temple an
unclean cage for hateful birds, or a temple for idols, how can it but
grieve him? And if you grieve the Spirit, certainly the Spirit will grieve
you, will make you repent it at the heart. Please him, by hearkening to
his motions, and following his direction, and he shall comfort you. His
office is to be a spring of consolation to you, but if you grieve him by
walking in the imagination of your hearts, and following the suggestions
of the flesh,--his enemy,--no doubt that spring will turn its channel
another way, and dry up for a season toward you. It is not every sin or
infirmity that grieves him thus, if so be that it grieve thee; but the
entertaining of any sin, and making peace with any of his enemies, that
cannot but displease him: and, O what loss you have by it! You displease
your greatest friend, to please your greatest enemy, you blot and
bludder(195) that seal of the Spirit, that you shall not be able to read
it, till it be cleansed and washed again. Now, "if any man have not the
Spirit of Christ, he is none of his," he is not a Christian. Take this
along with you, who aim at nothing but the external and outward show or
visible standing in the church. If you have not this Spirit, and the seal
of this Spirit, found on you, Christ will not know you for his in that day
of his appearing.

Sermon XXVI.

Verse 10.--"And if Christ be in you, the body is dead because of
sin; but the Spirit is life because of righteousness."

God's presence is his working. His presence in a soul by his Spirit is his
working in such a soul in some special manner, not common to all men, but
peculiar to them whom he hath chosen. Now his dwelling is nothing else but
a continued, familiar and endless working in a soul, till he hath
conformed all within to the image of his Son. The soul is the office
house, or workhouse, that the Spirit hath taken up, to frame in it the
most curious piece of the whole creation, even to restore and repair that
masterpiece, which came last from God's hand, _ab ultima manu_, and so was
the chiefest. I mean, the image of God, in righteousness and holiness.
Now, this is the bond of union between God and us: Christ is the bond of
union with God, but the Spirit is the bond of union with Christ. Christ is
the peace between God and us, that makes of two one, but the Spirit is the
link between Christ and us, whereby he hath immediate and actual interest
in us, and we in him. I find the un