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thought is connected with another thought, and that with another, and so on, till we are lost in the distance or the crowd. Now, we ask, Is that which God doth by means less his doing than if it were performed without means? Is not the last effect as much his as the first? Who gave us this year a plentiful harvest? You say, God. You say right, because God formed six thousand years ago sun and earth, air and water, wheat and barley, and fixt all in such a state that they came to you last harvest exactly in such proportion as he at first pointed them. One great argument for the truth of the Christian religion is, that it exactly resembles the world of nature, and so proves itself to be the work of the same God; and if it were not so, if religion were not like other things, which we are sure God made, we should have no certain rules to know, when we received a religion, whether it were a body of truth coming from God to make us happy, or a set of errours contrived by wicked men to make us miserable. Did ever any man conceive that the sun, or the air, or the water, or the trees, or fish, fowl, and cattle, were the invention and production of man? Nobody ever thought so. Why? Because they have characters of size, shape, duration, and perfection, above all the skill and power of man to produce. Bring forth ten thousand things to view having the same characters of perfection in their kind, and we instantly know the maker; but produce something with different characters, and the author becomes doubtful, and it is no further probable that he created it than as it resembles his other works. Apply this to our subject. If God regenerates us by means, if he makes us wise by informing us of truth, and good by proposing good reasons to us for being so, then religion resembles his other works; but if we be wise without truth, and good without motive, then a new work appears without the characters of his other works, and consequently without any evidence to persuade us it is his. Thus, reason seems to plead for the truth of our notion of the work of the Holy Spirit. The chief objection against this account seems to me a strong reason in favour of it. If this account be true,

say some, the work of the Spirit may be explained and described as clearly as any other part of religion, and we shall know what the work of the Spirit is; whereas we have been taught to believe that the work is a mystery, which no man knoweth, no, not he that receiveth it, and this notion seems confirmed by this text, "The wind bloweth where it listeth, and thou hearest the sound thereof, but canst not tell whence it cometh, and whither it goeth: so is every one that is born of the Spirit." In answer to this, and every other objection taken from Scripture, we have proposed to make a second reflection on the language of Scripture concerning this subject, and we shall put the passages into two classes.

In the first we put such as speak of this work under figures or similitudes; as where the Spirit is said to be like wind, fire, water. All Scriptures of this kind are explained by one distinction between the nature and the effects of things. It is one thing to know the nature of fire, and air and water, and it is another to know the effects they produce. No man fully knows the first; but the last are as clear as daylight. Is there a man in this assembly, who doth not know what effect fire will produce in wood or water, and wind in mill work, and so on? When our Lord said, Every one that is born of the Spirit is so as you, Nicodemus, are in the wind, he knows the effects, and that knowledge is sufficient to direct his actions; my instructions are intended to make men good men, and not philosophers: observe, it was Nicodemus who said, How can these things be? And the reproof given him by Jesus Christ would have been improper, had the subject been a mystery; "Art thou a master of Israel and knowest not these things?" We speak that we do know, and testify that we have seen. The subject of their conversation was not the nature of the Spirit, but his influences in religion. Now, said our Lord, the religion I teach is spiritual; it doth not stand like yours in "meats and drinks, and divers washings, and carnal ordinances imposed until the time of reformation for the purifying of the flesh," but in effects upon the mind and heart: you see no temple, no priesthood, no sacrifices in my religion: let not this of

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fend you; my religion resembles the wind, which no man ever saw, but the effects of which you and all othmen perfectly understand. "The wind bloweth where it listeth, and thou hearest the sound thereof, but canst not tell whence it cometh, and whither it goeth: so is every one that is born of the Spirit." In this manner expound all the passages that speak of the Spirit's work under similitudes, and you will find no difficulty in them.

In a second class I put all such Scriptures as describe the work of the Spirit. The apostle Peter had seen a great deal of this work, and one day of his life, such a day as that in which "three thousand souls were added," produced more and better experiments than ordinary teachers have an opportunity of seeing in their whole life. He saw religion in every form, and examined single conversions, separately and alone, and his whole life was a course of experiments, a part of which are recorded in Acts; and we have reason to believe, though we have no account of the twenty-four last years of his life in Scripture, that he continued to old age in the exercise of instructing and converting mankind, or, as our Lord calls it, "feeding the lambs and the sheep" of Christ. The testimony of such a man is extremely respectable. It is a testimony of inspiration explained and confirmed by experiment. Now he says, that the "strangers scattered throughout Pontus," and other countries, who were "elect through sanctification of the Spirit," were "born again of incorruptible seed by the word of God, which word by the Gospel was preached unto them." This account of regeneration is partly literal, and partly figurative. The Gospel is the word of God... the Gospel was preached unto you... these are literally true; the Gospel containing the word of God which was preached unto you, is an "incorruptible seed," of which you were born again; these are figurative expressions, and must be expounded by the literal terms, and clearly mean a dependence of the three excellences that constitute a regenerate man on the three principal parts of religion, in which they had been instructed. The Gospel proposes a set of clear

truths:

Christians examine and believe these truths. The Gospel proposes a set of motives: Christians feel these motives; fear hell, desire heaven, love holiness, and so on. The Gospel proposes a set of rules to live by Christians reduce these rules to practice. Christians thus are born into a new world, having the new powers necessary to live in that world: they have new objects and new ideas: they have new motives and new feelings they have new laws and a new life. The apostle not only saw all this in others, but he felt all this exemplified in himself. He was in the exercise of his trade,"casting a net into the sea," when a person walking on the beach called to him, and said, "Follow me, and I will make you a fisher of men." This word

of the Lord was like that at the creation, "Let there be light;" and the history of the rest of Peter's existence may be contained in this word, "There was light." When he afterwards fell into a swoon, and returned again to sin and to fishing, he was "begotten again, unto a lively hope," not without means, but "by the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead." Here is the work, the whole ordinary work of the Holy Spirit, but all wrought by means: these strangers "purified their souls in obeying the truth through the Spirit," that is through the knowledge of things reported unto them, by them that preach the Gospel with the Holy Ghost sent down from heaven," to enable the preachers to speak the divers tongues of these strangers, and of all others to whom they were sent, that so their faith might stand on what they clearly understood.

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Strictly speaking, there are two kinds of passages in the New Testament descriptive of this work: the first are short, and are a sort of first principles, and these are mostly in the Epistles; as "If any man be in Christ he is a new creature... my preaching was in demonstration of the Spirit... your faith stands in the power of God... God called you unto the fellowship of his Son ... God shined in our hearts...the power is not of us, but of God." This is the first sort of passages; but there is a second class, which show us these first principles in real action, and this sort is in the Gospels, and in the Acts

of the apostles, and by these the former are expounded. What would you know of a tree by seeing it in its first principles? Could you know an oak by seeing an acorn, or a briar and a hawthorn by seeing hips and haws? An acorn is an oak in principle, and an oak is an acorn drawn out in practice. Explain the short principles in the Epistles to the Corinthians by the history of the conversion of the Corinthians in the Acts of the Apostles. Paul's preaching was in demonstration of the Spirit, that is, he was "pressed in Spirit" at Corinth, and testified to Jews and Greeks that Jesus was Christ," and "he reasoned in the synagogue every Sabbath." The faith of the Corinthians stood in the "power of God," that is, the reasoning of Paul "persuaded the Jews and the Greeks," who "hearing, believed." If any Corinthian be in Christ, he, the man, is a new creature; that is, the Corinthians, who had been heathens and Jews, when they "believed on the Lord, were baptized into that new and holy religion, Christianity. God shined in our hearts, I planted, Apollos watered; that is, I "continued a year and six months teaching the word of God among you," and Apollos, after he had been instructed by Aquila and Priscilla, "helped them much which had believed through grace, for he mightily convinced the Jews, shewing by the Scriptures that Jesus was Christ." The apostle had a right to conclude, that though they were "labourers together with God," yet the Corinthians were "God's husbandry, God's building." God created Paul and Apollos; he converted the one in an extraordinary way, and the other by ordinary means of instruction; but Aquila and Priscilla were his, the Scripture was his; "neither is he that planteth any thing, neither he that watereth, but God that giveth the increase." In this manner expound Scriptures by them, selves, and observe all along that it is granted on all hands, the conversion of a sinner is the work of the Holy Spirit, and all the honour of it due to him, and the only inquiry is, whether he doth this work with means or without them, and if without them, what is the use, the pure and proper use of means.

This brings us to our last reflection on Christian ex