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to the greatest witness, saying, "It is the Spirit that beareth witness:" even beyond "the water and the blood;" which bear witness also:* "because the Spirit is Truth." And that "the testimony of Jesus is the Spirit of prophecy:"3 Or, "the Spirit of prophecy is the testimony of Jesus;" or, that, which is the great witness to Jesus. As if it was so much the province of the Spirit to bear witness and give testimony, that no other witness or testimony was to be esteemed one, in comparison of His.

Since the law and the prophets all refer to the teaching and testimony of Jesus; and Jesus to the teaching and the witness of the Spirit; it must needs be of the highest consequence to the Christian religion, that this be rightly understood.

I shall therefore explain what I mean by the teaching and the witness of the Spirit. (Chapter 1.)

I shall endeavour to show the necessity there was for this teaching and witness of the Spirit, in the first settlement of Christianity. (Chapter 2.)

I shall further prove, that the Spirit did so teach and witness in the first settlement of Christianity and shall point out, in what this superior teaching and witnessing did consist. (Chapter 3.)

I shall from thence shortly state, what was the consequence of reviling and blaspheming it; or what I consider to be the sin against the Holy Ghost: and address a few words to the Deists (who desire to be thought the only freethinkers of the age), and those who professedly

write against them. (Chapter 4.)

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CHAPTER L

ON THE NATURE OF THE TEACHING, AND
WITNESS OF THE HOLY SPIRIL

SECTION I.—On the manner of our Lord's reating and the extent, to which He was understood whie že was still on Earth.

OUR Saviour, by the Spirit aut te days of His flesh. The civic e neucated, were, indeed, very plan: iar mang of the truths which He taught. Be taught n parables; and without a parale #IFLE FE not unto them: as they were aive at lear to bear) it." These are wit me u Es kingdom; His administering from we rege hand of God, by the Spirit: ne spest'T BULTESE and great extent: the reasonate ant f dom of its precepts: the great aposary and que final consummation. And though He went farther with the disciples, expounding some of Es parables privately uno tien a Mark List Ir forms us ;3 and as be and the oler & inform us, in several other places: yet our Se

'Matt. xiii. 34.

20 Christ's Divinity to be always kept in view.

viour told His disciples, just as He was going to leave them, that "He had many things to say unto them; but you cannot bear them now. Such were their prejudices, that by their influence they could as little bear them, as old bottles (old skins) could new wine; as our Saviour says of them on another occasion. So that just as He was going to them, He declares, concerning the mysteries of the kingdom of

'John xvi. 12. On the manner of our Lord's teaching see more particularly Bishop Law's Life of Christ, and Archbishop Newcome on the same subject. These eminent writers, however, have not sufficiently kept in view our Lord's divinity. They too much consider His wisdom, as that, only of a good and great man. In all our inquiries into our Lord's conduct, we must ever bear in mind, that He partook of the divine as well as of the human nature. As the doctrine of the divinity of Christ was one of the important truths which He came to establish, we find that many of His actions were directed apparently to this object. In the very lowest depths of His humiliation as a man, He gave a proof of His Godhead, by opening the kingdom of heaven to the penitent thief: and in his highest elevation upon earth, when the spirits from the invisible world had obeyed his summons, and the voice from Heaven proclaimed that He was a divine Being-in that hour, says the inspired narrative, He first revealed the astonishing fact, that He was to go up to Jerusalem, to be buffeted, and to be spit upon, as the lowest and the most degraded of criminals. Lord Barrington never loses sight of the divinity of Christ, to whatever part of His character or ministry, he may be directing the attention of his reader.

2 Matt. xix. 17.

Misapprehensions of the people concerning Xt. 21

which He had been speaking: "These things have I spoken to you in proverbs: the time cometh when I shall no more speak to you in proverbs, but I shall show you plainly of the Father." Nay, so strong were the preposses

I

sions of His disciples, that they did not understand some of those things which our Saviour told them in the plainest terms; they being, by the means of their preconceptions, hid from them."

The people thought, that Jesus of Nazareth was not Christ, because Elias was not come. They thought He could not be the Messias, because they imagined they knew His parents, that He was born at Nazareth, the meanest city in Galilee, the most despicable part of Palestine. They thought His appearance too mean and contemptible for the King of Israel, who, as they imagined, was to take temporal power, and deliver them from the yoke of the Romans; and who was to set up an universal monarchy, subduing the nations under them, and becoming their King and Governor, to continue such for ever. Jesus set the disciples right as to one of those things, namely, about Elias; yet He never attempted to set them right as to some of them; nor was He understood as to what He said to set them right about others.

John xvi. 25.

2 Luke ix. 45. xviii. 34.