Charity and Its Fruits (continued)
III. To shew, that though these are great privilege,, yet that the ordinary influence of the Spirit of God, working the grace of charity in the heart, is a far more excellent privilege than any of them: a greater blessing than the Spirit of prophecy, or the gift of tongues, or of miracles, even to the removing of mountains; a greater blessing than all those miraculous gifts that Moses, and Elijah, and David, and the twelve apostles were endowed with. This will appear, if we consider,
1. This blessing of the saving grace of God is a quality inherent in the nature of him that is the subject of it.— This gift of the Spirit of God, working a truly Christian temper in the soul, and exciting gracious exercises there, confers a blessing that has its seat in the heart, a blessing that makes a man's heart or nature excellent; yea, the very excellency of the nature does consist in it. Now it is not so with respect to these extraordinary gifts of the Spirit. They are excellent things, but not properly the excellency of a man's nature, for they are not things that are inherent in the nature. For instance, if a man is endowed with a gift of working miracles, this power is not anything inherent in 0a nature. It is not properly any quality of the heart and nature of the man, as true grace and holiness are; and though most commonly those that have these extraordinary gifts of prophecy, speaking with tongues and working miracles, have been holy persons, yet their holiness did not consist in their having these gifts. These extraordinary gifts are nothing properly inherent in the man. They are something adventitious. They arc excellent things, but not excellencies in the nature of the subject. They are like a beautiful garment, which does not alter the nature of the man that wee" it. They are like precious jewels, with which the body may be adorned; but true grace is that whereby the very soul itself becomes as it were a precious jewel.
2. The Spirit of God communicates, himself much more in bestowing saying grace than in bestowing these extraordinary gifts. In the extraordinary gifts of the Spirit, the Holy Ghost does indeed produce effects, in men, or by men; but not so as properly to communicate