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CHRIST'S WITNESS

WITHIN US,

THE

BELIEVER'S SPECIAL ADVANTAGE

AGAINST

TEMPTATIONS TO INFIDELITY.

"But when the Comforter (or Advocate) is come, whom I will send unto you from the Father; the Spirit of truth, which proceedeth from the Father, he shall testify of me. And ye also shall bear witness, because ye have been with me from the beginning."-JOHN xv. 26, 27.

TO THE READER.

1

READER,

WHILE the foregoing sermons on Gal. iii. 2. were in the press, I thought it not unmeet to peruse this sermon and annex it thereto, to make up the discourse more useful to true believers. I confess I did purposely handle this text more largely when I preached on it, with the 11th and 12th verses, for the explication of another point; and this was but slightly touched on the by; yet because it is suitable to the rest, and seasonable for weaklings in these shaking times, I have chosen to annex it, in hope it may somewhat conduce to their establishment, whereto I desire of God that He will use and bless it.

CHRIST'S WITNESS, &c.

1 JOHN v. 10.

"He that believeth on the Son of God, hath the witness in himself. He that believeth not God, hath made him a liar; because he believeth not the record that God gave of his Son."

Sect. I.

THE apostle having, in the fourth and fifth verses, extolled the grace of faith in Christ, from its successful victory over the world; doth proceed, in the following verses, to magnify it: 1. From the full and certain testimony, which doth animate and support it. 2. From the nature of its object and office. The first he doth in the 6th, 7th, 8th, 9th, and 10th verses; the latter in the 11th, and 12th, and some following. In the 6th, 7th, and 8th verses, the witnesses are enumerated in the 9th verse, the validity and unquestionable authority of the testimony is proved. In the 10th verse is declared, 1. The privilege of true believers, and the advantage which they have for further certainty 2. The heinousness of the sin of infidelity.

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Though it be the first part of the 10th verse which I am now to handle, yet, because we cannot so well understand what is meant by the witness' here, unless we look back to the precedent verses, let us briefly consider them.

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In the 6th verse, the apostle, extolling the object of faith, the Lord Jesus Christ, declareth with what convincing evidence he showed himself unto the world: "He came by water and blood, and it is the Spirit that beareth witness, because the Spirit is truth." Whereupon he further enumerateth the glorious trinity of witnesses in heaven, and the trinity of witnesses on earth. (Verse 7, 8.) The extraordinary diversity of reading in these two verses, and the specious arguments brought for each of them, I purposely overpass, as not concerning much my intended business; but what these witnesses are I shall briefly inquire. 1. The Father, the Word, and the Spirit, are the

three in heaven, which bear witness it is on earth that they witness; but it is in heaven that these witnesses are in glory.

1. The Father witnessed of the Son, as by describing him in prophesies and promises, before his coming, so by many notable attestations at his birth, and afterwards sending a choir of angels to predicate and honour his nativity; leading men to him by an extraordinary star, and other like means; and in an eminent manner at his more solemn entering upon his office, at his baptism, proclaiming him by a voice from heaven to be his Beloved Son, in whom he was well pleased; and to this testimony the text may seem to have some special respect: as also, he owned him by a voice from heaven, before his suffering. (John xii. 28.) And divers other ways."

2. The Lord Jesus himself, the Word of the Father, hath fully attested his own office and doctrine, not by naked affirmations only (for if he so bore witness of himself, he tells us, his witness were nothing.) But by proving his mission and commission from the Father, by the prophets, by his doctrine, and by the works which he did: which were such as perfectly answered his commission, and such as no man else could do.

3. The Spirit bore witness to Christ and his truth, both in the mouths of those prophets that foretold his coming, and by a more full attestation, when he was come, when he was baptised, it lighted on him in the form of a dove; in himself and his disciples, it gloriously appeared, as I have more largely expressed in the foregoing discourse.

But for the three witnesses on earth, though we are agreed in the matter, yet expositors are not of one mind about the sense of the words in this text; what is meant by Spirit, water, and blood. The first doubt is, what is meant by the Spirit? If it be the Holy Ghost, then is not this witness on earth, the same with one of those in heaven? To avoid this, some like those copies that leave out the 7th verse; some, as Piscator, by the Holy Ghost here, understand the Gospel: some take it only for the spirits which with the water and blood went out of the side of Christ on the cross. I rather judge that in the 7th verse, by the Spirit is meant the Holy Ghost considered, not as he is in heaven in glory, but witnessing on earth: but in the 8th verse is meant the same Holy Spirit, as he is and wit

a Matt. xvii. 5; xxxv. 17, and iii. 16; John v. 32; viii. 18; v. 36; i. 1; iv. 26; v. 17, &c.; vi. 29, &c.; vii. 46; viii. 12, &c.; x. 24, &c., and i. 33, 34; 1 John i. 1; Acts ii. 3, 4, 32, and ix. 3—6.

nesseth here on earth. For as he appeared in the shape of a dove on Christ, and of fiery tongues on his disciples, so is he said to be, to dwell and work in the souls of believers.

The cleansings in the law were by water and blood: by blood for expiation, and by water for actual abstersion. But as Christ was to be the true efficient of what these were the types, seeing the law itself could neither expiate nor cleanse a defiled soul, so especially was the gift of the Spirit, a thing beyond the compass of the law, and the eminent privilege of those Gospel times, and the special witness to the verity of his word. It is not unlikely, that in the 6th verse the apostle had respect to Christ's fulfilling the legal types, as Calvin, Piscator, and others judge, and so here also: but how was it that he fulfilled them? I see no reason why we should restrain the sense to any one act or passage of Christ's life, as many do, but more comprehensively expound it thus. It was both expiation of guilt, and abstersion of the filth of sin, that lost souls did need for their recovery: it was both which the law prefigured to be done by the Messias : it is both that he did; and sent forth his Spirit in a most eminent, triumphant manner to do the one, and by wonders also to bear witness to his name in the world. He was himself baptised, first with John's baptism of water, and then by the Holy Ghost, descending on him as a dove, at the chief entrance upon his work; and lastly, by a baptism of blood in the Exitus, toward the finishing of his preparations on earth. He sweat water and blood in the garden in his agony. He shed water and blood from his side upon the cross.d He lived accordingly, a life, first of pure innocency, without sin; secondly, a life of suffering, even to the death of the cross, both to expiate our sins, and to seal his testament, and to teach us self-denial and patience, by his example; thirdly, he walked in the power of the Holy Ghost, doing wonders, and doing good, and was quickened and raised by the Spirit from the dead. And as these testimonies were left by him on certain record, so did he accordingly transcribe it upon the souls of his disciples, and do these works also on them, and drew out his image on their souls, and left his cures, and wondrous gifts thus visible on earth, to be witnesses of him in the world.

b John x. 25, 36, 38; v. 32, 36; xiv. 2; xv. 24, 26; xvi. 13, and xiv. 26; Acts xi. 22; 1 Cor. ii. 10, 11.

© John i. 28; Eph. v. 27; Tit. iii. 5; Heb. x. 22; Ezek. xxxvi. 25; Isa. i. 16; Jer. iv. 14.

d John xviii. 37; 1 Tim. vi. 13.

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