most emphatic mode, by encouraging the fullest communication of Scripture to the people. Yet is it perfectly possible that the best use of such a freedom may often be thus exemplified: when a man, having prayed for light from God, and having striven to live in the spirit of his prayer, and yet finding his own opinion upon a point of doctrine opposite to that of the universal undivided Church, recognises the answer to his prayer and the guide to his mind in the declarations of the creeds rather than in his own single and perhaps recent impressions upon the subject, not thus surrendering his own liberty of judgment, but using it in order to weigh and compare the probabilities of his or the Church's correctness respectively, and acting faithfully on the result. 82. In truth, we have been in an excess upon the subject of private judgment. Civil society could not be held together were every man to withhold his allegiance from the State until he had been able to make up his mind upon the grounds of the theory of its constitution. Not less injurious is the idea, that human beings growing up from infancy in a Christian land are not to accept the truths of religion before trial; however it be just that they should be encouraged to try and prove them in proportion as they arrive at the capacity to do so. And what has been the result of our jealousy? Our impoverishment; our remaining as it were conversant only with the alphabet and first elements of religion. Perpetually busied about what is rudimental, from our extreme jealousy of all things except such as (we think) we understand, we do not obey the command of St. Paul, to go on unto perfection, and we fail to attain to much of that finished beauty of holiness which is perceived in its accurate and full development. Surely it shall be better, when we accept with more of trust and thankfulness those great truths which are of our patrimony as members of the Church, and when the superfluous portion of that energy, which is now absorbed by the active jealousy of private judgment, shall be more worthily bestowed in accumulating new treasures of stable Divine knowledge, to the end that we may be more thoroughly furnished unto all good works. 83. It may be hoped, then, that when we have more carefully considered the doctrine of the Church, as it is proposed to us by the authority of Holy Scripture, as it is hereafter to be assumed in these pages, and as likewise it is prescribed to us by our own apostolic mother, we shall find that it tends practically to the accomplishment of the great and sacred purposes of the Gospel, bringing us nearer to God, realising and making plain that way of access which is revealed to us, and not suffering us to hang upon the Redeemer through the frailty of any merely intellectual medium, through any mere body of propositions, however holy and excellent, but attaching us to Him, and habituating us to view ourselves as attached to Him by the most intimate and the most enduring of all bonds, a vital incorporation. CHAPTER IV. THE SACRAMENTS. Significationibus pascimur, ut ad res ipsas perdurantes pervenire possimus.-S. Aug. in Ev. Joan. Tract. xvii. 1. Mode of treating. 2-7. The Scriptural and ancient Doctrine. 8-14. Modern perversion, and its several bearings upon different cases. 15-33. Of certain specific uses of the Sacraments. 34. Summary view. 35-38. Cases of the Romanists, and of certain divisions of Protestants compared. 39-42. Practical warning to follow the true middle way. 1. ADHERING to the practice which seems to me most accordant with the intention of these pages, I shall, in treating of the Sacraments of the Church, endeavour to contemplate them rather practically than scientifically. I shall not argue at any length upon the proofs of that idea or doctrine of Sacraments which is embodied in the services of the Church of England, and which exhibits them as institutions significant indeed and symbolical, but likewise as not merely calculated to stimulate in the way of extrinsic motive our spiritual affections, and so to draw upon us spiritual benefit, or qualify us for its advantageous and cordial reception; not even merely as entailing by a direct process benefit of that nature, but as actually consisting of two parts-the one outward and a sign, the other inward and a power; so that he who has the Sacrament has both, and he who has the outward part alone without the inward, has not the Sacrament any more than he who has the Old Testament without the New has the Bible. A member of the Church has a right, at least prima facie, to assume that she teaches, upon any given point, in accordance with Scripture; and my main object will be, not critically to examine and vindicate her interpretation of the sacred text, but to show in the tendencies of her teaching, as it respects the matter now before us, adaptation and conduciveness to the Divine purpose, declared in the Gospel, to restore and sanctify our ruined nature. 2. But lest this should be interpreted into a depreciation of the supreme and ultimately exclusive authority of Scripture, I refer briefly to some of those passages which have ever been held to teach the efficacy of Baptism, proper and intrinsic, yet capable undoubtedly of being nullified by inadequate or repugnant conditions in the state of the receiver. We may, indeed, find authorities in the Sacred Volume for this doctrine, as many and as clear as can be cited in support of the greater portion of the distinctively Christian doctrines. "Except a man be born of water and of the spirit (ἐξ ὕδατος καὶ πνεύματος, denoting unity and simultaneity of act), he cannot enter the kingdom of Heaven."* "Go ye, therefore, and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost."† "He that believeth, and is baptized, shall be saved."‡ and be baptized, and wash away thy sins"-ad "Arise * John, iii. 5. + Matt. xxviii. 19. Mark, xvi. 16. Acts, xxii. 16. dressed to St. Paul, when already penitent and already called. "Therefore we are buried with him by baptism into death." "Likewise reckon ye also yourselves to be dead indeed unto sin."* "But ye are washed, but ye are sanctified, but ye are justified, in the name of the Lord Jesus, and by the Spirit of our God."+ "That he might sanctify and cleanse it with the washing of water by the word."‡ "Buried with him in baptism, wherein also ye are risen with him through the faith of the operation of God."|| "According to his mercy he saved us by the washing" (more correctly, bath) " of regeneration and renewing of the Holy Ghost." § be 3. These are but a few of the texts which may urged as importing by the interpretation, whether of common sense without prejudice, or of unanimous Christian antiquity, that a spiritual power and operation belong to Baptism. Is not that, however, a yet more conclusive evidence, at all events a most appropriate consummating testimony when added to the more immediate declaration of doctrine, which we derive from the general tenor of the Apostolic teaching? We find them offer to the Pagan or the Jew, first, repentance and faith, and then baptism. But we know the doctrine of a new life was essential. Where, then, do we hear of it in their intercourse with the unconverted, unless it be covered under the outward form of Baptism, its initiatory process? But how stands the case *Rom. vi. 4, 11. Eph. v. 26. |