Owen - BV4501 O84 1844

18 OF SPIRITUAL MINDEDNESS. acted and influenced thereby unto thoughts and medi- tations of spiritual things, from the affections cleaving unto them with delight and satisfaction. So on the contrary it is when men mind earthly things. From a principle of love unto them, arising from their suitable- ness unto their corrupt affections, their thoughts, medi- tations, and desires, are continually engaged about them. Wherefore; 2. Three things may be distinguished in the great duty of being spiritually minded, under which notion it is here recommended unto us. 1. The actual exercise of the mind in its thoughts, meditations, and desires about things spiritual andhea- venly. So it is expressed in the verse foregoing. They that are after the flesh do mind the things of the flesh ; they think on them, their contrivances about them, and their desires after them. But they that are after the spirit, the things of the spirit. They mind them by fixing their thoughts and meditations upon them. 2. The inclination, disposition, and frame of the mind, in all its affections, whereby it adheres and cleaves un- to spiritual things. This minding of the spirit resides habitually in the affections. Wherefore the phronema of the spirit, or the mind, as renewed and acted by a spiritual principle of light and life, is the exercise of its thoughts, meditations, and desires, on spiritual things, proceeding from the love and delight of its af- fections in them, and engagement unto them. 3. A complacency of mind from that gust, relish, and savor, which it finds in spiritual things, from their suitableness unto its constitution, inclinations, and desires. There is a salt in spiritual things, ,whereby they are condited and made savory unto a renewed mind : though to others they are as the white of anegg,

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