A53685:262
A discourse of the work of the Holy Spirit in prayer with a brief…
A discourse of the work of the Holy Spirit in prayer with a brief enquiry into the nature and use of mental prayer and forms / by John Owen ...
London: printed for Nathanael Ponder, 1682
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.
CHAP. X.
Of Mental Prayer as pretended unto by some in the Church of Rome.
Having described or given an account of the Gift of Prayer, and the use of it in the Church of God, and the Nature of the Work of the Spirit therein; it will be necessary to consider briefly what is by some set up in Competition with it, as a more Excellent way in this part of Divine Worship. And in the first place Mental Prayer as described by some devout persons of the Church of Rome, is preferred above it. They call it pure spiritual Prayer, or a quiet repose of Contemplation; that which excludes all Images of the Fancy, and in time all perceptible actuations of the Understanding, and is exercised in single Elevations of the Will, without any force at all, yet with admirable Efficacy; and to dispose a Soul for such Prayer there is previously required an entire Calmness and even Death of the Passions, a perfect purity in the spiritual affections of the will, and an entire abstraction from all Creatures, Cressy Church Hist. Pref. parag. 42, 43.
HAving described or given an account of the Gift of Prayer, and the use of it in the Church of God, and the Nature of the Work of the Spirit therein; it will be necessary to consider briefly what is by some set up in Competition with it, as a more Excellent way in this part of Divine Worship. And in the first place Mental Prayer as described by some devout persons of the Church of Rome, is preferred above it. They call it pure spiritual Prayer, or a quiet repose of Contemplation; that which excludes all Images of the Fancy, and in time all perceptible actuations of the Understanding, and is exercised in single Elevations of the Will, without any force at all, yet with admirable Efficacy; and to dispose a Soul for such Prayer there is previously required an entire Calmness and even Death of the Passions, a perfect purity in the spiritual affections of the will, and an entire abstraction from all Creatures, Cressy Church Hist. Pref. parag. 42, 43.