is certain, that wealth and riches are very vain things to be gloried and trusted in, as a man's chief security and felicity. For, 1. Riches reach only to the outward man, and cannot cure the inward evils and diseases of the mind. What doth all the wealth of the world signify to the man that is naturally and incurably melancholy, that dwells in a continual cloud, and looks on all the brighter things without him through a black glass and a thick mist of darkness? Besides, if some accidental discontent seize upon the rich man, (and the richest men are not out of the reach of such discontents,) how doth this sour all his enjoyments and delights, and render him inwardly most miserable, in the midst of all his outward happiness! How apt is every real or imaginary affront from his inferiors, that are either indeed so, or thought so by him, to disquiet and disturb him! How was Haman vexed in the midst of all his glory, for want only of a bow from Mordecai, Esth. iii. 5. Ahab, the richest of the kings of Israel, having taken a fancy to Naboth's vineyard, and being denied it, was heavy and displeased, and took his bed upon it, and could not sleep, and would not eat, 1 Kings xxi. 4. We are often infinitely mistaken, and take the falsest measures, when we envy the happiness of rich and great men; we know not the inward canker that eats out all their joy and delight, and makes them really much more miserable than ourselves. But what if a troubled conscience assaults the rich man? And from this danger he is not free, nay to this he is, of all others, most subject. For riches are styled by our blessed Lord the mammon of unrighteousness, Luke xvi. 9. Because they are for the most part found in the hands of unrighteous men, and by them are most valued, as being the mammon they serve and honour more than God; and also because they are often gotten by unrighteous means, and generally used to unrighteous purposes, being made the instruments of sin, and ministers to luxury and wantonness. Now, I say, what if all the wickedness he is guilty of, in the getting or using of his wealth, happen to stare in the face of the rich man's conscience when awakened by sickness or any other affliction? How doth this affright him, and into what horrors doth it cast him! 2. Riches cannot cure all the evils and diseases of the body neither. One sharp fit of the gout, stone, or strangury, will overcome all the cordial power of gold and silver, and make a man despise his riches, and willing to part with his beloved money for that ease which the vilest beggar enjoys. But this will not always do; money may procure the physician, but oftentimes the physician cannot cure the disease; and the rich man is left to roar under his torment, or miserably to languish under his infirmity, whilst the poor man sings and rejoices in his ease and health. Besides, I take it for certain, that if not the poor, yet the meaner man hath great advantages in point of health above the rich. For that temperance and plainer fare and exercise of body to which the condition of his life necessitates the man of a lower fortune, is in truth the best physic, and that which, after a tedious and costly course, the physician himself oftentimes adviseth his rich patient to. 3. Riches are no security against outward accidents and contingencies. God hath placed man in this world, in the midst of many hazards and evil chances, which fall not under any certain rule, but that of divine foresight and providence. To these the rich man is as liable as the poorest beggar. A tile or stone may as soon fall on and crush the rich man's head as the vilest peasant's; the rich man stands on no better legs, and hath no other arms, than the poor man; and he may, and as often doth need the surgeon to cure his broken leg or arm. He that is clothed in purple is thereby no more secured from a sudden blast of lightning than a man in rags. In the time of war and public calamity, the rich man generally fares the worst of all, and is exposed to plunder, rapine, and violence; whilst the meaner man is overlooked, and his obscurity is his greatest security and safety. 4. Riches are themselves uncertain, and therefore not to be gloried and trusted in. For what a folly is it for a man to be secure and confident in that, of the possession of which he can never be secure! Hence the great apostle gives it as a proper advice to rich men, not to trust in the uncertainty of riches, or in uncertain riches. And of riches the wisest of men thus elegantly discourseth, Prov. xxiii. 4, 5. Labour not to be rich: cease from thine own wisdom. Wilt thou set thine eyes upon that which is not? for riches certainly make themselves wings; they fly as an eagle toward heaven. Riches are as volatile a thing as the bird of the air, no where fixed, uncertain in the getting and keeping; flying from us both when we grasp after them and seek them, and when we think we have them in sure posses d 4 Μηδὲ ἠλπικέναι ἐπὶ πλούτου ἀδηλότητι. [1 Tim. vi. 17.] sion. Many are the projects of men to get riches, and some of them are so probable, so likely to take, and come so near the desired effect, that the man thinks himself as secure of them, as if he had them already in his power: but by some unexpected accident the project fails, and the man is left as poor as before; yea much poorer and more miserable, as being fallen from a great expectation, and afflicted with the loss of that, which though he never had, yet he was in his own conceit as sure of as if he' had possessed it. And when a man hath gotten wealth, how uncertain is the keeping of it! how often doth the bird fly away on a sudden! Riches are uncertain, as being subject to many chances, to theft and fraud, and rapine and violence, and fire and water too; a few great wrecks at sea often undoing the richest merchant. Besides men generally seek after wealth, not so much for their own comfortable subsistence whilst they live, (for a little will suffice for that,) as for the raising of a family, and leaving a rich and flourishing posterity behind them when they are dead. But, alas! how vain is this design! Hear the royal Psalmist, Psalm xxxix. 6. Surely every man walketh in a vain show: surely they are disquieted in vain: he heapeth up riches, and knoweth not who shall gather them. The provident man hath commonly a wasting prodigal, and the wise man a fool for his heir. And very often the heir utterly fails, and the family is extinct, and the name of it is perished from the earth, and the wealth gone to strangers that are no way related to the first gatherer of it. But if the family be still in being, yet oftentimes the riches are fled, and the estate is gone. How many great estates may we reckon up, that have within the compass of one age shifted several families! A good many years ago such a lordship was in such a family, (and perhaps their escutcheon is still to be seen in the wall or windows of the mansionhouse, as a sad monument of decayed and ruined gentility ;) afterwards it went to another, and now it is in a third or fourth family; and whither it will go next, who can tell? so vain a thing is it for a man to promise himself that he shall convey his inheritance to his heirs for ever. It is an excellent admonition to this purpose, that David gives to those that trust in their wealth, and boast themselves in the multitude of their riches, Psalm xlix. 10, 11, 12. For he seeth that wise men die, likewise the fool and the brutish person perish, and leave their wealth to others. Their inward thought is, that their houses shall continue for ever, and their dwelling places to all generations; they call their lands after their own names. Nevertheless man being in honour abideth not: he is like the beasts that perish. The sense of which place seems to be this: The rich man that trusteth in his riches, seeth, or may see, that the wise man and the fool certainly die, the one as well as the other; and that the wisest man, by all his wisdom, cannot so secure the estate he hath gotten, to his own progeny, but that it may, and often doth, in a short time, pass to another family. And yet such is the folly of the worldling, that he promises himself a perpetual name in the world, and a never-failing, and always flourishing posterity. But indeed, as the richest and most honourable man must himself certainly die, and have |