Selected quad for the lemma: spirit_n
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A44674
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A discourse of an unconverted man's enmity, against God Preached to a country congregation, by J.H. And publish'd by one who wrote it from his mouth.
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Howe, John, 1630-1705.
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1700
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Wing H3022; ESTC R215391
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18,256
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57
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innocent thing But this he remonstrates against takes notice of with dislike and displeasure and is counterworking this spirit of enmity not only by his word but by his spirit of love and power Though he doth not testify his displeasure by flames and thunderbolts yet he observes and approves not the course and current of their thoughts and affections though he permit them sometimes without sensible rebuke to run on long in their contempt of him yet he declares it to be wickedness The wicked have not God in all their thoughts Psal. 10. 4. He expostulates about it Wherefore do the wicked contemn God vers 13. threatens them with Hell for their forgetting him Psal. 9. 17. yet Sinners are apt to conclude that God doth not see or disallow any thing of that kind Psal. 94. 7. How unapt are they to admit any conviction of Heart-wickedness Tho' 't is more than intimated to be destructive Jer. 4. 14. Wash thine heart from wickedness that thou mayest be saved q. d. thou art lost if thy Heart be not purged Yea when it is so plain in it self that enmity against God which hath its seat in the Heart makes a mans Soul a very Hell yet they seem to think themselves very innocent Creatures when they are as much devilliz'd as a mind dwelling in Flesh can be This is the common practical error and mistake men lie under that they think God takes notice of no evil in them but what other men can observe and reproach them for But he knows the inward bent and inclination of their minds and Spirits Why else is he called the heart-searching God And knows that this is the principal and most horrid wickedness that is to be found among the children of men an alienated mind from God and the root of all the rest The fountain of wickedness is within a man Simon Magus's wickedness lay in his thought 'T is said to him Repent of this thy wickedness and pray the thought of thy heart may be forgiven thee Act. 8. 22. And when the Prophet exhorts as before Jer. 4. 14. to wash the heart from wickedness he adds how long shall vain thoughts lodge within thee And our Saviour tells us Out of the heart first proceed evil thoughts and then all the other wickednesses after mentioned murthers adulteries c. Matth. 15. 19. And that enmity and alienation of mind that turns off the whole current of a man's thoughts from God is the original evil and by consequence lets them loose to every thing else that offends him and ruins themselves Yet when their very Hearts are such an Hell of wickedness as what is more hellish than enmity against God they are notwithstanding wont to say they have good Hearts 2. Hence see the absolute necessity of Regeneration A Doctrine at which most men do wonder which our Saviour intimates when he says Joh. 3. 7. Marvel not at it viz. that I said you must be born again But who may not now apprehend a necessity of being regenerate What will become of thee if thou diest with such a disaffected mind Godward Do but suppose your Soul going out of the Body in this temper full of disaffection towards the ever-blessed God before whose bright Glory and flaming Majesty to thee a consuming fire thou must now appear tho' most unwilling and as full of horrour and amazing dread How will thine heart then meditate terrour and say within thee This is the God I could never love whom I would never know To whom I was always a willing stranger whose admirable Grace never allur'd or won my Heart who in a day of Grace that is now over with me offered me free pardon and reconciliation but I was never at leisure to regard it The love of this world which I might have known to be enmity against God had otherwise engag'd me It hath been the constant language of my Heart to him Depart from me I desire not the knowledge of thy ways I must now hear from him that just and terrible voice even by the mouth of the only Redeemer and Saviour of Sinners Depart from me I knew thee not And into how hOrrid Society must I now go The things that eye hath not seen nor ear heard more glorious things than ever enter'd into the heart are all prepared for lovers of God And for whom can everlasting Fire be prepared but for the Devil and his Angels and such other accursed God-haters as I have been Matt. 25. 41. Recollect your selves consider the present posture and temper of your Souls and what your way and course is You care not to come nigh to God now but love to live at a distance from him through enmity against him from whence proceeds your departing from him and saying to him depart from us But another day you will have enough of departing from God A wicked man's life is nothing else but a continual forsaking of God or departing from him I appeal to your own hearts concerning the justice of that mentioned Repartee They say now to God depart from us Job 21. 14. And God will then say to them depart from me Matth. 25. 41. That man's Soul must thus perish that lives and dies at enmity with God Regeneration slays this enmity and implants in the Soul Divine Love Therefore we must be regenerate or we cannot enter into the Kingdom of God Joh. 3. 3 5. A man must have a new Heart and a new Spirit created in him in which Heart and Spirit the Love of God is the reigning principle And therefore I repeat to you the things which eye hath not seen and a crown of life are prepared and promised to them that love him 1 Cor. 2. 9. Jam. 1. 12. You may your selves collect the rest 3. Hence take notice of the Seat and Subject of this Regeneration and Change It is the mind of man For you were enemies in your minds by wicked works We are to be renewed in the spirit of our minds Ephes. 4. 23. To be transformed by the renewing of our minds c. Rom. 12. 2. You that have not considered what Regeneration is I tell you 't is to have your minds altered and changed That whereas you did not mind God or Christ your minds being changed you savour and delight in the things of God Rom. 8. 5 7. They that are after the flesh savour the things of the flesh The carnal mind is enmity against God It is the mind therefore not as speculative meerly but as practical and active that must be renewed Enquire therefore what change do you find in your minds Are you in mind and spirit more holy spiritual and serious And are your minds more delightfully taken up with the things of God than formerly Till your minds are thus changed they cannot be towards God but will be perpetually full of enmity against God You will only mind earthly things Phil. 3. 19 20. with the neglect of God and Heaven and heavenly things If ever the Gospel doth us good it must be by the change of our minds 4. And in the last place Hence understand the absolute necessity of Reconciliation with God because you have been alienated and enemies against him by wicked works Regeneration cures in part your enmity but makes no atonement for your guilt in having been enemies For this you need a Reconciler that could satisfy for you What will become of the man that is not reconciled to God If you be God's Enemy can he be your Friend And if God be your Enemy he is the most terrible Enemy How can we lie down in peace in an unreconciled state or without knowing whether we are reconciled or not Let not the Sun go down this day and leave you at enmity with God If you have fallen out with a man the Sun is not to go down on your wrath And is your enmity against God a juster or more tolerable thing O let not the Sun go down before you have made your peace And for your encouragement consider that it is the Office of the Son of God to reconcile you to him He is the Reconciler the Peace-maker the maker up of Breaches between God and Man He is if you resist not ready by his Spirit to remove the enmity that lies in your minds against God and by his bloud he causes Divine Justice to be at Peace with you If you find the former effect that assures you of the latter Bless God that he hath provided and given you notice of such a Reconciler 2 Cor. 5. 19. God was in Christ reconciling the world to himself Bless God that he hath sent and settled one among you on this errand to beseech you to be reconciled to God vers 20. Blessed is the man whose iniquities are forgiven and blessed is the man who can say I was once an enemy but now am I reconciled formerly I saw no need of Christ but now I cannot live without him How fearfull a thing will it be to die unreconciled to God under a Gospel of Reconciliation While the voice of the Gospel of Grace is calling upon you Return and live Turn ye turn ye why will ye die beware of dying unreconcil'd under such a Gospel When you return hence retire into a corner and consider what a wicked enmity of mind you have had against God and Christ and pray that you may be renewed in the spirit of your mind Ephes. 4. 23. Let an holy Resolution be taken up at last after many neglects as was by the poor distressed Prodigal after he had long liv'd a wandring life Luk. 15. 18. and onward I will arise and go to my Father c. and you will find God a mercifull Father ready to receive you and with joy Oh the joyfull meeting between a returning Soul and a sin-pardoning God! When once your strangeness and your enmity are overcome and you are come into a state of amity and friendship with God then will the rest of your time be pleasantly spent in an holy humble walking with God under the conduct of Grace till you come eternally to enjoy him in Glory FINIS
But this man in his degenerate state will by no means admit of There are two things considerable in the Will of God which the mind of man cannot comply withall The Sovereignty and the Holiness of it 1. The Sovereignty of God's Will We must look on God's Will as absolutely Sovereign Man must look on God's Will to be above his Will so as that man must cross his own will to comport with an higher will than his But this apostatiz'd man will not do and therefore he is at enmity with God he will not submit to the Will of God as superiour to his Will And then 2. There is the Holiness of God's Will His Law is a holy Law and the renewed man therefore loves it But because 't is holy therefore the unregenerate man dislikes it 3. Lastly God is consider'd under the notion of our end our last end as he is to be glorify'd and enjoy'd by us There is a disaffection to God in the hearts of unregenerate men in this regard also The spirit of man is opposite to living to the glory of God Every one sets up for himself I will be my own end It shall be the business of my whole life to please my self Therefore when God is represented as our end as in the 1 Cor. 10. 31. Whether you eat or drink or whatever you do do all to the glory of God And as it is in the 2 Cor. 5. 15. No man is to live to himself c. The great design of our being delivered from the Law viz. as a cursing condemning Law is that we may live to God Gal. 2. 19. I am dead to the Law that I might live to God This the unrenewed heart cannot comport with The last and great design of all our actions must terminate on God Now self is set up as the great Idol in opposition to God all the world over and the spirits of men grow by custom more and more disaffected to God in this respect Again God would be owned by us for our best good This should be the sense of our Souls towards him So it was with the Psalmist Psal. 73. 25. Whom have I in heaven but thee c. But says the unregenerate Soul the World is better to me than God And it is upon this account that when Overtures are made of changing this state the unregenerate mind opposes it Thus have you this Doctrine explained and opened I come now in the 2d Place To evince the truth of this Doctrine and that by two Heads of Arguments Partly from our selves and partly from God 1. From our selves 'T is an alienation and enmity of mind that keeps men off from God and Reconciliation with him which will plainly appear 1. If we consider that our minds are capable of knowing God Such a thing is the mind of man which was originally made for such an exercise as to be taken up principally with things relating to God Our minds can apprehend what is meant by the nature of God as a Being of uncreated Perfection in whom all Power Wisdom and Goodness do meet who fills Heaven and Earth and from everlasting was God Our minds tell us that we have a capacity thus to conceive of God 'T is in the capacity of man's nature to mind God as well as to mind vanity but doth it not And whence doth this proceed but from enmity an alienation of the mind from God 2. This appears in that men are wilfully ignorant of God and are destitute of the knowledge of him out of choice ignorant and are willing to be so This speaks enmity and alienation of mind more expresly and fully That they are capable of knowing God and yet are ignorant of him leaves no other cause assignable But their desiring so to be plainly assigns this cause Rom. 1. 28. They liked not to retain God in their knowledge 'T is not grateful to them Job 21. 14. We desire not the knowledge of thy ways Men are ignorant willingly of that God who made the world and all things therein 2 Pet. 3. 5. For this they are willingly ignorant c. They will not know God though his visible Works shew his invisible Power and Godhead Rom. 1. 19 20. Now this can signify nothing but auenation and enmity of mind Men are willing and industrious to know other things and labour after the knowledge of them but they decline the knowledge of God and his ways being alienated from God through the blindness of their hearts Ephes. 4. 18. This heart-blindness is chosen and voluntary blindness signifies their having no mind or will to things of that nature But now the voluntariness of this ignorance of God and the enmity that is consequently in it appears evidently in two sorts of persons 1. In many that are of the more knowing and inquisitive sort who do all they can to make themselves notional Atheists to blot or rase the notion of God out of their minds Of them I shall say little here They do their utmost but in vain It will stick as close to them as their thinking Power But their attempt shews their enmity For they are content to admit the grossest Absurdities into their minds rather than permit that notion to remain unmolested there Rather imagine such a curious frame of things as this World is to have come by chance than that it had a wise just holy as well as powerful Maker They would count it an absurdity even unto madness to think the exquisite picture of a Man or a Tree to have happened by chance and can allow themselves to be so absurd as to think a Man himself or a Tree to be causal Productions Is not this the height of enmity 2. In the unthinking generality of whom yet unconverted out of the state of Apostacy 't is said they are fools as is the usual Language of Scripture concerning wicked or unconverted men and that such fools tho' they never offer at saying in their minds much less with their mouths yet they say in their hearts no God i. e. not there is none for there is no is in the Hebrew Text. The words may rather go in the Optative form than the Indicative O that there were none The notion is let alone while it reaches not their hearts If it do they only wish it were otherwise This speaks their enmity the more for the notion lies a continual testimony against the bent of their hearts and constant practice that while they own a God they never fear nor love him accordingly And they grosly misrepresent him sometimes as all made up of Mercy without Justice or Holiness and so think they need no Reconciliation to him he and they are well agreed already Sometimes think of him as merciless and irreconcilable and therefore never look after being reconciled to him 3. It appears hence that men do so seldom think of God when as a thought of God may be as soon thought as any other and would cost