Page:A Compendium of the Chief Doctrines of the True Christian Religion.djvu/76

72 they are restored to a state of liberty. But it is otherwise with the good. After a man has examined himself, and acknowledged his sin, and done the work of repentance, he ought to remain steady in goodness to the end of his life: for if he afterwards relapse to his former evil life, and embrace it again, he is then guilty of profanation, inasmuch as he unites evil with good, whereby his last state is worse than his first, according to these words of the Lord: "When the unclean spirit is gone out of a man, he walketh through dry places, seeking rest, and findeth none. Then he saith, I will return into my house from whence I came out; and when he is come, he findeth it empty, swept, and garnished. Then goeth he, and taketh with himself seven other spirits more wicked than himself, and they enter in and dwell there: and the last state of that man is worse than the first," Matt. xii. 43 to 45.

SINCE man is born with a propensity to evils of every kind, and yet was intended for heaven, it is necessary that the bias, which he has received hereditarily from his parents, and confirmed by actual life, be checked or restrained, and that new inclinations and new affections of an opposite tendency be gradually insinuated into him. This change of disposition and character is in the Word called the new birth, or regeneration, the several stages of which answer to those of man's natural conception, birth, and education. The necessity also of this change, before man can experience true heavenly happiness, is evident from our Lord's words to Nicodemus,