The saints everlasting rest

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 ⟨p. 312⟩before I am aware. While thou art reading this, it posteth on, and thy life will be gone as a tale that is told. Mayst thou not easily foresee thy dying time, and look upon thyself as ready to depart? It is but a few days till thy friends shall lay thee in the grave, and others do the like for them. If you verily believed you should die to-morrow, how seriously would you think of heaven to-night! The true apprehensions of the nearness of eternity, doth make men's thoughts of it quick and piercing; put life into their fears and sorrows, if they be unfit: and into their desires and joys, if they have assurance of its glory.