True gain, opened in a sermon preached at Pauls, Nov. 9. 1656

3. When life is lost, the world is all lost with it, a living porter, is richer then a dead Prince; death translates properties. If a man purchase land to himself for ever, that ever is no longer then his own life, if he will have the purchase extend further, he must put in his heirs with himself.

Secondly, Take the word [Greek or Hebrew] for the soul, as Luke: 12.19, 20. and then the truth holds much more. For 1. If a man could keep his soul and the world together, there is so vast a dis-proportion between them, that the one could never replenish the other, 2. If it could satisfy it for a time, yet it would cloy and satiate it at the last; there is excess in worldly enjoyments, and all ⟨p. 23⟩excess is nauseous and painful. 3. If they could replenish and not cloy, that there were a commensurateness between them, yet there is not an equality of duration. One generation, saith Solomon, passeth away, and another cometh, but the earth abideth, Eccles. 1.4. If when a man goes away, the earth did go with him, happily the same content which he found in it here, he would find in it elsewhere, but when he goes, and that stays behind him, all the content which he had in the fruition, doth vanish in the separation. 4. Being parted the soul must be for ever, as long as God is merciful to save, or just to punish, and what comfort is it, think we in hell, for a man to remember the pleasures of a short life; of which nothing there remains but the worm and the sting? ¹The Poet could say, If the headache did come first, no man would be drunk. If men could feel but a little of hell, before they sin, they would easily by that understand how empty and vanishing the pleasures of lust are, and how easily extinguished in a tormented Conscience, as a drop of wine loseth all its sweetness in a barrel of water. Again, what addition is it to the joys of heaven, for a man to recount the comforts of a perishing world? What content takes a grave wealthy learned man, in remembering the joy which in his childhood he was wont to take in his top, and counters? 5. The nature of the soul is spiritual, and must have spiritual objects to converse about. Sensitive faculties may be delighted with material objects: Mere natural reason may