INWARD WITNESS TO CHRISTIANITY. tSEÁhÍ. tir. the beginnings of that eternal life wrought in the soul; which the Son of God bestows on all believers; he that hath the Son hath life. The spiritual life of a christian runs into eternity; it is the same divine temper, the same peaceful and holy qualities of mind communicated to the believer here in the days of grace, which shall be fulfilled and perfected in the world of glory; and' this is a blessed witness to the truth of christianity; it proves with abundant evidence, that it is a religion sufficient to save souls; -for the salvation is begun in every man that receivesit. I shall . repeat no more of the foregoing discourses, but proceed immediately to answer the last question there proposed, viz. What sort of witness this is, which true faith gives to the gospel of Christ, and what are the remarkable properties of this testimony. I answer, I. It is a witness that dwells more in the heart than in the head. It is a testimony known by being felt and practised, and not by mere reasoning; the greatest reasoners may miss of it, for it is a testimony written in time heart; and upon this account it has some prerogatives above all the external arguments for the truth of christianity. This inward argument isalways at hand, when a believer is in the exercise of his graces, and acting according to his new ;nature and life : It is an argument that is not lost through the weakness of the brain, the defect of the memory, and long ábsence from books and study, to which other arguments are liable,; it is an argument that cannotbe forgotten, while true re- ligion remains in the heart,,, for it is graven there in last- ing characters. Those words of St. Paul to the Corinthians, in his se- . cond epistle, chap. iii. ver. 2, 3. have a reference to our present case: Ye are manifestly declared to be the epistle of Christ ministered by us, written not with ink but with the Spirit ofthe living God; not in tables of stone, but in fleshly tables of the heart. We have a glory in our religion, that distinguishes it from, and ad vances it above the Jewish dispensation; their lawWàs written in tables of stone, and afterwards Moses wrote it out at large in a book: But ye have something (says the apostle) written in your hearts, that proves the
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