N17286:767
The saints everlasting rest
The saints everlasting rest: or, A treatise of the blessed state of the saints in their enjoyment of God in glory: extracted from the works of Mr. Richard Baxter, by John Wesley, M.A. late fellow of Lincoln College, Oxford.
Philadelphia: printed by Prichard & Hall, 1790
Part 3 › Chapter 8: Some Advantages and Helps, for raising the Soul by Meditation.
Modern spelling is a reading aid: the words are the author’s, only the spelling is modernized. Original shows the page as printed, with the transcription marks.
CHAP. VIII. Some Advantages and Helps, for raising the Soul by Meditation.
THE next part of this directory, is to show you what advantages you should take, and what helps you should use, to make your meditations of heaven more quickening, and to make you taste the sweetness that is therein. For this is the main work, that you may not stick in a bare thinking, but may have the lively sense of all upon your hearts: and this you will find to be the most difficult part of the work. It is easier to think of heaven a whole day, than to be lively and affectionate in those thoughts one quarter of an hour. Therefore let us yet a little further consider what may be done, to make your thoughts of heaven piercing, affecting thoughts.
THE next part of this directory, is to shew you what advantages you should take, and what helps you should use, to make your meditations of heaven more quickening, and to make you taste the sweetness that is therein. For this is the main work, that you may not stick in a bare thinking, but may have the lively sense of all upon your hearts: and this you will find to be the most difficult part of the work. It is easier to think of heaven a whole day, than to be lively and affectionate in those thoughts one quarter of an hour. Therefore let us yet a little further consider what may be done, to make your thoughts of heaven piercing, affecting thoughts.
It will be a point of spiritual prudence, and a singular help to the furthering of faith, to call in our senses to its assistance: if we can make us friends of those usual enemies, and make them instruments of raising us to GOD, which are the usual means of drawing us from GOD, we shall perform a very excellent work. Sure it is both possible and lawful to do something in this kind; for GOD would not have given us either senses themselves, or their usual objects,