When a man shall after this life feel in his heart that horrible
abomination, of which sickness hath here a shadow, at the
remembrance of these voluptuous pleasures, for which he would here
be loth to change with the joys of heaven: when he shall, I say,
after this life, have his fleshly pleasures in abomination, and
shall have there a glimmering (though far from a perfect sight) of
those heavenly joys which here he set so little by--O, good God,
how fain will he then be, with how good will and how gladly would
he then give this whole world, if it were his, to have the feeling
of some little part of those joys!
And therefore let us all who cannot now conceive such delight in
the consideration of them as we should, have often in our eyes by
reading, often in our ears by hearing, often in our mouths by
rehearsing, often in our hearts by meditation and thinking, those
joyful words of the holy scripture by which we learn how wonderful
huge and great are those spiritual heavenly joys. Our carnal hearts
have so feeble and so faint a feeling of them, and our dull worldly
wits are so little able to conceive so much as a shadow of the
right imagination! A shadow, I say, for, as for the thing as it is,
not only can no fleshly carnal fancy conceive that, but beside that
no spiritual person peradventure neither, so long as he is still
living here in this world.
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