Owen - BV4501 O84 1844

192 OF SPIRITUAL MINDEDNESS. ceive his departing soul, and to raise his body out of the dust. Not to insist on moreparticulars ; thus it is with them who are spiritually minded ; thus must it be with all, if we pretend a title to that privilege. They are filled with thoughts. of God, in opposition to that char- acter of wicked men, that God is not in all their thoughts. And it is greatly to be feared, that many of us, when we come to be weighed in the balance, will be found too light. Men may be in the performance of outward duties ; they may hear the wordwith some delight, and do many things gladly ; they may escape the pollutions that are in the world through lust, and not run out into the same compass of excess and riot with other men; yet may they be strangers to inward thoughts of God with delight and complacency. I cannot understand how it can be otherwise with them, whose minds are over and over filled with earthly things, however they may satisfy themselves with pre- tences of their callings and lawful enjoyments, or not any way inordinately set on the pleasures or profits of the world. To walk with God, to live to him, is not merely to be found in an abstinence from outward sins, and in the performance of outward duties, though with dili- gence in the multiplication of them. All this may be done upon such principles, for such ends, with such a frame of heart, as to find no acceptance withGod. It is our hearts that he requireth, and we can no way give them"to him, but by our affections and holy thoughts of him with delight. This is to be spiritually minded; this is to walk with God. Let no man de- ceive himself ; unless he thus abound inholy thoughts of God, unless our meditation of him be sweet to us,

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