:

ers; He is omnipotent to deliver and defend me from all my enemies: He is faithful to perfect and perform all his own promises He is eternal and immortal to bless my poor depending soul, with eternal blessedness and immortality. O what a great and glorious Saviour for such a mean and worthless sinner! O what a bountiful and graciously indulgent friend for such a base and insignificant rebel! What, what am I, when I compare myself and all I am of myself, with what I can conceive of my God, and of what He hath kindly promised even to me! What a mystery am I, to myself, to angels, to men! A worm of earth to be like a star of heaven; a corruptible sinner to be an incorruptible saint; a rebel to be made a child; an outlaw to become an heir; a deserver of hell to be an inheritor of heaven; a strong hold of the devil to be changed into a temple of God; an enemy and a beggar to be exalted to a throne, to be in friendship with God, one with Christ, a possessor of his Spirit, and of all this honour, happiness, and glory, for evermore; and all without any right to any one thing on my part, but the miseries of the lowest hell! O what manner, and what matter, of love is this! Lord, take my heart, my soul, my all! I can render thee no more and I would render thee no less. "Tis indeed a poor return. My body and soul are but two mites; and yet (glory be to thee!) Thou who didst esteem those of the poor widow, wilt not despise these of mine. Lord, they are thine own too: And I can only give thee what is thine! I melt with gratitude; and even this gratitude is thy gift. O take it, and accept both it and me; blessing me in thyself, which is all my salvation and all my desire, for ever and ever!"

May this be the language of thy heart, reader, with increasing fervor, till thou art translated from this sickening, dying scene, to the life immortal, to the joys ineffable, and, above all, to the King eternal, who having loved his own, with an everlasting love, will love them to the end on earth, and world without end in heaven!

HOLY SPIRIT,

O R,

SPIRIT OF HOLINESS.

THA HAT Godis a Spirit, is agreed on by every one who believs there is a God at all. Even those, who have maintain. ed the grossest opinions of his nature, have allowed that he must at least be that Anima Mundi, the Soul or Spirit of the uni. verse, which pervades the whole material system, and unites, invigorates, and moves all corpuscular being. What Spinoza and the whole tribe of atheists term nature, is, when they explain themselves, visible substance enlivened and energized by an invisible one, which they allow is too subtle for sense, and therefore is called by the name of Spirit. The heathens were full as knowing as our modern philosophers about this sublime subject; and the most ignorant are just as wise as both of them, without a light superior to reason.

The me

morable words of Virgil (however he obtained the idea) are as expressive as any heathens of later times, and, because fewer, much less impertinent. He says of the whole creation, that

SPIRITUS intus alit; totamque infusa per artus
MENS agitat molem, et magno se corpore miscet.*
En. vi. 726.

Here mind and spirit are synonimous, which he represents as pervading and actuating all things: And in another place, he calls this agent God.†

* See Macrobius's comment upon these words, in Somn. Scip. lib. 1. c. 14. where he collects the sentiments of the antient philosophers on this matter.

t

Terras, Tractusque Maris, Calumque profundum

Georg. iv. 221.

As we can know nothing by ourselves but through the medium of sense, which likewise can perceive nothing but what has relation to matter, we have no real compréhension of pure abstracted Spirit, further than we can conceive any substance or being to be void of matter. We therefore unBut if we

derstand rather what it is not, than what it is.
could form a notion of what it is, we must yet be more puz-
zled about the modus existendi, or bow it is, than we are al-
ready upon the existence of material objects. Our senses
discern these, as to their being and reality; and yet neither
our senses nor intellect can investigate their mode and com-
position. Thus ignorant is man concerning the plainest sub-
jects before his eyes; and with the wisest of the heathens, he
may truly in this strictness of consideration, confess, that be
knows nothing. The philosopher was wise enough to know
that some later heathens have thought, on the contrary;
that they could soar much higher; and some have aimed so
high as even to define God himself, not considering that he is
necessarily indefinable. Socrates owned his ignorance; but
these men prove their's; for, while they tell us God is an
infinite being, they limit him by their conceptions and out of
their own heads, expressly lay down, what he is, and bow he
is; nay, what and how he must be. O the folly of man,
whose whole being is but an atom, and his life a moment, and
who yet pretends to comprehend incomprehensibility itself,
and to set bounds to the Most High! Whereas God cannot be
defined, because to define is to limit; and to limit infinitude
is an absurdity. Names are ascribed to him indeed, and at-
tributes, not as they fully express his nature, which is inex-
pressible, but as they convey some faint notices of his exalt-
ed perfections, sufficient to preserve the mind from vain ima-
ginations or gross conceptions of his being.

The word or revelation of God turns upon a very different principal. It lays down as a fixed and absolute truth, that man knows nothing of God, nothing of Spiritual being, and (what is more humbling yet) nothing of himself, without God's instruction. Upon this ground, among others, we apprehend the necessity of a divine revelation, and can perceive, that if our notions of God, of the universe, and of ourselves, are not taken from this his own communication; they at best must be uncertain, and are most probably false. To say, that God hath given us reason to discern the true from the erroneous, and that all our ideas must be squared by that rule, is only saying at the most, that we have obtained a capacity to receive ideas upon the subject, not to originate them, and a power to reject what our intellectual sense does not approve or delight in. But if, upon proof, this capacity of ours, this boasted reason, be a mutilated energy and a perverted prin

ciple; it can be trusted no farther, than itself is squared by some more perfect rule; for, otherwise, in the disquisition of things, and especially of those which transcend all animal sensation, it can afford us no certain and infallible conclusions; and if not such conclusions, then only can it lead us into inextricable doubt. Of this we have a demonstrable proof in the endless variety of opinions, which men form upon all subjects; yet they will all profess, that their respective notions are founded in reason. This proves the error of that boasted faculty, and the impossibility of its being a rule, especially in things which are above human nature, or which relate to the divine. Reason here becomes irrational, if it presume to steer without chart or compass, and even condemns its own advocates in rejecting HIM and his declarati ons, who, as the great author of reason, cannot be supposed to act without it. We may not see the whole of his reason, because our participation of it would be finite, if it were not corrupt; but we may be assured, that it must be right, and infinitely right, because God is infinite, and can utter no

wrong.

In condescension to our capacities, God hath revealed himself under names and notices, which may best strike our senses, the channel of all our reasonings, and the medium by which we know. He calls himself by the word Spirit, which refers to air or breath, or that subtle fluid, by the respiration of which all things live; because it is a substance of the most subtile and refined exility or nature, which our sense can discern. Analogous to this air or breath in the animal life is the ALMIGHTY SPIRIT, by which all spiritual beings exist and proceed. What the air in motion, is to the material world; that (as we learn from his own revelation) is the divine Spirit to the whole spiritual world. We can ascend no higher than this notion of his existence, and

* Lord BACON excellently says; Prærogativa Dei totum hominem complectitur: nec minus ad rationem quam ad voluntatem humanam extenditur. Quare, sicut legi divinæ obedire tenemur, licet reluctetur voluntas; ita et verbo Dei fidem habere, licet reluctetur ratio. Etenim si ea duntaxat credamus quæ sunt rationi nostræ consentanea, rebus adsentimur, non auctori: quod etiam suspectæ fidei testibus præstare solemus. Quanto igitur mysterium aliquod divinum fuerit magis absonum et incredible, tanto plus in credendo exhibetur honoris Deo, et fit victoria fidei nobilior. Quin etiam, si attente rem perpendamus, dignius quiddam est credere quam scire, qualiter scimus. In scientia enim mens humana patitur a sensu, qui a rebus materiatis resilit: in fide autem anima patitur cb anima, que est agens nobilius. De Augm. Scient. lib. ix. De his plura apud WITSIUM in Exercita de usu et abusú rationis. f. 23. &c.

the communication of it. Our senses are confined to matter,
and, at present, prevent us. Only when we are disembodied
can we know even as we are known. This will be truly seeing
the face of God, and enjoying his presence.
We shall have

another manner of being, and, of course, a different compre-
hension of all things. In this world it is not necessary for
us to know more than God hath been pleased to reveal: And,
upon the ground of his revelation, we cannot be mistaken,
because he cannot deceive.

God, then, is a Spirit; and, consequently, the three hypostases or persons, in which He exists, must be, distinctly, and conjuncly, Spirit too. God, otherwise, would not be that pure and uncompounded being, which he hath revealed himself to be. He is pure Spirit, because pure act. Each person in the divine nature, being essential in it, must likewise be this pure Spirit, or pure act: "Without quality "good, great without quantity, everlasting without time, present every where without place, containing all things "without extent.*

The Deity is revealed under the name of Spirit, in order to declare, that all existences, both corporeal and incorporeal, derive their spirit, or life and being, from him. He is spirit in the fountain: The creatures are only so as streams proceeding from him. The will and power of the Godhead gave them their entity. Hence Aratus the heathen poet, quoted by St. Paul, could justly sing of himself and others, We are bis affspring.

But though Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, are one God and Spirit, as to the immateriality and transcendent sublimity of the divine nature; yet one of the three persons is economically and emphatically distinguished by the names of Holy Spirit, Spirit of Jehovah, Spirit of Alebim, and the Spirit, because it is his office, in the covenant of grace, to put that, spirit and life into his fallen people, which they lost in their progenitor by sin. They become spiritual by his agency. Not that the Father and Son do not concur in it, for the energy of the Godhead ad extra is one; but it is the Holy Spirit's express appointment to carry on that energy to effect salvation. He works in unity with the Father; and therefore he is called the Spirit of the Father, Eph. iii. 16. He works likewise in unity with the Son, and therefore he is styled the Spirit of the Son, Gal. iv. 6. And he works of himself, in perfect conjunction with the Father and the Son. Thus he divideth his gifts as he will, 1 Cor. xii. 11. and is therefore by himself a sovereign agent; and yet the communion of

* Bishop HALL. Decad. iv. epist. 7. MORNAUS De Verit. Rel. xỉ. C. 4.

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