Heaven taken

But how shall we do to meditate?¹

1. 1Quest.

Get a love to spiritual things. We usually meditate on those things which ¹we love. The voluptuous man can muse on his pleasures: the covetous man on his bags of gold. Did we love heavenly things, we should meditate more on them. Many say, they cannot meditate, because they want memory; but is it not rather because they want affection? Did they love the things of God, they would make them their continual study and meditation.

1. 1Answ.

5. The fifth Duty wherein we are to ¹offer violence to our selves, is, Self-examination; a duty of great importance. It is a parleying with ones own heart, Psalm 77. 7. I commune with my own heart. David did put interrogatories to himself. Self-examination is the setting ⟨p. 56⟩up a Court in Conscience, and keeping a Register there, that by a strict scrutiny a man may know how things stand between God and his own Soul. Self-examination is a spiritual Inquisition; a bringing ones self to trial. A good Christian doth as it were begin the day of Judgement here in his own Soul. Self-searching is an Heart-Anatomy. As a Chirurgeon, when he makes a Dissection in the Body, discovers the intestina, the inward parts, the Heart, Liver, Arteries: so, a Christian anatomizeth himself; he searcheth what is flesh, and what is spirit; what is sin, and what grace,