CHAPTER IV: What it is to have the heart elevated, and suited to all things spiritual, as spiritu
CHAPTER IV
What it is to have the heart elevated and suited to all things spiritual, as spiritual.
But the last and main thing in this definition to be most attended unto is, what it is to have the heart elevated and suited unto all things spiritual, as spiritual.
There are three things to be inquired into for the explanation hereof.
1. What those things are which are spiritual.
2. What it is to have the heart suited to these spiritual things.
3. An account why this should be added, 'To spiritual things as spiritual.'
1. What are things spiritual? It needs not long be insisted on. The particulars are become known to us all, if we have hearts unto them: they are the things of God, which the Spirit reveals, 'the deep things of God,' 1 Cor. 2:10, 14, and Rom. 8:7. They are things of the Spirit,
Rom. 8:5. They are another world or system of things, opposed to things of the flesh, which flesh, or corrupt nature, is suited unto, which are manifestly fruits of the flesh, Gal. 5:19, downright sins, or things of this world, abused by our lusts, 1 John 2:16.
(1.) First and primarily, God himself and Christ are the chiefest spiritual things and blessings. They are the first original of all things spiritual, and so are the most spiritual, and have all and only true spiritualness in them. 'God is a Spirit;' it is his pure nature so to be, and therefore he is to be worshipped in spirit by us. Even as it is said,
'God is holy, therefore be ye holy;' so God is Spirit, therefore be ye spiritual. And therefore all things else are spiritual as they refer unto
him. As God only is good (as Christ says), so God only is Spirit; and as the sun only is light, be God only is the Father of all light that is truly heavenly; God is the measure, the standard of all things spiritual. And thus also Christ, who is styled 'The Lord,' is also said to be 'that Spirit' (2 Cor. 3:17) who puts all the spiritualness that is in the gospel into our minds.
(2.) There are things that are spiritual derivatively from God and Christ, which are the things of God, and which are not otherwise, no, nor further spiritual, than as they relate unto God and Christ, and partake of them, and redound to their glory, who is the measure of them. And of this distinction we shall have great use in the sequel; for in all the benefits bestowed in our salvation, there is no further a spiritualness to be found than as God shines in them, and his excellence and glory are illustrious. And that, and that alone puts every other thing into the being and rank of things spiritual.
[1.] All blessings, adoption, forgiveness, redemption, fellowship with God, and heaven itself, are termed spiritual blessings, Eph. 1:3,
'Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who hath blessed us with all spiritual blessings in heavenly places in Christ;' and these blessings consist not in houses, lands, &c., but in things heavenly.
[2.] Thus all graces of the Spirit are also spiritual. Col. 1:9, true saving knowledge is styled σύνεσις πνευματικὴ, 'spiritual understanding.'
[3.] All the immediate duties of God's worship, when God is worshipped in spirit in them, are termed spiritual. Prayer, hearing,
&c., all are termed 'spiritual sacrifices,' 1 Pet. 2:5, which become such, so far as God is sanctified and closed withal in them and by them.
[4.] Every duty of the moral law, as it is directed unto God, is a service in spirit, Rom. 7:6. And the whole moral law, and every
particle of it, in this right tendency, is spiritual, Rom. 7:14, 'The law is spiritual.'
2. What is it to have the heart made suitable to these spiritual things?
You all know, by analogy from nature, what it is to have the soul, in the powers and faculties of it, suited unto the object of it; as the eye is suited and fitted to colour, and the ear unto sounds. I shall give you some philosophical instances which the Scripture makes, Eccles.
11:7, 'Truly the light' (saith Solomon) 'is sweet, and a pleasant thing it is to behold the sun.' Here is a heavenly outward object, and the visive or seeing faculty, declared suited or fitted one to the other. The apostle Paul also (1 Cor. 6:13) speaking of the present condition of the bodies of men, 'The belly' (says he) 'is for meats, and meats for the belly;' that is, they are by God suited and fitted one for another in this present state. And consider the purpose of his mentioning this.
It is to illustrate how in a proportionable manner, and in a spiritual way, even the bodies of men after the resurrection, when they shall be made spiritual, 1 Cor. 15, shall then be suited unto Christ, so it follows, ver. 14, 'And God hath both raised up the Lord, and will also raise us up by his own power.' And it is said too, in ver. 17, 'He that is joined to the Lord is one spirit.' Now then to make up the analogy, as he will suit spiritual senses to spiritual things after the resurrection, so he doth suit men's souls and spirits aforehand in this life unto the spiritual things manifested in the word, afore the resurrection of body and soul into a greater glory. And this the Scriptures also speak as expressly to this point of regeneration or grace, as it doth to that other point of nature: 1 Cor. 2:9, 'Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, nor hath it entered into the heart of man, the things which God hath prepared for them that love him.' The things prepared, &c., are manifestly here the things of the gospel in this life revealed, and not only those in the world to come, as by the context hath been long since observed. And the only use at present I make lies in these words, 'Prepared for those that love him;' that is, aforehand suited and fitted by God unto the new creature, or unto those into whose hearts he puts his love. And if it be not an allusion intended by the
apostle, yet it may well be represented by the correspondency that is between the story of the first creation and the new creature, which the apostle intends by those who love God. The apostle in those words of his, 'As it is written,' refers us to Isa. 64:4, 'Since the beginning of the world, men have not heard, neither perceived by the ear, neither hath the eye seen,' &c. Now consult the story of man's first creation, to which this is a manifest allusion, and it stood thus.
God made and prepared a world consisting of, and filled with, variety of creatures, the making of which cost him six days' work. There were delicacies of fruits for the taste, an entertainment for the eye in all sorts of colours, light, ornaments, and tapestry, which heaven and earth affordeth to this day. There was a brave world, and richly furnished, as the apostle speaks of it, 1 Tim. 6. The angels stood by, and wondered all the while for whom all this should be prepared, for they had not senses to be affected with them. God after all, at the latter end of this his work, brings in man, and sets Adam down in the centre of this world; and lo, he had at the first of his creation an eye to see and to be taken with all the beauties God had scattered up and down throughout the whole. He had an ear to hear all the music which the melodies of birds singing, or the murmurings and warblings of rivulets, could afford. He had a taste and belly suited to take pleasure in all these varieties of fruits, or whatever else God had provided as a banquet for him; insomuch as there was not any one thing God had made but he had some sense, inward or outward, to take in a pleasure from it, or some faculty in his mind to close with and make use of it. Whence it was apparent unto himself and the angels, the spectators, that God had first prepared and set out all these for the man, and then created the man, in like manner prepared and fitted for all these things. He had an ear and an eye (as both the prophet's and apostle's words are) to receive and take in what was thus made for him. Thus the apostle tells us it falls out in this new creation, God hath been from everlasting contriving and ordaining, and in the fulness of time preparing, all those glorious truths and things which the apostle (to whom was committed the news and tidings of this world to come, Heb. 2:5) by the Holy Ghost, have given us in their writings a full discovery of. And whenever God