The door of salvation opened by the key of regeneration

1 For the act I call it a renewing (and so doth the Apostle, Titus 3.5. Eph. 4.23, 24,) upon a double account; partly because in Regeneration nature is not ruined, but rectified. The Convert is the same man but new made: The Faculties of his soul are not destroyed, but they are refined; the same Viol, but new tuned. Christ gave not the blind man new eyes, but a new sight to the old ones. Christ did not give Lazarus a new body, but enlivened his old body: So God in Conversion doth not bestow a new understanding, but a new light to the old; nor a new Soul, but a new life to the old one. The powers of the man are like streams not dried up, but turned into another Channel. ⟨p. 20⟩The truth is, that man by his fall from God is so exceedingly degenerated and polluted, that repairing and mending will not serve, he must be wholly and throughly new made, as the house infected with the leprosy, scraping would not do, it must be pulled down, and new set up, but as when an house pulled down is new set up, we use possibly the same timber and stones, and materials which were in it before, only they are new squared and polished, what is rotten or amiss in them is pared off, and what is wanting (as several things will be) are added: So when this new building of Regeneration is erected, the Spirit of God makes use of the old substantial materials (the soul and its faculties, the body and its members) which were in man before, only polisheth and purifieth them, and squareth them according to the rule of Gods word, it hews off what is unsound and sinful, and bestoweth that grace and holiness which is needful, He taketh not away our beings, but the wickedness and crookedness of our beings, and addeth a new gracious beauty which we had not before We put off the rags of the old man, and put on the Robes of the new man and continue in regard of substance the same men.

1 For the act I call it a renewing (and so doth the Apostle, Titus 3.5. Eph. 4.23, 24,) upon a double account; partly because in Regeneration nature is not ruined, but rectified. The Convert is the same man but new made: The Faculties of his soul are not destroyed, but they are refined; the same Viol, but new tuned. Christ gave not the blind man new eyes, but a new sight to the old ones. Christ did not give Lazarus a new body, but enlivened his old body: So God in Conversion doth not bestow a new understanding, but a new light to the old; nor a new Soul, but a new life to the old one. The powers of the man are like streams not dryed up, but turned into another Channel.