with some peculiar favour by God? the idea is certainly a most natural one, and it has a large amount of Scriptural authority on its side; for the children of Isracl are represented throughout the Bible as loved for their fathers' sake. Within reasonable limits, and not pushed too far, a certain holiness of Christian children, as being the children of Christians, is perfectly admissible. And if they are in any sense holy, there is an anticipation of baptismal holiness-a state, and a peculiar state, of grace or favour before baptism. And therefore if some of our divines put forward this ground of the holiness of Christian children for their parents' sake, and describe in consequence a holiness or grace which they have on the hereditary ground previous to baptism, and with which they are presented at the font, it remains to be seen whether they hold this idea to the denial of proper grace to baptism.

We shall finish this counter-criticism we have been engaged in upon the language of the Elizabethan divines, by a reference to one great English name.

It is admitted by Mr. Gorham's counsel that Hooker did hold a doctrine of Baptismal Regeneration in Mr. Gorham's view objectionable. Dr. Bayford professes to show us from what he (Hooker) departed '-viz. from the doctrine held and taught by the Reformers.' There was a change in the opinions of Hooker on sacramental grace' as he grew older, 'a partial retrogression toward the Romish doctrine of the Sacraments.' If the learned Counsel does not mean by this that Hooker held, as his later and mature view, a doctrine of Baptismal Regeneration, much like what the Bishop of Exeter claims from Mr. Gorham, we do not know what he does mean. So then the doctrine of Hooker is confessed.

Now the learned Counsel himself admits, and takes the trouble to adduce, an extract to prove that Hooker was a predestinarian.

"For as we are not naturally men without birth, so neither are we Christian men in the eye of the Church of God but by new birth; nor according to the manifest ordinary course of divine dispensation new born, but by that Baptism which both declareth and maketh us Christians. In which respect we justly hold it to be the door of our actual entrance into God's house; the first APPARENT beginning of life; A SEAL, PERHAPS, TO THE GRACE OF ELECTION BEFORE RECEIVED, but to our sanctification here a step that hath not any before it." (B. v. § 60.)’—P. 196.

Again, he shows that Hooker did not hold the Sacraments to impart grace by any virtue of their own.

"The benefit he that hath it receiveth from God himself the Author of the sacraments, and not from any other natural or supernatural quality in them." "For of Sacraments the very same is true which Solomon's Wisdom observeth in the brazen serpent: He that turned toward it was not healed, by the thing he saw, but by thee, O Saviour of all."'

Again, he proves that Hooker held that the reception of grace in baptism was conditional.

"They [the Sacraments] are not physical, but moral instruments of salvation, duties of service and worship; which, unless we perform as the Author of grace requireth, they are unprofitable. For all receive not the grace of God which receive the Sacraments of his grace."'—P. 198.

Again, he shows that Hooker speaks of baptism as 'a seal.' 'A seal perhaps to the grace of election before received.'

Again, he shows that Hooker thought that grace could precede baptism.

"If outward Baptism were a cause in itself possessed of that power either natural or supernatural, without the present operation whereof no such effect could possibly grow; it must then follow, that seeing effects do never prevent the necessary causes out of which they spring, no man could ever receive grace before Baptism; which is apparently both known, and also confessed, to be otherwise in many particulars."'—P. 197.

Now all these points have been insisted on in the former part of the learned Counsel's speech, as evidences to prove that the writers who entertained them could not believe in the doctrine of Baptismal Regeneration. First, the doctrine of election and predestination, then the refusal of intrinsic virtue to the Sacraments, then the language descriptive of baptism as a 'seal,' then the admission of a grace antedating baptism, proved this; but now it appears that all these views may be entertained by a divine who held a doctrine of Baptismal Regeneration, which was a 'retrogression to Romanism;' and which therefore must be, in Mr. Gorham's opinion, much the same with what the Bishop of Exeter claims from him. It seems that Hooker was a predestinarian, and yet held such a doctrine of Baptismal Regeneration; that he refused intrinsic virtue to the Sacraments, and yet did; spoke of the grace of baptism as conditional, and yet did; spoke of the sacrament as a seal, and yet did; spoke of grace previous to baptism, and yet did. The inference is plain. The learned Counsel has answered his own objections, and refuted his own

arguments.

We shall conclude this article with one summary reflection, which will need, however, one or two subordinate ones to usher it in.

The reader, then, has now had a string of authorities on Mr. Gorham's side, laid before him. We are not particularly called upon to defend every phrase or every position which these authorities use. These men did not compile our Services, or construct our Articles. Had they done so, those formularies would not have depended on their private opinions. But they did not.

These authorities, as a body, are posterior to the

Reformation, and only represent one particular interval, and that a short one, in English theology. It is little to us if this or that individual in the reign of Queen Elizabeth writes Calvinistically about Baptismal Regeneration. He is no more an authority than a divine of the reign of Queen Victoria, who might do the same-suppose Mr. Gorham himself, or Mr. Goode. But thus much we are bound to say:-In the first place, these extracts come after all to much less than they are proclaimed to do. Let any fair person carry his eye over them; he will see a whole predestinarian line of thought running through them, with which he may not at all sympathise; he will see some single statements on baptism in Mr. Gorham's favour. But even throughout these extracts-picked carefully out of whole volumes of theology, as the most telling on Mr. Gorham.'s side, the very essence of the phraseology antagonistic to baptismal grace which could be found in the school most antagonistic to that grace-even throughout these extracts, as a whole, there runs a most unequivocally superior estimate of baptism, to what is put forward by 'evangelicals' now. Throughout, baptism appears either as a real and bona fide channel of grace, (though of permanent grace to the elect only,) or as the seal which consummates the giving of that grace, or as the true evidence of God's grace, to which all Christians are to refer in thought, whenever they want to assure themselves that they have grace. There is no reduction of baptism to a mere symbol, no erection of a mere internal and conscious new birth.

But supposing these extracts were much more favourable to Mr. Gorham than they are, there remains still a question of some importance-Are these the only statements which these divines make on the subject of baptism, or are there others in the background? And, what is more to the purpose still, Are these the great cardinal statements and professions which these men make as members of the Church; or are they qualifications and explanations, which they make as theologians, of some cardinal statement which has preceded, and is supposed throughout? This is an important distinction. Give, on any doctrine whatever, only the secondary and not the primary part of a writer's whole expression of himself about it, the part where he begins to explain and qualify, separated from the first simple and cardinal statement, and he may be made to appear a denier or a doubter of it. Take the explanatory statements on the doctrine of the Trinity, distinct from the cardinal one, and the doctrine of the Trinity will crumble into pieces. With the doctrine of the Incarnation, with the doctrine of Original Sin, or any other, it will be the same. No doctrine could stand such It is the leading statement which in every doctrine binds all together, and presents the whole, as a whole, to our

a test.

view. The doctrine of Baptismal Regeneration, then, as held by any writer, is not to be judged of by the explanations and qualifications of it, which he enters into subsequent to the cardinal statement of the doctrine, taken alone. He makes this first; and, when he has made it, enters on the department of explanation; but it would be plainly unfair to him to take all his explanations as if he had never made the previous statement. He carries this with him, and it is supposed throughout. Such being the relation, then, of, and the distinction between, explanatory and primary statement, we see at once, on looking at these extracts on Mr. Gorham's side, that we are looking at a quantity of explanation simply; a critic at once sees with the eye of a comparative anatomist, that there is some head or top wanting to and supposed in all of it.

:

What the school represented by Mr. Gorham in this trial wants, is the right to deny in words that persons are regenerate in baptism; to contradict, i. e., the primary and leading statement of the doctrine of Baptismal Regeneration. Now we have looked through the whole of these extracts, and, without pledging ourselves for every single one, we have no hesitation in saying that, as a mass, they completely fail Mr. Gorham at this point. Whatever explanatory liberty they may allow him, they do not give him the precedent which he and his school want-the literal denial of regeneration in baptism. They fail to do so, because they are, in fact, themselves explanations and qualifications of that cardinal statement. This appears, constantly, in the very form of the language in them; the very form evidently supposing it and sometimes, for it cannot be suppressed, the very statement itself comes out. In baptism, Christ and the Holy 'Ghost be given to them that be truly baptized in the water:' (Dr. Bayford, p. 99)—that is Cranmer's statement: and it is one which Mr. Gorham's school wants to deny. Baptism 'is 'regeneration, when a man is received into the holy Catholic Church of Christ, and is now to be accounted for one of the 'lively members of Christ's own body:' (p. 145)—that is Ridley's statement. Baptism is sacramentum a Domino institutum, ex aqua et verbo constans, quo regeneramur, et Christo inserimur, 'ad remissionem peccatorum et eternam vitam :' (p. 107)—that is Peter Martyr's statement. Baptism is a figure, indeed; but 'such as hath the truth of things joined and knit unto it: for 'as in baptism God truly delivereth us forgiveness of sins and newness of life, so do we certainlyreceive them:' (p. 139)— that is Nowell's statement. "By Baptism is he your Father, and you are born of him, and so become his son: therefore, 'can he none otherwise than love, tender, and favour you, and 'give you the inheritance of his heavenly kingdom. By Baptism are you made the brother of Christ, heir of God, and

'fellow-heir with Christ of everlasting glory; then may you be certain to be of that number that shall inherit 'eternal life. By Baptism is the Holy Ghost given you; 'then are you the sons of God, and cannot perish:' (p. 149)That is Becon's statement. 'In baptism our sins are taken 'away, and we from sins purged, cleansed, and regenerated in a new man'-that is Launcelot Ridley's statement. 'Baptismum esse sacramentum regenerationis non negamus:'-that is Whittaker's statement. That infants are regenerated in baptism is the language of Scripture and antiquity:'-that is Archbishop Sharp's statement. All infants are in baptism regenerated by the Holy Ghost:'-that is Bishop Hopkins' statement. Here are (and they are only specimens) so many assertions, simple and decided, of Baptismal Regeneration, appearing in the very extracts which Mr. Gorham has picked out of all English theology for disproving that doctrine. Now, our opponent will say: Yes, here are the statements, doubtless: but do not be in a hurry; the writers, or at least some of them, will explain them soon: you will see what they mean by that statement, when you see the appendage to it. But this is exactly what we say. Supposing the statement is explained afterwards, still the statement is made first. But our opponents will not make the statement. They claim all the explanation, without any of the assertion; all the liberty, without any of the yoke. It is truc, some writers do explain and some may exceed the just limits of explanation: but those who are most jealous of the baptismal gift, and reduce the meaning of the statement most in the explanation, make, and never abandon, the statement itself. They may call the sanctity imparted by baptism external, ecclesiastical, relative; the regeneration, sacramental: but they maintain that it does impart sanctity, and does confer regeneration. They give no sanction, then, and supply no precedent to those who refuse to make that

statement.

We will even take their assertion-and this is the concluding observation for which we have been preparing-as made upon Mr. Gorham's own ground;-the ground which has been put forward throughout this contest, and of which it has been the professed object of this contest, on his side, to obtain the concession; -the ground of charitable presumption. Extracts are adduced to prove that the ground of charitable presumption is the ground put forward in explanation of the assertion of regeneration in baptism, by various divines of our Church. Who be of the Church,' says Whitgift, 'is known to Him alone who knoweth those that are His.' But we must count all in the Church,' who are in it visibly. 'What thou art inwardly,' says Benefield, and in the sight 'of God, God alone knoweth; He alone is kapdtoyvwσrns, and 'sees and knows thy heart. Since thou hast given thy name to