Of mental prayer as pretended unto by some in the Church of Rome.
Having described or given an account of the gift of prayer, and the use of it in the church of God, and the nature of the work of the Spirit therein, it will be necessary to consider briefly what is by some set up in competition with it, as a more excellent way in this part of divine worship. And, in the first place, mental prayer, as described by some devout persons of the church of Rome, is preferred above it. They call it “pure spiritual prayer, or a quiet repose of contemplation; that which excludes all images of the fancy, and in time all perceptible actuations of the understanding, and is exercised in signal elevations of the will, without any force at all, yet with admirable efficacy.” And to dispose a soul for such prayer, there is previously required “an entire calmness and even death of the passions, a perfect purity in the spiritual affections of the will, and an entire abstraction from all creatures.” — Cressy, Church Hist. pref. parag. 42, 43.
1. The truth is, I am so fixed in a dislike of that mere outside, formal course of reading or singing prayers which is in use in the Roman church (which though, in Mr Cressy’s esteem, it have a show of a very civil conversation with God, yet is it indeed accompanied with the highest contempt of his infinite purity and all divine excellencies), and do so much more abhor that magical incantation which many among them use, in the repetition of words which they understand not, or of applying what they repeat to another end than what the words signify, — as saying so many prayers for such an end or purpose, whereof it may be there is not one word of mention in the prayers themselves, — that I must approve of any search after a real internal intercourse of soul with God in this duty. But herein men must be careful of two things: (1.) That they assert not what they can fancy, but what indeed, in some measure, they have an experience of. For men to conjecture what others do experience (for they can do no more), and thence to form rules or examples of duty, is dangerous always, and may be pernicious unto those who shall follow such instructions. And herein this author fails, and gives nothing but his own fancies of others’ pretended experience. (2.) That what they pretend unto an experience of be confirmable by Scripture rule or example; for if it be not so, we are directed unto the conduct of all extravagant imaginations in every one who will pretend unto spiritual experience. Attend unto these rules, and I will grant in prayer all the ways whereby the soul, or the faculties of it, can rationally act itself towards God in a holy and spiritual manner. But if you extend it unto such kind of actings as our nature is not capable of, at least in this world, it is the open fruit of a deceived fancy, and makes all that is tendered from the same hand to be justly suspected. And such is that instance of this prayer, that it is in the will and its affections without any actings of the mind or understanding; for although I grant that the adhesion of the will and affections unto God by love, delight, complacency, rest and satisfaction, in prayer, belongs to the improvement of this duty, yet to imagine that they are not guided, directed, acted by the understanding, in the contemplation of God’s goodness, beauty, grace, and other divine excellencies, is to render our worship and devotion brutish or irrational, whereas it is, and ought to be, our “reasonable service.”
And that this very description here given us of prayer is a mere effect of fancy and imagination, and not that which the author of it was led unto by the conduct of spiritual light and experience, is evident from hence, that it is borrowed from those contemplative philosophers who, after the preaching of the gospel in the world, endeavoured to refine and advance heathenism into a compliance with it; at least is fancied in imitation of what they ascribe unto a perfect mind. One of them, and his expressions in one place, may suffice for an instance, — Plotinus, Ennead. 6, lib. 9, cap. 10; for after many other ascriptions unto a soul that hath attained union with the chiefest good, he adds:— Οὐ γάρ τι ἐκινεῖτο παρ’ αὐτῷ, οὐ θυμὸς, οὐκ ἐπιθυμία ἄλλου παρῆν αὐτῷ, ἀναβεβηκότι· ἀλλ’ οὐ δὲ λόγος, οὐ δέ τις νὸησις· οὐ δ’ ὅλως αὐτὸς, εἰ δεῖ καὶ τοῦτο λέγειν· ἀλλ’ ὥσπερ ἁρπασθεὶς ἢ ἐνθουσιάσας ἡσυχῆ ἐν ἐρήμῳ καταστάσει γεγένηται ἀτρεμεῖ, τῇ αὐτοῦ οὐσίᾳ οὐδαμοῦ ἀποκλίνων, οὐδὲ περὶ αὐτὸν στρεφόμενος, ἑστὼς πάντη καὶ οἷον στάσις γενὸμενος· — “A mind thus risen up is no way moved, no anger, no desire of any thing is in it” (a perfect rest of the affections); “nay, neither reason nor understanding” (are acted), “nor, if I may say so, itself: but being ecstasied and filled with God, it comes into a quiet, still, immovable repose and state, no way declining” (by any sensible actings) “from its own essence, nor exercising any reflex act upon itself, is wholly at rest, as having attained a perfect state;” — or to this purpose, with much more to the same. And as it is easy to find the substance of our author’s notion in these words, so the reader may see it more at large declared in that last chapter of his Enneads; and all his companions in design about that time speak to the same purpose.