The divine life in three treatises

4. No man is bound to be continually taken up with actual, distinct cogitations about God: For in duty we have many many other things to think on, which must have their time: And as we have Callings to follow, and must eat our bread in the sweat of our brows, so we must manage them with prudence: A good man will guide his affairs with discretion, Psal. 112. 5. It is both necessary as duty, and necessary as a means to the preservation of our very faculties, that both body and mind have their times of employment about our lawful business in the world: The understandings of many cannot bear it, to be always employed on the greatest and most serious things: Like Lute▪ strings they will break, if they be raised too high, and be not let down and relaxed when the lesson is plaid. To think of nothing else but God, is to break the Law of God, and to confound the mind, and to disable it to think aright of God, or any thing. As he that bid us pray continually, did not mean that we should do nothing else, or that actual prayer should have no interruptions, but that habitual desires should on all meet occasion be actuated and expressed; so he that would be chief in all our thoughts, did never mean that we should have no thoughts of any thing else, or that our serious meditation on him should be continual without interruption: but that the final intending of God, and our dependence on him, should be so constant as to be the spring or mover of the rest of the thoughts and actions of our lives.

4. No man is bound to be continually taken up with actual, distinct cogitations about God: For in duty we have many many other things to think on, which must have their time: And as we have Callings to follow, and must eat our bread in the sweat of our brows, so we must manage them with prudence: A good man will guide his affairs with discretion, Psal. 112. 5. It is both necessary as duty, and necessary as a means to the preservation of our very faculties, that both body and mind have their times of employment about our lawful business in the world: The understandings of many cannot bear it, to be alwaies employed on the greatest and most serious things: Like Lute▪ strings they will break, if they be raised too high, and be not let down and relaxed when the lesson is plaid. To think of nothing else but God, is to break the Law of God, and to confound the mind, and to disable it to think aright of God, or any thing. As he that bid us pray continually, did not mean that we should do nothing else, or that actual prayer should have no interruptions, but that habitual desires should on all meet occasion be actuated and exprest; so he that would be chief in all our thoughts, did never mean that we should have no thoughts of any thing else, or that our serious meditation on him should be continual without interruption: but that the final intending of God, and our dependence on him, should be so constant as to be the spring or mover of the rest of the thoughts and actions of our lives.