16. From all this, there may evidently be inferred the absolute necessity of the new birth, and of the daily renovation of our mind into the image of God. This necessity will yet more fully appear, when we consider the image of the devil according as the law describes it. For as the devil not only does not _love_ God, but rather _hates_ him with his whole heart; so he has infected man’s soul with the same contagion, and transfused into it malice against God; so that now man by nature neither loves, honors, believes, calls upon, nor trusts in God; but as he is filled with enmity against him, so he flees from him, and shuns him. As the devil is hurried on with a blind fury, and lives without God and his will; so in like manner, the soul of man being corrupted by him, leads a _godless_ life, unmindful of God and of his will. This inward darkness of the mind, is attended with a frightful destruction of the divine light and image; and brings forth that abominable sin, in which man, left to himself, saith: “There is no God.” Ps. 14:1. And by reason of this blindness of heart, all mankind are become an abomination before God, in all their ways. 17. But notwithstanding so dreadful a night of apostasy, there still remains a spark of natural light in man’s understanding, by which he might come to know that there is a God (Rom. 1:20); as also, that this God must be just, according as all the heathen philosophers teach: but as for the spiritual life, which is after God and his righteousness, it was wholly extinguished in man. For conscience, which is the law of God written in every man’s heart when it was first formed by him, teaches every one what is good and right. Thus if you look, for instance, upon a person that is unchaste, there is not one that so much wallows in the filth of the flesh, but he now and then thinks with himself, “Surely there is a God, and this God is most pure and undefiled; and so not like to me by any means.” He cannot but reflect further: “This holy and pure God, must abhor every sort of pollution and uncleanness; and, therefore, if I would be acceptable to him, I ought to live chastely, and to abstain from all impurity.” But this spark of light is soon put out by the filthy lusts of the flesh which crowd in upon the mind; these overwhelm all good impressions, just as a spark of fire is swallowed up by a flood of water. The lust of the flesh is kept within the heart, and the conviction, which began to reprove it, is soon stifled.