The Grace and Duty of Being Spiritually Minded

2. That they be accompanied with Godly Fear and Reverence. These are required of us, in all wherein we have to do with God, Heb. 12.28, 29. And as the Scripture doth not more abound with Precepts unto any Duty, so the Nature of God and our own, with the infinite distance between them, make it indispensably necessary even in the light of the natural Conscience, ⟨p. 146⟩Infinite Greatness, infinite Holiness, infinite Power, all which God is, command the uttermost reverential fear that our nature are capable of. The want hereof is the spring of innumerable evils, yea indeed of all that is so. Hence are blasphemous abuses of the holy Name of God in cursed Oaths and Execrations; hence it is taken in vain, in Ordinary Exclamations; hence is all Formality in Religion.

It is the spiritual Mind alone that can Reconcile those things which are prescribe us as our Duty towards God. To delight and Rejoice in him always, to triumph in the Remembrance of him, to draw nigh unto him with boldness and confidence, are on the one hand prescribed unto us: And on the other it is so, that we fear and tremble before him, that we fear that Great and dreadful Name the Lord our God, that we have Grace to serve him with Reverence and Godly Fear, because he is a consuming fire. These things Carnal Reason can comprehend no consistency in; what it is afraid of, it cannot delight in; and what it delights in, it will not long fear. But the Consideration of Faith (concerning what God is in himself, and what he will be unto us,) gives these different Graces their distinct Operations, and a blessed Reconciliation in our Souls. Wherefore, all our Thoughts of God ought to be accompanied with an holy Awe and Reverence, from a due sense of his Greatness, Holiness and Power. Two things will utterly vitiate all Thoughts of God, and render them useless unto us.

It is the spiritual Mind alone that can Reconcile those things which are prescribe us as our Duty towards God. To delight and Rejoyce in him alwayes, to triumph in the Remembrance of him, to draw nigh unto him with boldness and confidence, are on the one hand prescrib'd unto us: And on the other it is so, that we fear and tremble before him, that we fear that Great and dreadful Name the Lord our God, that we have Grace to serve him with Reverence and Godly Fear, because he is a consuming fire. These things Carnal Reason can comprehend no consistency in; what it is afraid of, it cannot delight in; and what it delights in, it will not long fear. But the Consideration of Faith (concerning what God is in himself, and what he will be unto us,) gives these different Graces their distinct Operations, and a blessed Reconciliation in our Souls. Wherefore, all our Thoughts of God ought to be accompanied with an holy Awe and Reverence, from a due sense of his Greatness, Holiness and Power. Two things will utterly vitiate all Thoughts of God, and render them useless unto us.