A treatise of delighting in God from Psal. xxxvij. 4. Delight thy self also…

And by the latter, That were most irrational delight, which in a Fever one should take in gratifying his distempered appetite, whereby he doth not so much relieve nature as feed his disease.

And so we may say, that Religion is undelightful, i. e. not duly delightful.

1. Which consists wholly in revolving in ones own mind the notions that belong to Religion, without either the experience, or the design and expectation of having the heart and conversation formed according to them. So the case is with such as content themselves to yield the principles of Religion true, and behold with a notional assent and approbation the connection & agreement of one thing with another: But do never consider the tendency and aim of the whole; or that the Truth of the Gospel is the Doctrine that is according to godliness; ¹or such as is pursuant to the design of making men godly; of transforming them into the Image of God, and framing them to an entire subjection to his holy and acceptable will; that bethink not themselves the Truth is never learned as it is in Jesus, except it be to the renewing the Spirit of the mind, ²the putting off the old man, and the putting on of the new. When this is never considered, but men do only know, that they may know; and are never concerned further about the great things of God, than only to take notice that such things there are offered to their view which carry with them the appearance of Truth, but mind them no more than the affairs of Utopia, or the world in the Moon; what delight is taken in this knowledge, is surely most perverse. There is a pleasure indeed in knowing things, and in apprehending the coherence of one Truth with another; but he that shall allow himself to speculate only about things wherein his life is concerned, and shall entertain himself with