This great doctor was so great a dunce – Thomas Brooks

(“Touchstone of Sincerity”)

Nicodemus was a man of great note, name, and fame among the pharisees, and he fasted, and prayed, and gave alms, and paid tithes, etc., and yet was a total stranger to the new birth. Regeneration was a paradox to him. “How can a man be born when he is old? Can he enter the second time into his mother’s womb and be born?” This great doctor was so great a dunce, that he understood no more of the doctrine of regeneration, than a mere child does the highest precepts of astronomy!

As water can rise no higher than the spring from whence it came, so the natural man can rise no higher than nature.