226 part ni. Ch. xviii. — sanctification.
those recognized and assumed to be regenerate, requiring them, on the one hand, to resist their evil passions and propensities, to lay aside all malice, and wrath, and pride, and jealousy ; and on the other, to cultivate all the graces of the Spirit, faith, love, hope, long-suffering, meekness, lowliness of mind, and brotherly kindness. At the same time they are reminded that it is God who worketh in them both to will and to do, and that therefore they are constantly to seek his aid and to depend upon his assistance. It follows from this view of the subject that sanctification is not only, as before proved, a supernatural work, but also that it does not consist exclusively in a series of a new kind of acts. It is the making the tree good, in order that the fruit may be good. It involves an essential change of character. As regeneration is not an act of the subject of the work, but in the language of the Bible a new birth, a new creation, a quickening or communicat- ing a new life, and in the language of the old Latin Church, the infusion of new habits of grace ; so sanctification in its essential nature is not holy acts, but such a change in the state of the soul, that sinful acts become more infrequent, and holy acts more and more habitual and controlling. This view alone is consistent with the Scriptural representations, and with the account given in the Bible of the way in which this radical change of character is carried on and consummated.
§ 3. The Method of Sanctification.
It has already been shown that although sanctification does not exclude all cooperation on the part of its subjects, but, on the contrary, calls for their unremitting and strenuous exertion, it is nevertheless the work of God. It is not carried on as a mere process of moral culture by moral means ; it is as truly supernat- ural in its method as in its nature. What the Bible teaches in answer to the question, How a soul by nature spiritually dead, being quickened by the mighty power of God, is gradually trans- formed into the image of Christ, is substantially as follows, —
The Soul is led to exercise Faith. 1. It is led to exercise faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, to re- ceive Him as its Saviour, committing itself to Him to be by his merit and grace delivered from the guilt and power of sin. This is the first step, and secures all the rest, not because of its inher- ent virtue or efficacy, but because, according to the covenant of grace, or plan of salvation, which God has revealed and which He