Of Regeneration and the New Creature

We confess: In as much as our first parents, Adam and Eve, throught their transgression, separated themselves from God, and fell into temporal and eternal death, with all their pasterity, and, consequently, lost the image of God, which is righteousness and true holiness; became depraved in their nature, and inclined to sin and wickedness from their youth; so that of all men none can attain unto faith, and a godly conversation through the power of their first birth, which has sprung and proceeded from sinful seed; because that which is born of flesh is flesh, and hence, carnally minded, and the natural man does not receive the things of the Spirit of God; therefore, all men, having come of the earth, shall return to dust and earth, and, in part, are also like to the corrupted earth, which of itself does not bring forth good grain, but must thereto be prepared anew, and grown with good seed, thus also all men, when they have passed their youth, and have come to understand and discern good and evil, we perceive, that their carnal hearts and earthly life, being conceived in sin, are inclined to sin, which conceives by its own lust, which awakens sin in them, and allures and moves them to actual sin; and thus they fall from grace,-to which they had been redeemed through the atonement of Christ-which plunges them into the death of sin.

Hence, God, the Lord requires and demands through his word, of all men of understanding, a true reformation and a renewing from these their own actual sins; that is through the hearing of the word of God they receive the faith, become regenerated, from above, of God, be created anew in the inner mind of the heart, according to the image of God, and circumcised, being translated from the carnal into the spiritual, from unbelief unto faith, from that which is earthly-minded and like Adam into that which is heavenly-minded and like Jesus Christ; that they crucify and mortify their earthly members, and feel, prove, and taste that which is heavenly, and not that which is earthly.

To this, God promises life, peace, and all heavenly riches; and it is the sanctification in the spirit of the mind, and the appropriation of all the benefits of Christ (which have been lost through our own actual sin), and has the promise of eternal salvation.

Taken from A Confession of faith, according to the Holy Word of God, written about the year 1600, as recorded in The Martyr's Mirror written during the years, 1625-1664, by Th. J. van Braght.

The first English edition of Martyr's Mirror, published in 1837 at Lampeter Square, Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, was translated from the German language. The second edition was published in 1853 at London, England. The third edition, published in 1886, in Elkhart, Indianna, was translated from the original Dutch language edition of 1660. A re-print of the third English edition was published at Scottdale, Pennsylvania. Fifth and later English printings, 1950, 1951, 1964, 1968, 1972, 1975. The eleventh English printing of 1977 and subsequent printings include improvised reproductions of the engravings (from The Drama of the Martyrs by permission of the Mennonite Historical Associates, Lancaster, Pennsylvania ). Twelfth and later printings, 1979, 1982, 1985, 1987, 1992, 1994, 1996. Printed in the United States of America. 43,000 copies in print since 1938.