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St. John represents the gift of the Holy Spirit, granted to the whole church: Ye have an unction from the Holy One, and ye know all things, 1 John ii. 20.

By the seal, of which the apostle here says, God hath sealed us, the sacraments may be understood. The metaphor is derived from the usages of society in affixing seals to covenants and treaties. Under this design are the sacraments represented in the Scriptures. The term is found applied to those exterior institutions in the fourth chapter of St. Paul's epistle to the Romans. It is there said, that Abraham received the sign of circumcision, as a sign of the righteousness of faith. By the institution of this sign, to Abraham and his posterity, God distinguished the Jews from every nation of the earth; marked them as his own, and blessed them with the fruits of evangelical justification. This is its true import, provided the interior grace be associated with the exterior sign; I would say, sanctification, or the image of God; purity being inculcated on us in the Scriptures by the symbol of a seal. This, in our opinion, is the import of that fine passage, so distorted by the schoolmen; The foundation of God standeth sure, having this seal, the Lord knoweth them that are his let every one that nameth (or invoketh) the name of Christ depart from iniquity, 2 Tim. ii. 19. What is God's seal? How does God know his own? Is it by the exterior badges of sacraments? Is it by the circumcision which is in the flesh? No, it is by this more hallowed test, Let every one that nameth the name of Christ depart from iniquity.

In fine, by the EARNEST of the Spirit, we understand these foretastes of heaven which God communicates to some of those he has designated to celestial happiness. An earnest is a deposit of part of the purchase-money for a bargain. St. Paul says, and in the sense attached to the term. We that are in this tabernacle do groan, being burthened not that we would be unclothed, but clothed, that mortality

might be swallowed up of life. Now he that hath wrought us for the self-same thing is God; who also hath given unto us the earnest of the Spirit, 2 Cor. v. 4, 5.

Whether, therefore, each of these terms, unction, seal, earnest, express the same thing; and I think it could be proved, by several texts of Scripture, in which they are promiscuously used;....or, whether they convey three distinct ideas;....they all indicate that God confirms to us the evangelical promises in the way we have described.

This is the idea, my brethren, we should attach to the metaphors in our text. In order to comprehend the Scriptures, you should always recollect, that they abound with these forms of speech. The sacred writers lived in a warm climate; whose inhabitants. had a natural vivacity of imagination, very different from us who reside in a colder region, and under a cloudy sky; who have consequently a peculiar gravity, and dulness of temperature. Seldom, therefore, did the men of whom we have been speaking, employ the simple style. They borrowed bold figures; they magnified objects; they delighted in amplitude and hyperbole. The Holy Spirit, employing the pen of the sacred authors, did not change, but sanctify their temperature. It was his

pleasure that they should speak in the language used in their own time; and avail themselves of those forms of speech, without which they would neither have been heard nor understood.

2. Let us reduce the metaphor to precision, and the figure to truth. But, under a notion of reducing it to truth, let us not enfeeble its force; and, while we would reject imaginary mysteries, let us not destroy those which are real. This second caution is requisite, in order to supersede the false glosses which, have been attached to the text. Two of these we ought particularly to reject;....the one on the word Spirit....the other on the words, seal, unc

tion and earnest, which we have endeavoured to ex plain.

Some divines have asserted, that the word Spirit, ought to be arranged in the class of metaphors designed to express, not a person in the Godhead, but an action of Providence; and that we should attach this sense to the term, not only in this text, but also in all those we adduce to prove, that there is a divine person distinct from the Father and the Son, called the Holy Spirit,

We have frequently, in this pulpit avowed our ignorance concerning the nature of the divine essence, if I may be allowed the expression. We have often declared, that we can determine nothing concerning God, except what we are obliged to know from the works he has created, and from the truths he has revealed. We have more than once acknowledged, that even those truths, which we trace from reason and revelation, are as yet very imperfect; and that the design of the Scriptures, when speaking of God, is less to reveal what he is, than in the relation in which he stands to us. Hence I conceive, that the utmost moderation, and deference of judgment; and, if I may so speak, the utmost pyrrhonism, on this subject, is all that reasonable men can expect from the philosopher, and the divine.

When we find in the Scriptures, certain ideas of the Godhead; ideas, which have not the slightest dissonance to those afforded by his works;....ideas, moreover, clearly expressed and repeated in a varie ty of places, we admit them without hesitation, and condemn those, who, by a false notion concerning propriety of thought, and precision of argument, refuse their assent. Now, it seems to me, that they fall into this mistake, who refuse to acknowledge, in the text we adduce, a declaration of a Divine Person.

I shall cite one single passage only from the sixteenth chapter of the gospel by St. John; When he, the Spirit of truth is come, he will guide you into all

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truth; for he shall not speak of himself; but whatsoever he shall hear, that shall he speak : and he will shew you things to come. He shall glorify me ; for he shall receive of mine, and shew it unto you. ask here, whether the propriety of thought, and precision of argument, of which the persons we attack make a profession, I had almost said a parade, obstruct their perception of three persons in the words we have read? If so, can it obstruct their perceiving the Father, to whom all things belong; the Son, who participates in all things which belong to the Father: the Holy Spirit, who receives those things, and reveals them to the church? I ask again, whether this propriety of thought, and precision of argument, can understand an action of Providence, by what is ascribed to the Holy Spirit? And whether, without offering violence to the laws of language, they can substitute for the term spirit, the words action and providence, and thus paraphrase the whole passage; "I have yet many things to say unto you, but ye cannot bear them now. Howbeit, when this action of Providence is come, even this action of Providence, it will guide you into all the truth; for it shall not speak of itself; but whatsoever it shall hear, that shall it speak for it shall receive of mine, and shall show them unto you." We frankly confess, my brethren, nothing but the reluctance we have to submit our notions to the decision of Supreme Wisdom, can excite an apprehension, that a distinct person is not set forth in the words we have cited. And, when it is once admitted, that the Holy Spirit sent to the church is a divine person, can they, on comparing the words of our text with those we have quoted, resist the conviction, that the same Spirit is intended in both these passages?

In the class of those, who, under a pretext of not admitting imaginary mysteries, reject such as are real, we arrange those divines, who deny the agency of this adorable person on the heart, in what the apos

tle calls, unction, seal, and earnest: those supralap sarian teachers, who suppose, that all the operation of the Holy Spirit on the regenerate, consists in enabling them to preach; that he does not afford them the slightest interior aid, to surmount those difficulties which naturally obstruct a compliance with the grand design of preaching. The Scriptures assert, in so many places, the inefficacy of preaching without those aids, that no doubt can, in my opinion, be admissible upon the subject. But, if some divines have degraded this branch of Christian Theology, by an incautious defence, to them the blame attaches, and not to those who have established it upon solid proof. Those divines, who, by a mode of teaching much more calculated to confound, than defend, orthodox opinions, have spoken of the unction of the Spirit, as though it annihilated the powers of nature, and as though they made a jest....yes, a jest, of the exhortations, promises, and threatenings addressed to us in the Scriptures:.... Those divines, if there are such, shall give an account to God for the discord they have occasioned in the church, and even for the heresies to which their mode of expounding the Scriptures has given birth.

You, however, brethren, embrace no doctrines but those explicitly revealed in the Scriptures ;.... you, who admit the agency of the Holy Spirit on the heart, unsolicitous to define its nature....You, who say with Jesus Christ, the wind bloweth where it listeth, and thou hearest the sound thereof, but canst not tell whence it cometh, and whither it goeth, John iii, 8.... You, who especially admit, that the more conscious we are of the want of grace, the more we should exert our natural gifts; that, the more need we have of interior aids, the more we should profit by exterior assistance, by the books we have at hand, by the favourable circumstances in which we may be providentially placed, by the ministry which God has graciously established among us! Fear not to follow

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