366 OF SPIRITUAL MINDEDNESS. chambering, and wantonness, with all sorts of sensual pleasures. Of the latter, is all our inordinate love to self, our families, and the whole world, or the things of it. To this end, every thing in the whole world that may make provision for lust is made use of. Herein consists the nature and efficacy of most of those temptations which we have to conflict with. Solicitations they are of our affections, to draw them off from things spiritual and heavenly, and to divert them to other things. Hereby do our enemies endeavor to beguile us, as the serpent beguiled Eve, with fair and false representations of other beloveds, that our hearts be not preserved, as a chaste virgin, in all their affections for Christ. And it is almost incredible how apt we are to be be- guiled by the specious pretences wherewith we are solicited. That our affections in the degree treated about, sup pose of love to the world and the things of it, are law- ful and allowable, is one of the sophisms and artifices wherewith many are deluded. Hereon, provided they run not out into scandalous excesses, they approve of themselves in such a worldly frame of mind, and acting according to it, as renders them fruitless, useless, senseless, and is inconsistent with that prevailing ad- herence of affections to spiritual things, that ought to be in us. Others are deluded by a pretence, that it is in one instance only they would be spared; it is but this or that object they would give out the embraces of their affections to ; in all other things they will be entire for God : the vanity of which pretence we have spoken to before. Others are ruined by giving place to their solicitations, with respect to any one affection whatever. As suppose it be that of fear. In times of
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