Chapter IV. Signs of a Spiritual Society

We have observed the traces of a spiritual constitution for mankind. We have observed that the two parts of this constitution, which are united by family relationships and by locality, depend upon a third part which is universal. We have observed that there are two possible forms of a universal society, one of which is destructive of the family and national principle, the other the expansion of them. The first of these is that which in Scripture is called the world, the latter is that which in Scripture is called the Church. We have observed that the principles of the world exist in the heart of every family and of every nation; that they are precisely the natural tendencies and inclinations of men; that they are always threatening to become predominant; that when they become predominant there ceases to be any recognition of men as related to a Being above them, any recognition of them as possessing a common humanity. The other body, therefore, the Church, being especially the witness for these facts which it is natural to us to deny, must be a distinct body. In losing its distinctness it loses its meaning, loses to all intents and purposes, though the words may at first sound paradoxical, its universality. The question then which we have to examine is, Are there any signs in the present day of the existence of a spiritual and universal body upon the earth? Do these signs identify that body with the one spoken of in Scripture? Are they an effectual witness against the world?

Section I. Baptism

That there has existed for the last 1800 years, a certain rite called Baptism; that it is not derived from the national customs of any of the people among whom it is found; that different tribes of the most different origin and character adopted it, and when they had received it believed themselves to be members of a common society; that this society was supposed to be connected with an invisible world, and with a certain worship and government; that an immense proportion of all the children in Europe are admitted very shortly after their birth to the rite; that it is generally performed by a peculiar class of functionaries;—these are facts, which it is not necessary to establish by any proof. The only question is whether these facts have a meaning and what that meaning is.

The idea of the Scriptures, so far as we have been able to trace it, is that Jesus Christ came upon earth to reveal a kingdom, which kingdom is founded upon a union established in his person between man and God, between the visible and invisible world, and ultimately upon a revelation of the divine Name. If then the setting up of this kingdom, and the adoption of men into it, be not connected in the New Testament with the rite of baptism, we may be quite sure that the fact we have just noticed, let its import be what it may, does not concern us. Even though baptism were enjoined as a rite by our Lord Himself, yet if it were appointed in such terms as leave us at liberty to suppose that it was merely accidental to the general purposes of His advent, we cannot prove an identity between the universal society which acknowledges it now and the one which He founded.

Let us then turn to the Gospels that we may see there how far this is the case. One of the first events announced there is contained in these words: “In those days came John the Baptist, preaching in the wilderness of Judea and saying, Repent ye, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand. Then went out to him Jerusalem and all Judea, and were baptized of him in Jordan confessing their sins.” This narrative is at least singular: baptism is connected with a spiritual act, that of repentance; with a spiritual promise, that of remission; with the announcement of a kingdom; with an intimation that that kingdom should not merely be composed of the children of Abraham. Supposing it were, as some imagine, a ceremony not known until that time, then it was introduced at the very moment that the kingdom of heaven was to begin; supposing it had been practised, as others say, at the reception of Gentile converts to the privileges of the outer court, then the administration of it to Jews would appear to be a most significant intimation, that they were henceforth to take their stand upon a universal human ground. This baptism then was the preparation for the Gospel. It may, however, for aught that appears at present, have been only a preparation. But Jesus Himself descends into the water, and as He comes out of it, a voice from heaven proclaims Him the well beloved Son, and the Spirit descends upon Him in a bodily shape. The announcement then that the Divine man, the king of men, had really appeared, was, according to the Gospels, connected with Baptism. And this same Baptism they speak of as the beginning of our Lord’s public ministry, and of all the acts by which his descent from above was attested. Yet this might have been necessary to mark the leader; it need not have any application to his disciples. But Jesus preached, saying, “Repent, the kingdom of heaven is at hand;” he appoints Apostles to go and declare that kingdom; and these Apostles baptize. The nature of their message may denote, however, that they were only continuing the dispensation of John, that they had nothing directly to do with that higher Baptism of the Holy Ghost and of fire, which John had declared would supersede his own. Our Lord has a conversation with Nicodemus in which He tells him that he must be born again if he would see the kingdom of heaven; because that which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit; because it was impossible for the fleshly man to understand even earthly things, much more these heavenly things, which He alone could reveal who had come down from heaven, and was in heaven. And this declaration of the transcendental character of the new kingdom is joined to the words, “Except a man be born of water and of the Spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of heaven.” Yet perhaps even here there may be a reference rather to the spiritual eye in man, which this ordinance, like those earlier ordinances of the Jews, might be the means of opening, than to the actual gift of God’s Spirit which was promised; for it is said expressly, “The Spirit was not yet given, because that Jesus was not yet glorified.” Our Lord appears to his disciples after He had risen from the dead, and He says, “All power is given unto me in heaven and earth, go therefore, and preach the gospel to all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost.” This language is certainly strange; for it seems as if it could only look forward to the establishment of a spiritual kingdom. But one other point of evidence is still wanting. Did the Apostles, after the glorification of Christ, after the descent of the Holy Ghost, still baptize with water? St. Peter stood in the midst of the disciples, and said to the Jews, “God hath made this Jesus whom ye crucified, both Lord and Christ; repent therefore, and be baptized, and ye shall receive the gift of the Holy Ghost;” and the same day three thousand were baptized. This evidence may perhaps be enough to shew that the writers of the Gospels and of the Acts believed this to be the sign of admission into Christ’s spiritual and universal kingdom, and consequently that every person receiving that sign was ipso facto a member of that kingdom. As the son or servant of the Roman commonwealth entered so soon as he was manumitted upon the rights of a citizen, as all immunities and responsibilities appertaining to this character from that hour became his, the young Christian convert who had derived his instruction from the Scriptures could not doubt, that from the time of his baptism he was free of that brotherhood of which his Lord was the head. He could not doubt that whatever language, be it as lofty as it might, described that brotherhood, described his state; that if Christ came to make men sons of God, he was a son of God; if He came to make them members of His own body, he was a member of that body; if He came to endue men with His Spirit, that Spirit was given to him. His baptism said to him, This is your position; according to the conditions of it you are to live. It will not be an easy life. It will be one of perpetual conflict. You will have a battle not with flesh and blood only, but with principalities and powers, with the rulers of spiritual wickedness in high places. But understand the nature of the battle. Your foes are not hindering you from obtaining a blessing; they are hindering you from entering into the fruition of one that has been obtained for you; they will laugh at you for pretending that it is yours; they will tell you that you must not claim it. But in the strength of this covenant you must claim it; otherwise your life will be a lie. I ask anyone calmly to read the Epistles, and tell me whether any other sense than this could be put upon Baptism by those who exhorted men, because they were baptized, to count themselves dead unto sin and alive unto God; by those who addressed men, the majority of whom they did not know personally, some of whom they did know to be inconsistent and unholy, as being in Christ, elect, children of God; by those who conjured their disciples not to doubt, not to disbelieve, that they had been admitted into the communion of saints, and told them they would sink into apostasy if they did? But then I must ask also, why, if the kingdom of Christ was declared to be an everlasting kingdom, and this sign was fixed as the admission of men into it at the first, and this sign still exists among us, all we who have received it are not in the same position, have not the same privileges, are not under the same responsibilities, as those who lived eighteen hundred years ago? I ask whether Baptism be not the sign of a spiritual and universal kingdom?

Objections. 1. The Quaker

To this question various answers are given. I will consider first that of the Quakers.

It seems to them utterly incredible and monstrous, that a spiritual fact or operation should be denoted by a visible sign. “Either men are livingly united to the Divine Word, or they are not: if they are, the sign is useless; if they are not, it is false. If Christ’s kingdom depend upon these outward ceremonies, wherein does it differ from the Jewish? What do the words, that John came baptizing with water but Christ with the Spirit and fire, mean, if both baptisms are equally outward?”

Positions of this kind are so self-evident to the Quaker, that Scripture cannot be suffered to contradict them. It is in vain to allege texts and commandments. These are primary truths which ride over them all, and determine the interpretation of them. If the Apostles did act in opposition to them, the Apostles showed that they were still ignorant and Judaical. Be it so: if these notions are good for anything, if they do not contradict the leading positive truths of Quakerism, let them be upholden at all risks. But that is the point I wish to examine.

We have seen that Fox did not consider it the work of the Gospel to reveal the fact of men’s relation to the Divine Word; that fact, he believed, was intimated both to Heathens and to Jews. To the latter it was intimated by a sign. The Invisible Teacher by this means declared to the children of Abraham that there was a union between themselves and Him, warned them of the tendency there was in their fleshly natures to separate from Him, promised to uphold them against that tendency.

This, I say, Fox acknowledged to be the Divine method in the Jewish dispensation. He never pretended that the union which was made known to the Jew was a material union; if it had been, there would have been no sign, for there would have been nothing to signify. He never pretended that it was a variable union, deriving its existence from certain feelings in the minds of the human creatures who shared in it; if it had been there could have been no sign, for the thing to be signified would have been different each day. So that the appropriateness, the possibility, if I may so speak, of this method, arose from the fact that a certain spiritual and permanent relation was to be made known by it. And yet the reason, according to the Quaker, why this method should be abandoned, is this and this only, that the dispensation of the Gospel has a spiritual and permanent, not a material and transitory, character! Surely this is an inconsistency which needs to be justified by something else than vague declamations about carnal practices, and angry denunciations against the whole of Christendom, from the Apostles downwards, for being guilty of them.

“But it is a false thing to give the sign to anyone who has not the reality.” What is meant by the words, has not the reality? Is it meant that the relation is not real? If so, Fox was wrong, for he affirmed that it was real, for all men. Or does the word real refer to the feeling and acknowledgment of the relation? Then this proposition affirms, that it is false to tell a man a truth because he does not believe it. Unquestionably we are guilty of that falsehood; the whole Old Testament dispensation was also guilty of it; Fox and the Quakers themselves are guilty of it.

“But the sign is useless to a man who is truly united to the Divine Word.” There are two opinions implied in this language, both of great importance, both very illustrative of Quaker feeling and history. One is that it is nothing to a man that a thing is true, true in itself, true universally, provided he feels it to be true for him; the other is that union with the Divine Word is all which men require. Now every earnest word which Fox spoke was a testimony against both these notions; first (as I have shewn so often), the truth of the thing was the ground upon which he exhorted men to place their feeling of it; secondly, he declared that union with the Divine Word did not satisfy those Heathens or Jews who perceived it, but that it made them long for something more, for a kingdom of Heaven. See here an evidence for Baptism, which all the history of Christendom could not have afforded, frankly offered to us by those who reject it. Their whole preaching is against Judaism, against the old covenant; and yet they are thrown back upon Judaism, they cannot rise above the great doctrine of the old covenant. But neither can they keep that doctrine; they cannot keep the faith that we are related to the Divine Word; they can only substitute for it certain individual feelings and impressions.

And now, having this thought on our minds, let us compare for an instant our interpretation of the words of John the Baptist with theirs. We say that John came baptizing with water unto repentance, for the remission of sins. Here lay the spiritual meaning of his Baptism. Our Lord’s baptism, we maintain, includes this meaning, but it has a deeper one. His baptism is not only unto repentance; not only intimates that the heart has turned to God, and so turning is delivered from sin: it gives the spirit and power whence repentance and every right act must flow; it brings the subject of it under the discipline of that purifying fire whereby the old and evil nature is to be consumed. This meaning of the passage seems to be literal enough, and it precisely accords with the promises and anticipations of the prophets, with the expositions and retrospections of the Apostles. How does the Quaker improve upon it? He makes it the great characteristic of John, that he did baptize with water, and of Christ, that He would not baptize with water. So that the voice crying in the wilderness said this, “Hear, O Israel! rejoice, O ye Gentiles! the glorious time is at hand, which your fathers expected, which the whole universe has been groaning for—the time when signs are to be abolished. The great Prince and Deliverer is at hand, who will cause that the things of earth shall be no longer pledges and sacraments of a union with Heaven! This is the consummation of all the hopes of mankind, this is what is meant by the Tabernacle of God being with men; by His dwelling with them, and their being His people, and His being their God.”

2. The Anti-pedobaptist

The Anti-paedobaptist is; in many respects, strongly contrasted with the Quaker. He attaches a very great value to the baptismal sign. He believes that it is intended to be the witness of a spiritual kingdom. In general, he is remarkable for holding the belief firmly, in which the Quaker is deficient, that men are chosen by God to their place in the Divine — Economy. But he conceives that the admission of those who have no spiritual consciousness or spiritual capacity to this ordinance, is destructive of its meaning; as it exists in modern Europe it has nothing to do with the Kingdom of Christ.

I should be very careful to answer this objection, for it certainly affects the whole of my argument, if it had not been already so fully considered. The issue to be tried between us and the Anabaptists is not whether the existence of such and such a sign indicates the existence of a kingdom, but what that kingdom is which it should indicate. I have maintained, upon the authority of Scripture, that the Catholic Church is emphatically a kingdom for mankind, a kingdom grounded upon the union which has been established in Christ between God and man. I have maintained that it grew out of a family and a nation, of which social states it proved itself to be the proper and only foundation. Supposing this notion to be altogether false, it may be most reasonable to say that a child, an embryo man, ought to be treated as if he were not a citizen of this kingdom. To one who believes it true, such a doctrine must seem absolutely monstrous. Let us take a member of either of the classes out of which the early Church was formed. First let him be a Heathen. He has been struck with the threatenings of coming judgments which were visible in the sins of the Roman empire, in the divorces, adulteries, incests, parricides of its most conspicuous members. He has felt how little the idea of the gods which was received among his countrymen tended to repress such atrocities. The preaching of some Christian Apostle has awakened him to the fact, that the evil nature from which all these crimes have proceeded is in himself. He hears of a deliverance out of that nature. He hears that God has revealed himself to men as the enemy of all unrighteousness; that He has also revealed himself to men as their Father; that His Son has come down to dwell among men: that He has made himself the brother of our race; that He has claimed the members of it for members of his own body; that He has given them a sign of admission into it; that He has promised them His Spirit. Could he who received this joyful message, and acted upon the command which was involved in it, doubt that he was received into the true human family, that he was taken out of a hateful, anomalous, inhuman world? Could he then dare to say, “This child whom I have begotten belongs to this inhuman anomalous world; he has a human form and countenance, that form and countenance which Christ bore, yet the accursed nature which I have renounced is his proper, his appointed master; the evil society out of which I have fled, is his home; to the evil spirit who I believe has infused his leaven into that nature and that society, I leave him.” I am not now reasoning with a person who does not attach any high meaning to Baptism, but with one who believes it to be really the sign of the redeemed covenant family. I ask such a person to consider, what less than this a Christian convert could suppose to be signified, by anyone who told him that he was not to baptize his child, because he could not be sure that it was included in Christ’s redemption?

Nor let it be supposed that this is the whole of the contradiction which such a prohibition would involve. Far from it. The idea of the Gospel, as the revelation of truths which are expressed in the forms of family society, and which, to all appearance, are not expressible in any other forms, truths to the apprehension of which he had risen through the feelings which his domestic relations or the consciousness of their violation had called forth, would seem to him utterly destroyed, all links between human relations and Divine at once abolished, if he might not dare to speak of his child as united to him in a spiritual bond. Again, the idea of the Gospel, as the promise of a Spirit who would awaken all consciousnesses, convictions, and affections, would be equally trifled with, by the doctrine that the existence of these convictions, consciousnesses, affections, was the condition precedent to an admission into the Gospel Covenant.

On this last point, the perplexities of a Hebrew Christian, who was commanded not to baptize his child, must have been still more distressing. His own covenant had been emphatically with children. That which had superseded it was, in all other respects, wider, freer, more directly referring all acts of the creature to the love and good pleasure of the Creator. Yet, without one word of Christ being produced to this effect, I command you not to follow the analogy of God’s earlier dispensation, not to suppose that, in my kingdom of grace, infants are accounted human and moral beings as they were under the law—without the record of one sentence to this purpose; with the record of many acts and words which led to just the opposite conclusion, that infants were a most honoured part of that race which He came to seek and save; with the doctrine forming an article of his daily confession, that the Redeemer of humanity had Himself entered into the state of childhood, as well as into that of manhood, the Israelite convert is forced to abandon all the habits of thought and feeling which he had derived from God’s own teaching, not because they were too narrow, but because they were too comprehensive for his new position.

The Anti-paedobaptist then, I think, cannot plead, (and this is his only plea,) that the application of Baptism to infants is a strange and perplexing departure from the admitted sense and object of the ordinance. On the contrary, there is some reason, I fancy, for suspecting danger on the other side. It was so reasonable, so inevitable a consequence of the baptismal principle, that infants should be received into the Church—the law of the Church’s propagation was thereby so clearly explained and reconciled with the ordinary laws of God’s Providence—that it would be no wonder if another truth, equally necessary, were lost sight of in the eagerness to enforce that which this practice inculcated. It might be forgotten that we baptize children, not because they are children, but because they are embryo men; that to the complete idea of a spiritual blessing, a receiver is needful as well as a giver; that Baptism is not a momentary act but a perpetual sacrament. Before I finish this section I may have occasion to show that some or all of these errors have arisen in the Church, and to their prevalency the rise of a sect of Anti-paedobaptists is, no doubt, to be attributed. But there is found, side by side with Baptism, in all the countries where it is adopted, an institution which is a far more complete testimony against such perversions, than those have been able to bear who set aside the principle out of which they have grown. This institution, not displacing or superseding Baptism, but confirming, as its name denotes, the authority and pledges of that sacrament, declares to the child that He who has guided it through infancy will be with it in the conscious struggles of manhood, and that it has been made free, not only of a particular congregation, but of the Universal Church.

The doctrine of the Anabaptists then, like that of the Quakers, supplies a strong argument in favour of my position, for it shews that, just so far as the operation of Baptism is restricted, just so far does the belief of a human society become impossible.¹

3. The Modern Protestant

Next to the Anabaptist comes the soi-disant disciple of Luther and Calvin, the modern Protestant or Evangelical. His doctrine is that there are two kingdoms of Christ, one real and spiritual, the other outward and visible. It is highly desirable, perhaps necessary, that young as well as old should be admitted into the latter. Baptism is the appointed mode of admission. What are the privileges of the Gentile court into which, by this ordinance, we are received, they do not precisely determine. Possibly some grace is communicated at Baptism; or if not, the blessings of being permitted to hear preaching, and of obtaining a Christian education, are great, and may be turned to greater use hereafter. But the important point of all is this, to press upon men that till they have been actually and consciously converted they are not members of Christ or children of God. Some disciples of this school believe that these words may be applied to baptized people in a sense; but if you desire to know in what sense, the answers are so vague and indeterminate, as to leave a painful impression upon the mind, that such language is very awful and significant, and yet that it may on certain occasions be sported with or used with a secret reservation.

But those who make these statements say, that they wish to get rid of equivocations, not to invent them. They resort to this hypothesis of a double kingdom, because the plainest observation tells them, that a baptized man may be a very evil man, and because, being evil, they cannot see what he has to do with a kingdom of righteousness, peace, and joy in the Holy Ghost. Again, they say, “Let people make out what theological scheme they please, we know that we, having been baptized in infancy, did in manhood as much pass from death unto life, as any heathen in the first age could have done.” It is not, they contend, fair or honest to suppress either of these facts, either that which is obvious to every man’s common sense, or that of which they themselves are conscious; but that this is done, and must be done, if we assume Baptism to be what it is sometimes called—a New Birth—the actual introduction into a spiritual world.

Now I feel as little disposed to deny the melancholy proposition that Christian men are not living Christian lives, as the Jewish prophet felt to pass over the truth, that the name of God was blasphemed through his countrymen in all lands. The precedents which Holy Scripture furnishes I believe to be strictly applicable to us; that which was the function of the preacher then is his function now; if he who prophesied in Jerusalem was to rebuke men for sin, and to call them to repentance, we in London or Paris are to do the like. The question is, what is the sin which we are to rebuke, what is the repentance to which we are to invite. The Jewish prophet charged his people with forgetting the covenant of their God. He traced up all sins to this sin. He said that the Jew was guilty, because he did not claim the privileges of a Jew, because he did not act as if he was a Jew. Are we to follow this precedent or not? Are we following it when we say, “This covenant is, I will be to you a father, and you shall be to me sons and daughters; you are acting as if you were not in this covenant, you are forgetting it,” or when we say, “These titles are not yours, or are yours only in some formal imaginary sense,” that is, if we spoke plain English, in no sense at all?

As little do I desire to deny or explain away the other assertion, that baptized men, who have lived without God in the world, are converted to Him by his grace. This is a doctrine which I believe was held as strongly by St. Bernard, Tauler, and à Kempis, I might add by Loyola and Xavier, as by any modern Methodist. These eminent persons did not limit their language to cases of open profligacy (though they by no means excluded such cases); they applied it to laymen or priests, who under a respectable exterior had sought the praise of men more than the praise of God. Whether we have a right to restrict the word to a particular act or crisis; whether every act of repentance is not one of conversion or turning to God; whether we are not apt to forget that every such act must be as much attributed to the Spirit of God as the recovery from habitual thoughtlessness and sin, are questions for serious reflection: but the decision of them does not affect the opinion, that there may be an entire change in the feelings and aims of one who has received Christian Baptism. But by what words is such a revolution to be denoted? I believe the answer may be obtained, by comparing different approved records of conversions. We shall find a great difference in them. In some we shall hear a man speaking with great horror and loathing of his past years and of his youthful companions. We shall hear another transferring these expressions of loathing to his evil nature, and to himself for having yielded to it, manifesting the deepest affection for all he has ever been acquainted with, owning them to be more righteous than himself, believing that God cares for them as well as for him, certain that what is true for him, is true also for them. The first talks much of the new start he has taken, of his new heart, of his purified affections: the latter rejoices that having discovered the feebleness of his own heart, he has been led to see that there is another in whom he ought to have trusted before, and may trust now. The first speaks of the grace that has been bestowed upon himself; the other of being taken under the gracious guidance of a Spirit, whom he has resisted too long. Granting that these modes of expression may be sometimes intermingled, that there may be a true feeling in those who chiefly use the former, and that there may be error and confusions in those records wherein the latter predominate, yet does not everyone recognize a characteristic, a most practical, difference between them? Would not any experienced person of the Evangelical school feel, that the one kind of language indicated a much more healthful, genuine state of character than the other? But then ought he not to ask himself whether both of these kinds of language are incompatible with the idea of Baptismal Regeneration, or only one of them; and if only one, whether the false or the true? If the words, “then I was awakened,” do not imply “I had been asleep;” if the words, “then I came to the knowledge of the truth,” do not imply “that which I knew was true before I knew it;” if the words, “I ceased to strive against the Spirit,” do not imply that there had been a previous resistance to the Spirit, they are mere cant words, good for nothing, nay, utterly detestable. But, if they do imply all this, they imply just what the believer in Baptismal Regeneration is charged with fiction and falsehood for maintaining. They presume the existence of a state, which is our state, whether we are conscious of it, whether we are in conformity with it, or no.

It is then not necessary for the vindication of these two facts, that we should adopt the notion that there are two kingdoms, one earthly, formal, fictitious; the other heavenly, spiritual, real. It is not necessary for their vindication, seeing that neither of these facts can be calmly examined, even in the reports of those who insist most upon them, without suggesting the notion, that there must be a heavenly, spiritual, real kingdom, against which all evil men, just in so far forth as they are evil, are rebelling; and into subjection to which all converted men, in so far forth as they are converted, are brought. And therefore, whatever evils have flowed and are flowing from this notion of the two kingdoms, are not justified or compensated for by one practical advantage. How practical the evils are, let the history of Christian Europe since the Reformation attest! I have spoken of the difference between Luther and the Lutherans, even between Calvin and the Calvinists; I have spoken of the way in which Justification by Faith has been turned from a living principle into an empty shibboleth: in which the Divine Election has lost its force, except as an excuse for doubting the existence of our own awful responsibilities. If we trace these miserable fruits to their root, we shall find it, I believe, in this notion. This at least is certain, as I have had occasion again and again to remark, that the doctrine of Baptismal Regeneration was held by Luther not in conjunction with that of Justification by Faith (as he might have held any doctrine which belonged to the natural philosophy of his age), but that he grounded the one on the other. “Believe on the warrant of your Baptism, You are grafted into Christ; claim your position. You have the Spirit, you are children of God; do not live as if you belonged to the devil.” This was his invariable language, with this he shook the Seven Hills.

What, I ask, have those done who have abandoned this language, and who, while they talk of Luther, would actually denounce anyone who used it as heretical and papistical? The children of Protestant families are told that they have no right to call themselves children of God. They grow up in that conviction; in maturer years they carry it to its legitimate consequences. They feel that they have no right to use the Lord’s prayer, no right to pray at all; that they have no power near them to keep them from temptation; that they have no bonds of fellowship with any, except on the grounds of liking and taste. Gradually as their understandings ripen and their feelings decay, they begin to regard Protestantism as a halfway house between Popery and Infidelity; and whether they shall go back to the one, or on to the other, depends principally upon their circumstances, and upon the predominance of the fancy or of the intellect in their constitution. I speak of the more courageous; in the majority, dull indifference, which is incapable of either resolve, becomes the ruling habit of mind. Thanks be to God, the exceptions to my statement, in all Protestant countries, are innumerable. But I believe it will be found almost universally, that they occur when parents have acted upon the principle which I am maintaining, though in words they have disavowed it; when they have treated their children as if they possessed all Christian titles and privileges, though they did so in utter disregard of their own theory. That, even in such cases, the contradiction has not been innocuous, I think I can affirm with some confidence. A sense of perplexity, of half sincerity, cleaves to the minds of those who most long to keep a clear heart and a free conscience. They do not dare to call themselves by a name which yet they feel they must claim, if they are to serve God or to do any right act. Hence their conduct becomes uncertain, their thoughts are not manly; and, in place of humility, they cultivate a false shame, in which they are conscious that pride is a large ingredient. There are hundreds of young men who will understand my meaning; there are others, I mean ministers of the Gospel, to whom I wish that I could make it intelligible. But at all events, those who feel as I do in this matter, will have bitter cause for self-reproach, if they do not protest in season and out of season, against a notion which, if I be not greatly mistaken, is doing more than all others to undermine the Christianity of the Protestant nations.

4. The Philosopher

Last come our modern Philosophers. Their notions upon this subject are generally indicated by some such language as the following. “Baptism cannot be the sign of a Universal Society, for it excludes Pagans and Mahometans, all but the members of a certain religious sect; Baptism cannot, in any proper sense, be the sign of a Spiritual Society, for it makes no distinction between the most stupid and the most cultivated, the most brutal and the most humane; Baptism, by the very terms in which it is performed, implies the acknowledgment of a doctrine which many Christians deny, few think of, and none understand; Baptism, if we may judge from the words or the ceremonies which everywhere accompany it, presumes the belief of an evil spiritual agency, a belief belonging only to the darkest ages. Baptism was unquestionably a bond of fellowship in certain periods; it did mean something to those who lived in them; but its significance is gone; it is changed into a worthless symbol which may be allowed to last so long as it does not pretend to be anything, but which the moment it endeavours to recover its obsolete importance will be rejected by wise men altogether.”

To the first of these objections, that Baptism is exclusive, because merely for those who profess a faith in Christ, I reply,—As against the theologians who look upon Christ merely as the great teacher, this argument has the greatest force: to baptize men into the name of Christ is, if they be right, to receive them into the sect or school of a certain person who appeared in Palestine 1800 years ago. We may prefer Him to one who appeared in Arabia about 1200 years ago, but our taste, which increased information may change altogether, is surely no true foundation for a human fellowship. But, be it remembered, this is not the idea of Baptism as it is expressed in any one formulary which is recognised in any part of Christendom. That idea assumes Christ to be the Lord of men; it assumes that men are created in Him; that this is the constitution of our race; that therefore all attempts of men to reduce themselves into separate units are contradictory and abortive. Now say, if you please, that this is an utterly false view of things; say that it does not in the least explain the relations of men to each other and the meaning of their history; say that there is no spiritual constitution for mankind or that it cannot be known, or that it is not this. But you cannot say that if it were this, a society founded upon such a principle would be merely one for a party and not for mankind. According to our doctrine we must say to Jews, Pagans, Turks, “There is a fellowship for you as well as for us. We have no right to any spiritual privileges to which you have not as complete, as indefeasible a right. We protest against you, Jews, because you deny this, because you maintain that there is no fellowship for mankind. We protest against you, Pagans, because by giving us different objects of worship, you necessarily divide us according to circumstances, customs, localities. We protest against you, Mahometans, because by affirming the greatest man to be merely a man, you destroy the communication between our race and its Maker; you suppose that communication to exist, if at all, merely for certain sages, not for every human creature. You set up the idea of absoluteness against the idea of relationship; whereas each is involved in the other and depends upon the other; and therefore you make it impossible for the Islamite nations to have any feeling of a humanity, to be anything but slaves.”

Again, it is said, that our baptismal fellowship is not spiritual, for that it takes no account of the spiritual differences in men. The dullest clod has the same place in it, as the man who sees furthest into the meaning and life of things. Here, again, it is necessary, that we should recall the objector to the baptismal principle. He may think that we are using a mere phrase, or form of words, when we say that the man or the child is actually adopted into union with a Being above himself, and that the Spirit of Life, of Power, of Wisdom, is given to him. All this may seem to him the merest absurdity. But we do not think it so. And, supposing it were not an absurdity, supposing it were a truth, there would be no pretence for the accusation we are considering. Then we should not only be bearing witness that the great distinction of all is that between the man who has an eye for spiritual objects, and the man who sees nothing but the ground at his feet; we should not only be bearing this witness, but we should actually be taking men into a position in which they might, if they would, overcome their downward tendencies and attain the highest insight. Unquestionably we do not look out for intellectual or moral aptitudes, and expose the children in whom we do not discover them; we believe that there is an eye in all men which can be opened if the evil will do not keep it closed; that all peculiar faculties and capacities are subordinate to this, and will be best awakened when it is most in exercise. But this doctrine is surely not one to which philosophers of this day can on principle object, however little they may be inclined habitually to act upon it.

The third complaint is, that this universal sign is inseparably associated with the belief of an incomprehensible dogma. Now when we were examining the features of the Unitarian creed, we were led to notice, as the most prominent and striking of them, the assertion that the unity of God is a great primary unchangeable truth, upon which all others must rest, and the acknowledgment of which must be the foundation of unity among men. This affirmation seemed to us of the highest importance; we said that no theories or conclusions or dogmas, let them be backed by what authority, or supported by what arguments they might, could destroy its force, or make it nugatory. But we found that this truth of the Divine Unity, this awful, everlasting primary truth, had been turned by the (so called) Unitarians into a mere notion or dogma, a notion or dogma actually deduced from material considerations and therefore self-contradictory; a notion purely negative, which said to Polytheists, “You ought not to worship many gods,” without declaring to them the one God whom they ought to worship; a notion not leading to the adoration of a Living Being, but to a superstitious reverence for the number one, a notion therefore which never could be the symbol of a human fellowship. If then it be true that this unity is at the root of all union among men, if it be the deep foundation upon which the pillars of the universe rest, one must look not for a rude notional announcement of it, but for a gradual discovery of it, through the forms and relations of human society. Such a discovery I have urged is to be found in the Scriptures; a discovery of which the name revealed to the father of the faithful was the first step; the words, “Hear, O Israel, the Lord thy God is one Lord,” a second; the name into which we are baptized, the final and perfect step. I do not say that this is a progress from the obscure to the intelligible, from the remote to the near; far from it: like all science it is an advance from that which may be apprehended by the Senses or the Affections, to that which is deeper and is only within the reach of the Understanding or the Conscience; then onwards to those amazing abysses which the Reason seeks after, and which she delights, wonders, and is lost. If it were not this, it would not be a revelation of God; but being this, it is, as we believe, not the cold denial and contradiction of all that men have been dreaming of through the different ages of the world, but rather the sweet reconciliation and exquisite harmony of all past thoughts, anticipations, revelations. No Pagan mythology could exist without the acknowledgment of a Something beneath and behind all their conceptions of the gods, too awful to speak of, almost to think of. Each mythology contained also its Heroes of divine and human race, whom men might admire, and with whom they might sympathise. And this was not enough without the dream of an Inspirer, Life-giver; not removed from men, not even a mere object to be beheld and adored, but the source of all their deeper thoughts and longings. How dark and sensualized this faith became—how the absolute Being was regarded as a dreary fate, the Heroes as the fruit of earthly passions and full of earthly crimes, the Inspirer as the god of folly and drunkenness—I need not tell; nor how jarring these forms of belief were in their best estate, how continually seeking for a unity and not finding it. Still, the feelings were really there; expressed indeed, by poets and sages, but only because it was their gift to utter that which was in the hearts of poor men, that which they were obscurely feeling or dimly acting out. Now, if the Name into which we Europeans have for so many centuries been baptized be, as we believe it is, that which brings all these thoughts at one, separating them from their hateful and degrading additions, raising them to Heaven, and yet establishing a more direct and intimate connexion between them and all the daily transactions of this earth; are we guilty of fencing men off from our Communion by a strange dogma of which they can know nothing, when we tell them that this Name is to go with them from their cradle to their grave; that the grace, the love, the fellowship of this name are to be with them as charms against all perils, light in all darkness, comfort in all sorrow; that it is to bind them with that which was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be; that every homely duty, every act of self-sacrifice, every deed of mercy, will make the vision of it more bright, as that vision will be clouded by every act of sin, every proud thought, every uncharitable feeling; that the more they cleave to this name, the less they will dream of selfish rewards, the more they will long for the day when the sunlight of God’s countenance may gladden the whole creation; that the communion of the Father and the Son in one Spirit, as it has been the ground of all their thoughts and hopes, so will be the consummation of them all, to those who shall wake up in the same likeness, and be satisfied with it?

But Baptism implies the acknowledgment of an evil spiritual agent, and this belief is at war with all civilization and philosophy. I am as little disposed to shrink from this charge as from any of the others. Baptism unquestionably has been connected with this doctrine ever since it was practised; it must, I think, be an unmeaning ceremony to anyone by whom this doctrine is denied.

This opinion I ground upon the remarks which have just been made respecting the Baptismal Name. Baptism asserts for each man that he is taken into union with a Divine Person, and by virtue of that union is emancipated from his evil Nature. But this assertion rests upon another, that there is a society for mankind which is constituted and held together in that Person, and that he who enters this society is emancipated from the World—the society which is bound together in the acknowledgment of, and subjection to, the evil selfish tendencies of each man’s nature. But, further, it affirms that this unity among men, rests upon a yet more awful and perfect unity, upon that which is expressed in the Name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost. Lose sight of this last and deepest principle, and both the others perish; for to believe that there is a Truth, a Unity, a Love, existing under certain forms, and not to believe there is an absolute Truth, Unity, Love, from which these forms have derived their excellence and their existence, is impossible, and has been always felt to be impossible. But is it not equally impossible to the Reason, has not the Experience of mankind proved it to be impossible, to contemplate the antagonist forms of evil, without ascending to the belief of an evil which has impregnated those forms, and which can exist apart from them? So necessary has this conviction been found, not to a few but to all, that the imagination has been continually framing to itself the horrid notion of an evil, which is not merely the source and spring of all that is evil in the actual condition of things, but which is the source of those things themselves, a primary original power, a rival Creator. This Manicheeism, though only at particular seasons it may have been congealed into a system, has been haunting men’s minds from the beginning of the world, and is haunting us all still. But whence comes it, and what is the great prop of it? Surely it is this. We cannot deny the facts of misery and evil which thrust themselves upon our notice. We feel that we must refer them to a cause. But not daring to look steadily at the idea of an evil will, and to contemplate it in the light of a perfectly pure and holy will, we fancy that the powers which are exerted for an evil end are evil, that the things which are turned to an accursed use are themselves accursed. Hence the Oromasdes and Arimanes doctrine; hence, too, all the superstitious notions which have peopled nature with malignant influences and objects of dread. How are such dark dreams to be dispelled? Not by setting aside facts; not by outraging the innermost convictions of mankind; not by separating men from one another, as you do most effectually, when you teach them that the evil which each is to contend with in himself, and the evil which he sees in his fellow creatures, or which he notices in the history of the world, have no common derivation. These outrages upon reason and conscience have been perpetrated again and again by so-called philosophers, but what have they effected? What one dark fear have they removed out of our path? What new bond of affection have they created between the members of the human family? The mockery has gone forth; it has been listened to, admired, adopted; and in the next age all the old superstitions have returned; the Imagination has revenged itself for the denial of an evil Spirit, by turning all the forms of Society and of Nature into evil. Meantime, this Baptism has been testifying to high and low, to men of all countries, languages, customs, that they have a common friend and a common enemy; but that the enemy has been vanquished, has been declared to have no right or property in any human creature, in any one corner of the universe; that his power is conferred by our faithlessness; that while we are claiming our true position we may despise and defy him; that it is only by making a lie that we come under the dominion of the father of lies. And yet it testifies as strongly to the fact, the monstrous fact, that men may be making lies, may be living in a position the most utterly anomalous and unreasonable; that nothing but entire dependence upon the righteous and holy Being rescues any one from this position; that every one therefore has a devil to fight with, as well as a world and a flesh. Get rid of this contradiction, if you can, by the philosophy of denials. We shall continue, with God’s assistance, to seek deliverance from it by declaring to men their true state, and by adopting them into it.

To what extent the general charge is made out that Baptism is a bygone symbol, may be inferred from the particular arguments upon which it is grounded. If there be nothing which does not belong to a particular age, nothing permanent, nothing real; if there be nothing to connect together the portions of mankind which are separated by space and time, then the sign is obsolete because there is nothing to be signified by it. If, on the other hand, all men in all times have sought, and the men of this age above all others are professing to seek, for some common human bonds which were not created to suit a particular period and locality, and which do not change when the notions and theories of that period have proved futile, when the customs of that locality are not applicable, I ask, where is the proof that this sign is not as fresh now as it was 1800 years ago? That men in times of sensuality, of luxury, of religious exclusiveness, of philosophical pretension, become impatient of it, I willingly admit. What better argument do I want than this, that it is a true thing, a witness for that which is spiritual, real, simple, universal? Thanks be to God, that He has not left eternal truths, which concern all men, to the custody of the wise and prudent of the earth; that He has embodied them in forms which from generation to generation have been witnesses of his love to the humble and the meek, and which all the contradictions of pride and self-will only help to illustrate and interpret.

The Romish System

I have stated why I look upon Baptism as the first sign of the existence of a Catholic Church or Kingdom of Christ in the world. I have considered the different objections to that view of it. But in the course of these remarks I have alluded to a class of persons who are most earnest in proclaiming the fact that there is such a Church, and equally earnest in maintaining that Baptism is the only induction into it. I have intimated that, nevertheless, I differ most widely with these persons, and believe that the dignity of Baptism was asserted against them by the Reformers of the 16th century. I am then, I conceive, bound to consider the doctrine respecting Baptism which is professed by the Romanists, and to give my reasons for not adopting it.

The common phrase that the Romanist regards Baptism as an opus operatum, is one which may be liable to much perversion. An intelligent defender of the system would protest earnestly against some opinions which might seem, at first hearing, to be implied in it. “To suppose,” he would say, “from our use of it, that we look upon a baptized person as incapable of falling into sin or losing heaven, would be to contradict monstrously and ridiculously every notion which our doctors have inculcated in their writings or our priests enforced in their practice. The disciples of the Reformation complain of us for our vigilance and self-suspicion. It is our strongest conviction that a dereliction of baptismal privileges is at once most possible and most awful.” But having guarded himself by this explanation he would, I think, be most ready to admit the phrase as legitimate, and to unfold, in some such words as these, the sense of it: “By baptism,” he would say, “we receive the benefits of the redemption which Christ wrought out for us. We become new and holy creatures. The work is finished: we have received the highest blessing which God can bestow upon us. Henceforth our business is, by the use of all the means which the Church prescribes, to keep ourselves in this state of purity. We shall not preserve it altogether; we shall be committing frequent venial sins, which, after confession and penance, will, we have a right to hope, be forgiven us. But we may, by constantly availing ourselves of the prayers and communion of the Church, preserve ourselves from those mortal sins which would utterly rob us of the Divine blessing. Should a sin of this kind have been committed, or should there be any fear that it has been committed, we may still have just such a hope of restoration as is an encouragement to the most unabated earnestness and diligence in seeking for it by the appointed methods.”

Now it will strike the reader at once, that in certain points this explanation corresponds exactly with the one which I have given. First, as to the effect of Baptism. I have contended that Baptism affirms a man to be in a certain state, and affirms the presence of a Spirit with him, who is able and willing to uphold him in that state, and to bring his life into accordance with it. Secondly, as to the sin of men. I have contended that this consists in their voluntarily refusing the blessings of God’s covenant. Thirdly, as to the means by which we are most likely to be kept in the right way; I should say, as the Romanist does, by abiding in those ordinances, whereby we maintain a communion with our brethren and with God. Where then does the difference between us begin? I answer, at the threshold of these very statements. A man is brought into a certain state. The point is, what state? I have said, and I know the Romanist would not in words contradict me, into a state of union with Christ. But this state, I have contended, precludes the notion that goodness, purity, holiness, belongs to any creature considered in itself. To be something in himself is man’s ambition, man’s sin. Baptism is emphatically the renunciation of that pretence. Man does not, therefore, by Baptism, by faith, or by any other process, acquire a new nature, if by nature you mean, as most men do, certain inherent qualities and properties. He does not by Baptism, faith, or by any other process, become a new creature, if by these words you mean anything else than that he is created anew in Christ Jesus, that he is grafted into Him, that he becomes the inheritor of His life and not of his own. That, being so grafted, he receives the Spirit of Christ, I of course believe. But I contend, that the operation of this Spirit upon him is to draw him continually out of himself, to teach him to disclaim all independent virtue, to bring him into the knowledge and image of the Father and the Son. Upon these grounds, I have maintained, against our modern Protestants, that the sin of a baptized man consists in acting as if he were not in union with Christ, in setting up his own nature and his own will, and in obeying them. That is to say, his sin consists in doing acts which are self-contradictory, in assuming to be that which he is not, and never can be, in denying that he is that which he is and ever must be. What follows? Surely that faith in this union is a duty, the greatest of all duties, and that it can never cease to be a duty. A man has no right to believe a lie. Sin leads him to do it; sin brings him into a condition of mind in which a lie seems truth to him. It may bring him into a condition of mind in which lying becomes the element of his being, in which truth is absolutely closed from his eyes. The possibility of this sort of mortal sin I cannot doubt, either while I meditate upon the awful tendencies of atheism, which there are in every one of us, or while I read the Epistle to the Hebrews. But supposing this awful condition had actually taken place in any man, it could not change the fact in the least degree; it would establish the fact. Is the writer of the Epistle to the Hebrews less earnest in his exhortations to faith than the other writers of the New Testament? Does he less invite men to enter into God’s rest? Does he separate these exhortations and invitations from his warnings respecting the peril of apostasy? or does he not make that peril one of his main arguments why every one of those whom he addressed should claim his privileges as a citizen of the New Jerusalem?

For precisely the same reason I attempted to shew that the Evangelical or modern Protestant notion made repentance impossible. If we are not allowed to call ourselves children of God, how can we be told to arise and go to our Father? If we are not to do this, what does our repentance mean? It can be nothing but a sinful selfish struggle after the blessings of corn and wine and the fatness of the earth, which we think we have lost; not a humble confession that we have made light of our birthright, and are no more worthy to be called sons. The repentance of the world may be produced by the desire or effort to obtain an assurance that we are members of God’s redeemed family; the repentance which leadeth to life must be the confession of the unbelief, ingratitude, hardness of heart, which have led us to slight a love which has been bestowed freely, and which has never ceased to watch over us and to struggle with us.

Now the doctrine of the opus operatum leads, I think, by a more circuitous, but also by a more certain, route to those practical results which seem to me to make our Protestant systems so dangerous and objectionable.

When it is said that a baptized man loses his baptismal state, it is inevitably implied that this state was one of independent holiness and purity. We do not, as I have again and again urged, cease to be children because we are disobedient children. If therefore Baptism were looked upon as the adoption into the state of children, and if its virtue were believed to consist in this, the notion we are considering would be impossible. But it is supposed that the man acquires something for himself in the instant of Baptism, that he is endowed with heavenly virtues, that he is in himself, separately considered, a new creature. By this opinion the Romanist supposes that he exalts Baptism. He seems to me utterly to degrade it and rob it of its meaning. He turns a sacrament into an event, supposes the redemption of Christ to be exhausted by a certain gift, while the Bible represents it as bringing men into an eternal and indissoluble friendship. He thinks that he promotes a safer, holier, more watchful feeling. It seems to me, that just so far as this opinion becomes the governing one of our lives, it undermines holiness, watchfulness, safety. For it turns the whole of life into a struggle for the recovery of a lost good. If this struggle is pursued honestly, there is no holiness in it, for it is purely selfish, it is not, cannot be, prompted by love. But in most men there arises a cruel sense of contradiction. They are commanded to repent; they feel that they cannot repent, for their consciences tell them that lamentation for the consequences of sin, present or expected, is not repentance; hence a craving for indulgences, a habit of unbelief, a despair of holiness. Which of these conditions of feeling is a safe one for a human creature to be in? But the Romanist thinks that at all events he is honouring the Church by this notion. To me it seems that he is destroying the very idea of the Church, denying its necessity. For he makes it appear that the blessing of Baptism is not this, that it receives men into the holy Communion of Saints, but that it bestows upon them certain individual blessings, endows them with a certain individual holiness. How then is self-renunciation and fellowship as members of the same body possible? And if these are impossible, what is the Church?

It will be admitted, I hope, that I have not imputed to Romanists anything which is merely an excess or exaggeration of their creed upon this great subject. There is a system of which this doctrine forms an integral part. But do I therefore mean to affirm either that this doctrine is only to be found in Romanist writers, or that the one I have defended is not to be found in them? I believe that if I brought forward any such propositions I should be easily confuted. On the one hand it might be proved, by extracts from the Fathers, that the doctrine of an opus operatum did mingle itself in their minds with that of our being grafted into Christ; on the other by extracts from Anselm, from Hugo de St. Victor, from Bernard, from Aquinas, nay from eminent Romanists of the present day, that the very idea which I have endeavoured to express has been unfolded by them, only with infinitely more eloquence and unction. All this I believe most fully. So far from wishing to hinder the theological student from making such observations, I would do my best to force them upon his attention. I would labour to convince him, that whenever any great spiritual principle has been strongly revealed to men, a material counterfeit of that principle has always appeared also; that they have dwelt together in the minds of the best and wisest men; that if we seek for the one we must turn to their devotional exercises, to the occasions when they were most cultivating fellowship with God and most forgetting themselves, to those parts of their writings therefore which their disciples often study the least; that if we seek for the others we shall find them in elaborate controversial treatises, those which supply the best materials for theorems, the most ready formulas, the most convenient weapons of argument and ridicule against opponents; that the first remain for the delight and consolation of humble Christian people in all ages; that the last gradually shape themselves more and more into a definite system; that they are supposed to be bone of each other’s bone, and flesh of each other’s flesh, till some great crisis arrives, in which it pleases God to demonstrate the difference of the causes by the difference of the effects, to show that one had proceeded from Him and the other from the devil. Let the reader then not be dismayed if he find the very highest authorities alleged in support of the doctrine of an opus operatum; let him not be surprised to find it in any age or in any part of the Church, (especially in any which had greatly undervalued sacraments) reappearing and asserting its claim to be identical with the Scriptural and Catholic idea of it. Let him not be terrified by being told, when he attempts to discriminate between them, that he is setting up his own judgment against the opinion of doctors and the testimony of antiquity. Let him say boldly, I am doing no such thing; I am simply determining that I will not believe the doctors against themselves; that I will not suffer myself to be cheated of a transcendent truth which they have taught me, a truth which was evidently dear to their inmost hearts, a truth which they felt was derived from the teaching of Christ himself and bound them to the Apostles and Martyrs of all times, a truth which they acknowledged was contrary to all their carnal apprehensions, and was only preserved to them by the continual teachings of God’s Spirit; because they have elsewhere, while arguing with adversaries, while attempting to make a principle tell upon the hopes or fears of men who were incapable of entering into its true meaning, while drawing conclusions from Scripture by their private judgments, while apologizing for some fungus which the maxims of their age had confounded with the tree upon which it grew, produced a plausible explanation of this truth, an explanation forgotten in every moment of higher inspiration, and proving itself the less Divine the more it is tried by its fruits. It is easy to accuse those of wanting humility who have courage to act upon this determination. I believe that the proud system-seeking, system-loving intellect within us, disposes us to embrace the doctrine of the opus operatum; that the humble and contrite heart craves for a deeper principle, and, finding it, is obliged to part with the other for the sake of it.