Wesley Corpus

Vanity - Not only unsatisfying, but also an affliction or breaking to a man's spirit. Crooked - All our knowledge serves only to discover our miseries, but is utterly insufficient to remove them; it cannot rectify those disorders which are either in our own hearts and lives, or in the men and things of the world. Wanting - In our knowledge. Or, counted out to us from the treasures of human learning. But what is wanting, will still be so. And that which is wanting in our own knowledge, is so much that it cannot be numbered. The more we know, the more we see of our own ignorance. Communed - I considered within myself. Great - In wisdom. Have gotten - As I had a large stock of wisdom infused into me by God, so I have greatly improved it by conversation, and study, and experience. Than all - Whether governors, or priests, or private persons. In Jerusalem - Which was then the most eminent place in the world for wisdom. To know - That I might throughly understand the nature and difference of truth and error, of virtue and vice. Grief - Or, displeasure within himself, and against his present condition. Sorrow - Which he does many ways, because he gets his knowledge with hard and wearisome labour, both of mind and body, with the consumption of his spirits, and shortening of his life; because he is often deceived with knowledge falsely so called, and often mistakes error for truth, and is perplexed with manifold doubts, from which ignorant men are wholly free; because he hath the clearer prospect into, and quicker sense of his own ignorance, and infirmities, and disorders, and withal how vain and ineffectual all his knowledge is for the prevention or removal of them; and because his knowledge is very imperfect and unsatisfying, yet increasing his thirst after more knowledge; lastly, because his knowledge quickly fades and dies with him, and then leaves him in no better, and possibly in a much worse condition than the meanest and most unlearned man in the world.