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Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: 71 SERMON II. WHITSUNDAY.?OF THE SPIRIT OF GRACE. ROMANS, Till. 9, 10. But ye are not in the flesh, but in the Spirit, if so be that the Spirit of God dwell in you. Now if any man have not the Spirit of Christ, he is none of his. And if Christ be in you, the body is dead, because of sin; but the Spirit is life, because of righteousness. PART I. This day, in which the church commemorates the descent of the Holy Ghost on the apostles, was the first beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ. This was the first day that the religion was professed: now the apostles first opened their commission, and read it to all the people. ' The Lord gave his Spirit, ' (or, the Lord gave his Word, ) ' and great was the company of the preachers.' For so I make bold to render that prophecy of David. Christ was ' the Word' of God, Verbum teternum; but the Spirit was the Word of God, Verbum patefactum: Christ was the Word manifested in the flesh; the Spirit was the Word manifested to flesh, and set in dominion over, and in hostility against the flesh.The gospel and the Spirit are the same thing; not in substance; but 'the manifestation of the Spirit is the gospel of Jesus Christ: ' and because he was this day manifested, the gospel was this day first preached, and it became a law to us, called ' the law of the Spirit of life;'' that is, a law taught us by the Spirit, leading us to life eternal. But the gospel is called 'the Spirit, ' 1. Because it contains in it such glorious mysteries, which were revealed by the immediate inspirations of the Spirit, not only in the matter itself, but also in the manner and powers to apprehend them. For what power of human understanding could have found out the incarnation of a God; that two natures, a finite and an infinite, could have been concentred into o.