a88 OF SPIRITUAL MINDÉDNÊSS. believe. So far as our affections are renewed, this is the principal attractive to cleave to them with delight and complacency. They are, as was observed before, the ways of out approaching to God. Now we do not draw nigh to God, as himself speaks, as a dry heath, or a barren wilderness, where no refreshment is to be obtained. To make a pretence of coming to God, and not with expectation of receiving good and great things from him, is to despise God himself, to overthrow the na- ture ofthe duty, and deprive our own souls of all be- nefit thereby ; and the want hereof is that which ren- ders theworship of the most, useless, and fruitless to themselves. We are always to come to God, as to an eternal spring of goodness, grace, and mercy, of all that our souls stand in need of, of all that we can de- sire in order to our everlasting blessedness ; and all these things, as to believers, may be reduced to the two heads before mentioned. First. They come for a communication of a sense of his love in Jesus Christ. Hence do all our peace, consolation, and joy, all our encouragement to do and suffer according to the will of God, all our support- ments under our sufferings, solely depend ; in these things do our souls live, and without them we are of all men the most miserable. It is the Holy Spirit who is the immediate efficient cause of all these things in us. He sheds abroad the love of God in our hearts. Rom. v. 5. He witness - ethour adoption to us, (chap. viii. 15, 16,) and thereby an interest in the love of the Father, in God, as he is love. But the outward way and means whereby he communicates these things to us, and effects them in us, is by the dispensationof the gospel, or the preach-
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