The application of redemption

Lastly, while the swarms of vain imaginations keep §5through-fare in our minds and the noisome steams of sinful affections are rising, boiling, and bubbling in our bosoms, there is little expectation that the power of any means should come in upon the soul or prevail with it for good, the crowd of imaginations stop the passage so that there is no coming to speech with the soul, the hurries of […] to transport it and take up the whole strength of it, that it can neither attend nor stay upon ⟨p. 167⟩any thing besides, 2 Cor. 10. 4. therefore called the strong hold, where Satan entrencheth, and fortifieth himself against all the means of Grace […] may cast him out, for while the stream of the thoughts are turned another way, the ear hears nothing, the understanding minds nothing, the heart embraceth nothing, there is no place or room there, and thence it is, as our Saviour speaks, the word cannot take place in them, John. 8. 37. therefore the prophets advice to Jerusalem when he would have her cleansed and saved, he directs her to dislodge her vain thoughts, wash thy heart O thou Jerusalem that mayest be saved, how […] shall vain thoughts lodge within thee Jer. 4. 14. those vain thoughts are those carnal reasonings whereby the sinner would put bye the authority of the truth, that so the sinner might neither see the loathsomeness of his sin; nor the danger of his estate, or the necessity to recover himself out of it, and if these thoughts lodge in him there will be no entertainment for the power of any ordinance or counsel that will take place with him, nor reproof awe, nor exhortation persuade, he casts out and keeps off any thoughts of any necessity to be washed, and so to be saved. If then by those vain thoughts thy heart is estranged from God, and carried in […], against him, If they be the cause of all sins committed and continued in, if the hindrance of all means that might procure our God, then is their evil exceeding […] and therefore we should so judg it and so be effected with it.

Lastly, while the swarmes of vain imaginations keep