The Scripture directory for church-officers and people, or, A practical commentary upon the whole…

¹Fourthly, The last part of this foundation is, A renewed and sanctified Nature. And this is of great consequence. Nicodemus though so great a Master in Israel, and exact in the external obedience of the Law, yet being ignorant of this, did fundamentally err in all his obedience. Therefore of all points, you see our Saviour chiefly insists on this, Unless a man be borne again, John 3. This was a very strange paradox to him, and it's no less to thousands of people, who go on in a formal customary road, they regard the work done, the action it self, but never the Regeneration of the nature from whence it is to flow: Whereas this is all in all, Make the Tree good, and then the fruit will be good, said Christ, Mat. 12 33, The Spring and Fountain must first be clean, ere the streams be: The root sweet, ere the fruit be. Why then art thou pleasing thy self with the actions thou doest, when thou art in the old, polluted, defiled nature? Can men gather grapes of thorns, or figs of thistles? Let thy external actions be never so religious, so glorious, they are but like fine flowers on the dunghill, or on a dead corpse, there must be the inward uncleanness, the inward filthiness cured first. Oh that men had ears to hear this! Oh that God would give you understanding in this thing! For till the Old man be put off, and the New man put on, you are still in your sins; all that you do is fit fuel for Hell, none can deliver you from it, till there be a change. Thus unless Ministers and people begin here, though they should build of gold and precious stone, the foundation is but of hay and stubble, and that is worst of all. And certainly, if the Apostle make it so hard a thing to be saved, though a man do lay a good foundation, if he build hay and stubble on it: How impossible will that mans salvation be, whose foundation is hay and stubble? Mark then, and consider these things in your whole conversation: Let every good action have these four foundation stones under it: The Scripture to direct, justification to accept through Christs merit, Christ to enable through his Spirit, and a renewed nature to sanctify. For, as it was with the Temple, and the gold in the Temple, The gold did not sanctify the Temple, but the Temple the gold:

¹Fourthly, The last part of this foundation is, A renewed and sanctified Nature. And this is of great consequence. Nicodemus though so great a Master in Israel, and exact in the external obedience of the Law, yet being ignorant of this, did fundamentally erre in all his obedience. Therefore of all points, you see our Saviour chiefly insists on this, Ʋnlesse a man be borne again,