Quest. Can you give me further reason yet to convict me of the truth of what you say?
Answ. Yes.
1. Because the Spirit cannot give himself the lie, he cannot overthrow his own order of working nor contradict that testimony that his servants, by his inspiration, hath given of his order of working with them. But he must do the first if he saith to us—and that after we have received his own testimony, we are under grace—that yet we are under sin, the law, and wrath.
And he must do the second, if—after he hath gone through the first work on us as a spirit of bondage, to the second as a spirit of adoption—he should overthrow as a spirit of bondage again what before he had built as a spirit of adoption.
And the third must therefore follow, that is, he overthrows the testimony of his servants; for they have said, that now we receive the spirit of bondage again to fear no more; that is, after that, we by the Holy Ghost are enabled to call God Father, Father.
2. This is evident also because the covenant in which now the soul is interested abided and is everlasting, not upon the supposition of my obedience, but upon the unchangeable purpose of God, and the efficacy of the obedience of Christ, whose blood also hath confirmed it. It is "ordered in all things, and sure," said David; and this, said he, "is all my salvation" (2 Sam 23:5). The covenant then is everlasting in itself, being established upon so good a foundation, and therefore stand in itself everlastingly bent for the good of them that are involved in it. Hear the tenor of the covenant and God's attesting of the truth thereof—"This is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel, after those days, saith the Lord; I will put my laws into their mind, and write them in their hearts; and I will be to them a God, and they shall be to me a people; and they shall not teach every man his Neighbour, and every man his brother, saying, Know the Lord; for all shall know me, from the least to the greatest; for I will be merciful to their unrighteousness, and their sins and their iniquities I will remember no more" (Heb 8:10-12). Now if God will do thus unto those that he hath comprised in his everlasting covenant of grace, then he will remember their sins no more, that is, unto condemnation—for so it is that he doth forget them; then cannot the Holy Ghost, who also is one with the Father and the Son, come to us again, even after we are possessed with these glorious fruits of this covenant, as a spirit of bondage, to put us in fear of damnation.
3. The Spirit of God, after it has come to me as a spirit of adoption, can come to me no more as a spirit of bondage, to put me in fear, that is, with my first fears, because, by that faith that he, even he himself, hath wrought in me, to believe and call God "Father, Father," I am united to Christ, and stand no more upon mine own legs, in mine own sins, or performances; but in his glorious righteousness before him, and before his Father; but he will not cast away a member of his body, of his flesh, and of his bones; nor will he, that the Spirit of God should come as a spirit of bondage to put him into a grounded fear of damnation, that stand complete before God in the righteousness of Christ; for that is an apparent contradiction.
Quest. But may it not come again as a spirit of bondage to put me into my first fears for my good?
Answ. The text is contrary, for we "have not received the spirit of bondage again to fear." Nor is God put to it for want of wisdom, to say and unsay, do and undo, or else he cannot do good. When we are sons and have received the adoption of children, he doth not use to send the spirit after that to tell us we are slaves and heirs of damnation, also that we are without Christ, without the promise, without grace, and without God in the world; and yet this he must do if it comes to us after we have received him as a spirit of adoption, and put us, as a spirit of bondage, in fear as before.
[This ungodly fear wrought by the spirit of the devil.]
Quest. But by what spirit is it then that I am brought again into fears, even into the fears of damnation, and so into bondage?
Answ. By the spirit of the devil, who always labors to frustrate the faith, and hope, and comfort of the godly.
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