Christian Theology - Media Sabda Org

great atonement, shows the necessity of it, counsels us to receive it,
instructs us how to lay hold on it, vindicates our claim to it, and makes
intercessions in us with unutterable groanings.
Our Lord makes intercession for us by negotiating and managing, as
our friend and agent, all the affairs pertaining to our salvation. And the
Spirit of God maketh intercession for the saints, not by supplication to
God in their behalf, but by directing and qualifying their supplications in
a proper manner, by his agency and influence upon their hearts; which,
according to the gospel scheme, is the peculiar work and office of the
Holy Spirit. So that God, whose is the Spirit, and who is acquainted with
the mind of the Spirit, knows what he means when he leads the saints to
express themselves in words, desires, groans, sighs, or tears; in each God
reads the language of the Holy Ghost, and prepares the answer according
to the request.
This Spirit is not sent to stocks, stones, or machines, but to human
beings endued with rational souls; therefore, it is not to work on them
with that irresistible energy which it must exert on inert matter, in order
to conquer the vis inertiae, or disposition to abide eternally in a
motionless state, which is the state of all inanimate beings; but it works
upon understanding, will, judgment, conscience, &c., in order to
enlighten, convince, and persuade. If, after all, the understanding, the eye
of the mind, refuses to behold the light; the will determines to remain
obstinate; the judgment purposes to draw false inferences; and the
conscience hardens itself against every check and remonstrance; (and all
this is possible to a rational soul, which must be dealt with in a rational
way;)then the Spirit of God, being thus resisted, is grieved, and the sinner
is left to reap the fruit of his doings. To force the man to see, feel, repent,
believe, and be saved, would be to alter the essential principles of his
creation and the nature of mind, and reduce him into the state of a
machine, the vis inertiae of which was to be overcome and conducted by
a certain quantum of physical force, superior to that resistance which
would be the natural effect of the certain quantum of the vis inertiae
possessed by the subject on and by which this agent was to operate. Now