Christian Theology - Media Sabda Org

man's reason, fancy, or imagination, can restore this cry. Were he to utter
the words with his lips his heart would disown them. But, on the other
hand, while he continues faithful the witness is continued; the light and
conviction, and the cry, are maintained. It is the glory of this grace that no
man can command this cry; and none can assume it. Where it is, it is the
faithful and true witness: where it is not, all is uncertainty and doubt.
The persons mentioned, Rom. viii, 15, 16, had the strongest evidence
of the excellence of the state in which they stood; they knew that they
were thus adopted; and they knew this by the Spirit of God, which was
given them on their adoption; and, let me say, they could know it by no
other means. The Father who had adopted them could be seen by no
mortal eye; and the transaction, being of a purely spiritual nature, and
transacted in heaven, can be known only by God's supernatural testimony
of it upon earth. It is a matter of such solemn importance to every
Christian soul, that God in his mercy has been pleased not to leave it to
conjecture, assumption, or inductive reasoning; but attests it by his own
Spirit in the soul of the person whom he adopts through Christ Jesus. It
is the grand and most observable case in which the intercourse is kept up
between heaven and earth; and the genuine believer in Christ Jesus is not
left to the quibbles or casuistry of polemic divines or critics, but receives
the thing and the testimony of it immediately from God himself. And
were not the testimony of the state thus given, no man could possibly
have any assurance of his salvation which could beget confidence and
love. If to any man his acceptance with God be hypothetical, then his
confidence most be so too. His love to God must be hypothetical, his
gratitude hypothetical, and his obedience also. If God had forgiven me my
sins then I should love him, and I should be grateful, and I should testify
this gratitude by obedience. But who does not see that these must
necessarily depend on the "if" in the first case? All this uncertainty, and
the perplexities necessarily resulting from it, God has precluded by
sending the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, by which we cry, "Abba,
Father;" and thus our adoption into the heavenly family is testified and
ascertained to us in the only way in which it can possibly be done, by the