40 OF SPIRITUAL MINDEDNESS. love respects the goodness of the things themselves, and not merely the truth of the propositions wherein they are expressed. The other thoughts are only the sense of the mind, as affected with light and truth, without any cordial love unto the things themselves. 2. They are accompanied with complacency of soul, arising from love, experience, more or less, of the power of them, and their suitableness unto the new nature or principle of grace in them. For when our minds find that so indeed it is in us, as it is in the word; that this is that which we would be more con- formable unto; it gives a secret complacency with satisfaction unto the soul. The other thoughts, which are only occasional, have none of these concomitants or effects, but are dry and barren, unless it be in a few words or transient discourse. 3. The former are means of spiritual growth. So some say the natural growth of vegetables is not by insensible motion, but by gusts and sensible eruptions of increase. There are both in spiritual growth, and the latter consists much in those thoughts which the principle of the new nature is excited unto by the word in the latter. 2. The duty of prayer is another means of the like nature. One principal end of it is to excite, stir up, and draw forth, the principle of grace, of faith and love in the heart, unto a due exercise in holy thoughts of God and spiritual things, with affections suitable unto them. Those who design not this end in prayer, know not at all what it is to pray. Now all sorts of persons have frequent occasion to join with others in prayer, and many are under the conviction that it is their own duty to pray every day, it may be, in their families and otherwise. And it is hard to conceive how men can constantly join with others in prayer,
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy OTcyMjk=