The Christian Temper (Volume 2); Being Thirty-Eight Discourses Upon the Principal Heads of Practical Religion (Paperback)

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: SERMON VI. ' A carnal and a fpiritual Mind. Rom. viii. 6; for to be carnally minded is death: but to It fpirikually minded, is life and peace. THE different tempers-of mind, which are here exprefled by the phrafes of being tcrndly minded and fpiritually minded, have been diftintHy explained in a former difcourfe. I am now,, II. To confider what the apoftle affixes t each charaler; to fhew the evil and hateful- nefs of being carnally minded, and the good. Befs and excellence of being fpiritually minded. The characters are not more oppofite than their attendants and confcquences. " To be carnally minded is death: but to be fpiritually minded is life and peace." A lively and moving defcription this is o that which ftands infeparably connected with thefe different tempers of foul, .though exprefft ed in a few words... Life is the mo ft" de fir able, thing that can be to moft people.. " Skin for fkin, and all that a man hath, will he give, for his life." And accorclingly-this wor.d is u-fed in Scripture meta- phorically, to exprefs the greateft good. Death, on the other hand, is naturally the dread of mankind; and therefore the greated ace in Scripture-language exprelfed bjt.it: Peace joined with life, if we ftiould tar it in the latitude in which it is often to be un- derftood in the Hebrew (tile, comprehends all4 that is good and definable. That was the Jewifh falutation, "Peace be unto you;" as if it was faid, All happinefs to you. But the fenfe of the word here feems rather more confined, and to ftand oppofed to that which is declared of the carnal mind in the verfe following the text. " The carnal mind is enmi ty againft God." It carries in it direcl hollili- ty againft him, and therefore cannot fail to in- tail upon a man the dreadful mifery of h...