And if in the overflow of love and gratitude they
confounded the power and presence of the Holy Spirit, working alike
in weakness and in strength, in the morning mists and in the
clearness of the full day; if they confounded this communion and co-
agency of divine grace, attributable to the Scripture generally, with
those express, and expressly recorded, communications and messages of
the Most High which form so large and prominent a portion of the same
Scriptures; if, in short, they did not always duly distinguish the
inspiration, the imbreathment, of the predisposing and assisting
SPIRIT from the revelation of the informing WORD, it was at worst a
harmless hyperbole. It was holden by all, that if the power of the
Spirit from without furnished the text, the grace of the same Spirit
from within must supply the comment.
In the sacred Volume they saw and reverenced the bounden wheat-sheaf
that STOOD UPRIGHT and had OBEISANCE from all the other sheaves (the
writings, I mean, of the Fathers and Doctors of the Church), sheaves
depreciated indeed, more or less, with tares,
"and furrow-weeds,
Darnel and many an idle flower that grew
Mid the sustaining corn;"
yet sheaves of the same harvest, the sheaves of brethren! Nor did it
occur to them, that, in yielding the more full and absolute honour to
the sheaf of the highly favoured of their Father, they should be
supposed to attribute the same worth and quality to the straw-bands
which held it together.
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