10

USE OF PRIVATE JUDGMENT IMAGINARY.

This is very natural; for men must lean upon something. Our Reformers, in their interpretation of Scripture, besides the divine means of prayer, leant on the consent and agreement of the "old holy Catholic Doctors," who had received their doctrine immediately, or but at a little interval, from the Apostles, when every link almost in the chain was a Saint and Martyr. The agreement of the Church was to them the evidence of GOD'S speaking in the Church. But now that men have forgotten these maxims, and the blessed dead who resisted unto blood Heathen malice, and established and fixed for us the Creeds wherein we find rest, and look upon deference to the Church almost as a relic of Papal errors, man, since he is not made to be independent, leans upon his fellows; and the supposed spiritual character of individuals is made the test of truth. Man cannot escape from authority: the question only, in religious truth as in civil society or in private life, is, whose authority he will follow.

This mode of judging is indeed a tacit recognition of external authority; those who adopt it have virtually renounced the narrow and cold notion of individual judgment, and taken refuge from it in that of a body of Christians; they adopt and imitate the principles of our Church, which refers us to the agreement of Catholic antiquity, only that unhappily they take as a test moderns instead of ancients; those who arose after the waters had been polluted, instead of those who lived near the source; a section of the Church, instead of the Church itself. They are thereby necessarily much narrowed in their choice, substituting a sort of Ultra-Protestant Popery of one or more individuals, for the Catholic unity of all times and Churches.

The several controversies with infidels, again, have led to some false maxims as to the tests of truth: for, instead of setting forth against these despisers the power of the Gospel of CHRIST as a whole, that it is "the power of God unto salvation to every one that believeth," that "the truth," i. e. the whole Gospel," will set free" those who receive it, men have dwelt too much upon its natural tendency, as they deem it, to produce such or such effects, upon the efficacy of particular doctrines, or its contrast in such or such points with other religions; thereby fostering the conviction that we are much more judges in these matters than we

are.

MINISTRY NOT INFALLIBLE BECAUSE BLESSED.

11

These men, however, were contented with contrasting Christianity, or parts thereof, with that which was out of the pale of the Gospel; and for this, happily, a more general and superficial view and statement of doctrine sufficed: others have arisen, who have applied this same test within the compass of Christianity, contrasted the supposed efficacy of one doctrine with another; and thus we have made ourselves judges in matters yet more beyond our grasp. Undoubtedly faithful and sound preaching is likely, by God's blessing, to produce a harvest: the holy and earnest life of a religious pastor is a yet more powerful sermon: his performance of his weekly duties, his greater watchfulness over the right dispensation of the Sacraments, his more earnest prayers are also means of promoting God's kingdom. Obviously then, the blessed effects of a whole ministry cannot be made a test of the truth of each doctrine preached and yet more obviously perhaps on this ground, that there is not complete agreement in the doctrines, the preaching of which is attended with these apparent effects: add also, that even in this way, one must judge not by the preaching of those, who being already full of fervour preached these doctrines, but by that of their disciples1; for it may be that that influence was owing to the fervour of the individuals, not to the entire truth of their system. For since we do not think that incidental error will mar the benefit of a whole ministry, or that fallible man, though richly endowed by GoD's Spirit, is yet rendered infallible, we cannot infer that because his teaching is blessed, therefore every portion of it must be sound. Rather, one might infer from the fact that the same doctrines when preached by a less gifted follower, have not the same efficacy, that the former efficacy was not to be referred to the truth of each doctrine, which was preached, but to the Spirit of GOD, with which each faithful minister is endowed. Had the effect been the result of the whole doctrine, and of that only, the effects had been more uniform. Lastly, we must look not to im

1 Thus the early Pietists in Germany, whose system and practice much resembled that of the body here alluded to, had, from their personal character, a great, and for the time a blessed, influence; but they shook the Lutheran body, and prepared the way for its downfall: their successors with the same system had no weight.

12 GREATNESS OF DOCTRINE OF BAPTISMAL REGENERATION

mediate only but to lasting effects, not only to the foundation but to the superstructure. This arguing from the supposed effects of a system, as it is at this day the plea for every irregularity, so is it most used by a body where the good effects are the least lasting, and subsequently are fearfully neutralized; and it is in great part owing to the absence of this doctrine of Baptismal Regeneration, that while a foundation is so often laid, the edifice of Christian piety among us still bears such low and meagre proportions, and still further, that there is not more of early Christianity among us. As of course, if it is a Scriptural truth, the neglect of preaching it must be a loss as well as a negligence.

1

These observations are not made under any idea that they who oppose the doctrine of Baptismal Regeneration are more zealous and earnest than they who preach it; quite the contrary; they who believe and realize the height of the gift of God in Baptism must, in the belief of the great things which God has done for them and His whole Church, have a source of solemn responsibility and deep awe, and humble amazement of God's graciousness, peculiar to themselves; and in proportion as they are penetrated with it, their preaching must be also raised. One may appeal safely on this point to the solid, subdued, but sublime eloquence of the early Church, or to those of our own who in older times most realised their Baptismal gifts. Baptismal Regeneration, as connected with the Incarnation of our blessed Lord, gives a depth to our Christian existence, an actualness to our union with CHRIST, a reality to our sonship to God, an interest in the presence of our Lord's glorified Body at GoD's right hand, a joyousness amid the subduing of the flesh, an overwhelmingness to the dignity conferred on human nature, a solemnity to the communion of saints, who are the fulness of Him, Who filleth all in all, a substantiality to the indwelling of CHRIST, that to those who retain this truth, the school which abandoned it must needs

1 The following remarks are made reluctantly now (Ed. ii.), because, in a controversial writing, what had been said above has been construed into an admission of the superiority of those who oppose the doctrine of Baptismal Regeneration. The author wished, while he might, to avoid every thing directly bearing on modern controversy.

appear to have sold its birthright. But it is one thing to hold Baptismal Regeneration, and another to hold merely that there is no regeneration subsequent to Baptism. A mere negative view must always be a cold one. Any careless person may hold Baptismal Regeneration negatively; they only can hold it positively and in its depth, who have endeavoured to realize it. Yet as well might we urge the case of the Antinomian, i. e. of him who holds justification by faith negatively, in opposition to the necessity of good works, against that holy doctrine, as the case of him who should in like way abuse the doctrine of Baptismal Regeneration, to lower the greatness of subsequent holiness. Both may be abused to men's own destruction; both may be blasphemed in consequence of their being held in name only; both may be held imperfectly and inadequately; nay, both in this life must be so held; yet one would not select those who hold either, and therewith other truths, most imperfectly, as the specimens of the effects of the doctrine in itself. Let those who would remonstrate against any such injustice, in the case which they make their own, beware how they be themselves guilty of the like injustice.

But, again, it might very well be, that a body of men, having much zeal for religion, and very active in promoting it, might yet for a time be in error upon some one or more points; nay, in circumstances such as the present are represented to be, it is probable that it would be so. It is professed, that they who now oppose Baptismal Regeneration, arrived at their present views by a sort of reaction; the Church, it is represented, was in a state of lethargy and coldness, preaching moral discourses, and forgetful of her office as teacher of the truth, when certain individuals were aroused, and preached faithfully the leading truths of the Gospel, of which our generation is reaping the fruits. In like manner individuals who oppose the same doctrine, are wont to refer to the time when they suppose they held it, as a period of religious apathy, during which they lulled their consciences with the notion that, having by Baptism been made children of GOD, they had nothing further to do 1. In either case (whether of

1 Hence such persons persist in calling the doctrine of Baptismal Regeneration "deadening," and "soul-destroying," because they held it amiss, and so

14

WHO SERVES EARLIEST, SERVES BEST.

individuals or bodies), it is probable that they would arrive at a portion only of the truth. It is not in these sudden reactions that God generally imparts a consistent enlarged view of truth. To such he gives what is most needful for them, and they are often energetic preachers of conversion; but the deeper, calmer, insight into truth, He usually reserves for those (whether bodies or individuals) whom He has gently led, and who have on the whole equably followed his leading. Under the elder dispensation, schools of the prophets were formed, so soon as Gon purposed to raise up a succession of teachers for His Church; from very youth were they to be trained to the service of the Lord. Samuel himself, who was employed to form them, was before his birth consecrated to the Lord, and formed in His temple; the forerunner of the Lord was sanctified from his mother's womb; and of the Apostles whom He chose, the saintly disciple whom He loved, who loved most early, steadily, boldly, alone by the Cross, was chosen further that he should

"Armed in his station wait,

"Till his Lord be at the gate;"

forming and carrying on the Church when the rest were removed, and (through his disciple St. Polycarp) the author of the earliest school of Christian doctors for the transmission of sound doctrine. So also in later times, they to whom, in her hour of need, the Church of CHRIST has been most indebted for the maintenance of purity of life and doctrine, St. Basil', St. Gregory of Nazianzum, St. Athanasius the Great, St. Ambrose, St. Chrysostom, St. Ephraim, were, by pious mothers, sisters, grandmothers

it became deadening to them; e. g. "A Tract for the Times in Reply to the Oxford Tracts," p. 1 & 13, notes.

1 St. Basil, chiefly by his grandmother Macrina, a confessor of the Catholic Faith, and a disciple of St. Gregory Thaumaturgus; St. Gregory of Nazianzum, by the excellent Nonna, who, like Hannah, dedicated her son to God from the womb, and soon after his birth, placing the Gospel in his hand, devoted him at the Altar to the service of the Lord, as was St. Ephraim also, the son of Confessors; St. Athanasius, by very pious parents, and then by the saintly Alexander the Bishop; St. Ambrose, by his sister Marcellina, who devoted herself to celibacy, that she might the more "care for the things of the Lord;" St. Chrysostom, by his mother Anthusa, who lived a widow from her twentieth year, retiring from the world, wherewith she was connected, to devote herself to educate her son.