willingness to bless with every requisite of holiness and happiness, those upon whom he looks with paternal complacency? What! did he so "love the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him might not perish, but have everlasting life?" To achieve our redemption did he ordain, that the exalted personage who is the brightness of his glory, and the express image of his person, should assume our degraded_nature?— When Gethsemane exhibited a spectacle to make angels weepwhen the agony of the divine, the prostrate sufferer, was such as to cause the blood to ooze from every pore of his body, and to extort the plaintive petition " O my Father, if it be possible let this cup pass from me," would the Father not permit it to pass from him until he drank it? And did he give him to the odium and the tortures of the cross, that we might triumph in immortal life, and be crowned with unfading honor? Why then should it be thought a thing incredible, that He who is thus rich in mercy, should bless his people with the cloud dispelling light of his countenance? Must not the opponents of the doctrine of the immediate attestation of the Spirit acknowledge, that, admitting its truth, it must of all blessings be the most eminently adapted to promote our sanctification, by invigorating our faith, our hope, and love, and to augment our happiness, by expanding and elevating the mind with filial confidence and joy in God our Saviour. Now, this its obvious and undeniable tendency, furnishes strong presumptive evidence of its truth. For, he that spared not his own Son, but delivered him up for us all, how shall he not with him also freely confer upon us a blessing so peculiarly calculated to assimilate us to Himself, in holiness and felicity? But the doctrine rests not upon mere probability, however strong. It is susceptible of more satisfactory demonstration. We evince its truth by fair deduction from those precepts in the New Testament, which obviously imply that the persons to whom they were addressed, were not only participants grace, but that they were conscious of the divine change that had taken place in their character. Of this kind is the injunction"Grow in Grace." How can any individual appreciate how can he possibly recognize his obligations to obey this command, unless he is previously assured that he is the subject of grace? The advances of a plant towards maturity are not looked for till it have taken root. Before a man grow in grace, he must be grafted into Christ the living vine; and while he remains destitute of a consciousness that he is in a state of grace, in vain is the exhorted to grow therein. The same reasoning is strictly applicable to the Apostolic injunction-" Rejoice evermore." Impossible must it be for him, who has been awakened to a vivid perception of the value of his soul, and the necessity of a preparation for eternity, to

of

cherish exultant emotions of mind, if the Lord the Spirit have not revealed Christ in his heart.

Then, only then, we feel

Our interest in his blood,

And cry, with joy unspeakable,
Thou art My Lord, My God.

Of the christian's hallowed and triumphant joy, this divine evidence of his acceptance with God is the animating soul. Destitute of it, just in proportion to the depth and solemnity of his views of eternal things, would be the agitation and gloom of his mind.

But I need not specify additional precepts in illustration of a matter so plain. How sincerely soever any man may be devoted to God, yet if abandoned to perplexing uncertainty regarding his interest in the divine favor, it is apparent that this must give a character of correspondent servility and incertitude to the spirit and course of his obedience: his service will be that of a slave, not of a son—the trembling subjection of fear, not the willing and joyous devotedness of love. 66 'If," as a recent learned Commentator very forcibly reasons, "to any man his acceptance with God be hypothetical, then his confidence must be so too. His love to God must be hypothetical, his gratitude hypothetical, his obedience hypothetical. If God have forgiven my sins, then I should love him, and I should be grateful, and I should testify my gratitude by my obedience.' But who does not see that this must necessarily depend upon the 'IF'in the first case. All this uncertainty, and the perplexities resulting from it, God has precluded by sending forth the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, by which we cry, Abba, Father."*

Of this cheering truth the Sacred Volume affords evidence more lucid and decisive than has hitherto been adduced. "We have received," says St. Paul, "not the Spirit of the World, but the Spirit which is of God, that we might know the things that are freely given to us of God." 1 Cor. ii. 12. That he here alludes, not to the extraordinary gifts of the Spirit peculiar to the Apostles, but to those influences without which the natural man cannot receive or know the things of the Spirit of God, whoever attentively peruses the subsequent part of the chapter, will, it is apprehended, be fully satisfied. Admitting then the applicability of the passage to all who are spiritual, does it not plainly and irrefragably evince, that one part of the Holy Spirit's office, is to give to believers a distinct perception of the blessings which God of his unmerited mercy confers upon them? Among these, their adoption into the spiritual family of God, is, unquestionably, entitled to an eminent rank. One distinguished end of the Spirit's Mission from on high

*D. A. Clark's Note on Rom. viii. 15.

would therefore be unaccomplished, in case he did not impart to the children of God the knowledge of their salvation.

Should it be objected to the preceding arguments, that though they may be admitted to be evincive of the doctrine of the conscious influences of divine grace, yet they are not available to establish that speciality of character attributed to the Spirit's witness, as being immediate and direct: " We reply-It is demonstrable, that independently of such a testimony, no man can either know that his sins are pardoned, or that he is the subject of regenerating grace. Let not our meaning be misconceived. It has already been observed, that two witnesses are distinctly recognized by the apostle in the text-the witness of our spirit, as well as that of the Spirit of God. But that the deposition of our own spirit, to our adoption, cannot subsist independently of the direct attestation of the Spirit of God, is, we think, clearly evincible from the admissions of our opponents themselves.

It is a mutually accorded sentiment, between those who advocate and those who oppugn the direct witness, that the inferential evidence of salvation is founded upon a perceived agreement of our spiritual state with the biblical characteristics of a child of God. These characteristics are what the Apostle denominates-' the fruit of the Spirit,' which, he says is, "love, joy, peace, long-suffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, temperance. Gal. v. 22. Now, nothing surely can be plainer, than that these associate graces of the Spirit, which are the discriminating signs of real discipleship, must be infused into our hearts, before we can be conscious of possessing them. They must exist before we can have any perception of their existence. On this ground, therefore, no legitimate persuasion of acceptance with God can be generated in our hearts, until, born from above, we actually exhibit these adornings of the Spirit. Take the first in St. Paul's enumeration as an elucidative example. Love to God is the vital flame of religion. The man whose heart is not consciously animate with this celestial affection, is not authorised in concluding that he is regenerated. But so long as enmity against God is his dominant propensity, he cannot be conscious that he loves God. How then, it is inquired, is this natural enmity subdued, and the opposite grace diffused abroad in his heart? "We love him because he first loved us" is the appropriate and scriptural answer. Our love to God must spring. from a sense of His love to us. It is filial affection that he requires of us: but a conviction of his paternal love to us can alone enable us to love Him as children in return. Who or what can give birth to this conviction within us? Who has power to dispel our anxious doubts, with reference to our saving interest in the mercy of God? He alone, whose prerogative it is to forgive the repentant sinner, through faith in his Son. As pardon and adoption

are purely acts of the Omnipotent, the knowledge of these acts can be received by the sinner in whose behalf they take place, only by immediate communication from the Spirit of God.

"What man

knoweth the things of a man, save the spirit of a man which is in him? even so, the things of God knoweth no man, but the Spirit of God." 1 Cor. ii. 11. By the same Spirit, therefore, and by his operation alone, can they be made known to our minds. If, then, justification and adoption be acts suspended entirely upon the will of the Deity, and can be transacted only by Himself; if a persua sion that we are the privileged objects of these redeeming acts be essential to the creation of filial love to God in our hearts; if the all-searching Spirit who alone knows what passes in the divine mind touching our salvation, and only He, can impart to us the knowledge of our pardon;—and to these statements, we are sure, none can reasonably demur;-we are fully warranted in concluding, that the immediate attestation of the Holy Spirit must, in the nature of things, precede not only every other authorised persuasion of the favor of God, but the foundation also upon which such a persuasion can be superinduced; because it must precede that LOVE, which is the fulfilling of the law, and dissociated from which, all other attainments will profit us nothing.

From these considerations, we conceive, it cannot but be apparent to every one who brings to the examination of this momentous doctrine a mind unsophisticated by prejudice, that to contend for any scripture evidence of our adoption into the family of God, independent of the internal and immediate witness of His own Spirit, is to affirm what is absurd in theory, and can never exist in experience: it is, in short, to assert, that an effect may be produced without a cause.

In perfect accordance with the result to which we have been conducted by a fair investigation of this subject, is the running language of the Spirit of inspiration, in describing the inestimable priveleges by which Christians are distinguished in the present life. "At that day," our Lord assured his desponding disciples, "ye shall know that I am in my Father, and you in me, and I in you." "He that hath my commandments and keepeth them, he it is that loveth me; and he that loveth me shall be loved of my Father, and I will love him, and will manifest myself unto him." John iv. 20, 21. "But we all with open face beholding as in a glass the glory of the Lord, are changed into the same image from glory to glory, even as by the Spirit of the Lord." 2 Cor. iii. 18. "The love of God is shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Ghost which is given unto us. Rom. v. 5. "It pleased God," says Paul, "who separated me from my mother's womb, and called me by his grace, to reveal his Son in me.” Gal. i. 15, 16. And, so far was he from regarding his exalted privilege in this instance as

و,

peculiar to himself, that he explicitly represents Christ in believers (and how could He be in them but by a similar revelation?) the hope of glory, as the elevated and inspiring theme of his ministry. Col. i. 27, 28. "And grieve not the Holy spirit of God, whereby ye are sealed unto the day of redemption." Eph. iv. 30. Το these citations it may be sufficient to add the text, in connection with the preceding verse, and the parallel passage in the Epistle to the Galatians ch. iv. v. 6. Amid the pleasing and instructive varity of phrase and of allusion exhibited in these declarations, there is an observable harmony of import pervading them all. He who, on the face of such inspired announcement, does not recognize the doctrine which it has been our endeavor to explain and establish, must have prejudged the case, and be determined to adhere to his opinion; and any further attempt to dissipate his doubts, or to assist his mental vision, would be vain and inefficient.

Others, however, there may be, whose greatest preventative against the admission of the doctrine, is an impression that it is novel and unsanctioned. They have been taught to regard it as one of those innovations of modern theology, which, as it cannot plead the authority of prescription, should be condemned as imaginative and misleading.

The charge of novelty, in the present case, may very easily be repelled. "Luther," we are informed by his biographer, "received much comfort from God in his temptations, by that saying of St. Bernard, 'It is necessary to believe, first of all, that you cannot have forgiveness but by the mercy of God; and next, that through his mercy thy sins are forgiven thee. This is the witness which the Holy spirit bears in thy heart, Thy sins are forgiven thee.' And thus it is, that according to the apostle, a man is justified freely through faith." On this point, the famous Genevan reformer has delivered his sentiments, in a tone of uncompromising fidelity. Speaking of the earnest of the Spirit, he remarks: As this simile is frequently used by the apostle, so it is a very apposite one. For as the Spirit, in attesting our adoption is the pledge, and by confirming our faith in the promises is the seal; so, with equal propriety, he is called the earnest, because he ratifies the covenant between God and us, which would otherwise remain, in a manner, unsettled. Hence, it is worthy of remark, that, since this certainty transcends all human understanding, it is the office of the Holy Spirit to seal in our hearts, what God has promised in his word, and therefore is he denominated, the anointing, the earnest, the Comforter, the seal. It must also be observed, that, all who have not the Holy Spirit's witness, enabling them fully to confide in God, who has called them to the certain hope of salvation, have no just claim to the appellation of Christians."*

*Calvin's Commentator 2. Cor. 1-21, 22.