Two discourses concerning the Holy Spirit, and His work the one, Of the Spirit…

2. WE are directed to pray for the Holy Spirit, and assured that God will give him unto them that ask him of him in a due manner, Heb. 11. 13. If these Words must be expounded metonymically and not properly, it must be because either, (1) They agree not in the Letter with other Testimonies of ⟨p. 56⟩Scripture. Or, (2) Contain some Sense absurd and unreasonable. Or, (3) That which is contrary unto the Experience of them that believe. The first cannot be said, for other Testimonies innumerable concur with it. Nor the Second, as we shall show. And for the Third, it is that whose contrary we prove. What is it that Believers intend in that Request? I suppose, I may say, that there is no one Petition wherein they are more intense and earnest, nor which they more frequently insist upon. As David prayed, that God would not take his Holy Spirit from him, Psal. 51. So do they, that God would bestow him on them. For this they do, and ought to do, even after they have received him. His Continuance with them, his evidencing and manifestation of himself in and to them, are the design of their continued Supplications for him. Is it merely external Operations of the Spirit in Grace that they desire herein? Do they not always pray for his ineffable Presence and Inhabitation? Will any Thoughts of Grace or Mercy relieve or satisfy them, if once they apprehend that the Holy Spirit is not in them, or doth not dwell with them? Although they are not able to form any Conceptions in their Minds of the manner of his Presence and Residence in them, yet is it that which they pray for, and without the Apprehension whereof by Faith, they can have neither Peace nor Consolation. The Promise hereof being confined unto Believers, those that are truly and really so, as we showed before, it is their Experience whereby its Accomplishment is to be judged; and not the Presumption of such, by whom both the Spirit himself, and his whole Work is despised.

2. WE are directed to pray for the Holy Spirit, and assured that God will give him unto them that ask him of him in a due manner, Heb. 11. 13. If these Words must be expounded metonymically and not properly, it must be because either, (1) They agree not in the Letter with other Testimonies of