Chapter XII.
What is required in and unto our affections that they may be spiritual — A three-fold work on the affections described.
To declare the interest of our affections in this frame of being spiritually minded, and what they contribute thereunto, I shall do these three things:— First, Declare what is required hereunto, that our affections may be spiritual, wherein lies the foundation of the whole duty; secondly, What are their actings when they are so spiritual; thirdly, What are the means whereby they may be kept and preserved in that frame; with sundry other things of the like nature.
How our affections are concerned in or do belong unto the frame of mind inquired after hath been before declared. Without spiritual affections we cannot be spiritually minded. And that they may be of this use, three things are required:— I. Their principle; II. Their object; III. The way and manner of their application unto their proper object by virtue of that principle.
I. As unto the principle acting in them, that our affections may be spiritual and the spring of our being spiritually minded, it is required that they be changed, renewed, and inlaid with grace, spiritual and supernatural. To clear the sense hereof, we must a little consider what is their state by nature, and then by what means they may be wrought upon as unto a change or a renovation; for they are like unto some things which in themselves and their own nature are poisonous, but being corrected, and receiving a due temperament from a mixture of other ingredients, become medicinal and of excellent use.
By nature our affections, all of them, are depraved and corrupted. Nothing in the whole nature of man, no power or faculty of the soul, is fallen under greater disorder and depravation by the entrance of sin than our affections are. In and by them is the heart wholly gone and turned off from God, Tit. iii. 3. It were a long work to set forth this depravation of our affections, nor doth it belong unto our present design. Some few things I shall briefly observe concerning it, to make way unto what is proposed concerning their change:—
1. This is the only corruption and depravation of our nature by the fall evident in and unto reason or the light of nature itself. Those who were wise among the heathen both saw it and complained of it. They found a weakness in the mind, but saw nothing of its darkness and depravation as unto things spiritual. But they were sensible enough of this disorder and tumult of the affections in things moral, which renders the minds of men “like the troubled sea, whose waters cast up mire and dirt.” This greatly aggravates the neglect of them who are not sensible of it in themselves, seeing it is discernible in the light of nature.
2. They are, as depraved, the seat and subject of all lusts, both of the flesh and of the spirit; yea, lust or evil concupiscence is nothing but the irregular motion and acting of our affections as depraved, defiled, corrupted, Rom. vii. 8. Hence no one sin can be mortified without a change wrought in the affections.
3. They are the spring, root, and cause of all actual sin in the world, Matt. xv. 19. The “evil heart,” in the Scripture, is the corrupt affections of it, with the imaginations of the mind, whereby they are excited and acted, Gen. vi. 5. These are they which at this time fill the whole world with wickedness, darkness, confusion, and terror; and we may learn what is their force and efficacy from these effects. So the nature of the plague is most evident when we see thousands dying of it every week.
4. They are the way and means whereby the soul applies itself unto all sinful objects and actings. Hence are they called our “members,’’ our “earthly members;” because as the body applies itself unto its operations by its members, so doth the soul apply itself unto what belongs unto it by its affections, Rom. vi. 13; Col. iii. 5.
5. They will not be under the conduct of the mind, its light or convictions. Rebellion against the light of the mind is the very form whereby their corruption acts itself, Job xxiv. 13. Let the apprehensions of the mind and its notions of good and evil be what they will, they reject them, and lead the soul in pursuit of their inclinations. Hence, no natural man whatsoever doth in any measure answer the light of his mind or the convictions of his understanding, but he sees and approves of better things, following those that are worse; and there is no greater spiritual judgment than for men to be given up unto themselves and their own evil affections, Rom. i. 26.
Many other instances might be given of the greatness of that depravation which our affections are fallen under by sin; these may suffice as unto our present purpose.