advocates,--Christ with the Father, and the
Spirit with us. Christ is gone above for it, and he sent the Spirit in his
stead. As God hath a deputy judge in man, that is, man's conscience, so
the Son, our advocate with God, hath a deputy advocate to plead the cause
in our conscience, and this he doth, partly by opening up the Scriptures
to us and making us understand the way of salvation in them, partly
manifesting his own works and God's gifts in us by a superadded light of
testimony, and partly by comforting us against all outward and inward
sorrows. Sometimes he pleads with the soul against Satan "not guilty," for
Satan is a slanderous and a false accuser, and cares not _calumniari
fortiter ul aliquid haereat_, to calumniate stoutly, and he knoweth
something will stick.(254) He will not only object known sins and
transgressions of the law, but his manner is to cast a mist upon the eye
of the soul, and darken all its graces, and then he brings forth his
process, that they have no grace, no faith in Christ, no love to God, no
sorrow for sin. In such a case, it is the Spirit's office to plead it out
to our consciences, that we are not totally guilty, as we are charged, and
this is not so much a clearing of ourselves, as a vindication of the free
gifts of God, which lie under his aspersion and reproach. Indeed, if there
be a great stress here, and, for wise reasons, the Spirit forbear to plead
out this point, but leave a poor soul to puddle it out alone, and scrape
its evidences together in the dark,--I say, if thou find this too hard for
thee to plead not guilty then my advice is, that ye wave and suspend that
question. Yield it not wholly, but rather have it entire, and do as if it
were not. Suppose that article and point were gained against thee, what
wouldst thou do next? Certainly, thou must say, I would then seek grace
and faith from him who giveth liberally. I would then labour to receive
Christ in the promises. I say, do that now, and thou takest a short and
compendious way to win thy cause, and overcome Satan. Let that be thy
study, and he hath done with it.

But in any challenge about the transgression of the law, or desert of
eternal wrath, the Spirit must not plead "not guilty," for thou must
confess that, but in as far as he driveth at a further conclusion, to
drive thee away from hope and confidence to despondency of spirit, in so
far the Spirit clears up unto the conscience that this doth nowise follow
from