to set before our eyes the extent of our practical departure from the system of early Christianity, if we touch briefly upon them. Thus, when St. Paul exhorts the Hebrews (iv. 22, 23) to draw near to Christ with a pure heart in full assurance of faith, inasmuch as their hearts had been purified by Christ's blood, and its merits applied by Holy Baptism, for so the Fathers understood the words "our hearts sprinkled from an evil conscience and our bodies washed by pure water," moderns have found mere allusions to legal ablutions, or else have supposed that "the washing of the body with pure water" represented simply the purifying of the soul by the direct influence of the Holy Spirit, without any intervention of the consecrated element.
Again, we might observe how in the Apostolic exhortation to unity (Eph. iv. 4. sqq.) the oneness of baptism is set forth, together with all those things which we account most spiritual, "one body, one spirit, one hope of our calling, one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all, who is above all, and through all, and in you all." As has been well said, "all are things inward, belonging to the Church and to its several members." Our "one regeneration and engraffing into Christ" may well occupy its place among our most glorious privileges, for it is the basis of all the rest; the earnest of the Spirit, the ground of our hope, the gift or confirmation of our faith, the union with Christ, and thereby with His Father and our Father, how should it not be a thing most inward? and how should we be ashamed, if we think only of the outward symbol under which it is made visible to us? This also, we may note, is the fourth mention of baptism in this one short epistle to the Ephesians,—a Church, as it should seem, in the most spiritual state, of those to whom St. Paul wrote. The Sacrament of regeneration is again referred to by St. Paul (1 Cor. xii. 13) as a ground of Christian unity, together with that of the Communion with Christ, "By one Spirit we are all baptized into one body." "Here, also, again," says Bucer[1], "there is ascribed to baptism an incorporation into Christ the Lord, and a con-
- ↑ De vi Bapt. Opp. Angl. i. p. 597.
