such persons, there could be no true reports of the matter. And therefore to consult uninspired persons, and such as deny and reproach the pretence. to inspiration, to be rightly instructed about the truth of immediate continual divine inspiration, is a degree of blindness greater than can be charged. upon the old Jewish Scribes and Pharisees.

The reports that are to be acknowledged as true: concerning the Holy Spirit and his operations, are those that are recorded in Scripture; that is, the Scriptures are an infallible history, or relation of that which the Holy Spirit is, and does, and works in true believers; and also an infallible direction how we are to seek, and wait, and trust in his good power over us. But then the Scriptures themselves, though thus true and infallible in these, reports and instructions about the Holy Spirit, yet› ‹ they can go no farther than to be a true history; they cannot give to the reader of them the possession, the sensibility, and enjoyment of that which they relate. This is plain, not only from the nature of a written history or instruction, but from the express words of our Lord, saying, " Except a. man be born again of the Spirit, he cannot see or enter into the kingdom of God." Therefore, the new birth from above, or of the Spirit, is that alone which gives true knowledge and perception of that which is the kingdom of God.. The history may relate truths enough about it; but the kingdom of

- God, being nothing else but the power and presence of God dwelling and ruling in our souls, this can only manifest itself, and can manifest itself to nothing in man but to the new birth. For every thing else in man is deaf and dumb and blind to the kingdom of God; but when that which died in Adam is made alive again by the quickening Spirit from above, this being the birth which came at first from God, and a partaker of the divine nature, this knows, finds, and enjoys the kingdom of God.

"I am the way, the truth, and the life," says Christ. This record of Scripture is true; but what a delusion, for a man to think that he knows and finds this to be true, and that Christ is all this benefit and blessing to him, because he assents, consents, and contends, it may be, for the truth of those words. This is impossible. The new birth is here again the only power of entrance; every thing else knocks at the door in vain. " I know you not," says Christ, to every thing but the new birth. "I am the way, the truth, and the life;" this tells us neither more nor less than if Christ had said, I am the kingdom of God, into which nothing can enter, but that which is born of the Spirit.

Here again may be seen, in the highest degree of certainty, the absolute necessity of immediaté divine inspiration, through every part of the Chris

tian life. For if a birth of the spirit is that alone that can enter into, or receive the kingdom of God come amongst men, that alone which can find Christ to be the way, the truth, and the life, then a continual life, or breathing of the spirit in us, must be as necessary as the first birth of the spirit; for a birth of the spirit is only to make a beginning of a life of the spirit. Birth is only in order to life; if, therefore, the life of the spirit continues not, the birth is lost, and the cessation of its breathing in us is nothing else but death again to the kingdom of God, that is, to every thing that is or can be godly. Therefore, the immediate continual inspiration of the Spirit, as the only possible power and preservation of a godly life, stands upon the same ground, and is as absolutely necessary to salvation, as the new birth.

Take away this power and working life of the spirit from being the one life of all that is done in the church, and then, though it be ever so outwardly glorious in its extent, or ever so full of learned members, it can be nothing else in the sight of God but the wise Greeks and the carnal Jews become a body of water-baptised Christians. For no one can be in a better state than this; the wisdom of the Greek, the carnality of the Jew, must have the whole government of him, till he is born of and led by the Spirit of God; this alone is the king. dom of God, and every thing else is the kingdom

of this world, in which Satan is declared to be the prince. Poor, miserable man! that strives, with all the sophistry of human wit, to be delivered from the immediate continual operation and government of the Spirit of God, not considering, that where God is not, there is the devil, and where the spirit rules not, there all is the work of the flesh, though nothing be talked of but spiritual and Christian matters. I say talked of; for the best ability of the natural man can go no farther than talk, and notions, and opinions, about Scripture words and facts; in these he may be a great critic, an acute logician, a powerful orator, and know every thing of Scripture, except the Spirit and the truth.

How much, then, it is to be lamented, as well as impossible to be denied, that though all Scripture assures us, that the things of the Spirit of God are and must, to the end of the world, be foolishness to the natural man, yet from one end of learned Christendom to the other, nothing is thought of as the true and proper means of attaining divine knowledge, but that which every natural, selfish, proud, envious, false, vain-glorious, worldly man can do. Where is that divinity student who thinks, or was ever taught to think, of partaking of the light of the gospel, any other way than by doing with the Scriptures that which he does with pagan writers, whether poets, orators, or comedi

ans, viz. exercise his logic, rhetoric, and critical skill, in descanting upon them? This done, he is thought by himself, and often by others, to have a sufficiency of divine apostolical knowledge. What wonder, therefore, if it should sometimes happen, that the very same vain, corrupt, puffing literature, that raises one man to be a poet-laureat, should set another in a divinity chair?

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How is it that the logical, critical, learned Deist comes by his infidelity? Just by the same help of the same good powers of the natural man, as many a learned Christian comes to know, embrace, and contend for the faith of the gospel. For, drop the power and reality of divine inspiration, and then all is dropt that can set the believer above, or give him any godly difference from the infidel. For the Christian's faith has no goodness in it, but that it comes from above, is born of the Spirit; and the deist's infidelity has no badness in it, but because it comes from below, is born of the will of flesh, and of the will of men, and rejects the necessity of being born again out of the corruption of fallen nature. The Christian, therefore that rejects, reproaches, and writes against the necessity of immediate divine inspiration, pleads the whole cause of infidelity; he confirms the ground on which it stands, and has nothing to prove the goodness of his own Christianity, but that which equally proves to the deist the goodness of his infidelity.

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