assertion of the Regeneration of the Infant, which had no place in the ancient service-book. There is no assertion in the old service at all like-"Seeing now, dearly beloved, that this child is regenerate." The nearest approach to it is a blessing pronounced on the child in this form:Almighty God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who hath regenerated thee of water and the Holy Ghost, and hath given unto thee remission of all thy sins, vouchsafe to anoint thee with the unction of the Holy Spirit, and bring thee to the inheritance of everlasting life."

66

The reader will see at a glance that the assertion in our Reformed Service is incomparably stronger than this. Does not this show the absurdity of seeking for some hypothesis of a compromise between Popery and Protestantism, in order to account for the fact that Baptismal Regeneration is to be found in our present service?

CHAPTER II.

REVIEW OF SCRIPTURE ARGUMENT.

I SHALL now review somewhat in full the Scripture testimony to the doctrine of the Church.

In doing this, I shall put aside every consideration which does not arise out of the canonical books of Scripture, and deal with the matter, as far as possible, as if it were one on which the Church had decided nothing; and that, having nothing in the history of the Church to guide us, we were now called upon, for the first time, to ascertain what the word of God teaches us.

At the very outset of our inquiry, the first thing which strikes us is this, that the Scriptures are not written in the form of a doctrinal treatise on Theology. The form under which God has given to us the New Testament is this. First, we have four parallel biographical notices of the Life, Teaching, Miracles, Death, and Resurrection of the Second Adam, the New Man, the One Mediator, the Supreme Head of the Church. In these books we constantly read of His intention, after His Ascension, to set up a kingdom which, though in this world, was not to be "of it." After this comes a book which describes the first planting of this Kingdom or Church, and its earliest struggles with the powers of this world. Then we have a number of letters, addressed to the members of this Church, living in different parts of the world. It is to be noticed, that not one of these letters is addressed to the heathen,

b

in order to instruct them ab initio in the doctrine of Christ. They are all addressed to Christians, and assume that they have already been grounded in the first principles of the truth, and have been initiated into the privileges and responsibilities of the kingdom. They are all written to baptized communities.

But another point, of the greatest importance, requires notice. Both the Founder of the Religion in His discourses and the writers of these letters to the members of His Church take it for granted that the various members of the Church had already in their hands an inspired volume, viz. the Old Testament. The way in which the Old Testament is treated is very remarkable, and at first sight somewhat perplexing. It is recognised as the word of God; indeed, before the first books of the New Testament were written, it was the only written word of God to the Christians. All of it is supposed to be given by inspiration of God. It is referred to continually as declaring the will of God; it is assumed to be full of principles which are eternal in their application; and yet certain parts of it are supposed to be abrogated.

This, then, is the form which the Christian Scriptures take-not the form of a methodical treatise, in which we can find all that pertains to any particular doctrine, digested into certain chapters or sections, but such a form that, if we wish to ascertain the mind of God on any particular subject, we must gather together scattered statements, intimations, hints, illustrations, as they present themselves in the New Testament Scriptures; not for a moment forgetting that these New Testament Scriptures, at every turn, witness to the abiding authority of certain older Scriptures, equally given by inspiration of God.

Let us look more closely at the New Testament. What is its speciality as compared with all other books profess

ing to be revelations? Evidently, the extraordinary position assigned in it to the Person of its Divine FounderHis Person, not of course as excluding His work, His teaching, His example, but His Person, as giving an infinite value to all that He does and says. This is especially to be noticed. The speciality of the New Testament is not that it inculcates a higher spirituality as compared with the Old Testament, or a purer morality as compared with heathen religious systems. Its great distinguishing feature is the position which it assigns to Christ Himself. It commences with His Genealogy; then it proceeds to reveal His miraculous Conception and Birth; and then, omitting all account of His early Life, it leaps forward to the commencement of His Ministry. And how did His public Life or Ministry commence? By a Baptism, to which He submitted.* The first matter recorded of Him in each one of the Gospels, after His coming of age, is His reception of Baptism. Now, considering that He Who thus submitted to a ceremonial washing was the only

* 66 Baptism, if you mark it, stands at the beginning of the Gospel. The first thing related in the history of the New Testament is the promise given to Zacharias that St. John the Baptist should be born. St. Mark's Gospel opens thus: The beginning of the Gospel of Jesus Christ the Son of God; as it is written in the prophets, Behold I send my messenger before thy face, which shall prepare thy way before thee; The voice of one crying in the wilderness, Prepare ye the way of the Lord, make His paths straight. John did baptize in the wilderness, and preach the Baptism of Repentance for the remission of sins.' St. John, as soon as ever he has declared the Godhead of Jesus Christ and His wonderful Incarnation, goes on to tell us of John the Baptist, how he came to bear witness of that light, baptizing with water. St. Matthew relates at large how our Lord, when He would begin His ministry, came to be baptized by St. John in Jordan. Thus, in every one of the Gospels, you see that Baptism was the beginning." —KEBLE, “Village Sermons on the Baptismal Offices," p. 10.

man ever born who needed it not; seeing that he who administered this Baptism to Him was His own messenger and creature, sent to prepare His way; if this His Baptism had been followed by nothing else, it would have been worthy of our deepest consideration: but it becomes doubly significant when we remember that, at the moment of His Baptism, the Great God of All acknowledged Him as His own Son, and sent down upon Him the Holy Ghost in a bodily form, to sanctify Him for the work He had undertaken.

Still more significant does this become, when we remember that He Himself, in His very last words on earth, instituted a Baptism in water in the name of the Trinity.

These considerations can hardly fail to impress upon us the importance of the whole matter. The very spirituality of the dispensation, the pre-eminence, acknowledged by all, with which it invests what is inward and spiritual above what is outward and formal, might (and in fact does) tempt many to push aside the whole matter as of secondary importance; but the fact that the Eternal Son of God, at the beginning of His Ministry, submitted to receive a Baptism in water, and at the end of it instituted. another Baptism of His own, should arrest our attention, and compel us to see if there may not be a reason for it: and I hesitate not to say, that if we can induce men, in a reverent and believing spirit, to search and see whether there be not some intelligible reason for the position of Baptism in such a spiritual system as the Christian, we have won the battle. A reason, be it remembered, must be found consonant with the special character of the Dispensation itself that is, consonant with the prominence assigned in it to the Person of the God-Man, and His relations to His Church, which so intimately depend upon the truths relating to His Person.