Spirit" still abiding in him": and if you pray, " Lord Jesus, breathe on me!" he will in no wise refuse your request1.]
2. How to judge of your state before God —
[Men will pretend to declare, with great confidence, that such and such characters, which they account good, have nothing to fear. You yourselves, too, may have formed a strong opinion on such points. But I warn you, that whatever you or the world may think, God's judgment shall stand; and his final sentence shall be in exact accordance with his written word. Your one inquiry therefore must be, " What saith the Scrip- ture?" for assuredly those whom the Scripture acquits, shall be acquitted ; and those whom the Scripture condemns, shall be condemned. " To the word, therefore, and to the testimony. Whoever they be that speak not according to this word, there is no light in them."]
u Mai. ii. 15. * Luke xi. 13.
John xx. 27, 28. Then saith he to Thomas, Reach hither thy
finger, and behold my hands ; and reach hither thy hand, and
thrust it into my side : and be not faithless, but believing.
And Thomas answered and said unto him, My Lord and my
God,
IT is worthy of observation, that the inspired writers shew no solicitude to conceal their own faults, or the faults of each other; but that they relate every thing with artless simplicity, precisely as it occurred. The Disciples were all, without exception, reproved as " fools, and slow of heart to believe what had been written by the prophets " of old. But Thomas in particular gave way to unbelief, and would not credit the resurrection of his Lord, even after all the others were convinced of it. This, however, was overruled by his Divine Master, for the good of the Church in all ages : for, whilst it was an occasion of a particular manifestation of Christ to him, it brought forth from him as glorious a confession of Christ, as any we find in the inspired volume.
From that manifestation, and that confession, we shall be led to shew,
1732.1 thomas's unbelief reproved. 219
I. The evidence we have of the truth of Christianity— Of course we cannot enter now into the considera- tion of the evidences at large : we must confine our attention to the two which are mentioned in the passage before us ;
1. The testimony of the Apostles in general— [They had no expectation that their Lord and Master would rise again : and when they were informed that he was risen, they knew not how to believe it. However, the nume- rous proofs which they had of it on the very day on which he rose, and particularly his presence with them all on the close of that day, convinced them fully that he was indeed risen, and that the same body which had been crucified was restored to life a. From that time they entertained no doubt respecting this fundamental article of their faith. On the contrary, as soon as ever the Holy Ghost had descended on them on the day of Pentecost, they spake of it with great boldness, and urged it as a decisive proof that Jesus was the true Messiah. In this testimony they all concurred ; nor could the most cruel menaces or persecutions at all abate their confidence in main- taining it. Having themselves had such abundant opportunities of ascertaining the truth of his resurrection during the forty days that he continued upon earth, they were ready to seal their testimony with their own blood, and did actually lay down their lives in confirmation of it. To this conduct they had no temptation whatever ; for they knew that nothing but trials and persecutions, imprisonments and death, would be their portion in this world. With what confidence they them- selves relied upon this truth, may be seen from their writings : and, if we receive not their testimony, there must be an end ol all testimony whatever; since nothing ever was, or can be, so incontrovertibly established, as this fact.]