A Discourse Concerning the Holy Spirit, Volume 1

Spiritual Gifts and the Spirit’s Work

The apostle Paul, in the twelfth chapter of his First Epistle to the Corinthians, gives direction on the exercise of spiritual gifts, a matter the Corinthians had asked him about along with other pressing concerns. The opening words of his discourse make this plain: “Now concerning spiritual gifts” (1 Cor 12:1). The Greek term there, pneumatika, means “gifts” (charismata), as his subsequent explanation shows. Some have imagined he means “spiritual persons” instead, but that reading goes against the sense of all the ancient interpreters and does not fit the context.

The whole passage that follows is directive about spiritual gifts and their exercise, since that was exactly what the church had asked him about. This is confirmed at the close of his discussion, where he sums up his purpose with the advice to “covet the best gifts” (that is, among the gifts he had just been discussing, as stated in verse 31). The “spiritual gifts” of verse 1 are the same as the “gifts” of verse 31, and the same term appears again in 1 Corinthians 14:1, where he tells them to “desire spiritual gifts,” meaning the gifts whose nature and use he had just taught them.

The Corinthian church had received an abundant measure of these gifts, especially the extraordinary ones suited to convincing unbelievers. The Lord had “much people in that city” whom he intended to call to faith (Acts 18:9–10). Not only did he encourage Paul against all fears and dangers to begin and continue his preaching there, a work he carried on for a year and six months (Acts 18:11), but he also equipped the first converts with gifts so eminent, some even miraculous, that they became a powerful means of converting many others. God is never at a loss to provide the instruments and means suited to whatever end he intends.

Yet in the use and management of these gifts, the Corinthian church, or at least some of its leading members, had fallen into serious disorder. They turned the gifts into occasions for rivalry and ambition, which led to further evils, just as the best of God’s gifts can be abused by disordered human desires, and the purest water can be tainted by the earthen vessel that holds it. Paul had learned of these troubles both from certain members who loved truth, peace, and order and were distressed by the disorder (1 Cor 1:11), and from a letter the whole church had written to him about these and other matters (1 Cor 7:1). In response, he gives them counsel for correcting these abuses.

He begins by preparing them with the humility and gratitude fitting for those entrusted with such excellent privileges, privileges they had abused, and without which right frame of mind they could not receive the instruction he intended to give. So he reminds them of their former condition before their calling and conversion to Christ: “You know that you were Gentiles, carried away with dumb idols, even as you were led” (verse 2), swept along by violent impulses from the devil into the service of idols.

He mentions this not to reproach them, but to show them what kind of mind and fruit of life should rightly follow from such a change in their condition. As he tells them elsewhere, if they had not made themselves different from others, if they possessed nothing but what they had received, they had no right to boast or exalt themselves above others, as though they had not simply received it (1 Cor 4:7). It is a foolish thing for anyone to boast of what was freely given by another and never deserved, and this applies to all who have received either gifts or grace from God.

Paul further explains this change in their condition by pointing to its effects and its author (verse 3): “Wherefore I give you to understand, that no man speaking by the Spirit of God calleth Jesus accursed: and that no man can say that Jesus is the Lord, but by the Holy Ghost.” The great dividing line in the world at that time concerned Jesus, who was preached to everyone. Unbelievers, still driven by impulses of mind and affection toward “dumb idols,” acted on by the spirit of the devil, blasphemed by declaring Jesus anathema, accursed. They regarded him as someone to be detested and abominated, the shared object of hatred for both their gods and their people. So whenever his name came up, they would say, “Jesus is accursed,” calling for him to be detested and destroyed.

The Jews continue in this same blasphemy to this day, concealing their cursed sentiments under a corrupted pronunciation of his name. Instead of writing his name properly, they write and pronounce it as the initials of a phrase meaning, “Let his name and memory be blotted out,” which amounts to the same thing as “Jesus anathema.” This blasphemous curse was the very test the earliest persecutors of the church used to try the faith of Christians, as Pliny records in his letter to Trajan, and as Justin Martyr and other early defenders of the faith confirm. Just as the apostle says that those who cursed Jesus did not do so by the Spirit of God, he means that they did it under the instigation of the devil, the unclean spirit ruling in those disobedient people. This had been the very condition of the Corinthians themselves before their conversion, when they too were carried away after dumb idols.

By contrast, those who believed called Jesus “Lord,” professing him as Lord and thereby declaring both their faith in him and their obedience to him. Chiefly, they acknowledged him as Jehovah, the Lord, God over all, blessed forever, since the divine name is everywhere rendered in the New Testament by the Greek word for “Lord” used here. Whoever professes Jesus as Lord acknowledges, first, that he is the true God, and second, that he is their own Lord, the Lord of their souls and consciences, to whom they owe all subjection and obedience, just as Thomas declared in his great confession, “My Lord, and my God” (John 20:28).

Paul had already implied that those who disowned Jesus and called him accursed spoke by the instigation of the devil who acted in them. Now he tells them, on the other hand, that no one can confess Jesus as Lord except by the Holy Ghost. But someone might object that people acted on by an unclean spirit have also confessed Christ as Lord. The man in the synagogue cried out, “I know thee who thou art, the Holy One of God” (Mark 1:23–24), and in that same passage Jesus “suffered not the devils to speak, because they knew him.” The servant girl possessed by a spirit of divination cried out after the apostles, saying, “These men are the servants of the Most High God” (Acts 16:17). The man who lived among the tombs, possessed by an unclean spirit, cried out to Jesus, “What have I to do with thee, Jesus, thou Son of the Most High God?” (Mark 5:7). Other examples to the same effect could be drawn from the heathen world and their oracles.

Answer 1: The apostle is speaking of a confession of Jesus as Lord that comes joined with faith in him and the soul’s submission to him, and that kind of confession comes from the Holy Ghost alone. No one acted on by an unclean spirit can make that confession.

Answer 2: These acknowledgments by unclean spirits were either, first, forced out of the devil against his will, forming no small part of his punishment and torment, or, second, intended by him to undermine the glory of Christ through his own testimony, since he was a liar from the beginning.

When an evil man pretends to be good, he is at his worst. Such professions could have no place here. With this, the apostle shows them the foundation of all church relation, order, and worship. Their acknowledgment of Christ’s Lordship had not come from themselves; it was purely the effect of the Holy Spirit’s work in them and toward them. Any similar profession that does not come from that same source and fountain is of no use to God’s glory, and brings no advantage to the souls of men.

Chrysostom notes that no demon calls on God willingly. Those possessed by demons said, “We know you, who you are, the Son of God,” and to Paul, “These men are servants of the most high God.” But such words were forced out by torment and compulsion; freely, and without being scourged, they never spoke so.

Some think this saying, that Jesus is Lord, refers specifically to the manner of speaking the apostle goes on to discuss. In the following verses he treats the extraordinary gifts many in that church then had. No one, he says, can say “Jesus is the Lord” in an extraordinary way, through various tongues or prophecy, except by the Holy Spirit. Without his special assistance, no one can declare this in such a striking, miraculous manner. If that is right, then those mentioned earlier, who said Jesus was accursed, were likely persons pretending to be moved (or really moved) by an extraordinary spirit, one the apostle declares was not the Spirit of God. Chrysostom reads the words this way, applying them to those visibly and violently possessed by the devil. Satan raised up many such instruments of his malice in those days, to preserve his tottering kingdom from ruin, if that were possible.

But there is no need to restrict the words to that sense. In fact, it seems to me inconsistent with the apostle’s purpose and the scope of the passage. He means to instruct the Corinthians in the nature, use, and exercise of spiritual gifts, and he begins by laying down the spring and source of all saving profession of the gospel, which those gifts were meant to advance. Having reminded them of their former heathen state, he tells them by what means they were brought into the profession of the gospel and came to acknowledge Jesus as Lord, in contrast to the dumb idols they had served. This was the work of the very author of those gifts, to whom he was now turning their attention. The great change in their religion and profession came from the Holy Spirit. No one can say that Jesus is the Lord, which is the sum and substance of our Christian profession, except by him, though some think he has little or no part in this matter.

To say Christ is Lord includes two things. First, faith in him as Lord and Savior. So the angels declared him: “A Saviour which is Christ the Lord” (Luke 2:11). The word Lord denotes both the dignity of his person and his investiture with the offices he exercised and discharged for our good. Second, it includes the profession of that faith. Where these two are sincere, they always accompany each other (Rom 10:10). Just as calling Jesus “anathema” was an open disclaiming and renunciation of him, so calling him Lord expresses the profession of our faith in him and our submission to him. Both are meant here as sincere and saving, for this is the faith and profession by which the church is built on the rock, the same faith Peter professed: “Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God” (Matt 16:16). That these are works of the Holy Spirit, which none of us are sufficient to produce on our own, will, God helping, be shown more fully later.

Having thus laid out the origin and foundation of the church, in its faith, profession, order, and worship, the apostle further tells them that the same Spirit is also the author of all the gifts by which the church was to be built up and established, and its profession enlarged: “Now there are diversities of gifts, but the same Spirit” (1 Cor 12:4). These are the matters he means to discuss, and he expands on them through the whole following chapter. Since the particulars raised here at the start of his discourse will all come up again in their proper places, I will only point to the main headings of the argument in the verses leading up to verse eleven, which is our chief concern.

Treating, then, of “spiritual things or gifts” in the church, he first names their author, the one from whom they come and by whom they are worked and given. He calls him the “Spirit” (verse 4), the “Lord” (verse 5), “God” (verse 6). To mark the oneness of their author, despite the diversity of the gifts themselves, he calls him the same Spirit, the same Lord, the same God.

These words can be understood two ways. First, that the whole Trinity, and each person distinctly, is meant. Considered as the immediate worker of these gifts, it is the Spirit, or Holy Ghost (verse 4). Considered as to their procurement and immediate authoritative granting, they come from Christ, the Son, the Lord (verse 5). But as to their first origin and source, they come from God the Father (verse 6). And all three are one and the same.

But it seems more likely that the Spirit alone is meant, given this threefold name. He is particularly denoted by the name “Spirit” so that we know exactly who is mainly meant, and he is also called Lord and God to show his sovereign authority in all his works and administrations, and to instill due reverence in the hearts of those dealing with him in this matter. Nothing more is meant in these three verses than what is summed up in verse 11: “But all these worketh that one and the self-same Spirit, dividing to every man severally as he will.”

Second, as to their general nature, the apostle sorts them into “gifts” (verse 4), “administrations” (verse 5), and “operations” (verse 6). This division, and the reasons for it, will be clarified further as we proceed.

Third, he states the general purpose for which the Spirit of God gives these gifts, and their use in the church (verse 7): “But the manifestation of the Spirit is given unto every man to profit withal.” The phrase means “the revelation of the Spirit,” that is, the gifts by which, and in whose exercise, he manifests and reveals his own presence, power, and effective working.

The Spirit of God has no other aim in granting these enlightening gifts, by which he shows his care for the church and declares the things of the gospel to anyone, except that they be used for the profit, advantage, and edification of others. They are not given to men so they might gain secular advantage from them, whether wealth, honor, or reputation, the ends for which Simon the magician tried to buy them with money (Acts 8:19). Nor are they given merely for the good of the souls of those who receive them, but for the edification of the church and the advancement of faith and profession in others; that is, “for that which is expedient, useful, profitable” to the church (1 Cor 6:12, 1 Cor 10:23, 2 Cor 8:10).

This is how the foundation of the first gospel churches was laid by the Holy Spirit, and how the work of building them toward completion was carried on by him. How far present churches stand, or ought to stand, on the same foundation, and how far they are carried on by the same principles, is well worth our inquiry, and will come under our consideration in its proper place.

Fourth, the apostle sorts the spiritual gifts then given to the church, or to some of its members, into nine particular kinds: 1. Wisdom. 2. Knowledge (verse 8), or the word of wisdom and the word of knowledge. 3. Faith. 4. Healing (verse 9). 5. Working of miracles. 6. Prophecy. 7. Discerning of spirits. 8. Kinds of tongues. 9. Interpretation of tongues (verse 10). All of these were extraordinary gifts, in the manner of their communication and exercise, suited to the church’s condition at that time. What still continues that is analogous to them, or holds some proportion with them, must be examined further, and their particular nature will be unfolded then as well.

But now, if there is such great diversity of gifts in the church, and so much difference in their administrations, how can differences and divisions be prevented from arising among those who receive them and those among whom they are exercised? It is true that this can happen, and sometimes does; in fact it did happen in the church at Corinth. One person admired one gift, another admired a different kind, and so on. Among those who had received these gifts, one would boast of this or that particular ability and constantly exercise it, to the exclusion and contempt of others, gifts given no less for the church’s edification than his own.

They were so carried away by vainglory and the desire for self-advancement that they preferred using gifts in the church that mainly produced astonishment and wonder in their hearers, over those gifts especially useful for the church’s edification. The apostle rebukes this evil at length in chapter 14. In this way the church became divided against itself, and was nearly torn apart (1 Cor 1:11–12). So foolish are the minds of men, so easily deceived, so prone are their desires, led astray by Satan’s craft, to turn judgment into bitterness and abuse the most useful effects of divine grace and generosity.

To prevent all these evils in the future, and to show how perfect a harmony exists among these varied gifts and different administrations, how well they agree with one another in serving the same ends of the church’s unity and edification, from what fountain of wisdom they flow, and with what care they should be used and made the most of, the apostle tells them both the author of these gifts and the rule by which he distributes them (verse 11): “All these,” he says, “worketh that one and self-same Spirit, dividing to every man severally as he will.”

I will not open or dwell further on these words here. We will return to them often as we go, and they will be fully explained as they concern the person of the Spirit, his will, and his operations, all of which are asserted here. My purpose is, with God’s permission and help, to treat from this passage the name, nature, existence, and whole work of the Holy Spirit, together with the grace of God through Jesus Christ in communicating him to the sons of men.

This work is in itself too great and difficult for me to undertake, and beyond my ability to manage for the glory of God or the edification of believers’ souls. For “who is sufficient for these things?” Yet I dare not utterly lose heart, so long as I look to him whose work this is, who “gives wisdom to those who lack it, and does not reproach them” (Jas 1:5). Our eyes, therefore, are on him alone, who “supplies seed to the sower” and afterward “blesses it with increase.” The present necessity, importance, and usefulness of this work are what alone have moved me to undertake it. I will briefly lay these out in some general considerations before turning to the particulars I intend to explain.

First, then, we should consider that the doctrine of the Spirit of God, his work, and his grace, is the second great head or principle of those gospel truths in which the glory of God and the good of the souls of men are most deeply concerned. Without it, without knowing it truly and applying it in its power, the other great truth will be useless for those ends.

When God designed the great and glorious work of recovering fallen man and saving sinners to the praise of his glory, he appointed, in his infinite wisdom, two great means to that end. The first was giving his Son for them; the second was giving his Spirit to them. In this way room was made for the glory of the whole blessed Trinity to be displayed, which is the ultimate end of all God’s works. In this way the love, grace, and wisdom of the Father in designing and planning the whole work; the love, grace, and condescension of the Son in executing, purchasing, and securing grace and salvation for sinners; and the love, grace, and power of the Holy Spirit in effectually applying all of this to the souls of men, were all made gloriously visible.

So from the very entrance of sin, there were two general heads to God’s promise concerning the means of man’s recovery and salvation. The first concerned the sending of his Son to become incarnate, to take our nature upon himself and suffer for us in it. The second concerned the giving of his Spirit, to make the effects and fruits of the Son’s incarnation, obedience, and suffering effective in us and toward us. All of God’s promises can be reduced to these two heads. Because the first was to be the foundation of the second, it had to be laid down first and emphasized most until it was actually accomplished.

So the great promise of the Old Testament, the chief object of believers’ faith, hope, and expectation, concerned the coming of the Son of God in the flesh and the work he would perform. Yet, as we will see as we go on, this was also accompanied by a great mixture of promises concerning the Holy Spirit, to make his coming and work effective for us. But once that first work was fully accomplished, once the Son of God had come and destroyed the works of the devil, the main remaining promise of the New Testament, the source of all the rest, concerned the sending of the Holy Spirit to accomplish his part of that great work God had designed.

So the doctrine of the Holy Spirit’s person, work, and grace is the most distinctive and central subject of the New Testament Scriptures, and a most prominent immediate object of believers’ faith. This point needs further clarification, since we are dealing with some who will scarcely allow the Spirit any real consideration in these matters at all. I will be brief with these preliminary testimonies, since the whole discourse that follows is designed to demonstrate the truth of this claim.

1. It is of great weight, and sufficient by itself to support the case as stated, that when our Lord Jesus Christ was about to leave the world, he promised to send his Holy Spirit to his disciples to take his place. We can grasp something of how valuable Christ’s presence was to his disciples: their hearts were filled with sorrow at the mere mention of his leaving them (John 16:5–6). Wanting to relieve them in this great distress, which drew out his highest expressions of love, tenderness, compassion, and care for them, he does so mainly through this promise. He assures them it will benefit them more than the continued presence of his body among them ever could. To reassure them of this, and to impress on them its great importance, he repeats it to them often and presses it home.

Consider some of what he says to this effect in his final discourse with them (John 14:16–18): “I will pray the Father, and he shall give you another Comforter, that he may abide with you for ever; even the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it seeth him not, neither knoweth him; but ye know him; for he dwelleth with you and shall be in you. I will not leave you comfortless, I will come unto you,” meaning in and through this Holy Spirit.

And in verses 25–27: “These things I have spoken unto you, being present with you; but the Comforter, who is the Holy Ghost, whom the Father will send in my name, he shall teach you all things, and bring all things to your remembrance, whatever I have said unto you. Peace I leave with you,” and so on.

And in John 15:26: “But when the Comforter is come, whom I will send unto you from the Father, even the Spirit of truth, which proceedeth from the Father, he shall testify of me.”

And in John 16:5–15: “Now I go my way to him that sent me, and none of you asketh me, Whither goest thou? But because I have said these things unto you, sorrow hath filled your heart. Nevertheless, I tell you the truth, it is expedient for you that I go away, for if I go not away the Comforter will not come unto you; but if I depart I will send him unto you. And when he is come he will reprove the world of sin, and of righteousness, and of judgment. Of sin, because they believe not on me; of righteousness, because I go to my Father, and ye see me no more; of judgment, because the prince of this world is judged.

“I have yet many things to say unto you, but you cannot bear them now. Howbeit when he, the Spirit of truth, is come, he will guide you into all truth: for he shall not speak of himself; but whatsoever he shall hear, that shall he speak, and he shall shew you things to come. He shall glorify me, for he shall receive of mine, and he shall shew it unto you. All things that the Father hath are mine; therefore said I, that he shall take of mine, and shew it unto you.”

This was the great legacy that our Lord Jesus Christ, departing this world, left to his sorrowful disciples. He promised it to them as a sufficient relief for all their troubles, and a faithful guide in all their ways. Because of how important it was for them, he repeated it often and expanded on the benefits they would receive from it, giving them specific reasons why it would prove more advantageous to them than his own bodily presence.

So after his resurrection he reminds them of this promise again, commanding them to do nothing toward building the church until it had been fulfilled among them (Acts 1:4–5, 8). They would have wanted to go on embracing his human nature and rejoicing in it. But just as he told Mary, “Touch me not” (John 20:17), to wean her from any merely physical view of him, so he now instructs them all to look to and trust in the promise of the Holy Ghost.

Hence our apostle says, “though we have known Christ after the flesh, yet now henceforth know we him no more” (2 Cor 5:16). Although it was a great privilege to have known Christ in this world according to the flesh, it was a far greater thing to enjoy him through the Spirit’s work. The ancient interpreters judge that the apostle said this to rebuke the boasting of some who prided themselves on having seen the Lord in the flesh, on account of which they were called “those who had seen the Lord,” and he directs them instead to a more excellent knowledge of Christ. It is pointless to claim that this concerned only the apostles, or perhaps some of the early Christians.

This promise belongs to all believers to the end of the world, not only to the apostles, though the Holy Spirit was given to them in a special way and for particular purposes. As for his gracious operations, whatever the Lord Christ prayed and promised for them (since the Spirit was obtained for them through his prayer, John 17:16–17) was not for them alone: “I pray not for these alone, but for them also which shall believe on me through their word” (John 17:20).

His promise is to be “with them always, even unto the end of the world” (Matt 28:20), and that “where two or three are gathered together in my name, there am I in the midst of them” (Matt 18:20). He is present in no other way than by his Spirit, since as to his human nature, “the heavens must receive him until the times of the restitution of all things” (Acts 3:21).

This one consideration is enough to show the importance of the doctrine of the Holy Spirit. Could any Christian be so carelessly negligent, so unconcerned about the things on which their present comfort and future happiness absolutely depend, as not to feel it a duty to inquire with the greatest care into what our Lord Jesus Christ has left us to fill his absence and finally to bring us to himself? Whoever despises these things has no part or share in Christ himself, for “if any man have not the Spirit of Christ, he is none of his” (Rom 8:9).

2. The great work of the Holy Spirit in the dispensing and ministering of the gospel, throughout every part of it, provides another proof to the same purpose. So the gospel itself is called the “ministration of the Spirit,” in contrast to the law, which is called the “ministration of the letter and of condemnation” (2 Cor 3:6–9). The “ministry of the Spirit” means either the ministry the Spirit makes effective, or the ministry by which the Spirit communicates his gifts and graces to people. This is what gives the ministry of the gospel both its glory and its power.

Take the Spirit away from the gospel, and you turn it into a dead letter, no more useful to Christians than the Old Testament is to the Jews. It is therefore a harmful notion, born of ignorance, blindness, and unbelief, that the gospel contains nothing more than any other body of doctrine or truth, that it is merely a book for people to exercise their reason on and improve by that same faculty. This separates the Spirit, or the Spirit’s work, from the gospel, which in truth destroys it. It also rejects God’s covenant, which is that “my word and Spirit shall go together” (Isa 59:20–21).

We will therefore show, as we proceed, God helping us, that the whole ministry of the gospel, its whole use and power, depends on that ministration of the Spirit which, according to God’s promise, accompanies it. If we have any interest in the gospel, or have ever received any benefit from its ministry, we have a clear duty before us in this matter.

3. There is no spiritual or saving good communicated to us from first to last, nothing of God’s grace that we are made partakers of, except as it is revealed and given to us by the Holy Spirit. Whoever has not had an immediate, special work of the Spirit of God upon them never received any special love, grace, or mercy from God, for how else could they? Whatever God works in us and upon us, he does by his Spirit. So whoever has had no work of the Spirit of God on their heart never received mercy or grace from God, since God gives neither except by his Spirit.

To disclaim any work of the Spirit of God in us or upon us is to disclaim all share in his grace and mercy. Those for whom the work of the Spirit of God is a matter of reproach would do well to consider this. When they can show us any other way a person may become a partaker of mercy and grace, we will listen. Meanwhile we will prove from Scripture that this is God’s way.

4. Nothing done in us or by us is holy and acceptable to God except as it is an effect of the Holy Spirit, his operation in us and through us. “Without him we can do nothing,” for without Christ we cannot (John 15:5), and it is by him alone that Christ’s grace is communicated to us and worked in us. By him we are regenerated; by him we are sanctified; by him we are cleansed; by him we are helped in and toward every good work. Particular instances of this will be discussed and proved later. It is our urgent concern to inquire into the source and spring of all that is good in us, for in doing so we will also truly discover the source and cause of all that is evil in us. Without adequate knowledge of both, we cannot act as we ought.

5. God lets us know that the one truly remediless sin under the gospel, the one truly unforgivable way of sinning, is to sin against the Holy Spirit in a particular manner. This alone should convince us how necessary it is to be well instructed in what concerns him, for there is a sin that carries irrecoverable and eternal ruin with it, and nothing else in the world does.

So Mark 3:28–29 says: “All sins shall be forgiven unto the sons of men, and blasphemies wherewith soever they shall blaspheme: but he that shall blaspheme against the Holy Ghost hath never forgiveness.” Or, as it is put elsewhere, “he that speaketh against the Holy Ghost, it shall not be forgiven him, neither in this world, nor in the world to come” (Matt 12:32). Nothing remains for the one who does despite to the Spirit of grace but a “certain fearful looking for of judgment and fiery indignation, which shall devour the adversaries” (Heb 10:27, 29). This is the “sin unto death,” for which we are not to pray (1 John 5:16).

The Spirit has undertaken to make effective for us the great remedy provided in the blood of Christ for the pardon of our sins. If, in carrying out that work, he is despised, blasphemed, and treated with contempt, there is neither relief nor pardon possible for that sin, for where else could it come from? Just as God has no other Son to offer another sacrifice for sin, so whoever despises that sacrifice can have no other remaining for them; likewise God has no other Spirit to make that sacrifice effective for us, if the Holy Spirit is despised and rejected in his work. This, then, is tender ground. We cannot use too much holy diligence in searching out what God has revealed in his word concerning his Spirit and his work, since opposing him can bring about a ruin as fatal as human nature is capable of suffering in any other case.

These considerations belong to the first head of reasons for the importance, use, and necessity of the doctrine we are examining. They are enough to show what is at stake for all believers here. On account of these things, as we observed before, Scripture plainly declares that “if any man have not the Spirit of Christ, he is none of his” (Rom 8:9). Such people have no share in him and will receive no benefit from his mediation.

Men may please themselves with a profession of being Christians and owning the gospel, while despising the Spirit of God in both name and reality. We will examine and judge their condition by Scripture before we come to the end of this discourse. As for Scripture itself, whoever reads the books of the New Testament, alongside the great and precious promises given concerning him in the Old, will find and conclude, unless prejudiced beforehand, that everything declared in those writings turns on this one hinge. Remove from them the consideration of the Spirit of God and his work, and it will be hard to find out what they aim at or intend.

Second, the great deceit and abuse that has occurred in all ages of the church under the pretense of the name and work of the Spirit make it exceedingly necessary to thoroughly consider what we are taught about them. Had these things not been excellent in themselves, and acknowledged as such by all Christians, they would never have been so widely and falsely claimed. Men do not seek to adorn themselves with rags, or boast of what is justly held in contempt. The more excellent a thing is, the more it lies open to abuse, and the more vile and dangerous is any false pretense to it.

Such have been the false pretenses of some in every age to the Spirit of God and his work. Their real excellence has made those false claims all the more abominable and dangerous, for the better the thing counterfeited, the worse the ends to which the counterfeit is put. In the whole world there is nothing so vile as that which pretends to be God and is not, nor is anything else capable of so pernicious an abuse. I will give some instances of this from both the Old Testament and the New.

The most notable gift of the Spirit of God for the use of the church under the Old Testament was prophecy. This gift was deservedly honored and respected, carrying as it did a strong impression of God’s authority, and with it, of his nearness to man. Besides this, those who possessed it were rightly entrusted with guiding the minds and consciences of others, for they spoke in God’s name and had his warrant for what they proclaimed, which is the highest ground for obedience.

These very qualities led many to falsely claim this gift who were never truly inspired by the Holy Spirit, but were instead moved by a spirit of lying and uncleanness. It is very likely that when men falsely pretended to be divinely inspired prophets, without any prior demonic possession, the devil made use of them to accomplish his own purposes. Given up by God’s righteous judgment to all manner of delusion, for having falsely claimed his Spirit and holy inspiration, they were soon possessed by a spirit of lying and unclean divination.

So it was with the false prophets of Ahab, who encouraged him to go up to Ramoth Gilead by foretelling his success (1 Kgs 22:6). They seemed only to be deceitfully complying with their master’s wishes, outdoing his other courtiers in flattery by dressing it up as prophecy. But when Micaiah exposed the mystery of their wickedness, it became clear that a lying spirit, permitted by God, had taken possession of their minds and given them impressions that, being supernatural, deceived them even as they deceived others (verses 21–23). They were justly given over to this, having falsely claimed the inspiration of the Holy Spirit they had never received.

The same thing has happened with some in our own day, whom we have seen visibly moved by an extraordinary power. They wrongly claimed supernatural stirrings from God, but were really being acted upon by the devil, something they had neither sought nor expected. Surprised by it at first, they were nonetheless pleased with it for a while, as was the case with several of the Quakers when they first appeared.

Now these false prophets of old were of two kinds, both mentioned in Deuteronomy 18:20. First, there were those who openly served other gods, directing all their prophetic activity toward promoting that worship. Such were the prophets of Baal, in whose name they expressly prophesied and whose help they invoked: “They called on the name of Baal, saying, O Baal, hear us” (1 Kgs 18:26–28). Many of these were slain by Elijah, and the whole line of them was later wiped out by Jehu (2 Kgs 10:25–28). This put an end to Baal’s supposed deity, for it is said that “he destroyed Baal out of Israel,” since false gods have no existence except in the deceived minds of their worshipers.

One might ask why these are called prophets at all, and the same question applies to all the false prophets mentioned in Scripture. Was it because they merely pretended and counterfeited a spirit of prophecy, or did they actually possess something of the kind? I answer that I have no doubt they were of both sorts.

These prophets of Baal worshiped the sun, in the manner of the Tyrians. In doing so they invented many hellish mysteries, ceremonies, and sacrifices, which they taught to the people who employed them. Having thus given themselves over to the devil’s service, he actually took possession of their minds “as a spirit of divination,” enabling them to declare things unknown to other men. Meanwhile, finding themselves genuinely moved by a power greater than themselves, they took and claimed that power to be the power of their god, and so became direct worshipers of the devil.

Our apostle affirms this in 1 Corinthians 10:20. Whatever the true God’s abandoners aimed to worship, the devil placed himself between them and it as the object of their adoration. In this way he became “the god of this world” (2 Cor 4:4), the one they worshiped and adored in all their idols. Many of the false prophets were moved by a spirit of divination from him, which they mistook for the spirit of their god, for they found themselves acted upon by a superior power they could neither explain away nor resist. Others among them were mere pretenders and frauds, deceiving the foolish crowd with empty false predictions. More will be said of these later.

Second, there were others who spoke in the name of the Holy Spirit of God, falsely claiming his inspiration. Jeremiah had great conflicts with this kind of man. In that apostatizing age of the church, they had gained such influence and reputation among the rulers and people that they not only set their own predictions against his prophecies (Jer 28:2–4) but also slandered him as a false prophet and pressed for his punishment under the law (Jer 29:25–27). Zedekiah son of Chenaanah showed the same arrogance toward Micaiah, scornfully asking him, “Which way went the Spirit of the Lord from me to speak unto thee?” (1 Kgs 22:24), meaning: since the Spirit surely speaks through me, how did he come to give you a contrary revelation? Ezekiel, at the same time as Jeremiah, was troubled and opposed by such men (Ezek 13 and 14).

This kind of person, false claimants to divine, extraordinary revelation, typically flourished in ancient times during seasons of danger and approaching ruin. The devil stirred them up to fill people with false hopes, keeping them complacent in sin so that destruction might catch them unaware. Whoever follows the same course today, in a time of deserved and threatened judgment, does the devil’s work as well, even if the means differ. For whatever encourages people to feel secure in their sins is a false divination (Jer 5:30–31). The prophet Jeremiah describes this kind of person in Jeremiah 23:9–33, where anyone may read of their sin and coming judgment.

Yet this false pretense to the spirit of prophecy did nothing to cast doubt on the real gift of the Holy Spirit; if anything, it gave that gift greater glory and luster. God never honored his true prophets more than in times when false ones abounded. Likewise, no false pretense to the Spirit of grace will ever make him less precious to those who truly share in him, or make his gifts any less valuable to the church.

The same pattern held under the New Testament when the gospel was first preached. Its doctrine was declared by immediate revelation of the Spirit, preached by the Spirit’s assistance, made effectual by his work and power, and often accompanied by outward miraculous works of the Spirit. That is why everything distinctive to it, in contrast with the law, was called the “ministration of the Spirit.”

Since everyone acknowledged these things, those with false opinions of their own to spread, or other deceit to work on Christians, could find no more effective means of achieving their ends than by claiming immediate revelations of the Spirit. Without some borrowed credibility from that claim, they knew their foolish notions would get no hearing at all. This is why the apostle Peter, after discussing God’s revelation by his Spirit in prophecy under the Old and New Testaments (2 Pet 1:17–21), draws an inference comparing the false prophets of the Old Testament with the false teachers of the New: “But there were false prophets also among the people, even as there shall be false teachers among you” (2 Pet 2:1). The reason is that just as the old false prophets claimed the Spirit of the Lord, saying “Thus saith the Lord” when he had not sent them, so these new false teachers ascribed all their abominable heresies to the inspiration of the Spirit, though the Spirit never assisted them.

This is the source of the blessed caution and rule the apostle John gives us. He lived to see much harm done to the church by this very pretense: “Beloved, believe not every spirit, but try the spirits whether they are of God, because many false prophets are gone out into the world. Hereby know we the Spirit of God; every spirit that confesseth that Jesus is come in the flesh, is of God; and every spirit that confesseth not that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh, is not of God” (1 John 4:1–2).

The apostle gives believers a twofold direction here. The first is a caution: do not believe every spirit. That is, do not receive or credit every doctrine presented as immediate revelation and inspiration of the Spirit. He means the same thing Paul means in Ephesians 4:14, where Paul would not have us carried about by every wind of doctrine, like ships at sea without anchor or helm, tossed by the “sleight of men, and cunning craftiness whereby they lie in wait to deceive.” The craft and sleight in view are the kind men use when they cast a kind of mist before the eyes of those they intend to cheat and defraud. That is how false teachers dealt with their disciples through their pretended revelations.

John’s second direction tells us how to put this caution into practice: by testing the spirits themselves. This is the duty of all believers whenever such claims arise. They must test these spirits and examine whether they are of God. For keeping this rule and discharging this duty, the church of Ephesus is commended by our Lord Jesus Christ: “Thou hast tried them, which say they are apostles and are not, and hast found them liars” (Rev 2:2). Those who claimed to be apostles were also claiming apostolic authority and infallibility, on the ground of immediate inspiration supposedly received from the Holy Spirit. In testing them, the Ephesians tested the spirits behind them. By this same warrant we may test the spirit of the church of Rome, which likewise claims apostolic authority and infallibility.

To these two directions the apostle adds the reason such watchfulness is needed: “For,” he says, “many false prophets are gone out into the world.” These are the false teachers Peter speaks of as “bringing in damnable heresies.” John calls them false prophets partly by allusion to the false prophets of the Old Testament, with whom Peter compares them, and partly because, just as those prophets grounded their errors in claimed divine revelation, these teachers falsely ascribed their doctrines to immediate divine inspiration. For the same reason he calls them spirits: “try the spirits.” For while they claimed the Spirit of God, in truth most of them were driven by a spirit of error, lying, and delusion, that is, by the devil himself.

So I have no doubt that most of those who claimed to teach by immediate inspiration also produced other extraordinary operations, or undetectable counterfeits of them, such as lying miracles worked by the spirit that drove them (see Matthew 24:24). Yet the apostle does not direct us to test their claims to inspiration by demanding further extraordinary works as confirmation, since they could counterfeit these too, and so skillfully that most Christians could not detect the fraud. Instead he gives us all a stable and reliable rule that will never fail those who attend to it carefully: test them by the doctrine they teach (1 John 4:2–3).

Let their doctrine be examined by Scripture. If it agrees with Scripture, it may be received safely by the hearers, whatever corrupt motives may drive the teachers. But if it does not agree, if it fails to keep harmony with the analogy of faith, then no matter what inspiration or revelation is claimed to justify it, it must be rejected, and so must those who teach it. The apostle Paul confirms this rule with the strongest possible example: “If we, or an angel from heaven, preach any other gospel unto you, than that which we have preached unto you, let him be accursed” (Gal 1:8).

Paul also shows that, to our advantage in testing spirits, it helps to hold a clear conviction of, and constant adherence to, certain fundamental principles, especially those seducers are most likely to attack with the greatest cunning. In those days, Satan’s chief design was to spread strange false ideas about the person and mediation of Christ, aiming to overthrow both. So the apostle counsels believers to test the spirits by this one fundamental truth: that “Jesus Christ is come in the flesh,” a confession that covers both his person and his mediation. Believers were therefore to ask this of every new teacher or claimant to spiritual revelation first of all: do you confess that “Jesus Christ is come in the flesh”? If they did not immediately make this confession, believers were not to weigh their other claims at all, but were to turn from them without wishing them well (2 John 1:10–11).

I could easily show how many dangerous heresies were shut out in those days by this short confession of faith. Some more recently (such as Grotius, following Socinus and Schlichting) have interpreted Christ’s “coming in the flesh” as referring only to his lowly outward condition, as opposed to the pomp and glory of an earthly king, and in doing so openly corrupt the text. His coming in the flesh is the same as the Word being “made flesh” (John 1:14), or “God being manifest in the flesh” (1 Tim 3:16); that is, the Son of God being made “partaker of flesh and blood” (Heb 2:14), or “taking on him the seed of Abraham” (Heb 2:16), that is, his being “made of a woman” (Gal 4:4), or his being “made of the seed of David according to the flesh” (Rom 1:3), his “being of the fathers as to the flesh” (Rom 9:5).

This confession was aimed directly against the heresies then arising, whose founders claimed that Jesus Christ was merely an appearance, a manifestation of divine love and power, denying that the Son of God was truly incarnate, as the ancient writers generally testify.

It would have gone well for many people in our own day if they had attended to a rule like this. But through neglecting it, and through an ungrounded boldness and curiosity, they have listened to deceiving spirits in other matters, and have been drawn in beyond recovery before realizing that these deceivers had cheated them out of the chief articles of their faith. Had they tested and examined them steadily from the start, they might have been kept safe from these snares.

The Jewish teachers rightly said there were two ways of testing prophets under the Old Testament: by their doctrine and by their predictions. Testing by doctrine, that is, whether a prophet drew people from the worship of the true God into idolatry, was the responsibility of every member of the church. Direction for this is given in Deuteronomy 13:2–3: “If the prophet gives a sign or a wonder, and it comes to pass, and says, Let us go serve other gods, you shall not listen to him.” Whatever signs or wonders such a man produced, the people were to judge him by what he taught.

Judgment on predictions, however, was left to the Sanhedrin, according to the directions given in Deuteronomy 18:20–22. By this rule the Jews falsely and cruelly sought to kill Jeremiah, because he foretold the ruin of them and their city (Jer 26:11). In the first case, even if his sign, wonder, or prediction came to pass, if the doctrine he sought to confirm by it was false, he was to be rejected. In the second, the fulfillment of his prediction cleared him, since his teaching contained nothing false.

The first kind of test, that of doctrine, is the duty of every believer under the gospel. Those who would take this liberty from believers would turn them into brutes rather than Christians, unless believing what one does not understand and obeying without reason are marks of a Christian. See Romans 12:2, Ephesians 5:8–11, Philippians 1:10, 1 Thessalonians 5:21.

The second kind of trial, so far as it was needed to keep the church in truth and peace, was provided for in the earliest times, while extraordinary gifts of the Spirit were still truly given (and so occasion for false claims and danger of deception were greater), through a special gift of discernment given to some among them. “Discerning of spirits” is counted among the gifts of the Spirit (1 Cor 12:10). The Lord had graciously provided that some in his churches should be enabled in an extraordinary way to discern and judge those who claimed extraordinary workings of the Spirit. When the truly God-given extraordinary gifts ceased, the gift of discerning spirits ceased with them, and we are left with the word alone to test any who claim them today.

Such false claims were so common in the apostles’ day that Paul, writing to the Thessalonians to warn them against being deceived about the time of Christ’s coming, first warns them not to be moved “by spirit” (2 Thess 2:2), meaning by persons claiming spiritual revelations.

Something of this same kind has continued and broken out in later ages, sometimes in ways abominable and dreadful. The more genuine and eminent the outpourings of the Holy Spirit upon gospel ministers and Christ’s disciples in any age, the more watchfulness is needed against these delusions. For it is precisely when spiritual gifts are valued and put to use that Satan seizes the opportunity to smuggle in his own deceitful suggestions under their guise.

In the dark ages of the papacy, histories are full of satanic delusions: fantastic apparitions, horrors, specters, and other works of darkness. Rarely did anyone then falsely claim the gifts and graces of the Holy Spirit, since such things had little use or demand in that world. But when God was pleased truly to renew the outpouring of spiritual gifts and graces at the Reformation, the old dreads and terrors, the nightly apparitions bent on deeds of darkness, vanished. In their place, stirred up everywhere by Satan, arose false claimants to the Spirit of God. Satan will grow still more active and inventive in this kind of deception as God increases the gifts and graces of his Spirit in the churches, though even now in these later ages he has not matched what he achieved in the primitive times of the gospel.

A full and clear scriptural declaration of the nature of the Holy Spirit and his workings may, by God’s blessing, help protect believers’ minds against satanic delusions that counterfeit his true workings and inspirations. The apostle, who himself saw great havoc done to the churches by deluding spirits, gives us direction to this end: knowledge of the truth, testing the spirits abroad by the doctrines of Scripture, and dependence on the Holy Spirit’s teaching according to the word, these are what he commends to us for this purpose.

Third, in the days we live in, there has arisen an anti-spirit, set up and advanced against the Spirit of God, against his very being and all his operations, against his whole work toward the church of God. This new spirit claims for itself whatever is promised to be done by the “good Spirit of God.” This is what some call the light within them, though in truth it is nothing but a dark product of Satan working on their own imaginations, or at best the natural light of conscience, which some pagans also called a spirit. (Seneca writes to Lucilius: “A sacred spirit dwells within us, an observer and guardian of our good and evil; as we treat it, so it treats us,” Epistle 41.)

Yet people trust in this inner light as though it did everything for them, leaving no room for the promised work of the Spirit of God, nothing left for him to do. This light, they say, teaches them, instructs them, enlightens them. They attend to it as the Samaritans attended to Simon Magus, and they claim to obey it. From it, and from its supposed fruits, they expect acceptance with God, justification, and blessedness hereafter.

These deluded souls must settle on one of two things: either this light they speak of is the Holy Spirit of God, or it is not. If they say it is the Spirit, it will be easy to show how, in saying so, they utterly destroy the true nature and being of the Holy Spirit, as will become clear when we explain his true nature. If they say it is not the Holy Spirit they mean by it, it becomes just as clear that they exclude him entirely from his rightful work and put another, indeed an enemy, in his place. For another God is a false god, another Christ is a false Christ, and another Spirit is a false spirit, the spirit of antichrist.

Because this is a growing evil among us, drawing many away and seducing them, our duty to Jesus Christ and our compassion for souls require that we do everything we can, by the means Christ has appointed, to stop this evil that spreads like a canker and is fed by profane and empty talk that leads only to more ungodliness. Some, I admit, rage unfairly against the people who have taken up these delusions, attacking them with violence and fury as they do others as well. May the Lord not hold that against them.

But this does not prevent us from using the “weapons of our warfare, which are not carnal but mighty through God to the pulling down of strongholds, casting down such imaginations, and every high thing that exalts itself against the knowledge of God, and bringing every thought into obedience to Christ.” With these weapons we ought to seek the destruction of their errors and the breaking of the snares of Satan, by which they are held captive at his pleasure.

The approach of opposing errors and false spirits through prayer, preaching, and writing is despised by those whose furious and arrogant minds recognize only “burn, cut, and kill,” who think that “arise, Peter, kill and eat” is a command of more use to them than all the commands of Jesus Christ put together. But the way set before us by the Lord Jesus Christ himself, walked by his holy apostles and by all the ancient, learned, godly writers of the church, is the way we must and will follow.

The course particularly suited to counter the evil described is to give a full, plain, clear declaration from Scripture of the nature and operations of the Holy Spirit of God. From this it will become undeniably clear how much of a stranger this pretended light is to the true Spirit of Christ, how far it is from being of any real use to the souls of men, and indeed how it stands in opposition to him and his work, the one by whom, and by which alone, we become accepted with God and are brought to enjoy him.

Fourth, there are, moreover, many harmful and destructive opinions about the Holy Spirit that have spread through the world, opinions embraced by many to the ruin of the faith they had professed. Among these are the opinions that deny his Deity and Personality. Many disputes have arisen over these matters. Some have worked diligently and cunningly to promote the perverse opinions just mentioned, while others have contended, as was their duty, “for the faith once delivered unto the saints.” But these disputes have mostly been carried on in such a way that, although the truth has in some cases been strenuously defended, believers in general have gained little edification from them.

This is because most people are unfamiliar with the ways and terms of argument suited to convince others or “stop the mouths of gainsayers,” rather than merely to direct the faith of others. Besides, our knowledge of things comes more from their operations and proper effects than from their own nature and formal definition. This is especially true of divine things, and particularly of God himself. In his own glorious being, he dwells in light that no creature can approach. We must seek him instead in the revelation he has made of himself through the effects of his will in his word and works. Through these, the otherwise invisible things of God are made known and his attributes declared, and we come to a better acquaintance with him than any we could attain by our most diligent speculation about his nature directly.

So it is with the Holy Spirit and his personality. Scripture presents him to be known by his properties and works, his associated actions and operations, by our duty toward him and our offenses against him. The careful consideration of these things will lead us to the assured knowledge of his being and existence that our faith and obedience require, which is the purpose of all these inquiries (Col 2:2).

So although I will, along the way, explain, confirm, and defend the testimonies Scripture gives, or some of them, to his deity and personality, the main means I will rely on to establish our faith in him is the careful and just exposition of the administrations and operations Scripture ascribes to him. This will also shed great light on the whole mystery and ordered plan of God in the work of our salvation through Jesus Christ.

Fifth, the main cause and occasion of the present undertaking is the open and horrible opposition made against the Spirit of God and his work in the world. There is nothing that concerns him that many do not deride, denounce, and blaspheme. The very name of the Spirit has become a term of reproach, and some think they cannot mock anyone more spitefully than by charging them with “a concern in the Spirit of God.” This is something I have often wondered at, and continue to wonder at still. In the gospel, everything good, holy, and praiseworthy in anyone is expressly credited to the Spirit as its immediate cause and worker, and the condition of those without him, not made partakers of him, is described as rejected by God and foreign to any interest in Christ. Yet many who claim to believe and profess the gospel are so far from desiring any share of this Spirit in themselves that they mock and despise those who dare to claim any connection with him or his works.

I must grant that in this they have had predecessors: the old scoffing pagans. Lucian, in his Philopatris, mimics a Christian in mockery, saying in effect, “Speak out now, drawing power of speech from the Spirit.” Certainly the old caution, “if not chastely, then at least cautiously,” was needed by some in this matter. Even if they could not bring their own hearts to a proper reverence for the Spirit of God and an effort to share in his fruits and effects, the things spoken about him and his work throughout the New Testament, and in countless places in the Old, might have checked their public, contemptuous mockery, so long as they claim these writings come from God. But this was how he was received in the world at his first outpouring (Acts 2:13).

I know many excuses will be offered to justify this abomination. First, they will say it is not the Spirit of God himself and his works that they mock, but only others’ false claims to him and them. I fear this excuse is too thin to cover their irreverence. It is dangerous to trifle rashly and impudently with holy things and then invent excuses for it. When it comes to reproaching the Lord Christ and his Spirit, people will never lack pretexts (John 10:32).

And the things of the Spirit of God that they mock and despise in others are either truly and really ascribed to him and worked by him in the disciples of Jesus Christ, or they are not. If they are things that are not actually effects of the Spirit of grace, things he never promised to work or is never attested as producing in believers, such as false enthusiasms, ecstatic raptures, and supposed revelations, then it would far better suit Christians, people who profess (or at least pretend) reverence for God, his Spirit, and his word, to demonstrate and convince others that such things are not “fruits of the Spirit” but the products of their own imagination, rather than mocking them under the name of the Spirit or his gifts and operations. Do such people consider whom, and what, they are treating so lightly? But if these are things that are truly effects of the Spirit of Christ in believers, or things Scripture undeniably ascribes to him, then what can excuse such brazen irreverence?

But, second, they say, it is not the real, true operations of the Spirit themselves but the false claims of others to them that they ridicule and expose. Will this justify the course they plainly follow, both in substance and manner? These same people claim to believe in Christ and the gospel, and to share in the benefits of his mediation. Yet if they do not have the “Spirit of Christ,” they have no saving interest in these things, for “if any man have not the Spirit of Christ, he is none of his.”

If it is only the false pretending to the Spirit of God and his works that these people revile and scorn, why do they not treat claims about Christ and the profession of the gospel the same way? Why do they not say, “You believe in Christ, you believe in the gospel,” and expose such claims to derision on that basis? That is exactly how the Jews treated our Lord Jesus Christ (Ps 22:7–8; Matt 21:39, 43). So it is the things themselves, not merely false pretensions to them, that are the real objects of this contempt and reproach.

Besides, suppose those whom they currently hate or despise for other reasons are indeed not partakers of the Spirit of God, but are truly strangers to what they hypocritically profess. Will these scoffers then grant that other Christians in the world really do partake of him, so as to be led, guided, and directed by him, to be made alive, sanctified, and purified by him, to be enabled to commune with God and perform all duties of holy obedience by him, along with the other effects and operations that he was promised by Jesus Christ to work in his disciples? If they will grant that these things are truly accomplished in anyone, then let them not be offended with those who desire the same for themselves and declare that desire openly. People would then find more charity for such believers than their petulant scoffing currently allows.

Third, it will still be argued that these objectors grant, as fully as anyone, the existence of the Holy Spirit, the promise of him, and his real operations. They differ from others only in how they interpret those scriptural phrases and expressions, which others misuse by taking literally what is in fact metaphorical.

But is this really the way they choose to express their views, namely, by openly reviling and scorning the very naming and assertion of the Spirit’s work in the words God himself has taught? This is a boldness for which earlier ages give us no precedent, and we hope future ages will give no example worth following. Their own understanding of these matters will be examined later, so far as they have dared to reveal it. In the meantime, we know that the Socinians acknowledge a Trinity, the sacrifice of Christ, and the expiation of sin accomplished by it, and yet we have real differences with them about these things. So too we have differences with these men about the Spirit of God and his work under the gospel, even though, like the Socinians, they would grant these things to be true if interpreted metaphorically. But we must treat these matters more fully later.

I say, this has come to pass among many who profess to believe the gospel is true: the very naming of the Spirit of God has become a reproach, and so has his whole work. The promise of him that Jesus Christ made to his church is treated as useless and worthless, though it was the main support he left his church in his bodily absence, the only means of making the work of his mediation effective in and among his people. Without him, everything else, the word, the ministry, the ordinances of worship, is lifeless and useless. God is not glorified by them, nor are the souls of men helped.

Yet now some are uncertain what use the Spirit is to the church, and, as far as I can tell, uncertain whether he is of any use at all. Some have not trembled to argue that certain things plainly ascribed to him in Scripture, as plainly as words can assign anything, are actually the cause of all the troubles and confusions in the world. Give such people the word or tradition that outwardly reveals God’s will (as the Jews have to this day), and let them apply their own reason and natural abilities to it, and that, they think, is the whole of what is required for a person or a duty to be accepted by God. What use, then, is the Spirit of God in any of this? None at all, it seems, nor any use in the doctrine concerning him, except to fill the world with noise and confusion and trouble men’s minds with unintelligible notions. If these things had not been said, they need not be answered, for death lies at the door in them.

So, on this view, men may pray without him, preach without him, turn to God without him, and perform all their duties without him well enough. If anyone pleads the necessity of his assistance for these things, and credits him with all that is good and well done in them, that person will hardly escape being mocked for it. And yet all the while, these same people wish to be considered Christians. What do they make, then, of the prayers of the ancient church, of Christians who prayed to the Spirit for the working of all good in them, and ascribed every good thing to him? And in what, then, do we have any advantage over the Jews, or in what does the superiority of the gospel lie?

The Jews have the word of God, that portion of it entrusted to their church, which is in its kind sufficient to direct their faith and obedience. For so is “the sure word of prophecy” if diligently attended to (2 Pet 1:19). And if traditions are of any use, they can outdo anyone in the world at that. None of this means such people lack wit or the use of their reason.

Those who deal with such people in the ordinary affairs of the world do not call them fools, and no one who actually knows them and their concerns would question their diligence in studying the letter of Scripture and searching it out to the best of their understanding. And yet, after all this, they remain Jews. If we possess the New Testament in the same way they possess the Old, having only its letter to reason over according to our own best understanding, without any accompanying work of the Spirit of God to give us saving light into its mystery and make it effective in our souls, then I will not hesitate to say that, just as they “call themselves Jews and are not, but are the synagogue of Satan” (Rev 2:9), so we who call ourselves Christians will, as far as the saving ends of the gospel are concerned, be found in no better condition.

And yet it would be good if even here some limit were set on the fierceness of certain men’s spirits, but they will not be confined. In many places they are carried away with rage and fury to the point of stirring up persecution against those who are truly anointed with the Spirit of Christ, and for no other reason than that they are so anointed (Gal 4:29). Other pretexts are given, but anyone can see they are not weighty enough to justify such wrath. This hidden cause is what stirs it up, and it is often openly expressed.

So far these things have been charged only as the failings of private persons. But when such views are adopted by whole churches, they become the cause of, and the entrance into, a fatal defection and apostasy. From the foundation of the world, the chief revelation God made of himself was the oneness of his nature and his sovereign rule over all things. In this revelation, the person of the Father was immediately represented with his power and authority, for he is the fountain and source of the Deity, the other persons deriving their subsistence from him. Yet God also gave promises concerning the appearance of the Son in the flesh at an appointed time, and of the Holy Spirit to be given by him in a special way. Through this, their persons were to be gloriously honored in the world, since it was God’s will that all “men should honour the Son, as they honoured the Father,” and likewise the Holy Spirit.

Under this arrangement, the only apostasy possible for the church was polytheism and idolatry. And so it happened: the church of Israel was continually prone to these sins, so that scarcely a generation passed, if any, in which the body of the people did not defile themselves with idols to some degree. Weaning them from this sin, and recovering them from it, was the chief purpose of the preaching of the prophets God sent them from time to time (2 Kgs 17:13). This was also the cause of all the calamities that befell them and all the judgments God brought upon them, as is testified throughout the historical books of the Old Testament and confirmed by countless examples.

To put an end to this, God eventually brought total desolation on the whole church and had the people carried into captivity out of their own land. This accomplished its purpose, at least this far: whatever other sins they fell into after their return, they kept themselves from idols and idolatry (Ezek 16:62–63, Ezek 23:27, Ezek 23:48). The reason for this was that the time was drawing near when they would be tested by another dispensation of God. The Son of God was to be sent to them in the flesh. Receiving and obeying him was now to be the chief test of their faith and obedience.

They were no longer to be tested merely on whether they would acknowledge the God of Israel alone, over against all false gods and idols, for God had already won that ground with them. Now everything turned on this hinge: would they receive the Son of God, come in the flesh as promised? Here the majority of that church and people fell through unbelief, apostatized from God, and thereby ceased to be either church or people (John 8:24). Once they were rejected, the Son of God called and gathered another church, founding it on his own person, along with faith in him and the profession of that faith (Matt 16:18–19). In this new church, then, the foundation is fixed and the ground made secure: Jesus Christ, the Son of God, is to be honored as we honor the Father (1 Cor 3:11). All who are rightly called Christians agree on this, just as the church of Israel agreed on the oneness of God after their return from the Babylonian captivity.

But now the Lord Jesus Christ, having ascended to his Father, has committed the whole administration of his affairs in the church and in the world to the Holy Spirit (John 16:7–11). It is by this design of God that the person of the Spirit is to be uniquely exalted in the church, whereas before, people were so much in the dark about him that some, and not the worst among them, admitted they had not even heard whether there was a Holy Spirit (Acts 19:2), meaning, at least, that they had not heard of the particular dispensation of him then being introduced into the church. So the church’s duty now directly concerns the Spirit of God, who acts toward it in the name of the Father and the Son.

It is with respect to him that the church, in its present state, is capable of apostasy from God, and whatever apostasy of this kind is found among any today has its beginning here. The sin of despising his person and rejecting his work now is of the same nature as the idolatry of old and the Jews’ rejection of the person of the Son. And whereas relief was once provided against such sins, because a new dispensation of God’s grace was to follow in the gospel work of the Holy Spirit, if people now sin against him and his operations, which contain the perfection and completion of God’s revelation of himself to them, their condition is beyond hope.

Some may object that everything said about the Holy Spirit, his graces, gifts, and operations, belonged entirely to the first age of the gospel, when they were displayed through visible and wonderful effects. On this view, those things were confined to that time, and we have no interest in them now except as a recorded testimony to the truth of the gospel long ago. This is true enough of his extraordinary and miraculous operations. But to confine his whole work to that period plainly denies the truth of Christ’s promises and overthrows his church. We will show it is undeniable that no one can believe in Jesus Christ, obey him, or worship God in him, except by the Holy Spirit. So if the entire dispensation of the Spirit and his communications to the souls of men has ceased, then all faith in Christ, and Christianity itself, has ceased with it.

For these and similar reasons, I have thought it necessary, both for myself and for the church of God, that Scripture be diligently searched concerning this great matter. No one can deny that the glory of God, the honor of the gospel, the faith and obedience of the church, and the everlasting welfare of our own souls, are all deeply bound up in it.

The apostle Peter, speaking of the great things of the gospel taught by himself and the other apostles of our Lord Jesus Christ, tells those to whom he wrote that in what was preached to them, they had not “followed cunningly devised fables” (2 Pet 1:16). This was how the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ were then reported in the world: what was preached about them was regarded as “cunningly devised” and artfully constructed “fables,” meant to allure and deceive the people. The apostle testifies against this and appeals to the divine assurance his readers had received of the holy truths delivered to them (2 Pet 1:17–20). In the same way, when our Lord Jesus Christ himself preached the doctrine of regeneration to Nicodemus, Nicodemus questioned it as something incredible or unintelligible (John 3:4). To instruct him and rebuke his ignorance, Jesus tells him that he spoke nothing but what he brought from heaven, from the eternal fountain of goodness and truth (John 3:11–13). Something not much different has happened in this matter.

The doctrine of the Spirit of God and his work on the souls of men has been preached in the world. What he does in convicting men of sin, what he works in godly sorrow and humiliation, the exceeding greatness of his power at work in the regeneration and sanctification of souls, the supplies of grace he gives to believers, and the assistance he provides as the Spirit of grace and supplication, all this has been preached, taught, and pressed on the minds of those who attend to the gospel.

Correspondingly, people have been urged to try, search, and examine themselves, to see what of this work of the Holy Spirit they have found, observed, or experienced as effectually accomplished in their own souls. They have been taught that their peace, comfort, and assurance, their communion together as saints of God, and many other purposes of their holy living, depend on these very things. Indeed, it has been constantly taught that without an effectual work of the Holy Spirit on their hearts, they “cannot enter into the kingdom of God.”

Now some call these things into question, or reject them outright. Some regard them as “cunningly devised fables,” things invented not long ago and propagated by others for their own advantage. Others say that what is taught about them can hardly, if at all, be understood by rational people, being merely empty speculations having little or nothing to do with true Christian religion.

Yet many, very many, have received these things as sacred truths and are persuaded they have found them realized in their own souls. Their whole experience of the Holy Spirit’s work in and upon them, as declared in the word, is for the most part the foundation of their comfort and peace with God, since it gives them the clearest evidence of their standing in him who is their peace. And since they are at present persuaded that without these things being true in and with them they have no foundation for hoping in eternal life, it is of vital necessity for them to examine and search the Scripture diligently to see whether these things are so.

For if there is no such work of the Spirit of God on the hearts of men, indispensably necessary to their salvation, and if there are no such assistances and supplies of grace needed for every good duty as they have been taught, then throughout their whole profession they have simply been deceived “by cunningly devised fables.” Their misled hearts have fed on ashes, and they remain in their sins. Given that the eternal welfare of their souls is directly bound up in this, nothing could matter more than that they diligently try, examine, and search these things by the safe and infallible touchstone of the word, on which they may, must, and ought to risk their eternal condition.

I know that most believers are so settled in the truth of these things, and in their own experience of them, that they will not be moved in the least by the opposition raised against them or the scorn cast upon them. “He that believeth on the Son of God hath the witness in himself” (1 John 5:10).

But just as Luke wrote his Gospel to Theophilus so that he might “know the certainty of those things wherein he had been instructed” (Luke 1:4), that is, to confirm him in the truth by adding new degrees of assurance, so it is our duty to let the loud opposition raised against the truths we profess (truths worth as much as our souls) spur us to compare them diligently with Scripture, so that we may be more fully confirmed and established in them.

Having examined the whole matter, I will leave it to readers’ choice, as Elijah did of old: if “Jehovah be God, serve him, and if Baal be God, let him be worshipped.” If what the generality of professing Christians believe and acknowledge about the Spirit of God, his work on their hearts, and his gifts and graces in the church, along with the manner of their communication, is, in substance (as they generally agree), taught and revealed in Scripture on the same terms by which it is received, then let them continue in that holy profession and rejoice in the comfort they have received through it. But if these things, along with what is directly and necessarily deduced from them in their application to the souls of men, are nothing but vain and useless imaginings, then it is high time that people’s minds were freed of them.