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your spirit; your spirit should doubt no more. For even in this that God has given you his Spirit, the very being of it in you is a real proof, and the greatest confirmation that can be of your being in a state of grace. For when you have this Spirit, you are anointed, 1 John ii. 27; what greater confirmation would you have of being made kings and priests to God? Rev. i. 6. You are also by this Spirit sealed to the day of redemption, Eph. iv. 30. What greater confirmation can there be of God's covenant, and of his will and testament towards you? It is likewise the earnest of your inheritance, 2 Cor. i. 22; Eph. i. 14, which gives present being, and the beginning to the enjoyment of the blessings, and is the sure evidence of the full possession in due time. You are so surely God's, when he has given you his Spirit, that unless you can think he will lose his Spirit, the earnest of which he gave you, you can have no cause to think that he will lose, or not fulfil the promise of salvation made unto you, whereof his Spirit is the earnest, and part of the covenant.

This Spirit does witness to a man, that he is the child of God, two ways:

First, By immediate witness and suggestion. Secondly, By necessary inferences, by signs from the infallible fruits of the said Spirit. By which latter witness you may know the former to be a true testimony from God's Spirit, the Spirit of adoption, and not from a spirit of error and presumption. For this Spirit of adoption is a spirit of grace and supplication, Zech. xii. 10; Rom. viii. 26; it is a spirit of holy fear, Isa. lxi. 3; and it is a spirit of holy joy, Acts viii. 8. Where it does testify that you are God's children, there it will give you new hearts, causing you to desire and endeavour to live like God's children, in reverend fear and love; leading you in the right way, checking you and calling you back from the way of sin; stirring you up to prayer, with sighs, desires, and inward groans; at least making you to confess your sins, and to ask and hope for pardon in the name of Christ, Gal. v. 22; Acts xxiv. 16; Isa. xxx. 21. And it