4. Again, what is the reason of that unfndtfulness that is amongst men, but because truths were never settled iu the soul by the Spirit of God ?
428 COMMENTARY ON
That which men know out of the word of God concerning Christ and the privileges by him, they were never persuaded of it in their hearts ; therefore, they como not to a fruitful convcrsiitiou. It is impossible but that men should be abundantly fruitful that have spiritual apprehensions of divine things, of evaiigelical truths. Hence comes all our unthankfulness and imdervaluing of the gospel. The gospel of itself is an unprized thing. How- ever we esteem of it, God values it highly. We value it not, because our apprehensions of it are customary and formal, gotten by breeding, and edu- cation, and discourse, and not by the Spirit; we feel not the spiritual and heavenly comforts of those truths we think we know.
5. How comes likewise deaixiir in time of tciiiptation, mid in dentli, but only because men wan£ this stablishing by the Spirit of God ? Men go on in evil courses, trusting to a formal, dead, human knowledge, gotten by human means, and not settled in them by the Spirit of God, that hath not sealed the truth in their hearts ; and hereupon, when sharp trials come, they despair, because they have no feeling of the truths of the gospel ; and so when conscience is awakened and smarts, it clamours and cries out upon all their formal and human knowledge. For they having not a spiritual sense of the mercies of God in Christ, and the persuasions of comfort are not so near to support the soul, as the temptations, and vexations, and torments are, how can they but despair ? Now who can still the conscience, but the Spirit of God ? Why now, if the knowledge that men had were spiritual and heavenly, in all accusations of conscience, it would set conscience down and still it. I am a sinner indeed, I am this and this, but I have felt the sweet mercies of God in Christ ; God hath said to my soul, ' I am thy salvation,' Ps. xxxv. 3 ; he hath intimated to my spirit, by a sweet voice, ' Son, thy sins are forgiven thee,' Mark ii. 5. Where there is, I say, a knowledge and an apprehension of these evangeli- cal truths wrought by the Spirit, it sets down conscience and stills it, though the heart rage at the same time. There are thousands in the very bosom of the church that miscarry because of this, resting in a literal, outward, formal knowledge, gotten only by discourse, and by reading, and commerce with others, and never labour to have their hearts stablished in Christ by God's Spirit.
You see here, then, a necessity of God's writing his truth in our bowels. He saith in the covenant of grace, ' I will write my law in their inward parts,' Jer. xxxi. 33, that is, I will teach their very hearts : that knowledge that they have shall be spiritual.
For, beloved, the knowledge that must save us must not only be of divine things, but it must be divine ; it must not only be of spiritual things, but it must be spiritual. The light that we have of spiritual things must be answerable to the things ; we must see them by their own light. We cannot know spiritual and heavenly things by a human light ; but as the things themselves are spiritual, so we must have the Spirit of God, that by it we may come to know spiritual things spiritually.
Desire God therefore to vouchsafe us his Spirit, that it may teach us, and convince us of the truth of those things which we read and hear. God must do it, he must persuade and bow the heart, and will, and affections ; and so he will do it, and doth it to those that rely upon him. And this is the second branch,
Obs. As God must do it, so God xiill do it.
What is the reason of that ?
1. It is this : he will do it, because he is constant. Where he ' begins a
2 COBINTHIANS CHAP. I, VER. 21. 459
good work, he will finish it to the day of the Lord,' Philip, i. 6. He will do it, because in the covenant of grace he hath undertaken both parts, both his own and ours. He undertakes his own part, which is to give us eternal life, and to give us Christ ; and he undertakes our pai-t too, which is to believe, and to cleave unto Christ, &c. He makes this good himself. He works this in the heart by the Spirit ; for therefore it is called the covenant of grace, because God himself is graciously pleased to do both parts, which must be comfortably remembered against an objection that flesh and blood will make. I might indeed come to God and Christ, but I am an unworthy, empty creatui'e, I have no faith.
Come and attend upon the means ; the gift of application, and confirm- ing, and stablishing, is part of the covenant. The covenant that God makes with thee, is not only to give thee life everlasting and glory, but to give thee grace likewise. ' Faith is the gift of God.' He that stablisheth us, and confirms us upon that w^hich is certain in itself, is God.