But one would think our temporal happiness were as much a mystery as our eternal, to fee what variety of blind pursuits are made after it. One man thinks tis feated on the top pinnacle of honor, and climbs till perhaps he falls head-long. Another thinks it a mineral, that must be dig'd out of the earth, and toils to lade himself with thick clay, Hab. 2. 6. and at last finds a grave, where he fought his trefure. A third fuppofes it confifts in the variety of plesures, and wearies himself in that pursuit, which only cloies, and disappoints. Yet every one of these can read you lectures of the gross mistake and folly of the other, whilft himself is equal ly deluded.

Thus do men chafe an imaginary

good,

1

good, till they meet with real evils; herein expofing themselves to the fame cheat Laban put upon Jacob, they ferve for Rachel, and are rewarded with Leah, court fancied beauty, and marryloath'd deformity.Such delufive felicities as these are the largesses of the Prince of the Air, who once attemted to have enveigled even Chrift himself, Mat. 4.

But Gods proposals are more fincere: he knows how fandy, how falfe a foundation all these external things must make,and therefore warns us not to build fo much as our present fatisfaElion upon them, but fhews us a more certain, a more compendious way to acquire what we gasp after, by telling us that as Godliness in respect of the next, fo contentment for this world

world is great gain. 1 Tim. 6.6. It is indeed the unum neceffarium, the one point in which all the lines of wordly happiness are concentred, and to complete its excellence, 'tis to be had at home: nay indeed only there. We need not ramble in wild pursuits after it, we may form it within our own breasts: no man wants materials for it, that knows but how to put them together.

And the directing to that skill is the only defign of the enfuing Tract, which coming upon so kind an errand, may at least hope for an unprejudic'd reception. Contentment is a thing we all profess to aspire to, and therefore it cannot be thought an unfriendly office to endeavor to conduct men to it. How far the enfuing con

fiderations may tend to that end, I must leave to the judgment, and experience of the Reader, only defiring bim that he will weigh them with that feriousness which befits a thing wherein both his happiness and duty are concern'd; for in this (as in many other inftances) God has fo twisted them together, that we cannot be innocently miferable. The prefent infelicities of our murmurs and impatiencies, have an appendant guilt, which will confign us to a more irreverfible state of diffatisfaction hereafter.

THE.

THE ART

O F

CONTENTMENT.

I.

SECT. I.

Of the necessary Connexion between Happiness and Con

tentment.

I by

OD who is effentially hap py in himself, can receive no acceffion to his felicity by the poor contributions of men. He cannot therefore be fuppos'd to have made them upon intuition of increafing, but communicating his happiness. And this his original

A