That which is born of the flesh is flesh, replied Jesus. In vain would you be born a second time of flesh and blood, which cannot enter into the Kingdom of Heaven. You could not thereby be in a state to enter into that Kingdom, for you can only carry out of your Mother's womb a nature corrupt, sensual, and earthly. It is of a spiritual birth I speak; for only that which is born of the spirit is spirit. And as the Kingdom of God is purely spiritual I repeat to thee again, Verily, Verily, if a man be not born of water and of the spirit he cannot enter into it. If the pure waters of grace, of which those of Baptism are emblematic, do not render white as snow those sins which are red as scarlet; and if the powerful operation of the spirit of God does not renew all the faculties of his soul, causing him to be born again of incorruptible seed, by which he recovers the image of his Creator, and becomes thus a partaker of the divine nature, he shall have no part in the inheritance of the saints in light: the entrance of that Kingdom shall be shut against him for ever.
John Fletcher — John Fletcher, The New Birth. A Discourse Written in French by the Rev. John Fletcher, Late Vicar of Madeley, and Translated by the Author (Bristol: printed and sold by Lancaster and Edwards / London: at the Methodist chapels, 1794), p. 8
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