[b]Those who hunt after it are dogs!
(Thomas Brooks, "The Crown and Glory of Christianity,
or, HOLINESS, the Only Way to Happiness", 1662)
Though of all losses, the loss of the soul is the greatest, the
saddest, the sorest, the heaviest, and the most intolerable,
inconceivable, and irrecoverable loss--yet a man bewitched
with the world will run the hazard of losing his eternal soul,
of damning it--to enjoy the world.
Men who are bewitched with this world in these days, oh, how
do they prefer their sensual delights, their brutish contentments,
and their carnal enjoyments--before the beauties of holiness, and
before heavenly glory, where holiness sparkles and shines in all
its refulgence, and where their souls might be abundantly satisfied
and delighted with the most ravishing joys, the most surpassing
delights, and the most transcendent pleasures which are at God's
right hand!
The Arabic proverb says that "the world is a carcass--and
those who hunt after it are dogs!" If this proverb is true,
what a multitude of professors will be found to be dogs--
who hunt more after earth--than heaven;
who hunt more after terrestrial things--than celestial things;
who hunt more after worldly nothingnesses and emptinesses
--than they do after those fullnesses and sweetnesses which
are in God, Christ, heaven, and holiness!