The Art of Contentment, Title page – Preface
The ART of Contentment.
By the Author of THE WHOLE DUTY OF MAN, &c.
It is but lost labor, that ye hasten to rise up early, and so late take rest, and eat the bread of carefulness: for so he giveth his beloved sleep. Psal. 127. 3.
At the THEATER in OXFORD. M. DC. LXXV.
Imprimatur,
RAD. BATHVRST. Vice-Cancell. Oxon. Feb. 24. 1675.
THE PREFACE.
THE desire of happiness is so coessential with our nature, so interwoven and incorporate with it; that nothing but the dissolution of the whole frame can extinguish it. This runs thro the whole race of mankind, and amidst the infinit variety of other inclinations, preserves its self entire. The most various contradictory tempers do yet conspire in this, and men of the most unequal fortunes, are yet equal in their wishes of being happy.
But this concurrence as to the end is not more universal then the disagreement about the way. Every man would have happiness, but wherein that consists, or how it is to be attain'd, has bin very diversly opin'd. Indeed the ultimate supreme happiness as it is originally inherent in God, so it is wrapt up in those clouds and darkness, which, as the Psalmist saies, are round about him Psal. 18. 11. And we can see nothing of it, but in those gleams and raies he is pleas'd to dart out upon us; so that all our estimates as to our final felicity, must be mesur'd by those revelations he has made of it.
But one would think our temporal happiness were as much a mystery as our eternal, to see what variety of blind pursuits are made after it. One man thinks tis seated on the top pinnacle of honor, and climbs till perhaps he falls head-long. Another thinks it a mineral, that must be dig'd out of the earth, and toils to lade himself with thick clay, Hab. 2. 6. and at last finds a grave, where he sought his tresure. A third supposes it consists in the variety of pleasures, and wearies himself in that pursuit, which only cloies, and disappoints. Yet every one of these can read you lectures of the gross mistake and folly of the other, whilst himself is equally deluded.
Thus do men chase an imaginary good, till they meet with real evils; herein exposing themselves to the same cheat Laban put upon Jacob, they serve for Rachel, and are rewarded with Leah, court fancied beauty, and marry loath'd deformity. Such delusive felicities as these are the largesses of the Prince of the Air, who once attemted to have enveigled even Christ himself, Mat. 4.
But Gods proposals are more sincere: he knows how sandy, how false a foundation all these external things must make, and therefore warns us not to build so much as our present satisfaction upon them, but shews us a more certain, a more compendious way to acquire what we gasp after, by telling us that as Godliness in respect of the next, so contentment for this world is great gain 1 Tim. 6. 6. It is indeed the unum necessarium, the one point in which all the lines of wordly happiness are concentred, and to complete its excellence, tis to be had at home: nay indeed only there. We need not ramble in wild pursuits after it, we may form it within our own breasts: no man wants materials for it, that knows but how to put them together.
And the directing to that skill is the only design of the ensuing Tract, which coming upon so kind an errand, may at least hope for an unprejudic'd reception. Contentment is a thing we all profess to aspire to, and therefore it cannot be thought an unfriendly office to endeavor to conduct men to it. How far the ensuing considerations may tend to that end, I must leave to the judgment, and experience of the Reader, only desiring him that he will weigh them with that seriousness which befits a thing wherein both his happiness and duty are concern'd: for in this (as in many other instances) God has so twisted them together, that we cannot be innocently miserable. The present infelicities, have an appendant guilt, which will consign us to a more irreversible state of dissatisfaction hereafter.