Academicus. Standing upon the ground, that you, Theophilus, stand upon, all that you have said of reason, science, historical knowledge, or critical skill in words, is unanswerable. For what can all these things avail, if redemption is purely a birth of the divine nature, light, and Spirit of God, offered to fallen man; which birth can only be received by the faith, hope, and desire of that inward man, which is divine in us? For nothing else can have any hunger or thirst after the divine nature, but that which is itself born of it.