Selected Sermons of Jonathan EdwardsEdwards, Jonathan
Religion
Selected Sermons of Jonathan Edwards
Edwards, Jonathan
Congregational churches -- Sermons; Edwards, Jonathan, 1703-1758; Sermons, American
The Spirit of God acts in a very different manner in the one case from
what he doth in the other. He may indeed act upon the mind of a natural
man, but he acts in the mind of a saint as an indwelling vital principle.
He acts upon the mind of an unregenerate person as an extrinsic,
occasional agent; for in acting upon them, he doth not unite himself to
them; notwithstanding all his influences that they may be the subjects of,
they are still sensual, having not the Spirit, Jude 19. But he unites
himself with the mind of a saint, takes him for his temple, actuates and
influences him as a new, supernatural principle of life and action. There
is this difference, that the Spirit of God, in acting in the soul of a
godly man, exerts and communicates himself there in his own proper nature.
Holiness is the proper nature of the Spirit of God. The Holy Spirit
operates in the minds of the godly by uniting himself to them, and living
in them, and exerting his own nature in the exercise of their faculties.
The Spirit of God may act upon a creature, and yet not in acting
communicate himself. The Spirit of God may act upon inanimate creatures;
as the Spirit moved upon the face of the waters in the beginning of the
creation; so the Spirit of God may act upon the minds of men many ways,
and communicate himself no more than when he acts upon an inanimate
creature. For instance, he may excite thoughts in them, may assist their
natural reason and understanding, or may assist other natural principles,
and this without any union with the soul, but may act, as it were, as upon
an external object. But as he acts in his holy influences and spiritual
operations, he acts in a way of peculiar communication of himself; so that
the subject is thence denominated spiritual.
2. _This_ spiritual and divine light _don't consist in any impression made
upon the imagination_. It is no impression upon the mind, as though one
saw any thing with the bodily eyes: 'tis no imagination or idea of an
outward light or glory, or any beauty of form or countenance, or a visible
lustre or brightness of any object. The imagination may be strongly
impressed with such things; but this is not spiritual light. Indeed when
the mind has a lively discovery of spiritual things, and is greatly
affected by the power of divine light, it may, and probably very commonly
doth, much affect the imagination; so that impressions of an outward
beauty or brightness may accompany those spiritual discoveries. But
spiritual light is not that impression upon the imagination, but an
exceeding different thing from it. Natural men may have lively impressions
on their imaginations; and we can't determine but that the devil, who
transforms himself into an angel of light, may cause imaginations of an
outward beauty, or visible glory, and of sounds and speeches and other
such things; but these are things of a vastly inferior nature to spiritual
light.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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