Religious Affections in Vol I of the Works - Edwards - IV - Part 2 concluded

Required reading
Religious affections in Volume I of the Works by Jonathan Edwards (Available from Amazon or free here) - Conclude Part 2.

My summary.

Today Edwards finishes his list of things which are not signs that affections are gracious or not gracious.

Last week he told us it is no sign, one way or other, if religious affections:

(i) are very great;

(ii) have great effects on the body;

(iii) have fluency and fervour;

(iv) are excited by us;

(v) come with texts of Scripture;

(vi) have appearance of love;

(vii) are of many kinds.

Edwards now adds:

(viii) have comforts and joys that seem to follow in a certain order;

(ix) dispose persons to spend much time in religion and to be zealously engaged in the external duties of worship;

(x) dispose persons with their mouths to praise and glorify God;

(xi) make persons exceeding confident;

(xii) are very affecting.

What grabbed me

I appreciated the point that unbelievers can be very fervent in private devotion:

'Experience shows, that persons, from false religion, may be abundant in the external exercises of religion; yea, to give themselves up to them, and devote almost their whole time to them. Formerly, a sort of people were very numerous in the Romish church, called recluses, who forsook the world, and utterly abandoned the society of mankind. They shut themselves up close in a narrow cell, with a vow never to stir out of it, nor to see the face of any, (unless that they might be visited in case of sickness,) but to spend all their days in the exercises of devotion and converse with God. There were also in old time, great multitudes called Hermites and Anchorites, who left the world in order to spend all their days in lonesome deserts, and to give themselves up to religious contemplations and exercises of devotion. Some sorts of them had no dwellings, but the caves and vaults of the mountains, and no food, but the spontaneous productions of the earth.—I once lived, for many months, next door to a Jew, (the houses adjoining one to another,) and had much opportunity daily to observe him; who appeared to me the devoutest person that ever I saw in my life; great part of his time being spent in acts of devotion, at his eastern window, which opened next to mine, seeming to be most earnestly engaged, not only in the day-time, but sometimes whole nights.'

Private worship is not true worship if it isn't in spirit and truth.

Next week's reading

Commence Part 3 by reading Section 1.

Now it's your turn
Please post your own notes and thoughts in the comments section below.