The following excerpt is from Puritan author John Owen's 1684 book The Glory of Christ. See the 8/7 entry for Dave Harvey's comments on the Puritans. Here Owen is addressing the development of the believer's mind. Take your time; this is tedious material. My head hurts just trying to think about it:
"Labor that your minds may continually be fitted and prepared for such heavenly contemplations. If they are carnal or sensual, or filled with earthly things, a due sense of this love of Christ and its glory will not abide in them. Virtue and vice, in their highest degrees, are not more diametrically opposite and inconsistent in the same mind, than are an habitual course of sensual, worldly thoughts and a due contemplation of the glory of the love of Christ, yea an earnestness of spirit, pregnant with a multitude of thoughts about the lawful occasions of life, is obstructive of all due communion with the Lord Jesus Christ in this. Few there are whose minds are prepared in a due matter for this duty. The actions and communications of the most evidence what is the inward frame of their souls. They rove up and down in their thoughts, which are continually led by their affections to the far corners of the earth. It is in vain to call such persons to contemplations of the glory of Christ in his love. A holy composure of mind, by virtue of spiritual principles, an inclination to seek after refreshment in heavenly things, and to bathe the soul in the fountain of them, with constant apprehensions of the excellency of this divine glory, are required to this."
John Owen, The Glory of Christ
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