he is a living creature. So here, the effects of regeneration, by feeling and experience, demonstrate a principle of holy and spiritual life.

First, It exists or shows itself in the illumination of the mind. Hence it is termed light, and the subjects of it, "children of "the light and of the day: God's shining into the mind, to give "the knowledge of Christ Jesus," &c. By this illumination, the soul is brought to entertain new apprehensions of God, of the divine law, of itself, of eternity, of Jesus Christ, and the glorious method of saving lost sinners in the gospel.

All these things he beholds in a new and very different manner. Formerly he was in darkness, through the blindness of his mind, but now is he become light in the Lord. He views God as all glorious and transcendently excellent. Every divine perfection in the bible appears with a peculiar and amiable lustre ; his holiness and justice, as well as his goodness and mercy. The soul, as it were, quits itself, and fixes with admiring wonders upon God as altogether lovely. There is now a rectitude and propriety in all the goings and providences of God, which charm and delight his mind.

The law of God is to his contemplation without blemish, exactly what it ought to be, perfect and right. He now feels with a distinguishing sensation, the Apostle's description of it, when says, "The law is holy, and the commandment is holy, and "just and good." He cries out, "All is infinitely holy and 46 good, come of me what will."

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He becomes enlightened with new discoveries of himself. He sees himself a sinner. He had from education under the gospel, been used to make this acknowledgment. But, alas! what is a customary and formal acknowledgment, to what it is to have his eyes opened to behold himself in the light of God, and in the mir ror of a perfect law? He sees nothing reflected upon himself but

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depravity and moral deformity. He feels himself before the glass, "poor, and miserable, and wretched, and blind, and "naked." And in the awful view, his lamentations are, "hold I am vile, I have not the understanding of a man." And he dashes himself to the earth, saying, "I am as a beast be "fore God."

This illumination gives him new views of eternity. Tremen dous is the prospect which opens before him. Eternity! dread ful and solemn is the thought! A sea never traversed, an ocean without a shore. Its entrance is found, but no return to port. It is an everlasting voyage. The view fills him with horror, and causes his soul to start back upon itself. What shall be his fate in this endless course-whether he shall pass this interminable scene in perfect felicity, or plunge in the fiery billows of divine wrath and utter despair. All is uncertain-his mind terrifies and fills him with awful pain and misgivings.

His next discoveries are the mediatorial wonders of Jesus Christ. As God and man; as interposing for transgressors; his humiliation, sufferings, and death; satisfying divine justice, fulfilling the divine law, making atonement for sin, vanquishing death and hell, and ascending to glory. These discoveries overwhelm his soul, give him pleasure, joy and transport, previous, sometimes, to his having the reflex acts of believing that he is comprehended and interested herein. Christ, in his mediatorial offices, appears all glorious and beautiful, as an object to the ilJuminated mind. In his view, his divine excellencies strike his attention, command his soul, and captivate his heart, beyond any thing he ever beheld. The beauties of the rainbow are nothing to the natural eye, in comparison of the beauties of the Redeemer, to the eye of spiritual illumination.

The discoveries of the glorious method of saving guilty sin ners in the gospel. The views often astonish and charm his heart, without any sensible consideration of himself. The

benevolence, condescension, compassion, mercy, grace, and goodness displayed therein, as pure objects of his illuminated contemplation, shed over his soul a feeling, and an indescribable pleasure and delight.

But all these things will come into a more particular review, when your attention will be directed to the doctrines of conver sion, repentance, faith, love, &c.

Secondly, The principle of regeneration shows itself by the new bias of the will. Understanding and will, philosophers have considered as the constituent faculties of the soul. Some have added hereto the passions and affections, but the moderns have reduced these to volitions or acts of the will. However this may be, metaphysically and logically considered, it can make no difference in theological discussions, or the experience of christians. Experience and feeling is the great business of christians, in the view and under the operation of the Spirit and gospel truth.

The will, whether it follows the last dictate of the understanding, or is as the understanding, as the more refined express it, common sense teaches us, it is that power of the soul which approves or disapproves of objects or actions as they stand in the conception of the mind. Therefore, when we say regeneration gives a new bias to the will, all that is intended, is, that this faculty becomes determined about spiritual objects, in a new and different manner from what it formerly was. For instance, as the will formerly was not exercised in the approbation of God, or choosing him as an amiable and excellent being, nor in the disapprobation of sin as exceedingly base and odious, the bias of it now is, a well pleasedness with God, and an aversion from iniquity.

In this new choice and determination of the will, conversion properly consists. This is the precise point wherein the exercises of true religion begin. The exercises of the renewed will be

come easy and unrestrained. They tend towards God and heavenly things, as the needle tends to the polar star. Not so with the ungodly. With reluctance they call God to remembrance. If any occurrences force the recollection of him into the mind, they feel uneasiness, and seem to have no enjoyment of themselves until it is banished hence. But it is not thus with the renewed soul. A marvelous change takes place in his affections, propensities and attachments.

In the affections much of vital and experimental religion consists. Unless our affections be raised and directed towards spiritual things, our religion will be apt to wear the complexion of formality. Proper allowances are ever to be made for different constitutions. Some are sanguine, forward, and petulent-others timid, modest and reserved. These various constitutions will give a various appearance to religious affections. Yet there will be leading radical traits, which will prove a genuine correspon

dence in all.

But to be a little more particular in considering the renewed affections. Perhaps admiration is one of the first passions awakened into sensibility in the illuminated mind. He feels himself, as it were, introduced into a new world, and all are wonders around him. God, in all his perfections, in all his ways, in all his operations of creation, providence and grace, appears marvelous in his eyes. The patience of God, in sparing such a wicked generation; his goodness in pouring down beneficence upon it; loving kindness and tender mercies; the projection and execution of the method of salvation, swell his soul into rapturous bursts of admiration.

This change in the affections, is especially manifested in love. This may be termed, the superior passion of the soul. Its direction fixes the character of a person, with regard to religion or He whose heart is more attached to the objects of sense, than charmed with the beauty of divine things, is a lover

the reverse.

of pleasure, more than a lover of God. Love implies esteem, approbation, and complacency. The renewed heart esteems God above all. Beautiful greatness constitutes the object of esteem. This is transcendantly the character of Jehovah-hence, supreme approbation follows estimation, and complacency and delight are indissolubly connected with both.

New desires come forth into exercise in the regenerated soul, Once his propensities were earthly and sensual-and as to God, he desired not the knowledge of his ways. But now the knowledge of his name is the ardent desire of his heart. He hungers and thirsts after God, even the living God. The desire of his soul is to the remembrance of him forever.

New aversions are passions which arise into existence, in consequence of this renovation. What he formerly loved, now he hates. He abhors every false and evil way. He hates the lawless liberties of the sons of impiety; and turns away from the indulgencies which formerly gave him pleasure. He feels an indignation at the risings of vain imaginations and irregular inclinations. "He walketh not in the counsel of the ungodly, nor "standeth in the way of sinners, nor sitteth in the seat of the "scornful." With regard to the wicked, he is often saying, "O my soul come not thou into their secret; unto their assem❤ "bly, mine honour be thou not united."

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New fears are another train of passions which arise in the illuminated mind. Having his heart sprinkled from an evil conscience, he dreads its defilement. He now, not only fears the punishment annexed to sin, but its turpitude fills him with horror. also fears his own weakness, lest unbelief should prevail, and he should be left to return again to sin. His heart trembles within him, lest he should dishonor God, wound the interests of religion, and fall back into sin, folly, and ruin.

The renovated soul has also new joys. The prospects opened to his view of glory and felicity; the sweet communion he feels