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Mark x. 21. Luke xii. 33. chap. xviii. 22.] and it is equally certain that it's meaning has been much mistaken, whilst men have supposed that it relates only to houses, lands, money, &c. &c. and other descriptions of mere external property, when yet there is every reason to conclude, that it hath manifest reference to all that a man hath, thus not only to his external property, but his internal; consequently to mind as well as to matter; to the purposes, inclinations, thoughts, delights, &c. of the former, alike with the grosser and more perishable substances of the latter. The enlightened Christian accordingly extends the evangelical law of abandonment to the more refined property of his inner man, whether consisting of natural will, of natural understanding, of natural talent, of natural temperament, together with the several gratifications resulting from each, and in so doing he experiences the blessed tendency of the law to deliver him from all the defiled sources of restlessness and misery. For what is more tormenting than the activity of man's natural will and understanding, until it be taught to submit itself to the mild and gentle government of the Divine love and wisdom What again tends to produce a more violent agitation in the waters of man's life, and thus more to affect the tide of temper, than superior natural talents and natural learning, unless they bow down to with humility, and acknowledge with gratitude, a Divine Lord, Ruler, and Sanctifier? It is most evident then that Christian doctrine and life, in requiring the total surrender of these natural and disturbing principles to that Divine controul, which can at once moderate their activities, repress their vehemence, and direct them to their proper ends, is most friendly to the temper and constitution of man, by pouring into the human mind the oil of a Divine
