The crucifying of the world by the cross of Christ with a preface to the nobles, gentlemen, and all the rich, directing them how they may be richer / by Richard Baxter.

Quest. 3.

MY next▪ Question is, What hath the world done for any other, that should perswade you to set so much by it as you do? Did it ever save a soul? or heal a soul? or make a man truly happy at the last? Look back in any credible Records, to the beginning of the world, and down to this day, and tell me where is the man that is made happy by the world? And Consider what it hath done for them all? He that had most of it, and made the best of it, for the pleasing of his flesh, had but a short taste of sonsual pleasures, which quickly left him worse then he was before; like cold drink to a man in the fit of an Ague. And will you so far lay by your reason, as to go against the Experience of all the world? Do they all cry out against it as Vanity, and yet will you take no warning? Can you think to find that by it that no man ever found before you? What art have you to extract such comforts from the creature, that never man could do till now? It is the shame of them that spend so much cost, and time, and labour, in seeking that seed of Gold which they call the Philosophers stone, because never any that sought it could find it, but have all lost their la∣bour. So is it your far greater shame▪ to run an hazard so much greater for that which never man from the beginning of the

world could find till now. ••olomon went as far as any, in the pleasing of his flesh with the fulness of the world, and in the Conclusion he passeth this sentence on it, that All is vanity and vexation of spirit.