Grace And Duty Spiritual Minded (3) How to know if our prayers are spiritual

(1.) Spiritual thoughts may be raised in a person in his own duty, by the exercise of his gifts, when there is no acting of grace in them at all; for they lead and guide the mind unto such thing as are the matter of prayer, — that is, spiritual things. Gifts are nothing but a spiritual improvement of our natural faculties or abilities; and a man cannot speak or utter any thing but what proceeds from his rational faculties, by invention or memory, or both, managed in and by his thoughts, unless he speak by rote and that which is not rational.