meat. The I'ich men's charge, James v. 5, runs tlms : ' Ye liave lived in pleasm-e on earth.' They lived in pleasures as if they lived for them, and could not live without tliem. When once this wine of creature-contents fumes up to the brain, intoxicates the man's judgment, tliat he begins to dote of them, and cannot tliink of parting with them to enjoy better, but cries, loth to depart; as those Jews in Babylon, who, beginning to thiive in that soil, were very willing to stay there, and lay their bones in Babylon for all Jeriisalem, which they Ayere called to return unto ; then truly they are pernicious to the power of holiness. Though a master doth not grudge his servant his meat and drink, yet he will not like it if, when he is to go abroad, his servant be laid up drunk and disabled from waiting on him by his intemperance ; and a drunken man is as fit to attend on his master, and do his business for him, as a Christian over- charged with the pleasures of the creatm-e is to serve his God in any duty of godliness.
Secondly, They are sinful when not rightly timed: fruit ate out of its season is naught. We read of ' a time to embrace, and a time to forbear,' Eccles. iii. 7; there are some seasons that the power of holiness calls off, and will not allow, what is lawful at another time. As, first, on the Lord's day, now all carnal creature pleasures are out of season. God calls us then to higher delights, and expects we should lay the other aside, and not put our palates out of taste with those lower pleasures, that we may the better relish his heavenly dainties, Isa. Iviii. 13: 'If thou turn away thy foot from the sabbath, from doing thy plea- sure on my holy day, and call the sabbath a delight, the holy of the Lord, honourable, and shalt honour him, not doing thy own ways, nor finding thy own pleasure, nor speaking thy own words, then shalt thou delight thyself in the Lord.' Mark, we can neither taste the sweetness of communion with God, nor pay the honour due to God in sanctifying liis day, except we deny ourselves in our carnal delights. If a king should, at some certain times of the year, invite some of his poor subjects to sit and feast with him at his own royal table, they should exceedingly dishonour their prince, and wrong themselves, to bring their ordinary mean fare with them to court. Do glorified saints in heaven call for any of their carnal delights, or miss them, while they are taken up in heaven, pi'aising God, and feeding on the joys that flow from the full-eyed vision of God? And doth not God make account he gives you to enjoy heaven in a figin-e, when he admits you the service of his holy day ? Secondly, in days of solemn fasting and prayer we are then to afflict our souls ; and creature-plea- sures will fit that work no better than a silver lace would do a mourning suit. Thirdly, in times of public calamity in the church abroad, especially at home ; and this a gracious heart cannot but count reasonable that he should deny him- self, or at least tie up himself to a very short allowance in his creature-delights. When Christ in his cluu-ch lies a bleeding, sympathy is a debt we owe to our fellow-saints, Christ mystical. And truly the coi-ds of other afflictions will be little felt through our soft, downy beds, if we indulge ourselves, I mean, to a full enjoyment of our ease and carnal delights. What child that is merry and pleasant in his own house, and hath a father or mother lying at the same time in great misery at the point of death, but unknown to him, will not, when the doleful news at last comes to him, change his note, yea, mourn that he did not know it sooner, and had not rather have been weeping for, and with his dear relations in the house of mourning, than passing away his time pleasantly at home? Hitherto I have answered by concession, confessing what pleasures the power of a holy and righteous life denies and forbids, and I hope they appear to be no other than such as may, without any loss to the believer's joy, be fairly dismissed.
Section II. — Ans. Now in the second place I come to answer by way of negation. Though a holy, righteous life denies the Christian the pleasures afore- mentioned, yet it doth not deprive him of any true pleasure the creature affords; yea, so far fi-om this, that none doth or can enjoy the sweetness of the creature like the gracious soul that walks in the power of holiness, as will apjjear in these two particidars.
First, The gracious person hath a more curious palate, that fits him to taste a fiuther sweetness in, and so draw more pleasure from, any creatiu-e-enjoyment than an unholy person can do. The fly finds no honey in the same flower from
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