4. Such persons only know how to use and improve all communications of a sense of divine love. These things are not granted unto us to lie by us, without any use of them. They are gracious provisions wherewith we are fur- nished to enable us unto all other duties, conflicts, and trials. On all occasions are they to be called over for our spiritual relief and encouragement. Hereby are they safely retained. For in the due improvement of them, they grow more bright in our minds every day, and are ready for use, in
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which posture they are safely preserved. But these things will yet be farther manifest in the instances that ensue.
2. This frame of mind casts out all principles and causes of trouble and disquietment, which are inconsistent with life and peace. There are in us by nature principles of contrariety and opposition unto spiritual life and peace, with sundry things, whose abode and prevalency in us is incon- sistent with them. I shall give only one or two instances hereof.
1. It will cast out all * filthiness and superfluity of naughtiness' from our minds. Without this, we can receive no benefit by the means of grace, nor perform any duty in a right manner ; James i. 27. This is that which stands in di- rect immediate opposition and contrariety unto our being spiritually minded, so as they can have no consistency in the same person. And they expel one another like heat and cold. And where there is this 'filthiness and superfluity of naughtiness,' there is neither life nor peace. Unclean lusts of the flesh, or of the spirit, working, tumultuating, acting themselves in the minds of men, will not sufi'er either the life of holiness to flourish in them, or any solid peace to abide with them. The soul is weakened by them as unto all spiritual actings, and made like ' a troubled sea that cannot Jest, whose waters cast up mire and dirt.' Where they are absolutely predominant, there is a hell within, of darkness, confusion, and enmity against God, preparing men for a hell of punishment without, unto eternity. And according as they remain, or have any prevalency in us, so are spiritual life and peace impaired and obstructed by them. Now the very nature of this grace and its universal exercise, is suited to the casting out of all the relics of this ' filthiness and su- perfluity of naughtiness.' It brings in a principle into the mind directly contrary unto that from whence they do pro- ceed. All the actings of it, which we have described, lie in direct tendency unto the extirpation of these causes of fil- thiness which ruin life and peace ; nor will they by any other way be cast out. If the mind be not spiritual, it will be carnal; if it mind not things above, it will fix itself in- ordinately on things below.
2. That disorder which is by nature in the affections and passions of the mind, which is directly opposite unto spi- ritual life and peace, is cast out, or cured hereby. It is a
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blessed promise of the times of the New Testament, of the kingdom and rule of Christ, that through the efficacy of gospel grace, 'The lion shall lie down with the lamb, and the leopard with the kid;' Isa. xi. 6. Persons of the most intemperate and outrageous passions, shall be made meek and lovely. Where this is not in some measure effected, according unto the degrees of the prevalency of such pas- sions in us, we have not been made partakers of evangelical grace. It were an easy task to demonstrate how the dis- order of our affections and passions is destructive of spi- ritual life and peace. The contrariety that is in thera, and contradiction unto one another, their violence, impetuous- ness, and restlessness, their readiness to receive and take in provocations on all occasions, and frequently on none at all, but what imagination presents unto them, are sufficient evi- dences hereof. Can we think that life and peace do inhabit that soul wherein anger, wrath, envy, excess in love unto earthly things, do dwell, and on all occasions exert them- selves? there, where there is a continual tumult, fighting, and rebellion, as there is where the passions of the mind are not under the conduct of reason, nor of grace ?
The nature and principal effect of this spiritual minded- ness, is to bring all the affections and passions of our minds into that holy order wherein they were created. This was that uprightness wherein God made us ; namely, the whole blessed order of all the powers, faculties, and affections of our souls, in all their operations, in order unto our living unto God. And this is restored unto us by this grace, this duty of being spiritually minded. And wherein it falls short of that perfection which we had originally (for the remainders of that disorder which befell us by sin, will still in part continue), it is recompensed by the actings of that new principle of gospel grace which is exercised in it. For every act of our affections towards God, in the power of grace, exceeds, and is of another nature, above that we could do, or attain unto, in the state of nature uncorrupted. Hereby are life and peace brought into our souls, and pre- served in them.