fublime for the moft philofophic and foaring mind Now fpiritual life ftill approaches nearer to the life of the divine Being, that boundless ocean of incomprehenfible mysteries, and confequently exceeds our capacity more than any other. But befides, fuch is the blindness of unregenerate fouls, that they cannot receive or know the things of the spirit of God, 1 Cor. ii. 14. and therefore what is knowable by enlightened minds concerning fpiritual life, cannot be apprehended with fuitable clearness by them. The power of understanding it seems to be the effect of the thing understood, and cannot exist separately from it. So it is in other kinds of life. Nothing but reafon can inform what is a rational life. Let the faculties of the moft fagacious animal be ever fo must polished, it can receive no ideas of it. So he that believeth, hath the witness in himself, 1 John v. 10. and none but himself can hear its teftimony. * But fuppofe we could form clear ideas, we should ftill be at a lofs for clear expreflions. I have a clear idea of many of the appetites, paffions, and motions of animal life; but words may fail me to express them intelligibly to another, efpecially if he has no experience of them himself. It need not, therefore, afford you any furprize, if, after all that shall be faid to illuftrate this point, it ftill remains obfcure. To defign any more than to give you fome faint glimmerings, fome half-formed, inadequate conceptions of it, would be a piece of arrogant vanity. Now fpiritual life fuppofes a living spiritual principle, and it implies a difpofition and a power to ferve God, or of holy operation. 1. It fuppofes a living fpiritual principle. There can be no life, no vital actions, without a vital principle, from whence they flow: e. g. there can be no animal life, no animal *I do not mean that the unregenerate have the fame degree of incapacity in the one cafe as beafts have in the other, but only that the one is as really incapable as the other. Reafon in the unregenerate approaches nearer to spiritual life than the powers of animal life do to reason, and yet comes entirely fhort of it. animal sensations and motions, without a principle of animal life. By a vital principle I mean that from which life and its actions and paffions immediately proceed: e. g. in the formation of our fouls a principle of reason is concreated with them, which is the fource, the immediate cause of their life and rational operations. I call this a principle, because it is the beginning of life. Now fpiritual life muft fuppofe a principle of holinefs. A principle of life of any kind will not fuffice; it must be particularly and formally a holy principle; for life and all its operations will be of the fame. kind with the principle from which they proceed. Now a holy principle is fomething diftinct from and fuperadded to the mere natural principle of reafon. By virtue of this a man can think and will; but experience affures us, that thinking and willing, abstractedly confidered, or under fundry modifications which they are capable of, are very different from thinking and willing in a holy manner, or with thofe peculiar modifications which fpiritual operations bear. I can will an indifferent or evil object, if it appears to me as good; but my willing that which is morally good as fuch, is a very different act; and the principle from which the former act with its modification proceeds, may not be capable of producing the latter fo modified. This may be illuftrated by the case of the devils and their affociates of the human race. They still retain the principle of reafon, and are capable of thinking and willing; otherwife they would be incapable of torment, for without consciousness there could be no fenfe of mifery, and consciousness implies thinking; and without willing there can be no defire of happinefs, or abhorrence of penal evil; but yet they are utterly incapable of thinking and willing in a manner morally good, and therefore a principle of holiness must be something diftinct from a mere rational principle. It may be urged, "That all the acts of fpiritual life may be refolved into the acts of reaion, namely, thinking thinking and willing in a holy manner; and therefore the principle of the former is the fame with that of the latter. In anfwer to this, I grant that the principle of reason, when it implies a power of putting forth fuch acts, and about fuch objects, as holiness includes; when it implies a power of knowing and choofing those things which the divine law requires us to know and choose, that then it is the fame with a principle of fpiritual life; and this is the cafe of fuch reafonable beings as still continue in their original uprightnefs: but the principle of reafon may be fo maimed as to lofe this power, and yet not lofe its nature; that is, it may become incapable of that manner of operation which spiritual life produces, and yet continue a principle of reafon ftill. This is evident from the cafe of infernal fpirits, formerly mentioned. Now the principle of fpiritual life fupplies this moral defect; it adds to reafon a capacity of exercising itself suitably about fgiritual things. Such a capacity is a feparable adjunct of reason, and by the corruption of our natures it is actually separated from it; and confequently, till it be fuperadded to our rational powers, we are incapable of spiritual operation; I mean fuch a manner of fpiritual operation as is morally good and acceptable to God. Our rational powers indeed can ftill exercise themselves about divine things, but then it is not in a fit manner: and therefore when a finner is quickened by efficacious grace, a power of acting in a fit. manner with respect to these things is fuperadded to his rational powers; and before this there is nothing in him out of which fuch a power may be educed. To illuftrate this matter, let us fuppofe a man deprived of the faculty of memory, and yet to continue rational (as he might in a low degree) according to this fuppofition, he will be always incapable of an act of memory, however ftrong his powers of perception, volition, &c. may be, till the power of exercising his reason in that particular way which is called remembering, be conferred upon him. So let a finner's mere natural natural powers be ever fo much refined and polished, yet, if there be no principle of fpiritual life diftinct from them infufed, he will be everlastingly incapable of living religion. This gracious principle is called the feed of God, 1 John iii. 9. to intimate, that as the feed of vegetables is the firft principle of the plant, and of its vegetable life, fo is this of spiritual life, and all its vital acts. 2. Spiritual life implies a difpofition to holy operation; an inward propenfity, a fpontaneous inclination towards holineís; a willing that which is good. Rom. vii. 18. Every kind of life has fome peculiar innate tendencies, fympathies, and antipathies: fo animal life implies a natural inclination to food, to move at proper feafons, &c. There is a favour, a relifh for divine things, as effential to fpiritual life as our natural gufts and relishes are to natural life. Hence gracious defires are often fignified in fcripture under the metaphors of hungering and thirfting; and to this St. Peter exprefsly alludes; as new-born babes, defire the fincere milk of the word, that ye may grow thereby. 1 Pet. ii. 2. By virtue of this difpofition, believers fet their affections on things above, Col. iii. 2. they relish, they favour, they affect things above. This is the fpiritualmindednefs, the favour of the fpirit, which is fpiritual life; and ftands in oppofition to the relish and propenfions of mere nature. Rom. viii. 6. By virtue of this the frongeft bent of their fouls is God-ward; they tend, they gravitate towards him as their proper centre. Their defire is unto him, and to the remembrance of his name. Ifa. xxvi. 8. Their foul follows hard after him. Pfal. Ixiii. 8. By virtue of this they incline to keep all God's commandments; they have an inward tendency to obedience; they love God's law; they delight in it after the inner man, Pfal. cxix. 97. Rom. vii. 22. and their love and delight will habitually fway them to obferve it: religion is their element, their choice. It is not in them forced and unnatural, as all thofe operations are which do not proceed from an in trinfic trinfic principle; and that reluctancy and indifpofednefs which they fometimes unhappily feel in themfelves to religious duties, is preternatural with respect to this fpiritual difpofition; as the loathing of healthful food is to the human body: it proceeds from a diforder, a weakness in their fpiritual life, occafioned by the ftrugglings and tranfient prevalency of contrary principles: it is owing to the luftings of the flesh against the spirit. Again, Their obedience is not fervile and mercenary, refulting merely from the apprehenfion of the mifery which will enfue upon difobedience; but it is generous and filial, proceeding from a convictive view of the intrinfic reasonableness, congruity, and amiablenefs of the duties of holiness; from the pleasure and fatisfaction which the performance of them, under this view, naturally produces; (fo a man is excited to eat, not merely by his apprehenfion of the neceffity of it for the fupport of his body, but also by the pleasure he finds in the very action) and from a fenfe of the divine authority enjoining thofe duties. By this the genuine acts of fpiritual life are infallibly dif tinguished from that low and ignoble devotion which flows from cuftom, education, horrors of confcience, and all the principles of mere nature. It is true, indeed, fome perfons by nature, and confequently without this fupernatural difpofition, may incline to and delight in fundry things that, as to the matter of them, are religious duties. So (e. g.) fome are naturally averfe to temperance; and fobriety is inwrought in their very conftitutions. Yet ftill, this gracious difpofition is diftinguished from fuch a natural inclination by these two marks: The first implies a diftinct reference to and a fenfe of the authority of the divine Lawgiver as enjoining thofe duties, and prompts a perfon to obferve them formally as duties, as acts of obedience; but the latter prompts to the obfervance of them, confidering them as things agreeable to the perfon's natural temper, without any dif tinct reference to God; and so they are rather acts of VOL. III. T felf |