X TO THE ment and the New,_ directions being therein added for their discovery and disprovement. But if we must therefore reject the true and real operationsof the Spi- rit of God, the principal preservativeagainst our being deceived by them, we may as well reject the owning of God himself; because the devil bath imposed himself on mankind as the object of their worship. Wherefore as to enthusiasms of any kind, which might possibly give countenance unto any diabolical suggestions, we are so far from affirming any operations of the Holy Ghost to consist in them, or in any thing like unto them, that we allow no pretenceof them to be consistent there- withal. And we have a sure rule to try all these things by, which as we ere bound in all such cases precisely to attend unto, so hath God promised the assistance of his Spirit that they be not deceived, unto them who do it in sincerity. What some men intend by impulses I know not. If it be especial aids, assistances and in- clinations unto duties, acknowledged to be such, and the duties of persons so assisted and inclined, and that peculiarly incumbent on them in their pre- sent circumstances, it requires no small caution that under an invidious name we reject not those supplies of grace which are promised unto us, and which we are bound to pray for. But if irrational impressions, or violent inclinations unto things or actions, which are not acknowledged duties in themselves, evidenced by the word of truth, and so unto the persons so affected in their present conditions and circumstances, are thus expressed; as we utterly abandon them, so no pretence is given unto them from any thing which we believe concerning the Holy Spirit and his operations. For the wholework which we assign unto him, is nothing but that whereby we are enabled to perform that obe- dience unto God which is required in the scripture, in the way and manner wherein it is required. And it is probably more out of enmity unto him than us, where the contrary is pretended. The same may besaid con- cerning revelations. They are of two sorts, objective and subjective. Those of the former sort, whether they contain doctrines contrary unto that of the scrip- ture, or additional thereunto, or seemingly confirma. READERS. tory thereof, they are all universally to be rejected, the former being absolutely false, the latter useless. Neither have any of the operations of the Spiritpleaded for the least respect unto them. For he having finished the whole work of external revelation, and closed it in the scripture, his whole internal spiritual work is suited and commensurate thereunto. By subjective revela- tions nothing is intended, but that work of spiritual illumination, whereby we are enabled to discern and understand the mind of God in the scripture, which theapostleprays for in the behalf of all believers, (Eph. i. 17, 18, 19.) and whose nature God assisting shall be fully explained hereafter. So little pretence there- fore there is for this charge on them by whom the efficacious operations of the Spirit of God are as- serted, as that without them, we have no absolute se- curity that we shall be preserved from being imposed on by them, or some of them. But itmay be, it will be said at last, that our whole labour in declaring the work of the Spirit of God in us, and towards us, as well as what we have now briefly spoken in the vindication of it from these or the like imputations isaltogether vain, seeing all we do or say herein is nothing but canting with unintelligible ex- pressions.- So some affirm indeed, before they have produced their charter wherein they are constituted the sole judges ofwhat words, what expressions, what way of teaching is proper in things of this nature. But by any thing that yet appears, they seem to be as unmeet for the exercise of that dictatorship herein, which they pretend unto, as any sort of men that ever undertook the declaration of things sacred and spiritual. Where- foreunless they come with better authority than as yet they can pretend unto, and give a better example of their own way and manner of teachingsuch things than as yet they have done, we shall continue to make scrip- ture phraseology our rule and pattern in thedeclaration of spiritual things, and endeavour an accommodation of all our expressions thereunto, whether to them intelli- gible or not; and that for reasons so easy to be C011.- ceived, as that they need not here be pleaded..
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