DISCOURSE XII. The extraordinary Witness of the Sjirit. ltms. viii. 18.The ápirit itself beareth witness withone slìirit that weare the children of God. TI1E SECOND PART. IT is great and divine condescension, that the blessed God should ever take any of the children of wrath, and make them the children of his love : But he condescends yet farther, when he sendsdown his own Spirit to give us notice of our adoption, and toacquaint uswith our high and holy privilege. The com- mon and ordinary method whereby the Spirit of God bears wit- ness that we are his children, is by drawing out our own spirits to search and enquire into the filial and holy disposition whichhe- himself hss wrought in our hearts, and by assisting our conscien- ces in this enquiry. 'l'hus by his gentle, easy, and insensible in- fluences upon our souls, he leads us on in a rational manner to infer andconclude, that we are born of God, because we find the image of God impressed on us, and those divine qualities wrought in us, which belong only to his children: Thishas been the sub- ject of the foregoing discourse. I proceed now to consider the extraordinary witness of the Holy Spirit, when in a more imme- diate 't and more sensible manner he raises in the hearts ofsome of his favourites a powerful and a pleasant sense of their interest in the love of God. This extraordinarywitness maybedistinguished into twokinds. 1, It may imply some very uncommon and powerful confir- mation of the ordinary and rational witness, by the mo stsensible impressions of divine love on the heart; by which it is raised to holy raptures, to heavenly joy and assurance. Perhaps the apos- tle Peter may have some respect to this ; I Peter i. 8. where speaking of Christ, he adds, whom having not seen, ye love ; in whom, though now, ye seen him not, yet believing, ye rejoice with joy unspeakable, and full ofglory. Here it is supposed in the text, that the persons tp whom he writes were conscious of their own faith in an unseen Saviour, and their love to him : and thence they could infer that they were accepted of God : But * By the word immediatehere 1 do not mean without ordinances, suchasprayer meditation, &c. but rather sudden and tpeedy. 1
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