Samuel Rutherford (The Covenant of Life Opened, pp. 279–280):
We fail in being more alive to comforts then to God the comforter: the infant may at once both suck the breasts, and also sleep. And is one flower more to be smelled then the whole Garden? And shall feelings and raptures, and manifestations of God in his out-goings be courted and over-courted by us beyond the God of all comforts? There is need that the heart be deadened to sense, for feeling and sense is fiery and idolatrous; and were sense more mortified at the out-goings of faith, hope, love, it were good, for our faith should be the more lively and vigorous to lay hold on God. Q. Is it not lawfull to be taken and feelingly delighted with the influences of God? Ans. Sure, feeling of it self is not faulty, the fierinesse and excessive fervour of feeling is faulty, especially when terminated upon created actings of love, faith, joy, desire, hope, and not upon influences as coming from the free Grace of God, otherwise, we are but sick and pained of love of our own gracious actings, because they are our own; and this is the sicknesse of selfishnesse. Ah! a Godhead, a Godhead is not known.
