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distance, and men will not take a nearer view of the regularity of the ways of godliness.
3. Because they live contrary to that life which they affect, and do by their practice condemn it. This reason is given by the apostle, 1 Peter iv. 4, ' Wherein they think it strange, that you run not with them into the same excess of riot : speaking evil of you.' Worldly men think there is a kind of happiness in their sort of life, which is so. plausible and pleasing to the flesh, they cannot but wonder at it ; and as long as they are carnal, they cannot discern those spiritual reasons which make believers abhor their kinds of conversation, and therefore censure and judge them as a sort of crazy brains, that do not know what is good for them. Men that live in any sinful course are unwilling that any should part company with them in their way wherein they will go, that there may be none to make them ashamed, which testify that their deeds are evil, John vii. 7, or to condemn by their practice what they allow, Heb. xi. 7 ; and the sweetness of Christ's service is wholly hid from them, and therefore are never more furiously confident than when most deceived and most blind, and others appear in a real con- tradiction to their humours.
Fourilily, Let us see how justly this crimination may be retorted, and that their way is properly madness. And in this sense bedlam is everywhere : the whole world is a dreaming, distracted world, a mere incurable bedlam.
1. If you will stand to the judgment of God, the case is determined, that every carnal man is a fool, and out of his wits. There is all the reason in the world, that he should be counted a fool, and one beside himself, whom God calleth fool, for he is best able to judge, because he is the fountain of wisdom : Ps. xlix. 13, the Holy Ghost hath determined the case, ' This their way is their folly.' Job's hypocrites, and Solomon's fools, and those whom John calleth the world, and Paul the carnal, they are all the same company, only diversified in the notion.
2. We will give them as partial a judge as can be. First, In the judgment of their own hearts, they are fools and madmen when they are serious. As when a man is convinced by the Spirit of God, he Cometh to himself ; as it is said of the prodigal, Luke xv. 17, ' He came to himself.' The first thing that he is convinced of is'the folly and madness of his carnal course. Therefore every one of us must become a fool that he may be wise, 1 Cor. iii. 18 ; a child of God, when he cometh out of a temptation, Ps. Ixxiii. 22, ' I was as a beast before thee;' Titus iii. 3, 'We were sometimes foolish,' madmen, or men out of our wits, in regard of our perverse choice ; and till we repent, we are never ourselves ; then we are in our wits again. The prodigal grew in his folly, till he came to his father ; and he went not to his father, till he came to himself. We then come to ourselves when we know our folly, mourn for it, and seriously amend it. The first degree of wisdom is to know our folly ; the second to turn from it, and betake ourselves to a wiser course. Secondly, When he cometh to die : Luke xii. 20, ' Thou fool, this night thy soul shall be required of thee.' Why fool ? Because everything was provided for but that which should be most provided for, his precious and immortal soul. He that pro-
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videth but for half, and that the worser half, and that but for a short time, is a fool. In his greatest extremity his eyes are opened : Jer. xvii. 11, 'At his latter end, he shall be a fool.' In the conviction of his own conscience, his heart will rave at him. 0 fool ! 0 vain mad- man ! death bloweth away all vain conceits and fancies, when all our vain pursuits and projects will leave us in the dirt. Thirdly, Plain, reason will evidence carnal men to be beside themselves. I prove it thus. There is in madness two things, amentia et furor, folly and fury. That there are both these in a carnal man, I shall prove by these demonstrations, for a taste.
[1.] There is in them the folly of a distracted man, or one bereft of his senses, even in the wisest worldlings and sensualists.
(1.) Though they acknowledge a God, by whom and for whom they were made, and from whom they are fallen by sin, and cannot be happy but in returning to him, yet the worldly man knoweth no misery but in bodily and worldly things, no happiness but in pleasing his senses. The beginning, progress, and end of his course is all from himself, in himself, and to himself, looking only to things near at hand ; every toy that pleaseth his humour is good to him, poureth out his heart upon it and loseth himself for it, and will neither admit information of his error, nor reformation of his practice, till death destroy him, and the God that made him is forgotten days without number : Eom. iii. 10, * There is none that understandeth, and seeketh after God.'