their ancient polity, and an increase of secular wealth and power, should be put to an ignominious death, and perish by the hands of the Jewish nation, to whom he made the first offer of favours from the deity, was alike perplexing to the judgment and offensive to the pride of the Pharisee—— that the religion taught by the same Messiah should equally hold out the protection and blessing of God to the Gentile and the Jew, was yet more perplexing, and yet more offensive.

My hearers, what a wonderful example of penetration and condescension does our blessed Instructor thus set before us! how tenderly does he reprove the errors of Nicodemus, while he effectually refutes them! In revealing what we are most concerned to hear, and were of ourselves quite unable to discover, how happily does he unite argument with statement, simplicity with dignity, and the impressive with the awful! How much does that wisdom which is from above surpass all the ingenuity of human reasoning, and all the splendour of human eloquence! Who does not wish to be actuated by the heavenly spirit of docility and gratitude, when such heavenly truths, in such a heavenly manner, are communicated to him by our heavenly Teacher?

Humbly, my hearers, and yet earnestly, do I hope to have been not wholly unsuccessful in this well-meant effort to bring before you the real and complete meaning of a text, which seems to me of more than ordinary importance, and which is certainly accompanied by difficulties, for the solution

of which are required the most steady attention and the most reverential wariness. In conformity to what I said at the beginning of my discourse, I have explained to you some peculiar circumstances in the character of Nicodemus-I have analyzed some singular properties in the language of our Redeemer-I have supported my criticism by the authority of serious believers and distinguished scholars; and I trust that you see connection which unites all the various parts of our Lord's conversa. tion, and the infinite value of the close, in which you are told that for your sake he was lifted upon the cross, and in love to you God sent his Son into the world, that whoever believeth on him should not perish, but have everlasting life. These heavenly truths you will receive more readily, more gratefully, than did the Pharisees; you will avow your belief in them more boldly than did Nicodemus; and may God in his mercy grant that such

your belief may lead you to correspondent holiness

of life.

When illustrating the first part of my text, I took occasion to remark, that, among many other earthly things not understood, or not received by Nicodemus, our Lord adverted to spiritual birth, and that he called it so, because that birth was accomplished upon earth, that is, because matter of direct personal experience; and though actually revealed by Christ, yet does not stand in the same high order with other communications, to which he assigned the name of heavenly. Now the rapid progress of fanaticism-the uncouth jargon of certain

teachers upon illumination and the new birth-the strange interpretations which they confidently disseminate on the phraseology of the Gospel-and the tendency of their doctrines, not only to decoy men into the most irrational and unscriptural opinions, but to excite them to most unseemly habits of spiritual pride and uncharitable censoriousness, cannot fail to alarm every enlightened believer in every Christian Church, and more especially the well-informed and judicious pastors of our own venerable Establishment. I have therefore determined, on the two following Sundays, to read in this sanctuary what I think a most excellent discourse on Experience. It was written by a Divine of great and just celebrity. I trust, therefore, that the soundness of his doctrine, the liveliness of his descriptions, the cogency of his reasoning, the seriousness of his warnings, and the fervour of his piety, will amply justify my choice. Indeed, he will be found at once ingenious without refinement, and popular without enthusiastic rant and frivolous common place. But in order to prepare for the topics which he has discussed with more than ordinary ability, I think it right to introduce here some particular matter on regeneration, a word which illiterate and indiscreet teachers have, you know, frequently and triumphantly misemployed in deluding the credulous, terrifying the lowly, and emboldening the presumptuous.

The word regeneration occurs in the profane writers of antiquity, and bears, you must remember, not a moral but a physical signification. The Stoics

eld that, on the completion of their great year, which included one hundred thousand annual revolutions of the heavenly bodies, the universe would be restored to its former state, and a new course of the same things, animate and inanimate, would commence, with the same destined duration. Certain calculators maintained that, in the space of four hundred and forty years, the same men should be born again, not by any transmigration of souls, as the Pythagoreans taught, but with the same bodies and the same souls. Cicero speaks of the triumph to which he was summoned by his friends on that return from exile, which he styles a second birth. Galen tells us of a medicine which procured for those who were at the point of death, that speedy and perfect recovery which he considered as a second coming to life. "Oh! immortal Gods!" says Hegio, in the Captives of Plautus, on receiving some good advice, "I seem to be born again, if you speak true." It is used nearly in the same manner by Philo and Josephus. "Noah and his family," says the former, "not only were themselves rescued from the greatest dangers, but were the leaders also of a second birth to their posterity, and the persons in whom began a second period of existence." "The Jews," says the latter, "on their return from the Babylonian activity, celebrated by a feast this recovery of their state, and second birth of their country.”

In the foregoing passages, the term means, literally, either a second existence, or such a signal improvement in the condition as resembled it. In

the Old Testament we do not meet with the compound word, but the parts of which it is compounded are in the Septuagint version of Job xiv. 14. "All the days of my appointed time will I wait till my change come," says our version. "All the days of this my pilgrimage I am looking when my change shall come," Tindal renders the words. All the Greek translators, Symmachus, Aquila, Theodotion, and the Seventy, understood the words to mean a change from one state of being to another; and such, too, is the fixed judgment of the learned Schultens.

Now I must entreat you to remark, that, whether it be used in a primary or a secondary, a literal or a figurative sense, by the writers just now mentioned, it means a physical state of things, and supplies us with little or no light in adjusting the sig nification, when it is employed, as in the Scriptures it once certainly is, in a moral sense. Twice only do we meet with it in the New Testament, and I shall examine both the texts. In Matthew xix. 18, we read, "Jesus said unto them, Verily I say unto which have followed me, in the regene you, that ye ration, when the Son of Man shall sit on the throne of his glory, ye also shall sit upon twelve thrones, judging the twelve tribes of Israel." Here the sense must depend on the punctuation. Our translators join the word to, ye which have followed me, and then regeneration must signify, as Hammond and Fischer suppose, the amendment of the souls both of Jews and Gentiles to be effected by the aid of the Gospel; and doubtless in furnishing that aid