And GOD saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually.
— Genesis 6:5
I have seen thine adulteries, and thy neighings, the lewdness of thy whoredom, and thine abominations on the hills in the fields. Woe unto thee, O Jerusalem! wilt thou not be made clean? when shall it once be?
— Jeremiah 13:27
If I regard iniquity in my heart, the Lord will not hear me:
— Psalm 66:18
SAMECH. I hate vain thoughts: but thy law do I love.
— Psalm 119:113
How long, ye simple ones, will ye love simplicity? and the scorners delight in their scorning, and fools hate knowledge?
— Proverbs 1:22
Repent therefore of this thy wickedness, and pray God, if perhaps the thought of thine heart may be forgiven thee.
— Acts 8:22
Because that, when they knew God, they glorified him not as God, neither were thankful; but became vain in their imaginations, and their foolish heart was darkened.
— Romans 1:21
And again, The Lord knoweth the thoughts of the wise, that they are vain.
— 1 Corinthians 3:20
What is Meant by Thoughts?, by Thomas Goodwin. The following contains Chapter One of his work, “The Vanity of Thoughts, Being an Instance of the Abounding Sinfulness in One Faculty of the Soul.”
How long shall thy vain thoughts lodge within thee?
— Jeremiah 4:14 d
1. First, what is meant by thoughts, especially as they are the intended subject of this discourse, which in so vast an argument I must necessarily set limits unto.
(1.) By thoughts the Scriptures do comprehend all the internal acts of the mind of man, of what faculty soever; all those reasonings, consultations, purposes, resolutions, intents, ends, desires, and cares of the mind of man, as opposed to our external words and actions. So, Isa. 66:18, all acts are divided into those two,’I know their works and their thoughts.’ What is transacted within the mind is called the thoughts; what thereof do manifest themselves and break out in actions are called works. And so, Gen. 6:5,’Every imagination of the thoughts’—omne figmentum, all the creatures the mind frames within itself, purposes, desires, &c., (as it is noted in the margin)—’are evil;’ where by thoughts are understood all that ‘comes within the mind,’ (as, Ezek. 11:5, the phrase is,) and so indeed we vulgarly use it and understand it. So to ‘remember’ a man is to ‘think’ of him, Gen. 40:14; to have purposed a thing, we say, I thought to do it; to take care about a business, is to ‘take thought,’ 1 Sam. 9:5. And the reason why all may thus be called the thoughts, is because indeed all affections, desires, purposes, are stirred up by thoughts—bred, fomented, and nourished by them. No one thought passeth, but it stirreth some affection of fear, joy, care, grief, &c. No, although they are thus largely taken here, yet I intend not to handle the vanity of them in so large a sense at present.
I must confine myself, as strictly as may be, to the vanity of that which is more properly called the thinking, meditating, considering power of man, which is in his understanding or spirit, that being the subject I have in hand; thoughts not being in this sense opposed only to your works, but unto purposes and intents. So, Heb. 4:12, as the soul and spirit, so thoughts and intents seem to be opposed. And, Job 20:2, 3,’thoughts’ are appropriated to the ‘spirit of understanding.’ And again, yet more strictly, for in the understanding I mean not to speak of, generally, all thoughts therein, neither, as not of the reasonings or deliberations in our actions, but those musings only in the speculative part.
And so I can no otherwise express them to you than thus: Those same first more simple conceits, apprehensions that arise, those fancies, meditations, which the understanding, by the help of fancy, frames within itself of things; those whereon your minds ponder and pore, and muse upon things; these I mean by thoughts. I mean those talkings of our minds with the things we know, as the Scripture calls it, Prov. 6:22; those same par leys, interviews, chattings, the mind hath with the things let into it, with the things we fear, with the things we love. For all these things our minds make their companions, and our thoughts hold them discourse, and have a thousand conceits about them; this I mean by thoughts. For besides that reasoning power, deliberating power, whereby we ask ourselves continually, What shall we do? and whereby we reason and discuss things, which is a more inward closet, the cabinet and privy council of the heart, there is a more outward lodging, that presence chamber, which entertains all comers, which is the thinking, meditating, musing power in man, which suggesteth matter for deliberations, and consultations, and reasonings, which holds the objects till we view them, which entertaineth all that come to speak with any of our affections.
(2.) I add,’which the mind frames within itself;’ so the Scripture expresseth their original to us, and their manner of rising, Prov. 6:14, ‘Frowardness is in his heart,’—fabricatur,—’he forgeth mischief,’ as a smith doth iron, hammers it out. And the thoughts are the materials of this frowardness in us; upon all the things which are presented to us, the mind begets some thoughts, imaginations on them; and as lusts, so thoughts ore conceived, James 1. Isa. 59:4,’They conceive mischief, and bring forth iniquity, and hatch cockatrice’ eggs, and weave spiders’ webs.’ And, ver. 7, he instanceth in ‘thoughts of iniquity,’ because our thoughts are spun out of our own hearts, are eggs of our own laying, though the things presented to us be from without.
And this I add to sever them from such thoughts as are injected and cast in only from without, which are children of another’s begetting, and often laid out of doors: such as ore blasphemous thoughts cast in by Satan, wherein if the soul be merely passive, (as the word ‘buffeting’ implies, 2 Cor. 12:7,) they are none of your thoughts, but his; wherein a man is but as one in a room with another, where he hears another swear and curse, but cannot get out from him; such thoughts, if they be only ‘from without,’ defile not a man. For ‘nothing defiles a man but what comes from within,’ Matt. 15:18, 19, or which the heart hath begotten upon it by the devil,—as thoughts of uncleanness, &c.,—wherein, though he be the father, yet the heart is the mother and womb, and therefore accordingly affect the heart, as natural children do. And by that we may distinguish them from the other, namely, when we have a soft heart, an inward love unto them, so that our hearts do kiss the child, then they are our thoughts; or else when the heart broods upon those eggs, then they are our thoughts, though they come from without.
Though this is to be added, that even those thoughts wherein the soul is passive, and which Satan casts in, which we do noways own, wherein he ravisheth the heart, rather than begets them on us, (if there be not any consent to them in us, then it is but a rape, as in law it is,) I yield those thoughts are punishments often of neglect of our thoughts, and of our suffering them to wander; as Dinah, because she went cunningly out, to ‘view the daughters of the land,’ was taken and ravished; though against her will, yet it was a punishment of her curiosity. Or else they are the punishment of the neglect of good motions of the Spirit; which resisting, we thereby grieve him, and so he deals with us as we with our children, suffers us to be scared with bugbears, and to be grieved by Satan, that we may learn what it is to neglect him and harbour vanity. Lastly, I add, ‘which the mind, in and by itself, or by the help of fancy, thus begets and entertains,’ because there are no thoughts or likenesses of things at any time in our fancies, but at the same time they are in the understanding also reflected unto it. As when two looking-glasses are placed opposite and nigh each to other, look, what species appears in the one do also in the other.
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