The saints everlasting rest

2. Labour as to know heaven to be the only happiness, so also to be thy happiness. Though the knowledge of excellency and suitableness may stir up that love which worketh by desire, yet there must be the knowledge of our interest or propriety, to the setting at work our love of complacency. We may confess heaven to be the best condition, though we despair of enjoying it; and we may desire and seek it, if we see the obtainment to be but probable; but we can never delightfully rejoice in it, till we are persuaded of our title to it. What comfort is it to a man that is naked, to see the rich attire of others? Or, to a man that hath not a bit to put in his mouth, to see a feast which he must not taste of? What delight hath a man that hath not a house to put his head in, to see the sumptuous buildings of others? Would not all this rather increase his anguish, and make him ⟨p. 311⟩more sensible of his misery? So, for a man to know the excellencies of heaven, and not to know whether he shall ever enjoy them, may well raise desire to seek it, but it will raise but little joy and content.

3. Another help to the fore-taste of rest is this: labour to apprehend how near it is; think seriously of its speedy approach. That which we think is near at hand, we are more sensible of than that which we behold a• a distance. When we hear of war or famine in another country, it troubleth us not so much; or if we hear it prophesied of a long time hence, so if we hear of plenty a great way off, or of a golden age that shall fall out, who knows when, this never rejoiceth us. But if judgments or mercies draw near, then they affect us. This makes men think on heaven so insensibly, because they conceit it at a great distance: they look on it as twenty, or thirty, or forty years off; and this it is that dulls their sense. As wicked men are fearless and senseless of judgment, because the sentence is not speedily executed; so are the good deceived of their comforts, by supposing them further off than they are. How much better were it to receive the sentence of death in ourselves, and to look on eternity as near at hand? Surely, reader, thou standest at the door, and hundreds of diseases are ready waiting to open the door and let thee in. Are not the thirty or forty years of thy life that are past, quickly gone? Are they not a very little time when thou lookest back on them? And will not all the rest be shortly so too? Do not days and nights come very thick? Dost thou not feel that building of flesh to shake, and perceive thy house of clay to totter? Look on thy glass, see how it runs: look on thy watch, how fast it getteth; what a short moment is between us and our rest; what a step is it from hence to everlastingness! While I am thinking and writing of it, it hasteth near, and I am even entering into it