* Ninth Sunday after Trinity.
1 Cor. X. 15. / speak as to wise men; judge ye what I say. THE subject to which we would now draw your attention, and which is most intimately connected with that of our fallen state, and of our depravity by nature, is the doctrine of the New Birth. It lias been already shewn, that we are altogether born in sin.
and corrupt in all our faculties ; and it is obvious, that a great change must pass upon our souls before we can be meet for the enjoyment of those heavenly mansions, where no unclean thing can enter.
In order to invalidate this doctrine, occasion has been taken from the use of the word iraXiyyevea-la, which we translate regeneration, to confound this doctrine with baptism. The argument used is this : The word iraXtyyeveala pccurs but tvvice in the Scrip- tures, and neither time has it any thing to do with that spiritual change which enthusiasts insist upon as necessary to our salvation. One of the times it is used in reference to baptism, and is expressly distin- guished from the renewing of the Holy Ghost ; as when it is said " God hath saved us by the washing of regeneration, and renewing of the Holy Ghost^:" and the other time, it has nothing to do either with baptism or the new birth, but refers to a totally distinct subject.
Now we grant, that this particular term, " the washing of regeneration," is here used as our objector states : and we also grant, that if nothing more were said in Scripture respecting a new birth than what is expressed under that particular term, there would be very great weight in the objection. But the doctrine of the new birth is not at all founded on the use of that particular term. The term regeneration, indeed, has a peculiar fitness to express the being born again : and when it is so peculiarly fit for this purpose, we cannot but think that the non-application of it to the subject in the Holy Scriptures, would be a very weak argument against the doctrine itself, when that doc- trine is expressed as clearly as possible by various other terms of the same import. However, we wish not to contend about a word: it is not words, but things, that we insist upon ; and therefore, waving the use of that particular term, we shall speak in the common phraseology of Scripture, of being " born again," or " born from above," or " born of God." But that we may leave no room for misapprehension
a Tit. iii. 5.