The divine life in three treatises

CHAP. IV.

BY this time I hope you may see reason to call your selves to a strict account, what converse you have been taken up with in the world, and upon what you have exercised your thoughts: surely you must needs be conscious, that the thoughts which have been denied God, have brought you home but little satisfaction, and have not answered the ends of your creation, redemption or preservation! and that they are now much fitter matter for your penitential tears, then for your comfort, in the review! I do not think you dare own and stand to, those thoughts which have been spent for fleshly pleasures, or in unnecessary worldly cares, or that were wasted in impertinent vagaries upon any thing, or nothing, when you should have been seeking God! I do not think you have now any great pleasure, in the review of those thoughts, which once were taken up with pleasure, when your most pleasant thoughts should have been of God. Dare you approve of your rejecting your Creator and the great concernments of your soul out of your thoughts, and wasting them upon things unprofitable and vain? Did not God, and Heaven deserve more of your serious thoughts then any thing else that ever they were employed on? Have you laid them out on any thing that more concerned you? or on any thing more excellent, more honourable, more durable, or that could claim precedency upon any just account? Did you not shut heaven it self out of your thoughts, when you shut out God? And is it not just that God and Heaven should shut out you? If Heaven ⟨p. 221⟩be not the principal matter of your thoughts, its plain that you do not principally love it: And if so, judge you whether those that Love it not are fit to be made possessors of it.

BY this time I hope you may see reason to call your selves to a strict account, what converse you have been taken up with in the world, and upon what you have exercised your thoughts: surely you must needs be conscious, that the thoughts which have been denyed God, have brought you home but little satisfaction, and have not answered the ends of your creation, redemption or preservation! and that they are now much fitter matter for your penitential tears, then for your comfort, in the review! I do not think you dare own and stand to, those thoughts which have been spent for fleshly pleasures, or in unnecessary worldly cares, or that were wasted in impertinent vagaries upon any thing, or nothing, when you should have been seeking God! I do not think you have now any great pleasure, in the review of those thoughts, which once were taken up with pleasure, when your most pleasant thoughts should have been of God. Dare you approve of your rejecting your Creatour and the great concernments of your soul out of your thoughts, and wasting them upon things unprofitable and vain? Did not God, and Heaven deserve more of your serious thoughts then any thing else that ever they were employed on? Have you laid them out on any thing that more concerned you? or on any thing more excellent, more honourable, more durable, or that could claim precedency upon any just account? Did you not shut heaven it self out of your thoughts, when you shut out God? And is it not just that God and Heaven should shut out you? If Heaven