hts
all the way! It is an alley of delight,--the way of his commandments; it
wants not accommodation in it to refresh the traveller. The most
delightful company is here; the Father and the Son, who sought no other
company from all eternity, but were abundantly satisfied and rejoiced in
one another. This fellowship the Christian hath to solace himself with,
and he is admitted to be partaker of that joy. There is nothing that doth
disburden the soul so of care and anxiety, nothing doth rid a man of so
many perplexities and troubles, as this way. But the way of sin in itself
is most laborious, most difficult. It hath infinite by-ways that it leads
a man into, and he must turn and return, and run in a circle all the day,
all his time, to satisfy the infinite lusts and insatiable desires of sin.
O how painful and laborious is it to fulfil the lusts of the flesh! How
much service doth it impose! How serious attention! What perplexing cares
and tormenting thoughts! How many sorrows and griefs are in every step of
this way! Do you not perceive what drudges and slaves sin makes you,--how
much labour you have to satisfy your lusts? And you are always to begin,
as near that which you seek in the end of your years, as in the beginning.
How thorny, how miry is the way of covetousness! Are you not always out of
one thorn into another, and cut asunder, or pierced through with many
sorrows? 1 Tim. vi. 10; Matt. xiii. 22. Is that a pleasant and easy way,
I pray you, that makes all your sorrow and your travail grief, and suffers
not your heart to take rest in the night? Eccl. ii. 22, 23. What pains of
body! What plotting of mind! What labour and vexation of both must a
sinner have as his constant attendance in this way! The way is intricate,
deep, unpassable, that leads to that satisfaction you desire to your
lusts. Your desires are impotent and impatient, the means to carry you on
are weak and lame, nowise accommodated or fit for such a journey, and this
puts you always, as it were, on the rack, tormented between the impatience
of your lusts, and the impotency of means, and impossibility to fulfil
them. Desires and disappointments, hopes and fears, divide your souls
between them. Such is the way after the flesh, an endless labyrinth of
woes and miseries, of pains and cares, ever while here.

But these ways receive such names from the common opinion and apprehension
of men, because of our flesh, which is predominant. The way after the
fl