99 the Prophets in the Old Testament fulfil at once both these functions, that of national poet, and that of the true pourtrayer of the nation; extolling the holy and elect people on the one side, while on the other they expose and rebuke, with all the force of an inspired indignation, the vices of the same people, their dishonesty, avarice, injustice, and disobedience. The Apostles fulfil the same double function; and while they glorify the Christian Church as the undefiled spouse of Christ, the heavenly Jerusalem, and the assembly of just men made perfect, they rebuke the sins and corruptions of the same Church, its internal dissensions, jealousies, and unbelief. On the one side all its members are described as dead to sin and risen with Christ; on the other, filthy dreamers, who defile the flesh, who corrupt themselves like brute beasts, who have gone in the way of Cain, and run greedily after the error of Balaam, murmurers, complainers, walking after their own lusts, speaking great swelling words, and foaming out their own shame, are rebuked and threatened; the blackness of darkness is declared to be in reserve for them, and the coming of the Lord is prophesied to judge their ungodly deeds. The presumption of the New Testament is, then, that Christians are saints and holy men; but when the contrary is ascertained in the case of any Christians, the whole previous presumption at once falls to the ground; every individual case stands on its own merits, and the man is judged according to fact. Two different languages and points of view respecting the church and its members, thus go on in the New Testament simultaneously.

The Fathers have the same twofold language. On the one side, they presume that all the members of the church are saints, that they have died to sin and risen with Christ, that they have put on Christ and are clothed with righteousness; they presume about them all that of which regeneration is the summary and technical name. All this is assumed as the effect of baptism, and is supposed, as a matter of course, to accompany that rite of admission into the church; because

with the Apostle they will not contemplate beforehand any lower result. But when they come to an individual case they give up their presumption, and decide it according to facts. They do not allow that a man who lives in sin has died to sin, risen again, been born again, or put on Christ. Before they knew him they presumed it of him; but they do so no longer when they know him, and know that his life does not verify the presumption. St. Jerome says of such men, that they have an apparent and external baptism; but he denies that they have a baptism to Christ, or have put on Christ. By baptism into Christ, and putting on Christ, he obviously means the spiritual grace of baptism or regeneration, as distinguished from the outward rite. So we see that when he has distinctly before him the case of a wicked man, he denies that he is regenerate. St. Basil says that those who trample on the baptismal robe by sinning are stripped of it. It is evident, then, that when he has a sinful life distinctly before him, he does not contemplate the spiritual grace of baptism or regeneration, which the robe signifies, as co-existent with such a life. As soon as he imagines the individual wicked, he imagines him also naked and without the robe, i. e. without the grace associated with baptism, or regeneration."Show me," says St. Gregory Nyssen, " ye who boast of your regeneration and renovation, your morals changed, and prove the reality of your new state by the purity of your life. Let us have some sure proof by which we may know that you are born again; some manifest tokens by which we may distinguish the new man from the old. Before baptism a man was dissolute, avaricious, rapacious,

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'Si quis hoc corporeum et quod oculis carnis aspicitur, aquæ tantum accipit lavacrum, non est indutus Dominum Christum. Hæretici vel hypocritæ et hi qui sordide victitant, videntur quidem accipere baptismum, sed nescio an Christi habeant indumentum. Itaque consideremus ne forte et in nobis aliquis deprehendatur, qui

ex eo quod Christi non habet indumentum arguatur non baptizatus in Christo. -Jerom. in Gal. c. 3. v. 27.

2 Αφαιρείται μέντοι ἀφ' ἡμῶν τὴν δόξαν τοῦ ἱματισμοῦ, ἐὰν ἀναξίως αὐτῷ κει χρημένοι φανῶμεν, καταπατοῦντες αὐτὸν, καὶ τῶν σαρκικῶν μολυσμάτων ἀναπίμ- Basil in Esai. c. 3. v. 18.

πλαντες.

contumacious, a liar, a calumniator; after it let him be modest, sober, contented, charitable, truthful, courteous, affable. As darkness is dispersed by light, so is the old man effaced by righteous actions. Zacchæus after his call changed his course of life; Paul was a persecutor before grace, an Apostle after. Such should be regeneration; so should we abolish the inclination to sin; such should be the conversation of the sons of God, as we after grace are called. We must copy the attributes of our Father, if we would be His true and lawful sons. Our Lord says that we must bless those that hate us, and pray for those that despitefully use us and persecute us, if we would be the children of our Father which is in heaven. He says that we become the sons of God when we imitate the goodness of God."1 Such passages as these, representing a general line of teaching in the Fathers, appear certainly to show that, however before-hand they may suppose all men regenerate and children of God, who have been admitted into the church by baptism, when they come to the individual case, they decide it by fact. Is the man a good man? if he is, he is a son of God; if he is not, however he may have been called and presumed to be such in baptism, he is not really a son of God. This is their rule of dealing with the baptized Christian.

The distinction, indeed, between outward baptism and inward is one which of itself implies this rule. "I speak not," says Cyril," of the regeneration of the body, but of the spiritual regeneration of the soul.” 2 "There is the baptism of water," says St. Jerome, "and there is the baptism of Christ." Here two baptisms are spoken of, one of which implies regeneration, while the other does not. And what is the test of possessing that baptism which implies regeneration? A holy life. "Those who remain in their sins," says Cyril,

1

"have not attained to the grace of God which is given through Christ in the regeneration of baptism." "Those who live ill," says Jerome, "have an apparent baptism, but not the robe of Christ."2 St. Cyril is, indeed, in the above statement that a sinful life is inconsistent with regeneration referring to a sinful life at the time of receiving baptism; but Jerome's is made without any such special referNor, indeed, is this difference at all an important or relevant one. For regeneration implying, as has been shown, real goodness, a state of sin is as much opposed to it after, as it is at the very time of, baptism. Outward baptism, then, as distinguished from inward, is a term or phrase for the unregenerate state, which the Fathers apply when they are obliged to acknowledge that some members of the Christian Church are not what they were presumed to be. By presumption the whole body was regenerate; but as soon as ever they come to facts, then they divide and distinguish between one part of this body and another, between the true and the false members of it, between those who have undergone the rite, and those who possess the grace represented in baptism. Before they know they hope the best, and they express this hope by assertion; but they will not allow a wicked man, recognised as such, to be regenerate.

I have conducted my readers from the Old Testament to the New, and from the New Testament to the Fathers. It only remains now that I should bring this subject to its natural goal; that, viz., which it attains in the formularies of our Church. In our baptismal service every child is, upon his baptism, asserted to be regenerate; and in our Catechism, the same child is told to assert of himself, that he is a member of Christ, a child of God, an inheritor of the kingdom of heaven; and that he has received, in his baptism, the benefit of a death unto sin and a new birth unto righteousness. The present chapter has decided the sense in which these state

Catech. Lect. 1.

2 In Gal. iii. 27, 28.

ments are to be understood, viz., that they are hypothetical. It has also met the objection made to this mode of interpretation, as not being literal. I will only repeat here that the real question is, not what is the literal interpretation of these statements, but what is the true one. These statements in our formularies come before us with a certain history appended to them: these are old statements, which have descended from prophets to apostles, from apostles to fathers, and from fathers age after age downwards; till at last we find them before us in our own Prayer-book and ritual. These statements must not, therefore, be isolated, separated from all previous interpretative data, and judged of by themselves. They must be interpreted in connexion with their history, and in connexion with previous language. The asserted regeneration of the whole body of the baptized in our Prayer-book is but the continuation of the asserted righteousness of the holy nation in the Old Testament, and the asserted glory of the Christian Church in the New. The assertion in our formularies is the hereditary representative of an old assertion pervading all Scripture. Is that assertion of Scripture, then, a literal or hypothetical one? If the latter, then is the one in our formularies hypothetical too. The term regenerate comes down to us with a particular meaning stamped upon it, which we cannot remove; according to which meaning it cannot possibly be asserted literally of all baptized persons. This is therefore an hypothetical assertion. A bias in favour of a literal interpretation operates as an obstacle to sound interpretation instead of an assistant to it, if it induces us to invent a meaning for a term which it never had, in order that by help of such a meaning we may produce a literal interpretation. And worse still does this bias for literal interpretation operate, when it leads, as it does in the present instance, even to its own total and conspicuous frustration; when it carries us to the most flagrant and obvious distortion of the natural meaning of words; when it makes us, for the sake of literal interpretation, neglect and violate lite