α) The Lutheran theory of imputation can be most effectively refuted by an analysis of the Scriptural term “regeneration” (_regeneratio_, ἀναγέννησις, παλιγγενεσία). “Unless a man be born again of water and the Holy Ghost,” says our Divine Lord, “he cannot enter into the kingdom of God.”(918) This spiritual rebirth wipes out sin and inwardly sanctifies the soul. The regenerate sinner receives a new and godlike nature. That this nature can be conceived in no other way than as a state of sanctity and justice appears clearly from Tit. III, 5 sqq.: “Not by the works of justice which we have done, but according to His mercy, He saved us, by the laver of regeneration and renovation of the Holy Ghost, whom he hath poured forth upon us abundantly, through Jesus Christ our Saviour: that, being justified by His grace, we may be heirs, according to the hope of life everlasting.”(919) Both text and context show that the Apostle is here speaking of the justification of adult sinners in Baptism, which he describes as a “laver of regeneration and renovation” resulting in an “outpouring of the Holy Ghost.” These phrases plainly denote a positive quality of the soul as well as a permanent interior grace. Regeneration consists in the remission of sin through Baptism, and also, more particularly, in man being made like God, _i.e._ becoming a child of God,(920) while “renovation” means “putting off the old man”(921) and “putting on the new.”(922) The “outpouring of the Holy Ghost” effected by Baptism is not, of course, an outpouring of the Hypostasis of the Third Person of the Trinity, but of created grace, which re-forms the sinner and makes him just.(923) This justifying grace must not be conceived as an actual grace, much less as a series of actual graces, for it is not given us merely as an aid in the performance of some particular act, but as a new nature. Regeneration and renovation denote a state of being, as we can plainly see in the case of baptized infants. It is for this reason that the Apostle speaks of it as a lasting state;—that which theologians call the _status gratiae sanctificantis_.(924)