§ 4. (3.) One great qualification of these persons is, that they are _born again_.[190] To be the people of God without regeneration, is as impossible as to be the children of men without generation. Seeing we are born God's enemies, we must be new born his sons, or else remain enemies still. The greatest reformation of life that can be attained to without this new life wrought in the soul, may procure our farther delusion, but never our salvation. [Footnote 190] John iii, 3. § 5. (4.) This new life in the people of God discovers itself by conviction, or a deep sense of Divine things. As for instance.—They are convinced of the evil of sin. The sinner is made to know and feel, that the sin, which was his delight, is a more loathsome thing than a toad or a serpent, and a greater evil than plague or famine; being a breach of the righteous law of the most high God, dishonorable to him, and destructive to the sinner. Now the sinner no more hears the reproofs of sin as words of course; but the mention of his sin speaks to his very heart, and yet he is contented you should shew him the worst. He was wont to marvel, what made men keep such a stir against sin; what harm it was for a man to take a little forbidden pleasure; he saw no such heinousness in it, that Christ must needs die for it, and a Christless world be eternally tormented in hell. Now the case is altered, God hath opened his eyes to see the inexpressible vileness in sin. § 6. They are convinced of their own misery by reason of sin. They who before read the threats of God's law, as men do the story of foreign wars, now find it their own story, and perceive they read their own doom; as if they found their names written in the curse, or heard the law say, as Nathan, _Thou art the man_.[191] The wrath of God seemed to him before, but as a storm to a man in a dry house, or as the pains of the sick to the healthful standerby; but now he finds the disease is his own, and feels himself a condemned man, that he is dead and damned in point of law, and that nothing was wanting but mere execution to make him absolutely and irrecoverably miserable. This is a work of the Spirit, wrought in some measure in all the regenerate. How should he come to Christ for pardon, that did not first find himself guilty, and condemned? or for life, that never found himself spiritually dead? _The whole need not a physician, but they that are sick._[192] The discovery of the remedy, as soon as the misery, must needs prevent a great part of the trouble. And perhaps the joyful apprehensions of mercy may make the sense of misery sooner forgotten. [Footnote 191] 2 Samuel xii, 7. [Footnote 192] Luke v, 31.