INTRODUCTION ΤΟ SACRAMENT OF RESPONSIBILITY. CHAPTER I, EFFECTS OF THE GORHAM CONTROVERSY. Ar the time when this tract was first published, the Church was shaken to its foundation by the Gorham controversy. It is with no intention whatsoever of raking up the embers of this almost forgotten dispute that I refer to it, and indicate what I believe to have been its effects at that time. The Bishop of Exeter had refused to institute Mr. Gorham to a living because, on examination, he seemed not to hold absolutely the Regeneration of all Infants in Holy Baptism. The Bishop took his stand upon the plain words of the Baptismal Service. If Mr. Gorham administered Baptism to Infants in the words of that Service, he must assert, in the face of God and of the congregation, respecting each particular infant, that as soon as ever he had baptized it, it was regenerate. Setting aside other considerations, it seemed reasonable that the congregation should be protected from the scandal of hearing their minister formally deny in the pulpit what he had asserted at the font, or, if he did not formally deny it, clog it with so many limitations as to render the assertion at the font practically nugatory. To this it was rejoined by the friends of Mr. Gorham— i.e. by the whole Evangelical party-that there were other doctrines held by the Church besides the doctrine of Regeneration in Baptism; that one of these was the doctrine of God's Eternal Election, as stated in the former part of the 17th Article; that the natural inference from that Article is, that those whom God has once regenerated will always continue in a state of regeneration, or, if they fall away from it for a time, be certainly restored to it. Now, it cannot be denied that the vast majority of those for whose Regeneration in Baptism thanks have been given to God do not continue in that state of salvation; how, then, is their defection to be accounted for ?—for accounted for it must be. It may be accounted for in one of two ways, either that those who fell away were not really Regenerated in Baptism, or that they were there and then Regenerated, but have fallen away from the grace of Regeneration then conferred. In the former of these cases, the doctrine that Regeneration is conferred in Baptism must be modified by that of Eternal Election: in the latter, the doctrine of Eternal Election, if held at all, is assumed to be compatible with falling away from some degree of grace. In the former case, the statements of the Liturgy are assumed to be modified by the more dogmatic statements of the Articles : * * It was assumed to be so compatible by St. Augustine himself, the first doctor of the Church who put the doctrine of election into a systematic form: I have shown this fully in Appendix C, in the end of my Treatise, "The Second Adam and the New Birth," pp. 324, 325, fourth edition. |