Vain vexing world, and flesh, and sense, Retire while I approach my God; Nor let my sins divide me thence, Nor creatures tempt my thoughts abroad. While to thine arms, my God, I press, No mortal hope, nor joy, nor fear, Shall call my soul from thine embrace; ’Tis heav’n to dwell for ever there. SERMON XII. _The Scale of Blessedness: Or, Blessed Saints, Blessed Saviour, and Blessed Trinity._ PSALM LXV. 4.—Blessed is the man whom thou choosest, and causest to approach unto thee, that he may dwell in thy courts. THE SECOND PART. By the entrance of sin into the world, man was first separated from God and happiness: God in righteous anger withdrew from his creature man; and man, obeying the dictates of his own impious folly, runs farther away from his Maker God; _He is born like a wild ass’s colt_, unknowing and thoughtless: and like a colt he runs wild in the forest of this world, roving amongst a thousand vanities in quest of happiness, but afar off from God still. He seeks substantial and pleasant food, but he meets with broad barren sands in the wilderness, or with brakes, and briars, and bitter weeds. He follows every foolish fire of fancy, till he is led into many a pit and precipice; He rises again, and changes the chase: He flies perpetually from object to object, but finds everlasting disappointment: Shadows, and painted hopes, flatter and tire, and delude him, till he lies down and despairs in death. This is the case of mankind by nature; they live ignorant of God, and wilfully blind to their own felicity. Fatal blindness and wretched mankind! But blessed be God, that he has not renounced and abandoned all our race for ever, and fixed us in a state of eternal separation from him! Blessed be God, who has chosen, and already called many of the wanderers to himself again! He has built dwellings for himself on earth; he has appointed means for our return, and invites all to approach him. Good David had a full and lively sense hereof when he wrote the words of this song; _Blessed is the man whom thou choosest, and causest to approach unto thee, that he may dwell in thy courts_: Whence I derived this doctrine in the foregoing sermon. Doctrine. Nearness to God is the foundation of a creature’s happiness.