5. Reason and conscience are unable to renew and change our hard hearts, or to give us a true and real light of the excellency of spiritual and divine things. To subdue the obduracy of the heart, to slay the enmity there is in us against the law, character, and perfections of God, is beyond all that reason and conscience can effect. The powers of reason can tell us of our dark, blinded corrupt state. Men of science and liberal enquiry, in all ages, and among all people, have seen, confessed, and bewailed the imperfections and frailties, the infirmities and exceeding depravation of human nature; like a magnificent pile of buildings in ruin--or a fertile and luxuriant soil overrun with noxious plants. It was impossible for candid and inquisitive men among heathen tribes not to have discovered the perverseness and vices of human nature, in general, they are so plain; though they called some things Virtues which were not--and some things Vices which were not. But reason never could suggest, or give a hint of any plan of restoration to a right temper or a holy and innocent condition. There is nothing--no principle in man--no light--or quality that can sanctify, purify, and regenerate the soul. But an inward renovation is absolutely necessary to moral happiness, to become like God, to be either conformed to his perfections, or fitted to enjoy his presence in heaven. The wisest and best heathen confessed it was not in man to heal the moral disorders of his nature, or to rectify the temper, so great was its obliquity; and affirmed that a superior power was needed to effect this, and to make us meet to enjoy forever the favour and friendship of the Creator of the Universe. They felt that a revelation was _necessary_ to lead and direct men how to live, so as to be hereafter blessed, and never once thought of disputing the possibility of such a thing. And nothing, in that Revelation which we enjoy, is plainer than the doctrine of efficacious grace, or more insisted upon than the need of a divine power to sanctify, purify, and change our disordered and depraved nature. Divine influence is essentially requisite, to renew us and to implant within the soul the principle of holiness. _Because the carnal mind is enmity against God: for it is not subject to the law of God, neither indeed can be.--But the natural man receiveth not the things of the spirit of God: for they are foolishness unto him; neither can he know them for they are spiritually discerned.--No man can come unto me, except the father, which hath sent me, draw him; and I will raise him up at the last day.--Not that we are of ourselves sufficient to think any thing as of ourselves, but our sufficiency is of God.--Paul may plant and Apollos water, but it is God that giveth the increase.--Yea they have chosen their own ways, and their soul delighteth in their abominations._