are enlisted and protected in our blessed Master's service. May we ever use them so uniformly and effectually, that we may bring forth the fruits of holy living, to the honour and glory of God's name, aad the welfare of our own souls, through Jesus Christ our Lord. To whom, &c.

VOL. III.

LECTURE XLVI.

OF BAPTISM.

MATTHEW, XXVIII. 19,

Go ye, therefore, and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost,

Ir has been shown you, in the preceding Lecture upon the subject of the sacraments in general, that the texts advanced are the scriptural warrants for the positive institution of these holy rites. At present, I shall discourse to you upon the nature and design of BAPTISM, and the several ways of administering this sacrament.

By the doctrine of our Church, we esteem baptism as the first sacrament of the New Testament; and it is a sacrament of such vast importance for all Christians to receive and understand, that you cannot be too attentive to what I shall (with God's blessing) deliver to you at this time, for your instruction on the subject. I will endeavour to make what it is necessary for

you to know upon it, as plain as possible to the capacity of the most unlearned hearer.

I should hope it almost needless to acquaint you, that it is an essential article of our Christian faith, that we must partake of another birth, besides this which introduced us to a sense and desire of temporal things, or we cannot be qualified for another and better state of existence after the present life is over. This doctrine is laid down by the divine Author of our religion (John, iii. 3, 4, 5): Jesus said, Verily, verily, I say unto you, except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God: that is, he can neither perceive the things that belong to this kingdom here (meaning the spiritual kingdom within us, the knowledge of divine things), nor be prepared for an actual enjoyment of the kingdom of heaven hereafter; for, to this end, he must be born again of the Spirit, and that for this plain reason, because the things of God can only be spiritually discerned. For, as it is absolutely necessary that we should be furnished with organs and senses particularly adapted for discerning and using the things of this carnal, temporal world, so is it equally expedient that we should be supplied with proper powers to enable us to apprehend and relish the things that belong to our future state of happiness.

(i. e. the man only judging

The natural man

according to the

course of this world), the vain philosopher, the carnal-minded person, cannot reconcile such a doctrine with the intelligence of mere human reason; and therefore in the next verse we see Nicodemus, who, though he was a master in Israel, a doctor of the law, and probably a good moral man, yet could not comprehend it, any more than a new-born infant, but taking it at the letter, proposes this foolish question to our Lord: How can a man be born when he is old? can he enter the second time into his mother's womb, and be born? Our blessed Master condescends to stoop to his infirmity by nature, to correct his ignorance, and to inform him of the truth: Verily, I say unto thee, except a man be born of water and of the Spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God. Here is another testimony of the outward visible sign, and the inward spiritual grace, of which this sacrament is composed; and that there is indisputably another birth besides that of the flesh, to render a man a member of Christ's body, and which these words fully prove For that which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit; and this is that new and spiritual birth, our Church holds forth as a principle of our Christian faith..

Baptism, then, is the solemn means of our being admitted or entered into the communion of the Christian church; into covenant with