A Christian Directory

§. 10. Direct. 9. Take heed of an impatient peevish self-tormenting mind, that can bear no cross; and ¹of overvaluing earthly things, which causeth impatience in the want of them. Make not too great a matter of fleshly pain or pleasure; Otherwise your minds will be called to a continual attendance on the flesh, and taken up with continual desires, or cares, or fears, or griefs, or pleasures; and will not be permitted to solace themselves with God. The soul that would have pure and high Delights, must abstract it self from the concernments of the flesh, and look on your body as if it were the body of another, whose pain or pleasure you can choose whether you will feel: when Paul was rapt up into the third Heaven, and saw the things unutterable, he was so far freed from the prison of sense, that he knew not whether he was in the Body, or out of it. As the separated souls that see the face of God and the Redeemer, do leave the Body to be buried and to rot in darkness, and feel not all this to the interrupting of their joys; so faith can imitate such a Death to the world, and such a neglect of the flesh, and some kind of elevating separation of the mind, to the things above. If in this near conjunction you cannot leave the Body to rejoice or suffer alone, yet, as it self is but a servant to the soul, so let not its pain or pleasure be predominant, and control the high operations of the soul. A manly valiant believing soul, though it cannot abate the pain at all, nor reconcile the flesh to its calamity, yet it can do more, notwithstanding the pain, to its own delight, than strangers will believe.

§. 10. Direct. 9. Take heed of an impatient pievish self-tormenting mind, that can bear no cross; and ¹of overvaluing earthly things, which causeth impatience in the want of them. Make not too great a matter of fleshly pain or pleasure; Otherwise your minds will be called to a continual attendance on the flesh, and taken up with continual desires, or cares, or fears, or griefs, or pleasures; and will not be permitted to solace themselves with God. The soul that would have pure and high Delights, must abstract it self from the concernments of the flesh, and look on your body as if it were the body of another, whose pain or pleasure you can choose whether you will feel: when Paul was rapt up into the third Heaven, and saw the things unutterable, he was so far freed from the prison of sense, that he knew not whether he was in the Body, or out of it. As the separated souls that see the face of God and the Redeemer, do leave the Body to be buried and to rot in darkness, and feel not all this to the interrupting of their joys; so faith can imitate such a Death to the world, and such a neglect of the flesh, and some kind of elevating separation of the mind, to the things above. If in this near conjunction you cannot leave the Body to rejoyce or suffer alone, yet, as it self is but a servant to the soul, so let not its pain or pleasure be predominant, and controll the high operations of the soul. A manly valiant believing soul, though it cannot abate the pain at all, nor reconcile the flesh to its calamity, yet it can do more, notwithstanding the pain, to its own delight, than strangers will believe.