The divine life in three treatises

But though in this life we may neither hope for, nor desire, such overwhelming sensible apprehensions of God, as the rest of our faculties cannot answer, nor our bodies bear; yet that our apprehensions of him should be so base, and small, and dull, and unconstant, as to by born down by the noise of worldly business, or by the presence of any creature, or by the tempting baits of sensuality, this is the more odious, by how much God is more Great and Glorious than the creature, and even because the use of the creature it self is but to reveal the Glory of the Lord. To have such sleight and stupid thoughts of him, as will not carry us on in uprightness of obedience, nor keep us in his fear, nor draw out our hearts in sincere desires to ⟨p. 195⟩please him, and enjoy him, and as will not raise us to a contempt of the pleasures, and profits, and honours of this world, this is to be despisers of the Lord, and to live as in a sleep, and to be dead to God, and alive only to the world and flesh. It is no unjust dishonour or injury to •e Creature, to be accounted as Nothing in comparison of God, that it may be able to do Nothing against Him and his interest: But to make such a Nothing of the most Glorious God, by our contemptuous forgetfulness or neglect, as that our apprehensions of Him cannot prevail against the sordid pleasures of the flesh, and against the richest baits of sin, and against all the wrath or allurements of man, this is but to make a God of dust, and dung, and nothing, and (in heart and practice) to make God worse than dust and dung. And it is a wonder that mans understanding can become so sottish, as thus to wink the Sun it self into a constant darkness, and to take God as Nothing, or a• no God, who is so abundantly revealed to them in astonishing transcendent Greatness and Excellency, by all the Creatures in the world, and with whom we have continually so much to do. O sinful man! into how great a depth of ignorance, stupidity and misery art thou fallen!

But though in this life we may neither hope for, nor desire, such overwhelming sensible apprehensions of God, as the rest of our faculties cannot answer, nor our bodies bear; yet that our apprehensions of him should be so base, and small, and dull, and unconstant, as to by born down by the noise of worldly business, or by the presence of any creature, or by the tempting baits of sensuality, this is the more odious, by how much God is more Great and Glorious than the creature, and even because the use of the creature it self is but to reveal the Glory of the Lord. To have such sleight and stupid thoughts of him, as will not carry us on in uprightness of obedience, nor keep us in his fear, nor draw out our hearts in sincere desires to