Page:On the providence of God in the government of the world.pdf/15

 abatements be deducted. Their pleasures are short, a blaze, the crackling of thorns under a pot' often interrupted, not by unlucky accidents only, but most of all by their own unruly passions; which are so many vipers, always breeding within them, and gnawing through their bowels. 'The wicked are like the troubled sea, when it cannot rest, whose waters cast up mire and dirt.' There is no peace, saith my God, to the wicked. Isa. lvii. 10.21. [sic]

What peace can they have who entertain such to peace within themselves? Pride, scornfulness,, vain glory, foolish hope, insatiable desire; whose are easily corrupted with discontent; who  their own success in things of the greatest value,  they be disappointed in a trifle; whose pleasures are  purchased with long and sharp pains, that tread  the heels of them. And although conscience seems give them but little trouble, to be either reconciled  what they do, or fast asleep, and to observe nothing;  every now and then it affears them with dreams, and  them with visions, and upon some surprizing, will be apt to start of a sudden, and awake  a great affright, and will not, without much ado, be  and laid to sleep again.

This is very often the inside of that gawdy shew that the prosperity of the wicked makes. Their afflictions not so apt to deceive the standers by; there it is easy  see how their sins and unmortified lusts, and evil  increase their torment; they have used religion  ill to expect any relief from thence; they know not  to make God their refuge; they are, it may be, too  and desperate to pray at all, or too guilty to  with confidence; their pride and haughtiness makes  more impatient; they break their teeth with biting  chain; they struggle with that which is too strong for them: they can neither cast off nor bear their ; they have no patience, because they have 'no hope, and are without God in the world.'

The sum of this consideration is, That whatever the of men be, high or low, rich or poor,  observation will be found true, that