The divine life in three treatises

In a word, you are there half delivered from the VANITY and VEXATION of the world; and were it not that you are yet undelivered from your selves, and that you take distempered corrupted hearts with you, O what a felicity would your solitude be! But, alas, we cannot overrun our own diseases, we must carry with us the remnants of our corrupted nature; our deadness, and dullness, our selfishness and earthly minds, our impatience and discontents; and worst of all, our lamentable weakness of faith and love and heavenly mindedness, and our strangeness to God, and backwardness to the matters of eternal life. O that I could escape these, though I were in the hands of the cruellest enemies! O that such a heart could be left behind! How gladly would I overrun both house, and land, and honour, and all sensual delights, that I might but overrun it! O where is the place where there is none of this darkness, nor disaffection, nor distance, nor estrangedness from God! O that I knew it! O that I could find it! O that I might there dwell! though I should never more see the face of mortals; nor ever hear a humane voice, nor ever taste of the delights of flesh! Alas, foolish soul! such a place there is, that hath all this and more than this: but it is not in a wilderness, but in Paradise, not here on earth, but above with Christ! And yet am I so loth to die? yet am I no more desirous of the blessed day, when I shall be unclothed of flesh and sin? O death, what an enemy art thou even to my soul! By affrighting me from the presence of my Lord, and hindering my desires and willingness to be gone, thou wrongest me much more, than by laying my flesh to rot in darkness. Fain I would know God, and fain I would more love him and enjoy him: but O this hurtful love of life! O this unreasonable fear of dying, detaineth my desires from pressing on to the happy place where all this may be had! O wretched man that I am, who shall ⟨p. 350⟩deliver me from this body of death! this carnal unbelieving heart, that sometime can think more delightfully of a Wilderness then of Heaven; that can go seek after God in desert solitude, among the birds and beasts and trees, and yet is so backward to be loosed from flesh that I may find him and enjoy him in the world of glory! Can I expect that heaven come down to earth!

In a word, you are there half delivered from the VANITY and VEXATION of the world; and were it not that you are yet undelivered from your selves, and that you take distempered corrupted hearts with you, O what a felicity would your solitude be! But, alas, we cannot overrun our own diseases, we must carry with us the remnants of our corrupted nature; our deadness, and dulness, our selfishness and earthly minds, our impatience and discontents; and worst of all, our lamentable weakness of faith and love and heavenly mindedness, and our strangeness to God, and backwardness to the matters of eternal life. O that I could escape these, though I were in the hands of the cruellest enemies! O that such a heart could be left behind! How gladly would I overrun both house, and land, and honour, and all sensual delights, that I might but overrun it! O where is the place where there is none of this darkness, nor disaffection, nor distance, nor estrangedness from God! O that I knew it! O that I could find it! O that I might there dwell! though I should never more see the face of mortals; nor ever hear a humane voice, nor ever tast of the delights of flesh! Alas, foolish soul! such a place there is, that hath all this and more than this: but it is not in a wilderness, but in Paradise, not here on earth, but above with Christ! And yet am I so loth to die? yet am I no more desirous of the blessed day, when I shall be unclothed of flesh and sin? O death, what an enemy art thou even to my soul! By affrighting me from the presence of my Lord, and hindering my desires and willingness to be gone, thou wrongest me much more, than by laying my flesh to rot in darkness. Fain I would know God, and fain I would more love him and enjoy him: but O this hurtful love of life! O this unreasonable fear of dying, detaineth my desires from pressing on to the happy place where all this may be had! O wretched man that I am, who shall