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head; but it is the supreme Father and Teacher above, who carries it into the heart, the only soil wherein it proves lively and fruitful. One man cannot reach the heart of another; how should he then renew its fruitfulness? If natural births have been always acknowledged to belong to God's prerogative, how much more is this new birth wholly dependent on his hand!

But though this word cannot beget without him, yet it is by this word that he begets, and ordinarily not without it. It is true that the substantial eternal Word is to us the spring of this new birth and life, the head from whom this supernatural life flows, but that by the word is here meant the gospel, the apostle puts out of doubt; And this is the word which by the gospel is preached unto you. Therefore thus is this word really the seed of the new birth, because it contains and declares that other Word, the Son of God, as our life. The word is spoken in common, and so is the same to all hearers; but then, all hearts being naturally shut against it, God doth by his own hand open some to receive it, and mixes it with faith; and those it renews, and restores in them the image of God, draws the traces of it anew, and makes them the Sons of God. So that the efficacy of the word to prove successful seed, doth not hang upon the different abilities of the preachers, their having more or less rhetoric or learning. It is true, eloquence hath a great advantage in civil and moral things, to persuade and to draw the hearers almost which way it will; but in this spiritual work, to revive a soul, to beget it anew, the influence of heaven is the main thing requisite. There is no way so common and plain, but the Spirit of God can revive the soul by it; and the most skilful and authoritative way, yea, being withal very spiritual, yet may effect nothing, because left alone to itself. One word of holy scripture or of truth conformable to it, may be the principle of regeneration to him that bath heard multitudes of excellent sermons, and hath often read the whole Bible, and hath still continued unchanged. If the Spirit of God preach this one or any such word to the soul, God so loved the world, that he

gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth on him should not perish, but have everlasting life, it will be cast down with the fear of perishing, and driven out of itself, and raised up and drawn to Jesus Christ by the hope of everlasting life. It will believe on him that it may have life, and be inflamed with the love of God, and give itself to him who so loved the world, as to give his only begotten Son to purchase for us that everlasting life. Thus may that word prove this immortal seed, which, though very often read and heard before, was but a dead letter. In hearing of the word, men look usually too much upon men, and forget from what spring the word hath its power. They observe too narrowly the different hand of the sowers, and too little depend on his hand, who is the great Lord of both seed-time and harvest. Be it sown by a weak hand or a stronger, the immortal seed is still the same; yea suppose the worst, that it be a foul hand that sows it, that the preacher himself be not so sanctified and of so edifying a life as you would wish, yet the seed itself, being good, contracts no defilement and may be effectual to regeneration in some and to the strengthening of others; although he that is not renewed by it himself, cannot have much hope of such success, nor reap much comfort by it, and usually doth not seek nor regard it much; but all instruments are alike in an Almighty hand.

Hence learn, 1. that true conversion is not so slight a work as we commonly account it. It is not the outward change of some bad customs; it is a new birth and being, and is elsewhere called a new creation. Though it be but a change in qualities, yet it is such a change, and the qualities are so far different, that it bears the name of the most substantial productions-from children of disobedience, and that which is linked with it, heirs of wrath, to-be sons of God and heirs of glory! They have a new spirit given them, a free, princely, noble spirit; and this spirit works in their life and actions.

2. Consider this dignity, and be kindled with an ambition worthy of it. How doth a Christian pity that poor vanity, which men make so much noise about, of their kindred and extraction! This is worth glorying in indeed, to be of the highest blood-royal, sons of the King of kings by this new birth, and in the nearest relation to

him! This adds matchless honor to that birth which is so honorable in the esteem of the world.

But we all pretend to be of this number. Would we not study to deceive ourselves, the discovery whether we are or not, would not be so hard.

In many, their false confidence is too evident. There is no appearance in them of the Spirit of God, not a footstep like his leading, nor any trace of this character, As many as are led by the Spirit of God, they are the sons of God; not a lineament of God's visage, as their Father. If ye know that he is righteous, says St. John, ye know then that every one that doeth righteousness is born of him. And how contrary to the most holy God, the lover and fountain of holiness, are they who love to wallow, like swine, in the mire of unholiness! Is swearing and cursing the accent of the regenerate, the children of God? No; it is the language of hell. Do children delight to dishonor their father's name? No; earthly-mindedness is a countersign. Shall the king's children, they that were brought up in scarlet, embrace the dunghill? Princes on account of their high birth and education, have usually their hearts filled with far higher thoughts than mean persons. The children of the poorest sort have ordinarily their greatest thoughts, as they grow up, how they shall shift to live, how they shall get bread; but princes think either of the conquest or governing of kingdoms. Are you not born to a better inheritance, if indeed you are born again? Why then do you vilify yourselves? Why are you not more in prayer? There are no dumb children among those that are born of God. They have all that spirit of prayer by which they not only speak, but cry Abba Father.

II. We come to consider the seed of this regeneration, the word of God. The most part of us esteem the preaching of the word, as a transient discourse that amuses us for an hour. We look for no more and therefore we find no more. We receive it not as the immortal seed of our regeneration, as the ingrafted word that is able to save our souls. O! learn to reverence this holy and happy ordinance of God, this word of life; and know, that they who are not regenerated, and so saved by it, shall be judged by it.

Of this new being we have here these two things speci

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fied-its high original from God, Being born again of his word that which so much commends good things, its duration; and this follows from the other; for if the principle of this life be incorruptible, itself must be so too. The word of God is not only a living and ever abiding word in itself, but likewise in reference to the new birth and spiritual life of a Christian; and in this sense that which is here spoken of it, is intended. And because we are most sensible of the good and evil of things by comparison, the everlastingness of the word and of that spiritual life which it begets, is set off by the frailty and shortness of natural life, and of all the good that concerns it. This the Apostle expresseth in the words of Isaiah, in the next verse.

Ver. 24. For all flesh is as grass, and all the glory of man as the flower of grass. The grass withereth, and the flower thereof falleth away.

IN expressing the vanity and frailty of the natural life of man, it agrees very well with the subject to call him flesh, giving to the whole man the name of his corruptible part, both to make the wretched and perishing condition of this life more sensible, and man the more humble by it: for though by providing all for the flesh, and bestowing his whole time in the endeavours which are of the flesh's concernment, he remembers it too much and forgets his spiritual and immortal part, yet, in that over eager care for the flesh, he seems, in some sense, to forget that he is flesh, or, at least, that flesh is perishing; extending his desires and projects so far for the flesh, as if it were immortal, and should always abide to enjoy, and use these things. As the philosopher said of his countrymen, upbraiding at once their surfeitings and excess in feasting, and their sumptuousness in building, that "they ate as if they meant to die to-morrow, and yet built as if they were never to die:" thus, in men's immoderate pursuits of earth, they seem both to forget that they are any thing else beside flesh, and, in this sense too, to forget that they are flesh, that is, mortal and perishing. They rightly remember neither their immortality nor their mortality. If we con

sider what it is to be flesh, the naming of that were sufficient to the purpose. Thus in the Ixxviiith Psalm, He remembered that they were but flesh: that speaks their frailty clearly enough; but it is added, to make the vanity of their estate the clearer, A wind that passeth and cometh not again. So Psal. ciii, 15. As for man, his days are as grass, as á flower of the field so he florisheth; for the wind passeth over it and it is gone; and the place thereof shall know it no more.

Grass hath its root in the earth, and is fed by the moisture of it for a while; but besides that it is under the hazard of such weather as favors it not, or of the scythe that cuts it down, give it all the forbearance that may be, let it be free from both these dangers, yet how quickly will it wither of itself! Set aside those many accidents, the smallest of which is able to destroy our natural life, the diseases of our own bodies, and outward violences, and casualties that cut down many in their greenness, in the flower of their youth, the utmost term is not long. In the course of nature it will wither. Our life is indeed a lighted torch, either blown out by some stroke or some wind, or, if spared, yet within a while it burns away, and will die out of itself.

And all the glory of man. This is elegantly added. There is indeed a great deal of seeming difference betwixt the outward conditions of life amongst men. Shall the

rich, and honorable, and beautiful, and healthful go in together, under the same name with the baser and unhappier part, the poor wretched sort of the world, who seem to be born for nothing but sufferings and miseries? At least, have the wise no advantage beyond the fools? Is all grass? Make you no distinction? No; all Aesh is grass; or if you will have some other name, be it so: if that glory which shines so much in your eyes, must have a different name, then this is all it can have-it is but the flower of that same grass; something above the common grass in gayness, a little comelier and better apparelled than it, but a partaker of its frail and fading nature. It hath no privilege nor immunity that way, yea, of the two, is the less durable, and usually shorter lived.

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