3. Our mistakes about it will cost us dear. God is very jealous of what we make our happiness, and therefore blasteth the carnal choice. Those that will try experiments, smart for it in the issue. Solomon came home by weeping-cross : Eccles. i. 14, ' I have seen all the works that are done under the sun, and behold, all is vanity and vexation of spirit.' He hath proved it to our hands. He had a large heart, and a large estate, and gave himself to pleasures, to extract happiness from the creatures, to hunt after worldly satisfactions in a more artificial way than brutish sots, that merely act according to lust and appetite : Eccles. ii. 1, ' I said in mine heart. Go to now, I will prove thee with mirth, therefore enjoy pleasure ; and behold, this also is vanity,' He gave himself to pleasures, not merely upon sensual, but curious and artificial aims, yet found his heart secretly withdrawn from God, Whoever maketli trial will either run into utter mischief, or must come home again by a sound remorse. And so they learn it, and dearly to their cost.
Use. Let us study this point well.
1. That we may not take up with a false happiness, or set up our rest in temporal enjoyments, as height of honour, abundance of riches, favour of great men, &c. ; things useful in their sphere, and beneficial to sweeten and comfort the life of man, who hath placed his happiness in God. Pleasures being enjoyed, they do not satisfy ; being loved, they defile ; being lost, they increase our trouble and sorrow.
[1.] They cannot satisfy, because of their imperfection and uncertainty. They do not answer the whole desire of man, carry no proportion with the conscience. That which maketh a man happy must bear a thorough proportion with all the wants, desires, and capacities of the soul, so as conscience and heart and all may say it is enough. But, alas ! these things cannot give us solid peace and contentment : Isa. Iv. 2, ' Wherefore do ye spend your money for that which is not bread ? and your labour for that which satisfieth not ? ' Till an hungry conscience be provided for, we cannot be hap[)y. But besides their low use, consider the uncertainty of enjoyment. Nothing can give us
8 SEKMONS UPON PSALM CXIX. [SePv. L
solid peace, but what doth make us eternally happy. These flowers wither in our hands while we smell at them. Nothing but the favour of God is from everlasting to everlasting. We have not a sure posses- sion of these things in the world. They are possessed with .fear, 1 Cor. vii. 30, 31. It is the apostle's counsel, that 'they that buy' should have such remiss affections to the world, 'as though they possessed not ; and that they use this world as not abusing it, for the fashion of this world passeth away.' A man must look for changes, and lay forth for several conditions in the world: Ps. xxxix. 11,. ' When thou with rebukes dost correct man for iniquity, thou makest his beauty to consume away like a moth. Surely every man is vanity. Selah.' Like glass, brittle when most glistering.
[2.] Being inordinately loved, they defile. There is not only gall, but poison in them. They cannot make us better, but may easily make us worse, as they defile and draw the heart from God, and en- slave us to our own lusts : 1 Tim. vi. 9, 10, ' But they that will be rich, fall into temptation and a snare, and into many foolish and hurtful lusts, which drown men in destruction and perdition. For the love of money is the root of all evil, which, while some have coveted after, they have erred from the faith, and pierced themselves through with many sorrows.'
[3.] Being lost, they increase our trouble and sorrow. A man that hath not learned to be abased, as well as to abound, his abundance maketh his case the more miserable. It is hard to go back a degree or two. They are apt to bring much trouble upon the heart of him that is conversant about them : ' All is vanity and vexation of spirit.' The more we make them our happiness, when lost they increase our trouble.
2. That we may not be prejudiced against the true happiness. Men think it a happiness to live without the yoke of religion, to speak, and think, and do what they please without restraint ; but to be always in bonds, and held under the awe of the word, that they count unreason- able and grievous : Ps. ii. 8, ' Let us break their bands asunder, and cast away their cords from us.' In studying this point — (1.) * Lean not to thine own understanding ;' Prov. xxiii. 4, ' Labour not tobe rich ; cease from thy own wisdom; ' but seek direction from God by his word and Spirit. God only can determine who is the blessed man, in whose hand alone it is to make us blessed. (2.) Take the light of faith ; sense and carnal reason will deceive you. Blessedness is a riddle which can only be found out by faith, ' which is the evidence of things not seen,' Heb. xi. 1. That a poor godly man, who is counted the filth and oflfscouring of all things, should be the only happy man, and that the great men of this world, who have all things at will, should be ' poor, blind, miserable, and naked,' is a paradox will never enter into the heart of a natural man, that hath only the light of sense and carnal reason to judge of things, for to sight and reason it is nothing so. (3.) Wait for the light and power of the Spirit to incline and draw thy heart to God. Many times we are doctrinally right in point of blessed- ness, but not practically; we content ourselves with the mere notion, but are not brought under the power of these truths ; that is the work of the Spirit. It is easy to prove that it is the beasts' happiness to enjoy