Ecclesiastes 6

He robs himself of necessaries. A man to whom God has given riches, yet God gives him not power to eat thereof (Ecclesiastes 6:2). He gluts his chest and starves his belly.

Ecclesiastes 6:6. Do not all go to one place? I remember an ingenious writer, who had been very copious in his publications, observed, that the best and most profitable were written after he was fifty years of age: it is supposed, then the judgment is ripened, and the genius is…

Secondly, a hidden birth. An untimely birth, is called a hidden birth, because it is hid from the eyes of others; abortives are unpleasing and undesirable spectacles, therefore they are covered and laid by; there is no remembrance of their form or likeness, therefore Solomon spe…

Is this profitable? No, 'tis a sore travail, for he has not power to eat thereof (Ecclesiastes 6:2). To fill his purse he starves his belly, and grudges himself victuals.

1. As they are men; such are those misers, which having great estates, yet can hardly afford themselves bread; who live sneakingly, and are ready to wish their own throats cut, because they are forced to spend something in satisfying nature's demands: This Solomon calls an evil…

1. It reproves them that prefer other things before salvation; who labor more for the bread that perisheth than for salvation. Their chief care is how to live in the world, and get a present subsistence; All the labor of a man is for his mouth (Ecclesiastes 6:7). The body shall…

Put money into a bag, and the bag remains leather or canvas still; but if it once get into the heart of a man, he is presently changed, his thoughts of himself greater, and of others meaner than they were before. This the Apostle says should not be so, for after all this, it is…

Not free indeed, until the Son make us free, so that this idol of free-will, in respect of spiritual things, is not one whit better than the other idols of the heathen: though it look like silver and gold, it is the work of men's hands, it has a mouth, but it speaks not, it has…

Fifthly from the certainty of an everlasting separation from them (verses 15-16), and this he says is a sore evil, which galls the heart of a worldly man, that has resolved upon no other heaven than his wealth, when sickness comes to snatch him away from this his idol, there is…