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must not take the place of the Holy Spirit.

"It is the

Spirit that quickeneth: the flesh profiteth nothing."

2. The Holy Spirit acts a Sovereign in producing regeneration. There is sovereignty in all God's works and dealings. If it be asked what we mean by the divine sovereignty, we reply in God's own words "I will have mercy on whom I will have mercy." He carries forward his gracious purposes of wisdom and love,-chooses or rejects,— reveals or withholds-"working all things after the counsel of his own will," "and giving no account of any of his matters." "The wind bloweth where it listeth, and thou hearest the sound thereof, but canst not tell whence it cometh, and whither it goeth: so is every one that is born of the Spirit." "He effectually worketh in them that believe." As Matthew Henry says, "The Spirit dispenses his influences where, and when, on whom, and in what measure and degree he pleases; dividing to every man severally as he will," 1 Cor. xii. 11.

3. The operations of the Holy Spirit, in regeneration, are of his own free grace. He sees no worthiness in the sinner to induce him to come into his heart. Can there be worthiness in one whom the Scriptures declare to be a condemned criminal,-a guilty rebel,-one who owes ten thousand talents, and has nothing to pay,—one whose carnal mind is enmity against God? That the Holy Spirit should enter the heart of such an one, and convince him of sin, and subdue the hatred and break down the rebellion of his heart, and seal pardon and peace on his conscience, surely this is free grace; it is unmerited mercy; it is love truly sovereign and divine. Thus the Holy Spirit comes, and knocks, and unbolts and unbars the heart, and enters, and creates all things new in Christ Jesus, wholly irrespective of merit in the sinner.

It would be interesting to notice the other parts of the Holy Spirit's work on the hearts of men, but we can only give a very brief summary.

Having renewed the heart, it is the doctrine of the Scriptures, that he dwells in it, as in a temple, filling it with light, and love, and holiness, and life. As he is the author, so is he the supporter of grace in the Christian's heart. He breathed spiritual life into the soul, and he keeps, and nourishes, and watches over it there. The Christian cannot keep himself. Nothing good originates from himself, or is sustained by his own power. The same almighty power that implanted the principle of grace, keeps it from

decline and death. It is the Holy Spirit, then, who produces in the child of God the hungering and thirsting after righteousness, the lifting up of the heart to God in filial confidence and love,—the sweet, child-like submission to the divine will,—the longing after more enlarged discoveries of Christ, the constant struggling with the law of sin in the members, and the mourning over the indwelling remains of corruption-which the word of God describes as characteristic of him. "I will pray the Father, and he shall give you another Comforter, that he may abide with you for ever."

This blessed Comforter abides in the believer as a spirit of holiness, carrying forward the sanctification of his nature, and is his witness, comforter and guide, in proportion as the work of sanctification advances in the soul. This sanctification includes true scriptural views of the spirituality of the divine law and conformity to it,-a growing resemblance to the image of Christ,—an increasingly tender conscience, a soft and gentle walk,-deepening views of the guilt of sin,―mourning over, confessing, hating and crucifying it at the cross, and a more complete putting on of the graces of the Spirit. Yes; the blessed Spirit restores order and purity, and re-establishes the reign of holiness over man's moral nature; he sets up the law of God in the soul, unfolding its precepts and writing them on the heart; he sheds abroad the love of God there, and leads the believer to run in the way of God's commandments. It is true, that he may for a time withdraw his sanctifying and comforting presence: he may be so grieved by a careless and unholy walk, as to suspend his sanctifying and witnessing influences, and permit indwelling corruptions, for a while, to triumph: but he restoreth the soul, and will bring it back again. "For a small moment have I forsaken thee; but with great mercies will I gather thee."

He is also in the believer as a Spirit of adoption, as a witness, as a teacher of the saints, as a comforter, and as a glorifier of Jesus. All these gracious operations worketh that one and the self-same Spirit, who dwells in the hearts of all true believers, working in them of his own good pleasure, both to will and to do, working in them that which is well-pleasing in the sight of God. The faithful, ever blessed Spirit that begins the good work, watches over it, and effectually carries it on and completes it in the everlasting salvation of the soul.

THE END.

EXCLUSIVE CLAIMS

OF

PRELACY,

STATED AND REFUTED:

BY THE

REV. B. M. SMITH,

PHILADELPHIA :

PRESBYTERIAN BOARD OF PUBLICATION.

THE

EXCLUSIVE

CLAIMS OF PRELACY.

GALATIANS 1: 6, 7.-" Unto another Gospel, which is not another; but there be some that trouble you, and would pervert the Gospel of Christ.

WE learn from the fifteenth chapter of the Acts of the Apostles, that certain persons, of the early church, who had been Pharisees, and other Jews, before they were professing Christians, taught, that "except a man were circumcised and kept the law of Moses, he could not be saved." It is generally supposed, that such had been actively propagating this error in the Galatian church, and are exposed and denounced by the Apostle, in the passage cited above.

I. The Gospel teaches two fundamental truths respecting the way of salvation: one, that the vicarious obedience and sufferings of Jesus Christ, constitute the meritorious ground of man's justification before God; the other, that this provision is applied to our wants, by the Holy Spirit, who through the medium of God's truth, ordinarily, "convinces us of our sin and misery, enlightens our minds in the knowledge of Christ, renews our wills, and enables and persuades us to embrace Jesus Christ, freely offered to us in the Gospel." To the first of these truths, while there has been great diversity of opinion on the nature and extent, both of the evil and the remedy, there has been, among all Christians, a general assent. Though some object to the term "vicarious," others reject "obedience," and others incorporate something of human merit in the

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