ADVERTISEMENT. It is presumed that the title-page will suffificiently account for the revival of this excellent discourse: for regeneration is a hard word, and a very serious thing; and is now bandied about, rather indecently, by too many, who seither know what they say, nor whereof they affirm. The decision of our church upon this subject is so explicitly set forth in the Office for the Public Baptism of Infants, that a man must have cast away the wisdom of the serpent, however he may retain the innocence of the dove-his charity must have swallowed up his common-sense--before he can persuade himself, that, even by the least-cultivated understanding, her meaning can be innocently misunderstood. Yet, strange to tell, they who arrogate to themselves the title of being her only faithful supporters, and of exclusively preaching the doctrines which in her Articles, Liturgy, and Homilies, she professes to believe, whenever they speak upon the subject, (and it is a subject which, somehow or other, they contrive to introduce into every discourse they deliver,) speak of it in terms diametrically opposite to that which she promulgates as the truth. For, whereas she assures every parent whose child her ministers have bap tized, that it is by this sacrament" regenerated ;" and solemnly returns thanks to God," for that it “ hath pleased him to regenerate the infant with “ his Holy Spirit, and to make him his own child “ by adoption;" they, on the contrary, continually address these infants, after they are come to years of maturity, as unregenerate, and teach them to expect from their preaching the benefit of regeneration. Thus they rob the sacrament of its “ inward and spiritual grace,” reducing it to a beggarly element, communicative of no benefit whatever, and charge the church with imposing upon her ministers the fearful impiety both of deceiving the people, and of lying unto God; and all this, that they may attract to their own persons exclusive admiration, and may draw away disciples after them. Again, whereas the church instructs parents to believe, that their children “may lead “ the rest of their lives according to that begin“ ning”- that, like Obadiah, they may fear the Lord from their youth—and that this is all they have to pray for in their behalf, since this will make their calling and election sure ; these men, on the other hand, teach their hearers, that, “ if they “ cannot prove the time when they really hated God, they hate him still”—and that “ their present experience, if they be really regenerate, “ will be as different from their former as light « from darkness." These two last-mentioned 1 positions are no slanderous imputations on the persons in question: for they were taken from the mouth of one of the ablest preachers of this description, who draws together a mixed multitude, every Sunday afternoon, to one of the churches bordering upon the metropolis, and who scarcely , ever fails to appeal to the authoritative declarations of our church, for proof of the orthodoxy of his opinions. The tide of these perverse opinions is, it is confessed, at present running very strong against us, and threatens to overwhelm every one who ventures to oppose it. But this will not excuse God's faithful servants from striving against the stream, and from attempting, at least, by the strongest barriers they can set up, to check its impetuosity: and if we are now dwindled down into so puny a race, that we cannot stem the torrent with our own strength, we shall do a service which we humbly hope will be accepted both by the church and its immortal Head, in bringing forward again those giants of former days, who, though dead, yet live to us in their writings, and who, by their well-directed opposition, kept under, during their own times, these overflowings of sectarian malignity. The name of WATERLAND stands very high in this list of worthies; and as he spake not in his life-time without commanding attention, we hope that he will not now speak in vain ; but that his words, being the words of one truly wise, will be either as goads, pricking those to the heart who have, with such indefatigable industry, propagated heresies which he has long ago so completely refuted; or else be as nails fastened by the masters of assemblies*, not to be driven from their hold even by the united effort of fanatical violence. Having therefore recovered them from the mouldering heap, in which they have been suffered to lie too long concealed and neglected, we tender them to our church, in these the days of her extreme necessity, when all the planks seem starting on which under God her security depends, in token of our unshaken fidelity to her interests, and of our resolution to maintain her cause, or, should these her enemies be permitted in judgment to prevail, to esteem the reproach of Christ greater riches than the treasures of Egypt; and impressed with these sentiments, subscribe ourselves |