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SERM.
III.
INWARD WITNESS
TO
CHRISTIANITY.
47
Thence it
comes
to
pass,
that
when Christians
have
grown
to
a
good
degree
of
strength
in
faith,
and
great
measures
of
holiness in this world, all the
temptations
that
they
meet
with to
turn
them aside from the
doc-
trines
of
Christ,
are
esteemed
but
as
straw
and
stubble
;
they
cannot
move
nor stir
them from the faith
that
is
in Jesus, because the evidence hath
grown strong
with
years:
.
and
as
they have
attended
long upon the minis-
tration of
this gospel, they have
found more and more
of
this
eternal
life
wrought
in
their hearts
;
they
havé
got
nearer
to heaven, they have pressed
on
continually
towards perfection, they havé found sweet assurance
of
the
pardon of
sin in
their
conscience,
and
diviner sensa-
tions
of
the love
of
'God
communicated
to them,
and
their
own
love
both
to
God
and
man
increasing;
they
have found
their hearts more
averse
to
all
iniquity,
they
have felt themselves rising higher and higher above
this
world, as they have come
nearer
to
the end
of their
days
;
and a holy
contempt
of
this world has grown
bolder
:
They take
greater
delight
in
God,
and more
gustful satisfaction
in his
worship,
and
in
his
company;
Their
zeal
for
his
honour
is
warmer and
stronger;
they
are perpetually
employing themselves
in
contrivances for
the
glory
of God
among
men.
Thus
in
every
part of
this
spiritual-
life
the
testimony increases, the evidence
grows
brighter,
as
eternal
life advances
in
them.
In
the
last
place
:
As
it
is
a
growing witness,
so
it
is
such an one
as
never can
be
utterly
lost;
and
that
cha-
racter
of
it
is
derived from the very
name, for
it
is
eter-
nal
life.
Where it
is
once wrought
in
the
soul,
it
shall
be everlasting,
it
shall
never
die. The seed
of
God
abides in those
that
are
born
of
God,
1
John
iii.
9.
for
they
are
born
not
of
corruptible
seed,
but
of
incorrupti-
ble,
even
the word
of
God,
which lives
and
abides
for
ever,
1
Pet.
i.
23:
His
gospel, which
is
an
everlasting
gospel,
continues
that
heavenly work in the soul, which
that
gospel did first begin.
It
may
be
darkened
indeed,
it
may
be
hidden
for
a
season;
sometimes the
violent temptations
of
the evil
'one,
inay,
as
it
were,
stop the mouth
of
this divine wit-
ness;
and sometimes, defiling lusts rising upon the face
of
the soul,
may
darken
these evidences,
but
can
never
entirely blot
them
out.
Eternal
life -must
abide
for ever,
according
to
the name and
nature
of
it.
Though
the