In putting off the body of the sins of the flesh. It consisted in putting off, spurning, renouncing, casting away with disgust, the body of the sins of the flesh, of our fallen nature, of the defiled and corrupt tendencies which we bring with us into the world," the flesh with its affections and lusts," "the old man" with all his "members which are upon the earth;" and it consisted, also, in "putting on the new man,' which, after God, is created in righteousness and true holiness," as the apostle elsewhere speaks; or, as he says in the next verse, the being "quickened with Christ," and raised from the tomb and death of sin by his grace, in virtue and after the example of his own glorious resurrection.

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This may well be called the circumcision of Christ, because it supersedes the external form of the circumcision of the law, and fulfils all its spiritual designs, in a far more perfect manner than even the spiritually minded Jew could adequately conceive.

Still, though the grace, as we have said, was more copious, the substance of the Abrahamic sacrament was the same as the Christian; just as the passover was substantially the same as the supper of the Lord. The characteristics remain.

But we return to the apostle's argument. He maintains that the admission into the covenant of God's mercy under the Gospel was complete by this circumcision of Christ. No additions from any

quarter were admissible.

What the moral law

could not do; nor the Mosaical ceremonies; nor

philosophical inventions, that, the circumcision of Christ effected. The moral law could only open the wound, but not cure it. The Mosaical circumcision, with all its frame-work of a typical economy, now that it was abolished, could only be an external and useless infliction. Philosophy was so far from being able to heal the disease of a fallen nature, that it was not even acquainted with it.

But the circumcision made without hands mortifies the whole body of sin, quickens and renews the soul, and "brings" the converts "nigh" to a reconciled God and Father" by the blood of Christ.”

Here, then, we close for the present. Let us each earnestly adopt the prayer of our church, which precisely confirms the view I have taken; "that God would grant us the true circumcision of the Spirit, that our hearts and all our members, being mortified from all worldly and carnal lusts, we may in all things obey his blessed will through Jesus Christ our Lord !"*

* Collect for the Circumcision.

LECTURE XVIII.

CHRISTIAN BAPTISM-REGENERATION.

COL. ii. 12.

12. Buried with him in baptism, wherein also ye are risen with him through the faith of the operation of God, who hath raised him from the dead.

THE apostle now expressly introduces, as the next important step in his argument, the initiatory sacrament of the New Testament. This he does without explanation. He seems He seems to consider baptism as coming in the place of circumcision as a matter of course. Nothing need be said; it was a thing well known from the first throughout the christian churches.

For as the circumcision made without hands," and the access to the covenant of mercy thrown open thereby to all nations followed naturally from the completeness of Christ's sufferings and mediation; so baptism followed with it, and took at once the position of circumcision; was applicable to the same persons; conveyed the same grace, only in a much larger measure; and imposed the same kind

of obligations, augmented by the superior dignity and value of Christ.

In what the apostle here states, he appears to meet an objection. For the false teachers might ask, "Why do you abolish circumcision under pretence of the spiritual grace of Christ? Was not Abraham spiritually circumcised? and yet the sign was added."

To this St. Paul virtually replies, "We do not consider a sign unnecessary. We have a sacrament under the Gospel answering to circumcision, administered to the same subjects, the faithful and their seed; representing and sealing the like blessings, and obliging to similar duties. To retain circumcision, then, as now necessary to salvation, would be to alter the order and dispensation of Christ, to open the door to a flood of human inventions, and to deny the perfection of our Lord's sacrifice and highpriesthood as the only Mediator of the new

covenant.

"And our initiatory christian sacrament," the apostle may be supposed to add, " is more adapted to the spiritual and universal economy of the Gospel than the Jewish; as being performed without shedding the blood of the convert or of his seed; as of easier application in all parts of the world; and as literally applicable to both divisions of the human family; so that in "Christ Jesus" there is now, in this as well as other senses, "neither male nor female."

Here the apostle begins his application of the doctrine of circumcision to the New Testament ordinance—and here we must give the closest attention; for a controversy now opens. The question is, Whether the full spiritual blessings of baptism are conveyed invariably and in all cases to infants at the time of their receiving it, so that we may then say they are as truly" born of God" as adults coming with repentance and faith undoubtedly are; or whether we must consider the full blessings to be dependent on the right administration and reception, by their believing parents and representatives, of the sacrament; and wait for their own actual and personal repentance and belief, before we declare them absolutely to be partakers of a new spiritual and moral change of nature; always hoping, as charity prescribes, that such change has begun till the contrary appears.

The expression buried with him in baptism alludes to the ancient form of administering that sacred ordinance still directed in our own church, except when health forbids, of the immersion or burial, so to speak, of the whole person in the water, after the example of the burial of the entire body of our Lord in the grave.

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The import of the expression is, perhaps, rather stronger than the similar terms of " dying to sin,” of being crucified with Christ," and of "putting off the old man with his deeds." It implies the It implies the permanent and entire mortification of the body of sin, the abiding reign and dominion of that figurative death,