APHORISM XL.

Worldly Troubles Idols.

Leighton.

The too ardent love or self-willed desire of power, or wealth, or credit in the world, is (an Apostle has assured us) idolatry. Now among the words or synonymes for idols, in the Hebrew language, there is one that in its primary sense signifies troubles (tegirim), other two that signify terrors (miphletzeth and emim). And so it is certainly. All our idols prove so to us. They fill 86 us with nothing but anguish and troubles, with cares and fears, that are good for nothing but to be fit punishments of the folly, out of which they arise.