word of God itself, considered irrespectively of Spiritual power; and from things within us-our own predisposition, or congruity, or condignity, or by whatever other name proud man would pilfer for himself some share of merit before God;-to the preventing grace, the free and uncaused mercy, the sovereign influence, of Him who is the Father of our spirits and who only can beget them into likeness to himself. "Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, which according to his abundant mercy hath begotten us again unto a lively hope."* "Behold what manner of love the Father hath bestowed upon us that we should be called the Sons of God."+ "After that the kindness and love of God our Saviour toward man appeared, not by works of righteousness which we have done but according to his mercy, he saved us, by the washing of regeneration and renewing of the Holy Ghost, which HE shed on us abundantly through Jesus Christ our Saviour." "For we are HIS workmanship created in Christ Jesus unto good works which God hath before should walk in them." § ordained that we * 1 Peter i. 3. † 1 John iii. 1. § Ephes. ii. 10. Titus iii. 4-6. 136 SECTION II. THE NECESSITY OF SPIRITUAL REGENERATION. SINCE Regeneration is the awakening in the soul of new sentiments and dispositions, and therewith new purposes, towards God; it follows necessarily, that some personal consciousness of such a change must be experienced by every mind which emerges from its natural indifference to God into the life of Christian Piety. Consciousness, I mean, not of the deeper workings, whether quick or gradual, that have prepared it; still less of imagined pangs and throes of the New birth in its very act; but of those altered and altering sentiments and dispositions, which are the manifestations of inward revolution to ourselves and to the world;-that consciousness which our Seventeenth Article calls "the feeling in ourselves the working of the Spirit of Christ, mortifying the works of the flesh and our earthly members, and drawing up our minds to high and heavenly things ;" and without which, our Regeneration in any other possible sense does but deepen our responsibility and guilt, and must increase our condemnation. - There are, indeed, two senses of the term Regeneration, which the Scriptures furnish us with, and which, therefore, are recognized by the ancient Fathers, by the Lutheran Reformers, and by the church of England; two senses, both of which, I do conceive, we must most carefully maintain,and maintain distinctly too, neither separating nor confounding them if we would not throw away, upon the one hand, the privileges of the Church, and the essential doctrine of anterior, vicarious Justification by the blood and merits of our Saviour Jesus Christ; nor degrade and sully, on the other hand, the holiness of the Church, and the equally essential doctrine of interior, personal, Sanctification by the work and influences of the Holy Ghost. By another than ourselves we must be justified,and this is relative Regeneration. But in ourselves we must be sanctified;-and this is personal Rege neration. For the word "Regeneration" is used both in heathen and Jewish authors, and in Scripture, in the first place, to denote any favourable Change of State; any marked transition from an outward condition of evil to one of good; as from Slavery to liberty, and from misery to prosperity. Thus, (to mention only Scriptural examples,) God's deliliverance of his people from the bondage of Egypt, and his forming them into a nation consecrated to himself, is called his begetting them, and his creating them. "Of the rock that begat thee," says Moses to the Israelites,*" thou art unmindful, and hast forgotten God that formed thee." And by the prophet Isaiah, God thus addresses his people."Thus saith the Lord that created thee, O Jacob, and he that formed thee, O Israel; Fear not, for I have redeemed thee, I have called thee by thy name, thou art mine." And again," Bring my sons from far, and my daughters from the ends of the earth; even every one that is called by my name; for I have created him for my glory, I have formed him, yea, I have made him."‡ And the final deliverance of the world at large from the bondage of the Evil one, the taking off the curse which sin has brought upon it, its putting on a new face and assuming a new character, is, from the same analogy, expressed in the same terms. "Behold," says the Lord, by Isaiah, "I create new heavens and a new earth, and the former shall not be remembered nor come into mind; but be ye glad and rejoice for ever in that which I create, for behold I create Jerusalem a rejoicing and her people a joy."§ "In the Regeneration," says our Lord to his disciples, referring to the same period, "when the Son of Man shall sit in the throne of his glory, + Isaiah xliii. 1. Isaiah lxv. 17, 18. * Deut. xxxii. 18. ye also shall sit upon twelve thrones, judging the twelve tribes of Israel." * And hence the farther application of these terms to denote a marked and obvious change of state in matters of Religious faith and worship; especially the passing over from Idolatry to the service of the true God; and the becoming thereby numbered among his people as partakers of his favour and protection. Of this we have an instance in the Eighty-seventh Psalm, in which the Psalmist, looking forward to the glorious things which had been promised concerning the city of God, exults in the expected influx of Proselytes from the neighbouring nations to swell the lists of her citizens, and cries- I will enumerate the Egyptian and the Babylonian among the worshippers of Jehovah ; I will speak of the Philistine, and the Tyrian, and the Ethiopian as "born" in the Holy City: for "of Zion it shall be said, This and that man was born in her; and the Highest himself shall establish her. The Lord shall count when he writeth up people, that this man was born there"-when he *Matt. xix. 28. the Compare Ezekiel xiii. 9. where excommunication from the commonwealth of Israel is thus threatened -"Mine hand shall be upon the prophets that see vanity and that divine lies; they shall not be in the assembly of my people, neither shall they be written in the writing of the house of Israel, neither shall they enter |