2. There arises from this sense of divine excellency of things contained in the word of God a conviction of the truth and reality of them; either indirectly or directly.
First, Indirectly, and two ways.
1. As the prejudices that are in the heart against the truth of divine things are hereby removed; so that the mind becomes susceptive of the due force of rational arguments for their validity. The mind of man is naturally full of prejudices against the truth of divine things: it is full of enmity against the doctrines of the gospel, which is a disadvantage to those arguments that prove their truth and cause them to lose their force upon the mind. But when a person has discovered to him the divine excellency of Christian doctrines, this destroys the enmity, removes those prejudices, sanctifies the reason, and causes it to lie open to the force of arguments for their truth.
Hence was the different effect that Christ’s miracles had to convince the disciples from what they had to convince the Scribes and Pharisees. Not that they had a stronger reason or had their reason more improved; but their reason was sanctified, and those blinding prejudices, that the Scribes and Pharisees were under, were removed by the sense they had of the excellency of Christ and his doctrine.
2. It not only removes the hindrances of reason but positively helps reason. It makes even the speculative notions more lively. It attracts the attention of the mind, with more fixedness and intenseness to that kind of object, which causes it to have a clearer view of them and enables it more clearly to see their mutual relations, and occasions it to take more notice of them. The ideas themselves that otherwise are dim and obscure are by this means impressed with the greater strength, and have a light cast upon them; so that the mind can better judge of them: as he that beholds the objects on the face of the earth, when the light of the sun is cast upon them, is under greater advantage to discern them in their true forms and mutual relations than he that sees them in dim starlight or twilight.
The mind having a sensibleness of the excellency of divine objects, dwells upon them with delight; and the powers of the soul are more awakened and enlivened to employ themselves in the contemplation of them and exert themselves more fully and much more to the purpose. The beauty and sweetness of the objects draw on the faculties and draw forth their exercises: so that reason itself is under far more significant advantages for its proper and free exercises, and to attain its proper end, free of darkness and delusion. But,
Secondly, A true sense of the divine excellency of the things of God’s word doth more directly and immediately convince of the truth of them; and that because the excellency of these things is so superlative. There is a beauty in them that is so divine and godlike, that is greatly and evidently distinguishing of them from things merely human, or that men are the inventors and authors of; a glory that is so high and great that, when clearly seen, commands assent to their divinity and reality. When there is an actual and lively discovery of this beauty and excellence, it won’t allow any thought that it is human work or the fruit of men’s invention. This evidence that they that are spiritually enlightened have the truth of the things of religion is a kind of intuitive and immediate evidence. They believe the doctrines of God’s word to be divine because they see divinity in them, i.e., they see a divine, and transcendent, and most evidently distinguishing glory in them; such glory as, if clearly seen, does not leave room to doubt of their being of God, and not of men.
Such a conviction of the truth of religion as this, arising, these ways, from a sense of the divine excellence of them, is that true spiritual conviction that there is in saving faith. And this original of it is that by which it is most essentially distinguished from that common assent which unregenerate men are capable of.
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