XlcTLON 11. 50 obedience; 1 Pet. i. 2'. and in verse 22. Ye have pxrfed .your souls in obeying the truth through the Spirit fe. And does St. John nmeani only the extraordinary; gifts of the HolySpirit, when be speaks to :ál1 christians, to fathers, young men and children and tells them, Ye have au unction from the holy One which rbideth iii yois, and teacheth,you all things, that is, all things necessary to salvation ; I John ii. 20, 27. And many other ex- pressions there are of this kind which are scattered through the New Testament : " Nö Mau can say Jesus is Lord, but by the Holy Spirit ;" 1 Cor, xii. 3.:" Ye are the epistle of Christ written, notwith ink, but with the Spirit of the living God ;" 2 Cor. iii. 3. " If the Spirit of him that raised Jesus from the dead dwell in you, he shall quicken your mortal bodies by his Spirit that dbelleth in you ;" Rom. viii. 11. " Ye are budded together for a habitation of God through the Spirit ;" Ephes ii. 22, with manyand,various phrases to the same purpose: Auer is not the gospel itself supposed on this account to be called the ministration of the Spirit: 2 Cor. iii. 8. Let me enquire now, would it not be a very difficult and painful task for any man of just reasoning, and a sincere conscience to interpret all these scripture-expressionsconcerning the work of the Holy Spirit on men in a just conformity to Agrippa's creed, and confine them all toextraordinary gifts, merely as an evidence of the truthof the gospel at the first promulgation of it to the world ? What! have we had nothing to do with the operations of the Spirit of God in the New Testament for these sixteen hundred years? Were all the promises of the Old Testament, concerning the blessed Spirit so entirely fulfilled in the first. age of christianity, that we have nothing new to expect from them? Are all the com- forts of this Spirit in the New Testament spent and exhausted, . so thatnone of them remain for christians in our day ? And is the same gospel now become a spiritless gospel tomen, without a divine converter, or a divine comforter ? VII. In the seventh place I would ask leave to put this question also to Agrippa andhis friends. Are not the sacraments of baptism and the Lord's-supper generally and justlyesteemed` to be comprehensive emblems of the peculiar glories of christi- unity, and Were they not instituted tokeep in mind the chief and most special blessings of thegospel, the peculiar and important doctrines of the blessed Jesus ? Now what is it these two sacra- ments represent to us ? Does not baptism design to exhibit the purification of our souls from sin, and the change of our tem- pers to holiness by the Spirit of God, which is represented as rivers of water, as clean water, either poured out or sprinkled upon us ; Ezek. xxxvi. 25. which shall make us clean and holy ? And in allusion to this, does not Christ himself tell us, that we mustbe born of water and of the Spirit, if ever we would see the
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