And wherever it is observed, that any do minister more from gifts and
parts, than life and power, though they have an enlightened and doctrinal
understanding, let them in time be advised and admonished for their
preservation, because insensibly such will come to depend upon a
self-sufficiency; to forsake Christ the living Fountain, and hew out unto
themselves cisterns, that will hold no living waters: and, by degrees,
such will come to draw others from waiting upon the gift of God in
themselves, and to feel it in others, in order to their strength and
refreshment, to wait upon them, and to turn from God to man again, and so
make shipwreck of the faith once delivered to the saints, and of a good
conscience towards God: which are only kept by that divine gift of life
that begat the one, and awakened and sanctified the other in the
beginning.
Nor is it enough, that we have known the divine gift, and in it have
reached to the spirits in prison, and been the instruments of the
convincing of others of the way of God, if we keep not as low and poor in
ourselves, and as depending upon the Lord, as ever: since no memory, no
repetitions of former openings, revelations, or enjoyments, will bring a
soul to God, or afford bread to the hungry, or water to the thirsty,
unless life go with what we say, and that must be waited for.
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