The writer of this Pamphlet, who seems to charge our Church, by implication, with holding the more rigid opinion, speaks upon this subject with his usual confidence and want of correct information. That infants dying unbaptized are not saved, is not, as he supposes, a Popish doctrine, but was the common opinion of the ancient Christians, long before the corruptions of Popery gained ground in the Church.

Inferring with good reason the necessity of Baptism to salvation, from the words of the institution, from John iii. 5, and from other passages of Scripture, they nevertheless made an exception, on principles of natural equity and charity, in behalf of those catechumens who suffered martyrdom for Christ's sake, and of those who before their death had expressed a resolution or a desire of receiving that sacrament. But, since infants could neither suffer, voluntarily at least, for Christ's sake, nor entertain a desire of Baptism, they did not extend this charitable limitation to their case, though they endeavoured to soften the harshness of this sentence by representing their condition as a kind of middle state, subjecting them to no positive pain, but shutting them out from such privileges and blessings as are peculiar to the elect. This opinion was held in the Church of Rome at the time of the Reformation; and the schoolmen grafted upon it the fiction of a limbus infantium, a kind of border,

or outground, parted off from the place of torments, in which the souls of these infants are detained. In the first formularies of faith', composed in the reign of Henry VIII., the necessity, in the strict sense, of Baptism was asserted. But that assertion was afterwards withdrawn; and though our Church has neither pronounced peremptorily upon the case, nor ceased to teach that Baptism is " generally necessary to salvation," her divines have always placed the charitable latitude of construction on the precepts which enjoin it. "For grace (as Hooker expresses their sentiments on this head) is not absolutely tied unto sacraments; and such is the lenity of God, that unto things impossible he bindeth no man." It was this judgment of charity which induced the compilers of the "Office for the Baptism of those of Riper Years," to qualify the conclusion drawn from John iii. 5, as to the necessity of Baptism with the words where it may be had; on which the writer of the Pamphlet makes thiş edifying reflection 3. "Had they" (the divines of Charles II.) " possessed either reflection or modesty, when they felt it necessary so to qualify our Saviour's words, in order to fit them to their own conjectural exposition of John iii. 5, they would

1 Formularies of Faith, Oxford, 1825. Comp. pp. xix. 7. 93. with p. 254.

2 Hooker's Eccl. Pol. b. vi. s. 60.

3 P. 66.

shrewdly have suspected that they misinterpreted or misapplied the text."

The writer appears to take for granted, as a matter too notorious to need any proof, that the metaphorical interpretation of the word water, in John iii. 5, was the sense uniformly received in the purer ages of Christianity', and consequently that in those days this doctrine of Baptismal Regeneration was unknown to the Church of Christ. Having assumed

1

The metaphorical sense usually assigned to this passage is, "Except a man be born again of the Spirit, acting like water, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God." But in the opinion of the writer before us', "water" signifies Repentance, and "Spirit" faith; so that our Saviour's address to Nicodemus is equivalent to his call to " repent and believe the Gospel." In another place he tells us that repentance and faith are sure signs of spiritual regeneration: and infers from hence that since our Catechism mentions repentance and faith as pre-requisites for Baptism, it does not inculcate the doctrine of baptismal regeneration, and, consequently, is inconsistent with the offices for the administration of Baptism. He evidently does not understand that he is assuming the very point in debate. For they who think that the word "Regeneration in its strict and Scriptural sense, denotes that peculiar grace which is bestowed in Baptism, do not look upon faith and repentance as signs of Regeneration, but as necessary qualifications, in adults, for receiving that grace. This is the doctrine of our Catechism, which teaches us that faith and repentance are required of persons to be baptized; but that the inward and spiritual grace of Baptism is a death unto sin and a new birth unto righteousness: for being by nature born in sin, and children of wrath, we are hereby (i. e. by baptism) made the children of grace."

1 P. 39, 40.

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2 P. 38.

this point, he proceeds to inform us, that what he elsewhere calls the conjectural exposition of the divines who compiled our "Office for the administration of Baptism to such as are of riper years," was a device of the Papists to magnify the virtue of a sacrament. "The Papists," he tells us, "always anxious to magnify a church ordinance, thought proper, upon a bold misconstruction of John iii. 5, to declare the ceremony of baptizing infants to be salvation, if they died before actual sin; and, calculating boldly upon the ignorance of the laity, supported their dogma by texts which are referable only to the baptism of proselytes'." They hoped 2 to add to the attraction of their communion by raising a rite, highly proper in itself, to the unjustifiable pretension of a saving ordinance; and for that purpose understood the word water, John iii. 5, in its literal sense, and insisted that the kingdom of God meant the kingdom of glory 3." "To sus

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2 P. 42.

3 The ancients maintained that the kingdom of God in these texts of Scripture' signifies the kingdom of glory, because it cannot be affirmed with truth that no man can see the kingdom of God in this world," except he be born again." But I do not think that there is much force in this reasoning, because the word see may be taken, without any violence to the common usage of language, in a metaphorical sense. But the notion that to see," or enter into the kingdom of God,” signifies“ to become a member of the visible Church," is a very inadequate

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1 John iii. 3. 5.

tain this dogma of baptismal salvation', the Papists were driven to assert, that the injunction in St. Matthew to teach the Christian faith and to administer the Baptism of proselytism 2 to them that received it, was not the application of an old rite to a new faith, but that it was the institution of a new Baptism, foretold and described by our Lord in his conversation with Nicodemus. It did not suit the papists to recollect that water' was frequently used not instrumentally but symbolically, to signify purification or repentance; and that in

representation of our Saviour's language. If the phrase," the kingdom of God," includes, as it well may, the state of grace, as well as the state of glory, to "see" or "enter" into it, manifestly means, to be made partakers of the peculiar privileges, blessings, hopes, and promises of the Gospel kingdom.

The writer, while he contends that to be "born of water and of the Spirit" signifies to repent and believe, at the same time tells us that "the kingdom of God" signifies the visible Church. But that none but sincere penitents and true believers, none, in short, but those who are called, in a common and familiar way of speaking, truly regenerate," can enter into the visible Church, is probably more than he intended to affirm.

1 P. 42.

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2 The writer seems to look upon Baptism as nothing more than the continuance of a Jewish rite; a simple ceremony of initiation into the visible Church. But he cannot expect that the Church of England will change her views and definitions in deference to his opinion, or forget that her Lord, when he adopted a form of initiation not unknown to his countrymen, added," as Bishop Taylor expresses himself," the Spirit "the Spirit to the water, and made it a Sacrament or saving ordinance." "Our Saviour Christ altered and changed the same (the Jewish washings) into a profitable Sacrament."-Homily on Fasting.