The Soul's Conflict with Itself

But yet it ought not to invent or devise what is good and true in religion, here fancy must yield to faith, and faith to divine revelation; the things we believe are such, as neither eye hath se•e ¹nor ear heard, neither came into the heart of man by imagination stirred up from ⟨p. 201⟩any thing which we have seen or heard; they are above not only imagination, but reason it self, in men and Angels: But after God hath revealed spiritual truths, and faith hath apprehended them, then imagination hath use while the soul is joined with the body, to colour divine truths, and make lightsome what faith believes; for instance, it doth not devise either heaven or hell, but when God hath revealed them to us, our fancy hath a fitness of enlarging our conceits of them, even by resemblance from things in nature, and that without danger; because the joys of heaven, and the torments of hell are so great, that all the representations which nature affords us, fall short of them.

But yet it ought not to invent or devise what is good and true in religion, here fancy must yeeld to faith, and faith to divine revelation; the things we beleeve are such, as neither eye hath se•e ¹nor eare heard, neither came into the heart of man by imagination stirred up from ⟨p. 201⟩any thing which we have seene or heard; they are above not onely imagination, but reason it selfe, in men and Angels: But after God hath revealed spirituall truthes, and faith hath apprehended them, then imagination hath use while the soule is joyned with the body, to colour divine truthes, and make lightsome what faith beleeves; for instance, it doth not devise either heaven or hell, but when God hath revealed them to us, our fancy hath a fitnesse of enlarging our conceits of them, even by resemblance from things in nature, and that without danger; because the joyes of heaven, and the torments of hell are so great, that all the representations which nature affords us, fall short of them.