The saints everlasting rest

First, By keeping the heart employed: when we are idle, we tempt the devil to tempt us; as it is an encouragement to a thief, to see your doors open, and nobody within; and as we use to say, Careless persons make thieves; so it will encourage Satan, to find your hearts idle: but when the heart is taken up with GOD, it cannot have time to hearken to temptations: it cannot have time to be lustful and wanton, ambitious or worldly.

If you were but busied in your lawful callings, you would not be so ready to hearken to temptations: much less if you were busied above with GOD: will you leave your plough and harvest in the field? Or leave the quenching of a fire in your houses, to run hunting of butterflies? Would a judge rise, when he is sitting upon life and death, to go and play among the boys in the streets? No more will a christian, when he is busy with GOD, give ear to the alluring charms of Satan. The love of GOD is never idle; it worketh great things where it truly is; and when it will not work, it is not love. Therefore being still thus working, it is still preserving.

Secondly, A heavenly mind is freest from sin, because it is of clearest understanding in spiritual matters. A man that is much in conversing above, hath truer and livelier apprehensions of things concerning ⟨p. 285⟩GOD and his soul, than any reading or learning can beget: though perhaps he may be ignorant in divers controversies, and matters that less concern salvation; yet those truths which must establish his soul, and preserve him from temptation, he knows far better than the greatest scholars; he hath so deep an insight into the evil of sin, the vanity of the creature, the brutishness of sensual delights, that temptations have little power on him; for these earthly vanities are Satan's baits, which with the clear-sighted have lost their force. In vain (saith Solomon) the net is spread in the sight of any bird. And in vain doth Satan lay his snares to entrap the soul that plainly sees them. When the heavenly mind is above with GOD, he may from thence discern every danger that lies below: nay, if he did not discover the snare, yet were he likelier far to escape it than any others. A net or bait that is laid on the ground, is unlikely to catch the bird that flies in the air; while she keeps above, she is out of the danger, and the higher the safer; so it is with us. Satan's temptations are laid on the earth, earth is the place, and earth is the ordinary bait: how shall these ensnare the christian, who hath left the earth and walks with GOD?