with God, are as indivisible as the attributes from which (according to our notions) the willing and the acting do proceed: And, therefore, as Christ was to be the Lamb slain without the possibility of a failure, and is said, upon this ground, to bave been slain from the beginning; so the Holy Spirit was promised to be the Spirit of wisdom and revelation to his people, that they might know their salvation, but yet was ever that same Spirit of wisdom who spoke by the prophets and other boly men, and who opened his mysteries to believers, from the foundation of the world. All this was done, because the covenant and purpose of the Godhead could not but be fulfilled; for to him all things are present, and the intention and act the same. Christ could not but per

form his undertakings; nor could the Spirit fail in his. immutable determination existed in both, as persons in the Godhead: And, the whole Godhead or essence was engaged in the operations of the respective persons. There is no making sense of the Bible, but upon this foundation: And upon this foundation, there is the most wonderful harmony, wisdom, truth, righteousness, and mercy, pervading the whole of its revelation; so as to render it to those, whose understandings are open to understand it (Luke xxiv. 45.) the most delightful as well as most interesting book in the world. The want of this view hath been attended with many other wants; for when Christ and the mind of his Spirit do not appear as the basis and substratum of all religion; moral virtue, fitness, propriety, and many other fine names become mere names only, and are scarce understood in fact by those who use them. Yet the fashionable divinity of the day is founded upon these sounding words and notions-nations, which are not realized by those who talk of them, and which cannot be realized at any rate by any fallen, helpless, sinful worms, without the power of that Spirit, which many of those worms affect to ridicule or deny. It may well be called modern divinity for, God knows, it has very little connection with his most antient book the Bible.

Spiritual and eternal consolation, wrought or established in the soul, is an act of God only. Believers cannot be thus comforted but by the God of all comfort. The ground, the means, the end, of his consolation, all result from his wisdom and power. The application of the term to man, shews him to have been in a state of weakness and misery. If he were not wretched, the administration of comfort would be too superfluous an act to require so many circumstances of detail, which the Scriptures lay down concerning it. If he were not weak, and incapable of being supported by created aid; the office of a divine Comforter would be entirely useless. But, being both feeble and undone, the sound of an almighty Pare

clete, an everlasting Comforter, an omniscient Advocate, rings with unutterable delight in the awakened ear. The heart, when made alive to God and renewed, feels the need of this office; nor is the promise of this gracious aid any longer an idle tale, an enthusiastic dream, or at best a scriptural something, with which people now-a-days have nothing to do; but gled tidings, indeed, tidings of great joy, an assurance of joy unspeakable and full of glory. Let infidels, in fond conceit of themselves, affect to frown; and the profane, in equal ignorance of their own hearts, attempt to despise; the convinced sinner feels the worth of God's promise, and is neither to be laughed out of his spiritual sense by the buffoon, nor by the sophister to be tricked out of his hope. He knows that their tone, if not their bearts, will hereafter be changed, according to that striking passage in Acts v. 34, &c. and his worst wish, for the worst of them all, is, that both heart and tone, for their author's sake, may be duly changed before that hereaf ter shall come. 'Tis one thing, however, to laugh in the gaity and health of life; and quite another to rejoice in death itself, and in the nearly approaching views of a solemn cter

nity.

As Jebovab is the author of ali true consolation, so is each person in him. Hence the Father is styled, the Father of mercies, and the God of all comfort, 1 Cor. i. 3. Hence Christ is called the Paraclete, Advocate, or Comforter, 1 John ii. 1. in whom there is consolation, Phil. ii. 1. and who, with the Father, comforts his people's bearts, and gives them everlasting consolation and good hope through grace, 2 Thess. ii. 16, 17. Hence also the Spirit is the Comforter, or Advocate; and his people are privileged to walk in the comfort of the Holy Ghost, Acts ix. 31. It would be beyond the natural bound we perceive fixed to all inferior beings, if creatures were to give the consolation, the everlasting consolation, which Christ and the Spirit are said to give: It would be inverting the order of all things, if these, were they created beings, should attempt those eternal mercies, and spiritual creations, which are promised in the word to the people of God. In that case, it would be confounding subordinate with preordinate, and creature with Creator, beyond the apprehension of faith, as well as the comprehension of reason. The Scriptures hold a very different language. I JEHOVAH, and none else: 1 form the light, and create darkness; I make peace, and create affiction: I JEHOVAH do all these things. Isa. xlv. 7. When men want spritual comfort, the Scriptures speak of the consolations of God, Job xv. 11, and say, that it is Jehovah, who must

*Afliction, or sorrow, which are opposite to peace; as durkness is to light. The text hath a double antithesis.

*

comfort Zion, Is. li. 3. It must be averred concerning the creatures, in this view, what Job said of his friends, Miserable comforters are they all! There is no belp in them. But, looking to God the Father, the redeemed can bless him, who ordained them peace; looking to God the Son, they can magnify him, as the promised consolation of Israel; and looking to God the Holy Ghost, they can pray for his holy comfort, as from that other great Comforter, which was promised to console and conduct them in the way to heaven. They receive this comfort from each of the divine persons, by the agency of the third; and, from the happiest experience, can say of the whole essence or Jehovah, that he indeed is the God of all comfort, and hath extended his peace to their souls. This Comforter speaketh to the beart, and he alone; all others may visit the ear without effect, or with no better effect than music out of season. Peace is the fruit of the lips; and God may bless the voice of man in speaking about his peace: But man's voice is nothing but voice, unless God create peace to accompany it. Is. lvii. 19.

This Holy Spirit, and heavenly Comforter, is to be with his people, and to dwell in them,-to be in and with his people in all ages-at one and the same moment, in all countries-in beaven above and in earth beneath at once-without confinement; without intermisson, and without end. Is it possible then to conceive any thing like this of a creature? Who can venture to assert, that a finite being is equal to this momentous, this infinite task? Is not that to be called folly or presumption, which can dare to pronounce, that all the creatures together can create and supply such infinite and everlasting good?-The language is strong, but not too strong for the truth, that Beelzebub himself, liar as he is, hath not said it? It is a truth felt to the very bottom of hell. The mightiest angel there cannot create for himself a moment's enjoyment. of peace, or a moment's cessation from pain. Though reluctantly, yet even Satan owned the omnipotence of Christ in the flesh. He hath owned too the power of the divine Spirit in the hearts of hispeople, to the confusion of himself, and all his lying oracles.

*ANOTHER Comforter; John xiv. 16. Here is a most obvious distinction of this divine person from the Son-another personallyyet the same essentially; for he adds, I will not leave you comfortless, I will come again unto you. The former text shews the distinction, the latter the unity, of the two divine persons, in the divine essence.

† Hos. ii. 14. See Livelius's note upon the passage in LEIGH'S Crit. Sacra, in w

Tertullian, in his apology, hath several ren.arkable passages upon this subject, and makes an appeal to the senses of the Roman

This Spirit brooded, like a dove, upon the face of the troubled deep; and he warms, in tender love, the far more troubled deep of man's disordered soul. This mystic Dove visits his church (as Noab's dove, his emblem, did the ark) with the olive branch of eternal peace, prognosticates an approaching rest to the heaven-conducted vessel, and leaves it not, even when in full view of the everlasting bills. This holy Dove, in confirmation of his consolatory office, witnessed visibly for Christ at his baptisin, and afterwards spiritually abode or rested upon bim, when this emblem of his presense was seen no more. He took the name and type, possibly to express the fertility, meekness, purity, and love of his grace in the redeemed, the renewal of their minds into the same pattern by his almighty power, or, as, his true forerunner, the immediate mission of the great Redeemer. He is, in every sense, the spiritual oil to make the face shine with the splendor of his holiness, and the spiritual wine to make glad the beart of man with his consolation. Ps. civ. 15.

The usage of the term wine was to express the effect of his agency in the soul. The word wine is derived by some from the same root with the word dove, and is often used in the Scriptures to signify consolation. Thus the wise man says; Give wine to them that be of heavy hearts, Prov. xxxi. 6. that is, comfort. Come, buy wine, &c. without price. Is. lv. 1. that is, receive my free consolation. The like may be observed of other passages. And here, though it be a digression, it may not be altogether wide of our subject to remark, bow it is, that wine is employed to smybolize this effect. Its natural property is, undoubtedly, to cheer the animal spirits; and hence it it very fit to answer the spiritual idea of comfort; but, if we search a little farther, we shall find a still more cogent reason why it is used to imply consolation, and wherefore it is employed by the wisdom of God for this purpose. Christ instituted the sacrament of bread and wine for a memorial of himself: Do this (said he) in remembrance of me. We are at no loss to know, what the bread means; for he has told us, that it signified bimself, and that they, who partake of this bread, live by him. They become the members of his body. The wine, likewise, he explains to denote his blood; and commands all his disciples to drink of it, in order to live for ever. But under the law, the positive command was, that the blood of the creatures, sacrificed or unsacrificed, should by no means be tasted; and yet, here, Christ commands us to drink his own blood. The reason of these commands, consipeople then living (circ. ann. 200) for the truth of his assertion, that "the devil in the oracle, or in the possessed, would confess himself to be the devil, when challenged to declare by a Christian." Apol. c. 23.

dered together, seems very striking and important. The blood signifies the life; and man cannot live by pouring out the lives of victims under the Jewish dispensation, nor by the lives of the creatures under any dispensation. Their lives could not atone for bis forfeited life; nor could be live before God by all the powers of created beings. In token of this he was not to support bis natural life by their blood or life, under the law; and from hence he might remember, both that God alone was the strength of his life, and that a bigber life than the life of the creatures must be poured out for his atonement 2nd redemption. Christ, therefore, commands, when he appears in the flesh, that his people should drink his blood, in direct opposition (as it might seem) to the Jewish economy; in order that they might notice, that though they could not live by the blood or lives of the creatures, or by any atonement or activities of inferior beings; yet they could and were to live by his blood or life alone, and, because it was the life of his eternal nature, for ever and ever. John vi. 54. Well, then, may the emblem of consolation, wine, be used for this blood, from which originates the consolation of a saved sinner; and Christ employed the symbol for this end, that it might hold forth to his people in all ages, what he hath borne for them, and that from hence they are to derive their peace. His blood was the means of their reconciliation with God; because his life was shed for their sins, and delivered their lives from eternal destruction. He gave up a life of infinite value to save their lives from an infinite punishment, due to them through sin, which is infinite both as it cannot end of itself, and as it is committed against infinite holiness. He resumed his life by his own almighty power, proving thereby, that he had cancelled all the debt and fully satisfied eternal truth and justice. The Holy Spirit, as the first office of hist consolation, applies this blood through faith to his people's benefit; and so imparts the life of that blood to their souls, that it becomes their life; and then it is, that, because Christ liveth, they live also. No blood will serve for this but the blood of the God-man, Christ Jesus. His people's blood would not answer; for in the attempt their life must be lost, and lost for ever. Nor can they for themselves, or others for them, atone in part, leaving Christ to do the rest; for as, under the law, the blood of the sacrifice was not to be mixed with leavened bread; so in the law of faith, no leaven of man, none of his doings, can be mingled with Christ's atoning blood. Nothing will serve for this end, but the true and living bread, namely, his pure body and divine righteousness, represented in the law by the unleavened bread. Hence, his blood is called the blood of the New Testament, in direct oposition to all the works and services of man under that old