The Law of Spiritual Growth [pp. 608-640]

Law of Spiritutal Growth.
disposed to inquire, Where has this author been living? What
was his business before he undertook to write a book?
The other statement to which we alluded, has reference to
the doctrine of regeneration, or the new birth. And here also
the author shall speak for himself. These are his words:
"It is only one hundred years since the great truth of the
new birth, as a distinct experience, the privilege of all, began
to receive its full power of application to the heart and life of
the church." P. 216. "To the great central doctrine of justification by faith, revived before in the Reformation, the fact of
the new birth, as an experience for all, was now (one hundred
years ago) added to the faith of the church in the great awakening." P. 222.
How any one with a whole heaven of light streaming upon
him in brightness above that of the noon-day sun, with every
Protestant confession, every doctrinal symbol of the evangelical
church from the Reformation down to this hour, proclaiming its
clear and emphatic denial, could ever have put on record, in
sober earnest, a statement like this, it surpasses our ability to
conceive. If the great truth of the new birth was "added to
the faith of the church" only a hundred years ago, what did
Calvin mean, when, in the year 1559, he recorded this sentence? "As we have stated that complete salvation is found
in the person of Christ, so, to make us partakers of it, he'baptizes us with the Holy Spirit and with fire,' enlightening us
into the faith of his gospel, regenerating us so that we become
new creatures, and, purging us from profane impurities, consecrates us as holy temples to God." What did Ursinus mean,
when, in the year 1570, he expressed this, as his undoubted
conviction? "Man's conversion in this life is so necessary, that
without it no one can obtain everlasting life in the world to
come, according to what the Scriptures teach:'Except a man
be born of water and of the Spirit, he cannot enter into the
kingdom of God.'" What did Arminius mean, when, in the
year 1610, he laid down this proposition in regard to "the
restoration of mankind?" "This restoration is the restitution,
and the new or the second creation of sinful man, obnoxious
through sin to death temporal and eternal, and to the dominion
of sin." Again we inquire, Where has our author been living?
1860.]
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