The Rev. George Swinnock contrasts the devil’s wares with the Lord being a man’s portion (Works, vol. 4, pp. 28-29):
[T]he devil courts man for his soul with the brutish pleasures of sin; the world wooeth for the heart with its proffer of treasures and honours, which, like itself, are vain, vexatious, and perishing; God comes, and he offereth for the heart the precious blood of his Son, the curious embroidery of his Spirit, the noble employment and honourable preferment of angels, fulness of joy, and infiniteness of satisfaction, in the fruition of his blessed self to all eternity. Now what is the reason that the devil’s money is accepted, and the world’s offer embraced, and God’s tender (which is farther superior to theirs than the glorious heavens, where the King of saints keeps his court, and sheweth all his state, and royalty, and magnificence, is to a stinking dunghill) should be rejected? Truly nothing but this: men know not the worth of what God biddeth them for their wares. The money which the devil and world offer are their own country coin, and a little of this they sooner take, because they know it, than much more of another nation’s, the value of which they do not understand. Swine trample on pearls, because they know not the worth of them. None look off the world but they that can look beyond it.
