Casuistical morning-exercises the fourth volume /

The Casuistical consideration of the Text, best serves the stated purpose of this hour. And that I may be evidently pertinent, clear, succinct, and profitable, let me now lay the Case and Text together, and consider them in their relative aspects each toward the other.

1. Luke-warmness is the remissness or defectiveness of heat [Greek or Hebrew] or [Greek or Hebrew], a middle thing betwixt cold and heat. When there is not heat enough in subjecto capaci, to serve the purposes, that such a thing under such circumstances should subserve. Now God and Christ expect a fervent Spirit, burning and flaming Love; and in the Text, Love is here represented as needing Provocation. Heart-warmth is nothing else but love suiting and accommodating it self to worthy objects, according to their apprehended dignity, usefulness, or concerns. Love is the endearing to our selves of apprehended Excellence or Goodness, and our letting out our selves, or the issuings forth of our pleased wills in correspondent motions towards, reposes in, obsequiousness to, and engagements for, what we admire and affect; for worth or excellence discerned, makes us accommodate our selves unto the pleasure and concerns thereof▪ according to its nature, place, and posture towards us, and our affairs therewith. When therefore this Affection, Principle or Grace (or Passion, if Love may properly be called so) is grown too weak to fix the will, and to influence the life so as to please its God, and turns indifferent, and unconcerned and variable as the winds and weather change; this languor of the Heart and ⟨p. 322⟩Will, and its easiness and proneness to be drawn off from God and things Divine, we call Luke-warmness; which is nothing else, indeed, but the sluggishness and dullness of the heart and will to such a degree, as that it is not duly affected with, nor startled at, nor concerned intimately about what is truly excellent, and of great consequence and importance to us. And hence our Author phrases it by [Greek or Hebrew], in that Love may and ought to be smart and keen, heating and urging all the powers of the Soul to excite all their vigours and to perform all their Functions with strength and pleasure. Consider well,