OF SPIRITUAL MINDEDNESS. 195 worthy, useful, and desirable; all other things, in com- parison of them, are but loss and dung. Or is it be- cause the faculties and powers of our souls were not originally suited to the contemplationof them, and de- light in them l This also is otherwise : they were all given to us, all created of God for this end, all fitted with inclinations and power to abide withGod in all things, without aversation or weariness. Nothing was sonatural, easy, and pleasant to them, as steadiness in the contemplation of God andhis works. The cause, therefore, of all this evil, lies at our own doors. All this, therefore, and all other evils; came uponus by the entrance of sin. And therefore Solomon, inhis inqui- ry after all the causes and effects of vanity, brings it under this head; ' Lo, this only have I found, that God made man upright; but they have sought out many inventions.' Eccles. vii. 29. For hereby our minds, that were created in a state of blessed adherence to God, were wholly turned off from him; and not only so, but filled with enmity against him. In this state, that vanity which is prevalent in them, is both their sin and their punishment. Their sin, in a perpetual inclination to things vain, foolish, sensual and wicked. So the apostle describes it at large, Ephes. iv. 17-19. Tit. iii. 3. And their punishment, inthat being turned off from the chiefest good, wherein alone rest is to be found, they are filled with darkness, confusion, and disquietment, being like a troubled sea that cannot rest, whose waters cast up mire and dirt. By grace our minds are renewed; that is, changed . and delivered from this frame ; but they are so par- tially only. The principle of vanity is no longer pre- dominant in us, to alienate us from the life of God, or to keep us in enmity against him. Those who are so
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