confine its benefits to no age; but such of them as had received it themselves as adults, recommend that it should be imparted to infants. 2d, That they speak of it, not only as conveying remission of past sins, but, and that mainly, as a preservative in future temptation. 3dly, That they recommend it for infants, not only as an Apostolic ordinance, but as a known and exceeding safeguard. 4thly, That in proportion to their value for their Lord's ordinance, so much the more jealous were they, lest its force should be subsequently weakened, or the purity conferred by Him be defiled. The more they honoured Baptism, and the more they relied upon it as God's gift, so much the more careful were they of their subsequent walk with God.
These statements of the Fathers will incidentally remove an objection which has been in former times[1] and may be again made, viz. that we thereby bring back the opus operatum of the Schoolmen. For since it is known that the Fathers did not hold this in its objectionable sense, it plainly does not follow from this doctrine. In this, as in many other cases, we must distinguish between the practical corruptions of the Church of Rome and her theoretical errors. For it often happens that she leads her members into error, and countenances corruption in them, where her statements in themselves are not very unsound: teaching us how much evil, what seems a little departure from the truth, may create. The term to confer grace, ex opere operato, as explained by her writers[2] is "to confer grace by the force of the sacramental action itself, being instituted by God to this end, not through the merit of the (human) agent, or of the receiver," for which purpose they quote the words of St. Augustine[3]: "The Sacrament of itself is of much avail." Such appears to have been also the meaning of some,
- ↑ Rivetus (Disputt. Leidens. Disp. 43. ap Witsium, l.c. § 61.) blames those "who, deriving their name from Luther, rather than from Christ, so speak of the Word and Sacraments, as to ascribe to them the imparting of grace and sanctification; and rejecting the opus operatum in words, do not ascribe less efficacy to the outward action, than they who make the Sacraments the proper causes of grace."
- ↑ Bellarm. Controv. L. ii. c. 1. de effectu Sacramentorum.
- ↑ De Baptismo L. iv. c. 24.
