by its heat, and light by the vision which it affords. We learn the vice of our first birth by our "going astray as soon as we are born speaking lies;" for "that which is born of the flesh is flesh." In like manner, we know that regeneration which is necessary to cure the evil of our nature. "He that believeth that Jesus is the Christ is born of God: whatsoever is born of God overcometh the world." The first epistle of John, which was "written that we may know that we have eternal life," is full of such marks or signs of those that are born of God. Whatever then produces such effects is regeneration, or being born again; whatever produces no such fruits is not regeneration; for “we are created anew in Christ Jesus unto good works, which God ordained that we should walk in them."

This should be carefully kept in view, when considering the doctrine of regeneration, which is no speculative theory, but a practical truth. To call that which has produced no effect, or whose effects we cannot demonstrate, by the name of that which is known by its effects, most clearly and powerfully, is, to say the least, using words without knowledge; and, to say the worst, is practising an imposition on mankind.

Let us now proceed to

II. Examine the doctrine of Baptismal Regeneration.

The

If it be observed, by the reader, that we have already glanced at this; let him remember that it was only for the sake of illustrating the truth concerning regeneration; but we now shall bend our attention chiefly to the false doctrine that has been broached on this vital point; though still keeping in view the Scriptures as the standard of truth. most specious form which baptismal regeneration has assumed is this-that the Holy Spirit accompanies the rite of baptism with that influence which renews our fallen nature, and is the antidote to original sin; so that all those, and only those, who have been baptised, are regenerated. Baptism is by the men of this school often spoken of as being itself regeneration, but I am willing to attack the error in its least naked and offensive form.

Let us, then, examine this statement by the Scriptures-by the writings of the fathers-by facts.

1. Examine it by the Scriptures.

What saith the Scriptures? How

readest thou? To the law and to the testimony; if they speak not according to this word it is because there is no light in them." The most specious defence of baptismal regeneration which can be drawn from the Scriptures is by a misinterpretation of John iii. 5; "Except a man be born of water and of the Spirit he cannot enter into the kingdom of God." Here it has been supposed that our Lord refers to the water of baptism. But there is sufficient proof that this is a mistake, though it may be conceded that it is not surprising that men should have fallen into that mistake.

In the first place, our Lord manifestly speaks of something which was then and always necessary to salvation, in consequence of the fallen state of man: "because that which is born of the flesh is flesh, therefore ye must be born again of the Spirit; for only that which is born of the Spirit is spirit." Now baptism was not always necessary; nor was it necessary at that time, when our Lord uttered these words; for it was not yet instituted. All agree, that the use of water, in the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Ghost, is essential to Christian baptism; but this was not instituted till our Lord had risen from the dead. Then it was, that, about to ascend to heaven, he gave the apostles this commission, "Go ye, therefore, and teach all nations, baptising them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost," Matt. xxviii.

19.

Who can suppose that our Lord by the water he mentioned to Nicodemus meant that of baptism, which was not instituted till some years after?

In the second place, the reproof given to the Jewish doctor shows that our Lord could not have referred to baptism. "Art thou a master of Israel, and knowest not these things?" How could he have known what was not yet in existence? Even if it had then existed, Christian baptism was a novelty, a peculiarity of another dispensation, which, being a master of Israel did not oblige Nicodemus to know. It surely is not pretended, that there was any type in the Jewish religion which prefigured Christian baptism; so that a doctor of the Jewish law ought to have known the thing typified by means of its type.

In the third place, then, it follows, that our Lord spake of nothing but what was taught in the Scriptures of the Old

Testament; so that a master of Israel ought to have known these things. The water and the Spirit were both of that kind which the prophet Ezekiel mentions. "Then will I sprinkle clean water upon you, and you shall be clean : a new heart will I give you, and a new spirit will I put within you,' Ezek. xxxvi. 25, 26. These were the things that a master of Israel ought to have known. About the Spirit there is no dispute; but the water mentioned by the prophet is manifestly, not literal, but figurative; the influences of the Holy Spirit, operating like water to cleanse and purify: giving that new heart of which the prophet speaks, and for which David prays, saying, "Create in me a clean heart, O God." The man who has a new heart and spirit is a new creature, born over again into a new world. Our Lord, therefore, never mentions the water again, but speaks only of the Spirit, in the subsequent part of his discourse.

This text, then, which speaks of being born of water, though it is the chief, is no rational, or rather no scriptural foundation for the doctrine of baptismal regeneration. If any should object, that our Lord mentions two things, water and Spirit, and the interpretation now given reduces them to one-the Holy Spirit, I answer, that whatever may be said of two things, one of them cannot be the water of baptism; for the reasons already assigned, that Christian baptism was not instituted till after Christ's resurrection. But the interpretation given no more reduces two things to one, than many other expositions, which are admitted by all competent interpreters of texts, which express the same thing in two different forms; as in the parallel case of Christ's baptising with the Holy Ghost, and with fire, that is, with what the prophet calls "the spirit of burning." There is, however, a real distinction between the Holy Spirit, and his influences operating as water in our regeneration. The Spirit, who is the agent, is one; the operations of that Spirit are various; sometimes they are purifying water, sometimes consuming fire; now light, then life; here terrors, there consolations.

The next passage of Scripture which seems to have given countenance to the doctrine of baptismal regeneration, is Titus iii. 5, "He saved us by the washing of regeneration and renewing of the Holy Ghost." At this we have already

glanced; and if the Scriptures alone had been man's teacher, we had said enough. For there is no more mention of baptism here, than in the preceding passage that we have considered; and what right has any one to introduce baptism, which the apostle could have mentioned, if such had been his design? If he twice mentions the blessing-regeneration and the renewing of the Holy Ghost, must it be concluded that he means both the sign and the thing signified? Have we not abundant proofs of the pleonastic form of teaching being employed by the same apostle, for the sake of emphasis? Does he not say, we are justified freely by grace, which is but saying the same thing twice. Have we not in Scripture such pleonasms as these, "He lifted up his eyes, and looked, and beheld? We have seen with our eyes, and heard with our ears."

But, perhaps, it is because the apostle uses the Greek word λετρον, which our translators render washing, and others would render laver, that it is supposed the word refers to baptism. Now it is remarkable that the same apostle uses this very word λerpov, and connects it with water, too, in a passage where we are sure no literal water is intended, and the reference to baptism is excluded by the apostle himself, Ephes. v. 26," That he might sanctify and cleanse her, by the laver of water in the word," as some would translate, which latter words show that the apostle had the same idea in his mind, as when he said to the Corinthians, "Having these promises, let us cleanse ourselves from all filthiness of the flesh and spirit;" the doctrine taught by our Lord's prayer, "Sanctify or cleanse them by thy truth-thy word is truth." If, then, the word may be called a laver, how much more that operation of the regenerating and sanctifying Spirit which gives the word its purifying effect! Not, however, that it is admitted that we ought to translate the Greek word, laver, rather than washing; for the Septuagint employs λerpov in a passage in which laver would be ridiculous as a translation, Canticles iv. 2, "as a flock of sheep, which came up from the washing." There is nothing in the Hebrew to give a hint of laver, for the word means simply washing; and who would think of a flock of sheep washed in the laver of the temple? Sheep are washed in a river. But what scriptural connexion is there between a laver and baptism, that

should have led to the notion that the latter is intended, because it was supposed that the former was mentioned? Baptists surely will not plead for this; for we have seen that it would exclude the idea of immersion, and convey that of affusion. A river, and not a laver, is mentioned in Scripture, when the performace of the rite is detailed; and the word of God furnishes nothing to suggest the idea of baptism by a laver. There is nothing then in this Epistle to Titus, or any other Scripture, to sanction the notion, that baptism is intended, or even alluded to, where regeneration is mentioned. For as there is but one more passage in which the word regeneration is used, Matt. xix. 28; and as this refers to a different thing, the change or regeneration of the whole state of the world, in which there can be no reference to baptism; we may affirm that there is no scriptural authority whatever for the phrase baptismal regeneration.

Some, however, fly to those texts which speak of baptism for the remission of sins, and being baptised and washing away sins. I am not bound to meet these texts; for they do not speak of regeneration, which is my present subject; but they are employed to teach what should be called baptismal justification; as I once heard Mr. Irving, when baptising, teach the doctrine of baptismal election; as in fact baptism has been made to stand for any thing and every thing.

Of baptismal justification it might be enough to say, that, when the apostles teach most explicitly and largely the doctrine of justification, they declare it is by faith alone, and that if we seek the blessing" as it were by works of law," "Christ shall profit us nothing." No incidental expressions, when another subject is spoken of, can be allowed, to overturn the manifest design of an express dissertation on justification.

The

former must be interpreted by the latter, not the latter by the former. "The just by his faith shall live," as the words of Habakkuk, quoted so frequently by the apostle, should be rendered.

But the doctrines of Paul and James have been opposed to each other; the first being supposed to teach justification by faith; the last, justification by works. The true solution of the difficulty is well known to be, that Paul teaches how we are justified, before God, and James

how we prove before men that we are justified; or, as James puts it, how we meet the demand, "Show me thy faith." The faith is still assumed to be that which justifieth, but the works are that which show it, or which justify us before men, who cannot see our faith.

When, therefore, Peter says to the murderers of Christ, "Repent, and be baptised, for the remission of sins," he shows how these murderers of the Lord were to prove that the crimes with which he had charged them were forgiven― by submitting to the law of Messiah, and serving him as Lord and Christ, by joining his subjects, and entering into his kingdom. In like manner, when Ananias said to Paul, "Arise, and be baptised, and wash away thy sins, calling on the name of the Lord," he told him how he was to show himself cleansed from the blood of the saints which he had shed, and from all his former sins, which the church would regard as forgiven, when Paul had given this public pledge of faith in Christ, by being baptised according to his command. In this way the evidence is put for the thing evidenced, and they who will not admit this principle of interpretation, which is abundantly sustained by Scripture, must go to Rome and believe transubstantiation, to which some of the Campbellites, in America, are manifestly tending, along with the authors of the Oxford Tracts. Thus extremes meet; as a ci-devant Quaker has lately published an address to the Friends, to recommend them to imitate him in turning Roman Catholic.

Let us, however, cleave to the Protestant, or rather to the apostolic doctrine, that a man is justified by faith, and that the blood of Jesus Christ is that which cleanseth from all sin, steering our course, in all our interpretation, by this which is held out to us as the polar star.

There is one text which may yet seem to require notice: "The like figure whereunto even baptism doth also now save us (not the putting away of the filth of the flesh, but the answer of a good conscience toward God,) by the resurrection of Jesus Christ," 1 Peter iii. 21. Here the apostle expressly says, that it is not the rite, but the blessing which it signifies, that saves us, which explains those passages that seem to ascribe salvation to the rite. For, if the apostle had merely said, "Baptism now saves us," what a triumph

our baptismal regeneration men would have enjoyed! But though Peter employs the expression that they would have preferred without his explanation, he snatches from them their triumph and gives it to us, by showing that a rite may be said to save us when it is meant, that, not the sign, the water that puts away the filth of the flesh, but the thing signified saves us the answer of a good conscience towards God by the resurrection of Jesus Christ. If, therefore, we have this, we are saved; if we have it not, we are not saved. He whose conscience speaks peace to him, through the resurrection of Christ, who was delivered for our offences, and raised again for our justification, is saved; he who is merely washed by baptism in that water that puts away the filth of the flesh, is not saved. Try we now baptismal regeneration,

2. By the writings of the fathers.

First of all, we should ask, who are they? And who can answer this? A long list may be given, from Clement of Rome down to Bernard. But the list would be wofully defective; for there is a host whose writings are lost, and who can assure us that they may not be found, and essentially modify the testimony of the fathers? But of those that remain, who shall distinguish the heretical from the orthodox? Tertullian, the first of the Latin fathers, turned Montanist, and who can with certainty separate what was said by him as a father from what was said by him as a schismatic or heretic? Origen, the most learned of the Greek fathers, was accused of heresy; so that the questo vexata of some centuries was whether his writings should be received as oracles, or put into the Index Expurgatorius. But, after all, who will pretend to have read and studied all the fathers? Many laborious students have contented themselves with reading Chrysostom, for the Greeks, and Augustine, for the Latins, concluding, that then they had the substance of them all. This is more than has been done by a great part of those who prate about the fathers.

But what is the credit due to them? The first converts from the Tahitians, Hottentots, and Chinese, will, in future ages, be the fathers of their churches: but will they be their best teachers? No; the men educated in heathenism, as many of the fathers were, will be the children; and their children, brought up

from infancy in the school of Christ, I will be the fathers.

The greatest nonsense may be gathered from the fathers. The first and purest of these, Clement of Rome, attempts to prove the resurrection by the fable of the phoenix, which he relates as a grave fact; and if there is a weak place where the defence of Christianity is difficult, it is on the side of the fathers. Many of them declare that the giants before the flood were the offspring of angels copulating with women. The demons were supposed by the fathers to have been of the same origin.

One thing should never be forgotten; that the earliest fathers wrote before controversy had sharpened the weapons of truth. They spoke, therefore, loosely, vaguely, inaccurately, such things as they would gladly have corrected, if they had been taught by subsequent controversies; and Augustine published a whole volume of Retractions, eating his own words,-not the most delicate or nourishing fare. Much of the writings of the fathers savours of Arianism and Arminianism; but, when Arius had roused Athanasius, and Sabellius, Augustine, these champions for the Trinity and for what is now called Calvinism were hailed as the champions of the church, proving, that, what seemed the Arianism and the Sabellianism of the church, was but the inaccuracy of individuals who had not been sharpened by con

troversy.

In this inaccurate way the fathers wrote about the sacraments; for they loved allegory and hyperbole, and proved that it was not without reason that Bede

spoke of some in his day, who used great swelling words of vanity."

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The Church of Rome can find much to countenance her in the false assertion that the Christian church always believed in the doctrine of transubstantiation, for figurative language in abundance may be brought to convince those who can believe that this doctrine is taught even in Scripture. That baptismal regeneration was, at last, believed through the whole apostate church, we admit; for this constituted a great part of the apostacy. So powerful an instrument in the hands of the priests, making them the administrators of salvation, was naturally seized with avidity, to which the inaccurate and highly figurative language of the fathers soon gave countenance. Of the first, or apostolic

age, we have nothing unquestionable beside the first epistle of Clemens Ronus; for the pretended epistle of Barnabas, and the Shepherd of Hermas, are too contemptible to be noticed. But as the apostles Paul and John inform us, that the mystery of iniquity" and of antichrist was at work in their day, what can we expect but more complete corruption after their decease?

In the second century, therefore, the mass of superstition appended to baptism is astonishing, and a sufficient proof that we cannot take the fathers for our Eguide. Justin Martyr does, indeed, say,

"The converts are conducted by us where there is water, and in the same way in which we are regenerated, they are regenerated:" to which he adds strange things. He says also, that "Christ is the beginner of another race; regenerated by him, through water, faith, and wood, that has the mystery of the cross; as Noah also was saved in wood, as the prophet says, in Noah have I saved thee," making some strange mystical allusion to the prophecies of Isaiah: "This is as the waters of Noah." What importance can we attach to the sentiments or expressions of a man that can write in this way, of being regenerated by water, and faith, and wood? But we must not bear too hard upon poor Justin, educated among heathens, when we see what theology issues from Oxford. Many of the fathers are the most wretched of all commentators; and if we did not know by our own times that fools write while wise men think, we should ask, in bitter scorn, were these the far-famed primitive Christians? But it seems to have been God's design to show the great gulf between inspired and uninspired writings, by the contrast between the Jewish Rabbies and the Hebrew prophets, and between the apostolical writings and those of the Christian fathers. Many passages may be produced from the fathers, however, to contradict the doctrine of baptismal regeneration, as for instance, Justin's regeneration by water and faith, and wood. For if we are regenerated by faith, we must believe first; and the Scriptures declare, that whoever believeth that Jesus is the Christ, is born of God, so that the regeneration of which the Scriptures speak is prior to that which is said to be by baptism. Again, if we can attach any meaning, at least, any respectable meaning, to being

regenerated by wood, it must mean the cross of Christ, as the meritorious cause of that grace which regenerates. Thus we see how largely and loosely the fathers spake of regeneration. Cyrill, of Jerusalem, in his third catechism, addressed expressly to the candidates for baptism, says, The soul being regenerated by faith, the body receives grace by water. He that searches the divine writings will find that grace is not given by any of the other elements. For water is something great, and is the most beautiful of the four visible elements of the world. Cyrill was not acquainted with modern chemistry, and would have deemed it heresy to talk of water as composed of oxygen and hydrogen. But he pours out a torrent of allegorical proofs of the importance of water and of baptism. Such nonsense, that if it had come from a Methodist preacher the men of Oriel would have despised it, but as it comes from a father it is worthy to share the faith we owe to the apostolic writings. After all, the regeneration of the soul Cyrill ascribes to faith, and that of the body alone to water. But our readers will say, "Enough of these fathers, who were mere children."

3. By facts we may try the doctrine of baptismal regeneration.

The Scriptures declare that regeneration is designed to produce certain effects, and is known by the production of these effects; but they show us Simon Magus baptised, and instantly pronounced, in consequence of his conduct, to have " no part or lot with Christians, but to be in the gall of bitterness and bond of iniquity." Here is no sign of what the Oxford Tracts call "the mysterious communication of grace by water baptism." Vol. I. No. 40.

So far is the word of God from conveying the notion of regeneration being imparted by baptism, that we are informed that adults gave proof of their regeneration, in order to entitle them to baptism. For John says, "He that believeth that Jesus is the Christ, is born of God;" and Philip told the Ethiopian that, "if he believed with all his heart, he might be baptised."

As to facts, they furnish no evidence of regeneration by baptism; but abundant evidence of regeneration by the word; though the advertisement to the Oxford Tracts has dared to say, "That the sacraments, not preaching,