the court of a believer's conscience his witness is so powerful and effectual that neither law, devil, nor sin, which is represented as crying to heaven, no, nor even conscience itself, is suffered to speak. And this witness is true, and is no lie; and we are to abide in him. I know that Jacob set up a pillar at Bethel; and that Laban and Jacob gathered a heap of stones together at Mount Gilead, and called them witnesses: but these were only to help the treacherous memory of persons who are apt to forget, as Jacob did, when God bid him arise and go up to Bethel, where he anointed the pillar.

Power and authority, qualifying, equipping, and investing men with offices, must be personal works. "You shall receive power after that the Holy Ghost is come upon you. To one is given the word of wisdom, to another faith, to another divers kinds of tongues, to another the interpretation of tongues; and all these worketh that one and the self-same spirit." "Take heed to yourselves,

and to the flock over which the Holy Ghost hath made you overseers, Acts xx. 28. And, as they ministered to the Lord, and fasted, the Holy Ghost said, Separate me Barnabas and Saul for the work whereunto I have called them. So they, being sent forth by the Holy Ghost, departed," Acts xiii. 2, 4. "And they were forbidden of the Holy Ghost to preach the word in Asia. And they essayed to go into Bithynia, but the Spirit suffered them not." Now, upon the whole, if speaking, teaching, leading; qualifying men with grace, gifts, and abilities for the ministerial work; furnishing them with wisdom and knowledge, and giving them divers kinds of tongues; appointing them to the office of overseers, and telling them what to say; giving them readiness of mind, aptitude and utterance in speaking; telling them where to go, and forbidding them to go here and there, where he had no work for them to do, at least not at that season-if these are not personal works and actions what are?

C

There are some, I believe, in the world, who deny the very being of a God: "The fool hath said in his heart, There is no God." These must be left to be convinced by the torments of the damned. But I believe there are very few, who profess to believe the Bible, but will allow that there is one divine person in the Godhead, which is in general allowed to be God the Father; though many will not allow the Saviour to be a person, although he is his only-begotten Son, the Son of the Father in truth and love: and still less will they allow divine personality to the Holy Ghost; though the scriptures ascribe the same personal characters, properties, works, and actions, to the Son and to the Spirit, as they do to God the Father. Therefore, if the Father be a person, the Son and Spirit must. The work of creation is ascribed to the Holy Ghost, as well as to the Son and to the Father: "The Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters." He operated upon the confused chaos, and brought

it into beautiful order. "By his Spirit he hath garnished the heavens, his hand hath formed the crooked serpent," Job xxvi. 18. "By the Word of the Lord were the heavens made, and all the hosts of them by the breath of his mouth," Psalm xxxiii. 6. Here the creation of the heavens is ascribed to the essential Word and to the holy Spirit. "Thou sendest forth thy Spirit, they are created, and thou renewest the face of the earth," Psalm xxxiv. 30. Here is the work of creation ascribed to the Spirit, and it is he that renews the face of the earth every spring. The creation of man is ascribed to the Holy Spirit also. "The Spirit of God hath made me, and the breath of the Almighty hath giveǹ me life," Job xxxiii. 4.

Nor was the Holy Spirit a spectator when Christ appeared for our salvation. It was the Holy Ghost that came upon the Virgin Mary at her conception, and that formed the human nature which Christ assumed, and preserved it from every stain or spot of

original sin, and then rested upon him ' with all his fulness of gifts and grace. He applied the word which the Saviour spoke, and displayed his power in the miracles that he wrought; and those that blasphemed either his words or his power blasphemed against the Holy Ghost. It was through the eternal Spirit that he offered himself in sacrifice to God, and it was the same Spirit that quickened our Lord's body in the tomb. "He was put to death in the flesh, but quickened by the Spirit." And under his great power the apostles gave witness of the resurrection of the Lord Jesus; and hence it is said that he is "declared to be the Son of God with power, according to the [testimony of] the Spirit of holiness, by the resurrection from the dead," Rom. i. 4.

Making the saints meet for heaven lies much upon the Holy Ghost. It is he that applies the word, and makes it effectual: the word comes in power, and in the Holy Ghost; he convinces of sin; and it is the Spirit that quick