The divine life in three treatises

Answ. Consider, 1. That benumbedness, and sleep and death, is the very state of an unholy soul! Hast thou cast thy self into a sleepy senseless disease, and wilt thou argue thence against Eternity? This is as if the blind should conclude that there is no Sun, or that the eye of man was not made to see it, because he hath no sight himself! Or as if you should think that man hath not any life or feeling, because your palsy limbs do not feel! Or that the stomach was not made for meat, because the stomachs of the sick abhor it!

Answ. Consider, 1. That benummedness, and sleep and death, is the very state of an unholy soul! Hast thou cast thy self into a sleepy senseless disease, and wilt thou argue thence against Eternity? This is as if the blind should conclude that there is no Sun, or that the eye of man was not made to see it, because he hath no sight himself! Or as if you should think that man hath not any life or feeling, because your palsie limbs do not feel! Or that the stomack was not made for meat, because the stomacks of the sick abhor it!

2. And for believers, 1. You may see by their lives that they have some apprehensions of Eternity: why else do they differ from you, and deny themselves, and displease the world and the flesh it self? why do they set their hearts above, if they have not lively thoughts of an Eternity!

2. But if you ask me, Why their apprehensions are not a thousand times more lively about so Infinite a thing; I answer, 1. Their Apprehensions must be suitable to their State. Our state here is a state of Imperfection; and so will our apprehensions be; But a perfect state will have perfect apprehensions. It is no proof that the Infant in the womb is not made to come into this world, and see the Sun, and converse with men, because he hath no apprehensions of it. Our state here is a conjunction of the soul to a frail distempered body; and so near a conjunction, that the actions of the soul must have great dependence on the Body; And therefore our Apprehensions are limited by its frailty; and the soul can go no higher then the capacity of the Body will allow; 2. And our Apprehensions now are fitted to our Use and benefit; We are now Believers, and must live by faith: And therefore must not be Beholders, and live by sense. If Eternity were open to mens Natural sight, or we had here as clear and lively apprehensions of it, as those have that are there, then it were not thanks, no praise