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of grace to some degree, the believer, assured that he is a child, may then cry out, Abba,
Father (Gal. 4:6).
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Thomas Manton describes the Spirit`s witness with our spirit in six thoughts:
(1) The Spirit lays down marks [of grace] in scripture.
(2) He worketh such graces as are peculiar to God`s children, and are evidences of our interest in
the favour of God.
(3) He helpeth us to feel and discover those acts in ourselves.
(4) The Spirit helps us to compare them with the rule [of Scripture], and accordingly to judge of
their sincerity.
(5) The Spirit helps us to conclude rightly of our estate.
(6) He enlivens and heightens our apprehensions in all these particulars, and so fills us with
comfort, and raiseth our joy upon the feeling of the sense of the favour of God; for all this is the
fruit of his operation.
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Other Puritans, such as Samuel Petto, Samuel Rutherford, William Twisse, Henry
Scudder, Herman Witsius, Thomas Cole, and Cotton Mather, concur with much of what
has been said thus far, but feel that all this is included in the previous expression in WCF
XVIII:ii, which refers to assurance obtained through the inward evidences of grace. They
believe that the witnessing testimony of the Spirit involves something more; the witness
of the Spirit described in Romans 8:15 contains something distinct from that of verse
16.
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They distinguish the Spirit`s witness with the believer`s spirit from His witnessing
to the believer`s spirit by direct applications of the Word. As Heinrich Meyer pointed out,
the former works the self-conscious conviction, I am a child of God, and thus finds
freedom to approach God as Father. The latter involves the Spirit`s pronouncement on
behalf of the Father, You are a child of God, and thus approaches the Father with the
familiarity of a child, crying out, Abba, Father, on the basis of hearing one`s own
sonship pronounced from God`s Word.
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Herman Witsius says that this comes with such
power, immediately assuring God`s beloved people of their adoption, no less than if
they were carried up to the third heavens, and had heard it audibly from God`s own
mouth.
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Cotton Mather distinguishes these two grounds of assurance this way:
There is a Testimony of the Holy SPIRIT unto our Adoption, which comes as a Mighty Light, more
Directly breaking in upon our Minds, to assure us, that we are indeed the Adopted of GOD. There
is a Discursive Assurance of our Blessedness; which is drawn from the Marks and Signs of a Soul
become an Habitation of God thro' the Spirit. And then ther is a more Intuitive Assurance of it; In
which the Holy SPIRIT, more Immediately, and most Irresistibly, and with a Mighty Light, bears
in upon the Mind of the Beleever a powerful perswasion of it, That he is a Child of GOD, and his
GOD and Father will one day bring him to Inherit all things. The Soul of the Beleever is now
wonderfully moved and melted and overpowered with such Thoughts as these; GOD is my Father,
CHRIST is my Saviour, and I have an Inheritance in the Heavens reserved for me.
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