The divine life in three treatises

§. 2. I. To Walk with God in a Holy and Heavenly Conversation, is the employment most suitable to humane nature, not to its corrupt disposition, nor to the carnal interest and appetite; but to nature as nature, to man as man: It is the very work that he was made for: The faculties and frame of soul and body were composed for it by the wise Creator: They are restored for it by the gracious Redeemer. Though in corrupted nature where sensuality is predominant, there is an estrangedness from God, and an enmity and hatred of him, so that the wicked are more a verse to all serious holy converse with him (in prayer, contemplation, and a heavenly life) then they are to a worldly sinful life; yet all this is but the disease of nature, corrupting its appetite, and turning it against that proper food, which is most suitable to its sound desires, and necessary to its health and happiness. Though sinful habits are become as it were a second Nature to the ungodly, so depraving their judgements and desires, that they verily think the business and pleasures of the flesh are most suitable to them; yet these are as contrary to nature as nature, that is, to the primitive tendencies of all our faculties, and the proper use to which they were fitted by our Creator, and to that true felicity which is the end of all our parts and powers, even as madness is contrary to the rational nature, though it were hereditary.

§. 2. I. To Walk with God in a Holy and Heavenly Conversation, is the employment most suitable to humane nature, not to its corrupt disposition, nor to the carnal interest and appetite; but to nature as nature, to man as man: It is the very work that he was made for: The faculties and frame of soul and body were composed for it by the wise Creatour: They are restored for it by the gracious Redeemer. Though in corrupted nature where sensuality is predominant, there is an estrangedness from God, and an enmity and hatred of him, so that the wicked are more a verse to all serious holy converse with him (in prayer, contemplation, and a heavenly life) then they are to a worldly sinful life; yet all this is but the disease of nature, corrupting its appetite, and turning it against that proper food, which is most suitable to its sound desires, and necessary to its health and happiness. Though sinful habits are become as it were a second Nature to the ungodly, so depraving their judgements and desires, that they verily think the business and pleasures of the flesh are most suitable to them; yet these are as contrary to nature as nature, that is, to the primitive tendencies of all our faculties, and the proper use to which they were fitted by our Creatour, and to that true felicity which is the end of all our parts and powers, even as madness is contrary to the rational nature, though it were hereditary.