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SENSIBLE OBJECTS, let me only advise to draw strong suppositions from<br />
sense, and to compare the objects of sense with the objects of faith.<br />
1. For the helping of thy affections in heavenly contemplation, draw as<br />
strong suppositions as possible from thy senses. Think on the joys above, as<br />
boldly as Scripture hath expressed them. Bring down thy conceptions to the<br />
reach of sense. Both love and joy are promoted by familiar acquaintance.<br />
When we attempt to think of God and glory, without the Scripture's manner<br />
of representing them, we are lost, and have nothing to fix our thoughts upon;<br />
we set them so far from us, that our thoughts are strange, and we are ready to<br />
say, what is above us is nothing to us. To conceive of God and glory only as<br />
above our conception, will beget but little love; or above our love, will<br />
produce little joy. <strong>The</strong>refore put Christ no farther from you than he hath put<br />
himself, lest the divine nature be again inaccessible. Think of Christ as in our<br />
own glorified nature. Think of glorified saints as men made perfect. Suppose<br />
thyself a companion with John, in his survey of the New Jerusalem, and<br />
viewing the thrones, the majesty, the heavenly hosts, the shining splendor<br />
which he saw. Suppose thyself his fellow-traveller into the celestial<br />
kingdom, and that thou hadst seen all the saints in their white robes, with<br />
"palms in their hands;" and that thou hadst heard those "songs of Moses and<br />
of the Lamb." If thou hadst really seen and heard these things, in what a<br />
rapture wouldst thou have been! And the more seriously thou puttest this<br />
supposition to thyself, the more will thy meditation elevate thy heart. Do not,<br />
like the Papists, draw them in pictures! but get the liveliest picture of them in<br />
thy mind that thou possibly canst, by contemplating the Scripture account of<br />
them, till thou canst say, "Methinks I see a glimpse of glory! Methinks I hear<br />
the shouts of joy and praise, and even stand by Abraham and David, Peter<br />
and Paul, and other triumphant souls! Methinks I even see the Son of God<br />
appearing in the clouds, and the world standing at his bar to receive their<br />
doom; and hear him say, ‘Come, ye blessed of my Father;' and see them go<br />
rejoicing into the joy of their Lord! My very dreams of these things have<br />
sometimes greatly affected me; and should not these just suppositions much<br />
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