Wesley Corpus

The uncleanness here mentioned is a sinful uncleanness; for it is such as makes man’s days ‘full of trouble.’ And it is natural, being derived from unclean parents. ‘How can he be clean that is born of a woman?” God can ‘bring a clean thing out of an unclean; and did so in the case of the man Christ; but no other can. Every person then that is born according to the course of nature is born unclean; if the root be corrupt, so are the branches. Neither is the matter mended, though the parents be holy. For they are such by “grace, not by “nature: ' And they beget their children as men, not as holy men; wherefore, as the cir cumcised parent begets an uncircumcised child, so the holiest parents beget unholy children, and cannot communicate their grace to them as they do their nature. “(3.) Hear our Lord’s determination of the point: “That which is born of the flesh is flesh.” (John iii. 6.) Behold the corruption of all mankind; all are ‘flesh. It does not mean, all are frail; (though that is a sad truth too; yea, and our natural frailty is an evidence of our natural corruption;) but, all are ‘corrupt” and ‘sinful, and that naturally. Hence our Lord argues, that because they are ‘flesh, therefore they ‘must be born again, or they “cannot enter into the kingdom of God.” (Verses 3, 5.) And as the corruption of our nature evidences the absolute necessity of regeneration, so the necessity of regeneration proves the corruption of our nature. For why should a man need a second birth, if his nature were not ruined in the first birth ? Even infants must be born again; for this rule admits of no exception; and there fore they were circumcised under the Old Testament, as having ‘the body of the sins of the flesh, (which is conveyed to them by natural generation,) the whole old man, “to put off.” (Col. ii. 11.) And now, by the appointment of Christ, they are to be baptized; which shows they are unclean, and that there is no salvation for them, but “by the washing of regeneration, and renewing of the Holy Ghost.’ “(4.) ‘We are by nature children of wrath.