therefore regenerate infants are in a higher state then regenerate adults. The present question concerns not the regenerate state itself in infants and adults, but simply the evidence on which we judge them to be in that state. The presumptive regeneration of adults, as distinguished from the certain, follows simply from the general nature of probable evidence as distinguished from demonstrative. The character is the test of regeneration," and the character of a grownup man is a contingent fact which is decided by probable evidence, just as other such facts are; while the character of infants is necessary, and the result of a law of nature. But the regenerate state itself is doubtless a much higher state in an adult than in an infant, as being the result of personal discipline, probation, and trial of the will.

This holiness of infants, with its peculiar characteristic of certainty, figures in the Augustinian system as, like all other holiness, the result of Divine predestination; and with their certain holiness, their certain regeneration figures as the result of the same decree. St. Augustine everywhere asserts that baptized infants, dying in infancy, are certainly saved, which is to say, that they are certainly regenerate; but when the grounds of this statement are explained, it appears that he regards such certainty of salvation as the effect not of their baptism alone, which would be wholly insufficient to produce it, but of, together with their baptism, something over and above it, viz., the certainty of their final holiness, caused by their early death, before exposure to the possibility of actual sin. This merciful relief again from trial, this stroke which removes them from the world before any experience of its corruptions, any exposure to its snares, which takes them from the evil to come, and early calls them away, "lest wickedness should alter their understanding, or deceit beguile their souls," is the result of a Divine decree which from all eternity preordained it. The certain salvation of infants is thus the effect of a special Divine decree operating to their good, over and above the common

and promiscuous gift of baptism, and arranging for them in particular a certain final holiness. The gift of early death is in the Augustinian system one form of the grace of final perseverance: the same God who secures the elect adult from the bad effect of trial, saves the elect infant from meeting it, and gives victory in the one case, innocence in the other.

NOTE.

I HAVE assumed in this treatise that the alternative in the case of baptismal regeneration lies between an actual goodness which is hypothetically, and a capacity which is literally, possessed by all the baptized. Bishop Bethell, however, in the preface to his work on Baptismal Regeneration notices an opinion, entertained, it would appear, by some even now, that actual virtues and holy dispositions are infused into the minds of infants at baptism, and that this constitutes their regeneration. On this idea, then, as being an attempt to unite both points, ¿.e., actual goodness as the sense of regeneration, with the literal bestowal of such regeneration on all the baptized i. e. all baptized in infancy, I will make one or two remarks.

In the first place, then, I must observe that this idea, if tenable, is wholly at variance with the more common and received doctrine of regeneration as a spiritual capacity simply, imparted in baptism; and that it would alter the whole of that more common and received language with respect to baptismal regeneration, founded on the latter supposition. For according to this idea, regeneration consisting in actual virtues and holy dispositions, would be coincident with such dispositions among the baptized; the infant would be regenerate so long as he remained such; the adult so long as he retained the holy dispositions imparted to him in infancy; but one who lost these holy dispositions, and fell into sinful habits, would be no longer regenerate. But the more common and received language, which is founded on the supposi

tion of regeneration being a capacity, speaks of men as wicked and as regenerate at the same time. According to this idea of regeneration as a literal infusion of holy dispositions, however we might speak of all infants as regenerate, the growth of vice, carelessness, and irreligion after that age would prevent us from applying the term to the great majority of adults, that is to say, to the great mass of Christian society, to the Church as a body. We could not speak of their regeneration as a present but only a past fact, which would be a complete subversion of the received language to which I have referred, on the subject of baptismal regeneration.

But, in the next place, how is such an idea as this tenable? How can infants be talked of, with any show of reason, as having, or being, while infants, capable of having virtues. and holy dispositions? For will any one reflect for a moment on what is meant by these words. We mean by virtues and holy dispositions, certain moral states of mind belonging to reasonable and intelligent agents; and this reasonableness and intelligence in the agent is essential to, and is part of, the very meaning of virtue and moral disposition. If a person then asserts that an infant, i. e., one who is not yet a reasonable or intelligent being, has virtues and moral habits of mind, he is using these words in a sense entirely different from that in which they are universally used, and in a sense wholly unintelligible; ¿.e. he is using words without meaning, and asserting nothing at all.

But infants, it will be said, have the germ of particular dispositions and characters in them. They have. But what do we mean by the germ of a character? We mean particular latent tendencies in the natural constitution, which afterwards, as the infant grows up into a reasonable intelligent being, and according as, in this new stage of existence, he uses or abuses, cultivates or neglects these tendencies, become formed habits and dispositions. These tendencies, then, so long as they are latent, incipient, and elementary, and exist in