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This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1852 Excerpt:...It is he that makes us his people, and the sheep of his pasture j not wa ourselves. We are, in short, what the Scripture affirms us to be, naturally dead in trespasses and sins: and no dead man can make himself to differ from another. Conversion is a new birth; a resurrection; a new creation. What infant ever begat himself? What inanimate carcase ever quickened and raised itself? What creature ever created itself? Boast not, then, of your free-will; for it is, like what the prophet said of Nineveh, empty, and void, and waste. They that feel not this resemble delirious persons in a high fever; who imagine that nothing ails them, while in fact they are at the very gates of death. Nay, mankind, in their native state, are more than at the gates of death. The traveller, in the parable, who went down from Jerusalem to Jericho, and fell among robbers, is said to have been left half dead, but the degenerate sons of Adam are, spiritually speaking, stark-dead to God. An unrenewed man hath not one spiritual sense left: no hearing of the promises; no sight of his own misery, or of God's holiness, or of the perfect purity of the law, or of Christ, as an absolute Saviour, or of the blessed Spirit as the revealer of Christ in 'the heart; no taste of the Father's everlasting love, or of communion with him through the ministration of the Holy Ghost: no feeling of grace, in a way of conviction, comfort, and sanctincation, no hungerings and thirstings after spiritual enjoyment and sweet assurances; Bo heavenly tendencies, no out-goings of soul after the blood, righteousness, and intercession of Jesus Christ. If we experience these, they are indications of spiritual life: and we may take those reviving words to ourselves, "Flesh and blood hath not revealed this unto thee,...