(1.) By the internal illumination of the mind, giving a spiritual discerning of divine truth, which the natural man receiveth not, as the apostle says, 1 Cor. ii. 14. and it is called, 2 Cor. iv. 6. _a shining into our hearts, to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God, in the face of Jesus Christ_. (2.) By subduing the obstinate will of man, and so enabling it to yield to a ready, chearful, and universal obedience to the divine commands contained in scripture; and, in particular, inclining it to own Christ’s authority, as king of saints; and to say, as converted Paul did, _Lord, what wilt thou have me to do?_ Acts ix. 6. (3.) He works upon our affections, exciting in us holy desires after God and Christ, and a very high esteem and value for divine truth, and removes all those prejudices which are in our minds against it, opens and enlarges our hearts to receive the word, and comply with all the commands thereof, thus, Acts xvi. 14. _The Lord opened the heart of Lydia, that she attended to the things that were spoken of Paul._ So David prays, Psal. cxix. 18. compared with v. 5. _Open thou mine eyes, that I may behold wondrous things out of thy law. O that my ways were directed to keep thy statutes!_ Footnote 9: “As for _our own existence_, we perceive it so plainly, and so certainly, that it neither needs, nor is capable of any proof. For nothing can be more evident to us than our own existence; _I think, I reason, I feel pleasure and pain_: can any of these be more evident to me, than my own existence? If I doubt of all other things, that very doubt makes me perceive my own _existence_, and will not suffer me to doubt of that. For if I know _I feel pain_, it is evident I have as certain perception of my own existence, as of the existence of the pain I feel: or, if I know _I doubt_, I have as certain perception of the existence of the thing doubting, as of that thought which I call _doubt_. Experience then convinces us, that _we have an intuitive knowledge of our own existence_, and an internal infallible perception that we are. In every act of sensation, reasoning or thinking, we are conscious to ourselves of our own being, and, in this matter, come not short of the highest degree of _certainty_.”—— “In the next place, man knows by an intuitive certainty, that bare _nothing can no more produce any real being, than it can be equal to two right angles_. If a man knows not that non-entity, or the absence of all being, cannot be equal to two right angles, it is impossible he should know any demonstration in Euclid. If, therefore, we know there is some real being, and that non-entity cannot produce any real being, it is an evident demonstration, that from eternity there has been something; since what was not from eternity, had a beginning, and what had a beginning, must be produced by something else.