376 OF SPIRITUAL MINDEDNESS. tions, offences, and sufferings. It is the soul's compo- sure of itself in God, in his love in Christ Jesus, so as not greatly to be put out of order, to be cast down with any thing that may befall it, but affords men cheerfulness and satisfaction in themselves, though they walk sometimes in the valley of the shadow of death. Such persons have that in them, abiding with them, as will give them life and peace under all occur- rences. (2.) Our next inquiry is, how this spiritual mind- edness is life and peace, or what it contributes to them; how it produceth the frame of heart and mind so expressed ; and this it doth several ways. (1.) It is the only means on our part of retaining a Tense of divine love. The love of God, in a gracious sense of it, as shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Ghost, is the first and only foundation of all durable comforts ; such as will support and refresh us under all oppositions anddistresses ; that is, of life and peace in our souls in any condition. This God communi- cates by an act of sovereign grace, for the most part without any preparation for it in ourselves. He cre- ates the fruit of the lips, peace, peace. But although divine love be in itself unchangeable, and always the same, yet this sense of it may be lost, as it was with David, when he prayed that God would restore unto him the joys of his salvation, Ps. li. 12 ; and so many others have found it by woful experience. To insist upon all that is required on our parts, that we may re- tain a gracious refreshing sense of divine love, after it is once granted to us, belongs not to my present purpose. But this I say, there is not any thing wherein we are more concerned to be careful and diligent in, than what belongs to that end : for men
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