2. You must use the world, not as abusing it. If the Lord set the world upon you, you must not set your heart upon the world. If God give you great estates, you must not think you are better for your estates; you 1must not abuse that, which was given you to help you more comfortably to Heaven, to further you most effectually to Hell. You abuse it, when you suffer that use of it, to which your Maker made it. When you suffer the world to monopolize your hearts from God, then the right use of the world is perverted; when it thrusts out religious duties or straitens them so as makes them inconsistent with the health and welfare of the soul when the world governs you, which was made to serve you: In a word, it's abused when it is not crucified; when it's used to serve your corruptions, as your pride, covetousness or lust, then it's abused: when you dig an estate out of the bowels of the earth to dress your backs with pride, or to maintain unjust suits, or to be drunken, or gluttonous this is to abuse the world: and thus the creation ⟨p. 251⟩is made to groan, and the poor creatures do even sigh under their abuse, being unwillingly made subject to our vanities, and long to be delivered from the bondage of corruption. Keep the world therefore in its place, and put it not in the place of God. Remember that the heart is Gods-acre, a place prepared for the Lord, and never meets with its match but in him, who fits all its dimensions, fills all its desires, cures all its diseases, and answers […] the necessities thereof.
2. You must use the world, not as abusing it. If the Lord set the world upon you, you must not set your heart upon the world. If God give you great estates, you must not think you are better for your estates; you 1must not abuse that, which was given you to help you more comfortably to Heaven, to further you most effectually to Hell. You abuse it, when you suffer that use of it, to which your Maker made it. When you suffer the world to monopolize your hearts from God, then the right use of the world is perverted; when it thrusts out religious duties or straitens them so as makes them inconsistent with the health and welfare of the soul when the world governs you, which was made to serve you: In a word, it's abused when it is not crucified; when it's used to serve your corruptions, as your pride, covetousness or lust, then it's abused: when you dig an estate out of the bowels of the earth to dress your backs with pride, or to maintaine unjust sutes, or to be drunken, or gluttonous this is to abuse the world: and thus the creation ⟨p. 251⟩is made to groan, and the poor creatures do even sigh under their abuse, being unwillingly made subject to our vanities, and long to be delivered from the bondage of corruption. Keep the world therefore in its place, and put it not in the place of God. Remember that the heart is Gods-acre, a place prepared for the Lord, and never meets with its match but in him, who fits all its dimensions, fills all its desires, cures all its diseases, and answers 〈…〉 the necessities thereof.
- 1Thy God allows thee to warm thy self at the Sun of worldly comforts, but not to turn Persian and worship it. Mr. Swinnock.
