And though, after all this, I still confess that it is so exceeding hard a matter to keep the thoughts in holy exercise and order, that even the best do daily and hourly sin, in the omissions, the disorder or the vanity of their thoughts, yet for all that we must needs conclude that the inclination and design of our Thoughts must be principally for God, and that the Thoughts are principal instruments of the soul, in acting it in his service, and moving it towards him, and in all this holy work of our Walking with God: And therefore to imagine that Thoughts are inconsiderable and of little use, is to unman us and unchristen us. The labour of the mind is necessary for the attaining the felicity of the mind, •as the labour of the body is necessary for the things that belong unto the body. As bodily ⟨p. 235⟩idleness bringeth unto beggary, when the diligent hand makes rich, so the idleness of the soul doth impoverish the soul▪ when the laborious Christian liveth plentifully and comfortably through the blessing of God upon his industry and labour. You cannot expect that God appear to you in a bodily shape, that you may have immediate converse with him in the body: The corporal eating of him in transubstantiate bread, supposed common to men and mice or dogs, we leave to Papists, who have made themselves a singular new Religion, in despite of the common sense and reason of mankind, as well as of the Scriptures and the judgement of the Church: It is in the spirit that you must converse with God who is a spirit. The mind seeth him by faith, who is invisible to the bodily eyes. Nay if you will have a true and saving knowledge of God, you must not liken him to any thing that is visible, nor have any corporal conceivings of him: Earthly things may be the glass in which we may behold him, while we are here in the flesh. But our conceivings of him must be spiritual, and Minds that are immersed in flesh and earth, are unmeet to hold communion with him: The natural man knoweth him not, and the carnal mind is enmity to him, and they that are in the flesh cannot please him, Rom. 8. It is the pure abstracted elevated soul, that understandeth by experience what it is to Walk with God.
And though, after all this, I still confess that it is so exceeding hard a matter to keep the thoughts in holy exercise and order, that even the best do daily and hourly sin, in the omissions, the disorder or the vanity of their thoughts, yet for all that we must needs conclude that the inclination and design of our Thoughts must be principally for God, and that the Thoughts are principal instruments of the soul, in acting it in his service, and moving it towards him, and in all this holy work of our Walking with God: And therefore to imagine that Thoughts are inconsiderable and of little use, is to unman us and unchristen us. The labour of the mind is necessary for the attaining the felicity of the mind, •as the labour of the body is necessary for the things that belong unto the body. As bodily ⟨p. 235⟩idleness bringeth unto beggery, when the diligent hand makes rich, so the idleness of the soul doth impoverish the soul▪ when the laborious Christian liveth plentifully and comfortably through the blessing of God upon his industry and labour. You cannot expect that God appear to you in a bodily shape, that you may have immediate converse with him in the body: The corporal eating of him in transubstantiate bread, supposed common to men and mice or dogs, we leave to Papists, who have made themselves a singular new Religion, in despight of the common sense and reason of mankind, as well as of the Scriptures and the judgement of the Church: It is in the spirit that you must converse with God who is a spirit. The mind seeth him by faith, who is invisible to the bodily eyes. Nay if you will have a true and saving knowledge of God, you must not liken him to any thing that is visible, nor have any corporal conceivings of him: Earthly things may be the glass in which we may behold him, while we are here in the flesh. But our conceivings of him must be spiritual, and Minds that are immerst in flesh and earth, are unmeet to hold communion with him: The natural man knoweth him not, and the carnal mind is enmity to him, aend they that are in the flesh cannot please him, Rom. 8. It is the pure abstracted elevated soul, that understandeth by experience what it is to Walk with God.
