conscience which is a faculty of comparing ourselves with the rule of his word and judging accordingly: The spirit of God by his. power, and by his providence, awakens these holy dispositions into lively exercise: He assists our enquiring and our judging faculties, helps us to compare our own souls with his word, and thus confirms our own spirits in the belief of this proposition, that we are the children of God. This is the more common and ordinary way and method, whereby God is pleased to give the comforts of adoption to his people.

It is the remark of a judicious writer on this subject, "That as on the one hand wicked men are sometimes convinced in their own consciences that they are children of wrath, and further con> firmed in this persuasion by that evil spirit who labours from hence to drive and hurry them on to despair; so, on the other hand, when the hearts of believers speak peace to them, telling them that God is their Father, reconciled to them in Christ, and the Holy Spirit saith the same also, then they have perfect peace. That the Spirit of God may thus concur with the inward consciousness and testimony of our own spirits in so important a matter as our love to God, and his love to us, is very easy to be supposed, when the apostle speaks of this concurring witness of the Spirit of God to his own consciousness, and his sincere love of his countrymen, when he says; Rom. ix. 1. My conscience also bearing me witness in the Holy Ghost. There is nothing in all this account of things but what is perfectly agreeable to the word of God, and to the rational actings of created minds, under the happy influences of the uncreated Spirit.

The third thing proposed was, to give a few advices relating to this ordinary witness of the Spirit of God concurring with our spirits.

1. Satisfy not yourselves with one slight examination, but renew the work frequently, and search whether you find the same marks and evidences of adoption remaining in you or no.. Do not content yourselves to run the whole course of life with one or two solemn examinations of your own hearts, when God first began to work religion in you, but enquire and see whether your principles of grace abide in the same brightness, evidence, and activity as in time past. Perhaps by this means you may discern a sensible growth in grace, and you may find abundant advantage, worth all the care and labour of self-examination; or if you find decays and backslidings, it will awaken repentance and zeal toward a recovery.

2. In this searching work keep aloof from carnal self-love. When you call yourselves to an account, set yourselves before the bar of your own consciences, as before the bar of God; for conscience is a judge for God within us. Pass an impartial sentenee concerning yourselves, even such as you suppose God him

self would pass, if you were now summoned before his tribunal. Suffer not yourselves now to be biassed by the esteem or the fondness that we all have naturally for ourselves. The matter is too important, the enquiry too solemn and awful, for you to indulge self-flattery. It will be no profit to deceive your souls in this work, for you cannot deceive God. Come therefore and apply yourselves to this holy exercise, with an unbiassed design to pronounce concerning yonrselves whatever you find the word of God pronounces concerning you.

3. Trust not merely to your own spirits, without earnest prayer for the assistance of the Spirit of God; Jer. xvii. 9. The heart is deceitful above all things:-Who can know it? Therefore David prays importunately, as we have before observed, that God would search him and try him; Ps. cxxxix. 23, 24. Beg of the Lord that he would not suffer you to be deceived, when you set about this searching work; for it is a matter of most high concern. A mistake here is dangerous and it may be

for ever fatal.

4. When you find any character of adoption made to appear with strong evidence against your souls, be not utterly discouraged though you do not find all the characters of grace there. It is true indeed, where there is a new nature and divine principle wrought in the heart, there are the seeds of every holy disposi\tion; but they do not all arise to an equal strength, nor stand forth and shine with equal evidence. The Spirit of God may sometimes witness with your spirits, though but one mark of adoption appear plainly, while others are not so easily discovered. A single bough of the tree of life has upheld souls from drown ing in despair, when they could but lay hold of that one bough. Many a christian, under great difficulties, inward tumults, doubts, and darknesses of spirit, have been enabled to hold on their way by living upon some one plain scripture, and finding the sense of it transcribed into their own hearts. Some one evidence of true faith, or holy love, of repentance, or heavenly-mindedness, has been set in such a divine light before them, that they could not well mistake; and this has borne up their hope in an hour of temptation. But I must add,

5. Though you ought to bless God for any mark of his children in your hearts, yet you ought not to content yourself with one mark, since the scripture has given us many. The faculties of our natures are various, and they have their various operations: The passions or affections of our souls are many, and some of them are frequently in exercise: Now all the passions and faculties of nature, with all their operations, should be conformable to the rule of the word of God; and when it is so, there appears a variety of marks of the children of God upon us, even as many as there are powers or passions belonging to our souls. Whe

ther it be love, it is love to God, and the children of God, for they are born of the same Father: Whether it be hatred, it is hatred to sin, and to all that displeases God: If it be delight, it is a delight in heavenly things, and in holy ordinances: If it be desire, it is a desire after God, after a sense of his love, a greater acquaintance with him, a more exact conformity to him, and a breathing after the heavenly state, where we shall never sin against him. Thus since the several powers and principles in our nature being sanctified, yield us several distinct evidences of adoption, let us not be contented with one of them, but press forward toward a stronger hope of our sonship. Let us labour and pray that all the springs of action within us being sanctified by the Holy Spirit, may yield the fruits of holiness, may shine bright in a way of evidence, and raise our hope to full assurance.

6. When you have found any comfortable and solid hopes of your adoption, by the Holy Spirit witnessing in this rational way with your spirits, that you are the children of God, walk in the chearful sense of it continually; go on in the way of holiness, rejoicing in the Lord. This was one end why Christ has given us the characters of his disciples in scripture, that when we find them in our own hearts we might rejoice. This was part of the design of his farewel-sermon to his apostles, wherein some of these characters are described. See John xv. 11. These things have I spoken unto you, that my joy might remain in you, and that your joy might be full. The blessed Spirit, in the same discourse, is promised as a Comforter, and we ought to walk in the light of his consolations. It is the most evangelical and the most constraining method of his grace, when he carries on his sanctifying work by the influence of peace and joy; and it is one of the glories of a christian, that the joy of the Lord is his strength, to fulfil all the duties of righteousness.

DISCOURSE XII.

The extraordinary Witness of the Spirit.

ROM. viii. 16. The Spirit itself beareth witness with our spirit that we are the children of God.

THE SECOND PART.

It is great and divine condescension, that the blessed God

T

should ever take any of the children of wrath, and make them the children of his love: But he condescends yet farther, when he sends down his own Spirit to give us notice of our adoption, and to acquaint us with our high and holy privilege. The common and ordinary method whereby the Spirit of God bears witness that we are his children, is by drawing out our own spirits to search and enquire into the filial and holy disposition which he himself hss wrought in our hearts, and by assisting our consciences in this enquiry. Thus by his gentle, easy, and insensible influences upon our souls, he leads us on in a rational manner to infer and conclude, that we are born of God, because we find the image of God impressed on us, and those divine qualities wrought in us, which belong only to his children. This has been the subject of the foregoing discourse. I proceed now to consider the extraordinary witness of the Holy Spirit, when in a more immediate and more sensible manner he raises in the hearts of some of his favourites a powerful and a pleasant sense of their interest in the love of God.

This extraordinary witness may be distinguished into two kinds.

1. It may imply some very uncommon and powerful confirmation of the ordinary and rational witness, by the mo stsensible impressions of divine love on the heart, by which it is raised to holy raptures, to heavenly joy and assurance. Perhaps the apostle Peter may have some respect to this; 1 Peter i. 8. where speaking of Christ, he adds, whom having not seen, ye love; in whom, though now, ye seen him not, yet believing, ye rejoice with joy unspeakable, and full of glory. Here it is supposed in the text, that the persons to whom he writes were conscious of their own faith in an unseen Saviour, and their love to him and thence they could infer that they were accepted of God: But

By the word immediate here I do not mean without ordinances, such as prayer meditation, &c. but rather sudden and speedy.

without some peculiar and more uncommon influences of the Holy Spirit, they could hardly be said to arise to such joy as was unspeakable and full of glory, or glorifed joy, as the greek text expresses it, xa dedoğaμm, a-kin to that which the saints possess in the glorified state.

2. There is yet another sort of extraordinary witness of the spirit; and that is, when in an immediate and powerful manner, the Holy Spirit impresses the soul with an assurance of divine love, and gives the heart of a saint such a full discovery of his adoption or interest in the favour of God, without the more slow and argumentative method of comparing the dispositions of their souls with some special characters of the children of God in scripture. The Spirit of God may witness in an extraordinary manner to our adoption, by an inward experimental sense of the love of God shed abroad in the heart, assuring some of his favourites that they are the sons or daughters of God, without any particular examination of the heart at that time, or any present reflections on the characters of adoption described in the bible.

I confess the several acts of the mind of man, even the reasoning and argumentative acts of the soul, are so quick and sudden, and the sensible joy that may arise from them, follows in so swift and close a succession, that it is sometimes very hard to distinguish and define the bounds and limits of the several actions, perceptions, and impressions on the mind. On this account I shall not be solicitous to keep up the distinction between these two kinds of the extraordinary witness of the Spirit, but shall only speak of them in general, as distinguished from the ordinary witness of the Spirit, by the more immediate sensations of divine love, that are impressed through the peculiar favour of God on the souls of some of his children.

I am very sensible that, in our present age, the Spirit of God is so much withdrawn from the christian church in all his operations, that a man exposes himself to the censure of wild enthusiasm, and a heated fancy, if he ventures to discourse at all on such a theme as this: But as I am persuaded these things were fre quent matter of christian experience in the primitive days of the gospel, and in scenes of sharp persecution, so I am satisfied that God has not utterly withheld his divine favours of this kind from his churches and his children, for sixteen hundred years together; and I hope I shall make it appear, that a supposition of this extraordinary witness of the spirit may be maintained, with out giving a loose to all the roving dreams of a distempered brain, or to the bold presumptions of weak and conceited men or false and deceitful impostors. The method of my discourse is this,

I. I will offer some very probable proofs that there has been and is, such a thing as the extraordinary witness of the Spirit of God,-II. I shall mention a few of the special seasons or occa