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put such a fraud upon me as to translate these words back into the very phrase of which they are given as the explanation! But, are they a fair and legitimate explanation of it? Supposing they

were, those facts of conversion would not be less, but much more intelligible than they are; supposing they were, we should not have to suppose that Luther was quite ignorant of the truth which he lived to preach. But what warrant have we for saying that they are? I have answered this question already in my last Letter. I maintained that Christ, by whom, and for whom all things were created, and in whom all things consist, has made reconciliation for mankind; that on the ground of this atonement for mankind, God has built his church, declaring men one family in Christ; inviting all men to consider themselves so; assuring them that only in Christ they are or can be one family; that, separate from him they must be separate from each other. Therefore we, believing there is such an atonement, and that such a declaration has gone forth, and that it is a sin for men to account themselves separate from Christ, and separate from each other, when God has, by such a wonderful act, declared them to be one body in him; and believing that the mark of that universal body or fellowship, appointed by God himself is Baptism, do, without fear or scruple, asseverate of ourselves, and of all others who will come to this holy Baptism, of all who bear the marks and impress of that nature which Christ took, in his birth, of the blessed Virgin; that

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they are admitted into these high and glorious privileges; that they are brought into a state of salvation; that they are made sons of God and heirs of everlasting life; and that for this they are to give thanks to God unceasingly, and to look to Him who has introduced them to such a dignity to keep them in it even to the end. And in saying this, we contend that we give honour to the free grace and redemption of God; that we give faith, the faith of the child, the faith of the boy, the faith of the man, a ground upon which to stand, and which otherwise it cannot have. We say, hereby we are able to teach little children, that a Father's eye is upon them in love; hereby we are able to tell the young man, who is beginning to feel that he carries within him an accursed nature, which is not subject to the law of God, neither indeed can be, that by union with Christ he may rise out of that nature, and trample it under his feet; and this whether he has always maintained a fight against that nature, leaning upon the promise of his Baptism; or whether he has sunk under its dominion, and become the slave of the sin out of which Christ delivered him ; for in the last case, as much as in the first, we say he must be taught that he is united to Christ; and that by not claiming that union, by trusting in himself, by thinking that he was something when he was nothing, he has become the servant of the devil, not of his true Lord; consequently, that if he would not continue in sin, he must assert that glorious privilege of which, by his own

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act, he has deprived himself. Lastly, hereby we enable a man, in the midst of the world's conflict and bustle, not to spend his life in fretful and selfish questionings and debatings whether he is a child of God or no, but boldly to take up the rights of one, and enter into communion with his Father; and to seek for the knowledge of God, which is eternal life; and to do his will from the heart, by his spirit dwelling in him, and to look or the manifestation of Christ from heaven, when the redeemed body shall rejoice with the redeemed Spirit, when all evil shall be cast out for ever from the kingdom of God, and when God shall be all in

all.

Thus have I justified the truth which the Evangelical party assert respecting Baptism, and cleared it of the contradictions with which it seems to me that they have encompassed it. I say you are right that Baptism is an admission into the visible church. Only understand what that implies, what it must imply, in order that your justification and your conversion may have any meaning; in order that your preaching may have a power and reality, in which now, alas! it is grievously wanting; in order that you may not be perplexed with perpetual puzzles about the degree in which you may encourage your people to believe themselves what God has declared them to be; in order that you may not keep their consciences in perpetual bondage, while you pretend to set them free; in order that you may not exalt those whom God would humble, and make those sad whom he

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has not made sad; in order that you may not hinder your hearers from drawing nigh to God with a pure heart and faith unfeigned, and receiving the blessings which God has promised to all who seek him.

I now turn to the High Church view of Baptism, against which, I hope, you may feel somewhat less prejudice than you did when I commenced the discussion. You will, I think, be inclined to believe that those who hold this view may not be "all (with possibly a few exceptions,) open sinners. self-righteous Pharisees and dead formalists," as Mr. Philpot, late of Worcester College, kindly reports of them; or in the more gentle and humane language of the Record Newspaper, (though it, I believe, does not acknowledge the possibility of any exceptions), "soul-destroyers." This is all I desire; for, as I told you in the beginning of my letter, I am not about to set up their notion as the true and exclusive one. I mean to show you wherein I think it inconsistent with itself and with the idea of the church, and how that inconsistency must be removed from it before it can be reconciled with the views of the other parties, and can contribute an element to that grand idea of Baptism which will, I believe, result from their union.

The doctrines of this party, which are nowhere so ably and so eloquently expressed as in the tracts of Dr. Pusey, (published the year before last,) entitled "Scripture views of Baptism," turn, as I have said, mainly upon the principle that God,

of his free will and mere grace, does, by the opera tion of the Spirit, in the act of Baptism, change the nature of the person partaking that ordinance, and thereby constitute him his child, the member of Christ, the heir of heaven. If you read Dr. Pusey's tracts, you will see at once, that no other notion of regeneration except that which is implied in the words Change of Nature, has ever struck him as even possible; or if it has, that he has at once rejected it as inadequate. This is the point which I wish now to examine.

In older and simpler times, every thoughtful man felt deep thankfulness to our Lord for the wonderful blessing which he conferred on us by teaching us the phrase New Birth, or Birth from above. To be taken out of the region of abstractions, to be presented with a fact of every day occurence, yet still amazing and mysterious, as a key to this deeper mystery, to be able to translate words into life,-this was exactly what every man who knew his wants felt that he needed. It was a fulfilment of the promise, that the Lord would teach his people a pure language, a language which they might interpret, not by a dictionary, but by another part of his own scheme, a part of it known to all tribes of the earth, to rich and poor, learned and unlearned alike. Therefore, understanding this to be the intent of Christ, they meditated on the obvious facts of ordinary birth, and thus they felt that their minds became clearer respecting the more transcendent truth. That the body passes from the dark night