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 quite 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 fallen Adam, and mere natural man, to whom' the things of the Spirit of God are and must be foolishness. For a full proof of this, no more need be seen, than that which you cannot help seeing, that the same shining virtues, and the same glaring vices are common to them both. For the Christian, not made such by the Spirit of God continually -inspiring and working in him, has only a Christianity of his own making, and can have only such appearances of virtues, and will have such reality of vices, as natural self wants to have. Let him therefore renounce what is called natural religion as much as he will, yet unless he is a new-born and divinely inspired Christian, he must live and die in all his natural corruption,

Through all Scripture, nothing else is aimed at or intended for man, as his Christianity, but the divine life, nor any thing hinted at, as having the least power to raise or beget it, but the holy lifegiving Spirit of God. How gross therefore is that blindness, which, reading the gospel, and the history of gospel Christians, cannot see these two fundamental truths, 1. That nothing is divine

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knowledge in man but the divine life; 2. That the divine life is nothing else but a birth of the divine nature within him.

But this truth being lost or given up, vain learning and a worldly spirit, being in possession of the gospel-book, set up kingdoms of strife and division. For what end? Why, that the unity of the church may not be lost. Multiply systems of empty notions and opinions: For what? Why, that words and forms may do that for the church now, which to the first church, of Christ's own forming, could only be done by being born of the Spirit.

Hence it is, that the Scripture scholar is looked upon as having divine knowledge of its matters, when he is as ready at chapter and verse, as the critic is at every page of Ciccro. And nothing is looked upon as defective in divinity knowledge, but such supposed mistakes of the genius of the Hebrew or Greek letter, as the sublime students of the immortal words of a Milton or a Shakespeare, charge as blunders upon one another.

Now, to call such Scripture skill, divine knowledge, is just as solid and judicious as if a man was said or thought to know that which St. John knew, because he could say his whole gospel and epistles by heart, without missing a word of them. For a literal knowledge of Scripture is but like having all Scripture in the memory, and is so far from being a divine preception of the things spo

ken of, that the most vicious wicked scholar in the world, may attain to the highest perfection in it But divine knowledge, and wickedness of life, are so inconsistent, that they are mutual death and destruction to one another;-where the one is alive, the other must be dead. Judas Iscariot knew Jesus Christ, and all that he said and did, to his crucifixion; he knew what it was to be at the Lord's table, and to partake of his supper of bread and wine. But yet, with much more truth it may be said, that he knew nothing of all this, and had no better a knowledge of it than Pontius Pilate had. Now all knowledge of Christ, but that which is from divine inspiration, or the new birth, is but as poor and profitless as the knowledge of Judas was. It may say to Christ, as he did, "Hail, master;" but no one can call Jesus Lord, but by the Holy Spirit. This empty, letter-learned knowledge, which the natural man can as easily have of the sacred Scripture and religious matters, as of any other books or human affairs; this being taken for divine knowledge, has spread such darkness and delusion all over Christendom, as may be reckoned no less than a general apostasy from the gospel state of divine illumination. For the gospel state is, in its whole nature, nothing else; it has but oneLight, and that is the Lamb of God; it has but one life, and that is by the Spirit of God. What ever is not of and from this Light, and governed