It is this blessed Spirit that awakens the stupid and thoughtless sinner to a sense of his guilt and danger. It is he shews him the evil of sin, and makes him groan after deliverance, and cry out, what shall I do to be saved? And it is the Spirit that reveals and discovers Christ Jesus to him as the only and all-sufficient Saviour: It is he who shews the convinced sinner, that there is righteousness and grace to be found in Christ, to answer all his present complaints and necessities. The word of the gospel says these things indeed, but it is like a _dead letter_, till the living spirit speaks them over again, and, as it were, constrains us to hear the voice of encouragement and hope. It is he represents the death and sufferings of the Son of God, as an effectual atonement for sin, and makes the soul believe it, and teaches us how to lay hold on this hope, to fly to this refuge, to receive this atonement: It is the Spirit of God that softens the hardest heart, and melts it into godly sorrow: It is he makes us willing to accept of Jesus as a Prince and a Saviour, to renew our sinful natures, to refine our hearts, and thereby to reform our lives: It is he that takes the blood of Christ, and applies it to a distressed conscience under the guilt of sin, and thus gives the disquieted soul rest and peace: _He takes of the things of Christ, and shews them unto us_ in all their glory and sufficiency for our salvation, and thereby justly obtains the name of the paraclete, that is, an _advocate_ for Christ, and a _comforter_ to us: John xiv. 26. and xv. 26. and xvi. 14, 15. He composes the ruffles of the disturbed mind, and speaks all the waves of the soul into a calm: He makes all within us peaceful and easy, under the apprehensions of divine forgiveness through the merit of Christ. It is only the Spirit of God that can make the discoveries of heaven in the gospel effectual to awaken our hope, and to raise our joy: He shews us how it is purchased by the blood of Christ, and that it is made sure to all those that believe: He stamps his own holy image upon us, and seals us up for the inheritance of heaven; Eph. i. 13. _When ye heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation_, and _believed it, ye were_ then _sealed with the Holy Spirit of promise, which is the earnest of our inheritance_. The Spirit is sent into our hearts as a _Spirit of adoption, whereby we call God Father_; Gal. iv. 6. And he changes us from children of wrath into the sons and daughters of the living God; and he himself dwelling in us is a pledge and _earnest of that inheritance, which is reserved for us among the saints in light_.