Sermons preached

I. Use. Of Information.

1. That there is such a thing as the new Nature, Regeneration, or the new Birth, and the new Creature. It is one thing to make us Men, another to make us Saints or Christians. We have Understanding, and Will, and Affections, and Sense as Men, but we have these sanctified as Christians. The carnal World thinks Christianity puts strange names upon ordinary things: but is it an ordinary thing to row against the Stream of Flesh and Blood, and to raise Men above those Inclinations and Affections by which the generality of the World are mastered and captivated? For a Man to be another kind of Creature than the rest of Men are, surely proceeds from a new Nature put into him. 1 Pet. 4. 4. The World wondereth at Believers in their contemning the pleasant, powerful Attractives of sensible things.

2. That by this new Nature a Man is distinguished from himself as Carnal: he hath somewhat which he had not before, something that may be called a new Life, and Nature, a new Heart, that is created. Psal. 51. 10. and may be increased, 2 Pet. 3. 18. In the first Conversion, we are mere Objects of Grace; but afterwards Instruments of Grace. First, God worketh upon us, then by us. On the Unregenerate the Spirit worketh while they do nothing that is good, sometimes ⟨p. 387⟩the contrary: The Regenerate he helpeth; whiles they are working, striving, labouring, he quickeneth and exciteth their Inclination to God. They have some Principles of Operation, there is Life in them; and where there is Life, there is some power to act, or else God's most precious Gifts would be in vain, therefore it is their Duty to bestir themselves,