The new birthThe nevv birth

An hearty and unfeigned desire to please God in all things, is the characteristical note (as I may term it) of the sanctified. It is the most apparent, evident, sensible distinction betwixt him, & the falsely-seeming sanctified, the hypocrite. Wherefore it is of much importance to find this grace in ones self. And so are the superior powers of the soul framed to the blessed Image of God.¹ The inferior powers must needs follow the temper of the superior, and in them there resteth the spirit of grace and glory, which adorneth them with the brightness of excellent graces. First the thinking power (or imagination) is raised up to God and the things of God.² The Christian man finds, that as he is apt by nature to think of the King, or of his parents, or friends, or such like thing; so by virtue of his new nature, he is of himself moved to be taking occasion very many times to entertain thoughts of God, and always thoughts tending to magnify him within his soul. He is often stirring up in his own heart, motions tending to discover unto himself the beauty and sweetness of God, his wisdom, his power, his truth, his justice, and other attributes; and withal also the admirable and inconceivable excellency of heaven, & the surpassing glory and felicity of an other life. There is some familiarity and loving acquaintance betwixt God, and the kingdom of God, and his imagination; and it is a great pleasure & content to him, to converse (as it were) with these things, in the cogitations of his mind, & to have them dwell within him. Before God was not in all his thoughts, as the Psalmist speaketh;³ but now contrarily, as the same ⟨p. 77⟩Psalmist affirmeth of himself, his meditation of God is sweet: every thing almost that he sees, serveth but to beget in him new forms of apprehending Gods excellency, which in truth shineth forth most brightly in all these his works. A man that knows a rare secret and hidden treasure, cannot but ever and a none have the cogitation of it reviving it self within him: and the Christian having the eye of his mind opened to know God, and to believe in him, sees such rich treasures of wisdom and goodness in him; that his mind must needs be entertaining him within, by the imagination of these things. Wherefore not in solitariness alone, but in company, the motions of his mind are advanced towards heaven;