26. * To seek for any thing in religion, but a new nature fitted for a new world, is knowing neither it, nor ourselves. To be born again, is to be fit for Paradise in whatever part of the universe we live. Not to be born again, is continuing where the sin and death of Adam left us, whatever church, or sect of religion we have fellowship with. All ways and opinions, all forms and modes of worship, stand on the outside of religion. They certainly are helps to the kingdom of God, when we consider them only as the gate to that inward life, which we want. But this is unquestionably true, that our salvation consists wholly in our inward renewal by the Holy Ghost. When this begins, our salvation begins; as this goes on, our salvation goes on; when this is finished, our salvation is finished. This alone saves the soul, because this alone restores the first paradisaical, divine nature, which is the true image of God, and which alone can enter into the kingdom of heaven.
27. If we had only a notional knowledge that our first father had sinned, and knew no more of his sinful condition than history tells us of it; if we had only instituted types and figures to keep up the remembrance of it in our minds, we should be never the worse for his sins. We should have no hurt by owning ourselves to be children of a sinful father, if his nature, life and spirit were not propagated in us. So, if we have only a notional belief that Jesus is become the second Adam, to redeem, and regenerate the fallen nature; if we know this only in the notion and history kept up in our minds by outward figures and ordinances: tho’ we contend ever so much for this belief of a Saviour, and write volumes in defence of it; yet he is not our Saviour, till his nature, life and spirit, be in us. If there be any man in the world, in whom the nature of Adam is not, he has no sin from Adam. If there be any man in whom the life of Jesus is not, he has no righteousness from him. We must have life and righteousness in the same truth and reality in us from the second Adam, as we have sin and death in us from the first.
28. The whole matter is this: Christ, by the overshadowing of the Holy Spirit, became in the Virgin Mary, of the same nature with that first man, which was created in Paradise; who according to the purpose of God, was to have been the father of an holy race of men. But seeing the first Adam failed in this design of God, the wisdom of God provided a second Adam, who was born in the same degree of perfection, in which the first man was created. To this holy paradisaical human nature the Son of God was personally united. And thus Christ the second Adam, took the place of the first, and stands as the second father of all the sons of Adam. Now as we are earthly, corrupt, and worldly men, by having the nature and life of the first Adam propagated in us, so we must become holy and heavenly men, by having the life and nature of the second Adam derived into us; or as the scripture speaks, by being born again. Jesus Christ therefore helps us by a second birth, to such an holy, and undefiled nature, as he himself received in the blessed Virgin, and which we should have received in Paradise from our first father.
Thus by faith in Christ we put on Christ, he is formed in us; we eat his flesh and drink his blood, and have his nature and life in us.
Thus we are real members, living branches, and new born children of God.
29. * Look now at yourselves, at the world, at religion, in this true light, and surely you must see the desirable nature of every virtue, and every degree of it, which the gospel sets before you. Surely you must awake into a strong abhorrence of every thing that the fall has brought upon you; whether it be in your souls, your bodies, or the state of the world into which you are fallen. To renounce the poor interests of a worldly life, to be content with a pilgrim’s fare in it, to live looking and longing after that which you have lost; to have no more of covetousness, of pride, of vanity and ambition, than John the Baptist had; to live unto God in your shops, your employments and estates, with such thoughts and desires of going to your heavenly Father, as the lost son had when he saw his poor condition, eating husks among swine, is only a proof that you are, like him, come to yourselves, that you begin to see what, and how, and where you are. Surely you can need no exhortations to run to your Redeemer, to beseech him to do every thing in you and for you that your corrupted heart, and polluted body are in need of. He now stands as near you, as full of love to you, as he did to Lazarus when he raised him from the dead. He is no farther from your call than he was from the call of blind Bartimæus.
30. * Surely it should be as needless to exhort you to look earnestly after every means of recovering your first glorious state, as to exhort the blind to receive their sight, the sick to accept of health, or the captive to suffer his chains to be taken off. For when you see your misery and your redemption, both of them so exceeding great, you see something that must needs penetrate the depth of your soul, that leaves you no room to doubt about the nature of any virtue; no liberty to indulge one vain passion, or to think it any hardship that the gospel calls you to be perfect. For in this light every virtue of the gospel stands recommended to us, as health, purity and sight stand recommended to a sick, noisome, blind leper, who was shut up in a place that continually increased all his evils.
* It strips us of nothing, but the uncleanness of leprosies, the miseries of sores, pains and blindness. It takes nothing from the world which is about us, but its poison and power of infecting us.
* So that to be called to the height of all virtue, however excessive it may seem to the reasonings of flesh and blood, is only being called away from every misery and evil that can be avoided by us.
31. * No virtue therefore has any blameable extreme in it, till it contradicts this general end of religion, till it hinders the restoration of the divine image in us, or makes us less fit to appear amongst the inhabitants of heaven. Abstinence, temperance, mortification of the senses and passions, can have no excess, till they hinder the purification of the soul, or make the body less subservient to it. Charity can have no excess, till it contracts that love which we are to have in heaven, till it is more than that which would lay down its life even for an enemy, till it exceeds that which the first Christians practised, when they had all things common; till it exceeds that of St. John, who requires him that has two coats, to give to him that has none; till it is loving our poor brethren more than Christ has loved us; till it goes beyond the command of loving our neighbour as we love ourselves.