OF SPIItITÜAL MINÍ3ÉDNESS. 123 agination they have of something that is great and glorious, but what it is they know not. No wonder if such persons have no delight in, no use for, thoughts of heaven. When their imaginations have fluctuated up and down in all uncertainties for a while, they are swallowed up in nothing. Glorious, and therefore de- sirable, they take it for granted that it must be : but nothingcan be so to them, but what is suitable to their present dispositions, inclinations, and principles : and hereof there is nothing in the true spiritual glory of heaven, or in the eternal enjoyment of God. These things are not suited to the wills of their minds and of the flesh, and therefore they cannot rise up to any constant desire of them. Hence to please themselves, they begin to imagine what is not. But whereas what is truly heaven, pleaseth them not, and what dothplease them is not heaven, nor there to be found, they seldom or never endeavor, in good earnest, to exercise their thoughts about it. It were well if darkness and ignorance of the true nature of the future state and eternal glory, did not exceedingly prejudice believers themselves, as to their delight in them and meditations about them. They have nothing fixed or stated in their minds, which they can betake themselves to in their thoughts, when they would contemplate about them. And by the way, whatever diverts the minds of men from the power and life of spiritual worship, as do all pompous solemnities in the performance of it, doth greatly hin- der them as to right conceptions of our future state. There was a promise of eternal life given to the saints under the Old Testament : but whereas they were obliged to a worship that was carnal and out- wardly pompous, they never had clear and distinct ap-
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy OTcyMjk=