by now Seminole's imaginative pit
- From: Saeed al-Queda <digital@xxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Fri, 23 Nov 2007 23:06:10 GMT
is merely circumstantial or gradual.
There is, often, in the mind, some particular text of Scripture, holding
forth some evangelical ground of consolation; sometimes a multitude of
texts, gracious invitations and promises flowing in one after another,
filling the soul more and more with comfort and satisfaction. Comfort is
first given to some, while reading some portion of Scripture; but in
some it is attended with no particular Scripture at all, either in
reading or meditation. In some, many divine things seem to be discovered
to the soul as it were at once; others have their minds especially
fixing on some one thing at first, and afterwards a sense is given of
others; in some with a swifter, and others a slower succession, and
sometimes with interruptions of much darkness.
The way that grace seems sometimes first to appear, after legal
humiliation, is in earnest longings of soul after God and Christ: to
know God, to love Him, to be humble before Him, to have communion with
Christ in His benefits; which longings, as they express them, seem
evidently to be of such a nature as can arise from nothing but a sense
of the superlative excellency of divine things, with a spiritual taste
and relish of them, and an esteem of them as their highest happiness and
best portion. Such longings as I speak of, are commonly attended with
firm resolutions to pursue this good for ever, together with a hoping,
waiting disposition. When persons have begun in such frames, commonly
other experiences and discoveries have soon followed, which have yet
more clearly manifested a change of heart.
It must needs be confessed that Christ is not always distinctly and
explicitly thought of in the first sensible act of grace (though most
commonly He is), but sometimes He is the object of the mind only
implicitly. Thus sometimes when persons have seemed evidently to be
stripped of all their own righteousness, and to have stood
self-condemned as guilty of death, they have been comforted with a
joyful and sati
.
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