SEAM I.] INWARD WITNESS TO CHRISTIANITY. 7 the Father to take care of sinful and guilty souls, to re- move and cancel their guilt by his sacrifice, and invest themwith a perfect righteousness, to begin the workof grace in them, to fill them with principles of holiness, andby degrees to fit them for his glory : such a soul is a believer on the Son of God; and such a soul has the witness in himself, that our religion is divine, and that christianity is"from above. II. The second thing I proposed to consider, is, What is this inward witness that faith gives to the truth of christianity? At the first promulgation of the gospel, there were some souls overpowered with present miracles, attended with a divine light shining into them. This was such as they could nót resist, such as carried glorious evidence with it, and effectually wrought upon them to believe that our religion was from heaven, that Christ was the Son of God, and that his name was the only ground of hope for salvation. This was miraculous and extraor- dinary, and not to be expected every day now; such was the conversion of St. Paul to christianity, and many such instances of miracles appeared in the first seasons of the gospel. But thewitness. that the apostle John speaks of in my text, is such as belongs to every believer. It is an uni- versal proposition. He that believes, has the witness in himself: In order therefore to enquire into the nature of this testimony, I shall not lead you, nor myself, into the land of blind enthusiasm, that region of clouds and darkness, that pretends to divine light. The apostle does not mean here a strong impulse, an irrational and ungrounded assurance that our religion is true. Many times these vehement impulses are but the foolish firesof fancy, that give the enquiring traveller no steady light or conduct, but lead him far astray from truth. Chris -. tianity has a better witness than this; being such as be- longs to every believer, it must approve itself to the reason of men. And I will endeavour to explain it thus according to scripture. Let it be first noted here, that the word witness is used frequently, by our translators, to signify testimony, u4
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy OTcyMjk=