The saints everlasting rest

The understanding is not the whole soul, and therefore cannot do the whole work: as GOD hath made several parts in man, to perform their several offices for his nourishment and life; so hath he ordained the faculties of the soul to perform their several offices for his spiritual life: so the understanding must take in truths, and prepare them for the will, and it must received them, and commend them to the affections: the best digestion is in the bottom of the stomach; the affections are as it were the bottom of the soul, and therefore the best digestion is there: while truth is but a speculation swimming in the brain, the soul hath not taken fast hold of it; Christ and heaven have various excellencies, and therefore GOD hath formed the soul with a power of divers ways of apprehending, that so we might be capable of enjoying those excellencies.

What good could all the glory of heaven have done us? or what pleasure should we have had in the goodness of GOD himself, if we had been without the affections of love and joy, whereby we are capable of being delighted in that goodness? So also, what strength or sweetness canst thou receive by thy meditations on eternity, while thou dost not exercise those affections which are the senses of the soul, by which it must receive this strength and sweetness?

This is it that hath deceived christians in this business: they have thought meditation is nothing but the bare thinking on truths, and the rolling of them in the understanding and memory, when every schoolboy can do this.