492 SERMONS UPON PSALM CXIX. [SeR. GUI.
of the world, to part with them, to be dead to temporal interests, it seems the greatest folly in the world, but indeed it is the truest wisdom. Saith Lactantius, Usually wisdom dwells at the sign of folly. Why ? Because all wisdom puts men upon some self-denial. Carnal men count it folly for a man to be dead to his conveniences and worldly concernments, and that upon the pursuit of invisible things that lie in another world : but this indeed is the greatest wisdom. There is no wisdom without some self-denial. Carnal men have a self-denial, a cursed one ; none deny themselves so much as they ; they part with heaven, Christ, peace, and serenity of conscience, all the hopes, all the comforts of the Spirit, merely to please the flesh and gratify their in- terest in the world ; all is to compass the pleasure, profits, and honours of the world, and so to dig for iron with mattocks of gold, waste pre- cious things to compass them that are vile and contemptible.
Well, then, let us see who are wise, they that are working out their salvation, or those that are pleasing the flesh ? they that are wary and circumspect, and loath to break with God, or those that run blindfold upon the greatest dangers, and go ' like an ox to the slaughter, or as a fool to the correction of the stocks' ? Prov. vii.'^2. Who are wise? those that sell all for the pearl of price, or those that part with their birthright, all their hopes in God, and present sense of his love, for a little temporal convenience ?
Thus I have proved the first thing, namely, that the children of God are wiser than their enemies as to their general choice.
THE END OF YOL. VTL
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