faithful: Thy word and thy promifes give us full fecurity to truft in the Lord at all times; because in the Lord Jehovah is everlafting ftrength And bleffed are all they who put their truft in him. But by what ways and means fhall thefe arguments and encouragements have their full effect? This is the main point; and it is fettled beyond difpute upon fcripture authority. The fame Spirit, who revealed the promifes, is alfo the fulfiller of them: And he is almighty. The bleffing on the ufe of the means is entirely from him: It is he who teacheth man knowledge: And from him we are to feck it in prayer. With all our reading, hearing, ftudying, meditating upon the fcriptures, we must look up to him for his divine teaching. If of any you, believers, 8 believers, lack wisdom, let him ask it of God, who giveth to all afkers liberally, and upbraideth not, and it fhall be given him, but let him afk in faith. Here is a command and a promife. When we lack wifdom, which we always do, as much as we want breath, we are to afk it of the Spirit of wifdom, and it fhall be given us. He will make us wife unto falvation. He will keep us in the use of means dependent on his leading us into all ufeful truth, and of his revealing to us the things which are freely given to us of God, to fhew them to us, as realities, and to put us into the enjoyment of them, as bleffings. In this dependence on him, we live, and move, and have our being. Our fpiritual life and faculties, and the exercise of them, and the imC 6 provement provement of them, are entirely from his influence. For the Apoftle, mentioning the feveral gifts and graces of the Holy Spirit, fays, "All these worketh that one, and the felf-fame Spirit, dividing to every man his own gifts, according to his own will." To him then we are to look up for every good gift, and every perfect gift. Whenever we open the bible, we should ask his light and his teaching. He is the chief commentator. He only can put the fcriptures into our inward parts, and write them upon our hearts, so that we may experience them to be the power of God unto our own falvation. Our first reformers were of this fentiment, exhorting us to pray, that by the holy infpiration of God's Spirit, we may think those things that be be good, and by his merciful guiding, may perform the fame. Grant to us, Lord, we beseech thee, the Spirit, to think, and do always fuch things as be rightful; that we who cannot do any thing that is good without thee, may by thee be enabled to live according to thy will, through Jefus Christ our Lord. Amen. Sunday after Trinity. Ninth As they prayed, so they fung For we meet with two hymns, inferted by the reformers in the Common Prayer Book, appointed to be fung at the ordaining of priests, and at the confecration of bishops. The first begins with these words— Come, Holy Ghoft, our fouls infpire, And lighten with celeftial fire, &c. Out of the fecond I quote fome verfes, not for any excellency of the the poetry, but for the foundnefs of the divinity expreffed in thefe lines- Come, Holy Ghoft, eternal God,. Both from the Father and the Son, Vifit our minds, and into us Thou in thy gifts art manifold, According to thy promife made, O Holy Ghoft, into our fouls Strengthen |