Discourses upon the Existence and Attributes of God

2. Much less should we trust in them or rejoice in them. The best things are mutable, and things of such a Nature are not fit Objects of confidence. Trust not in Riches, they have their wanes as well as increases; they rise sometimes like a Torrent and flow in upon men, but resemble also a Torrent in as sudden a fall and departure, and leave nothing but slime behind them. Trust not in Honour, all the Honour and Applause in the World, is no better than an Inheritance of Wind, which the Pilot is not sure of, but shifts from one corner to another, and stands not perpetually in the same point of the Heavens. How in a few Ages did the house of David a great Monarch, and a man after Gods own heart, descend to a mean condition, and all the glory of that house shut up in the stock of a Carpenter? David's Sheep-hook was turned into a Sceptre, and the Sceptre by the same hand of Providence turned into a Hatchet in Joseph his Descendent.

2. Much less should we trust in them or rejoyce in them. The best things are mutable, and things of such a Nature are not fit Objects of confidence. Trust not in Riches, they have their wanes as well as increases; they rise sometimes like a Torrent and flow in upon men, but resemble also a Torrent in as suddain a fall and departure, and leave nothing but slime behind them. Trust not in Honour, all the Honour and Applause in the World, is no better than an Inheritance of Wind, which the Pilot is not sure of, but shifts from one corner to another, and stands not perpetually in the same point of the Heavens. How in a few Ages did the house of David a great Monarch, and a man after Gods own heart, descend to a mean condition, and all the glory of that house shut up in the stock of a Carpenter? David's Sheep-hook was turned into a Scepter, and the Scepter by the same hand of Providence turned into a Hatchet in Joseph his Descendent.

Rejoice not immoderately in wisdom; That and Learning languish with Age. A wound in the head may impair that which is the Glory of a Man. If an Organ be out of frame, Folly may succeed, and all a mans Prudence be wound up in an irrecoverable Dotage. Nebuchadnezzar was no Fool, yet by a sudden hand of God he became not only a Fool or a mad Man, but a kind of Brute. Rejoice not in strength; that decays, and a mighty Man may live to see his strong Arm withered, and a Grass-hopper to become a Burden.