himself to your experience in that we are now reviewing, as a comforter. You cannot be at a loss to know, if you have ever felt the blessed effects of his consolations. The sympathy of his love in our afflictions; the soft and tender soothings of his grace to our distresses; the manifestations which he makes of the Lord Jesus, in all his lovely characters exactly suited to the soul's need; and the grace, and purposes, and mercy, which he displays of the Father's heart, towards his people in their troubles; these are among the testimonies by which the Holy Ghost manifests himself as a Comforter, when directing the heart into "the love of God, and into the patient waiting for Jesus Christ."

There is one work more of the blessed Spirit, by which his work is made known in the heart, though it is not (as far as my observation hath extended to the writings of others) as generally noticed as its importance should seem to demand: I mean as a Remembrancer. "He shall bring all things (said Jesus when speaking of him,) to your remembrance, whatsoever I have said to you."

And I have found this office in the Spirit's work, at times, so very interesting and precious (if I may venture to say so) in my own experience, that I cannot but beg to recommend it to the reader's notice with the more particular attention. My memory of divine things is so treacherous, (though it may not perhaps be equally so with the reader,) that, like a sieve, every thing valuable runs through it, and leaves nothing of the finer parts behind. It is, I conceive, therefore, a most gracious and endearing office of God the Holy Ghost, to act as a Remembrancer, in calling the mind afresh to the recollection of the precious tokens of divine love long past. And in those numerous instances, where the temptations of Satan, joined with the treachery and deceitfulness of the

heart, have blotted out from the mind a thousand memorandums of grace received, which in the moment of making them, we fondly thought never would be lost; surely it is a distinguishing mercy in the Holy Ghost to bring them again to remembrance. And what can be more pleasing, or more profitable, than when the blessed Spirit opens to our view the volume of our own history, turns back the leaves of our experience, points to the chapter and page where Jesus shewed his love, and God the Father answered prayer, and thus brightens up again the recollection of long forgotten blessings, and stamps afresh the assurance, that nothing but mercy and goodness have been following us all the days of our life!

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If, perchance I should be addressing a heart somewhat like my own, prone to the forgetfulness of divine things, and which feels a partiality, from the consciousness of it, to this feature of office in the Holy Ghost's ministry, there is a method I would recommend to him, which, under grace, I have found useful to myself in this particular, to bring to remembrance again the things of God; and that is, by committing to his keeping, for a future day of necessity, what our memories are too treacherous to keep for ourselves. We should do in this instance, by God the Holy Ghost, as well taught children do by their parents. Whenever any thing valuable is given them, they put it into their parent's possession, to preserve for them until they want it. Reader! Let you and me do the same. Let us commit into the hands of the Holy Ghost, all those precious things which he hath mercifully taught us in respect to our salvation. And, Blessed Spirit! I would say, be thou my Remembrancer, to bring again and again to my forgetful heart, every thing which tends to endear to me.my heavenly Father's love, the tender mercies of Jesus, and thine own unspeakable gifts; that " my heart

may rejoice for the consolation, and my joy no man take from me."

I find the subject encreasing on me as I go, and the pages swelling much beyond what was originally intended. I had proposed indeed only a little tract; and now it is extending to a large one. And were I to bring forward many offices of the Spirit's ministry, yet unnoticed by me, such as his advocacy, intercession, and the like, it would fill a volume. But I would rather leave the subject unfinished, in order that the reader himself, from the outlines given of some of the cha racters in the ministry of God the Holy Ghost, may, in his own experience, under the guidance of Scripture, be led to search for others. And this will be the best confirmation of the doctrine; when from human teaching, he consults that which is divine, and which cannot fail to carry conviction to the heart, that "his faith is not founded in the wisdom of men, but in the power of God"

If I have advanced sufficient testimonies in proof of what I had in view, I would now request the reader to to pause over what hath been said, and gather for himself, the several particulars into one mass of evidence. And when he hath done this, let him determine the point, (for to that decision, as far as it concerns himself, I refer it,) whether the Spirit's work in the heart of every true believer, be not the great witness "to the truth as it is Jesus." And upon the presumption that the fact be so, let the reader farther determine, whether any thing can be equal, or indeed, whether any thing beside can be competent, as a preservative, in the present day of apostacy, against the various heresies abounding.

Suffer me, for the sake of argument only, to suppose that all the churches, professing the eternal truths of the gospel, were uniformly living under a constant and an abiding sense of these things. Nay, to come nearer

very

home; put the case, that the reader himself is the subject of divine grace we have been speaking of, and, in relation to the work of the Holy Ghost in the heart, can adopt the motto in the title page of this little book, and say, the Spirit itself beareth witness to my spirit. Let the patrons of modern infidelity advance what they please to decry all revelation, or the advocates of universalism to confound it, this is a testimony which will stand by him against all. He can humbly assume the language of the apostle, and from the same unquestionable authority say as he did, "I know in whom I have believed. For he that hath wrought us for the self-same thing is God, who also hath given unto us the earnest of the Spirit."

My brother! Is it your happiness to be thus taught of God; and have you this testimony to the work of the Spirit, in your heart? Let this be the standard then with you at least, for ascertaining all the doctrines proposed to you by men. Put that question which Paul the apostle proposed, as the first and most important of all questions, to the church at Ephesus, to every one who would tempt you to swerve from the faith once delivered to the saints :-"Have you received the Holy Ghost since you believed?" This will be the only method to prove the doctrine whether it be of God. For the time is arrived which the apostle predicted, when "men will not endure sound doctrine." And it is in vain to oppose argument to argument; for even the Scriptures themselves are perverted, and wrested by the several advocates of the various heresies of the present day, to countenance their several tenets. But in the blessed Spirit's work in the heart, there can be no possibility of error. And when the word and the testimony are confirmed by his Almighty assurance, they exactly correspond, like as the impression made by the seal on wax manifests their relation to each other. And this is what,

if I mistake not, the apostle meant when he said, “In the mouth of two or three witnesses shall every word be established." The heart which is taught of God is one, the word of God is another, and God himself, the Holy Ghost, is the third, who sets to his seal in the heart, all the great truths as "yea and amen in Christ Jesus."

Before I take leave of the reader, I would first very earnestly beg of him to be careful that the convictions of these things be not, in his instance, the convictions of the letter, but of the Spirit. Remember what an apostle saith: "The letter killeth ; the Spirit giveth life."

The most dangerous of all states respecting religion is, according to my apprehension, that which rests in head-knowledge, void of heart-influence. It is very possible, from the mere effects of hearing sermons, reading books, the habits of education, and the like, to acquire a competency of understanding in divine things, so as to be able to reason and argue on any point of doctrine, with a clearness of judgment which may astonish the hearers. (And this by the way I would observe, within a parenthesis, is no uncommon thing in the younger branches of a family, brought up under the means of grace by their pious parents. And I mention it, by way of exciting such parents to be jealous over their children with a godly jealousy.) But all the while this differs very, very widely, from that divine teaching, which is the sole effect of the Spirit's influence. Indeed there is as essential a difference between the one and the other, as between that knowledge which our children acquire of a town or a city, by the dissection and putting together of a map, according to the improvements of modern education in geography, and that which an inhabitant of such a place obtains from having continually gone over the several lanes and streets of it.