The Works of Robt Leighton Author:Robert Leighton Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: souls untied from this world and knit to God, they need not complain of the shortness of it, having laid hold on eternal life; for this life is flying away, ther... more »e is no laying hold on it; it is no matter how- soon it go away, the sooner the better, for to such persons it seems rather to go too slow. LECTURE IV. Ver. 7. And now, Lord, what wait I for ? my hope is in thee. To entertain the minds of men with thoughts of their own vanity, .and discourses of their own misery, seems to be sad and unpleasant; but certainly it is not unprofitable, unless it be our own choice to make it so; and that were the greatest vanity and misery of all. Indeed, if there were no help for this sore evil, then the common shift were not to be blamed, yea, it were to be chosen as the only help in such a desperate case, not to think on it, to forget our misery, and to divert our thoughts from it, by all possible means, rather than to increase it, and- torment ourselves, by insisting and poring on it; and in that case, shallow minds would have the advantage, that could not converse with these sad thoughts ; for to increase this knowledge were but to increase sorrow. But far be it from us thus to determine; there is a hope which is a help to this evil, and this is it that this holy man fixes on, And now, Lord, andc. otherwise it were strange, that the most excellent piece of the visible creation should be made subject to the most incurable unhappiness, to feel misery which he cannot shun, and to be tormented with desires that cannot be satisfied. But there is some better expectation for the souls of men, and it is no other but himself who made them. The wisest natural men have discoursed of man's vanity, and passionately bemoaned it, but in this they have fallen short, how to remedy it. Theyhave...« less