Quest. CLXVIII. Are not our own reasons, studies, memory, strivings, books, forms, methods, and ministry, needless, yea, a hurtful quenching or preventing of the Spirit, and setting up our own, instead of the Spirit's operation?
Answ. 1. Yes; if we do it in a conceit of the sufficiency of ourselves, our reason, memory, studies, books, forms, &c. without the Spirit; or if we ascribe any thing to any of these which is proper to Christ or to his Spirit. For such proud, self-sufficient despisers of the Spirit, cannot reasonably expect his help. I doubt among men counted learned and rational there are too many such, that know not man’s insufficiency or corruption, nor the necessity and use of that Holy Ghost into whose name they were baptized, and in whom they take on them to believe. But think that all that pretend to the Spirit are but fanatics and enthusiasts, and self-conceited people; when yet the Spirit himself saith, Rom. viii. 9, “If any man have not the Spirit of Christ, the same is none of his.” And Gal. iv. 6, “Because we are sons, God hath sent forth the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, whereby we cry, Abba, Father.”
2. But if we give to reason, memory, study, books, methods, forms, &c. but their proper place in subordination to Christ and to his Spirit, they are so far from being quenchers of the Spirit, that they are necessary in their places, and such means as we must use, if ever we will expect the Spirit’s help. For the Spirit is not given to a brute to make him a man, or rational; nor to a proud despiser, or idle neglecter of God’s appointed means, to be instead of means; nor to be a patron to the vice of pride or idleness, which he cometh chiefly to destroy; but to bless men in their laborious use of the means which God appointed him: read but Prov. i. 20, &c. ii. iii. v. vi. viii., and you will see that knowledge must be laboured for, and instruction heard; and he that will lie idle till the Spirit move him, and will not stir up himself to seek God, or strive to enter in at the strait gate, nor give all diligence to make his calling and election sure, may find that the Spirit of sloth hath destroyed him, when he thought the Spirit of Christ had been saving him. He that hath but two articles in his creed, must make this the second: “For he that cometh to God must believe that God is, and that he is the rewarder of them that diligently seek him,” Heb. xi. 6.
John xv. 1, 3-5, 7.
Even among them that in their ordination heard “Receive ye the Holy Ghost,” and “Over which the Holy Ghost hath made you overseers.”
Isa. lxxxiv. 7; Matt. vii. 13, 14; 2 Pet. i. 10.