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.

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.

So that they go on in their sin waiting for a new birth, &c.

The following account is extracted from the Methodist Magazine for 1798: "The Lord astonished 'Sarah Roberts' with his mercy, by setting her at liberty, while employed in the necessary business of washing for her family, &c.

A washerwoman has all her sins blotted out in the twinkling of an eye, and while reeking with suds is received in the family of the Redeemer's kingdom. Surely this is a most abominable profanation of all that is serious, &c.

The leading design of John the Baptist * * was * this:—to prepare the minds of men for the reception of that pure system of moral truth which the Saviour, by divine authority, was speedily to inculcate, and of those sublime doctrines of a resurrection and a future judgment, which, as powerful motives to the practice of holiness, he was soon to reveal.

—their faiths in the efficacy of their own rites, and creeds, and ceremonies, and their whole train of substitutions for moral duty, was so entire, and in their opinion was such a saving faith, that they could not at all interpret any language that seemed to dispute their value, or deny their importance.

Thus it was that this moral preacher explained and enforced the duty of repentance, and thus it was that he prepared the way for the greatest and best of teachers, &c.

—the logic of the new Evangelists will convince him that it is a contradiction in terms even to suppose himself capable of doing any thing to help or bringing any thing to recommend himself to the Divine favour.

"Even repentance and faith," (says Dr. Hawker,) "those most essential qualifications of the mind, for the participation and enjoyment of the blessings of the Gospel, (and which all real disciples of the Lord Jesus cannot but possess,) are never supposed as a condition which the sinner performs to entitle him to mercy, but merely as evidences that he is brought and has obtained mercy. They cannot be the conditions of obtaining salvation."

The former authorities on this subject I had quoted from the Gospel according to St. Luke: that Gospel most positively and most solemnly declares the repentance of sinners to be the condition on which alone salvation can be obtained. But the doctors of the new divinity deny this: they tell us distinctly it cannot be. For the future, the Gospel according to Calvin must be received as the truth. Sinners will certainly prefer it as the more comfortable of the two beyond all comparison.

What is faith? Is it not a conviction produced in the mind by adequate testimony?

"I could as easily create a world (says Dr. Hawker) as create either faith or repentance in my own heart." Surely this is a most monstrous confession. What! is not the Christian religion a revealed religion, and have we not the most miraculous attestation of its truth?

How can this evangelical preacher declaim on the necessity of seriously searching into the truth of revelation, for the purpose either of producing or confirming our belief of it, when he has already pronounced it to be just as possible to arrive at conviction as to create a world?

But this Calvinistic Evangelist tells us, by way of accounting for the utter impossibility of producing in himself either faith or repentance, that both are of divine origin, and like the light, and the rain, and the dew of heaven, which tarrieth not for man, neither waiteth for the sons of men, are from above, and come down from the Father of lights, from whom alone cometh every good and perfect gift!

According to that Gospel which hath hitherto been the pillar of the Christian world, we are taught that whosoever endeavours to the best of his ability to reform his manners, and amend his life, will have pardon and acceptance.

When the wicked man turneth away from the wickedness which he hath committed, and doeth that which is lawful and right, he shall save his soul alive. This gracious declaration the old moral divines of our Church have placed in the front of its Liturgy.

"For so very peculiarly directed to the sinner, and to him only (says the evangelical preacher) is the blessed Gospel of the Lord Jesus, that unless you are a sinner, you are not interested in its saving truths."

It was reserved for these days of new discovery to announce to mankind that, unless they are sinners, they are excluded from the promised blessings of the Gospel.

I can assure these gentlemen that I regard with a reverence as pure and awful as can enter into the human mind, that blood which was shed upon the Cross.

Let them not attempt to escape it by quoting a few disconnected phrases in the Epistles, but let them adhere solely and steadfastly to that Gospel of which they affect to be the exclusive preachers.

The 'nostrum' of the mountebank will he preferred to the prescription of the regular practitioner. Why is this? Because there is something in the authoritative arrogance of the pretender, by which ignorance is overawed.

But the anti-moralists aver * * that they are quoted unfairly; —that although they disavow, it is true, the necessity, and deny the value, of practical morality and personal holiness, and declare them to be totally irrelevant to our future salvation, yet that * * I might have found occasional recommendations of moral duty which I have neglected to notice.

We are told by our new spiritual teachers, that reason is not to be applied to the inquiry into the truth or falsehood of their doctrines; they are spiritually discerned, and carnal reason has no concern with them.

Religion has for its object the moral care and the moral cultivation of man. Its beauty is not to be sought in the regions of mystery, or in the flights of abstraction.

The masculine strength and moral firmness which once distinguished the great mass of the British people is daily fading away. Methodism with all its cant, &c.

So with the Tinker; I would give him the care of kettles, but I would not give him the cure of souls. So long as he attended to the management and mending of his pots and pans, I would wish success to his ministry: but when he came to declare 'himself' a "chosen vessel," and demand permission to take the souls of the people into his holy keeping, I should think that, instead of a 'licence', it would be more humane and more prudent to give him a passport to St. Luke's. Depend upon it, such men were never sent by Providence to rule or to regulate mankind.

"A truly awakened conscience," (these anti-moral editors of the Pilgrim's Progress assure us,) "can never find relief from the law: (that is, the moral law.) The more he looks for peace this way, his guilt, like a heavy burden, becomes more intolerable; when he becomes dead to the law,—as to any dependence upon it for salvation,—by the body of Christ, and married to him, who was raised from the dead, then, and not till then, his heart is set at liberty, to run the way of God's commandments."

Here we are taught that the conscience can never find relief from obedience to the law of the Gospel.