designed in the purpose of God. Wherever the Holy Spirit puts forth his power for regeneration, it removes all obstacles, and infallibly produces the effect intended. This proposition being of great importance to the glory of God's grace, and most signally opposed by the patrons of free will, must be both explained and confirmed. We say therefore,

1. The operations of divine power are suited to our nature; our minds, wills, and affections. He draws us with "the cords of a man ;"-and the work itself is expressed by persuading and by alluring: it has no more repugnancy to our faculties than a prevalent persuasion has.

2. He does not possess the mind with any enthusiastical impressions; nor does he act absolutely upon us as he did in extraordinary prophetical inspirations of old, where the minds and bodies of men were merely passive instruments; but he works on the minds of men in and by their own natural actings, through an immediate impression of his power.

3. He therefore offers no violence to the will. This faculty is not capable of compulsion; if it be compelled, it is destroyed. There is an inward, almighty, secret act of the power of the Holy Ghost, effecting in us the will of conversion to God; so acting on our wills, as that they also act themselves, and that freely. The Holy Spirit doth, with the preservation, and in the exercise of the liberty of our wills, effectually work our regeneration and conversion to God. I shall confirm this truth with evident testimonies of Scripture, and reasons contained in them or deduced from them.

First, The work of conversion, and especially the act of believing, is expressly said to be of God, to be wrought in us, to be given to us, by him. The Scripture says, Not that God gives us ability only to believe, or such a power as we may make use of if we will, but faith, repentance, and conversion themselves, are said to be the work of God. Thus, in Phil. i. 29, "To you it is given, on the behalf of Christ, not only to believe on him, but also to suffer for his sake." To believe on Christ, expresses saving faith itself. This

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is given to us; and how is it given? Even by the power of God working in us "to will and to do of his own pleasure," ver. 13. Our faith is our coming to Christ. "And no man," saith he, "can come unto me, except it be given him of my Father." John vi. 65. In ourselves we are utterly destitute of power for this end; 66 no man can come to me:" however men may be disposed or prepared, whatever arguments may be used with them, yet no man of himself can believe, can come to Christ, unless faith itself be given to him; that is, wrought in him by the grace of the Father. This is again asserted, both negatively and positively, in Eph. ii. 8: "By grace are ye saved, through faith, and that not of yourselves; it is the gift of God." Our own ability and God's gift are here distinguished. If it be of ourselves, it is not the gift of God: if it be the gift of God, it is not of ourselves. In like manner God is said to give us repentance, 2 Tim. ii. 25. This is all we plead for. God, by the exceeding greatness of his power, actually works faith and repentance in us; so that they are mere effects of his grace; and his working in us infallibly produces the effect intended, because it is actual faith that he works, and not merely a power to believe, which we may exert or not as we please.

Secondly. As God works in us faith and repentance, so the way whereby he does it, makes it evident that he does it by a power infallibly efficacious; for he takes away all resistance, all opposition: "The Lord thy God will circumcise thine heart to love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and all thy soul, that thou mayest live." To have the heart circumcised, "is the putting off the body of the sins of the flesh;" that is, our conversion to God. It is the giving "an heart to perceive, and eyes to see, and ears to hear;" that is, spiritual light and obedience, by the removal of all hindrances. This is the immediate work of the Holy Ghost. No man ever circumcised his own heart. No man can say he began to do it by the power of his own will, and then God only helped him by his grace. As outward circumcision on the body of a child was

the act of another, and not of the child, who was passive, and the effect only in the child, so it is in this spiritual circumcision: it is the act of God; and as it is the blindness and stubbornness in sin that is in us by nature, which hinders us from conversion to God, by this circumcision they are taken away; and how should the heart resist the work of grace, when that whereby it should resist is effectually removed?

Let us also consider the following concurrent testimonies :-Ezek. 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 a heart of flesh." To which may be added, Jer. xxiv. 7, " And I will give them an heart to know me, that I am the Lord; and they shall be my people, and I will be their God." As also (Isa. xliv. 3, 4, 5) “I will pour water upon him that is thirsty, and floods upon the dry ground; I will pour my Spirit upon thy seed, and my blessing upon thine offspring," so Jer. xxxi. 31, "I will put my law in their inward parts, and write it in their hearts."

The subject spoken of in these promises, is the HEART, or whole rational soul; and it is described as stony. Our hearts, by nature, as to living to God, or his fear, are stony; and who has not some experience hereof, from the remains of it still abiding in him?-and two things are included in this expression :-(1.) An unfitness for any spiritual actions. Whatever else the heart. can do, in natural or civil affairs, it can do no more as to the great concern of living to God than a stone. (2.) An obstinate stubborn opposition to the grace of God; and, therefore, it stands opposed to the pliableness of an heart of flesh. This heart, this impotency and enmity, God says "he will take away. He does not say that he will endeavour to take it away, nor that he will use such and such means to take it away, nor that he will persuade and assist men to remove it; but, that absolutely and positively he himself will do it. What, therefore, God promises herein, is, as to the event, infallible, and, as to the operation, irresistible.

'As what God takes from us, so what he bestows on us is here expressed; and this is a new heart and a new spirit; the benefit hereby received is also declared; for those who have this new heart do actually, by virtue of it, "fear the Lord, and walk in his ways." There must, therefore, be in this new heart a principle of holy obedience, the creation of which in us is our conversion to him; for he "converts us, and we are converted;" and how is this new heart communicated? "I will," saith God, "give them a new heart:" "I will put a new spirit. within them;" and, yet more plainly, "I will write my law in their hearts;" alluding to the tables of stone on which the letter of the law was actually engraved; and so God writes the law, the matter and substance of it, in our hearts; and this he does by a principle of obedience and love to it, actually wrought within us.

Another argument is taken from the condition of men by nature; and if it be indeed such as we before described, surely, none can be so brutish as to imagine it may be cured, merely by aid of rational consideration. We shall, therefore, inquire what that grace is by which we are delivered from it.

1. It is called a Vivification, or quickening. We are by nature "dead in trespasses and sins;" in our deliverance from this state we are said to be quickened ; though "dead, to hear the voice of the Son of God and live." Now, no such work can be wrought on us but by an effectual communication of a principle of spiritual life. Some think to evade this, by saying "All these expressions are metaphorical;" and, indeed, it is well if the whole Gospel be not a metaphor to them; but if there be not in us by nature an impotence to all acts of spiritual life, like that which is in a dead man to all the acts of natural life ;-if there be not an equal power of God necessary for our deliverance from that state, as is necessary for the resurrection of a dead body, they may as well say that the Scripture speaks not truly, as that it speaks metaphorically: and that it is almighty power that is exerted herein, we have already proved; and what do these men intend by rai

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sing from the dead?-a persuasion of our minds by rational motives?-Who ever heard of such a monstrous expression, if there be nothing else in it? What could the holy writers mean by calling this work "a quickening of men who were dead in sin, through the mighty power of God," unless it were by a noise of insignificant words, to draw us off from a right understanding of what is intended? And it is well if some are not of

that mind.

2. The work itself wrought, is, our REGENERATION. I have proved before that this consists in a new, spiritual, vital principle of grace, infused into the soul by the Holy Spirit, enabling persons in whom it is, to spiritual, vital acts of faith and obedience. Some, indeed, deny all habits of grace; and on such a supposition, a man is no longer a believer than he is in the actual exercise of faith; but this would plainly overthrow the covenant of grace, and all the grace of it. Others expressly deny all gracious, supernatural infused habits, but admit of such as are acquired by frequent acts of grace.

But the Scripture gives us another description of this work of regeneration; for it consists in the renovation of the image of God in us. "Be renewed in the spirit of your mind, and put on the new man, which, after God, is created in righteousness and true holiness." That Adam in innocency had a supernatural ability of living to God, habitually residing in him, enabling him to fulfil all his commands; and that this was the image of God in him, is generally acknowledged. This was lost by the Fall. In regeneration there is a renovation of this image of God, and it is renewed by a creating act of almighty power, which, "after God," or according to his likeness, "is created in righteousness and true holiness." There is, therefore, in it an implantation of a new principle of spiritual life, which is called Spirit: "That which is born of the Spirit is spirit." It is the Spirit of God of whom we are born, and that which is so born is spirit,-not the natural faculties of our souls; they are once created, once born, and no more but a new principle of spiritual obedience, where