thinketh of rest on earth, _Arise ye, and depart, for this is not your rest, because it is polluted_.[303] These things cannot in their nature be a true Christian's rest. They are too poor, to make us rich; too low, to raise us to happiness; too empty, to fill our souls; and of too short continuance to be our eternal content. If prosperity, or whatsoever we here desire, be too base to make gods of, they are too base to be our rest. The soul's rest must be sufficient to afford it perpetual satisfaction. But the content which creatures afford, waxes old, and, abates after a short enjoyment. If God should rain down _Angel's food_, we should soon _loathe the manna_. If novelty support not, our delights on earth grow dull. All creatures are to us, as the flowers to the bee; there is but little honey on any one, and therefore there must be a superficial taste, and so to the next. The more the creature is known, the less it satisfieth. Those only are taken with it, who see no further than its outward beauty, without discerning its inward vanity. When we thoroughly know the condition of other men, and have discovered the evil as well as the good, and the defects as well as the perfections, we then cease our admiration. [Footnote 303] Micah ii, 10 § 16. (6.) To have creatures and means without God, is an aggravation of our misery. If God should say, "Take my creatures, my word, my servants, my ordinances, but not myself;" would you take this for happiness? If you had the word of God, and not the word, which is God; or the bread of the Lord, and not the Lord, which _is the true bread_; or could cry with the Jews, _The temple of the Lord_, and had not the Lord of the temple; this were a poor happiness. Was Capernaum the more happy or the more miserable, for _seeing the mighty works which they had seen, and hearing the words of Christ which they did hear_? Surely that, which aggravates our sin and misery, cannot be our rest.