Rest, or pacification in God's providences, implies and secures the fact of rest or peace in other things, which have an indirect relation to his providences.
For instance, he who is at peace with Providence, has rest
from vain and meandering imaginations. He is unlike other persons in this respect, who constantly recur in their imaginations to other scenes and other situations. and people them with a felicity which is the creation of their own minds. If his imagination ever goes beyond the sphere which Providence has assigned him, it does so under a divine guidance, and not at the instigation of unholy discontent.
Again, he who is at peace with Providence experiences, as one of the incidental results of his position in this respect, a peace or rest
from feelings of envy. The occasion of envy is the existence, or supposed existence, of superiority in others. It is impossible, therefore, for him to envy others, because, viewing all things as he does in the light of God, he does not and cannot believe that the situation of others is better than his own. Accordingly, he is at rest from the agitations of this baneful passion.
He has rest also
from easily offended and vengeful feelings. If he has been injured by another, he knows that his heavenly Father, without originating the unholy impulse, has seen fit, for wise reasons, to direct its application against himself. He receives the blow with a quiet spirit, as one which is calculated to strengthen his own piety, while he has pity for him who inflicts it. Considered in relation to himself, he accepts all, approves all, rejoices in all. In the remarkable language of the apostle Paul, which precisely describes his situation, he "suffers long and is kind; he envies not; is not easily provoked; thinketh no evil; rejoiceth not in iniquity, but rejoiceth in the truth; beareth all things, believeth all things, hopeth all things, endureth all things.” 1st Corinthians, ch. 13.
— edited from A Treatise on Divine Union (1851) Part 8, Chapter 6.
