cause, was the presence of Christ in the flesh; the patterns of evangelical life; the Passion; the Cross; the Burial; the Resurrection; so that man, being saved by the imitation of Christ, receives again that ancient adoption of sons. To the perfection then of life, there is needed the imitation of Christ, not only of the gentleness, and humility, and long suffering, displayed in His Life, but of His Death also; as St. Paul saith—he, the imitator of Christ—'being conformed to His death, if by any means I may attain unto the resurrection of the dead.' How then do we come to the likeness of His death? By 'being buried with Him through Baptism?' What then is the mode of burial, or what the benefit of the imitation? First, it is necessary that the course of the former life should be broken through. But this is impossible, unless a man be born again, as the Lord said. For the re-generation, as the name also itself implies, is the beginning of a second life; so that before we begin the second, an end must be put to the preceding. Wherefore our Lord, in dispensing life to us, gave us the covenant of Baptism, containing an image of death and life—the water fulfilling the image of death, and the Spirit giving the earnest of life. This then is 'to be born again of water and the Spirit,' our death being effected in the water, and our life worked in us by the Spirit. So that whatever grace there is in the water is not from the nature of the water, but from the presence of the Spirit." And St. Augustine, against the Pelagians[1]:—"After the Apostle had spoken of the punishment through one, and the free grace through One, as much as he thought sufficient for that part of his epistle, he then recommended the great mystery of Holy Baptism in the Cross of Christ in this way, that we should understand that Baptism in Christ is nothing else than a likeness of the death of Christ, and the death of Christ crucified nothing else than the likeness of the remission of sin; and as His death is real, so is our remission of sins real, and as His resurrection is real, so is our justification real.—If then we are proved to be dead to sin, because we are baptized into the death
- ↑ Encheirid. c. 52. t. vi. pp. 215, 216.
