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Million Book Collection - The Fishers of Men Ministries

Million Book Collection - The Fishers of Men Ministries

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336 THE THIRD AGE OF THE MARTYR CHURCHand habits which, their new Christian consciencetaught them to regard as fearful sins. Nay, thenotion <strong>of</strong> sin itself-as a transgression <strong>of</strong> the eternallaw and an <strong>of</strong>fence against the personal Majesty<strong>of</strong> God-was a Christian acquisition to thecorrupted heathen. Thus the passage into theone Body and the divine Kingdom was contemporaneousin their case with a total change <strong>of</strong> themoral life. It is Cyprian, again, who has givenus a vivid account <strong>of</strong> this change, which took placeat a time <strong>of</strong> mature manhood in his own life, andwhich will serve as a graphic sketch <strong>of</strong> what hadhappened to the great mass <strong>of</strong> adult converts besideshimself.Let us suppose a man forty-five years <strong>of</strong> agespeaking: "For me, while I yet lay in darknessand bewildering night, and was tossed to and froon the billows <strong>of</strong> this troublesome world, ignorant<strong>of</strong> my true life, an outcast from light and truth,I used to think that second birth, which divinemercy promised for my salvation, a hard sayingaccording o to the life I then led: as if a man couldbe so quickened to a new life in the laver <strong>of</strong> healingwater as to put <strong>of</strong>f his natural self, and keephis former tabernacle, yet be changed in heart andsoul. How is it possible, said I, for so great aconversion to be accomplished, so that both theobstinate defilement <strong>of</strong> our natural substance, andold and ingrained habits, should suddenly andrapidly be put <strong>of</strong>f; evils whose roots are deepty

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