Moralities.
1. IT is a strange thing, that God is always with us, and we are so little with him. We have our being, our moving, our life from him: he car∣ries us in his arms, he keeps us as a nurse doth her dear child; and yet all this while we scarce know what he is, and use him so often as a stranger. He is in our being, and yet we keep him far from our heart, as a dead man, who is quite forgotten. And Enoch walk∣ed with him, and for that he was taken from the conversation of men, and reserved for Paradise. To speak truth, our soul should always be languishing af∣ter her Jesus, and count it a kind of Adultery to be separated from him, so much as by thought. Let us learn a little to talk with him; we commonly have that in our tongue, which we keep in our heart. Let us sweeten the sadness of our pilgrimage, by the con∣templation of his beauties. Let us look upon him as God and man; the God of gods; the Man of men; our great Saviour and Prophet, powerfull both in word and work; for if his word be thunder, his life is a lightening. He hath been here doing good to all the world, and suffering hurt from all the world; doing good without reward, and enduring evil without impatience. We all pass here as Torrents into valleys; the onely question is of our passing well: whether we look on worldly goods as on waters which pass under a bridge, and as upon the furniture of an Inn which is none of ours. If we be embark∣ed in the Vessel of life, let us not amuse our selves to gather Cockles upon the shore; but so, that we may always have our eyes fixt upon Paradise.
2. Two things do hinder those Pilgrims from knowing Jesus as they should. The one is, their eyes are dazeled; and the other is, the little account they make of the Cross, which drives them into the mis∣trust of the Resurrection. And this is it which cros∣seth us all our life, and so oft diverts us from the point of our happiness. Our eyes are dazeled with false lights of the world, they are darkened with so many mists and vapours of our own appetites and passions, that we cannot see the goods of heaven in the bright∣est of their day. Worldly chains have a certain effe∣ctive vigour and pleasure, which is onely painted, but they have a most certain sorrow, and a most uncertain contentment: They have a painful labour, and a ti∣morous rest: A possession full of misery, and void of all beatitude. If we had our eyes well opened, to pe∣netrate and see what it is, we should then say of all the most ravishing objects of the world; How sense∣less was I when I courted you? O deceitfull world, thou didst appear great to me, when I saw thee not as thou art: But so soon as I did see thee rightly, I did then cease to see thee: for thou wast no more to me but just nothing. We run in full career after all that pleaseth our sense, and the Cross, which is so much preached to us, is much more upon our Altars, than in our hearts. We will not know, that the throne of Mount Calvarie, is the path-way to Heaven; and as this truth wanders from our hearts, Jesus departs from our eyes. Let us at least pray Jesus to stay with us, for it is late in our hearts, and the night is far ad∣vanced by our want of true light. We shal not know Jesus by discourse, but by feeding him in the persons of his poor, since he gives the continual nourishment of his body.