believe and then you shall understand[1]." And this may be said, in Christian warning, against those hard words, in which Christians sometimes allow themselves; as, "the deadening doctrine of Baptismal Regeneration;" language which can only serve to darken the truth to those who use it, and which is by so much the more dangerous, since all Christians believe that Regeneration sometimes accompanies Baptism; and since Baptismal Regeneration was the doctrine of the Universal Church of Christ in its holiest ages, and our own reformers (to whom, on other points, men are wont to appeal as having been highly gifted with God's Holy Spirit) retained this doctrine, a private Christian ought not to feel so confident in his own judgment as to denounce, in terms so unmeasured, what may after all be the teaching of God; "lest haply he be found to fight against God."
Others again, holding rightly the necessity of Regeneration for every one descended of Adam, would strongly set forth this necessity; but whether God have ordinarily annexed this gift to Baptism, this they would have passed over as a difficult or curious question. They bid men to examine themselves whether they have the fruits of regeneration; if not, to pray that they be regenerate. "This absolute necessity of regeneration," they say, "is the cardinal point; this is what we practically want for rousing men to the sense of their danger, and for the saving of their souls: what privileges may have been bestowed upon them in Baptism, or, in a happier state of the Christian Church, might not only be then universally bestowed, but be realized in life, is of lesser moment: regeneration, and the necessity thereof, is the kernel; these and other questions about outward ordinances, are but the husk only: regeneration and 'justification by faith only' are the key-stones of the whole fabric." I would, by the way, protest against such illustrations, whereby men, too commonly,
- ↑ "We are not therefore ashamed of the Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ, because miscreants in scorn have upbraided us, that the highest point of our wisdom is, Believe. That which is true, and neither can be discerned by sense nor concluded by mere natural principles, must have principles of revealed truth whereupon to build itself, and an habit of Faith in us, wherewith principles of that kind are apprehended."—Hooker L. v. § 63.
