The works of George Swinnock, M.A

Godliness brings more noble and excellent pleasures. Others are puddle-water, those pleasures which godliness giveth, are pure and clear streams, such as flow from God himself; There is more sweetness in one drop of the Fountain, then in all the waters of the Sea; There is more joy, more comfort, in a little communion with God, then in the greatest confluence of creature-enjoyments.¹ Austin saith, How sweet was it to me on a sudden to be without these sweet vanities; thou Lord who art the true sweetness, didst take them from me and enter ⟨p. 855⟩in thy self, who art more pleasant then all pleasure, and more clear then all light. The world, as they say of Fairies, deprives of true children and puts changelings in their room; deprives men of true substantial joy, and gives them shadows in the room; but godliness on the contrary, deprives oft painted poisons, and gives them wholesome and real pleasures. All the comforts of this world to a person void of grace, are but as a sack of perfumes, and medicines, and cordial drugs to the back of a galled horse, which may vex and enrage his sores with their weight, but do not ease or abate his pain with their virtue. A Saints life, notwithstanding his greatest sufferings, whilst it is blessed with the smiles of his father, is an heaven upon earth; but the sinners life, notwithstanding his honours, and pleasures, and riches, and relations, whilst under the wrath of an infinite God, and anguished with the gripings of a guilty conscience, is little less then an earnest and taste of hell. Grace is sugar to sweeten all our crosses, and sin is vinegar to sower all our comforts. The iron seems to embrace the load-stone with great delight, and to be rapt with an amorous ecstasy. So as Thales thought it animal, and yet that motion is void of the least sense of pleasure. The wicked man seems by his smiling face and giggling countenance, to be the only merry man, when he is as far from true pleasure as from true piety. The least Be finds more delight in making and tasting a little honey, then the great Sun and all his glorious attendants in their high and perpetual courses. The meanest Christian hath more comfort in making sure his salvation, and ⟨p. 856⟩tasting the sweetness of his Saviour; then the Kings of the earth, and their Courtiers, in their abundance of all earthly comforts.