Discourses upon the Existence and Attributes of God

Whatsoever is enjoined us as our duty, ought to be performed with the greatest intenseness of our Spirit. As it is our duty to pray, so it is our duty to pray with the most fervent importunity. Tis our duty to love God, but with the purest and most sublime affections: Every Command of God requires the whole strength of the Creature to be employed in it. That love to God, wherein all our duty to God is summed up, is to be with all our strength, with all our might, &c. ^*Tho in the Covenant of grace he hath mitigated the severity of the Law, and requires not from us such an elevation of our affections as was possible in the state of innocence, yet God requires of us the utmost moral industry to raise our affections to a pitch, at least equal to what they are in other things: What strength of affections we naturally have, ought to be as much and more excited in acts of worship than upon other occasions and our ordinary works. As there was an inactivity of Soul in worship and a quickness to sin, when sin had the dominion; so when the Soul is Spiritualized, the temper is changed; there is an inactivity to sin and an ardour in duty: The more the Soul is dead to sin the more it is alive to God, ^*and the more lively too in all that concerns God and his honour. For grace being a new strength added to our natural, determines the affections to new objects and excites them to a greater vigour. And as the hatred of sin is more sharp, the love to every thing that destroys the dominion of it, is more strong. And acts of worship may be reckoned as the chiefest batteries against the power of this inbred enemy. When the Spirit is in the Soul, like the Rivers of waters flowing out of the belly, the Soul hath the activity of a River, and makes hast to be swallowed up in God, as the streams of the River in the Sea. Christ makes his people Kings and Priests to God; ^*first Kings, then Priests: Gives first a Royal temper of heart, that they may offer Spiritual Sacrifices as Priests: Kings and Priests to God acting with a magnificent Spirit in all their motions to him: We cannot be Spiritual Priests, till we be Spiritual Kings. The Spirit appeared in the likeness of fire, and where he resides, Communicates like fire purity and activity.

Whatsoever is enjoyned us as our duty, ought to be performed with the greatest intensness of our Spirit. As it is our duty to pray, so it is our duty to pray with the most fervent importunity. Tis our duty to love God, but with the purest and most sublime affections: Every Command of God requires the whole strength of the Creature to be imployed in it. That love to God, wherein all our duty to God is summed up, is to be with all our strength, with all our might, &c.