11.10.2008

New word: frame

Look how Thomas Boston uses this word 'frame' in this section of his Human Nature in its Fourfold State:

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The heart, that was made according to God's own heart, is now the reverse of it, a forge of evil imaginations, a sink of inordinate affections, and a storehouse of all impiety, Mark 7:21, 22. Behold the heart of the natural man, as it is opened in our text. The mind is defiled; the thoughts of the heart are evil; the will and affections are defiled—the imagination of the thoughts of the heart, that is, whatever the heart frames within itself by thinking, such as judgment, choice, purposes, devices, desires, every inward motion, or rather the frame of the thoughts of the heart, namely, the frame, make, or mold of these, 1 Chron. 29:18, is evil.

Yes, and every imagination, every frame of his thoughts, is evil. The heart is ever framing something; but never one right thing—the frame of thoughts, in the heart of man, is exceedingly various; yet are they never cast into a right frame.
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It's a useful word as he uses it because it gives understanding, or a 'view' of what the heart is doing which is behind our actions and words and thoughts and deeds and so on. But if the heart frames things differently (which is what the Work gets at with active reasoning and attitudes and thinking from the Work rather than from life and so on) then... It kind of is a word to connect one more with the inner 'reins' of real will.

Boston, in this book, discusses Work ideas in Christian language. Rebellious will, disordered affections, darkened mind, as the result of the fall. You have to read it. Here's an online version.

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