OF SPIRITUAL MINDEDNESS. 65 lusts and temptations, and are not the immediate, uni- versal consequence of that depravation of nature which is equal in all. Such alone is the vanity and wickedness of the thoughts and imaginations of the heart. A change herein is a blessed evidence of a change of state. He who is cured of a dropsy, is not immediately healthy, because he may have the prevail- ing seeds and matter of other diseases in him, and the next day die of a lethargy : but he who, from a state of sickness, is restored in the temperature of the mass of blood and the animal spirits, and all the princi- ples of life and health, unto a good crasis and tempe- rature, his state of body is changed. The cure of a particular sin may leave behind it the seeds of eternal death, which they may quickly effect ; but he who hath obtainéd a change in this character, which belongs essentially unto the state of depraved nature, is spiri- tually recovered. And the more the stream of our thoughts is turned, the more our minds are filled with those of a contrarynature, the greater and more firm is our evidence of a translation out of that depraved state and condition. There is nothing so unaccountable as the multipli- city of thoughts of the minds of men ; they fall from them like the leaves of trees, when they are shaken with the wind in autumn. To have all these thoughts, all the several figments of the heart, all the con- ceptions that are framed and agitated in the mind, to be evil and that continually, what an hell of horror and confusion must it needs be ! A deliverance from this loathsome, hateful state, is more to be valued than the whole world. Without it neither life, nor peace, nor immortality, nor glory, can ever be attained. The design of conviction is to put a stop to these 6*
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