Ib. p. 26.
Jesus answered him thus—Verily, I say unto you, unless a man be born of water and of the spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God.—The true sense of which is obviously this:—Except a man be initiated into my religion by Baptism, (which at that time was always preceded by a confession of faith) and unless he manifest his sincere reception of it, by leading that upright and spiritual life which it enjoins, he cannot enter the kingdom of heaven, or be a partaker of that happiness which it belongs to me to confer on those who believe in my name and keep my sayings.
Upon my faith as a Christian, if no more is meant by being born again than this, the speaker must have had the strongest taste in metaphors of any teacher in verse or prose on record, Jacob Behmen himself not excepted. The very Alchemists lag behind. Pity, however, that our Barrister has not shown us how this plain and obvious business of Baptism agrees with ver. 8. of the same chapter:
The wind bloweth where it listeth
, &c. Now if this does not express a visitation of the mind by a somewhat not in the own power or fore-thought of the mind itself, what are words meant for?
Ib. p. 29.
The true meaning of being born again, in the sense in which our Saviour uses the phrase, implies nothing more or less, in plain terms, than this:—to repent; to lead for the future a religious life instead of a life of disobedience; to believe the Holy Scriptures, and to pray for grace and assistance to persevere in our obedience to the end. All this any man of common sense might explain in a few words.
Pray, then, (for I will take the Barrister's own commentary,) what does the man of common sense mean by grace? If he will explain grace in any other way than as the circumstances