This then serveth, 1. To reprove the sin and folly of all those who seek for joy out of the broken Cisterns of the Creatures, which can hold none, and leave that living fountain out of which it naturally floweth. Some seek it in secular wealth and greatness, others in sensual pleasures, feasting, gaming, luxury, excess; some in Titles of Honour, others in variety of knowledge, some in stately Structures, magnificent retinue, goodly provisions; others in low, sordid, and brutish lusts. Unto all whom we may say as the Angel unto the women, Luke 24. 5. Why seek ye the living amongst the dead; or as Samuel did unto Saul, Set not thy mind upon the Asses, there are nobler things to fix thy desires upon. Solomon had more variety this way, and more wisdom to improve it, then any now have; and he made it his business critically and curiously to examine all the creatures, and to find out all the good which was under the Sun. And the product and result of all his enquiries, amounted at last to a total made up all of Cyphers, of mere wind and emptiness, Vanity of vanities, vanity of vanities, all is vanity: So he begins his book; and to show that he was not mistaken, so he concludes it, Eccles. 1. & 12. Every particular vanity alone, and all in a mass and collection, vanity together, enough to vex the soul, enough to weary it; but never enough to fill it, or to suffice it: Many of them sinful delights, poisoned cordials, killing, cursing, damning joys; dropping as ⟨p. 21⟩an honey-comb, smooth as oil, but going down to death, and taking hold of hell, Prov. 5. 35. All of them empty delights, in their matter and expectation earthly; in their acquisition painful, in their fruition nauseous and cloying, in their duration dying and perishing; in their operation hardening, effeminating, leavening, puffing up, estranging the heart from God; in their consequences seconded with anxiety, solicitude, fear, sorrow, despair, disappointment, in their measure shorter then that a man can stretch himself on, narrower then that a man can wrap himself in; every way defective and d•sproportionable to the vast and spacious capacity of the soul, as unable to fill that, as the light of a candle to give day to the world. What ever delights men take pleasure in leaving Christ out, are but as the wine of a condemned man;
This then serveth, 1. To reprove the sin and folly of all those who seek for joy out of the broken Cisterns of the Creatures, which can hold none, and leave that living fountain out of which it naturally floweth. Some seek it in secular wealth and greatness, others in sensual pleasures, feasting, gaming, luxury, excess; some in Titles of Honor, others in variety of knowledge, some in stately Structures, magnificent retinue, goodly provisions; others in low, sordid, and bruitish lusts. Unto all whom we may say as the Angel unto the women, Luke 24. 5. Why seek ye the living amongst the dead; or as Samuel did unto Saul, Set not thy mind upon the Asses, there are nobler things to fix thy desires upon. Solomon had more variety this way, and more wisdom to improve it, then any now have; and he made it his business critically and curiously to examin all the creatures, and to find out all the good which was under the Sun. And the product and result of all his enquiries, amounted at last to a total made up all of Cyphers, of meer wind and emptiness, Vanity of vanities, vanity of vanities, all is vanity: So he begins his book; and to shew that he was not mistaken, so he concludes it, Eccles. 1. & 12. Every particular vanity alone, and all in a mass and collection, vanity together, enough to vex the soul, enough to weary it; but never enough to fill it, or to suffice it: Many of them sinfull delights, poisoned cordialls, killing, cursing, damning joies; dropping as ⟨p. 21⟩an honey-comb, smooth as oyle, but going down to death, and taking hold of hel, Prov. 5. 35. All of them empty delights, in their matter and expectation earthly; in their acqnisition painful, in their fruition nauseous and cloying, in their duration dying and perishing; in their operation hardning, effeminating, levening, puffing up, estranging the heart from God; in their consequences seconded with anxiety, solicitude, fear, sorrow, despair, disappointment, in their measure shorter then that a man can stretch himself on, narrower then that a man can wrap himself in; every way defective and d•sproportionable to the vast and spatious capacity of the soul, as unable to fill that, as the light of a candle to give day to the world. What ever delights men take pleasure in leaving Christ out, are but as the wine of a condemned man;
