Four useful discourses viz. ... /Four usefull discourses viz. ... /

So when you let your hearts have liberty a little while to rejoice in the Creature, you have little command over your hearts for many weeks after. Now you may be merry, Religion keeps not one from mirth, but yet so as to have a command over our spirits; that I can call my heart in again, when there is occasion. I will rejoice in the Creature, I but I will reserve my chief joy for something else; there is something else that I am to rejoice in, more than in the use of the Creature. If you let out your heart so, when you rejoice in the Creature, as you make it your chief joy, your only joy; your joy is not right. But it is not so with the heart that knows how to be full.

So when you let your hearts have liberty a little while to rejoyce in the Creature, you have little command over your hearts for many weeks after. Now you may be merry, Religion keeps not one from mirth, but yet so as to have a command over our spirits; that I can call my heart in again, when there is occasion. I will rejoyce in the Creature, I but I will reserve my chief joy for something else; there is something else that I am to rejoyce in, more than in the use of the Creature. If you let out your heart so, when you rejoyce in the Creature, as you make it your chief joy, your onely joy; your joy is not right. But it is not so with the heart that knows how to be full.

Fifthly, Then hath a man or woman learned how to be full, when they can so use the creatures of God, as yet they are in a readiness to part with all their comforts, if God will call for them. If I enjoy comfort, but in such a manner as my heart lies down before God ready prepared to give up those comforts that I do enjoy; whenever God will have me: Then I have learned to be full. When a man or woman shall have their hearts taken so with the Creature, as they cannot leave them, whatever comes of them: They must preserve their Estate, now having had full Estates, and lived full handed; they cannot live meanly: rather venture upon sin or any thing in the world, to preserve their Estates. O how is it possible for a man as ⟨p. 14⟩