Wesley Corpus

i., pp. 231, 232.) Yet again: “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.’” (Ibid.) According to Origen, therefore, this testimony of the Spirit is not any public testimony by miracles, peculiar to the first times, but an inward testimony, belonging in common to all that are born of God; and consequently the authority of Origen does not “confirm that interpretation” neither, but absolutely destroys it. 18. The last authority your Lordship appeals to on this text is, “that of the great John Chrysostom, who reckons the testimony of the Spirit of adoption by which we cry, ‘Abba, Father, among the miraculous gifts of the Spirit.” “I rather choose” (your Lordship adds, p. 26) “to refer you to the words of St. Chrysostom, than to transcribe them here, as having almost translated them in the present account of the testimony of the Spirit.” However, I believe it will not be labour lost to transcribe a few of those words. It is in his comment on the fourteenth verse, that he first mentions St. Paul’s comparison between a Jew and a Chris tian. How fairly your Lordship has represented this, let every reader judge:- “‘As many as are led by the Spirit of God, they are the sons of God.”--Whereas the same title had been given of old to the Jews also, he shows in the sequel, how great a difference there is between that honour and this. For though, says he, the titles are the same, yet the things are not. And he plainly proves it, by comparing both what they had received, and what they looked for. And first he shows what they had received, viz., a ‘spirit of bondage. Therefore he adds, “Ye have not received the spirit of bondage again unto fear; but ye have received the Spirit of adoption.’ What means the spirit of fear?-Observe their whole life, and you will know clearly. For punishments were at their heels, and much fear was on every side, and before their face. But with us it is not so.