Essays, Scriptural, Moral, And Logical V2 (1807) (Hardcover)

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: ESSAY XIII. UPON THE ORDINARY OPERATIONS OF THE HOLY SPIRIT. considering the ends for which the ex iraordinary gifts of the Holy Spirit were imparted to the apostles, and the account of hit effects upon their minds as related in scripture, we were enabled to collect the Nature of hit extraordinary operations. In the same man- jier, by considering the ends for which the ordinary gifts of the Holy Spirit are promised to all Christians, and also the constitution of the human mind, upon which we are told he exerts his effects (for we learn from scripture that God worketh in us to mill and to do), we hall be enabled to collect the nature of his ordinary operations. The end of the extraordinary operations of the Holy Spirit was the qualification of theapostles to be the dispensers of God's word to all mankind. The knowledge and the powers vouchsafed to them for this purpose were so little connected with the private benefit of the individual, that we are told many, who possessed these gifts in an eminent degree, should yet be excluded from that salvation they were enabled to preach. In order to preach this salvation, a ncic and extraordinary knowledge was communicated to them, by ways no less new and extraordinary; a knowledge far above the reach of the human faculties, and to which not only they, but all mankind, were utter Strangers from the creation of the world, excepting the little imparted for the purpose of prophecy. This ignorance of man was the de- signation of God himself. It was in the WisDom of God that the world by wisdom knew not Godt. It was the special, the wise, the express appointment of God, that mankind should not be able to discover, by the use of their natural faculties (those faculties which he had given them), that great mystery of God in Christ reconcili...