This influence is sight to the blind, hearing to the deaf, riches to the poor, health to the sick, and life to the dead. It is not incompatible with moral agency, for the holy disposition is as free in its operation, as the former sinful inclinations had been in theirs. The necessity of it to salvation, is no excuse for the impenitent; grace is not necessary to the vindication of Divine justice: the preponderancy of inclinations to evil is the essence of, not an apology for sin. It is very strange if, because a man is so intent upon sinning that nothing can change him but the almighty power of the Divine Spirit, he is on this very account innocent.—It does not render the preaching of the word unnecessary, for besides that it is commanded, and important to call men to repentance and faith, when the grace has been given, God also usually accompanies his ordinances with his Spirit’s influences, and seems in most cases, to direct in his providence the blessings of his instructions to those whom he makes the subjects of his grace. Footnote 16: “I have seen it objected, that to suppose a change effected in the heart of man, otherwise than by the power of moral means, is palpably absurd; as implying an evident impossibility in the nature of things. It has been said, by a divine of advanced age, and good sense; ‘The moral change of the mind in regeneration, is of an essentially different kind from the mechanical change of the body, when that is raised from the dead; and must be effected by the exertion of a different kind of power. Each effect requires a power suited to its nature: and the power proper for one can never produce the other. To argue from one to the other of these effects, as the apostle has been misunderstood to do, in Eph. i. 20, is therefore idle and impertinent.—The Spirit of God is possessed of these two kinds of power, and exerts the one or the other, accordingly as he wills to produce a change of the moral or physical kind, in moral beings or inanimate matter.’