Sanctification [pp. 537-557]

THE
1)k~INcLToN R~LYIEW.
OCTOBER, 1867.
No. IV.
ART. I.-Sanctzflcation.
SANcTIFIcATIoN is the maintenance and progression of a new
life, imparted to the soul, by a direct agency of the Spirit of
God, in regeneration or the new birth. Of the latter, Coleridge admirably says that "not the qualities of the soul merely,
but the root of the qualities is transcreated. How else could
it be a birth, a creation?``* By nature, or the first birth, we
are not only destitute of every element of this Divine principle,
every spiritual desire or aptitude, we also have within us a
princ;pie utterly, and to finite power invincibly antagonistic to
it; a dead]y, death-working energy, that reigns and rules with
a sovereign sway throughout and over our entire nature. It is
described by the apostle as a merciless tyrant that rouses himself and asserts his supremacy at the least symptom of resistance to his malignant sway. This is sin, original sin, knowing
no infancy, adult in the new-born babe; as Augustine says,
~antz71us puer, tantus peccator;t the spring-head an~ everflowing fountain of all wrong acts and words and thoughts
and feelings; it is like the poison in the viper, which makes it
* Works, vol. V. p. 870, Shedd's edition.
t See South's Sernions, vol. ii. p. 430, Bohn's edition.
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