The divine life in three treatises

2. I add therefore that even those men that seem to take up ⟨p. 240⟩their felicity in common Knowledge, indeed do but make their Knowledge subservient to something else which they take for their felicity. For Knowledge of Evil may Torment them. It is only to know something which they take to be Good, that is their Delight. And it is the Complacency or Love of that Good at the Heart, which sets them on work, and causeth the delight of Knowing. If you will say that common Knowledge as Knowledge doth immediately Delight, yet will it be found but such a pleasing of the Fantasy, as an Ape hath in spying marvels, which if it have no end that's higher, is still but a sensitive Delight; but if it be referred to a higher Delight (in God) doth participate of the nature of it. Delight in general is the common end of Men and Brutes: But in specie they are distinguished as Sensual or Rational.

2. I add therefore that even those men that seem to take up ⟨p. 240⟩their felicity in common Knowledge, indeed do but make their Knowledge subservient to something else which they take for their felicity. For Knowledge of Evil may Torment them. It is only to know something which they take to be Good, that is their Delight. And it is the Complacency or Love of that Good at the Heart, which sets them on work, and causeth the delight of Knowing. If you will say that common Knowledge as Knowledge doth immediately Delight, yet will it be found but such a pleasing of the Phantasie, as an Ape hath in spying marvels, which if it have no end that's higher, is still but a sensitive Delight; but if it be referred to a higher Delight (in God) doth participate of the nature of it. Delight in general is the common end of Men and Brutes: But in specie they are distinguished as Sensual or Rational.

3. If you suppose a Philosopher to be Delighted in studying Mathematics, or any of the works of God, either he hath herein an End, or no End beyond the Knowledge of the Creature: Either he terminateth his desires and delights in the Creature, or else useth it as a means to raise him to the Creator. If he study and delight in the Creature ultimately, this is indeed the Act of a rational Creature, and an act of Reason, as to the faculty it proceeds from (and so is a Rational Contrivance for sensual ends and pleasures:) But it is but the error of Reason, and is no more agreeable to the Rational Nature, than the deceit of the senses is to the sensitive. Nor is it finally to be numbered with the operations felicitating humane nature, any more than an erroneous dream of pleasure, or than that man is to be numbered with the lovers of learning, who taketh pleasure in the binding, leaves or letters of the book, while he understandeth nothing of the sense. But if this Philosopher seek to know the Creator in and by the Creatures, and take delight in the Makers Power, Wisdom and Goodness, which appeareth in them, then this is truly a Rational Delight, in it self considered, and beseeming a man. And if he reach so far in it, as to make God his Highest desire and delight, overpowering the desires and delights of sensuality, he shall be happy, as being led by the Son unto the Father: But if he make but some little approaches towards it, and drown all such desires in the sensual desires and delights, he