How is it, that the logical, critical, learned deist comes by his infidelity? Why by the same help of the same good powers of the _natural man_, as many a learned Christian comes to know, and contend for the gospel. For, drop divine inspiration, and all is dropt, that can give the believer any godly difference from the infidel. The Christian therefore that rejects and writes against the necessity of immediate divine inspiration, pleads the whole cause of infidelity: he confirms the ground on which it stands; and has nothing to prove the goodness of his own Christianity, but that which equally proves to the deist, the goodness of his infidelity. For without the new birth, or which is the same thing, without immediate, continual divine inspiration, the difference between the Christian, and the Infidel, is lost; and whether the uninspired, unregenerate son of Adam, be in the church, or out of the church, he is still that child of this world, _that_ mere natural man, to whom the _things of the Spirit of_ God, are and must be foolishness.――Nothing but the loss of the light and Spirit of God, turned an order of angels into devils.――Nothing but the loss of that same light and Spirit, took from Adam, his first crown of glory, stript him more naked than the beasts, and left him a prey to devils, and in the jaws of eternal death.――What therefore can have the least power towards man’s redemption, but the light and Spirit of God? Or what can begin, or bring forth the return of his first state, but this eternal light and Spirit.――Hence it is, that the gospel-state is by our Lord, affirmed to _be a kingdom of heaven_, because it has the nature of no worldly thing, is to serve no worldly ends, can be helped by no worldly power, receives nothing from man, but man’s full denial of himself, stands upon nothing that is finite or transitory, has no existence but in that power of God, that created and upholds heaven and earth; and is a kingdom of God become man, and a kingdom of men united to God, through a continual, immediate divine illumination. What scripture of the New Testament can you read, that does not prove this to be the gospel-state, a kingdom of God, into which none can enter, but by being born of the Spirit, none can continue, but by being led by the Spirit, and in which not a thought, or desire, or action, can be allowed to have any part, but as it is a fruit of the Spirit?
What now have parts, and literature, and the natural abilities of man, that they can do here? Just as much as they can do at the resurrection of the dead; for all that is to be done here, is nothing else, but _resurrection_ and _life_. Therefore, that which gave eyes to the blind, cleansed the lepers, cast out devils, and raised the dead; that alone can, and must do all that is to be done in this gospel kingdom of God. For the smallest work of grace must be as solely done by God, as the _greatest miracle_ in nature: because every work of grace, is the same overcoming of nature, as when the dead are raised to life. Yet vain man would be thought to have great power in this kingdom of grace, not because he happens to be born of noble parents, but because he has happened to be made a scholar, has run through all languages and histories, has been long exercised in conjectures and criticisms, and has his head as full of all notions, theological, poetical and philosophical, as a dictionary is full of words.
Now let this simple question decide the matter: has this great scholar any more power of _saying to this mountain, be thou removed hence, and cast into the sea_, than the illiterate Christian? If not, he is just as weak, as powerless, and little in the kingdom of God, as he is. But if the illiterate man’s faith, should happen to be nearer to the _bulk_ of a grain of mustard-seed, than that of the _prodigious scholar_, the illiterate Christian stands much above him in the kingdom of God.
Look now at the present state of Christendom, glorying in the light of Greek and Roman learning, (lately broke forth) as a _light_ that has helped the gospel to shine with a lustre, that it scarce ever had before. Look at this, and you will see the _fall_ of the present church from its first gospel state, to have much likeness to the _fall_ of the first _divine_ man, from the glory of innocence, and heavenly purity, into an earthly state of worldly craft and serpentine subtilty.