tions. As soon as these are changed he will see, and, seeing, love and obey the truth, although no constitutional change is wrought in his nature, i. e., no new faculty given, but only his perverted faculties morally rectified. This illumination is called super- natural, 1st, because, having been lost, it can be restored only by the immediate power of God. 2d. In contradistinction to the mained condition of man's present depraved nature. It, how- ever, conveys no new truths to the mind, nor does it relieve the Christian, in any degree, from the diligent and prayerful study of the Word, nor does it lead to any fanciful interpretations of Scripture foreign to the plain sense of the letter, it only leads to the perception and appreciation of the native spiritual beauty and power of the inspired word, and the truths therein revealed.
14. How may it be proved that believers are the subjects of such illumination ?
1st. It is necessary, 1 Cor. ii., 14 ; 2 Cor. iii., 14 ; iv., 3 ; John xvi., 3, From the constitution of our nature we must ap- . prehend an object as lovely before we can love it for its own sake. 2d. The Scriptures expressly affirm it. " To know God is eternal life/' John xvii., 3 ; 1 Cor. ii., 12, 13 ; 2 Cor. iv., 6 ; Eph. i, 18 ; Phil, i., 9 ; Col. iii., 10 ; 1 John iv., 7 ; v., 20 ; Ps. xix., 7, 8 ; xliii., 3, 4.
As the soul is a unite, a change in its radical moral dispo- sitions must simultaneously modify the exercise of all its facul- ties in relation to moral and spiritual objects. The soul can not love that the loveliness of which it does not perceive, neither can it perceive the loveliness of an object which is totally uncongenial to its own nature. The first effect of regeneration, or a radical change of moral disposition, in the order of nature, therefore, is to open the eyes of our understandings to the excellency of divine truth, and the second effect is the going; forth of the renewed affections toward that excellency so perceived. This is what Pres. Edwards (Religious Affections, Pt. III., sec 4) calls " the sense of the heart.'' : >
15. What is the nature of that conviction 7of sin which is the attendant of regeneration 1
Spiritual illumination immediately leads to the perception of the righteousness, goodness, and exceeding breadth and exactness of God's law, and by contrast of the exceeding sinfulness of sin
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in the abstract, Eom. vii., 7, 13 ; and above all of his own sin — thus revealing, in contrast to the divine purity and righteousness, the pollution of his own heart, his total ill-desert, and his entire helplessness in all his relations to Grod, Job xlii., 5, 6. This is a practical experimental knowledge, — produced by the wrestling sXeyxog, of the Holy Grhost (John xvi., 8) — of guilt, of pollution, and of helplessness.
16. What is the nature of that conviction of sin which often occurs before or without regeneration, and how may it be distin- guished from the genuine ?
Natural conscience is an essential and indestructible element of human nature, including a sense of right and wrong, and pain- ful emotions associated with a sense of the latter. Although this faculty may be for a time perverted, and the sensibility associated with it hardened, yet it may be, and often is, in the case of the unregenerate quickened to a painful activity, leading to a senes of ill desert, pollution, helplessness and danger. In eternity this will constitute a large measure of the sufferings of the lost.
On the other hand, that conviction of sin which is peculiar to the regenerate is distinguished by being accompanied by a sense of the positive beauty of holiness, and an earnest desire to escape not merely the pangs of remorse, but chiefly the pollution and the dominion of sin.
17. What is the nature of those new affections which flow from the renewal of the heart, and how are they distinguished from the exercises of unrenewed men ?
Spiritual illumination gives the perception of that loveliness which the renewed affections of the heart embrace and delight in. These are spiritual because they are formed in us, and preserved in healthy exercise by the Spirit of Grod. They are holy because their objects are holy, and because they delight in their objects as holy. The affections of unrenewed men, on the other hand, how- ever pure or even religious they may be, are merely natural in their source, and attach merely to natural objects. They may be grateful to Grod for his benefits, but they never love him simply for the perfections of his own nature.
18. What is the nature of that new obedience which results from regeneration , and how does it differ from mere morality ?
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