believed on? or, can one think that our age is herein like-minded with Him? or, do they recollect, that this act alone, in the whole Christian life, was commanded by their ascending Saviour, to be done in the name of the ever-blessed Trinity: that, in St. Chrysostom's[1] words, "the holy angels stand by, doing nothing, they only look on what is done; but the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost, effect all. Let us, then, obey the declaration of God, for this is more credible than sight; for sight is, yea and oftentimes, deceived; but that can never fail, obey we then it."
A similar test may be afforded, by the way in which Baptism is elsewhere spoken of, in Holy Scripture. When, e.g. we are declared to be "saved by Baptism" (1 Pet. iii. 22), as before (Tit. iii.) by the "washing of regeneration," let men think, whether this does not sound foreign or (if they dared to think it) repulsive to them; whether it finds any place in their system; or, whether they do not dismiss such an expression from their thoughts, as one requiring explanation to give it a sound sense, instead of conveying, of necessity, doctrinal truth. And if this be so, have we not lost a portion of our inheritance?
Contrast, herewith, St. Augustine's unhesitating faith. "Most excellently," saith he, writing against the Pelagians[2], "do the Punic Christians entitle Baptism itself no other than salvation, and the Sacrament of the Body of Christ no other than life. Whence, except from an old, as I deem, and Apostolical tradition, by which they hold it inserted into the Church of Christ, that, without Baptism, and the participation of the Lord's Table, no man can arrive, either at the kingdom of God, or salvation and life eternal. This, as we have said, is what Scripture testifies. For what do they who entitle Baptism salvation, hold other than what is written, 'He hath saved us by the washing of regeneration;' and what Peter saith, 'The like figure whereunto Baptism doth now save you?'"
In other cases, we seem not only to have lost the original meaning of Holy Scripture, but even all suspicion that we are in
