Pleasantness of a Religious Life, The: Life as Good as It Can Be (Christian Heritage Puritan Series)

Dismiss all the stereotypes you've heard about Puritans being sour and gloomy. This last book of the great Puritan commentator, printed the year he died in 1714, discusses what gives people real joy. Declaring that "there is true pleasure in true religion," Henry exhorts Christians to partake in all the joyful benefits of "the good life". The book is organized in four sections:  
  
1) 12 pleasures identified.  
2) A review of what God has done to bring joy to sinners.  
3) An appeal to the facts of Christian experience to confirm the previous.  
4) A challenge to the reader to enter into the fulness of the spiritual life described.  
  
Henry writes on page 49:  
  
"Pleasure is a tempting thing. What yields delight cannot but attract desire... religion has pleasure on its side... Here is a bait that has no hook under it... a pleasure which God himself invites you to, and which will make you happy, truly and eternally happy... it is certain that there is true pleasure in true religion."  
  
"We too get told that being a Christian is a bleak and burdensome business, and not being a Christian would be more fun; we too, like Henry's first hearers and readers, need to be reminded that it is absolutely not so"  
- J.I. Packer, in the introduction.

*“Here is a bait that has no hook under it…a pleasure which God himself invites you to, and which will make you happy, truly and eternally happy…it is certain that there is true pleasure in true religion.”*  
**Matthew Henry  
Matthew Henry, the great Puritan commentator, here looks at what gives people real joy. He looks at 12 different types of Christian pleasure, reviews what God has done to bring sinners joy, demonstrates that Christian experience proves this and challenges the reader to join in! This was Matthew Henry’s last book and was at the press when he died in 1714.This classic of Christian living is brought to you by J. I. Packer who adds an extensive introduction to the book showing its significance and gestation from Henry’s ministry.**Read less