tian Education, n.d.), 26 – 27.
Appendix 2
and towards Him, resting on Him as I am able. What else can be meant by the word RECEIVING? . . .
The second great mark of a gracious state, and true saving interest in Jesus Christ, is the new creature — "If any man be in Christ, he is a new creature" (2 Cor. 5:17). . . . In all who do warrantably pretend to Christ, this new creature must be; . . . This new creature is called the "new man" (Col. 3:10), which points out the extent of it. It is not simply a new tongue or new hand, but a new man. There is a principle of new life and motion put in the man, which is the new heart; which new principle of life sendest for the acts of life, or of "conformity to the image" of Him who created it, so that the party is renewed in some measure of every way (Col. 3:10.)22
In 1672 a work by Joseph Alleine was published posthumously, in which he wrote:
Conversion then, lies in the thorough change both of the heart and life. . . . If ever you would be savingly converted, you must despair of doing it in your own strength. It is a resurrection from the dead (Eph ii 1), a new creation (Gal vi 15; Eph ii 10), a work of absolute omnipotence (Eph i 19). Are not these out of the reach of human power? If you have no more than you had by your fi rst birth, a good nature, a meek and chaste temper etc., you are a stranger to true conversion. Th is is a supernatural work.23
Puritan Thomas Vincent's explanation of the Westminster Shorter Catechism (1674) contains these lessons, which read almost as if they were written specifically to refute the gospel that has become popular in our time:
Q. 7. How is Jesus Christ to be received by faith?
A. Jesus Christ is to be received by faith as he is off ered to us in the gospel.
Q. 8. How is Jesus Christ off ered to us in the gospel?
A. Jesus Christ is off ered to us in the gospel, as priest, prophet, and king; and so we must receive him, if we would be saved by him.
Q. 9. When doth the soul rest upon him for salvation?
A. Th e soul doth rest upon Christ for salvation when, being convinced of its lost condition by reason of sin, and its own inability, together
22. William Guthrie, Th e Chris tian's Great Interest (Edinburgh: Banner of Truth, 1982), 24 – 25, 76. 23. Joseph Alleine, An Alarm to the Unconverted (Marshallton, Del.: National Foundation for Christian Education, n.d.), 26 – 27.