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on, that mortality might be swallowed of life. Now he that hath wrought us for the self same thing (i. e. eter"nal glory) is God, who also hath given "unto us the earnest of the Spirit. "Therefore we are always confident, "knowing that, whilst we are at home "in the body, we are absent from the "Lord: for we walk by faith, not by sight. We are confident, I say, and willing rather to be absent from the body, and to be present with the "Lord." Thus grace, inwrought in our souls by the Holy Ghost, appears to be glory in the bud. And in the state of grace, into which we are manifestatively introduced by the Holy Spirit, we have many sweet foretastes of eter nal glory.

Othou divine and Eternal Spirit! who proceedest from the Father and the Son, I believe in thy personality, and confefs and acknowledge thee to be by efsential union with the Godhead coequal and co-eternal with the Father and the Son. Thou art uncreate, incomprehensible, God, and Lord; who livest in the pofsefsion and enjoyment of all efsential perfection and blefsednefs. Thou art the Lord and giver of all spiritual life. Blefsed be thy holy name, thou givest incontestible evidence of 12 Cor. v. 1-8.

thy eternal power and Godhead in regenerating and quickening the souls of thy people with new, spiritual, and eternal life; and continuest a perpetual proof of it in the souls, which thou hast quickened, by maintaining that life in thy people, carrying on thy work in them, and crowning it in due season with everlasting glory. Help me to give thee thy true and proper glory for thy own work within me, for quickening me with spiritual life, giving me to know JESUS, and the POWER of HIS RESURRECTION, and for filling my heart at seasons with a sense of my heavenly Father's love to me in his dear Sou. Keep me ever looking up to thee for thy life-giving influences and inward anointings. Lead me continually out of myself into communion with the Father in his love, and with the Son in the benefits and blessings of his salvation. O thou holy-making spirit, sanctify me throughout in body, soul, and spirit. I ask it for the honour of thy own grace. And to thee with the Father and the Son be equal praise for ever and ever. Amen.

CHAP. IV.

On the state, which the Believer is in: and what his experience and enjoyments are.

IT

For

T requires much divine light and unction from the Spirit of God to treat of his divine and sacred energy, influ ence, and operations within and upon the souls of the regenerate. In all attempts on a subject of such vast and eternal importance great attention ought to be given to what is revealed concerning his work in the written word. though the Holy Ghost works like himself, as an Almighty agent, yet he works always agreeably to the written word. To talk of his workings and operations without the word is wholly enthusiastic. And to talk of the word, without his own life-giving energy accompanying it to our hearts, is to neglect him who only can make it unto us spirit and life. We can never fully conceive the infinite delight which the Father hath in his Son, as Mediator, and in his finished work. The everlasting acceptance, which Christ's person, righteousnefs, and sacrifice have found wth Jehovah the Father, exceeds our utmost conception. In consequence of which our Je

sus appears on his mediatorial throne, as the lamb newly slain, with his heart burning with love to his redeemed. He remembers them with everlasting kindnefs. He looks on them with inexprefsible complacency, rejoicing in them and over them to do them good. As enthroned in glory, made most blessed for ever, being rendered exceeding glad with the light of his Father's countenance, and invested with all power in Heaven and in earth, he sends down his Holy Spirit to bring home his banished ones, whose work and office in the souls of the regenerate are wholly of grace, the fruit and effect of the everlasting covenant. The Holy Ghost works within and upon them as the tracail of Christ's soul. He views them as the objects of the Father's everlasting love, and out of his own free and sovereign love towards them, he works most freely and effectually within them. Like as the Father gave the greatest evidence of his everlasting love to the elect by the gift of his Son, to live and to die for them, when they were sinners, enemies, and ungodly; hence Paul saith, "God commendeth his love to"wards us, in that while we were yet "sinners Christ died for us:" and as Christ manifested his love, when we

a Rom. v. 8.

were in our sins and in our blood; for he loved us and gave himself for us, and was made sin and a curse for us, and washed us from our sins in his own blood; so the Holy Spirit, whose love is fixed on the persons of his people, and who loves them as the elect of God and the members of Christ's mystic body with the same everlasting love, with which the Father and the Son do, is also on his part pleased to give such a demonstration of it, when they are dead in trespasses and sins, as proves it to be wholly of grace. His whole work within them and on them is but the fruit and effect of his love. God's election is an

election of persons. Christ died for persons. The Holy Ghost works on persons. And his work is eternal and will last for ever. His work, when truly, scripturally, and properly explained, is strictly pure gospel. It consists in bringing the elect into the state of knowing the Lord, in furnishing them by his new-creation within them with those spiritual and supernatural faculties, which capacitate them for the enjoyment of the Father's love, and for communion with Christ in all the benefits and blessings of his salvation, and in leading them off entirely from every hope, but in the Lord alone. The foundation of which is laid in Jesus.