CHURCHMEN NEED NOT CONCEAL THEM. 73

why we may not have the same liberty of thinking, which, it seems, is permitted in the church. Or there is still another alternative, our letterwriter, an anonymous individual, may set up a scheme different from all these; and then, exquisite modesty! require our assent to that to which, perhaps, nobody in England but himself subscribes, and this by way of asserting a catholic doctrine! Any way, if you watch him well, you will find that he is smuggling in the opinion of some party or some individual; calling that the church's opinion; calling the church's opinion the Scripture opinion; and, by these different pretences, forcing a doctrine down the throats of those poor persons who are wise enough to open their mouths for the purpose of receiving it."

Such, you are well aware, will be the language, mixed, of course, with many smartnesses, which, through poverty of invention, I am not capable of anticipating, with which the religious newspapers will accost me, if they chance to become aware of my project. In a somewhat different style, I will meet each objection separately. It is fancied that a Churchman must wish to disguise the fact, that there are serious differences of opinion among those who belong to his communion on the subject of Baptism. If it be meant that he will not speak of such divisions with levity; that they cost him many a bitter tear in secret; that in his best moments he could count his life a cheap sacrifice if he might heal them;

74

THEY PROVE HIS PRINCIPLES.

-the charge is one which he can bear very well, --which he only fears is too honourable for him, -which he prays may become truer every day. But if it be meant, that it is his particular interest as a Churchman to hide these facts (seeing they exist) from the world, he begs to ask, For what reason? If he were very zealous in maintaining that the Church of God is a voluntary association, dependent for its existence solely upon the faith, the holiness, and the unity of its members, concealment of facts which indicate too plainly that this faith, and holiness, and unity are not what they should be, (are lower, perhaps, though on this point it must be absurd to express an opinion, than they were in any former age), would be almost a virtue, so greatly would the promises and truth of God be endangered by the disclosure. But if this is exactly what he does not maintain, exactly what he is at such constant pains to prove is not the case; if the burden of his song from morning to night is this, God is true though every man be a liar ;-he has established permanent symbols and witnesses of his truth; all men are admitted to partake the blessings of these symbols; and if they do not, it is their loss-the truth remains: why should he, of all men in the world, be most anxious to conceal the most striking, most appalling evidences of his own position? I protest, if we did not believe that arguments are made for man, not man for arguments, and, consequently, that the interests of our species must not be sacrificed for the

OPPOSITE VIEWS MAY BE TRUE

75

sake of making good any conclusion; and if we were not convinced that it is injuring our fellowmen to present them continually with instances of confusion and evil, instead of leading them to think on whatsoever things are pure, lovely, and of good report; and if we were not ashamed to attack crimes in other men, from which we feel that we are not exempt; and if it were not better to confess our own sins and theirs to God than to men, we should be always parading forth the errors with which church history abounds; so mightily do they make in favour of that principle which we, as Churchmen, are labouring to establish. But again, it is said, that I must either adopt one of those notions which are current in the church; or else, which is more presumptuous still, set up a notion of my own, to supersede them all. With submission, I will do neither of these things. I will consider each of these opinions; I will attempt to show how and wherein each seems to have denied the truth of the others. I will attempt to show how that which each really prizes, that which he feels he cannot part with, will unite in a principle-larger, deeper, more satisfactory, than any of the three, yet freed from the perplexities and contradictions which each has felt in the opinions of the others, and occasionally in his own. Will this be choosing any of the opposing notions, which prevail, and putting myself to the necessity of explaining how the others still exist? Will it not be accounting for thom all, and justifying them all? Will it be setting up a

76 THE CHURCH AND THE SCRIPTURE.

crotchet of my own in preference to the opinions of wiser, better, and more experienced men? Will it not be rather refusing to set up my judgment against any of them; refusing to determine to which of them I shall not render the respect and homage which I feel that all have a right to claim from me? But at least, I must on my own authority determine this view to be that of the church.' Not until I have brought you to confess, that each of these parties was right in reading its own view in the forms of the church; not till I have shown that each has failed, palpably failed, in identifying its own views with those of the forms of the church; not till I have shown you, that it is by the forms of the church, and not by my own wit, that I have been led to see how truly each of these views includes a portion of the meaning of Baptism, how its full meaning is only expressed by the union of them all. But then, I must assume the Scripture view and the church view to be the same.' Not if you can find another that coincides equally with the letter of Scripture, the spirit of Scripture, the scheme of Scripture. 'But, after all, this view is to be forced upon you,' Not unless you want it. If there are no wants in your mind and heart which require such an idea of Baptism, and will not be content without it, I know that I may allege the union of discordant opinions, the authority of the church, the consistency of Scripture, in vain. If there be, you will seize it, though the person who offers it to you be the silliest man in Europe. In your case I

REGENERATION.

77

know there are such wants. I therefore set before you that which I believe will satisfy them. In the case of the writers in religious newspapers, whose craft is to make paper shrines to the great goddess of opinion, which the religious world worships, I do not suppose that there are any such wants. They have their own peculiar wants; the spirit of strife and division caters to them abundantly. We have no command to supply them with food; on the contrary, the injunction is very peremptory, Give not that which is holy unto dogs, neither cast ye your pearls before swine, lest they trample them under their feet, and turn again and rend you.'

6

I need not tell you, that our formularies speak of a baptised child as regenerate. All churchmen, therefore, who acknowledge and use these formularies, of course, believe that in some sense or other the child is regenerate. The question is, In what sense? Here the dispute begins to which I have alluded. Those who, in honour or derision are called High Churchmen, maintain that the words are to be construed strictly,—that they denote a positive change in the moral and spiritual condition of any person to whom they are applicable, and fix Baptism as the period of that change. Those who, in honour or derision are called Evangelicals, affirm that no moral or spiritual change can take place in an unconscious subject; that the word regeneration, in its highest sense, signifies such a change, and describes the state of a man who has actually and consci