h 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. For since the very essential substance
of all the celestial joy standeth in the blessed beholding of the
glorious Godhead face to face, no man may presume or look to attain
it in this life. For God hath said so himself: "There shall no man
here living behold me." And therefore we may well know not only
that we are, for the state of this life, kept from the fruition of
the bliss of heaven, but also I think that the very best man living
here upon earth--the best man, I mean, who is no more than
man--cannot attain the right imagination of it; but those who are
very virtuous are yet (in a manner) as far from it as a man born
blind is from the right imagination of colours.

The words that St. Paul rehearseth of the prophet Isaiah,
prophesying of Christ's incarnation, may properly be verified of
the joys of heaven: _"Oculus non vidit, nec auris audivit, nec in
cor hominis adscendit, quae preparavit Deus diligentibus se."_ For
surely, for this state of this world, the joys of heaven are by
man's mouth unspeakable, to man's ears not audible, to men's hearts
uncogitable, so far excel they all that ever men have heard of, all
that ever men can speak of, and all that men can by