54

OBJECTORS TO THE GOSPEL.

The Arminian demurs to the special sovereignty of the gospel. The Antinomian loathes the strict morality of the gospel. The formalist despises the vitality of the gospel; whilst the Puseyite, and the high Churchist, doating and resting upon the forms and rubrics of the prayer book, recognize not the supreme authority and spirituality of the gospel, for they want to decorate the faith with humanly-invented, and humanly-imposed rites and ceremonies, thus seeking to throw around it the fascinations of mystery, and sacramental efficacy, and splendid seductive ceremonial. These, with Jewish predilections, and popish affinities and attachments, linger after

"the pomp that charms the eye,

And rites adorn'd with gold"—

instead of aiming at, and ardently loving, the simplicity, purity, and spirituality of New Testament ordinances, and heart-felt, christian worship. The approver and admirer of mere ritual observances would fain send a soul to heaven by sacraments, instead of pointing a spiritual wanderer alone to Jesus Christ, as the only Saviour.

He would pretend to regenerate

* The writers of the Oxford Tracts make the following deceptive assertions. In Tract No. 68, page 83, it is said,

SACRAMENTAL EFFICACY ASSERTED.

55

a child (and oft deceivingly asserts, that in bap

66

"The sacraments are not bare signs, but do convey that also which they signify." In No. 69, page 114, the writer says, "The sacraments are channels of divine grace to the soul, not simply by animating our faith; but the one, [meaning baptism] by actually incorporating us into Christ, and creating in our souls a new principle of life, and making us 'partakers of the divine nature;' the other, [alluding to the Lord's supper] imparting to us increased union with Christ, a deifying influence (!!!), whereby God gives us that which man would have accepted from Satan -'to be as Gods,' being partakers of the Son of God." Again in the same Tract, at pages 178 and 185, having alluded to the awful and unguarded words of St. Gregory of Nazianzen, who when urging the baptism of an infant, says, IMPART TO HIM THE TRINITY, that great and excellent preservative," instead of reprobating so blasphemous an expression, the sacramentarian divine thus eulogistically comments on it-" The thrill which those impressive words, impart to him the Trinity,' echoing to us after fourteen hundred years, still awaken in us, may well make us admire the energy of the faith, which infused into words so simple a force so amazing." The reader' also, perhaps, "thrills!" but if he feel like the writer, it is the thrill of a holy horror, and a jealous indignation, for the truth of God; for, according to the above statements, the two appointed ordinances of the New Testament are regarded, not as mere outward signs, but as the very vehicles of grace-are said to operate, not through the convictions of the mind, but by an occult power, a talismanic influence, a mystic spell, attending their minis-tration!!!

56

DR. PUSEY'S WORK ON BAPTISM.

tism it is actually effected*) by signing him with the sign of the cross would rear up candles at the churches' altar, to attract the

* No. 67 of the Oxford Tracts is a "Treatise on Bapptism," by Dr. Edward B. Pusey, of four hundred heavy pages in octavo, and is remarkable for its cumbrous, patristical, and liturgical learning, its impassioned veneration for antiquity, its horror of free intellectual independency of thought-in a word, its ultra catholicism. The reader shall have a few hasty extracts, without note or comment, from this anti-scriptural production of the learned Hebrew Professor. His views are thus expressed: "Our justification is imputed to us, not through our feelings, but through baptism." (Page 20.) " The person baptized becomes thereby a member of Christ, which one saying comprehends more than all which men's or angel's thoughts can conceive of blessedness." (Page 21.) "The water sanctified, is the womb of our new birth." (Page 48.) " By baptism we are saved-NOT by faith only!" (Page 55.) "All the texts that speak of our being in Christ are referred to baptism, by which alone that union can be effected." (Pages 114, 115.) "The gift of baptism is above all spiritual gifts." (Page 209.) Dr. P. approves of the catholic practice of "anointing with oil" in baptism [is not this something like one of the papists' seven sacraments, extreme unction], of exorcising the "evil spirit that lurks" in the infant (pages 58, 60), and signing with the sign of the cross on the eyes, nose, mouth, forehead, ears, breast, shoulders, &c., as well as a threefold application of water in the three several names of the Trinity.-See pages 144, 145.

DELUSIVE VIEWS.

57

superstitious gaze of the ignorant, instead of trying to pour on the beclouded mind the rays of the sun of righteousness-would pretend to wash a babe from sin in the supposed " laver of (falsely called baptismal) regeneration," instead of teaching the doctrine and enforcing the necessity of the baptism of the Holy Spirit, to make 66 any one a member of Christ, the child of God, and an inheritor of the kingdom of heaven."* Whilst, quite in keeping with all this pro-catholic system of doctrine, is the teaching of these sacramentarians; for they would ever and anon recommend to the ignorant, the superstitious, and the self-righteous, the eucharistical bread and wine, the commemorative supper of our once crucified Redeemer, as an all-saving ordinance and mystic viaticum for the languishing soul, rather than direct a dying sinner's eye, and heart, and faith, to Jesus only, as the living bread sent down from heaven for the "life of the world," and the support and salvation of his departing and immortal spirit.

"I do not understand (says the Bishop of London, in his recent semi-Puseyistic charge) how any clergyman who uses the Office of Baptism,' which by a solemn promise he has bound himself to do, without alteration or mutilation, can deny that in some sense or other, Baptism is indeed THE LAVER OF REGENERATION."

58

REFORMATION PRINCIPLES PERVERTFD.

These are some of the awful delusions, which are at the present period being practised by hundreds of individuals upon the credulity of the masses, which form the bulk of our professedly protestant population. For the votaries of Romanism and Puseyism love not the unadorned and native beauty of divinely inspired truth, nor can such behold scarcely any charms in the pure and simple ordinances and worship of unadulterated protestantism.

Thus we mournfully see how the truth of God-the glorious principles of the Reformation -the grand and distinguishing doctrines of grace, as embodied in the faith once delivered to the saints, are carnalized, diluted, and rendered of none effect "by the sleight of men and cunning craftiness, whereby they lie in wait to deceive." And as there is, and ever has been such a proneness in man to pervert the gospel of Jesus Christ, it is needful, absolutely needful, that all really Bible christians, that all true and zealous protestants, and all ministers of apostolic spirit and doctrine of every sect and name, though not making the insane boast of "apostolical succession," should be more than ever valiant for the truth, and contend earnestly (if need be, even agonizingly) for "the faith once delivered to the saints."

THIRDLY. A further necessity for exhibiting