The right method for a settled peace of conscience, and spiritual comfort in 32…

Doth not the world eat out the life of your duties, that when you should be serious with God, you have left your heart behind you, and drowned your affections in things below? Doth not your soul stick so fast in this mud and clay, that you can scarce stir it Godward in Prayer or heavenly Meditation? Do not you cut short duties in your family and in secret, if not frequently omit them, that so you may be again at your worldly business? Or do you not customarily hurry them over because the world will not allow you leisure to be serious? and so you have no time to deal in good earnest with Christ or your soul? Do not your very speeches of Christ and heaven grow few and strange, because the world must first be served? When you see your brother have need, do you not shut up the bowels of your compassions from him? Doth not the love of the world make you hard to your servants? hard to those you buy and sell with? And doth it not encroach much on the Lords own day? Look after this earthly vice in all these discoveries: ⟨p. 297⟩search for your enemy in each of these corners. And if you find that this is indeed your case, you need not much wonder if Christ and you be stranger then heretofore. If this earth get between your heart and the Sun of Life, no wonder if all your Comforts are in an eclipse; seeing your Light is but as the Moon's, a borrowed Light. And you must be the more careful in searching after this sin, both because it is certain that all men have too much of it, and because it is of so dangerous a nature, that should it prevail, it would destroy: For covetousness is Idolatry. And among all the heinous sins that the godly have fallen into, look into the Scripture, and tell me how many of them you find charged with covetousness? And also, because it is a blinding befooling sin, not only drawing old men, and those that have no children, and rich men, that have no need to pursue these things as madly as others; but also hiding it self from their eyes, that most that are guilty of it will not know it: Though, alas, if they were but willing it were very easy to know it. But the power of the sin doth so set awork their wits to find excuses and fair names and titles for to cloak it, that many delude others by it, and more delude themselves, ⟨p. 298⟩but none can delude God.

Doth not the world eat out the life of your duties, that when you should be serious with God, you have left your heart behinde you, and drowned your affections in things below? Doth not your soul stick so fast in this mud and clay, that you can scarce stirre it Godward in Prayer or heavenly Meditation? Do not you cut short duties in your family and in secret, if not frequently omit them, that so you may be again at your worldly business? Or do you not customarily hurry them over because the world will not allow you leasure to be serious? and so you have no time to deal in good earnest with Christ or your soul? Do not your very speeches of Christ and heaven grow few and strange, because the world must first be served? When you see your brother have need, do you not shut up the bowels of your compassions from him? Doth not the love of the world make you hard to your servants? hard to those you buy and sell with? And doth it not incroach much on the Lords own day? Look after this earthly vice in all these discoveries: