Page:The works of the Rev. John Wesley, M.A., late fellow of Lincoln-College, Oxford (IA worksofrevjohnwe3wesl).pdf/305

 *standing. He many times feels such a joy in God, as is unspeakable and full of glory. He feels the love of God ''shed abroad in his heart by the Holy Ghost which is given unto him''. And all his spiritual senses are then exercised to discern spiritual good and evil. By the use of these he is daily increasing in the knowledge of God, of Jesus Christ whom he hath sent, and of all the things pertaining to his inward kingdom. And now he may be properly said to live: God having quickened him by his Spirit, he is alive to God through Jesus Christ. He lives a life which the world knoweth not of, a life which is hid with Christ in God. God is continually breathing, as it were, upon the soul, and his soul is breathing unto God. Grace is descending into his heart, and prayer and praise ascending to heaven. And by this intercourse between God and man, this fellowship with the Father and the Son, as by a kind of spiritual respiration, the life of God in the soul is sustained: and the child of God grows up, 'till he comes to ''the full measure of the stature of'' Christ.

5. From hence it manifestly appears, what is the nature of the new birth. It is that great change which God works in the soul, when he brings it into life: when he raises it from the death of sin, to the life of righteousness. It is the change wrought in the whole soul by the almighty Spirit of God, when it is created anew in Christ Jesus, when it is renewed after the image