The saints everlasting rest

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, ⟨p. 355⟩if they might not have been serviceable to his own praise, and helps to raise us to the apprehension of higher things: and it is very considerable, how the Holy Ghost doth condescend, in the phrase of scripture, in bringing things down to the reach of sense; how he sets forth the excellencies of spiritual things in words that are borrowed from the objects of sense. Doubtless, if such expressions had not been best, and to us necessary, the Holy Ghost would not have so frequently used them: he that will speak to man's understanding, must speak in man's language, and speak that which he is capable to conceive.

1. Go to then; when thou settest thyself to meditate on the joys above, think on them boldly as scripture hath expressed them: bring down thy conceivings to the reach of sense. Excellency without familiarity, doth more amaze than delight us; but love and joy are promoted by familiar acquaintance: when we go about to think of GOD and glory without these spectacles, we are lost, and have nothing to fix our thoughts upon; we set GOD and heaven so far from us, that our thoughts are strange, and we look at them as things beyond our reach, and are ready to say, that which is above is nothing to us: to conceive no more of GOD and glory, but that we cannot conceive them; and to apprehend no more, but that they are past apprehension, will produce no more love but this, to acknowledge that they are so far above us that we cannot love them, and no more joy but this, that they are above our rejoicing. And therefore put Christ no further from you, than he hath put himself, lest the divine nature be again inaccessible. Think of Christ as in our own nature glorified; think of our follow-saints as men there perfected; think of the city and state as the Spirit hath expressed it, only with caution. Suppose thou wert now beholding this city of GOD, and that thou hadst been a companion with