But pray, gentlemen, who is this _Humanus_? I do not remember to have seen him before: he seems not willing to speak, yet is often biting his lips at what is said.
_Rusticus._ This _Humanus_, Sir, is my neighbour; but so ignorant of the nature of the gospel, that he is often trying to persuade me into a disbelief of it. I say ignorant (though he is a learned man) because I am well assured, that no man ever did or can oppose the gospel, but through a total ignorance of what it is in itself: for the gospel, when rightly understood, is irresistible: it brings more good news to the human nature, than sight to the blind, limbs to the lame, health to the sick, or liberty to the condemned slave. But this neighbour of mine has never yet been in sight of the real gospel; he knows nothing of it, but what he has picked up out of the books that have been written against it, and for it.
But this is enough concerning the man. He comes with me at his own desire, and upon promise, not to interrupt our conversation; but to be a silent hearer, till it is all over. And therefore, if you please, Sir, I beg our conversation may for a while turn upon the chief points of religion, that he may hear the whole nature, the necessity and blessedness of the Christian redemption.
*_Theophilus._ Your neighbour is welcome, and I pray God to give him an heart attentive to those truths, which have made so good an impression upon you. Your friend _Humanus_ lays claim to a religion of nature and reason: I join with him, with all my heart. No other religion can be right but that which has its foundation in nature. For the God of nature can require nothing of his creatures, but what the state of their nature calls them to. Nature is his great law, that speaks his whole will both in heaven and on earth; and to obey nature, is to obey the God of nature; to please him, and to live to him, in the highest perfection. God indeed has many after-laws; but it is after his creatures have fallen from nature, and lost its perfection. But all these after-laws have no other end or intention, but to repair nature, and bring men back to their first natural state of perfection. What say you now, _Academicus_, to all these matters?
*_Academicus._ You know, how these matters have affected me, ever since I read some books lately published. From that time, I have seen things in such a newness of light, as makes me take my former knowledge for a dream. A dream I may justly say, since all my labour was taken up in teaching into a seventeen hundred years history of doctrines, disputes, decrees, heresies, schisms, and sects, wherever to be found, in _Europe_, _Asia_, and _Africa_. From this goodly heap of stuff crouded into my mind, I have been settling matters betwixt all the present Christian divisions both at home and abroad, according to the best rules of criticism; having little or no other idea of a religious man, than that of a stiff maintainer of certain points against all those that oppose them. And in this respect, I believe I may say, that I only swam away in the common torrent.
*And in this laborious dream I had in all likelihood ended my days; had not those books shewn me, that religion lay nearer home. But however, though I seem to be entered into a region of light, yet I must not forget to tell you, what some of my friends say: that in those books, there are many things asserted, which have not scripture to support them.
_Theophilus._ Is there not some reason _Academicus_, to take this objection of your learned friends to be a mere pretence? For what is more fully grounded upon scripture, than the doctrine of a real regeneration? And yet the _plain letter_ of scripture, upon the most important of all points, the very life and essence of our redemption, is not only overlooked, but openly opposed, by the generality of men of sober learning. But this point has not only the plain letter of scripture for it; but what the letter asserts, is absolutely required by the whole spirit and tenor of the New Testament. All the epistles of the apostles proceed upon the supposed certainty of this one great point.
A Son of God, united with, and born in, our nature, that his nature may be produced in us; an holy Spirit, breathing in our souls, ♦quickening the dead in sin, is the letter and spirit of the apostles writings: grounded upon the plain letter of our Lord’s own words, that unless we are born again of water, and the Spirit we cannot see the kingdom of heaven.
♦ “quickning” replaced with “quickening”