There is ground of joy unspeakable and full of glory that results from this. Are you of this new creation that I have been discoursing of? Then take your portion of comfort. The jewel of comfort belongs only to the cabinet of grace. It is fit you should have the comforts of heaven in your hearts, who have a fitness for heaven in your nature. The day of the new birth was a happy day, to be brought from under the rule of sin and death in it, to the rule of the Spirit of God and life in it; from bearing fruit to death, to bringing forth fruit to God and everlasting life; if sin be a torment to the womb that bear it, no joy can reside in an unregenerate spirit; if sin be the soul's rack in its own nature, grace must be its pleasure; for it carries as much contentment and satisfaction in its bowels, as sin doth disquietness and

sorrow.

You have by the new creation, a relation to the blessed trinity. Such are the sons of God, the seed of Christ, the temple of the Spirit; what a connexion is there between you and the three persons? God in Christ, and Christ in you, that you may be made perfect in one. God in Christ reconciling the world; you in Christ reconciled to God. God in Christ, as a father in a son; you in Christ as members in the body; the Spirit in you as an informing and enlivening principle. It makes you related to the Father as his friends, by the ceasing of your enmity: to the Son, as his property, for then you are his; to the Spirit, as the tutor of you, and inhabitant in you; all implied, Rom. viii. 8, 9, 10. By your former birth you were children of wrath, by this, children of God; by that, partakers of the nature of the destroyer, by this, partakers of the divine nature of your Creator and Redeemer; by nature you descended from the loins of Adam, and thereby were related to all the corruption of the world, by the new birth, you are descended

from the son of God, and counted to the Lord for a generation, and thereby related to all the perfection of heaven: as really descended from Christ by a spiritual, as from Adam by a natural generation. What an overflowing comfort is this? To be a king's son is a higher privilege than merely to be his subject; subjects have protection, sons affection; subjects partake of the kindness of the prince, sons of his nature; as a son he hath a right to the inheritance of the father, as a subject not. Men are subjects by covenant, though born of others; sons by generation: by being a new creature, the regenerate man acquires a more noble relation, than by being a creature. That relation that he lost by a prodigal corruption, is restored to him in a more excellent way by his spiritual regeneration.

THE

AUTHOR OF REGENERATION.

Which were born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God -JOHN i. 13.

FROM the text it appears most evident that God alone is the prime efficient cause or author of regeneration, for it will be found upon investigation that man in all his capacities is too weak to produce the work of regeneration in himself. This is not the birth of a darkened wisdom, and an enslaved will. We affect a kind of divinity, and would centre ourselves in our own strength; therefore it is good to be sensible of our own impotency, that God may have the glory of his own grace, and we the comfort of it, in a higher principle and higher power than our own. It is not the bare proposal of grace, and the leaving the will to an indifferent posture, balanced between good and evil, undetermined to the one or the other, to incline and determine itself which way seems best to it. Not one will, in the whole rank of believers, if left to themselves. The evangelist excepts not one man among them; for as many as received Christ, as many as believed, were the sons of God, who were born; which believers, who had this faith as the means, and this sonship as the privilege, were born, not of the will of the flesh, nor the will of man, but of God.

God challenges this work as his own, excluding the creature from any share as a cause. I will sprinkle clean water upon you, I will cleanse you, I will give you a new heart, I will put a new spirit into you, I will take away the heart of stone, I will give you a heart of flesh, I will put my Spirit into you. Ezek. xxxvi. 25, 26, 27. Here I will no less than seven times. Nothing is allowed to man in the production of this work in the least; all that is done by him, is the walking in God's statutes by virtue of this principle. The sanctifying principle, the actual sanctification, the reception of it by the creature, the removal of all the obstructions of it, the principle maintaining it, are not in the least here attributed to the will of man. God appropriates all to himself. He doth not say, he would be man's assistant, as many men do, who tell us only of the assistances of the Gospel, as if God in the Gospel expected the first motions of the will of man to give him an opportunity for the acting of his grace; you see here he gives not an inch to the creature. To ascribe the first work in any part to the will of man, is to deprive God of half his due, to make him but a partner with his creature. The least of it cannot be transferred to man, but the right of God will be diminished, and the creature go shares with his Creator. What partner was the creature with God in the creation? It is the Father's work alone, without the hand of free-will. None can come, except the Father which sent me, draw them. John vi. 44. The mission of the Mediator, and the attraction of the creature, are by the same hand. Our Saviour could not have come unless the Father had sent him, nor can man come to Christ, unless the Father draw him: what is that which is drawn? the will. The will then is not the agent, it doth not draw itself.

The titles given to regeneration evidence it. It is

a creation; what creature can give itself a being? It is a putting in a law and a new heart; what matter can infuse a soul into itself? It is a new birth; what man did ever beget himself? It is an opening the heart; what man can do this who neither hath the key, nor is acquainted with the wards? Not a man knows the heart, it is deceitful above all things, who can know it?

Scripture represents man as exceedingly weak, and unable to do any thing spiritually good, "So then, they that are in the flesh, cannot, please God," Rom. viii. 8. He concludes it by his "so then," as an infallible consequence, from what he had discoursed before. If as being in the flesh they cannot please God, therefore not in that which is the highest pleasure to God, a framing themselves to a likeness to him. The very desire and endeavour of the creature after this, is some pleasure to God, to see a creature struggling after holiness; but they that are in the flesh cannot please him. Can any good thing come out of Nazareth, was said of our Saviour? So may we better say, can any good thing come out of the flesh, the enslaved, possessed will of man? If it be free since it was captivated by sin, who set it free? Nothing can, but the law of the Spirit of life, Rom. viii. 2. To be sinners, and to be without strength, is one and the same thing in the apostle's judgment, Rom. v. 6. 8. While we were yet without strength; afterwards, while we were yet sinners. God only is almighty, and man all impotency; God only is all-sufficient, and man all indigent. It is impossible we can have a strength of our own, since our first father was feeble, and conveyed his weakness to us; by the same reason that it is impossible we can have a righteousness of our own, şince our father sinned.

This weakness is universal. Sin hath made its sickly impressions in every faculty. The mind is dark, Eph.