"That which is born of the flesh, is flesh; and that which is born of the Spirit, is Spirit." (John iii. 6.) In the case of creatures, this communication of life by the parent to the offspring is merely transmission. In the case of God, the fountain of all life, it is a real communication. He originates the life which He gives. As it is utterly incongruous to think of a creature's begetting itself, or originating its own life; and no less incongruous to regard this commencement of life or being, as brought about by secondary influences, so is it utterly inconsistent with the Scriptures to regard regeneration as a man's own work, or as due to his coöperation, or as produced by the influences of truth. As well might it be assumed that light, heat, and moisture could make a dead seed germinate, and bring forth fruit. All beginning of life is directly from God; and this is what the Bible most explicitly asserts to be true of re generation. Those who become the children of God are "born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God." (John i. 13.) This argument is not invalidated by the fact that Paul says to the Corinthians, "I have begotten you through the gospel." All words are used literally and figuratively; and no man is misled (or need be) by this change of meaning. We are accustomed to speak of one man as the spiritual father of another man, without any fear of being misunderstood. When the historian tells us that the monk Augustine converted the Britons, or the American missionaries the Sandwich Islanders, we are in no danger of mistaking his meaning; any more than when it is said that Moses divided the Red Sea, or brought water out of the rock, or gave the people manna out of heaven. The same Paul who told the Corinthians that he had "begotten them through the gospel," told them in another place, "I have planted, Apollos watered: but God gave the increase. So then, neither is he that planteth anything, neither he that watereth; but God that giveth the increase." (1 Cor. iii. 6, 7.) In 1 Peter i. 23, it is written, "Being born again, not of corruptible seed, but of incorruptible, by the Word of God, which liveth and abideth forever." From this passage it is sometimes inferred that the new birth is a change produced not by the immediate agency of God, but instrumentally by the Word, and therefore by a rational process, or moral suasion. It has, however, been already remarked that regeneration is often taken in the wide sense of conversion. That is, for the whole change which takes place in the sinner when he is made a child of God. This is a comprehensive change, including all that takes place in the consciousness, and all that occurs in the soul itself (so to speak), below the consciousness, and subsequently in the state and relation of the soul to God.. In this change the Word of God is eminently instrumental. It is by the Word that the sinner is convinced, aroused, made to seek reconciliation with God, and enlightened in the way of salvation. It is by the Word that the person and work of Christ are revealed, and all the objects on which the activity of the regenerated soul terminates, are presented to the mind. The Gospel is, therefore, the wisdom and power of God unto salvation. It is by the Word that all the graces of the Spirit are called into exercise, and without it holiness, in all its conscious manifestations, would be as impossible as vision without light. But this does not prove that light produces the faculty of seeing; neither does truth produce the principle of spiritual life. The Apostle Paul, who glories so much in the gospel, who declares that it is by the foolishness of preaching that God saves those that believe, still teaches that the inward work of the Spirit is necessary to enable men to receive the things freely given to them of God; that the natural man receives not the things of the Spirit, that they must be spiritually discerned. (1 Cor. ii. 8-11.) As examples of the latitude with which the words beget, begotten, and new-birth are used in Scripture, reference need be made only to such passages as 1 Peter i. 3, where it is said, He "hath begotten us again unto a lively hope by the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead;" and 1 Corinthians iv. 15. There is therefore nothing in what the Scriptures teach of the agency of the truth in conversion, or regeneration in the wide sense of the word, inconsistent with their distinct assertion that in its narrow sense of quickening or imparting spiritual life, it is an act of the immediate omnipotence of God. This point was adverted to in a previous chapter. The fact then that the Bible represents regeneration as a spiritual resurrection, as a new creation, and as a new birth, proves it to be the work of God's immediate agency. There is another familiar mode of speaking on this subject which leads to the same conclusion. In Deuteronomy xxx. 6, Moses says: "The LORD thy God will circumcise thine heart, and the heart of thy seed, to love the LORD thy God with all thine heart, and with all thy soul, that thou mayest live." In Ezekiel xi. 19, it is said, "I will give them one heart, and I will put a new spirit within you; and I will take the stony heart out of their flesh, and will give them an heart of flesh." And in chapter xxxvi. 26, “A new heart also will I give you, and a new spirit will I put within you: and I will take away the stony heart out of your flesh, and I will give you an heart of flesh. And I will put my Spirit within you, and cause you to walk in my statutes, and ye shall keep my judgments and do them." Jeremiah xxiv. 7, "I will give them an heart to know me." The Psalmist prayed, "Create in me a clean heart, O God; and renew a right spirit within me." (Ps. li. 10.) It is admitted that the word heart, like all other familiar terms, is used in different senses in the Scriptures. It often means the whole soul; as when mention is made of the eyes, the thoughts, and the intentions of the heart. It very frequently means the feelings or affections, or is used collectively for them all, or for the seat of the feelings. A cold, hard, sluggish, timid, humble, broken, heart are all common forms of expression for what exists in the consciousness; for transient and changeable states of the mind, or inward man. Notwithstanding it is no less clear that the word is often used in the same sense in which we use the word nature, for a principle of action, a permanent habit or disposition. Something that exists not in the consciousness, but below it. That such is its meaning in the passages just quoted, and in all others in which God is said to change or renew the heart, is plain: (1.) Because it is something which God not only gives, but which He creates. (2.) Because it is the source of all right action. It cannot be a volition, or a generic purpose, or any state of mind which the man himself produces; because it is said to be the source of love, of fear, and of new obedience. Our Lord's illustration, derived from trees good and bad, forbids any other interpretation. A good tree produces good fruit. The goodness of the tree precedes and determines the goodness of the fruit; and so a good heart precedes all just thoughts, all right purposes, all good feelings and all holy exercises of every kind. (3.) The Scriptures explain what is meant by "creating a new heart" by the exegetical expression, “I will put my Spirit within you.". This surely is not a right purpose. The indwelling Spirit or Christ dwelling in us, is the principle and source of that new life of which the believer is made the subject. All those passages in which God promises to give a new heart, are proofs that regeneration is a supernatural work of the Holy Spirit; not a moral suasion, but a creating and imparting a principle of a new form of life. Argument from related Doctrines. 6. Another decisive argument in favour of the Augustinian doctrine of efficacious grace, is derived from its necessary connection 1 with other Scriptural doctrines. If the latter be true, the former must be true also. If the Bible teaches that men since the Fall have not lost all ability to what is spiritually good; that they are not dead in trespasses and sins; that they still have the power to turn themselves unto God, or, at least, the power to yield to the influence which God exerts for their conversion, and power to resist and refuse, then so far as this point is concerned it might be true that regeneration is the result of moral suasion. It might be true that "God offers the same necessary conditions of acceptance to all men; desires from the heart that all men as free agents comply with them and live; brings no positive influence upon any mind against compliance, but, on the contrary, brings all those kinds and all that degree of influence in favour of it, upon each individual, which a system of measures best arranged for the success of grace in a world of rebellion allows; and finally, saves, without respect of kindred, rank, or country, whether Scythian, Greek or Jew, all who under this influence, accept the terms and work out their own salvation, and reprobates alike all who refuse." But, on the other hand, if the Scriptures teach that 'man, by his fall into a state of sin, hath wholly lost all ability of will to any spiritual good accompanying salvation; so as a natural man being altogether averse from that good, and dead in sin, is not able, by his own strength, to convert himself, or to prepare himself thereunto; "2 then must it also be true that "when God converts a sinner, and translates him into the state of grace, He freeth him from his natural bondage under sin, and by his grace alone, enables him freely to will and to do that which is spiritually good." Then is it also true, that man in effectual calling "is altogether passive, until, being quickened and renewed by the Holy Spirit, he is thereby enabled to answer this call, and to embrace the grace offered and conveyed in it."4 If man is as really spiritually dead, in his natural state since the fall, as Lazarus was corporeally dead, then is the spiritual resurrection of the one as really a work of divine omnipotence as the bodily resurrection of the other. These doctrines, therefore, thus logically connected, have never in fact been dissociated. All who hold that original sin involves spiritual death and consequent utter inability to any spiritual good, do also hold that his recovery from that state is not effected by any process of moral suasion human or divine, but by 1 The Quarterly Christian Spectator, of New Haven, vol. iii. 1831, p. 635. 8 Ibid. ix. § 4. 4 lbid. x. § 2. the immediate exercise of God's almighty power. It is in reference to both classes of the dead that our Lord said, "As the Father raiseth up the dead, and quickeneth them; even so the Sou quickeneth whom he will. Verily, verily, I say unto you, The hour is coming, and now is, when the dead shall hear the voice of the Son of God: and they that hear shall live." (John v. 21, 25.) There is the same intimate connection between the doctrines of God's sovereignty in election and efficacious grace. If it were true that men make themselves to differ; that election is founded on the foresight of good works; that some who hear the Gospel and feel the influence of the Spirit, allow themselves to be persuaded, that others refuse, and that the former are therefore chosen and the latter rejected, then it would be consistent to represent the grace exercised in the vocation of men as an influence to be submitted to or rejected. But if God has mercy on whom He will have mercy; if it is not of him that willeth, nor of him that runneth, but of God that showeth mercy; if it be of God, and not of ourselves, that we are in Christ Jesus; if God hides these things from the wise and prudent and reveals them unto babes as seems good in his sight; then the influence by which He carries his purpose into effect must be efficacious from its own nature, and not owe its success to the determination of its subjects. The same conclusion follows from what the Scriptures teach of the covenant of redemption. If in that covenant God gave to the Son his people as the reward of his obedience and death, then all those thus given to Him must come unto Him; and the influence which secures their coming must be certainly efficacious. Thus this doctrine is implicated with all the other great doctrines of grace. It is an essential, or, at least, an inseparable element of that system which God has revealed for the salvation of men ; a system the grand design of which is the manifestation of the riches of divine grace, i. e., of his unmerited, mysterious love to the unworthy; and which, therefore, is so devised and so administered that he that glories must glory in the Lord; he must be constrained to say, and rejoice in saying, "Not unto us, O LORD; not unto us, but unto thy name give glory." (Ps. cxv. 1.) Argument from Experience. 7. Appeal on this subject may safely be made to the experience of the individual believer, and to the history of the Church. All the phenomena of the Christian life are in accordance with the |