1. In the fewer thoughts we have of God than of anything else. Did we apprehend God to be our chiefest good and highest end, should we grudge him the pains of a few days’ thoughts upon him? Men in their travels are frequently thinking upon their intended stage: but our thoughts run upon new acquisitions to increase our wealth, rear up our families, revenge our injuries, and support our reputation: trifles possess us; but “God is not in all our thoughts;”[254] seldom the sole object of them. We have durable thoughts of transitory things, and flitting thoughts of a durable and eternal good. The covenant of grace engageth the whole heart to God, and bars anything else from engrossing it: but what strangers are God and the souls of most men! Though we have the knowledge of him by creation, yet he is for the most part an unknown God in the relations wherein he stands to us, because a God undelighted in: hence it is, as one observes, that because we observe not the ways of God’s wisdom, conceive not of him in his vast perfections, nor are stricken with an admiration of his goodness, that we have fewer good sacred poems, than of any other kind.[255] The wits of men hang the wing when they come to exercise their reasons and fancies about God. Parts and strength are given us, as well as corn and wine to the Israelites, for the service of God; but those are consecrated to some cursed Baal.[256] Like Venus in the Poet, we forsake heaven to follow some Adonis. 2. In the greedy pursuit of the world.[257] When we pursue worldly wealth or worldly reputation with more vehemency than the riches of grace, or the favor of God;――when we have a foolish imagination, that our happiness consists in them, we prefer earth before heaven, broken cisterns which can hold no water, before an ever‑springing fountain of glory and bliss; and, as though there were a defect in {a144} God, cannot be content with him as our portion, without an addition of something inferior to him;――when we make it our hopes, and say to the wedge, “Thou art my confidence;” and rejoice more because it is great, and because “our hand hath gotten much,” than in the privilege of communion with God and the promise of an everlasting fruition of him;[258] this is so gross, that Job joins it with the idolatry of the sun and moon, which he purgeth himself of (xxxi. 26). And the apostle, when he mentions covetousness or covetous men, passes it not over without the title of idolatry to the vice, and idolater to the person;[259] in that it is a preferring clay and dirt as an end more desirable than the original of all goodness, in regard of affection and dependence.