The Power of True Godliness
By Jonathan Edwards

"In demonstration of the Spirit, and of power" (1 Corinthians 2:4).

The inward principle [of godliness] is a communication of God, a participation of the divine nature, Christ living in the heart, the Holy Spirit swelling there in union with the faculties of the soul as an internal vital principle, exerting His own proper nature in the exercise of these faculties. This is sufficient to show us why true grace should have such activity, power, and efficacy. No wonder that which is divine is powerful and effectual; for it has omnipotence on its side.

If God dwells in the heart, and is vitally united to it, He will show that He is God by the efficacy of His operation. Christ is not in the heart of the saint as in a sepulcher, or as a dead Savior who does nothing, but as in His temple, and as one who is alive from the dead. For in the heart where Christ savingly is, there He lives, and exerts Himself after the power of that endless life that He received at His resurrection.

Thus every saint is a subject of the benefit of Christ's sufferings, and is made to know and experience the power of His resurrection. The Spirit of Christ, which is the immediate spring of grace in the heart, is all life, all power, all act. Hence saving affections, though oftentimes they do not make so great a noise and show as others, yet have in them a secret solidity, life, and strength, whereby they take hold of and carry away the heart, leading it into a kind of captivity, gaining a full and steadfast determination of the will of God and holiness.

Taken from The Religious Affections by Jonathan Edwards