unto magistrates and powers, take ye no thought how, or what thing ye shall answer, or what ye shall say. For the Holy Ghost shall teach you in the same hour what ye ought to say; for it is not ye that speak, but the Spirit of your Father which speaketh in you." Such is the nature of inspiration it is the Spirit of God speaking in or by an apostle.*

We have also a specimen of the actual fulfilment of one important branch of the promise, even before the day of Pentecost. "Then opened he their understanding that they might understand the Scriptures; and beginning at Moses and all the prophets, he showed them in all the Scriptures the things concerning himself."

But what further illustrates the import and force of this promise of the Holy Ghost, is the commission given by Christ to the apostles, which rested entirely upon the accomplishment of it, and could not have been executed without it. "I give unto thee," said Jesus to one of the apostles, Peter, in the name of the rest, "the keys of the kingdom of heaven, and whatsoever thou shalt bind on earth, shall be bound in heaven; and whatsoever thou shalt loose on earth, shall be loosed in heaven.-And he breathed on them, and said, Receive ye the Holy Ghost; whosesoever sins ye remit, they are remitted unto them, and whosesoever sins ye retain, they are retained." Words, undoubtedly including, and indeed chiefly referring to the doctrine delivered by the apostles inspired by the Holy Ghost, according to which, sins are ministerially remitted or retained, and the state of all men in respect of acceptance or condemnation, is and will be finally determined; and which supposes such an assistance of the Spirit in the discharge of their office, as to exclude absolutely all error or mistake.

Again, the last words of our Lord confirmed all the preceding expectations of spiritual authority and inspiration. "All power is given unto me in heaven and earth; go ye, therefore, and teach all nations.-Go ye into all the world and preach the gospel to every creature; baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost, teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you. He that believeth and is baptized, shall be saved; and he hath believeth not, shall be damned. And lo, I am with you always, even unto the end of the world." If, then, any, the least error, as to the doctrines or precepts of * Matt. x. 19; Mark xiii. 11; Luke xii. 11, 12.

Christianity, is found in the Holy Scriptures, this promise, and the commission founded on it, have so far been defeated in their main design. There is no absolutely infallible standard of salvation or condemnation; and the divine Saviour, instead of being with his church to the end of the world, has failed it in the very first age, and in the most critical of all points, the inditing of those sacred rules and canons of faith and practice, by which every subsequent age was to be governed.

2. But what gifts and qualifications did the apostles actually receive in consequence of this great promise of our Lord?

This will furnish a most conclusive argument. We have only to look at the apostles, first in themselves, and then when the gifts of the Spirit had qualified them for their office, to be convinced of the full inspiration of all they spoke and wrote.

Behold the weak, dismayed, timid fishermen of Galilee, who had fled at their Master's apprehension, and had with difficulty been persuaded of his resurrection. The day of Pentecost arrives. They are suddenly endowed with new and surprising powers, and assume a new character. The house shakes where they are assembled. The divine Spirit rests, like a lambent celestial flame, upon each of them. Instantly they speak with new tongues. Unlearned and ignorant men as they were, and discouraged and cowardly as they had proved themselves, they discourse with the greatest readiness and propriety, and with a boldness which nothing can daunt, in every dialect and tongue of the assembled crowds. No language is unknown to them. Latin, Greek, Arabic, Coptic, Persic, the first rudiments of which they had never learned, are familiar to their use. A new courage, discernment, vigor, knowledge of the prophetical word, skill in argument, fortitude in bearing testimony to the resurrection of their Lord, appear in their discourses. The gifts of healing attend them, for the demonstration of their credentials to others; the gifts of wisdom, and knowledge, and the discerning of spirits, for giving them a full and comprehensive perception of the Christian doctrine, and the faculty of teaching it with unerring

truth.

Here we see the promise of the Saviour fully accomplished. This forms the link of all our arguments. The Old Testament was inspired; the New stands on the same footing; the promise and commission of our Lord imply full superintendence; the gifts bestowed on the apostles are precisely adapted

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to constitute them infallible teachers. The qualifications correspond with the offices to be fulfilled.

The apostles go forth. Let us follow the steps of any one, St. Paul, for example, who was so soon added to their company, and became the great doctor of the gentiles. He is miraculously converted from a fiery persecutor to a meek and devoted disciple. He receives a full and distinct revelation of the gospel, to him at that time unknown, by the immediate inspiration of Christ. He joins the Christian church. He turns to the gentiles. A heavenly vision calls him over into Europe. He performs every where his miraculous deeds: diseases fly before him: devils are cast out. His motions are guided from place to place by a divine oracle; Elymas is struck blind for opposing him; his bands are loosed by an earthquake; his vigor and health are instantaneously restored, when he had been stoned and taken up for dead at Lystra; his life is saved in a shipwreck, and for his sake nearly three hundred fellow passengers are rescued with him from a watery grave.

In the midst of these miracles, he preaches the gospel, he founds churches, he traverses the provinces of the Roman empire; he argues with the Jews, and proves from the Scriptures that Jesus is the Christ; he convinces the gentiles, and exposes their idolatries; the Holy Spirit accompanies his labors; multitudes are converted; miraculous gifts are conferred by the imposition of his hands. He executes for thirty years his commission to evangelize, instruct, make disciples of all nations. He uses every means likely to attain his end. He finds that his young converts need to be further instructed : that errors creep into the churches whilst he is absent. He hears that false apostles corrupt the faith, or that Jewish converts impose a yoke upon the gentiles. He writes letters to the churches, on the highest subjects of his ministry. Is it not, then, absurd-I was going to say, impious-to conceive that he should be left and deserted of God, who was at the very time surrounding him with the tokens of his extraordinary presence and care, to mingle error with his most solemn instructions, and human frailty with divine truth?

It is allowed by all who receive the Christian revelation in all its parts, that the gifts of the Holy Ghost conferred an infallibility upon the doctrine of the apostle, as he preached it to Jew and gentile: and surely this infallibility extended to every thing relating to the diffusion of the religion which he

and his fellow apostles propagated. If the Holy Ghost exalted and elevated their minds in their apostolical function generally, much more would his gifts attend them when inditing those books which were to be the abiding records of the Christian faith. During their lives, they could easily rectify the mistakes and heresies that arose to disturb the peace of the churches. But after their decease, things would fall into their ordinary course, the state of the church would be altered from the extraordinary guidance of the apostles, to the ordinary guidance of imperfect men. Feeble persons would soon mistake in doctrine; their memory would fail to retain what had been taught them; false brethren would come in; damnable heresies would be privily taught. There would want authoritative decisions, a standard, a rule to which all claims might be referred. God, who inspired the apostles to teach the world, inspired them, therefore, to write what they taught, for the preservation of the faith uncontaminated to every future age. And can any thing be more pernicious, than to suppose, without any one argument from reason or Scripture, that the Holy Spirit assisted them in the temporary instruction of a passing age, but left them to themselves in their permanent doctrine, in which the church, through all future ages, was interested; that they were inspired in discharging one part of their office, but deserted by the divine Enlightener when they sat down to the other; that the Spirit was bountifully with them in their assemblies, but withdrew when they retired to their studies; that their speech was with infallibility and power, but their writing with a mixture of feebleness and imperfection; that they were supernaturally aided in explaining the mysteries of the gospel in their discourses, but left destitute when reducing those discourses to writing; that their sermons were the word of God, but their books the word of man!*

* "You will remember, that the doctrines of the Christian revelation," says Bishop Horsley against them who denied the miraculous nativity, and the inspiration of the evangelists, were not originally delivered in a system, but interwoven in the history of our Saviour's life. To say, therefore, that the first preachers were not inspired in the composition of the narratives in which their doctrine is conveyed, is nearly the same thing as to deny their inspiration in general. You will, perhaps, think it incredible, that they who were assisted by the divine Spirit when they preached, should be deserted by that Spirit when they committed what they had preached to writing. You will think it improbable, that they who were endowed with the gift of dis

Besides, we are to recollect, that the apostles perpetually appeal, in their epistles, to what they had taught, as corresponding with what they wrote, and confirming it. They speak of their preaching and writing indifferently as the same gospel. "Remember ye not, that when I was yet with you, how I told you of these things?-We write none other things unto you, than what you read or acknowledge, and I trust you shall acknowledge even unto the end.-Hold fast the form of sound words which thou hast heard of me." Such is the language which marks the identity of their discourses and letters. But this identity is definitely settled by the authority of God himself. Every one of the attestations in the New Testament to the full inspiration of the Old, as the words of the Holy Ghost, is applied indifferently to what was spoken by Moses, and David, and Isaiah, and the other prophets, and to what was written by them; nay, though the passages, as cited, were of necessity taken from the written canon of the Jewish church, they are expressly described as spoken by God, uttered by the mouth of God, said or declared by the Holy Ghost.

Further, the epistles were chiefly addressed to the newlyfounded churches, to guard them, as we have just observed, against seducers; to correct rising errors, to communicate a full knowledge of the gospel, to establish them in the faith, to call them back from false teachers, to the doctrine and teaching of the apostles; to remind them of what they had heard from their fathers in Christ at their first conversion; to be the guide and standard of truth, after the decease of the apostles; to supply, in short, the personal presence and authority of the evangelists and apostles in every age. The epistles, therefore, are silent preachers, representatives of those who wrote them; summaries of their oral instructions; sermons adapted to the most important emergencies of the churches, and delivered permanently by pen and ink, instead of, on

cerning spirits, should be endowed with no gift of discerning the truth of facts. You will recollect one instance in which St. Peter detected a falsehood by the light of inspiration; and you will, perhaps, be inclined to think, that it could be of no less importance to the church, that the apostles and evangelists should be enabled to detect falsehoods in the history of our Saviour's life than that St. Peter should be enabled to detect Ananias's lie, about the sale of his estate. You will think it unlikely, that they who were led by the Spirit into all truth, should be permitted to lead the whole church for many ages into error."Sermon xxxiv. Luke i. 28.