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Practical discourses concerning the Christian temper...
Practical discourses concerning the Christian temper Author:John Evans Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: SERMON II. THE CHRISTIAN SPIRIT, A NEW SPIRIT. Eph. iv. 23. And be renewed in the spirit of your mind. THE apostle had exhorted these Ephesians, in ver... more ». 17- " not to walk as other Gentiles walked," who had not embraced Christianity. He describes their sad' case to the end of ver. 11). And expresses his better hope of those to whom he wrote, who had known and professed the Christian doctrine, ver. 20, 21. " But ye have not so learned Christ: If so be that ye have heard him, and have been taught by him, as the truth is in Jesus." Your temper and character is become quite of another kind from that of other Gentiles, and from that which was once your own in the days of your ignorance ; if you have been well acquainted with the design of Christianity, and have heartily embraced it with that view. Now what is the great design and scope of Christianity, which all, who hear of it, should learn; and which all who have been taught by Christ, as the truth is in Jesus, do learn ? An account of that follows in the three next verses. It is, " to put off, concerning the former conversation, the old man, which is corrupt according to the deceitful lusts," ver. 22. It is to abandon the old corrupt practices, to which you were accustomed by the governing influence of depraved nature, while you pursued its irregular inclinations and lusts : " And to be renewed in the spirit of your mind ; and thereupon to put on the new man, which after God is created in righteousness aud true holiness," ver. 23, 24. That which I propose now to consider and to begin with, as the first general view of the Christian spirit is, That it is a new temper of mind. And the text leads us to observe, That those who have learned Christ to good purpose, are renewed in the spirit of their minds. The right d...« less