CONTENTS. THE NEW BIRTH. SECTION I. INTRODUCTORY OBSERVATIONS CHIEFLY ON THE NEW BIRTH AND ON THE ORIGIN AND NATURE OF THE ENSUING CONFLICT. THE internal Conflict which a Christian enters into when he becomes sensible of that divine operation, which Holy Scripture describes as being "Born of God," deserves the most earnest investigation, in order to its intelligent and successful progress. A sensible person, when savingly enlightened, or born again, or born of God, soon finds that though all his natural perceptions and faculties retain their old propensities, according to their fallen nature, yet he has received new ideas of right and wrong, and new preferences and aversions, which he had not before. Holy Scripture teaches us that God is the author of this change; and the mind He thus gives us, with rule over the body, is said to be partaker of the divine nature. Hence the same individual is A said to have an old nature and a new, contrary the one to the other, though in undefined co-existence. If we try to analyse this statement, we soon perceive the difficulty, and look for further revelation to explain it. To approach and enter rightly into the more essential and interesting parts of the subject, it is necessary to glance at some points with which we are perfectly familiar. At the same time it should be kept in mind that the subject is not one to be run over in a cursory manner, but to be considered throughout with constant revision; insomuch that similar things will be found to be said more than once, as important in different stages of our elucidation. Now we learn among the first things in Holy Scripture that Man is a creature of God, consisting of two parts: first, a Body of earth, capable, when animated, of exercising wonderful powers of sense and appetite and activity; and secondly, of a Spirit intellectual infused by the breath of God. In both together he was made in the likeness of God, his prototype, "very good." The spirit, though partaking of the divine nature, was not the Holy Ghost, but a distinct HUMAN SPIRIT, created for, and breathed into, the body; a purely immaterial and intellectual being; a "spirit of mind; "1 which, beside its supreme intellectual powers, came as a living soul into the body, and vivified it, and endued it with 1 το πνεύμα του νoos, (Eph. iv. 23.) |