2. This spiritual and divine light doesn’t consist of any impression made upon the imagination. It is no impression upon the mind, as though one saw anything with one’s bodily eyes: ’tis no imagination or idea of an outward light or glory, or any beauty of form or countenance, or a visible luster 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 exceedingly 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 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.
3. This spiritual light is not the suggestion of any new truths or propositions not contained in the word of God. This suggesting of new truths or doctrines to the mind, independent of any antecedent revelation of those propositions, either in word or writing, is an inspiration, such as the prophets and apostles had, and such as some enthusiasts pretend to. But this spiritual light that I am speaking of is quite a different thing from inspiration: it reveals no new doctrine, it suggests no new proposition to the mind, it teaches no new thing of God, or Christ, or another world, not taught in the Bible, but only gives a due apprehension of those things that are taught in the word of God.
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