The Sincere Convert

Take a Princes child, and bring it up in a base house and place, it never aspires after a Kingdom or Crown: So men, hatched in this world, knowing ⟨p. 218⟩no better an estate, never cast about them to get a better inheritance than that they scramble for here. Wives mourn for the long absence of their beloved Husbands, because they know them and their worth. God may absent himself from men, weeks, months, years, but men shed not one tear for it, because they never tasted the sweetness of his presence. It is strange to see men take more content in their cups and cards, pots and pipes, dogs and hawks, than in the fellowship of God and Christ, in Word, in Prayer, in Meditation, which Ordinances are burdens and prisons unto them. What is the reason of it? Is there no more sweetness in the presence of Gods smiling in Christ, than in a filthy Whore? Yes, but they know not the worth, sweetness, satisfying goodness of a God; yet into fresh waters they will never return, because now they taste a large difference of each estate: So it is here, if men did but once taste of the happiness of Gods people, they would not for a thousand ⟨p. 219⟩worlds be one half hour in their wild loose Sea again ▪ e.

Take a Princes childe, and bring it up in a base house and place, it never aspires after a Kingdome or Crowne: So men, hatcht in this world, knowing ⟨p. 218⟩no better an estate, never cast about them to get a better inheritance than that they scramble for here. Wives mourne for the long absence of their beloved Husbands, because they know them and their worth. God may absent himself from men, weeks, months, yeares, but men shed not one teare for it, because they never tasted the sweetnesse of his presence. It is strange to see men take more content in their cups and cards, pots and pipes, dogges and hawkes, than in the fellowship of God and Christ, in Word, in Prayer, in Meditation, which Ordinances are burdens and prisons unto them. What is the reason of it? Is there no more sweetnesse in the presence of Gods smiling in Christ, than in a filthy Whore? Yes, but they know not the worth, sweetnesse, satisfying goodnesse of a God; yet into fresh waters they will never returne, because now they taste a large difference of each estate: So it is here, if men did but once taste of the happinesse of Gods people, they would not for a thousand