it of God dwell in you. Now, if any man have not the
Spirit of Christ, he is none of his."

Application is the very life of the word, at least it is a necessary
condition for the living operation of it. The application of the word to
the hearts of hearers by preaching, and the application of your hearts
again to the word by meditation, these two meeting together, and striking
one upon another, will yield fire. Paul speaks of a right dividing of the
word of truth (2 Tim. ii. 15), not that ordinary way of cutting it all in
parcels, and dismembering it, by manifold divisions, which I judge makes
it lose much of its virtue, which consists in union, though some have
pleasure in it, and think it profitable, yet I do not see that this was
the apostolic way, that either they preached it themselves or recommended
it to others, but rather he means, the real distribution of the food of
souls unto their various conditions, as it is the duty of a steward to be
both faithful and wise in that, to give every one their own portion, and
as it is the pastor's duty thus to distribute the word of God unto you, so
it is your part to apply it home to yourselves, without which application,
the former division of the word aright will not feed your souls, if every
man act not the pastor to his own heart it cannot profit. Now indeed the
right application of the word to souls is the difficultest part of
preaching, and it is the hardest point of hearing, in which there needs
both much affection and much direction, the one to be serious and ernest
in it, the other to be wise and prudent in it. Without suitable affection,
it will not pass into the substance of the soul to feed it, no more than
the stomach can digest meat, that wants convenient heat, and without
discretion and wisdom, to choose our own portion, it will not yield
convenient food, but increase humours and superfluities, or distemper our
spirits. That which I look at in these words, is the discretion and
prudence of this wise steward in God's house, after he hath represented
the wretched and woful estate of them that are in the flesh, how their
natures cannot but are enmity against God, how their end is death and
destruction, he subjoins in due season a suitable encouragement to
believers, "You are not in the flesh," &c. Because there is no man so
sensible of that corruption that dwells within, as he that is in part
renewed, as pain to a healthful body is most sensible, and as the
a