These few instances have I given of the arguments and motives whereby God is pleased to deter us from fixing our affections on things here below; and they are most of them such only as he maketh use of in the administration of his providence. There are two other heads of things that offer themselves unto our consideration :—
1. The ways, means, arguings, and enticements, which the world makes use of to draw, keep, and secure, the affections of men unto it- self. 2. The secret, powerful efficacy of grace, in taking off the heart from these things, and turning and drawing it unto God, with the arguments and motives that the Holy Spirit maketh use of in and by the word unto this end; wherein we must show what is the act of conquering grace, whereby the heart is finally prevailed on to choose and adhere unto God in love immutable. But these things cannot be handled in any measure, according to their nature and importance, without such length of discourse as I cannot here divert unto. I shall therefore proceed unto that which is the proper and peculiar subject before us. ..
CHAPTER XII.
What is required in and unto our affections that they may be spiritual—A three- fold work on the affections described.
To declare the interest of our affections in this frame of being spiritually minded, and what they contribute thereunto, I shall do these three things:—First, Declare what is required hereunto, that our affections may be spiritual, wherein lies the foundation of the whole duty; secondly, What are their actings when they are so spiri- tual; thirdly, What are the means whereby they may be kept and preserved i in that frame; with sundry other things of the like nature.
CHAP. XII.] THE NATURAL DEPRAVITY OF OUR AFFECTIONS... 411
How our affections are concerned in or do belong unto the frame of mind inquired after hath been before declared. Without spiritual _ affections we cannot be spiritually minded. And that they may be of this use, three things are required:—I. Their principle; II. Their ob- ject; III. The way and manner of their application unto their proper object by virtue of that principle.
I. As unto the principle acting in them, that our affections may be spiritual and the spring of our being spiritually minded, it is re- quired that they be changed, renewed, and inlaid with grace, spiri- tual and supernatural. To clear the sense hereof, we must a little consider what is their state by nature, and then by what means they may be wrought upon as unto a change or a renovation; for they are like unto some things which in themselves and their own nature are poisonous, but being corrected, and receiving a due tempera- ment from a mixture of other ingredients, become medicinal and of excellent use.
By nature our affections, all of them, are depraved and cor- rupted. Nothing in the whole nature of man, no power or faculty of the soul, is fallen under greater disorder and depravation by the entrance of sin than our affections are. In and by them is the heart wholly gone and turned off from God, Tit. iii. 3. It were a long work to set forth this depravation of our affections, nor doth it be- long unto our present design. Some few things I shall briefly ob- serve concerning it, to make way unto what is proposed concerning their change :—
1. This is the only corruption and depravation of our nature by the fall evident in and unto reason or the light of nature itself. Those who were wise among the heathen both saw it and complained of it. They found a weakness in the mind, but saw nothing of its darkness and depravation as unto things spiritual. But they were sensible enough of this disorder and tumult of the affections in things moral, which renders the minds of men “like the troubled sea, whose waters cast up mire and dirt.” This greatly aggravates the neglect of them who are not sensible of it in themselves, seeing it is dis- cernible in the light of nature.
2. They are, as depraved, the seat and subject of all lusts, both of the flesh and of the spirit; yea, lust or evil concupiscence is nothing but the irregular motion and acting of our affections as depraved, defiled, corrupted, Rom. vii. 8. Hence no one sin can be mortified without a change wrought in the affections.
3. They are the spring, root, and cause of all actual sin in the world, Matt. xv. 19. The “evil heart,” in the Scripture, is the corrupt affections of it, with the imaginations of the mind, whereby they are excited and acted, Gen. vi. 5. These are they which at this time fill
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the whole world with wickedness, darkness, confusion, and terror; and we may learn what is their force and efficacy from these effects. So the nature of the plague is most evident when we see thousands dying of it every week.
4, They are the way and means whereby the soul applies itself unto all sinful objects and actings. Hence are they called our “mem- bers,” our “ earthly members;” because as the body applies itself unto its operations by its members, so doth the soul apply itself unto what belongs unto it by its affections, Rom. vi. 13; Col. ii. 5.