Centuries of Meditations

15

In order to interior or contemplative happiness, it is a good principle: that apprehensions within are better than their objects. Mornay’s simile of the saw is admirable If a man would cut with a saw, he must not apprehend it to be a knife, but a thing with teeth, otherwise he cannot use it. He that mistakes his knife to be an auger, or his hand to be his meat, confounds himself by misapplications. These mistakes are ocular. But far more absurd ones are unseen. To mistake the world, or the nature of one’s soul, is a more dangerous error. He that thinks the Heavens and the Earth not his, can hardly use them; and he that thinks the sons of men impertinent to his joy and happiness can scarcely love them. But he that knows them to be instruments and what they are, will delight in them; and is able to use them. Whatever we misapprehend we cannot use; nor well enjoy what we cannot use. Nor can anything be our happiness we cannot enjoy. Nothing therefore can be our happiness, but that alone which we rightly apprehend. To apprehend God our enemy destroys our happiness. Inward apprehensions are the very light of blessedness, and the cement of souls and their objects.