Wesley Corpus

Give me leave to remind you of some of the words. In the forty-ninth page the argument concludes thus: ‘It will follow that this witness of the Spirit is the private testimony given to our own consciences, which consequently all sober Christians may claim, without any danger of enthusiasm.’ In the fifty-seventh page are these words: ‘Every one that is born of God, and doth not commit sin, by his very actions saith, “Our Father which art in heaven”; the Spirit itself bearing witness with their spirit that they are the children of God. According to Origen, therefore, this testimony of the Spirit is not any public testimony by miracles, but an inward testimony belonging in common to all that are born of God.’ Once more: in the fifty-eighth page are these words: ‘He brings yet another proof of the superiority of those who had this Spirit of adoption: “The Spirit itself beareth witness with our spirit that we are the children of God.” “I prove this,” says he, “not only from the voice itself, but also from the cause whence that voice proceeds. For the Spirit suggests the words while we thus speak, which he hath elsewhere expressed more plainly, ‘God hath sent forth the Spirit of His Son into our hearts, crying, Abba, Father!’ But what is ‘The Spirit beareth witness with our spirit’” He means the Paraclete by the gift given unto us.’ (But that this was an extraordinary gift we have no intimation at all, neither before nor after.) ‘And when the Spirit beareth witness, what doubt is left If a man or an angel spake, some might doubt; but when the Most High beareth witness to us, who can doubt any longer’ I am mistaken if this does not come home to the point, to the question now before us: describing a perceptible testimony of the Holy Ghost, ‘directly felt to be worked by Himself.’