A supplement to The Morning-exercise at Cripple-Gate, or, Several more cases of conscience practically…

4. Direct. Realize invisible things to yourselves, ¹by believing of them as certainly as if you saw them with your eyes. When you are going to pray, look into the unseen world: stand and take a view of departed souls, and seriously think what is their state, and what they are enjoying or suffering, that are already gone into eternity, and from thence fetch arguments to quicken your hearts when dull, and to be laborious when slothful, and lively and fervent in your duty. O how would a believing view of souls in Heaven and Hell help you to pray in prayer! Suppose then you saw the glorious Saints in Heaven, and the happiness they there enjoy, in that they shall sin no more, and suffer no more, and be tempted no more, and sigh and sob, nor weep nor sorrow any more for ever: all sin is expelled from those glorious souls, and all tears are wiped from their eyes, and now are full of love to God, solacing themselves in the perfect, perpetual and immediate suition of the chiefest good; and then ⟨p. 340⟩think, this is the state that I am hoping for, and looking, longing, waiting for, and that now I am going to beg and pray I may be fitted and prepared for, and hereafter be possessed of: and then pray as becometh such that unfeignedly desire to be partakers of their joy and felicity.

1. 1Istuc est sapere, non quod ante pedes modò est videre, sed etiam illa quae futura su•t prospicere. Ter. Adelph. Act. 3.

Again stand and take a view of poor damned Souls, and suppose you saw them with your eyes rolling in a lake of burning Brimstone, full of the fury of the Lord: Suppose you heard their direful execrations, their doleful outcries, their hideous roarings, and bitter lamentations ringing in your ears, saying, Woe and alas, that ever we were born! that are come to this place of torment, to this place of torment, Oh! it is, it is a place of torment: