A30158:157
I will pray with the spirit, and I will pray with the understanding also,…
I will pray with the spirit, and I will pray with the understanding also, or, A discourse touching prayer, from I Cor. 14.15 wherein is briefly discovered 1. What prayer is, 2. What it is to pray with the spirit, 3. What it is to pray with the spirit and with the understanding also / by John Bunyan.
London : Printed for the author, 1663
Modern spelling is a reading aid: the words are the author’s, only the spelling is modernized. Original shows the page as printed, with the transcription marks.
Thus you see, that as it is required to pray with the Spirit, so it is to pray with the Understanding also.
And to illustrate what hath been spoken by a similitude;
Set the case there should come two a begging to your door, the one is a poor, lame, wounded, and almost starved creature; the other is a healthful lusty person.
These two use the same words in their begging, the one saith he is almost starved, so doth the other; but yet the man that is indeed the poor, lame, or maimed person, he speaks with more sense, feeling and understanding of the misery that is mentioned in their begging, than the other can do; and it is discovered more by his affectionate speaking, his bemoaning himself: His pain and poverty makes him speak more in a spirit of lamentation ⟨p. 67⟩than the other, and he shall be pitied sooner than the other, by all those that have the least dram of natural affection or pity.
These two use the same words in their begging, the one saith he is almost starved, so doth the other; but yet the man that is indeed the poor, lame, or maimed person, he speaks with more sence, feeling and understanding of the misery that is mentioned in their begging, than the other can do; and it is discovered more by his affectionate speaking, his bemoaning himself: His pain and poverty makes him speak more in a spirit of lamentation