3. It cannot stead you in your greatest and deepest necessities, and therefore they are but limited. There are two great necessities vrhere- in all creature comforts will fail : —
[1.] In troubles of conscience. Men do pretty well with their worldly portion and happiness till God sets their consciences awork, and begins to rebuke man for sin, and reviveth the sense of their own guilt and liableness to the curse. In such a case, all the glory and profit and pleasure of the creature will do no good ; it cannot allay the sense of God's wrath scorching the soul for sin : Ps. xxxix. 11, ' When thou with rebukes doth chasten man for sin, thou makest his beauty to consume like a moth.' Tell him of honours, friends, estates, pleasures, all is nothing ; the virtue of that opium wherewith he laid his soul asleep is now quite spent. Trouble of conscience arrests the stoutest and most jovial sinners, and layeth them under sadness and horror. Judas threw away his thirty pieces of silver when his guilt stared him in the face : ' I have sianed in betraying innocent blood,' Mat. xxvii. 4. When God is angry the creatures cannot pacify him and make you friends. As when a man is going to execution with a drooping and heavy heart, bring him a posy of flowers, bid him smell them, and comfort himself with them, he will think you upbraid his misery ; so in troubles of con- science, what good will it be to tell a man of riches and honours. The remedy must be according to the grief; so that if outward things could satisfy the heart, they cannot satisty the conscience ; our sore will run, among all the creatures, and there is no salve for it.
[2.] They will not stead us at the hour of death, when a man must
454 SERMONS UPON PSALM CXIX, [SeR. C.
launch out into eternity, and set sail for an unknown world. Can a man comfort himself then with outward things, that a man is great, rich, and honourahle, beautiful or strong, or that he hath wallowed in all manner of sensualities? If 'men would look to the end of things, they would sooner discern their mistake : Deut. xxxii. 29, ' Oh, that they were wise, tliat they understood this, that they would consider their latter end ! ' So Jer. xvii. 9, ' At his latter end he shall be a fool.' He was a fool before, all his life-long, but now he is so in the ac- count of his own heart. So Job xxvii. 8, ' What hope hath the hypo- crite, though he hath gained, when God cometh to take away his soul?' The poor man would fain keep his soul a little longer; no, but God will take it now; and he doth not resign it, but God takes it by force. And 1 Cor. xv. 56, ' The sting of death is sin.' The dolours and horrors of a guilty conscience are revived by death, and then the weakness of worldly things doth best appear ; our wealth and honour and pleasure will leave us in the dirt. When the soul is to be turned out of doors, our vain conceits are blown away, and we begin to be sensible of our ill choice. If conscience did not do its office before, death will undeceive them : Ps. xlix. 17, ' When a man dieth he shall carry nothing away with him, his glory shall not descend after him.' He shall be eaten out by worms as others are, when he cometh to go the way of all the earth ; then for one evidence for heaven, one drachm of the favour of God, as Severus the emperor cried out, I have been all things, but now it profits me nothing.
4. It is of no use to you in the world to come. Gold and silver, the great instruments of commerce in this world, are of no value there. All civil distinctions last but to the grave. Some are high and others low, some are rich and others poor ; these distinctions will last but a while, but the distinction of good and bad lasts for ever. Their works follow them, but not their wealth ; outward things cannot save your souls, or bring you to heaven.
5. In this world it will not prevent a sickness or remove it. The honourable and the rich have their diseases as well as the poor ; yea, more, they are bred upon them by their intemperance. All your houses and lands and honours and estates cannot ease you of a fit of the gout, or stone, nor an aching tooth, nor keep off judgments when they are epidemical. There were frogs in Pharaoh's bed-chamber as well as among the meaner Egyptians, and all the king's guard could not keep them out.
Well, then, all these things show it is of a limited use ; indeed they serve to make our pilgrimage comfortable, and to support us during our service — that is the best use we can put them to ; but the use the most put them to is to satisfy a sensual appetite or please a fleshly mind, Ps. xvii. 14. The utmost that these things can procure is a back well clothed, and a belly well filled. This is but a sorry hap- piness, to feed a little better than others, to provide a richer feast for the worms, yea, a prey for hell. Take all created perfections, not as subordinate to grace, but separate from it, it servetli but to please the appetite or the fancy, make the most or best of it.