“Spiritual perceiving is the creation of a new taste in the soul. Before our conversion the honey of Christ tasted sour or bland and thus undesirable to our souls. Then, by grace, we were granted a new capacity for sweetness, and we tasted the honey of Christ for what it really is: sweet and desirable. This is the seeing that provides the enjoyment of Christ. The seeing and enjoying are inseparable. Indeed it appears that the enjoying is the seeing. Or as Jonathan Edwards says, the heart’s seeing a person as lovely implies that the person is pleasant to the soul.“

There is a difference between having a rational judgement that honey is sweet, and having a sense of its sweetness… So there is a different between believing that a person is beautiful, and having a sense of his beauty. The former may be obtained by hearsay, but the latter only by seeing the countenance… When the heart is sensible to the beauty and amiableness of a thing, it necessarily feels pleasure in the apprehension. It is implied in a person’s being heartily sensible of the loveliness of a thing, that the idea of it is sweet and pleasant to this soul.  Jonathan Edwards, A Divine and Supernatural Light