to our heavenly birth as this of Water[1]. Had it even been otherwise, the mention of any other instrument in our regeneration, could not of course have excluded the operation of Baptism: as indeed in Baptism itself, two very different causes are combined, the one, God Himself, the other a creature which He has thought fit to hallow to this end. For then, as Christ's merits, and the workings of the Holy Spirit, and faith, and obedience, operate in very different ways to the final salvation of our souls, so the mention of faith, or of the preaching of the Gospel as means of our regeneration would not have excluded the necessity of Baptism thereto, although mentioned in but one passage of Holy Scripture. But now, as if to exclude all idea of human agency in this our spiritual creation, to shut out all human cooperation or boasting, as though we had in any way contributed to our own birth, and were not wholly the creatures of His hands, no loop-hole has been left us, no other instrument named; our birth (when its direct means are spoken of) is attributed to the Baptism of Water and of the Spirit, and to that only. Had our new birth in one passage only been connected with Baptism, and no intimation been given to show that it was to be detached from it, this had alone been a weighty argument with any one who was wishing for intimations of God's will; but now, besides this, God has so ordered His word that it does speak of the connection of Baptism, and does not speak of any other cause, in the like close union with it.
This circumstance alone, thoughtfully weighed, would lead a teachable disposition readily to incline his faith, whither God seemed to point. For although the privileges annexed to Regeneration are elsewhere spoken of, and the character of mind thereto conformable,—our sonship and the mind which we should have as sons, our new creation,—yet these are spoken of, as already belonging to, or to be cultivated in, us, not as to be begun anew in any once received into the covenant of Christ. There
- ↑ "Unless as the Spirit is a necessary inward cause, so water were a necessary outward mean to our regeneration, what construction should we give unto those words wherein we are said to be new born, and that ἐξ δατος, even of water."—Hooker, B. v. c. 69.
