No precept of the gospel supposes man to have any power to effect it, or calls you to any natural ability, or wisdom of your own to comply with it. Christ and his apostles called no man to overcome the corruption and blindness of fallen nature by a learned cultivation of the mind. The wisdom of the learned world, was the same pitiable foolishness with them, as the grossest ignorance. By them, they only stand thus distinguished, the one brings forth a _Publican_, which is often converted to Christ, the other a _Pharisee_, that for the most part condemns him to be crucified. They (Christ and his apostles) taught nothing but death, and denial to ourselves; and the impossibility of having any one divine temper, but through faith, through a new nature, not _born of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God_. *To speak of the operation of the Holy Spirit, as _only an_ assistance, or an _occasional_ assistance, is as short of the truth, as to say, that Christ shall _only assist_ the resurrection of our bodies. For not a spark of any divine virtue can arise up in us, but what must wholly and solely be wrought by that same power, which alone can call our dead bodies out of the dust and darkness of the grave. If you turn to your own strength to have Christian piety and goodness; or are so deceived, as to think that learning, or local abilities, critical acuteness, skill in languages, church systems, rules and orders, articles and opinions, are to do that for you which the Spirit of Christ did, and only could do for the first Christians; your diligent reading of the history of the gospel, will leave you as poor, and empty, and dead to God, as if you had been only a diligent reader of the history of all the religions in the world. But if all that you trust to, long after, and depend upon, is that Holy Spirit, which alone made the scripture saints able _to call Jesus Lord_; if this be your one faith and one hope, the divine life, which died in _Adam_, will be quickened again in Christ Jesus. And be assured, that nothing but this _new birth_ can make a gospel Christian, because nothing else can possibly love, do, and be that which Christ preached in his divine sermon on the _Mount_. Be assured also, that when the Spirit of Christ is the spirit that ruleth in you, there will be no _hard sayings_ in the gospel; but all that Christ taught in the flesh, will be as meat and drink to you, and you will have no joy, but in walking as he walked, in saying, loving, and doing, that which he said, loved, and did. Ask then, my friend, no more where you shall go, or what you shall do, to be in the truth; for you can have the truth no where but in Jesus, nor in him any farther than as his holy nature is born within you. _Farewell._ * * * * * LETTER V. To a Person of Quality.