Chapter 5

CHAP. V.

The fourth particular by which we fetch influences of grace is by heavenly and spiritual dispositions: hence in this we speak 1. Of heavenly dispositions, in order to heavenly influences. 2. Of our actings to come under the influences of grace. 3. Of the obstructions and impediments of heavenly influences, and the contrary cures.

As touching dispositions: 1. What dispositions are, and how differenced. 2. Of the division of good and evil dispositions. 3. Get heavenly dispositions, and influences connaturally follow. 4. Evidences that dispositions go and come. 5. Spiritual dispositions are different from the affections. 6. There are heavenly dispositions through all the powers and affections of the soul. 7. Sinful dispositions are in all, and they latently creep in. 8. Actings and life under deadness. 9. Many sweet actings there are under deadness. 10. It's fit to go about duties under deadness. 11. Less of strong real influences, and more of moral influence prove the obedience to be more perfect.

1. Dispositions are moveable qualities of the soul, beyond and above the habit inabling us to act graciously, and to perform actions suitable to those dispositions; I speak now of gracious dispositions, for there are wicked and sinful dispositions added to the habit of sin original.

2. Gracious dispositions are moveable qualities, this differenches the disposition from the habit of grace; and therefore know wherein spiritual dispositions and spiritual habits agree; and 2. wherein they differ. 1. Both are above nature, for we being born in sin, mind, conscience, will, and affections, being polluted and corrupt in such heirs of wrath; no man is born with habits of grace, or gracious disposition. 2. Through the want of both, all are alike unfit by nature to be the work-house of the Holy Ghost. 3. Both the habit of grace, as it is proved Book 2. and much more gracious dispensations are the purchase of the merit of Christ. 4. Both are the supernatural gifts of God infused from above, and neither of them acquired or purchased by natural actings: it's clear of the habit of grace. John 14:16. I will pray the Father, and he shall send you the Comforter. Christ sends him, the Father sends him in Christ's name. John 14:26. he shall receive of mine and shew it to you. Now the Holy Spirit, the Comforter dwells in the children of God not personally, though he be said to dwell in them, and to speak in them. 1. In the habit and divine power, given to them to confess Christ before men (Matthew 10:19; Acts 4:8), or in preaching, working of miracles (Acts 6:8), or in praying (Acts 6:10, 11; Acts 7:55, 56). 2. In actuating that power, in giving grace actually to will and to do, to confess, prophesy (Luke 1:27, 41, 42; Luke 2:27, 28), to pray (Acts 7:55, 56), as the Lord is said to thunder in the clouds, to give rain, not that he is personally united with the clouds, but because he creates in the clouds the power of thunder and raining, and does actually determine the clouds to rain. 5. Supernatural habits and supernatural dispositions are near to each other, as the fire and the flaming of the fire, the clouds and the rain, the sea, and the ebbing and flowing of the sea; not that the disposition is the very operation and second act of the habit, but because the disposition is a quality superadded to the habit, or the nearer principle and power of spiritual acting. Stephen, and Peter, and John, were full of the Holy Ghost, *habitu*, from the time that the Holy Ghost was given them; but when they are conveyed to answer before the rulers, they are said to speak being full of the Holy Ghost (Acts 4:8; Acts 7:55, 56), which is either an enlargement of the habit of grace, or a new spring-tide of the same sea, or a new infused disposition, promised by our Savior, and given [in non-Latin alphabet] (Luke 12:11, 12; Matthew 10:19; Mark 13:11), in that same hour.

3. There is much nearness of heavenly habits, dispositions, and heavenly influences; and they are like each other, as life and breathing, fire and the flaming of the fire. Get heavenly dispositions, and influences of grace to pray, to praise, to believe, almost connaturally follow. When the tide of the Spirit flows, Steven and the Apostles must preach, and boldly confess their precious Master Christ Jesus; and this is great condescension of love, that the Spirit and the sinful believer are fellow-workers; for the Spirit to act in the man Christ, or in the elect angels, is not so much a wonder, for they never sinned: influences upon us, who have but a sort of obediential power, as we are sinners, such as is the power of swimming in iron, is lowliness of love. What is it for the Spirit of grace and glory to beat upon such broken and mistuned harps, and to bring forth such excellent actings, as praying, praising, confessing, believing, rejoicing in God, in such unhandy tools? What holy trembling is required in us, that we offend not such an honourable and glorious help, and that we neglect not to join his own habit to his own influences, when he renders the work sweet and easy! O let us lend our heart, and give organs, and a work-house to the Spirit, who comes down to sigh in sinners! He mourns like a dove, and weeps like a father who has lost his first-born in heirs of glory.

Q. But is not the habit of grace and spiritual dispositions all one and the same?

Answ. They are not one: For 1. The habit is the seed of God that remains always in us (1 John 3:9), and the anointing that dwells in us (1 John 2:20, 27), but a disposition comes and goes, ebbs and flows. A child of God will be under deadness and witheredness, the soul cleaving to the dust, dropping away for heaviness, like a bottle in the smoke, when the man with the habit of grace will pray like one sweating and rowing with oars against the tide and stream. Why does David pray so often to be quickened, if he was ever in a lively disposition?

2. Does not experience teach that there be times when David says (2 Samuel 7:27), "Your servant has found his heart to pray this prayer"? Was not this so much as to say, the heart and disposition to pray is lost sometimes, and is away (Psalm 57:7), "My heart is fixed, O God, my heart is fixed or prepared."

3. To say that spiritual dispositions are as permanent and constant as habits, is to deny the going and coming of the Spirit in Christ's love-visits. Now certain it is the Spouse is not ever sick of love for Christ, as Cant. 2. Nor is there such a flaming of love dispositions, as when the Spouse says (Cant. 1:5), "A bundle of myrrhe is my beloved to me, he shall lodge all the night between my breasts." When a sleepy drowsiness is on, that she suffers the well-beloved to knock, and stand and knock, while his head is full of dew, and his locks wet with the rain of the night, and refuses to open, yes positively gives a reason that she cannot lodge him in the house, nor between her breasts, "I have put off my coat, how shall I put it on?" such a spiritual love-sickness is far off.

4. When a contrary disposition to adultery is on, and David's hand at the pen writing a letter to contrive the killing of innocent Uriah; and the unbelieving fear of loss of life is upon Peter, so that he denies his Lord, there could not be a heavenly disposition to make spiritual songs, to pray, to praise, to confess Christ before men, on either the one or the other.

5. If those heavenly dispositions were ever in it, it should speak much against the liberty of the blessed Spirit, whose breathings and out-lettings are sovereignly free. Now by this the work of grace should be like the work of nature: we see the fountain always casts out her streams, the Sun ever gives light; the work of grace has a day and a dark night, and Sun-light and Moon-light; that we are in a state of outlawry when he withdraws, to be humbled to the dust for abused love-visits, and may know what is Christ's, and what is ours; the fire is ever alike disposed to cast heat; a mill-stone, if not hindered, is alike disposed to fall to the earth, or down the mountain.

Q. Are not spiritual dispositions nothing else but the heart's affections?

Answ. Dispositions heavenly are different from the affections, much more than they are different from the habit of grace.

1. The spiritual dispositions go and come; the heart and affections of love, joy, sorrow, remain.

2. The heart is one thing, and the heavenly preparedness of the heart is another thing: as the subject iron differs from the fierceness and heat in iron, and the water differs from the cold and heat that goes and comes from and to the water; so dispositions are spiritual qualities, and the affections the subject; the heart is sometimes cold, and sometimes hot, lively or dead, as the Lord is pleased to visit.

Q. May we not then say that dispositions are the affections heavenly disposed?

Answ. Not so neither; the affections are not the complete and adequate subject of heavenly dispositions, because there is often a heavenly disposition in the mind to know spiritual truths; so Elihu (Job 34:32), "That which I see not, teach you me." An heavenly propension in the mind to be taught of God (Psalm 119:18, 26). There is a heavenly disposition of the spiritual mind to believe the Scriptures; and in place of that there is a slowness to believe divine truths, rebuked by our Savior (Luke 24:25).

3. There is a spiritual disposition in the conscience of the Centurion (Luke 23:47), in Thomas (John 20:27), in Peter (1 Peter 5:8). The contrary whereof was in the Pharisees and Rulers wrestling against the manifest light of God (Matthew 12:22, 23, 24; Matthew 21:33, 34 & 45, 46; Matthew 28:11, 12, 13; John 9:13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19 & 34, 35; John 12:47, 48; Acts 4:13, 14, 15; Acts 13:44, 45). As also there is a heavenly disposition in the memory to retain the word (Psalm 119:11), forbidden (Hebrews 2:1). And gracious dispositions go through the whole soul, in order to all gracious actings, in mind, conscience, will, memory, affections of love, faith, hope, desire, fear, anger, and order to all the spiritual duties that can be performed by men, as sinful dispositions may be in all the powers of the soul; if so, the heart being so ticklesome a piece, so ill to be guided, it is of great concernment to see with what dispositions the heart is seasoned, and who they be that lodge here: as heat and cold come in the water by turns, as the summer is hot, and the winter cold, so the soul even of the child of God has ebbings and flowings of dead and lively dispositions; as the frequent triumphing and rejoicing, and the ordinary and much repeated complaints of the Saints do abundantly evidence (Psalm 22; Psalm 31; Psalm 77; Psalm 89; Lamentations 3; Jeremiah 20).

There is a sinful disposition.

2. The children of God may act spiritually under sinful dispositions.

3. What acts they then put forth.

4. The obedience performed under greatest indispositions, upon the sole motive of the word, is the most spiritual obedience.

5. Sometimes the less sense, the more spiritual is the obedience.

That there be sinful and gracious dispositions in men can hardly be denied.

1. In all men by nature there is the habit of natural and original sin. Hence an indisposition, and a reluctancy to believe in Christ, to love, desire, fear God.

2. There is an acquired wicked disposition in Doeg, he loves to lie; a disposition satanical and hellish in Saul when the evil spirit troubles him, he is disposed to kill David.

But the special ill disposition here is the dead untowardness of the children of God to pray, or praise, or confess Christ, &c.

Hence these considerations of this indisposition.

1. That it may befall the children of God.

2. That they may act under this indisposition.

3. What acts they may and ought to perform under it.

As to the first, it needs not much probation.

1. A doubting disposition comes on the disciples (Matthew 8) when the ship is a drowning, and they in hazard of sinking. Christ reproves not the act so much as the root and disposition, v. 26, [in non-Latin alphabet]; why are you fearful? He says not, why fear you? And he rebukes both in Peter (Matthew 14:31), [in non-Latin alphabet], for what end should you doubt? And both are clearly reproved, when they were [in non-Latin alphabet], affrighted, 37, 38, why are you troubled, jumbled, or put out of order? Or why do dialogues, or bounded or racketted thoughts ascend in your hearts?

2. Job, David, and Jeremiah, sadly complaining and challenging God as an enemy, as fiery, and a God burning with hot displeasure, and as lying waters; and that says, that hardly could they but be under a disposition and fretting impatience.

Elsha is so jumbled, that the soul is made like muddy water with indignation at Jehoram, that he is in no spiritual disposition or capacity to see the visions of God (2 Kings 13:14, 15), and Jonah is distempered at tender mercy in the Lord towards great Ninive, and old and young in it, a straw, the withering of a gourd: the renewed soul may be hammered and knocked to pieces like a broken crystal glass, while the Lord be pleased to soldar the broken pieces of the soul together again.

As to the second, under such dispositions there may be some stirring of the habit of grace, and of the new creation; the soul either under swooning or sleeping is still acting as the soul one way or other. It's not to be supposed that the life of God in a believer can more intermit all sort of lively and vital actings, than the soul can live of breathing, or to communicate vital heat to the body. The unbroken and intense habit of sin in the unrenewed, is the mother-indisposition that hinders influences of grace; as cast sparkles of fire on cold iron, it makes no flaming, because of the density and coldness of the object. The Lord does not bestow every the same sun-influences on the thistle or nettle, and on the vintry; nor is it supposed that God more bestows actual influence of saving grace upon a man dead in sin, until there be a new heart, and the life of God first infused in him, than the Lord bestows moral or rational influences on a horse or a mule that has no understanding. Now cast sparkles of fire upon flax or tow (though the sparkles be small) and there is presently flaming: if the Lord but blow upon the smallest measure of the spiritual life of God, though under many ashes, and a huge deal of indisposition, and there is some work flaming, which will beget more fire. There is much deadness and dullness of life in the affections to act in duties; when there is life, and some quickness of spiritual light, the life and warmness retiring in to the heart the fountain of life, when there is paleness and coldness in the external members: and as fire within creates fire in the nearest dry fuel, there is an act of renewed light consenting (Romans 7) to the good to be done, and yet deadness in the affections to perform, and lively light in the half sleeping Spouse, discerning the knock, voice, and words of the beloved, and assenting that it were just to open to Christ, and give him lodging in his own house; and yet a prevailing drowsiness in the affections, refusing to let him in.

As to the third, under indispositions there may be divers lively actings. As

1. Terrors and distractions, and all the waves of God's displeasure. Heman (Psalm 88:1): O Lord God of my salvation, I cry day and night before you. Verse 9: Lord I have called daily to you, I have stretched out my hands to you. Psalm 102, the afflicted soul says (verse 4): My heart is smitten and withered like grass. And here though buried and dead bones scattered at the grave mouth, as when one hews timber, speak and pray to God (Psalm 141), and the Church so overwhelmed, so that they cannot speak (Psalm 77:4), yet they speak prayers.

2. There is holy complaining laid in the bosom of an apprehended angry God; and though arrows of God stick in the flesh (Psalm 38:1, 2, 3, 4; Psalm 119:25), My soul cleaves to the dust. Verse 28: My soul drops away for heaviness. Verse 83: I am become like a bottle in the smoke (Psalm 42:1, 2; Psalm 6:1, 2, 3), prays and complains in a holy way to God; Like a crane or a swallow, so did I chatter, I did mourn as a dove; mine eyes fail with looking upward: O Lord I am oppressed, undertake for me.

3. It's half a closing with a sinful disposition, when it pains us less. Paul protests against the flesh's sinful disposition (Romans 7:15): I allow not the evil which I do.

2. He disowns it (verse 17): It's no more I that do it, but sin in me.

3. He condemns himself for it (verse 18): I know in me, that is, in my flesh dwells no good.

4. He complains of it (verse 23): I am led captive to the law of sin.

5. His complaining so grows, that he ends in an outcry, O wretched man that I am, who shall deliver me from the body of this death? And triumphs victoriously in Christ (verse 25). From which it is clear that Paul and the flesh part open enemies, and that there is no treaty of peace between the spirit and the sinful disposition flowing from the flesh, as if the flesh and the spirit were two free, co-equal, independent Lords and Princes, and each must have his own kingdom and princedom to himself, and the one must not encroach upon the other; for the flesh and its complices must down, and the spirit must be up in Christ. Nor is there any arbitrary agreement of the matter; for the spirit yields no liberty to sin, nor gives away one jot or tittle of the holy Law, to say Herod by the new covenant may keep his lust and Herodias, so he gladly hear John the Baptist.

4. There ought to be a going about of all duties, of praying, believing, hearing, praising, &c. under the lowest ebbings of the spirit, and the saddest deadness; so deadness and indispositions be the sin and sinful affliction, and the afflictive sin of the child of God; for our obedience to God is the more spiritual, that it has no moral motive from sense and comfort, but rather the contrary, save only the word of command. So excellently Christ (Hebrews 10:9): Lo I come to do your will, to suffer wrath, and the curse for man; but (Psalm 40:8) I delight to do your will, your Law is within my heart. His delight was in that saddest commandment (to speak so) in laying down his life for his sheep, and so had no sense to bear him up; for an agony, and sadness, and sorrow to death was upon the holy Savior, when he obeyed, and that peculiar law was in the inner part of his heart. It's true, his Father loved him for it (John 10:17): Therefore does my Father love me, because I lay down my life that I might take it again.

But 1. It's a question if in the act of suffering he felt that love, when he complained that he was forsaken of God.

2. Therefore the Father loved Christ, and Christ did abide in his love, because he kept his Father's commandments (John 15:11), because they were the Father's commandments.

It's a temptation to act under deadness, which actually blunts the heart; therefore to obey under a formal temptation, is more spiritual obedience. As for Christ to pray, to believe, to exhort his disciples to watch, and when pain, wrath, the actual pressing curse puts him to tears and hideous cries (Hebrews 5), is a perfect copy to all obedience: less thanks to you to pray when the heart is oiled with real influences, and feasted with some holy, and the bridegroom's honeycomb, and the feelings of the out-lettings of freest love; as what praise to a wheel to roll down the mount? or for the fire to cast heat, or the Sun to yield light? Feelings of the strong impulsions and breathings of Christ's love carry along such a strong necessity of obeying Christ's love, being a stronger and a more imperious commander than a fiery law, almost steals away the elective power, but to pray under the frame and current of a dead disposition working and re-acting on the contrary, from a principle that is strongly real, but from pure moral influences from the pure spiritual commands (1 Thessalonians 5:17), "Pray without ceasing," and (Psalm 50:15), "Call upon me in the day of trouble," is the most spiritual and perfect obedience. That wine has the most kindly taste and color of wine, and is preserved most connaturally, that has its being on the mother grape; it's not so when there is something of art (I know not what) to preserve it by, steel or something like that. Hence appears the deceitfulness of our hearts, when the delight in the duty comes rather from a mere physical cause, and less moral, to wit, from the heavenly flamings of quickening influences, not from the command, the only kindly mother and moral motive of obedience. The withdrawing of the rays and beams of the personally near Godhead now (as it were) under a cloud, which was wont to give the savoriness of strong delight, made our Redeemer's obedience (as is said) the more excellent.

It speaks much of savory graciousness, when the temptation is cos gratiae, a whetstone to grace, and to the spirit of adoption, and as sails and oars to praying, and does not blunt us in duties.

The greater combat with nature, the more perfect is the obedience. Abraham's natural disposition was strong to love Isaac his only son, to let the child take his good night at his aged mother; but the command of Jehovah his God in covenant so prevailed, as he would shift the temptation, and hid the matter from the mother Sarah, and strongly seconded the design of God's trying with resolved pure spiritual obedience from only the command of God.