Page:Tracts for the Times Vol 2.djvu/228

Not less peremptorily, however, do our Blessed Saviour's words refuse to be bound down to any mere outward change of state, or circumstances, or relation, however glorious the privileges of that new condition may be. For this were the very opposite error; and whereas the former interpretation "dried^[1] up" the water of Baptism, so does this quench the Spirit therein. One may, indeed, rightly infer, that, since the Jews regarded the baptized proselyte as a new-born child^[2], our Saviour would not have connected the mention of water with the new birth, unless the new birth, which He bestowed, had been bestowed through Baptism: but who would so fetter down the fulness of our Saviour's promises, as that His words should mean nothing more than they would in the mouth of the dry and unspiritual Jewish legalists? or, because they, proud of the covenant with Abraham, deemed that the passing of a proselyte into the outward covenant, was a new creation, who would infer that our Saviour spoke only of an outward change? Even some among the Jews had higher notions, and figured^[3] that a new soul descended from the region of spirits, upon the admitted proselyte. And if it were merely an outward change—a change of condition only, wherein were the solemnity of this declaration, "Verily, verily, I say unto you, except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God?" for the "seeing" or "entering into" the kingdom of God, i.e. the Church of Christ, first militant on earth, and then triumphant in heaven, was itself a change of state, so that the two sentences would have had nearly the same meaning. And who could endure the paraphrase, "unless a man be brought into a state outwardly different, he cannot enter into the kingdom?" But our Saviour Himself has explained His own words. To be "born of the Spirit," stands opposed to the being "born of the flesh." As the one birth is real, so must the other be; the agents, truly, are different, and so also the character of life produced by each: in the one case,

1. Hooker, l.c.
2. See Lightfoot, ad loc. Archbishop Lawrence's Doctrine of Baptismal Regeneration, p. 28.
3. Archbishop Lawrence, l.c. pp. 31, 2.