out fancies,
dreams, nothings; but you neither like to admit nor retain the knowledge
of God in your mind, Rom. i. 28. Do you not entertain any serious weighty
thoughts of religion, that by occasion may enter as fire-brands, as hot
coals in your bosom? How glad are you to get any diversion to other
things! How willing to shun them, or cast them out! But if it be any
temporal thing, any thing relating to this flesh, your thoughts come
freely off, are steady and fixed as long as you please, your minds can
travel through all the ends of the earth, to bring in some fancy of gain
or advantage, or to steal by precious time, and that without wearying. Now
all these things considered, my beloved, are you not carnal? I speak to
the most of you, are you not those who are born of the flesh, since you
mind nothing seriously, resolutely, constantly and willingly, but the
things of the flesh, and the things of this life? O it is no light matter
to be born of the flesh; if you continue so, you are ordained for
corruption, for death; "to be carnally minded is death," ver. 6, of this
chapter.

But I am persuaded better things of some of you, that the true light of
God hath shined into your hearts, and revealed more excellent things unto
you than these perishing fleshly things, viz. heavenly, substantial, and
eternal things in the gospel, which you account only worthy of the fixed
and continued meditation of your spirits. I am sure you perceive another
beauty and excellency in these things than the world doth, because the
Spirit hath revealed them unto you. It is true that your minds are yet
much darkened in their apprehension of spiritual things, they are not so
willing to receive them, nor so ready to retain them as you desire, they
are very unsettled and unsteady in the meditations of spiritual things,
and there are innumerable thoughts of other things that pass through your
hearts like common inns, uncontrolled at their pleasure; all this is true,
but I am sure it is the grief of your souls that your hearts are not so
fixed and established as the excellency of these spiritual things require.
I know it will be the aim and real endeavour of any spiritual heart, to be
shutting up all the entries and doors of the mind, that vain thoughts
enter not; yet enter they will, there are so many porches to enter in at,
and our narrow spirits cannot watch at all. Every sense will let in
objects, and imagination itself will be active in framing them