Chapter IV — The Indwelling of the Spirit

The first thing which the Comforter is promised for to Believers, is, that he should dwell in them, which is their great fundamental privilege, and whereon all other do depend. This therefore must in the first place be enquired into.

The inhabitation of the Spirit in Believers is among those things which we ought, as to the nature or being of it, firmly to believe; but as to the manner of it cannot fully conceive. Nor can this be the least impeachment of its truth to any who assent to the Gospel, wherein we have sundry things proposed as objects of our faith, which our reason cannot comprehend. We shall therefore assert no more in this matter, but what the Scripture directly and expressly goes before us in. And where we have the express letter of the Scripture for our warrant, we are eternally safe, while we affix no sense thereunto that is absolutely repugnant to reason, or contrary to more plain testimonies in other places. Therefore to make plain what we intend herein, the ensuing observations must be premised.

First, this personal inhabitation of the Holy Spirit in Believers, is distinct and different from his essential omnipresence, whereby he is in all things. Omnipresence is essential; inhabitation is personal. Omnipresence is a necessary property of his nature, and so not of him as a distinct Person in the Trinity, but as God essentially, one and the same in being and substance with the Father and the Son. To be every where, to fill all things, to be present with them, or indistant from them, always equally existing in the power of an infinite being, is an inseparable property of the divine nature as such. But this inhabitation is personal, or what belongs to him distinctly as the Holy Ghost. Besides it is voluntary, and that which might not have been, from where it is the subject of a free promise of God, and wholly depends on a free act of the will of the Holy Spirit himself.

Secondly, it is not a presence by virtue of a metonymical denomination, or an expression of the cause for the effect, that is intended. The meaning of this promise, The Spirit shall dwell in you, is not, He shall work graciously in you; for this he can without any especial presence. Being essentially every where, he can work where and how he pleases, without any especial presence. But it is the Spirit himself that is promised, and his presence in an especial manner, and an especial manner of that presence; he shall be in you, and dwell in you, as we shall see. The only enquiry in this matter is, whether the Holy Spirit himself be promised to Believers, or only his grace, which we shall immediately enquire into.

Thirdly, the dwelling of the Person of the Holy Spirit in the persons of Believers, of whatever nature it be, does not effect a personal union between them. That which we call a personal union, is the union of divers natures in the same person, and there can be but one person by virtue of this union. Such is the hypostatical union in the Person of the Son of God. It was our nature he assumed, and not the person of any. And it was impossible he should so assume any more but in one individual instance: for if he could have assumed another individual being of our nature, then it must differ personally from that which he did assume. For there is nothing that differs one man from another, but a distinct personal subsistence of each. And it implies the highest contradiction, that the Son of God could be hypostatically united to more than one: for if they are more than one, they must be more persons than one: and many persons cannot be hypostatically united, for that is to be one person and no more. There may be a manifold union, mystical and moral, or divers, of many persons, but a personal union there cannot be of any thing but of distinct natures. And as the Son of God could not assume many persons, so supposing that human nature which he did unite to himself to have been a person, that is, to have had a distinct subsistence of its own antecedent to its union, and there could have been no personal union between it and the Son of God. For the Son of God was a distinct Person; and if the human nature had been so too, there would have been two persons still, and so no personal union. Nor can it be said, that although the human nature of Christ was a person in itself, yet it ceased so to be upon its union with the divine; and so two persons were conjoined and compounded into one. For if ever human nature have in any instance a personal subsistence of its own, it cannot be separated from it without the destruction and annihilation of the individual. For to suppose otherwise, is to make it to continue what it was, and not what it was; for it is what it is, distinct from all other individuals by virtue of its personality. Therefore, upon this inhabitation of the Spirit, wherein soever it does consist, there is no personal union ensuing between him and Believers, nor is it possible that any such thing should be. For he and they are distinct persons, and must eternally abide so while their natures are distinct. It is only the assumption of our nature into union with the Son of God, antecedent to any individual personal subsistence of its own, that can constitute such an union.

Fourthly, the union and relation that ensues on this inhabitation of the Spirit, is not immediate between him and Believers, but between them and Jesus Christ. For he is sent to dwell in them by Christ, in his Name, as his Spirit, to supply his room in love and grace towards them, making use of his things in all his effects and operations to his glory. Hence, I say, is the union of Believers with Christ by the Spirit, and not with the Spirit himself. For this Holy Spirit dwelling in the human nature of Christ, manifesting and acting himself in all fullness therein, as has been declared, being sent by him to dwell in like manner, and act in a limited measure in all Believers, there is a mystical union from there arising between them, whereof the Spirit is the bond and vital principle.

On these considerations, I say, it is the Person of the Holy Ghost that is promised to believers, and not only the effects of his grace and power, and his Person it is that always dwells in them. And as this on the one hand is an argument of his infinite condescension in complying with this part of his office and work, to be sent by the Father and Son to dwell in believers, so it is an evident demonstration of his eternal Deity, that the one and self-same Person should at the same time inhabit so many thousands of distinct persons as are, or were at any time, of believers in the world; which is fondness to imagine concerning any one that is not absolutely infinite. And therefore that which some oppose as unmeet for him, and beneath his glory, namely, this his inhabitation in the saints of God, is a most illustrious and incontrovertible demonstration of his eternal glory. For none but he who is absolutely immense in his nature and omnipresence, can be so present with, and indistant from all believers in the world; and none but he whose Person by virtue of his nature is infinite, can personally, equally inhabit in them all. An infinite nature and Person is required hereunto. And in the consideration of the incomprehensibility thereof are we to acquiesce as to the manner of his inhabitation, which we cannot conceive.

1. There are very many promises in the Old Testament, that God would thus give the Holy Spirit in and by virtue of the New Covenant; as (Ezekiel 36:27; Isaiah 59:21; Proverbs 1:23). And in every place God calls this promised Spirit, and as promised, his Spirit, my Spirit; which precisely denotes the Person of the Spirit himself. It is generally apprehended, I confess, that in these promises the Holy Spirit is intended only as to his gracious effects and operations, but not as to any personal inhabitation. And I should not much contend upon these promises only, although in some of them his Person as promised be expressly distinguished from all his gracious effects: but the exposition which is given of them in their accomplishment under the New Testament, will not allow us so to judge of them.

2. We are directed to pray for the Holy Spirit, and assured that God will give him to them that ask him of him in a due manner (Hebrews 11:13). If these words must be expounded metonymically and not properly, it must be because either, (1) they agree not in the letter with other testimonies of Scripture; or, (2) contain some sense absurd and unreasonable; or, (3) that which is contrary to the experience of them that believe. The first cannot be said, for other testimonies innumerable concur with it. Nor the second, as we shall show. And for the third, it is that whose contrary we prove. What is it that believers intend in that request? I suppose, I may say, that there is no one petition wherein they are more intense and earnest, nor which they more frequently insist upon. As David prayed, that God would not take his Holy Spirit from him (Psalm 51), so do they, that God would bestow him on them. For this they do, and ought to do, even after they have received him. His continuance with them, his evidencing and manifestation of himself in and to them, are the design of their continued supplications for him. Is it merely external operations of the Spirit in grace that they desire herein? Do they not always pray for his ineffable presence and inhabitation? Will any thoughts of grace or mercy relieve or satisfy them, if once they apprehend that the Holy Spirit is not in them, or does not dwell with them? Although they are not able to form any conceptions in their minds of the manner of his presence and residence in them, yet is it that which they pray for, and without the apprehension whereof by faith, they can have neither peace nor consolation. The promise hereof being confined to believers, those that are truly and really so, as we showed before, it is their experience whereby its accomplishment is to be judged; and not the presumption of such, by whom both the Spirit himself, and his whole work is despised.

3. And this inhabitation is that which principally our Lord Jesus Christ directs his disciples to expect in the promise of him. He dwells with you, and shall be in you (John 14:17). He does so who is the Comforter, the Spirit of Truth: or as it is emphatically expressed (chapter 16:13), he the Spirit of Truth. He is promised to, and he inhabits them that do believe. So it is expressly affirmed towards all that are partakers of this promise (Romans 8:9): you are not in the flesh, but in the Spirit, if so be the Spirit of God dwells in you. Verse 11: the Spirit of him that raised up Jesus from the dead dwells in you. The Holy Spirit dwells in us (1 Timothy 3:14). He that is in us, is greater than he that is in the world (1 John 4:4). And many other express testimonies there are to the same purpose. And whereas the subject of these promises and propositions is the Holy Ghost himself, the Person of the Holy Ghost, and that so expressed as not to leave any pretence for any thing else, and not his Person to be intended: and whereas nothing is ascribed to him that is unreasonable, inconvenient to him in the discharge of his office, or inconsistent with any of his divine perfections, but rather what is every way suitable to his work, and evidently demonstrative of his divine nature and subsistence: it is both irrational and unsuitable to the economy of divine grace to wrest these expressions to a lower, meaner, figurative signification. And I am persuaded that it is contrary to the faith of the Catholic Church of true believers so to do. For however some of them may not have exercised their minds about the manner of the abode of the Holy Spirit with the Church, and some of them when they hear of his personal indwelling, wherein they have not been duly instructed, do fear it may be, that indeed that cannot be, which they cannot comprehend, and that some evil consequence may ensue upon the admittance of it, although they cannot say what they are: yet it is with them all even an article of faith, that the Holy Ghost dwells in the Church, that is, them that truly believe; and herein have they an apprehension of such a personal presence of his as they cannot conceive. This therefore being so expressly, so frequently affirmed in the Scripture, and the comfort of the Church which depends thereon being singular and eminent, it is to me an important article of evangelical truth.

Although all the principal actings of the Holy Spirit in us, and towards us as a Comforter, do depend on this head, or flow from this spring of his inhabitation, yet in the confirmation of its truth, I shall here name one or two, by which it self is evidenced, and its benefits to the church declared.

This is the spring of his gracious operations in us. So our Savior himself declares it. The Water that I shall give to him, shall be in him a Well of Water springing up into everlasting Life (John 4:14). The Water here promised is the Holy Spirit, called the Gift of God (ver. 10). This is evident from that parallel place (John 7:38, 39), where this Living Water is plainly declared to be the Holy Ghost. And this Water which is given to any, is to be in him, and there to abide, which is but a metaphorical expression of the inhabitation of the Spirit. For it is to be in him as a Well, as a Living Fountain, which cannot be spoke of any gracious habit whatever. No quality in our minds can be a spring of Living Water. Besides, all gracious habits are effects of the operation of the Holy Spirit, and therefore they are not the Well it self, but belong to the springing of it up in Living Waters. So is the Spirit in his indwelling distinguished from all his evangelical operations of grace, as the Well is distinct from the streams that flow from it. And as it is natural and easy for a spring of Living Waters to bubble up, and put forth refreshing streams; so it belongs to the consolation of believers, to know how easy it is to the Holy Spirit, how ready he is on the account of his gracious inhabitation, to carry on and perfect the work of grace, holiness and sanctification in them. And what instruction they may take for their own deportment towards him, may be afterwards spoken to. So in many other places is his presence with us (which we have proved to be by the way of gracious inhabitation) proposed as the cause and spring of all his gracious operations, and so distinct from them. So the Holy Ghost that is given us, sheds abroad the love of God in our hearts (Romans 5:5). The Spirit of God that dwells in us, shall quicken our mortal bodies (Romans 8:12). He bears witness with our spirits that we are the sons of God (Romans 8:16). Which places have been elsewhere explained and vindicated.

This is the hidden spring and cause of that inexpressible distance and difference that is between believers and the rest of the world. Our Apostle tells us, that the life of believers is hid with Christ in God (Colossians 3:3). A blessed life they have while they are here, dead to the world, and as dead in the world. A life that will issue in eternal glory: but no such thing appears, no lustre of it is cast abroad into the eyes of men. True, says the Apostle, for it is hid with Christ in God. It is so both in its causes, nature, operations and means of preservation. But by this hidden life it is that they are differenced from the perishing world. And it will not be denied, as I suppose, that this difference is real and great: for those who believe, do enjoy the especial love and favor of God; whereas those who do not, are under the curse, and the wrath of God abides on them. They are alive to God, but these are dead in trespasses and sins. And if men will not believe that there is so inexpressible a difference between them in this world, they will be forced to confess it at the last day, when the decretory sentences of Come you blessed, and Go you cursed, shall be openly denounced. But for the most part there is no visible cause in the eyes of the world of this inexpressible and eternal difference between these two sorts of persons. For besides that for the most part the world does judge amiss of all that believers are and do, and do rather, through an inbred enmity, working by wicked and foolish surmises, suppose them to be the worst, rather than absolutely the best of men: there is not for the most part such a visible, manifest difference in outward actions and duties, on which alone a judgment may be passed in man's day, as to be a just foundation of believing so unspeakable difference between their persons as is spoken of. There is a difference in their works, which indeed ought to be far greater than it is; and so a greater testimony given to the righteousness of God (1 John 3:12). There is yet a greater difference in internal, habitual grace, whereby the minds of believers are transformed initially into the image of God (Titus 1:15). But these things will not bear the weight of this inconceivable distance. Principally therefore it depends hereon, namely, the inhabitation of the Spirit in them that believe. The great difference between the two houses that Solomon built, was, that God dwelt in the one, and he himself in the other. Though any two houses as to their outward fabric make the same appearance, yet if the King dwell in the one, and a Robber in the other, the one may be a palace, and the other a den. It is this inhabitation of the Spirit whereon all the privileges of believers do immediately depend, and all the advantages which they have above the men of the world. And the difference which is made hereby, or ensues hereon, is so inconceivably great, as a sufficient reason may from there be given of all the excellent things which are spoken of them who are partakers of it.