World’s View of Godliness “Some look upon religion as a sour severity and count nothing delightful, but what is suitable to fleshly affections. A deceit like that of a sick person who, feeling no pleasure, but in the easy intervals between his fits and the remission of his distemper, should imagine that if he were freed from his disease, he should lose all pleasure, though the delights of health are more full and durable. The angels are incapable of sensual pleasures; their happiness arises from the perfection of good, not the allays of evil. The beasts are only capable of sensual pleasures, the remedies of natural evils, hunger, thirst, weariness, or accidental evils, diseases, and pains: and many are so sottishly deceived, as to prefer brutish pleasures that affect the senses, before angelical joys that arise from the fruition of God’s favor and obedience to His laws. This is a sad symptom of an unrenewed heart, and a heavy presage of future misery; for God will not be our everlasting joy in heaven, if He be not our exceeding joy upon the earth.”     -- William Bates (1635-1699)