The excellency of a gracious spirit Delivered in a treatise upon the 14. of…The excellency of a gracious spirit Deliuered in a treatise upon the 14. of…

Wherefore be you exhorted in the Name of the Lord, to labour much that you may have more gracious and holy spirits than others, together with your dignities, whereby you are lifted up above others. We envy not your honours, we desire that they may be raised higher by grace. Grace may well stand with the enjoyment of all your dignities, yea, grace is the only thing that blesseth them, and advanceth them.

Wherefore be you exhorted in the Name of the Lord, to labour much that you may have more gracious and holy spirits than others, together with your dignities, whereby you are lifted up above others. Wee envie not your honours, we desire that they may be raised higher by grace. Grace may well stand with the enjoyment of all your dignities, yea, grace is the only thing that blesseth them, and advanceth them.

And you whose spirits God hath raised above others, in the excellencies of your parts, and many excellent endowments of learning you have, who are men of larger understandings, ⟨p. 216⟩of higher apprehensions than others, and can look upon ordinary men as low and mean in respect of the difference between your parts and theirs: Do you labour yet to raise your spirits higher by grace and godliness, that as you differ from them in natural excellencies, so you may differ from them much more in spiritual and divine? How eminent would you be in grace, if those parts and abilities of learning you have, were sanctified for God? What blessed instruments might you be of glory to God, of comfort and encouragement to his people? but otherwise your parts and gifts are poisoned; a sinful wicked heart will poison all. It may be said of many, as it was of Pope Eugenius the second, he was a man of great Learning, and great Eloquence, with a mixture of great hypocrisy: If it may be thus said of any, He is a man indeed of excellent parts, very learned, of strong abilities, but he hath a corrupt spirit; he is a man of a corrupt ⟨p. 217⟩mind; surely these parts are all poisoned; no marvel then, though such men swell so much by reason of them. Parts unsanctified do exceedingly enlarge mens spirits, to be so much the more capable of spiritual wickedness, more than others of meaner and lower parts can be; your parts will aggravate all your sins, and increase your damnation: It is a lamentable thing that such excellent parts and abilities as many have, which might be of so great use, for God and his Church, yet that they should vanish into froth.