Christian Hedonism a la Thomas Manton

I fell in love with the English Puritans years ago; I found there (after much effort learning how to read them) a substance that was lacking in so much contemporary preaching, both theological as well as practical.  The other reason I have come to admire and appreciate them is because of the affective manner in which they speak about God: one almost gets the impression that they actually love him.  The following are a few excerpts I came across in Manton's work on Psalm 119 (it comes from volume 1, sermon 3):

God is the cause of all things, and nature cannot be satisfied without him. We were made for God, and can never enjoy satisfaction until we come to enjoy him.

The chiefest good should be sought after with the chiefest care, and chiefest love, and chiefest delight; nothing should be so precious to us as God. It is the greatest baseness that can be, that anything should take up our time, out thoughts, and content us more than God.

It is not enough to own Christ to be the true Messiah, but we must [also] embrace him....

We believe Christ with our whole heart when the heart is warmed with the things we know and assent to, when there is a full and free consent to take Christ upon God's terms to all the uses and purposes for which God hath appointed him....

When there is an effective and an affective knowledge; when we cannot only discourse of God and Christ, and are inclined to believe; but when these truths soak into the heart to frame it to the obedience of his will.

Many will be content to give God a part; God hath their consciences, but the world their affections.  Their heart is divided, and teh evidence of it is plainly this: in their troubles they will seek after God, but he is not their constant work and delight.

Such passages demonstrate just how far removed much of contemporary Christianity is from a living, breathng, feeling faith in Jesus Christ.  But what strikes me even more is how natural and earnest Manton is as he writes: there is no sense that he himself finds this affective dimension to be a foreign sounding thing; in fact, to hear him say it, such emotive work belongs in the very center of the heart of Christian faith. So why does it seem so absent (or, on the other hand, contrived) in so many churches?

BHT