THE

PRIMITIVE DOCTRINE

OF

BAPTISMAL REGENERATION.

CHAPTER I.

THE PRIMITIVE SENSE OF THE TERM REGENERATION AS ASCERTAINED FROM THE SCRIPTURAL AND PATRISTIC USE OF IT.

THE primitive doctrine of Baptismal Regeneration depends on two points, first, the sense of the term regeneration, and, secondly, the mode in which such regeneration is connected with baptism. I shall devote the present and the following chapter to the task of ascertaining the former point. And, first, I shall endeavour to ascertain the sense of the term, from its use in Scripture, and the writings of the Fathers.

It must be observed, then, to begin with, that the alternative with respect to regeneration lies between two senses, that of actual goodness, and that of a grace enabling to be good. By some regeneration is regarded as a new state of spiritual power or capacity, and no more; and, so understood, it does not include actual goodness and holiness in its meaning at all, but is a state which the most wicked as well as the best of men may be in alike. We see men in common life endowed by nature with greater powers of mind than others, with finer affections, with a quicker sense, with deeper tastes, and with a whole temperament which would have enabled them, had they chosen to direct it to such an

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end, to have attained a higher goodness than the average of men can attain to, but who, in the absence of such a moral use of their gifts, are by no means better than ordinary men, but very often worse, and sometimes, indeed, the worst of men. In the same way the possession of the highest spiritual powers and capacities is wholly distinct from spirituality in fact, and in forming our idea of the state of regeneration in this sense, we must wholly put the idea of actual goodness aside; for in whatever language we may exalt this state, and however incomprehensible we may assert it to be, and whatever gifts and powers we may include in it, and however mysterious and sublime we may suppose these to be, it is plain that, so long as we regard regeneration as a state of spiritual capacity simply, or contemplate the gifts and powers contained in it, as depending for their fruit upon a contingent will, regeneration does not imply any actual goodness. The height, or extent, or mysteriousness of the spiritual capacity does not make it differ in the least from the commonest moral one in this respect, that the possession of it is no pledge for the use of it, and is therefore consistent with the greatest actual wickedness in the possessor. Regeneration is in this sense no more than a neutral and indeterminate state common to good and bad alike.

By others, again, regeneration is regarded as a state, not of capacity only for goodness and holiness, but of goodness and holiness itself. An examination of the Scriptural and Patristic use of the term will, I think, decide the question in favour of this latter signification; and the inquiry in the present chapter will turn upon the four following heads:

I. Regeneration implies in the primitive sense real and actual goodness, in distinction to a capacity for it.

II. Regeneration implies final goodness, as distinguished from goodness for the time being.

III. Regeneration is an imparted as distinguished from an acquired goodness.

IV. Regeneration is not the less real and actual goodness because it is imparted.

I. & II. The two first heads are, with respect to the grounds and proof of them, so intimately connected and mixed together, that I shall treat them as one, and shall endeavour to show under one head that regeneration is, in the primitive sense, actual goodness, and that goodness a final and perfect one. But I will make two preliminary observations:

1. The question what any particular word means in its primitive use must of course be decided by a reference to that use. It will not, however, be wholly irrelevant to observe that the term born again, as applied to the moral creature, appears of itself to suggest a somewhat higher meaning than that of being merely endowed with certain new capacities, moral or spiritual. Whatever be the exact meaning of a man's being born again, the expression certainly appears to stand for the greatest change that can take place in the condition of the moral creature: for can we imagine any greater change than a new existence? But the circumstance of being endowed with additional capacities and means for a good life is so far from being in itself the greatest change that can take place in the moral being, that in the case of a vast portion of those who have these advantages bestowed on them, no change results whatever, the individual remaining just the same in spite of them. A change in our capacities and resources is a change in our circumstances rather than in ourselves; but to be born again certainly suggests at first sight the meaning of a change in ourselves, being different men to what we were before, being new creatures; and, a change of personal identity being a contradiction, a change of moral character appears to be pointed at as the greatest personal change that there can be. And here I cannot but notice that the use of the expression new nature, in the place of the Scriptural one of new birth, tends to suppress or disguise this natural conclusion. There can be no harm in varying a word, provided the original

meaning still continues in the mind of the person using it. But the term nature suggests a somewhat different meaning from that which birth does; nature, in our common use of the word, referring more to the man's powers and endowments, and birth referring to the man himself. The term new nature,” then, does not carry upon it, at first sight, so much of the meaning of a personal change as the term new "birth" does.

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2. Again, I will caution the reader against a particular use which is sometimes made of the term birth, in the phrase "born again," which will lead him in a wrong direction as to the meaning of this phrase. Birth is sometimes regarded in this phrase, as if it were used in tacit distinction to subsequent growth; and the distinction between birth and growth thus assumed is turned into a distinction between the faculty and the state of goodness; the birth, as the beginning, standing for the faculty, and the subsequent growth and life, to which it is supposed to be contrasted, for the state of goodness. The result of this distinction is, that regeneration or the new birth is regarded as a capacity for holiness, instead of holiness itself. But, first, were this distinction between birth and subsequent growth and maturity intended in the phrase, it would not be the same distinction as that of the faculty and the state, but a very different one. For growth follows inevitably upon birth, the proper circumstances permitting: the plant grows to be a tree, the child to be a man, necessarily; but the state of goodness does not at all necessarily follow upon the faculty. But the distinction is, to begin with, untrue, and is not designed in the phrase. In the phrase "born of God," and "born again," though birth is commencing life, the stress is laid evidently not on the commencement but on the life; it is a new life which is contrasted with an old one, not one part of the new life which is contrasted with another part, The stress is not upon the birth, but upon the peculiar kind of birth,—that it is a second one, and a Divine one,

Nor, indeed, is "born" or "birth" the word always used in this class of expressions, "son of God" being used as often, and the term "son" being plainly independent of any distinction of this kind.

The new birth is expressed in Scripture in two ways, as the being born of God, and the being born again. And under both these forms of expression it will be found to signify a real virtue and holiness, and not the mere power or capacity of becoming good and holy.

1. In the Scriptural phrase "being born of," or "being a son of," the relation of sonship to any one is contemplated as involving an inheritance of his moral character. By a law of the physical world the offspring succeeds at its birth to the nature of the parent; each fresh generation is only the reproduction of an original type, and the whole succession of individuals is united in the identity of a race. Sonship, then, is a pledge for a likeness of nature in one being to another. The moral character, however, of the creature is not part of his nature, but is the result of a contingent will; and, therefore, there is no pledge in human sonship for a similarity of moral character. In Scriptural language, however, this law of transmission is transferred from the one subject matter to the other; sonship is contemplated as involving an inheritance of the moral character of the father; and the phrase "being born of" or "being a son of" any one, stands to express a person's being morally like that other personage from whom he is thus said to be born. Thus our Lord tells the Jews that if they were the children of Abraham, they would do the works of Abraham; but that as they do the works of the devil, they are the children of the devil.1

Upon the common ground of sonship, then, to be a son of God means, in Scripture, to be good, because God is

1 John viii. 39.