Two treatises of Mr. Jeremiah Burroughs. The first of earthly-mindedness

As God hath higher thoughts concerning man; so the dignity of mans Nature, the rational soul of man is of too high a birth for to have the strength of it spent about the things of the earth. God breathed into man his soul: It's (I may say) a kind of a Divine spark, the soul of man it is of the same nature with Angels, a spirit as Angels are: the thoughts of the minds, the Faculties and Powers of the soul are more precious things than to be poured out as water upon the ground. If a man have a Golden Mill, he would not use it only to grind dirt, straws, and rotten sticks in. The mind of man, the thinking faculty is too high to be exercised in the things of this earth; the mind of man it is of a most excellent capacious Nature: it is fit to converse, not only with Angels, but with the eternal God Himself, with Father, Son, and Holy Ghost; and to bestow the strength of such a faculty that God hath put into the soul of man upon such dirty, drossy, low, base, mean things, as earthly-minded men and women do bestow it upon, this must needs be a great evil. Know, the dignity of your Nature, the excellency of your Mind, the Soul of man it is of a transcendent being. Put all the world into the Balance, with it it's nothing. Therefore you know what Christ saith, What shall it profit a man, to gain the whole world, and lose his soul? The soul of the meanest galley-slave is more precious than Heaven and Earth, Sun, Moon, Stars, and all the host of them: Let me add then, all the Silver and Golden mines under ground; and all the unsearchable Riches of the great ⟨p. 71⟩and wide Sea, yea put all these together; and the Soul of the most contemptible beggar that cries for a crust of bread at thy door, is unexpressibly more worth than all these: Now, if mans soul be of such an high-born Nature, if God hath put such a Spirit which is a spark of Heaven into the bosom, for man of him to employ it in no other use and service, but merely to be an earth-worm to creep in and upon the ground: this must needs be a very great evil.