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cepti bility of love, but also with a specific disposition to love our children ; if he can give us a discernment and susceptibility of natural beauty, he may give us a taste for spiritual loveliness. And if that taste, by reason of sin, is vitiated and perverted, he may restore it by means of his spirit in regeneration." — Hodge's Essays.
10. In what sense may the soul be said to be passive in regen- eration ?
Dr. Taylor maintains that regeneration is that act of the soul in which man chooses God as his portion. Thus, the man him- self, and not God, is the agent.
But the Christian church, on the contrary, holds that in re- generation the Holy G-host is the agent, and man the subject. The act of the Holy Spirit, in implanting a new principle, does not interfere with the essential activity of the soul itself, but sim- ply gives to that activity a new direction, for the soul, though active, is nevertheless capable of being acted upon. And although the soul is necessarily active at the very time it is regenerated, yet it is rightly said to be passive with respect to that act of the Holy Spirit whereby it is regenerated.
1st. The soul, under the conviction of the Holy Ghost, and in the exercise of merely natural feelings, regards some aspect of saving truth, and strives to embrace it. 2d. The Holy Ghost, by an exertion of creative power, changes the governing disposi- tion of the heart in a manner inscrutable, and by an influence not apprehended by the consciousness of the subject. 3d. Simulta- neously the soul exercises new affections and experimentally em- braces the truth.
11. What is the difference between regeneration and conver- sion ?
The term conversion is often used in a wide sense as including both the change of nature and the exercise of that nature as changed. When distinguished from regeneration, however, con- version signifies the first exercise of the new disposition implanted in regeneration, i. e., in freely turning unto God.
Eegeneration is God's act ; conversion is ours. Eegeneration is the implantation of a gracious principle ; conversion is the ex-
348 REGENERATION.
ercise of that principle. Kegeneration is never a matter of direct consciousness to the subject of it ; conversion always is such to the agent of it. Regeneration is a single act; complete in itself, and never repeated ; conversion, as the beginning of holy living, is the commencement of a series, constant, endless, and progressive. " Draw me, and I will run after thee," Cant, i, 4.
12. How can it be proved that there is any such thing as that commonly called regeneration ?
1st. By those Scriptures that declare such a change to be necessary, John iii., 3 ; 2 Cor. v., 17 ; Gal. vi., 15.
2d. By those passages which describe the change, Eph. ii., 5 ; iv., 24 ; James i., 18 ; 1 Pet. i., 23.
3d. From the fact that it was necessary for the most moral as well as for the most profligate, 1 Cor. xv., 10 ; Gral. i., 13-16.
4th. That this inward change is not a mere reformation is proved by its being referred to the Holy Spirit, Eph. i., 19, 20 ; Titus iii., 5.
5th. From the comparison of man's state in grace with his state by nature, Eom. vi., 13 ; viii., 6-10 ; Eph. v., 8.
6th. From the experience of all Christians, and from the tes- timony of their lives.
13. What is the nature of supernatural illumination ?
The soul of man is a unit. A radically defective or perverted condition of any faculty will injuriously affect the exercise of all the other faculties. The essence of sin consists in the perverted moral dispositions and affections of the will. But a perverted condition of these affections must affect the exercises of the in- tellect, concerning all moral objects, as much as the volitions themselves. We can not love or desire any object unless we per- ceive its loveliness, neither can we intellectually perceive its love- liness unless its qualities are congenial to our inherent taste or dispositions. Sin, therefore, is essentially deceitful, and man as a sinner is spiritually blind. This does not consist in any physi- cal defect. He possesses all the faculties requisite to enable him to see the beauty, and to experience the power of the truth, but his whole nature is morally perverted through his evil disposi-
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