Regeneration

“The Lord knows that you cannot change your own heart, and cannot cleanse your own nature; but He knows that He can do both.”

“You will win as many souls as God gives you, but no one will be converted by your own power.”

“God will not use dead tools for working living miracles.”

“Morning dawns when the grace overcomes nature.”

“Faith is the work of God's grace in us. No man can say that Jesus is the Christ but by the Holy Ghost.”

“You never require a teacher to lead you into the wrong path, but you do require a kindly word to conduct you aright.”

“No soul shall ever come to Heaven, but the soul which has Heaven come to it first.”

“Before your conversion, before God wrought upon your souls, you were contented with the world without grace, though you had no interest in God nor Christ; why cannot you now be contented with grace and spiritual things without the world?”

“Where God gives opportunity for preaching it is more than likely that he has some people to convert. Usually the Word of God takes root among some, though often in but a few.”

“Praying is the same to the new creature as crying is to the natural.”

“It is as impossible to understand the Scriptures without the Spirit's help as it is to read a sundial without the sun.”

“When the Holy Spirit sanctifies believers, He puts into their minds, wills and hearts a gracious, supernatural principle which fills them with a holy desire to live to God.”

“Before the work of grace, the heart is stony; it can do no more than a stone can do to please God.”

“Not a foot has any soul ever advanced to God, till God had advanced to him, and drawn him.”

“The second conversion is active , whereby man being converted by God, does further turn and convert himself to God in all his thoughts, words, and deeds.”

“Nature, simply considered, cannot raise itself above itself to actions which are spiritual and of a higher order and nature.”

“So when the minister came among the people, he found hearts of stone—but he left hearts of flesh.”

“When any child of man arises from the death of sin, and blooms in grace, God has arisen with divine almightiness.”

“The spiritual presence of Christ is necessary for the preparation and opening of the people's heart to receive and embrace the gospel to salvation; not a heart will open to receive Christ till the spirit of Christ unlock them.”

“Born of God, believers advance in spiritual stature, from the babe in Christ to the young man, from the young man to the father, and from the father to the hoary head found in the way of righteousness.”

“The heart, as it is by nature hard, stupid, and impenetrable, so it remains, and so will remain, until God, as was said, bruiseth it with his hammer, and melts it with his fire.”

“Can a man that is dead, or deadly-wounded, live? that is, perform the actions of life with delight constantly, for that is to live.”

“A regenerate person abhors sin not only for the curse but for the contagion.”

“His intercession is the spring that puts all the wheels in motion, that are set a-going, in the time of loves, for bringing one out of the state of nature, into a state of grace.”

“It is nature that causes the one kind of nobility, but it is the grace of God, a sparkle of the divine nature, a ray of the very glory of God himself, shining into the soul, that is the cause of the other.”

“No one, however wise, wealthy, noble, or beautiful, will ever get to heaven without conversion .”

“They feel something which tells them that old things are passed away, and all things become new; that guilt is gone, that peace is restored; that Heaven’s door is open, and hell’s door is shut.”

“He loved thee when thou hadst razed out in a great measure his image and picture which he had set in thy soul, will he hate thee now since he has restored that image, and drawn it with fresh colours?”

“It is written, yes, it is written, "You MUST be BORN AGAIN!" The New Birth is necessary , also, to the bringing forth of real holiness.”

“I will take away the stony heart, or the stoniness, or the hardness of your heart, and I will give you a heart of flesh; that is, I will make your heart sensible, soft, wieldable, governable, and penitent.”

“It is some strength to polish a rough stone taken out of the quarry, and hew it into the statue of a great prince; but more to make this statue a living man.”

“The preaching of the word takes away the veil from the things, and the Spirit takes away the veil from our souls.”

“Can we bless God enough if we have been rescued from such dreadful doom, and if the heart of enmity has been taken from us, and the heart of love and praise bestowed?”

“For to have the Holy Ghost to fall upon a man so as to dwell in him for ever, to take possession of his heart, and to bring him to glory, is more than to have extraordinary gifts, which many had who never were saved.”

“He surveys the past of his existence, and it seems as if he had been dwelling in a tomb, wrapped within the winding-sheet of death.”

“Your feigned conversion and godliness is but a work of nature, consisting in abstinence from blatant evil and the performance of civil good; however, this is not conversion and godliness.”

“Paul, after he had seen the heavenly vision, was so turned that all men wondered at the change (Acts 9.21).”

“It is not in our nature to humble ourselves to walk with God; we have an opposition to it and all parts of it: no angels or men can persuade us to it.”

“We cannot be washed, and cleansed, and purged from an imputed sin; this is done by the laver of regeneration.”

“The sinner may continue to be utterly carnal, with his personal nature unchanged.”

“When the work of the Spirit by means of the law and the gospel leads to true conversion, in this conversion the longing for this lost ideal of the covenant appears as an essential part.”

“Now, God can create a new spiritual eye to discern of spiritual things, which a natural eye cannot.”

“As receiving Christ passively, the sinner that was spiritually dead, is quickened; so being quickened, he receives Christ actively.”

“The depressions, therefore, of the new nature arise not from any essential defect in that nature--for it is incorruptible--but from the sin that dwells in us.”

“It is the Spirit of God dwelling in us that wrought us and fits us for this great and blessed hope; therefore whenever you think of it, your hearts should be raised in thanksgiving.”

“Establish it as a settled principle in your mind, that if the Holy Spirit really is in a person, it will be seen in the effects He produces on his heart and life.”

“Hence, though Christ's death obliterates condemnatory stains, the Spirit must come in with further aid, to wash the heart, and fit it for heavenly home.”

“The converting grace of God has achieved the wondrous revolution.”

“Christ must fight his way into the soul, though he have a right to enter, as into his dearly purchased possession.”

“Reader, learn then from Pentecost, that souls are the grain—the Spirit the Ingatherer.”

“All we can say is that 'we have known and believed the love which God hath to us.' This is the only account which we can give of ourselves or of our wondrous change.”

“We must therefore labor to be new creatures, changed in mind and heart, for an unholy person cannot truly desire the glory of God.”

“For the child of God is but once begotten to the Lord, and Paul here calls the Galatians “little children” because even in the time of their fall, the seed of God still remained in their hearts.”

“So the first thing in a penitent is illumination: `Now ye are light in the Lord' (Eph. 5.8).”

“He did not respond to the call of Christ until after he had been made alive.”

“Holy ancestry does not insure it, pious parentage does not convey it, human eloquence does not inspire it, moral persuasion does not produce it.”

“The same Spirit who enlightens the mind inspires gracious inclinations into the will and affections and infuses strength into the whole man.”

“For by raising any soul from a death in sin, God doth evidence the particular value of Christ's blood for that soul, as he did, in raising Christ, evidence the general fulness of that satisfaction.”

“Can you ever tell of a work of God separating you from the world, that when you wentest according to the world, God gave you a mighty call that made a separation between you and the world?”

“For till the Lord gives this special illumination whereby a man sees his own misery in himself and his great need of Christ’s righteousness, Christ is a hidden treasure unto him.”

“In short, what is there in the whole Christian life which I cannot do of myself, if I can begin this career without help from God?”

“Do not we see daily under the ordinance of God by weak men, the blind see, the spiritually deaf hear, the spiritually dumb be able to speak, to pray to God; the dead, those that are dead in sin, they receive life.”

“Even the world of NATURE seems to him as a new-born creation now that he has passed from death unto life.”

“Wherefore it is said expressly, 'Except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God.' By this one word, down goes all carnal privilege of being born of flesh and blood, and of the will of man.”

“God’s promises and the saints’ prayers in the holy Scripture seem to intend a grace that would give us a real internal ability to do what is spiritually good.”

“Is not conversion called a "new birth" and "a new creation"?”

“A new heart also will I give you, and a new spirit will I put within you, and I will take away the stony heart out of your flesh, and I will give you an heart of flesh.”

“There is nothing will stand out but the new creature, that we find a change wrought by the Spirit of God.”

“This conversion is not only of grace, nor only of will, but partly of grace and partly of will; yet so as grace is the principal agent, and will but the instrument of grace.”

“It is not only a Spirit of illumination, but of sanctification.”

“This Spirit of whom we treat is in himself a distinct, living, powerful, intelligent, divine person.”

“The Holy Spirit is more intimate, as it were, unto the principles of our souls than they are to themselves.”