vate person a common good. Dost thou disburse thy money for public uses? It is lawful-in this sense-to put out our money to use. Oh, let us all remember, an estate is a depositum! We are but stewards, and our Lord and Master will ere long say-Give an account of your stewardship. The greater our estate, the greater our charge; the more our revenues, the more our reckonings. You that have a lesser mill going in the world, be content; God will expect less from you, where he hath sowed more sparingly.

SECT. XI.

The eleventh Argument to Contentment.

THE eleventh argument is the example of those who have been eminent for contentment. Examples are usually more forcible than precepts. Abraham being called out to hot service, and such as was against flesh and blood, was content. God bids him offer up his son Isaac, Gen. xxii. 2. This was a great work. Isaac was the son of his old age, the son of his love, and the son of the promise: Christ, the Messiah, was to come of his line-In Isaac shall thy seed be blessed; so that, to offer up Isaac, seemed not only to oppose Abraham's reason, but his faith too; for if Isaac die, the world, for aught he knew,

Besides, if

must be without a Mediator. Isaac be sacrificed, was there no other hand to do it but Abraham's? Must the father needs be the executioner? Must he, that was the instrument of giving Isaac his being, be the instrument of taking it away? Yet Abraham doth not dispute or hesitate, but believes against hope, and is content with God's prescription. So, when God called him to leave his country, (Heb. xi. 1.) he was content. Some would have argued thus-" What, leave all my friends, my native soil, my brave situation, and go turn pilgrim?" Abraham is content besides, Abraham went blindfoldHe knew not whither he went, verse 8. God held him in suspense: he must go wander, he knows not where; and when he doth come to the place God had laid out for him, he knows not what oppositions he shall meet with there-the world doth seldom cast a favourable aspect upon strangers, Gen. xxxii. 16.-yet he is content, and obeys. He sojourned in the Land of Promise, Heb. xi. 9. Behold a little his pilgrimage.* First, he

* The amazing depth of Divine Providence cannot be fathomed while we are journeying through the wilderness of this world.-But it affords an infinite satisfaction to every truly pious mind, to reflect on the wisdom, the goodness, and the love of God our Saviour manifested towards us. Through all the varying vicissitudes of this transitory life, and if we by a steady faith, and patience, pursue our way, there is no doubt but we shall finally arrive at that city which Abraham sought for, whose builder and maker is God.

goes to Charan, a city in Mesopotamia; when he had sojourned there awhile, his father dies; then he removes to Sichem, then to Bethelem, in Canaan; there a famine ariseth; then he went down to Egypt; after that he returned into Canaan; when he came thereit is true he had a promise, but he found nothing to answer expectation-he had not there one foot of land, but was an exile. In this time of his sojourning, he buried his wife; and, as for his dwellings, he had no sumptuous buildings, but led his life in poor cottages. All this was enough to have broken any man's heart. Abraham might think thus with himself" Is this the land I must possess? Here is no probability of any good: all things are against me." Well, is he discontented? No. God saith to him-" Abraham, go, leave thy country." And this word was enough to lead him all the world over: he is presently upon his march. Here was a man that had learned to be content. let us descend a little lower, to heathen Zeno -of whom Seneca speaks-who had once been very rich, hearing of a shipwreck, and that all his goods were drowned at sea"Fortune," saith he he spake in an heathen dialect-" has dealt well with me, and would have me now to study philosophy." He was content to change his course of life, to leave off being a merchant, and turn philosopher. And if an Heathen said thus, shall not a Christian much more say, when the world is

But

drained from him-" God would have me leave off following the world, and study Christ more, and how to get to heaven." Do I see an Heathen contented, and a Christian disquieted? How did Heathens villify those things which Christians magnify? Though they knew not God, or what true happiness meant, yet would speak very sublimely of a Numen or Deity, and of the life to come, as Aristotle and Plato; and for those Elisian delights which they did but fancy, they undervalued and contemned the things here below. It was the doctrine they taught their scholars, and which some of them practised, that men should strive to be contented with a little; they were willing to make an exchange; to have less good, and more learning; and shall not we be content then to have less of the world, so we may have more of Christ? May not Christians blush to see Heathens content with a little, so much as would recruit nature, and to see themselves so transported with the love of earthly things; that if they begin a little to abate, and the stock of provision grows short, they murmur, and are like Micah-Have ye taken away my gods, and do ye ask me what I ail? Judges, xviii. 24. Have Heathens gone so far in contentment? And is it not sad for us to come short of them that came short of heaven? These heroes of their time, how did they embrace death itself? Socrates died in prison; Hercules was burnt alive; Cato

whom Seneca calls the lively image and portraiture of virtue-thrust through with a sword; but how bravely, and with what contentment of spirit, did they die? "Shall I," saith Seneca, "weep for Cato, or Regulus, or the rest of those worthies that died with so much valour and patience? Did not cross providences make them to alter their countenances, and do I see a Christian appalI led and amazed? Did not death affright them? and doth it distract us? Did the spring-head of Nature rise so high? and shall not grace, like the waters of the sanctuary, rise higher? We that pretend to live by faith, may we not go to school to them who had no other pilot but Reason to guide them? Nay, let me come a step lower, to creatures void of reason: we see every creature is contented with its allowance; the beasts with their provender, the birds with their nests, they live only upon providence; and shall we make ourselves below them? Let a Christian go to school to the ox and the ass to learn contentment; we think we never have enough, and are still laying up: the fowls of the air do not lay up, they reap not, nor gather into barns, (Matt. vi. 26.) it is an argument which Christ brings, to make Christians contented with their condition. The birds do not lay up, yet they are provided for, and are contented. "Are ye not," saith Christ," much better than they?" But if you are discontented, are ye not much