Our actual participation of the fmits of this grace is by the Holy Ghost. We cannot ourselves seize on them, nor bring them home to om- own souls. The impossibility hereof I cannot now stay to manifest. Now, whence is this Holy Ghost ? Is he not sent from the Father by the Son? Can we entertain any thought of his effectual \vorking in us and upon us, but it includes this whole doctiine ? They, therefore, who deny the Trinity, deny the efficacy of its operation also.
342 THE DIVINE ORIGINAL OF SCEIPTUEE,
So is it as to our obedience unto God, whereby the communion between God and man is completed. Although the formal object of divine worship be the nature of God, and the persons are not wor- shipped as persons distinct, but as they are each of them God; yet, as God, they are every one of them distinctly to be worshipped. So is it as to our faith, our love, our thanksgiving, aU our obedience, as I have abundantly demonstrated in my treatise of distinct communion with the Father in love, the Son in grace, and the Holy Ghost in the privileges of the gospel. Thus, without the acknowledgment of this truth, none of that obedience which God requireth at our hands can in a due manner be performed.
Hence, the Scripture speaks not of any thing between God and us but what is founded on this account. The Father worketh, the Son worketh, and the Holy Ghost worketh. The Father worketh not but by the Son and his Spirit; the Son and Spirit work not but from the Father. The Father glorifieth the Son, the Son glorifieth the Father, and the Holy Ghost gloriiieth them both. Before the foundation of the world the Son was with the Father, and rejoiced in his peculiar work for the redemption of mankind. At the creation, the Father made all things, but by the Son and the power of the Spirit. In redemption, the Father sends the Son ; the Son, by his own condescension, undertakes the work, and is incarnate by the Holy Ghost. The Father, as was said, communicates his love and all the fruits of it unto us by the Son, as the Holy Ghost doth the merits and fruits of the mediation of the Son. The Father is not known nor worshipped, but by and in the Son; nor Father nor Son, but by the Holy Ghost, &c.
Upon this discoveiy, the soul that was before startled at the doc- trine in the notion of it, is fully convinced that all the satisfaction it hath sought after, in its seeking unto God, is utterly lost if this be not admitted. There is neither any foundation left of the communi- cation of love to him, nor means of returning obedience unto God. Besides, all the things that he hath been inquiring after appear, on this account, in their glory, beauty, and reality, unto him ; so that that which most staggered him at first in the receiving of the truth, because of its deep, mysterious glory, doth now most confirm him in the embracing of it, because of its necessity, power, and heavenly excellency.
And this is one argument of the many belonging to the things of the Scriptm'e, that, upon the gi-ouuds before mentioned, hath in it, as to my sense and apprehension, an evidence of conviction not to be withstood.
Another consideration of the like efficacy may be taken from a brief view of the whole Scripture, with the design of it. The consent
EVIDENCE FROM HARMONY OF SCRIPTURE. S43
of parts, or harmony of the Scripture in itself, and every part of it with each other and with the whole, is commonly pleaded as an evidence of its divine original. This much, certainly, it doth evince, beyond all possible contradiction, that the whole proceedeth from one and the same principle, hath the same author, and he wise, dis- cerning, able to comprehend the whole compass of what he intended to deliver and reveal. Otherwise, or by any other, that oneness of spirit, design, and aim, in unspeakable variety and diversity of means of its delivery — that absolute correspondency of it to itself, and dis- tance from any thing else — could not have been attained. Now, it is certain that this principle must be summum in its kind — either bonum or malum. If the Scripture be what it reveals and declares itself to be, it is then unquestionably the " word of the living God," truth itself ; for that it professeth of itself from the beginning to the ending — ^to which profession, all that it reveals answers absolutely and unquestionably in a tendency to his glory alone. If it be not so, it must be acknowledged that the author of it had a blasphemous design to hold forth himself to be God, who is not so — a malicious design to deceive the sons of men, and to make them believe that they worship and honour God, and obey him, when they do not, and so to draw them into everlasting destruction ; and that to compass these ends of blasphemy, atheism, and malice, he hath laid out, ia a long course of time, all the industry and wisdom that a creature could be made partaker of Now, he that should do thus must be the devil, and none else : no other creature can possibly arrive at that height of obstinacy in evil. Now, certainly, whilst God is pleased to continue unto us any thing whereby we are distinguished ft'om the beasts that perish, whilst there is a sense of a distance between good and evil abiding amongst men, it cannot fall upon the under- standing of any man that that doctrine which is so holy and pure — so absolutely leading to the utmost improvement of whatever is good, just, commendable, and praiseworthy — so suitable to all the light of God, of good and evil, that remains in us — could proceed from any one everlastingly hardened ia evil, and that in the pursuit of the most wicked design that that wicked one could possibly be engaged in, namely, to enthrone himself, and maliciously to cheat, cozen, and ruin the souls of men ; so that upon necessity the Scripture can own no author but him whose it is — even the living God.