of perdition. Go tell them all what you really are, and undceieve them; and tell them never to lift up either cry or prayer for you-"There is a sin unto death; I do not say he shall pray for it.' Tell them that all your faith was nothing but presumption, and all your claims upon God were unwarrantable and daring intrusions-' And the soul that doeth aught presumptuously that soul shall be destroyed from among his people.' You will now be held up to contempt, and be made a public example to deter others; yea, a fugitive and a vagabond shalt thou be in the earth.' And, as for me, I will harass, worry, and drive you, as I did the mad Gadarene into the wilderness. I never sweat nor tire. I will pursue you with unremitted violence, till I drive you mad and desperate.

"Law sinners, that know nothing of the will of God in the gospel, will be beaten with few stripes; the heathen, who are a law to themselves, will be beaten with fewer still. But you are an impostor, a hypocrite in Zion, and a sinner against the Holy Ghost; the hottest

place in hell is your portion, and I will punish you (for I am the tormentor) worse than all the slaves I have, unless you will fall down and worship me.' It is in vain to cry to God, for there is no God; nor is it of any use to plead the promises, for the Bible is not true-I dictated it; it was compiled by cunning and designing men which I employed on purpose to decieve the simple. Hence many noblemen, and some of the most learned in all the nation, burlesque it and ridicule it as a mere fable and as an idle tale."

Thus, with violence, doth the devil break in upon the young believer and harass him, when it pleases God to leave him for the trial of his faith, and that he may know what is in his heart; and thus he used to serve me. Well may the prophet say, "The enemy comes in like a flood;" for all seems to be swept and carried away before him. Nothing appears to be left but the bare remembrance of things past, and sometimes hardly that. But, when the enemy comes in like a flood, "the Spirit of the Lord shall lift up a standard against

him." This standard is Christ Jesus. "Behold, I will lift up my hand to the Gentiles, and set up my standard to the people," Isa. xlix. 22. This standard is intended to gather together God's elect to Christ, as will appear in the following passage: "Go through, go through the gates; prepare ye the way of the people, cast up, cast up the highway; gather out the stones; lift up a standard for the people. Behold, the Lord hath proclaimed unto the end of the world, Say ye to the daughter of Zion, Behold, thy salvation cometh; behold, his reward is with him, and his work before him," Isa. lxii. 10, 11. Christ is the rod from out of the stem of Jesse ; he is the stand; ard and the ensign staff; his everlasting love is the banner; a daily cross and a crown of glory is the motto upon the banner; ministers of Christ are standard-bearers; these are commanded to go through the gates, to cast up the way, to gather out the stones, and to lift up the standard to the people. But then we can only lift up the standard to the people, not in them; whereas the enemy is said to get into them-"When the

enemy shall come in like a flood," &c. All in-door work belongs to the Holy Spirit. We can only preach to the outward ear, and set forth the Lord Jesus Christ before them; which is called lifting up a standard to them. But it is the Holy Spirit that testifies of Christ to the heart, and that lifts up the standard against Satan in the soul. And this he does by dispersing all the darkness and confusion which the devil has spread over the mind; and by subduing our inbred corruptions which the devil has stirred up, and by enlightening the understanding afresh, and presenting the Saviour as shining into the soul, and by drawing forth faith, hope, love, repentance, and godly sorrow, to go forth and flow out to him; and, at the same time, raising up and bringing forth to the believer's view the whole work of grace in his soul; by passing afresh the sentence of justification in the court of conscience, by brightening every evidence, bearing his own witness afresh, shedding abroad again God's love in the heart, and filling the soul with joy and peace in believing. Now, says the soul,

let my enemy come! No, no; Satan knows better; he will not face thee with all that armour about thee. He lays at the catch; he hates the believing voice of triumph. When he hears thee mourning alone and sitting solitary, then he will visit thee again with a, "Where is now thy God?" These are Satan's times, and he will let us know it. But still the Spirit lifts up the standard against him, and unfolds the banner of God's love, again and again, in the behalf of them that fear God, that his beloved may be delivered from the power of sin and Satan. "Thou hast given a banner to them that feared thee, that it may be displayed because of the truth. Selah. That thy beloved may be delivered; save with thy right hand, and hear me," Psal. lx. 4, 5. As sure as ever Satan obscures the blessed work, and raises doubts in the poor sinner's mind about the reality of it, so sure does the Spirit lift up the standard against him, and revives the work, and brings it forth again to the light, that we may behold the righteousness of God in it. He does it over and over again, till he