VI. Containing the description of the great duty of heavenly contemplation
use their bodies aright, we cannot wonder if they be much hindered in their heavenly conversing. Most men are very slaves to their sensitive appetite, and can scarce deny anything to the flesh, which they can give it on easier rates, without much shame, or loss, or grief.
The flesh thus used is as unfit to serve you as a wild colt to ride on.
When such men should converse in heaven, the flesh will carry them out to an ale-house, or to their sports, to their profits, or credit, or vain company; to wanton practices, or sights, or speeches, or thoughts: it will thrust a whore, or a pair of cards, or a good bargain into their minds, instead of God. Look to this specially, you that are young, and heathful, and lusty: as you love your souls, remember that in Rom. 13:14, which converted Austin, Make not provision for the flesh, to fulfil its desires; and that in Rom. 8:4–8, 12–14. Some few others do much hinder their heavenly joy, by over-rigorous denying the body its necessaries, and so making it unable to serve them. But the most, by surfeiting and excess, do overthrow and disable it. You love to have your knife keen, and every instrument you use in order: when your horse goes lustily, how cheerfully do you travel! As much need hath the soul of a sound and cheerful body. If they who abuse their bodies, and neglect their health,q did wrong the flesh only, the matter were small, but they wrong the soul also: as he that spoils the house, doth wrong the inhabitant. When the body is sick, and the spirits do languish, how heavily move we in these meditations and joys! Yet where God denieth this mercy, we may the better bear it, because he oft occasioneth our benefit by the denial.
CHAP. VI Containing the Description of the great Duty of Heavenly Contemplation SECT. I. Though I hope what is already spoken be not un-useful, and that it will not by the reader be cast aside; yet I must tell you, that the main thing intended is yet behind, and that which I aimed at when I set upon this work. I have observed the maxim, that my principal end
be last in execution, though it was first in my intention. All that I have said is but for the preparation to this: the doctrinal part is but to instruct you for this; the rest of the uses are but introductions to this: the motives I have laid down, are but to make you willing for this: the hinderances mentioned were but so many blocks in the way to this: the general helps which I last delivered, are but the necessary attendants of this; so that, reader, if thou neglect this that follows, thou dost frustrate the main end of my design, and makest me lose
(as to thee) the chief of my labour. I once more entreat thee, therefore, as thou art a man that maketh conscience of a revealed duty, and that darest not wilfully resist the Spirit, as thou valuest the high delights of a saint, and the soul-ravishing exercise of heavenly contemplation, as all my former moving considerations seem reasonable to thee, and as thou art faithful to the peace and prosperity of thine own soul, that thou diligently study these directions following, and that thou speedily and faithfully put them into practice: practice is the end of all sound doctrine, and all right faith doth end in duty. I pray thee, therefore, resolve before thou readest any further, and promise here, as before the Lord, that if the following advice be wholesome to thy soul, thou wilt conscionably follow it, and seriously set thyself to the work; and that no laziness of spirit shall take thee off, nor the lesser business interrupt thy course, but that thou wilt approve thyself a doer of this word, and not an idle hearer only. Is this thy promise; and wilt thou stand to it? Resolve, man; and then I shall be encouraged to give thee my advice: if I spread not before thee a delicious feast, if I set thee not upon as gainful a trade, and put not into thy hand as delightful an employment as ever thou dealtest with in all thy life, then cast it away, and tell me I have deceived thee; only try it thoroughly, and then judge: I say again, if in the faithful following of this prescribed course, thou dost not find an increase of all thy graces, and dost not grow beyond the stature of common Christians, and art not made more serviceable in thy place, and more precious in the eyes of all that are discerning; if thy soul enjoy not more fellowship with God, and thy life be not fuller of pleasure and solace, and thou have not comfort readier by thee at a dying hour, and when thou hast greatest
need; then throw these directions back in my face, and exclaim against me as a deceiver for ever: except God should leave thee uncomfortable for a little season, for the more glorious manifestation of his attributes, and thy integrity, and single thee out as he did Job, for an example and mirror of constancy and patience, which would be but a preparative for thy fuller comfort. Certainly, God will not forsake this his own ordinance thus conscionably performed, but will be found of those that thus diligently seek him. God hath, as it were, appointed to meet thee in this way, do not thou fail to give him the meeting, and thou shalt find by experience that he will not fail.
The duty which I press upon thee so earnestly, I shall now describe and open to thee; for I suppose, by this time, thou art ready to inquire, 'What is this so highly extolled work?' Why, it is the set and solemn acting of all the powers of the soul upon this most perfect object, rest, by meditation.
Sect. II. I will a little more fully explain the meaning of this description, that so the duty may lie plain before thee. 1. The general title that I give this duty is meditation; not as it is precisely distinguished from thought, consideration, and contemplation; but as it is taken in the larger and usual sense for thinking on things spiritual, and so comprehending consideration and contemplation.
That meditation is a duty of God's ordaining, not only in his written law, but also in nature itself, I never met with a man that would deny; but that it is a duty constantly and conscionably practised even by the godly, so far as my acquaintance extends, I must, with sorrow, deny it. It is in word confessed to be a duty by all, but by the constant neglect denied by most; and, I know not by what fatal customary security it comes to pass that men that are very tender-conscienced towards most other duties, yet do as easily overslip this, as if they knew it not to be a duty at all. They that are presently troubled in mind, if they omit but a sermon, a fast, a prayer in public or private, yet were never troubled that they have omitted meditation, perhaps all their lifetime to this very day; though it be that duty by which all
other duties are improved, and by which the soul digesteth truths, and draweth forth their strength for its nourishment and refreshing.
Certainly, I think that a man is but half an hour in chewing and taking into his stomach that meat which he must have seven or eight hours at least to digest; so a man may take into his understanding and memory more truth in one hour than he is able well to digest in many. A man may eat too much, but he cannot digest too well.
Therefore, God commanded Joshua, that the book of the law depart not out of his mouth, but that he meditate therein day and night; that he may observe to do according to that which is written therein.
(Josh. 1:8.) As digestion is the turning of the raw food into chyle and blood, and spirits and flesh, so meditation rightly managed, turneth the truths received and remembered, into warm affection, raised resolution, and holy and upright conversation. Therefore, what good those men are like to get by sermons or providences, who are unacquainted with, and unaccustomed to, this work of meditation, you may easily judge. And why so much preaching is lost among us, and professors can run from sermon to sermon, and are never weary of hearing or reading, and yet have such languishing, starved souls, I know no truer or greater cause than their ignorance and unconscionable neglect of meditation. If a man have the lientery, that his meat passes from him as he took it in; or, if he vomits it up as fast as he eats it, what strength, and vigour of body, and senses, is this man like to have? Indeed, he may well eat more than a sounder man, and the small abode that it makes in the stomach, may refresh it at the present, and help to draw out a lingering, languishing, uncomfortable, unprofitable life; and so do our hearers that have this disease; perhaps they hear more than otherwise they needed, and the clear discovery and lively delivery of the truth of God, may warm and refresh them a little, while they are hearing, and perhaps an hour or two after; and, it may be, linger out their grace in a languishing, uncomfortable, unprofitable life; but if they did hear one hour, and meditate seven; if they did as constantly digest their sermons as they hear them, and not take in one sermon before the former is well concocted, they would find another kind of benefit by sermons, than the ordinary sort of the forwardest Christians do. I know many
carnal persons do make this an argument against frequent preaching and hearing, who do it merely from a loathing of the Word, and know far less how to meditate than they know how understandingly to hear; only they pretend meditation against often hearing, because, that being a duty of the mind, you cannot so easily discern their omission of it. These are sick of the anorexia and apepsia; they have neither appetite nor digestion. The other of the boulimia; they have appetite, but no digestion.
Sect. III. But because meditation is a general word, and it is not all meditation that I here intend, I shall therefore lay thee down the difference whereby this meditation that I am urging thee to, is distinguished from all other kinds; and the difference is taken from the act, and from the object of it.
1. From the act, which I call the set and solemn acting of all the powers of the soul.
1. I call it the acting of them; for it is action that we are directing you in now, and not relations or dispositions; yet these also are necessarily presupposed. It must be a soul that is qualified for the work by the supernatural renewing grace of the Spirit, which must be able to perform this heavenly exercise. It is the work of the living, and not of the dead; it is a work of all other most spiritual and sublime, and therefore not to be well performed by a heart that is merely carnal and terrene. Also, they must necessarily have some relation to heaven before they can familiarly there converse. I suppose them to be the sons of God, when I persuade them to love him; and to be of the family of God, yea, the spouse of his Son, when
I persuade them to press into his presence, and to dwell with him. I suppose them to be such as have title to rest, when I persuade them to rejoice in the meditations of rest. These, therefore, being all presupposed, are not the duties here intended and required, but it is the bringing of their sanctified dispositions into act, and the delightful reviewing of their high relations. Habits and powers are but to enable us to action. To say, I am able to do this, or I am
disposed to it, doth neither please God, nor advantage ourselves, except withal we really do it. God doth not regenerate thy soul that it may be able to know him, and not know him; or that it may be able to believe, and yet not believe; or that it may be able to love him, and yet not to love him; but he therefore makes thee able to know, to believe and love, that thou mayest indeed both know, believe, and love him. What good doth that power which is not reduced into act?
Therefore, I am not now exhorting thee to be an able Christian, but to be an active Christian, according to the degree of that ability which thou hast. As thy store of money, or food, or raiment, which thou lettest lie by thee, and never usest, doth thee no good but please thy fancy, or raise thee to an esteem in the eyes of others, so all thy gifts, and powers, and habits, which lie still in thy soul, and are never acted, do profit or comfort thee little or nothing, but in satisfying thy fancy, and raising thee to the repute of an able man, so far as they are discernible to the standers-by.
Sect. IV. 2. I call this mediation, "the acting of the powers of the soul," meaning the soul as rational, to difference it from the cogitations of the soul as sensitive: the sensitive soul hath a kind of meditation by the common sense, the fantasy and estimation. The fleshly man mindeth the things of the flesh. (Rom. 8.) If it were the work of the ear, or the eye, or the tongue, or the hands, which I am setting you on, I doubt not but you would more readily take it up; but it is the work of the soul, for bodily exercise doth here profit but little. The soul hath its labour and its ease; its business and its idleness; its intention and remission, as well as the body; and diligent students are usually as sensible of the labour and weariness of their spirits and brain, as they are of that of the members of the body. This action of the soul is it I persuade thee to.
Sect. V. 3. I call it the acting of "all" the powers of the soul, to difference it from the common meditation of students, which is usually the mere employment of the brain. It is not a bare thinking that I mean, nor the mere use of invention or memory, but a business of a higher and more excellent nature. When truth is apprehended
only as truth, this is but an unsavoury and loose apprehension; but when it is apprehended as good, as well as true, this is a fast and delightful apprehension. As a man is not so prone to live according to the truth he knows, except it do deeply affect him, so neither doth his soul enjoy its sweetness, except speculation do pass to affection. 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 nourishing and life, so hath he ordained the faculties of the soul to perform their several offices for his spiritual life: the stomach must chylify, and prepare for the liver; the liver and spleen must sanguify, and prepare for the heart and brain; and these must beget the vital and animal spirits, &c.; so the understanding must take in truths, and prepare them for the will, and it must receive 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 half received it, nor taken fast hold of it; Christ and heaven have various excellences, and therefore God hath formed the soul with a power of apprehending divers ways, that so we might be capable of enjoying those divers excellences in Christ. Even as the creatures having their several uses, God hath given us several senses, that so we might enjoy the delights of them all. What the better had we been for the pleasant, odoriferous flowers and perfumes, if we had not possessed the sense of smelling; or what good would language or music have done us, if God had not given us the sense of hearing? or what delight should we have found in meats, or drinks, or sweetest things, if we had been deprived of the sense of tasting? So also, what good could all the glory of heaven have done us; or what pleasure should we have had, even in the goodness and perfection of God himself, if we had been without the affections of love and joy, whereby we are capable of being delighted in that goodness? And what benefit of strength or sweetness canst thou possibly 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 sweetness and strength?
This is it that hath deceived Christians in this business; they have thought that 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, or persons that hate the things which they think on.
Therefore this is the great task in hand, and this is the work that I would set thee on: to get these truths from thy head to thy heart, and that all the sermons which thou hast heard of heaven, and all the notions that thou hast conceived of this rest, may be turned into the blood and spirits of affection, and thou mayest feel them revive thee, and warm thee at the heart, and mayest so think of heaven as heaven should be thought on.
There are two accesses of contemplation, said Bernard, one in intellection, the other in affection; one in light, the other in heat; one in acquisition, the other in devotion. If thou shouldst study of nothing but heaven while thou livest, and shouldst have thy thoughts at command, to turn them hither on every occasion, and yet shouldst proceed no further than this; this were not the meditation that I intend, nor would it much advantage or better thy soul; as it is thy whole soul that must possess God hereafter, so must the whole, in a lower manner, possess him here. I have shown you in the beginning of this treatise, how the soul must enjoy the Lord in glory; to wit, by knowing, by loving, and joying in him. Why, the very same way must thou begin in thy enjoyment here.
So much as thy understanding and affections are sincerely acted upon by God, so much dost thou enjoy him: and this is the happy work of this meditation. So that you see here is somewhat more to be done than barely to remember and think of heaven. As running, ringing, and moving, and such-like labours, do not only stir a hand or foot, but do strain and exercise the whole body, so doth meditation the whole soul.
As the affections of sinners are set on the world, and turned to idols, and fallen from God, as well as the understanding, so must the affections of men be reduced to God, and taken up with him, as well as the understanding; and as the whole was filled with sin before, so the whole must be filled with God now. As St. Paul saith of knowledge, and gifts, and faith to remove mountains, that if thou have all these without love, "thou art but as sounding brass, or as a tinkling cymbal;" (1 Cor. 13:1, 2;) so I may say of the exercise of these, If in this work of meditation thou do exercise knowledge, and gifts, and faith of miracles, and not exercise love and joy, thou dost nothing; thou playest the child, and not the man; the sinner's part, and not the saint's. For so will sinners do also. If thy meditation tends to fill thy note-book with notions, and good sayings, concerning God, and not thy heart with longings after him, and delight in him, for aught I know thy book is as much a Christian as thou. Mark but David's description of the blessed man: "His delight is in the law of the Lord, and therein doth he meditate day and night." (Psal. 1:3.) Sect. VI. 4. I call this meditation "set and solemn," to difference it from that which is occasional and cursory. As there is prayer which is solemn, when we set ourselves wholly to the duty, and prayer which is sudden and short, commonly called ejaculations, when a man, in the midst of other business, doth send up some brief request to God; so also there is meditation solemn, when we apply ourselves only to that work; and there is meditation which is short and cursory, when in the midst of our business we have some good thoughts of God in our minds; and as solemn prayer is either first set, when a Christian, observing it as a standing duty, doth resolvedly practise it in a constant course; or, secondly, occasionally, when some unusual occasion doth put us upon it at a season extraordinary; so also meditation admits of the like distinction. Now, though I would persuade you to that meditation which is mixed with your common labours in your callings, and to that which special occasions do direct you to, yet these are not the main things which I here intend; but that you would make it a constant, standing duty, as you do by hearing,
and praying, and reading the Scripture; and that you would solemnly set yourselves about it, and make it for that time your whole work, and intermix other matters no more with it than you would do with prayer or other duties. Thus you see, as it is differenced by its act, what kind of meditation it is that we speak of; viz., it is the set and solemn acting of all the powers of the soul.
Sect. VII. The second part of the difference is drawn from its object, which is "rest," or the most blessed state of man in his everlasting enjoyment of God in heaven. Meditation hath a large field to walk in; and hath as many objects to work upon, as there are matters, and lines, and words in the Scripture, as there are known creatures in the whole creation, and as there are particular discernible passages of Providence in the government of the persons and actions through the world; but the meditation that I now direct you in, is only of the end of all these, and of these as they refer to that end. It is not a walk from mountains to valleys, from sea to laud, from kingdom to kingdom, from planet to planet; but it is a walk from mountains and valleys to the holy mount Zion; from sea and land to the land of the living; from the kingdoms of this world to the kingdom of saints; from earth to heaven; from time to eternity. It is a walking upon sun, and moon, and stars; it is a walking in the garden and paradise of God. It may seem far off; but spirits are quick, whether in the body or out of the body; their motion is swift; they are not so heavy or dull as these earthly lumps, nor so slow of motion as these clods of flesh. I would not have you cast off your other meditations, but, surely, as heaven hath the pre-eminence in perfection, so should it have the pre-eminence also in our meditations. That which will make us most happy when we possess it, will make us most joyful when we meditate upon it, especially when that meditation is a degree of possession, if it be such affecting meditation as I here describe.
You need not here be troubled with the fears of the world, lest studying so much on these high matters should craze your brains, and make you mad, unless you would go mad with delight and joy, and that of the purest and most solid kind. If I set you to meditate as