But to come to the person, who is it that stablisheth ? ' He that stab- lisheth us in Christ, is God.'
Wherein we may consider these two branches :
God must stablish.
God will stablish.
Can none stablish the soul upon Christ but God ?
No I For God is the only maker of the marriage between Christ and the church. The same God that brought Adam and Eve together in paradise, brings the church and Christ together. And as he gives Christ to the church, and hath sealed and appointed him to be ' wisdom, righteousness, sanctification, and redemption,' 1 Cor. i. 30 (being made of God unto us for that purpose, as the apostle saith), so he works the consent of the church, a consent in heart and spirit to take and embrace Christ. Now it is God only that can work the heart to Christ. ' None can come unto me, except God the Father draw him,' John vi. 44. It is God that gives Christ to be the husband of the church, and that brings the spouse, the church, to Christ.
1. For first, it is God by his Spirit that discovers to the soul its hideous, desperate, and wofal estate without Christ; and by the Spirit in the ministry of the ivord, lays open the riches and excellency that is in Christ, and the firm- ness and stability that is to be had in him ; and so draws us with the cords of a man, with reasons, discovering an absolute necessity of getting into Christ, and of having him to be our husband, except we will lie under the wrath of God and be damned ; and, wdthal, discovering the fulness and ex- cellency that is in Christ.
2. Again, it is God only that must stablish the soul, all the parts of it, both judgment and conscience. For, I beseech you, what can any human creature, what can anything under God, work upon the soul ? I mean so firmly as to stablish it ; and, therefore, our controversy with the papists is just and good.
We say the reason and ground of our believing the word of God to be
2 CORINTHIANS CHAP. I, VER. 21. 427
the word of God must not be the testimony of the church and the authority thereof; for, alas ! what can the judgment of man, what can the judgment of the church, do ? It may incline and move the will by inducing argu- ments, and so cause a human consent ; but to establish the soul and con- science, and to assure me that the word of God, which is the ground of my faith, is the word of God, it must be God by his Spirit that must do it ; the testimony of the church will never do it. The same Spirit that inspired holy men to write the word of God, works in us a belief that the word of God is the word of God. The stablishiug argument must be by the power of God's Spirit. God, joining with the soul and spirit of a man whom he intends to convert, besides that inbred light that is in the soul, causeth him to see a divine majesty shining forth in the Scriptures, so that there must be an infused establishing by the Spirit to settle the heart in this first prin- ciple, and indeed in all other divine principles, that the Scriptures are the word of God.
3. And, to go on a little fm-ther, this is a fundamental error in our prac- tice ; for what is the reason we liaveso inann apostates? What is the reason so many are so fruitless in their lives ? What is the reason that men despair in death, but even this, because men are not built and stablished aright ? God's Spirit never stablished their souls in divine truths. For, first, con- cerning apostasy, ask them what is the reason they are of this or that re- ligion, they will say they have been taught so, they have been brought up to it, the company with whom they have conversed have been devout men, and have been always led with this opinion, and they see no reason to thwart it.
Is that all ? Hath not the Spirit wrought these things in thy heart ? hath he not given thee a taste of them ? hath he not convinced thee in thy judg- ment that it is so ? hast thou not found the power of the Spirit working upon thy soul, changing of thee, raising of thee, drawing of thee out of the world nearer to God V hast thou not, I say, felt the power of the Spirit this way ?
No ; but thus I was catechised, and thus I have been bred, and thus I have heard in the ministry. And no otherwise '? Alas ! it will never hold out, there will be a falling away ; for when a man believes not that which he believes from the Spirit of God, he will be ready, when dangerous times come, when there is an onset made by the adversaries, to fall, and to fall clean away, as we see it was in the time of popery ; for whatsoever is not spiritual, whatsoever knowledge is not divine and from the Spiirit of God, never ;.holds out..; Therefore, I beseech you, what is the reason that you have many illiterate men that set upon the truth and hold out to the end, and, on the contrary, many great seeming scholars, that are skilful in school- leanaing and in other authors, do not ? The reason is, the one hath the truth from the Spirit, discovering all the objections that the heart of man can make against it, and the strength that is in the truth to answer and silence all those objections. The other man hath only a discoursing know- ledge, an ability to gather one thing from another, and to prove one thing by another, by strength of parts. But the Spirit of God never discovered the sleights and the corruptions of his heart, never fastened and settled his heart upon the truth, he never had experience of the truth. For, indeed, nothing doth stablish so much as the experience of the truth on which we are stablished.