-I conceive for this reason, Of the latter more could not be said with truth than that

they agree in one;" for they are not one in nature and substance: But the Three in heaven being in substance and in nature one, he asserts the agreement of their testimony in terms which predicate their substantial unity, in which the consent of testimony is necessarily included; lest, if he applied no higher phrase to them than to the terrestrial witnesses, he might seem tacitly to qualify and lower his own doctrine. He goes on: "And there are three in earth that bear witness, the spirit, and the water, and the blood; and these three agree in one."

Having thus detailed the particulars of the evidence, the apostle closes this part of his argument with these words: "This is the witness of God:" that is, this testimony, made up of six several parts, the witness of three witnesses in heaven, and the witness of three witnesses in earth, this, taken altogether, is "the witness of God which he hath testified of his Son."

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The spirit here, in the eighth verse, as well as in my text, is evidently to be understood of the gifts preternaturally conferred upon believers. But what is the water, and what is the blood, produced as two other terrestrial witnesses? what is their deposition, and what is its effect and amount?

No one who recollects the circumstances of the crucifixion, as they are detailed in St. John's Gospel, can for a moment entertain a doubt that the water and the blood mentioned here as witnesses, are the water and the blood which issued from the Redeemer's side, when his body, already dead, was pierced by a soldier with a spear. But how were these witnesses? and what did they attest? First, it is to be observed, that the stream, not of blood alone, but of water with the blood, was something preternatural and miraculous; for St. John dwells upon it with earnest reiterated asseveration, as a thing so wonderful that the explicit testimony of an eye-witness was requisite to make it credible; and yet of great importance to be accredited as a main

foundation of faith," One of the soldiers," the evangelist saith, "with a spear pierced his side; and forthwith came there out blood and water. And he that saw it bear record; and his record is true; and he knoweth that he saith true, that ye might believe." When a man accompanies the assertion of a fact. with this declaration, that he was an eyewitness, that what he asserts he himself believes to be true,- that he was under no deception at the time, that he not only

believes but knows the fact to be true, from the certain information of his own senses, that he is anxious for the sake of others that it should be believed, he certainly speaks of something extraordinary and hard to be believed, and yet in his judgment of great importance. The piercing of our Saviour's side with a spear, and the not breaking of his legs, though that piece of cruelty was usually practised among the Romans in the execution of that horrible punishment which it was our Lord's lot to undergo, had been facts of great importance, though nothing had issued from the wound; because, as the evangelist observes, they were the completion of two very re

markable prophecies concerning the Messiah's sufferings: But there was nothing in either, in the doing of the one or the not doing of the other, so much out of the common course as to be difficult of belief. The streaming of the blood from a wound in a body so lately dead that the blood might well be supposed to be yet fluid, would have been nothing remarkable. The extraordinary circumstance must have been the flowing of the water with the blood. Some men of learning have imagined that the water which issued in this instance with the blood was the fluid with which the heart in its natural situation in the human body is surrounded. This, chemists perhaps may class among the watery fluids; being neither viscous like an oil, nor inflammable like spirits, nor elastic or volatile like an air or ether: . It differs, however, remarkably from plain water, as anatomists assert, in the colour and other qualities: And that this fluid should issue with the blood of the heart, when a sharp weapon had divided the membranes which enclose it, as the spear must have done before it reached the heart, had been nothing more

extraordinary than that blood by itself should have issued at a wound in any other part. Besides, in the detail of a fact narrated with so much earnestness to gain be lief; the evangelist must be supposed to speak with the most scrupulous precision, and to call every thing by its name. The water, therefore, which he says he saw streaming from the wound, was as truly water as the blood was blood; the. pure element of water, transparent, colourless, insipid, inodorous water. And here is the miracle, that pure water, instead of the fluid of the pericardium in its natural state, should have issued with the blood from a wound in the region of the heart. This pure water and the blood coming forth together, are two of the three terrestrial witnesses whose testimony is so efficacious, in St. John's judgment, for the confirmation of our faith.

But how do this water and this blood bear witness that the crucified Jesus was the Christ? Water and blood were the indispensible instruments of cleansing and expiation in all the cleansings and expiations