look to obtain it; nay, it appears to be a penalty annexed to departure from this channel of truth, both in individuals and bodies, that they not only lose all insight into Scripture evidence, but gradually decline further from the truth, and but seldom, and not without extraordinary effort, recover. The first misgivings, and restrictions, and limitations, are forgotten: what was originally an exception is made a rule and a principle; and departures, which were at first timidly ventured upon, and excused upon the necessity of the case, (as that of Calvin from episcopal ordination, or the license with regard to the authority and extent of the Canon among several denominations of Christians,) are by their followers looked upon as matters of glory and of boast, and as distinctive marks of Protestantism. For, on the one hand, the dissatisfaction generated by a state of doubt leads us to prefer even wrong decision to suspense or misgiving; we "force ourselves to do this" unbidden "sacrifice:" on the other, our natural listlessness and dislike of exertion tempts us to make an arbitrary selection of such portions of the vast compass of Divine Truth as is most congenial to ourselves, (since to enter equally into all its parts costs much effort,) and this done, we acquire a positive distaste for such truth as we have not adopted into what is practically our religious creed: we dislike having our religious notions disturbed; and since no truth can be without its influence upon the rest, the adoption of any forsaken truth involves not only the admission of a foreign and unaccustomed ingredient, but threatens to compel us to modify much at least of our actual system.
My object then in the following pages is partly to help, by God's blessing, to relieve the minds of such persons as being in the sacred ministry of the Church, or Candidates for the same, have difficulty in reconciling with their ideas of Scripture truth, what appears even to them to be the obvious meaning of our Baptismal and other[1] Formularies, as to the privileges of Baptism;
- ↑ Persons often forget that Baptismal regeneration is taught in the Catechism as well and as undoubtingly as in the services of Baptism and Confirmation; for when the child is taught to say that it was "in its Baptism made a
