Part 168

§ 3. (1.) For the helping of thy affections in heavenly contemplation, draw as strong suppositions as possible from thy senses. Think on the joys above, as boldly as Scripture hath expressed them. Bring down thy conceptions to the reach of sense. Both love and joy are promoted by familiar acquaintance. When we attempt to think of God and glory, without the Scripture-manner of representing them, we are lost, and have nothing to fix our thoughts upon; we set them so far from us, that our thoughts are strange, and we are ready to say, what is above us, is nothing to us. To conceive of God and glory, only as above our conception, will beget but little love; or as above our love, will produce little joy. Therefore put Christ no farther from you, than he hath put himself, lest the Divine nature be again inaccessible. Think of Christ, as in our own glorified nature. Think of glorified saints, as men made perfect. Suppose thyself a companion with John in his survey of the new Jerusalem, and viewing the thrones, the Majesty, the heavenly hosts, the shining splendor, which he saw. Suppose thyself his fellow-traveller into the celestial kingdom, and that thou hadst seen all the saints in their _white robes_, with _palms in their hands_; and that thou hadst heard those _Songs of Moses, and of the Lamb_. If thou hadst really seen and heard these things, in what a rapture wouldst thou have been? and the more seriously thou puttest this supposition to thyself, the more will thy meditation elevate thy heart. Do not, like the papists, draw them in pictures; but get the liveliest picture of them in thy mind that thou possibly canst, by contemplating the Scripture-account of them, till thou canst say, "Methinks I see a glimpse of glory! methinks I hear the shouts of joy and praise, and even stand by Abraham and David, Peter and Paul, and other triumphant souls! Methinks I even see the Son of God appearing in the clouds, and the world standing at his bar to receive their doom; and hear him say _Come ye blessed of my Father_; and see them go rejoicing into the joy of their Lord! My very dreams of these things have sometimes greatly affected me, and should not these just suppositions much more affect me? What if I had seen, with Paul, those _unutterable things_! Or, with Stephen, had seen _heaven opened, and Christ sitting at the right hand of God_? Surely that one sight was worth his storm of stones. What if I had seen, as Isaiah did, _the Lord sitting upon his throne, and all the host of heaven standing on his right hand and on his left_? Such things did these men of God see; and I shall shortly see far more than ever they saw, till they were loosed from flesh, as I must be." Thus you see how it excites our affections in this heavenly work, if we make strong and familiar suppositions from our bodily senses, concerning the state of blessedness, as the Spirit hath in condescending language expressed it.