_Mr. Roscoe._--"But our mystical phraseology of speech, as you are pleased to term it, is the very language of Scripture; and the inspired writers who have employed it, would doubtless use it now, if they were speaking to us. You, then, ought to transfer your objections from us to them; but in doing so, you would be encountering an authority which you profess to venerate. But, after all, the objection is less against the phraseology of Scripture, than against the truth of which it is the appointed vehicle of communication. Pride, under some peculiar modification, is the epidemic disease of our nature; but none are more under its dominion than men of intelligence, of taste, and of virtue; and it is against this passion that the gospel of Jesus Christ directs the thunder of its power. How mortifying to a man of intellectual fame, whose superior genius feels equal to the comprehension of whole systems of truth, by a single exertion of its power, to be told that '_whosoever shall not receive the kingdom of God as a little child, shall not enter therein!_' How mortifying to a man, whose amiable temper, whose social habits, whose fascinating manners, whose constitutional virtues have combined to raise him far above his fellows, to be told that he must come down from his vantage-ground, to kneel at the same throne of grace with publicans and harlots, and implore forgiveness in language equally humiliating with that which they employ!" _Rev. Mr. Roscoe._--"I have always thought that the cultivation of the virtues predisposed the mind to receive the truths of Christianity; but if your statement be correct, a virtuous man may be no more fit for the kingdom of heaven than a profane one." _Mr. Roscoe._--"Nor can he be, _unless he is born again_. He may, like the Pharisee in the gospel, trust in the merit of his virtues for salvation, instead of trusting in the redemption made by Jesus Christ; but having no just perceptions of the degeneracy of his nature, he repudiates with disdain the doctrine of regeneration, which Jesus Christ asserts to be universally necessary." _Rev. Mr. Roscoe._--"Then you believe that _all_ men are depraved, though not _equally corrupt_; and that all, notwithstanding their various shades of excellence, stand in equal need of the moral change which you think regeneration denotes?"