Charity and Its Fruits
II. To give some reasons of their being thus connected and dependent. — And,
1. They are all from the same source. — All the graces of Christianity are from the same Spirit; as says the apostle, "There are diversities of gifts, but the same Spirit;… diversities of operations, but it is the same God which worketh all in all" (1 Cor. 12:4-6 ). The graces of Christianity are all from the same Spirit of Christ sent forth into the heart, and dwelling there as a holy, and powerful, and divine nature; and therefore all graces are only the different ways of acting on the part of the same divine nature; as there may be different reflections of the light of then, and yet all in origin the same kind of light, because it all comes from the same source or body of light. Grace in the soul is the Holy Spirit acting in the soul, and thus communicating his own holy nature. As it is with water in the fountain, so here it is all one and the same holy nature, only diversified by the variety of streams sent forth from it. These streams must all be of the same nature, seeing they all thus come from the same source; and the difference of many of them, whereby they have different names, is chiefly relative, and more from reference to their various objects and modes of exercise, than from a real difference in their abstract nature. So, also,
2. They are all communicated in the same work of the Spirit, namely, in conversion. — There is not one conversion of the soul to faith, and another conversion to love to God, and another to humility, and another to repentance, and still another to love to man; but all are produced by one and the same work of the Spirit, and are the result of one and the same conversion, or change of the heart. And this proves that all the graces are united and linked together, as being contained in that one and the same new nature that is given us in regeneration. It is here as it is in the first generation — that of the body, in which the several faculties are communicated in one and the same generation; the senses of seeing, hearing, feeling, tasting, and smelling, and so the powers of moving, breathing, etc., all being given at the same time, and all being but one human nature, and one