God said, _Let us make man in our own image and likeness_. Is not this as high a doctrine of _immortality_, does it not give the same instruction, raise the same hope, and call for all the same elevation of the heart to God, as when St. _John_ saith, _Beloved, it does not yet appear what we shall be; but we know that when he shall appear, we shall be LIKE him_? Just the same truth, and fitted to have the same effects, as when _Moses_ said, God made man in his own LIKENESS. St. _Paul_ says, _God was in Christ, reconciling the world unto himself_. A comfortable doctrine indeed, and full of hope of immortality; yet only the same comfort and hope of immortality which had been openly preached by _Moses_. When _Moses_ bringeth in the Deity, as saying, _The seed of the woman shall bruise the head of the serpent_; he preaches _that_ very same gospel, and in the same manner which the apostle did. For his words plainly teach, _that God was in the seed of the woman reconciling the world unto himself_; as when St. _Paul_ says, _that God was in Christ reconciling the world to himself_; the difference is nothing else, but in two different names given to our Redeemer. * Now tho’ _Moses_ was the first _recorder_ of the gospel salvation in a written book, yet was he not the first _preacher_ of it. For it was proclaimed in _Adam_’s day, from heaven, as the birth of Christ in the flesh, in the days of Herod. For when God said, _The seed of the woman shall bruise the head of the serpent_, the same good tidings of salvation was _proclaimed from heaven_ by God himself, as when the angel said to the shepherds, _Unto you is born this day in the city of David, a Saviour, which is Christ the Lord_. * But how can we know this? Only by God’s own teaching. For nothing can be truly known of God by the creature, but that which God makes known of himself.――So far as God operates in the creature, and manifests himself in it, so far it truly knows, and _is taught of God_.――Any other knowledge of God, however learned, high, or deep it may pretend to be, is as vain and spurious as _that goodness_ which proceeds from something else, than God’s good Spirit living in us. * Genius, parts and literature, however set forth with wit and rhetoric, have no affinity with divine knowledge; they can no more give it, than the lust of the eyes and the pride of life can generate humility and purity of heart. These accomplishments live and act in a sphere of their own, and have no more power of taking to themselves any living knowledge of God, than the art of painting to the life, can give the power of _creating_ life. * The blindness, and follies which have over-run both the antient and modern world in matters of religion, are a full proof of the capital doctrine of divine revelation, _namely_, that man (now the defaced image of God) is so miserably changed and fallen from his first created state, that nothing less than a new birth, can bring him again into the region of divine _truth_.