that the Lord, being in an agony, prayed more earnestly, (xxii. 44,) or, as it might be rendered, more intensely, from which circumstance we learn, that the intenseness of the Lord’s supplication, or of the force by which His Humanity applied to the Divinity in itself with a view to perfect union, was not always the same, but was subject to variation, and this probably according yo the violence of assault from the infernals. Query,—whether this is not also the case with man, so that the intenseness of his prayer varies in like manner, according to the force of temptation from the powers of darkness?
160. To chew the cud is a distinguishing characteristic of a clean human mind, as well as of a clean beast, because, in reference to the former, it implies an interior reception of truth, in consequence of meditating on what is heard and read, and thus admitting it into a higher or interior region both of the will and understanding. For if truth be only heard and read, and not well masticated by serious consideration, it remains in the memory only, and cannot entertain the life; thus it resides out of the man, and not in him, inasmuch as the memory is only an outer court of the human mind, useful indeed as a storehouse for the first reception of truths, but only savingly useful, so far as the received truths are afterwards called forth for examination, and exalted into an interior region, by reflection and profound exploration of their origin, meaning, and end. (See Deut. xiv. 6, 7, 8.)
161. It is a great and blessed thing to receive a
