3. Defects and wants are interwoven with the very nature of the creature; and the rational creature finds that it cannot be, nor is self-sufficient. Hence it seeks its happiness without itself, and must do it, to satisfy these natural desires.

Lastly, Seeing, then, man's happiness is without himself, it must be brought in, which cannot be done without labour. It is proper to God to be happy in himself; but every creature must needs go out of itself to find its happiness; so that action is the true way to it, that is, rest cannot be found but in the way of action and labour, and because they are not in the right way, it is wearisome labour.

Let us inquire,

II. How it is that men out of Christ labour for happiness and satisfaction. Here it is impossible for us to reckon up particulars, and that in regard,

1. Of the different dispositions of men, and the various, as well as contrary opinions, concerning what may make a man happy. Varro says, there were two hundred and eighty opinions touching the chief good in his time. It is true, Christianity, in the profession of it, hath fixed this point in principle; but nothing less than overcoming grace can fix it in point of practice. The whole body of Christless sinners are like the Sodomites at Lot's door; all were for the door, but one grasps one part of the wall for it, another another part, not one of them found it. The world is, as the air in a summer-day, full of insects; and natural men, like a company of children, one running to catch one, another, another, while none of them is worth the pains. One runs to the bowels of the earth, another to the ale-house, &c.-It is impossible to determine here,

2. In regard of men's still altering their opinions about it, as they meet with new diappointments. Like a man in a mist, seeking a house in a wilderness, when every bush, tree, &c. deceives, till, by coming near, he is undeceived. "O (thinks the man), if I had such a thing, I would be well." Then he falls to labour for it; may be he never gets it, but he ever pursues it. If he gets it, he finds it will not do, for as big as it was afar off, yet it will not fill his hand when he grips it; but it must be filled, or no rest, hence new labour to bring forth just a new disappointment: Isa. xxvi. 18, "We have been with child, we have been in pain, we have as it were brought forth wind."-It is difficult also,

3. Because they cannot tell themselves what they would be at. Their starving souls are like the hungry infant, that gapes, weeps, crys, and sucks every thing that comes near its mouth, but cannot tell what it would have, but is still restless till the mother set it to

the breast. It is regenerating grace that does that to the soul. The Hebrew word for believing, comes from a root that signifies to nurse, as if faith were nothing but a laying of the soul on the breasts of Christ, in whom dwelleth all the fulness of the Godhead. The scripture holds him out as the mother that bare them; hence his people are called, Isa. liii. 11, "The fruit of the travail of his soul." He also is their nourisher: hence he says, Isa. i. 2, "I have nourished and brought up children." The breasts of the church, Isa. lxvi. 11, at which they are to suck and be satisfied, are no other than Christ. But, in the general, to see from whence it is that men out of Christ go about to squeeze out their happiness, see Psalm iv. 6, 7, quoted above. From which observe two things.

(1.) That it is not God, for these two are set in opposition; go to as many doors as they will, they never go to the right door; hence it follows, that it is the creatures out of which they labour to draw their satisfaction: "Having forsaken the fountain of living waters, they hew out to themselves cisterns, broken cisterns, that can hold no water."

(2.) That it is good they are seeking out of them; and indeed men can seek nothing but under that notion, though for the most part they call evil good, and good evil. All good is either profitable, pleasurable, or honest; these, then, are all that they are seeking, not from God, but from themselves, or other creatures. The two former have respect to the cravings of men's desires, the latter to the cravings of the law. And seeing it is not in God that they seek their happiness and satisfaction, I infer hence, that all out of Christ are labouring for their happiness and satisfaction in one or both of these ways, either from their lusts, or from the law; and this I take to be the very labour intended in the text. For which consider these three things:

1st, That all natural men have two principles in them, (1.) Corruption; (2.) Conscience. Both crave of them: Rom. ii. 15, " Which shew the work of the law, written in their heart, their conscience also bearing witness, and their thoughts the mean while accusing, or else excusing one another." Hence, because they do not mortify the lusts, they must be fed or no rest; and therefore they labour for their lusts to satisfy them. Then, because they fly not to Christ for the satisfaction of their conscience, they go to the law.

2dly. The bulk of natural men in the world have still been of two sorts (1.) The profane party; (2.) The formal party. These have still been among Jews, Pagans, and Christians; the former labouring most in lusts, the latter in the law.

3dly, Adam left us with two yokes on our necks, (1.) Of lusts;

(2.) Of the law. The last was of God's putting, but he gave strength with it to bear it; Adam took away the strength, but left the yoke, aud put on a yoke of lusts beside; and in opposition to both these, Christ bids us come and take on his yoke, which is easy, and his burden, which is light," Matth. xi. 29.

As to the labour they have in their lusts, they call them, and they run after them. These infernal devils in the heart drive the swine of this world into the sea of perdition; nay, turn the soul itself into a very sea, that cannot rest: Isa. lvii. 20, "The wicked are like the troubled sea, when it cannot rest, whose waters cast up mire and dirt." They labour like madmen for satisfaction to them, and no calm, no rest, till the soul come to Christ.

1. They labour hard in the lusts of profit: 1 John ii. 16, "For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life, is not of the Father, but is of the world." The profits of the world are the cisterns they squeeze for satisfaction; they bewitch the hearts of them that have them, and of them that want them; they fly after them with that pains and labour the ravenous bird doth after its prey: Prov. xxiii. 5, "Wilt thou set thine eyes upon that which is not? for riches take to themselves wings, they fly away, as an eagle towards heaven." The strength of men's desires, and the cream of their affections, are spent on them; their happiness depends upon its smiles, their misery upon its frowns; if gone, their god is gone. Hence is that verified, Hab. ii. 13, "They labour in the very fire, and weary themselves for very vanity," like a poor fool running to catch a shadow. They have hard labour in lawful profits, how to get them, and how to keep them, but hardest of all, how to squeeze satisfaction out of them; there they labour in the very fire; they labour also in unlawful profits. The soul is an empty thing; lusts are ill to guide; conscience must make a stretch now and then, for the satisfaction of lusts; and the man will leap over the hedge, though the serpent will bite him: 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." Hence the carnal man, I may say, never gets up his back, but on his belly doth he go, and labours, as if he were a slave condemned to the mines, to dig in the bowels of the earth; like the blind moles, his constant labour is in the earth, and he never opens his eyes till he is dying. He has his lade of thick clay upon his back, Hab. ii. 6, as the fruit of his labouring in the fire. There is thus a labouring and heavy-laden party. Others take the world in their hand as a staff, nay, tread on it as the dirt,

and they get it as a burden on their back; while guilt, many times contracted in the getting of it, whether by oppression, cheatery, or neglecting of the soul for it, is like a sore back under the load, that makes them ready in despair to throw it away, but they know not how to subsist without it.

2. They labour in lusts of pleasure; they go about as the bee, extracting the sweet out of the creatures for their own satisfaction; this and the former usually go together. Profits and pleasures are the world's two great baits, at which all natural men are constantly leaping, till they are caught by the hook, and flung out into the fire of wrath: Prov. ix. 17, 18, "Stolen waters are sweet, and bread eaten in secret is pleasant. But he knoweth not that the dead are there, and that her guests are in the depths of hell." Pleasure is a necessary ingredient in happiness, and man cannot but seek it; hence God proposeth it to men in himself, who is the fountain of all sweetness: Psalm xvi. 11, "Thou wilt shew me the path of life, in thy presence there is fulness of joy, at thy right hand there are pleasures for evermore." But blind man makes the creature-sweetness his idol, and puts it in the room of God; for "they are lovers of pleasures, (in this sense), more than lovers of God," 2 Tim. iii. 4. It is no fault to seek our profit; for, Heb. xi. 26, " We are to have respect unto the recompense of the reward." Nor to seek what may be sweet to the soul; for we may wish our souls to be "satisfied with marrow and fatness," Psalm lxiii. 5. But the natural man's misery and sin both is, he forsakes God, and fastens on the breasts of the creatures for these things.

Now, there are two breasts of the creatures at which men may be sucking.

(1.) The breast of lawful comforts. Natural men fall on these, instead of the breasts of God's consolations, and labour, though in vain, to squeeze happiness and satisfaction out of them, and that with the greatest eagerness. They are lawful in themselves, but they often press so hard, that they draw out blood instead of milk from them; and are like men working at a flinty rock, to bring out water, instead of which they get fire flashing in their face, as in that case, Judges ix. 15, when "fire came out of the bramble to devour the cedars of Lebanon."-There is,

(2.) The breast of unlawful comforts, Prov. ix. 17," Stolen waters are sweet." Many seek their satisfaction in those things which they ought not so much as to desire, and fill themselves with what God forbids them so much as to taste. O! the misery of Christless sinners, to whom both lawful and unlawful comforts are effectual snares for ruin. Like mad beasts, if they abide within the hedge, they tear

up

all to the red earth, which doth not yet satisfy. But they most usually break over all hedges; and they do so, because the creature can never fully answer the craving desires and hungry appetite, and yet, after all, they will not come to Christ, that they may have rest.

These breasts of the creatures have many springs, divers lusts and pleasures, Titus iii. 3, and these are served; men must labour in them as a servant at his master's work. I shall reduce them to these two heads, mentioned, Eph. ii. 3, the desires of the flesh and of the mind.

1st, They labour for satisfaction and happiness in the pleasures of the flesh. And,-1. In sensuality. This was the door man first went to, after he had left God. And since the world was turned upside down by that means, the soul has lain downmost, and the flesh uppermost, so that they are all sensual, as Jude says, ver. 19, that have not the Spirit; and the soul is made drudge of the body. The belly is a god, and the pleasures of the flesh are squeezed for satisfaction; all the senses are set a-working for it, and yet can never do enough: Eccl. vi. 7, "All the labour of man is for his mouth, and yet the appetite is not filled." Many arts and trades are found out to bring this to perfection, though all in vain; and there is no end of these things, which are of no use but to please the flesh, which, like the grave, never says it has enough.-2. Ease, sloth, and quiet, which is a negative kind of sensuality: Luke xii. 19,"The rich man said, Thou has goods laid up for many years, soul, take thine ease." All to please the flesh. This costs hard labour many times to the soul, many a throw conscience gets for the sake of this idol, what by neglect of duties, what by going over the belly of light to shun what is grieving to the flesh, as if men's hapness consisted in the quiet enjoyment of themselves.-They labour for satisfaction,

2dly, In the desires of the mind, and pleasures thereof. These, if they terminated on right objects, and were sought in a right manner, it would be well, for our true happiness consists in the soul's enjoyment of God; but in the natural man all is confusion. And,—1. There is much labour in seeking happiness in the pleasures of the judgment. This is the snare of thinking graceless men; this was among the first doors men went to when they turned from God : Gen. iii. 5, "Ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil." And there is hard labour without a figure, for the punishment of that: Eccl. i. 13," And I gave my heart to seek and search out by wisdom concerning all things that are done under heaven; this sore travail God hath given to the sons of men to be exercised there