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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
them
with
a perfect righteousness, to
begin
the work
of
grace
in
them,
to
fill
them
with
principles
of
holiness,
and
by
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
the
witness.
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
fires
of
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