in God-He that loveth dwelleth in God, and God in bim. Faith gives us a dwelling in Chrift-That Chrift may dwell in your hearts by faith. And the Spirit's witness proves our adoption-the Spirit cries, Abba, Father. Receiving power to become the fons of God, is receiving the Spirit; and by the Spirit the grace of faith, to enable us, as I before obferved, with a holy boldness to claim our fonfhip before God.-But I faid, How shall I put thee among the children, and give thee a pleafant land, a goodly beritage of the bofts of nations? And I faid, Thou shalt call me, My father; and shalt not turn away from me. Jer. iii. 19. This promise the Spirit makes good; he makes us fay, My father. And this may be seen in the prodigal fon-I will arife, and go to my father. These words were spoken under the emboldening and encouraging influence of the spirit of adoption; and whatever the Holy Spirit fays or does is always owned and honoured by God the Father, and confirmed in heaven; as may be seen in that parable-This is my fon, fays God; he was dead, and is alive again; he was loft, and is found. The Jews fpoke the fame language the prodigal did, even to Chrift-We have one father, even God. But this is neither owned nor honoured; for, If God were your Father, (fays Chrift) you would love me: for I proceeded forth and came from God; neither came 1 of myself, but be fent me. Ye are of your father the devil, and the lufts of your father ye will do. He was a murderer from the beginning, and abode

13

not in the

truth,

truth, because there is no truth in him. John viii. 42,44: Thus we see that no claim upon birth-privileges, no, not upon national adoption; no unwarrantable, no presumptuous claims upon God, are either approved or confirmed.

io. The Holy Spirit is given for a witness to us. If we receive the witness of men, (as many do, and rest in it,) the witness of God is greater. He that believes bath the witness in himself. And fure I am that without the infallible teftimony of the Holy Ghoft no poor convinced, felf-condemned, and felf-defpairing finner could ever lay any claim upon the Almighty, A fenfible finner, who feels the enmity of his mind and the rebellion of his heart, who is loathfome in his own fight, and confcious to himself that he is a child of wrath, and a willing drudge to Satan; for fuch an one to call God his father (even while God's wrath and jealousy feems to fmoke against him) he would think it the vileft prefumption in fuch a wretch as he, and the greatest affront and infult, the greatest dishonour and indignity, that could be of fered to the majesty of heaven-He may fay to corruption, Thou art my father; and to the worm, Thou art my mother. Job xvii. 14. But to think that God would, or could, ever acknowledge or accept fuch an one as a child of his, is what would never have entered his mind world without end, if the Holy Ghoft did not put it there. And he does it in the following manner :-First, he filences all the finner's accufers and all accufations, and brings the

confufed

confused and confounded foul into a state of the most profound calm, quietude, peace, and tranquillity. Here our fins, which appeared like the fins of Sodom, crying to heaven; confcience, alfo, with his cutting accufations; the law, with all its curfes and unlimited demands; justice, with his calls for vengeance; Satan, with all his blafphemies, fiery darts, accufations, and terrible suggestions; together with all our heart-misgivings and heartrifings, and those terrible paffages of fcripture which defcribe the fruitless crys of Efau, the horrors of Judas, the misery of Cain, the distraction of Saul, and the fearful end of Corah, Abiram, and Dathan; are all stilled and hushed into the profoundest filence, the violent ftorm of wrath abates, and the troubled fea ceases from her raging. The poor finner ftands aftonished to know what are become of all his accufers; he looks about him, and finds that all his fins which were fet in order against him, all his fecret fins which stood in the light of God's countenance, are blotted out as a cloud, and his tranfgreffions as a thick cloud; and, as far as the east is from the weft, fo far does God feparate our transgreffions from us. The guilt and filth of fin within is all purged away, and every inbred corruption is fubdued and out of fight; fo that not one unclean bird remains upon the living facrifice. The Holy Spirit fets Chrift crucified before the eye of faith; while the Spirit, in the application of the blood of

fprinkling, fpeaks pardon, peace, reconciliation, and perfect friendship. Sin being purged, nothing feparates or ftands between God and the foul. The Holy Ghost sheds abroad God's love in the heart, which cafts out fear and torment, doubts and all mifgivings of the heart about it; while love diffolves the ftony heart, melts the ftubborn mind, and makes the rebellious will fubmit and become pliant. Joy unutterable flows in, godly forrow flow out. mercies, and God of all with the greatest freedom and familiarity, and with nearness of access to him. God fhines well-pleafed in the face of Jefus, accepts and embraces the foul in him; while faith, attended with the fulleft affurance, fprings up and goes forth in the fulleft exercise upon the everlafting love of God, and on the finished falvation of Jesus Christ, and is fully perfuaded of her eternal interest in both; while the Holy Spirit cries, Abba, Father: to which cry both law and gospel, the love of God and the blood of Christ, retributive justice and honeft confcience, all put their hearty amen.

while floods of pious and

The benign Father of all comfort, indulges the foul

The Holy Spirit, with the witness that he bears, follows the convinced finner through every ftage of his experience, from his first awakening, until his tranflation into the kingdom of God takes place. So that the convinced finner who comes to the light, who waits upon God, and waits for him, has the witness

witness of the Spirit in his own heart to the truth of what he feels, and of what he feeks. The Spirit bears his witnefs to the reality of his wants; to the deep fenfe that he has of his fins; to the honesty and integrity of his foul; to his fervent cries and earnest fearches; to his real grief on account of his fins, and his earnest defire of deliverance from them. Nor can fuch a foul look either God or confcience in the face, and fay, I am neither awakened nor quickened; I am neither in earnest, honest, nor fincere. Nor dare he fay, I have no hunger nor thirst after God, nor that I neither labour nor am heavy laden. Nor dare he fay that he has neither hope nor expectation of better days and better tidings; nor dare he say that there is no truth in him, nor that God has done nothing for him; nor would he change ftates (miferable as he is) with the most fecure pharifee, nor with the moft gifted profeffor in the world; nor would he part with his dreadful feelings, the chastisements, the reproofs of God, the bitter fenfe he has of his fins, nor the intolerable burden of them, for all the treasures of Egypt, unlefs he could get rid of them the right way; namely, by an application of the atoning blood of Chrift. He can smell the ftinking favour of an hypocrite in Zion, and feel the barrenness and emptiness of a minifter of the letter; he can fee through a sheep's fkin on a wolf's back, and knows the empty found of swelling words. Neither the graceless heart of a foolish