Thou desirest that I would teach thee how thou art to attain it; and I
will direct thee to our Master, from whom I have been taught it, that
thou mayest learn it thyself from him, who alone teacheth the heart.
Hear thou him. Wouldst thou arrive at this; wouldst thou remain
untouched by sensibles; wouldst thou behold light in the very Light of
God, and see all things thereby; then consider the words of Christ, who
is the Light and who is the Truth. O consider now his words, who said,
_Without me ye can do nothing_ (John xix. 5) and defer not to apply
thyself unto him, who is the strength of thy salvation, and the _power_
of thy life; and _with whom thou canst do all things_, by the faith
which he waketh in thee. But unless thou wholly givest thyself up to the
life of our Lord Jesus Christ, and resignest thy Will wholly to him, and
desirest nothing and willest nothing without him, thou shalt never come
to such a rest as no creature can disturb. Think what thou pleasest,
and be never so much delighted in the activity of thine own reason, thou
shalt find that, in thine own power and without such a total surrender
to God and to the life of God, thou canst never arrive at such a rest as
this, or the true Quiet of the Soul, wherein no creature can molest
thee, or even so much as touch thee. Which when thou shalt, with Grace,
have attained to, then with thy Body thou art in the World, as in the
properties of outward Nature; and, with thy Reason, under the Cross of
our Lord Jesus Christ; but with thy _Will_ thou walkest in heaven, and
art at the end from whence all creatures are proceeded forth, and _to_
which they return again. And then thou canst in this End, which is the
same with the _Beginning_, behold all things outwardly with _reason_ and
liberally with the _mind_; and so mayest thou rule in all things and
over all things, with Christ; unto whom all power is given both in
heaven and on earth.