pilgrim in progress

Today in my Puritan’s class we are looking at Edwards. Here’s a great quote from his Miscellanies on the nature of the saints enjoyment in heaven:

233. HAPPINESS OF HEAVEN. We know not what sort of bodies the saints
shall have after the resurrection. But it seems to me probable, that as
the bodies of the wicked shall be tormented as well as their souls (in
that Christ says both soul and body shall be cast into hell), so the
glorified spiritual bodies of the saints shall be filled with pleasures
of the most exquisite kind that such refined bodies are capable of; not
with any pleasures that in the least tend to clog the mind, and divert
from mental and spiritual pleasure and the pure joys of holiness. They
shall in no measure be equal to them, but as an additament to them; the
mind shall not be so naturally and strongly affected by them as by
spiritual satisfactions, and so there will be no danger of being
diverted from them. The pleasures of the body shall rather assist those
of the mind, and shall put the mind into a sprightly frame, and shall
be the effects of a holy exercise of mind, and shall be in proportion
to the divine joy of the soul. The sweetness and pleasure that shall be
in the mind, shall put the spirits of the body into such a motion as
shall cause a sweet sensation throughout the body, infinitely excelling
any sensual pleasure here. 

There are none of the arguments made use of to prove that the bodies of
sinners must be punished as well as their souls (having been companions
in sin etc.), but what are of equal force to evince that the bodies of
the saints shall be rewarded. And certainly ’tis represented in
Scripture that the bodies of saints shall be gainers by the
resurrection, which they can be in no other sense.

Jonathan Edwards, “HAPPINESS OF HEAVEN”, 1726, p. 1. Works of Jonathan Edwards Online, eds. Harry S.
Stout, Kenneth P. Minkema, Caleb J.D. Maskell, 2005-.
http://edwards.yale.edu/ref/10310/e/p/1