53

BAPTISMAL CONTROVERSY.

No. II.

If the principles endeavoured to be established in our former article on this subject be correct, it is evident that a wide latitude of expression must be accorded to men holding substantially the same views, though they differ in the dogmatical enunciation of them. The safest course will be to pronounce hypothetically as to the mass of professing Christians, and, as far as man can at any time judge his fellow-men, to decide categorically only on individual cases, when the fruits of the Spirit are manifest, and evidence the Spirit's presence by the evolution of the works of the Spirit. We have already recorded our interpretation of the Baptismal Office in the light of a Liturgical Service, and consequently composed with sole reference to believers. Inasmuch, then, as our Church supposes faith to precede, accompany, and follow the attendance upon that means of grace called baptism, she pronounces baptism to have been "rightly received," and necessarily to involve the blessing typified by the sacrament. Let us suppose an adult hypocritically professing, and, on that profession, baptised. The Church takes no cognisance of the hypocrisy, but pronounces of the profession made. God does take cognisance on the hypocrisy, and pronounces most signally upon it by rendering the sign bare and destitute of all efficacy, except in its witnessing and, in such a case, condemning power. Similarly in the other sacrament, individual hypocrisy, neither known nor recognised as possible in a company of souls professedly treated as believing ones by the Church, is both known to and visited with immediate judgement by God. The Church offers the sacrament, administers it, and concludes it, on the liturgical hypothesis; God, however, renders the ministration effectual as a means of grace on the incontrovertible evidence to His omniscient eye of the faithful reception of the sacrament. The Church acts upon her conviction of what must come to pass, in the case of every believer; God acts upon His unerring knowledge of what is the real state of each individual recipient. With the Church there is charitable comprehension, because she cannot see beneath the surface, and must take profession for sincerity; with God there is personal discrimination, because He "trieth the very veins and "the heart," and "requireth truth in the inward parts." To be hope

ful, is our exercise of love on imperfect data; to be positive, is God's exercise of love on perfect data. The servant's duty is to compel all to come in to the marriage supper; the Lord's prerogative is to discover and expel him that has not on the wedding garment. If such must necessarily be the case when adults present themselves at either sacrament, what reason, or what possibility even, is there that the Church can act otherwise in the case of infants at the font? She knows no more, therefore she can assert no more in the one instance than in the other. But, as we have previously shown, she, at least, asserts as much. She pronounces the infant regenerate, and, with her imperfect knowledge of the heart-workings of every individual there present, she does no more than her plain duty in thus pronouncing. She baptises on a profession, hopefully and charitably considered to be sincere. The right reception being taken for granted, the thing signified follows upon the sign as an indisputable verity. But whether the right reception has taken place in any given instance, that is a question between God and the soul; a question which God alone can solve, and which to us he solves in only one way-by presenting us with the unmistakable evidences of the work of the Spirit in the soul. Now "the fruit of the "Spirit is love, joy, peace, long-suffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, "meekness, temperance." Let us only see these blessed effects of the new birth developing themselves one by one in a child's character, and the Church's judgement, pronounced in faithful reliance on God's promises to all believers, is now most joyfully felt to be confirmed in the individual instance in which we are interested. We planted in hope, we watered in prayer-perchance in tears, and now the Lord has given the increase. An Isaac, a Samuel, and a St. John, were not more God's gifts in their first supernatural birth than in their second spiritual birth. What joy for the barren to bear children! What tenfold more abundant joy for the believing parents to be blessed with a believing offspring! By birth they were of Israel, by circumcision they were formerly registered as of Israel, by spiritual circumcision they were vitally adopted into the spiritual Israel. Was it a mercy to be enabled to hand down a name on earth? What then shall we think of the mercy which enabled these saints of old to perpetuate a name in heaven? Take a fourth instance of supernatural birth-Manoah's son. Here, too, the barren bare, and Samson became a Nazarite, and judged Israel twenty years, and wondrous things did he in the sight of the Philistines and of God's people, and although blinded and a captive, even in death triumphant. Compare his whole career with that of the son of Abraham, or of Hannah, or of Zaccharias. "The Spirit of the Lord was upon him;" but was it not also, subsequently, said in the same words that "the

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Spirit of the Lord came upon Saul," so that men exclaimed, “Is Saul "also among the prophets?" Can we perceive no difference here between the gift and the grace? Have we a single indication that Samson was blessed with that one thing needful-the new birth, amongst all those other blessings wherewith "God blessed him?" least, so doubtful is the evidence, that no one ventures to indulge more than a faint hope that he found pardon and acceptance at the last. We are silent where God has not vouchsafed the only ground on which we can safely form a judgement. Pious parents, supernatural birth, early and special dedication to God, the sign of the covenant given and received: what now was wanting to complete the link which should for ever bind in covenant relation the son of Manoah to the God of Israel? We may repeat this question, and again repeat it, and not a man upon earth will ever be able to answer it. Ask why one is taken and another left? ask why one is made to differ from his fellow? ask why, of all the trees of the Lord's planting in his vineyard, that one fig-tree was alone barren? and when you shall have satisfactorily answered these questions, on any scheme of dogmatic theology which has yet been framed by Council or Convocation, then you will be able to solve an enigma harder by far than that which Samson himself propounded, for you will have been given to know what that man even did not know who was caught up to the third heaven; for his only answer to the question is an humble avowal of ignorance, "Who art thou that repliest against God? Shall "the thing formed say to Him that formed it, 'Why hast thou made me "thus?" "

Doubtless the attempt to meet this difficulty has been frequently made; principally by distinguishing between regeneration and conversion. The former state, it has been said, is only an imperfect one, preliminary to that great change of heart which stamps a man's spiritual character as a child of God in contrast with the children of this world. Inasmuch, then, (so runs the argument,) as it is only imperfect and preliminary it need not necessarily eventuate in conversion. The seed sown may not spring up; if it spring up it may not reach maturity. The spirit given at baptism may, in various ways, be quenched, and the soul be then as much as ever in darkness and in guilt.

Now, here we have a scheme laid down for God's operations in the hearts of men, which has no warrant in scripture or in experience. To say that regeneration is not conversion, is simply to say that the part is not the whole; but to speak of regeneration as specifically distinct from conversion, is as much a fallacy as to say that the morning twilight is specifically distinct from the meridian blaze. The comparison, too, so often instituted between baptismal regeneration and the sowing of seed,

is equally illogical. Our Saviour, indeed, compares the preaching of the word to the sowing of seed, but never is the work of the Spirit in the individual soul thus spoken of in the scriptures. The truth is that the Spirit sows nothing; the seed is ministerially sown. The Son of Man himself thus sowed ministerially. "Paul planted, Apollos watered, but "God gave the increase." The Spirit prepares the soil, gives "the "honest and good heart," blesses the sowing, promotes the culture, advances the growing blade, brings the fruit to perfection. This is the Spirit's glorious work, and every saint of the Most High God knows this truth experimentally. So that to assert the fact of the regeneration of a baptised person growing up in a course of sin, and to compare it to seed lying dormant in an unkindly soil, is an assertion and a comparison which neither scripture nor fact warrants us in making. Besides, whatever seed be sown in accordance with God's direction, be it His precious word, or any other means of grace, is always good seed; and, therefore, the Spirit's work is not required in making the seed better, any more than in sowing it; but, first of all, in altering the conditions under which that seed is to be received and to vegetate into life in the soul. We dwell upon this point, for it is a most important one. Let us once get rid of the false analogies with which polemics have encumbered the subject, and we shall then have a fair prospect of nearing the truth. Let it be borne in mind that almost any event, any word, especially God's word, any occasion, may be a means of grace. A providence occurs— sickness, perhaps, or loss of fortune-this is the means. How does it become a means of grace, probably of conversion? By acting under the Spirit's energy upon the careless or obdurate heart, as the instruments in the husbandman's hands act upon the soil. But to what possible purpose can we suppose that the earth should be tilled, and manured, and watered, except that it may repay the labour bestowed upon it by producing an abundant crop? Similarly, the Spirit provides the wellprepared receptacle of a renewed heart, wherein the seed shall be sure to come up and mature. If it come not up, if it bear no fruit, the seed is not in fault; it would have vegetated in a better soil. The fault is in the soil, and we pronounce that ground bad which is barren, just as we pronounce that heart unrenewed which bears no evidence of its renewal. But what is an unrenewed heart ? One in its old state; i. e., its natural state. Now trace this argument, and say what it inevitably leads to, when brought to bear on the alleged specific difference between regeneration and conversion.

We ask once more, is there a single passage in the Bible which will lead us to the conclusion that the new birth is a change of state unaccompanied by a change of character? There are, we apprehend, but

two states and two characters respectively united in the scriptures -the state of condemnation, and the state of salvation. And the character joined to the former state is one of impenitence and unbelief, while the character joined to the latter state is that of repentance and faith. They who belong to the one class are termed the children of light, the children of God, &c.; they who belong to the other class are termed the children of darkness, the children of the evil one, &c. Again, we find these two opposite states termed respectively natural and carnal, and spiritual; a distinction leading us to no other inference than that at our first birth we are in a condition totally dissimilar from, and diametrically opposed to, the condition in which we are placed at our new birth. It is impossible, evidently, to be in both states at one and the same time. This is freely admitted on all sides. But who are the "spiritual," the "born of the Spirit," the "renewed in the Spirit " of their minds," but individuals who at the moment that such a character can be truly predicated of them are real believers-persons who, if they were summoned that very hour to meet their God, would be found to be in Christ, and therefore be welcomed with the blessed summons, "Enter ye into the joy of your Lord?"

View the subject then in whatever light we may, the same conclusion follows, as a practical result, when the question is made a matter of personal investigation into the state of the individual soul at any given instant in the sight of God.

From the tenor of the foregoing remark, our readers will be prepared to find a considerable difference of opinion between Mr. Kennaway and ourselves ou the fundamental points of the controversy. The following principles lie at the foundation of the author's theory of Baptismal regeneration :

"And here we may add that the same error which prevails in addressing Christian congregations, as if they were uncovenanted heathens, leads to a false use of the term regenerate. There cannot be a doubt that our Church holds, in some sense, the doctrine of baptismal regeneration. We thank God in baptism that it has pleased Him to regenerate the infant with his Holy Spirit. We do not use these words hypothetically, but as descriptive of a real transaction. How can we, after this, called the baptised unregenerate? It is most true that in thousands of cases no renewal of heart may take place, but still the child is pronounced to be regenerated, and that too by God's Holy Spirit. And this is the difficulty, and particularly the mention of the Holy Spirit, as the agent in regeneration, which puzzles so many who yet are unwilling to deny the truthfulness of the language of the baptismal service. How (it is asked) can a child be said to be regenerated by the Holy Spirit, and yet not be renovated in heart? They that ask this question will say, that it is possible to conceive that the simple term regeneration may be used in a lower sense, as implying privilege rather than influence, a change of state without a change of heart; but then, that they are prevented from resting on this ground, by the language of