OP SPIRITUAL MINDEDNESS. 291 l3elievers have other designs herein; and, among the rest, this in the first place, that they maybe afresh made partakers of refreshing, comforting pledges of the love of God in Christ, and thereby of their adop- tion, of the pardon of their sins, and acceptance of their persons. According as they meet with these things in the duties of holy worship, public or private,' so will they love, value, and adhere to them. Some men are full of other thoughts and affections, so as that these things are not their principal design or de- sire, or are contented with that measure of them which they suppose themselves to have attained ; or, at least, are not sensible of the need they stand in to have fresh communications of them made to their souls; supposing that they can do well enough with- out a renewed sense of divine love every day: some are so ignorant of what they ought to design to look af- ter, in the duties of gospel worship, as that it is im- possible they should have any real design in them. Many of the better sort of professors are too negli- gent in this matter : they do not loiig and pant in the inward man after renewed pledges of the love of God; they do not consider how much they have need of them, that they may be encouraged and strengthened to all other duties of obedience ; they do not prepare their mindsfor the receptionof them, nor come with the expectation of their communication to ,them; they do not rightly fix their faith on this truth, namely, that these holy administrations and duties are appointed of God, in the first place, as the ways and means of con- veying his love, and a sense of it, to our souls. From hence spring that lukewarmness, coldness and indiffer- ency in and to the duties of holy worship, that are growing among us: for if men have lost the principal
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