A Treatise Concerning Religious Affections

One of the books I am currently reading is A Treatise Concerning Religious Affections by Jonathan "The Man" Edwards. I figured I could jot down one or two lines from what I read each day, so here we go:

5/21 - If our inward spiritual joys are greater than our outward sufferings, these joys will support us and allow us to suffer with cheerfulness.

5/22 - But yet it is not the body, but the mind only, that is the proper seat of affections. The body of man is no more capable of being really the subject of love or hatred, joy or sorrow, fear or hope, than the body of a tree, or than the same body of a man is capable of thinking and understanding. as it is the soul only that has ideas, so it is the soul only that is pleased or displeased with its ideas. As it is the soul only that thinks, so it is the soul only that loves or hates, rejoices or is grieved at what it thinks of.

Affection is a word that, in its ordinary significance, seems to be something more extensive than passion, being used for all the vigorous lively actings of the will or inclination; but passion for those that are more sudden, and whose effects on the animal spirits are more violent, and the mind more overpowered, and less in its own command.

Who will deny that true religion consists in a great measure in vigorous and likely actings of the inclination and will of the soul, or the fervent exercises of the heart?

Romans 12:11

Deuteronomy 10:12, 6:4-5

Deuteronomy 30:6

5/23 - If we be not in good earnest in religion, and our wills and inclinations be strongly exercised, we are nothing. The things of religion are so great, that there can be no suitableness in the exercises of our hearts to their nature and importance, unless they be lively and powerful.

True religion is evermore a powerful thing and the power of it appears, in the first place in the inward exercises of it in the heart, where is the principal and original seat of it.

2 Timothy 3:5

2 Timothy 1:7

The business of religion if from time to time compared to those exercises wherein men are won't to have their hearts and strength greatly exercised and engaged, such as running, wrestling, or agonizing for a great prize or crown, and fighting with strong enemies that seek our lives, and warring as those that by violence take a city or kingdom.