Richard Sibbes was a late 16th, early 17th Century Puritan, preacher of Gray's Inn and Cambridge scholar when he authored The Matchless Love and Inbeing in London in 1629. Within these series of sermons and lectures, Sibbes sought to answer this question: "How shall we know that Christ is in us?"
"Where [Jesus] enters likewise, he possesses the whole inward and outward man to himself. He changes it like to himself ; He rules the eyes, the ears, the hands; He renews all, that our delights are clean other than they were before. If there be such a power in his truth, that, he a [branch] engrafted, it does change us into itself, certainly where Christ dwells, he hath as much power as his word. His word is like leaven, which alters the whole lump to be like itself. For the word engrafted makes the soul that believes it heavenly like itself, (I Corinthians 5:6). How is this? Because Christ comes with his word, leavens, alters, changes, and turns the soul. Christ by his Spirit and word is said to do it, because the Spirit of Christ comes with the word, which does all. Those therefore whose dispositions are contrary to Christ, Christ is not begotten in them. For certainly he does alter and change and fit his temple for himself, and drives out and chases thence, as I said before, all that is contrary; and keeps the door of the senses, and possession against all. He uses every member as an instrument of the Spirit and weapon of defense."
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