Original Correspondence. THE BAPTISMAL REGENERATION CONTROVERSY. To the Editor of the New Zealander.

New Zealander, Volume 7, Issue 505, 15 February 1851, Page 3

Original Correspondence. THE BAPTISM AL REGENERATION CONTROVERSY. To the Editor of the New Zealander.

Sin. — It is not without reluctance that 1 solicit a plnce in your columns (or some remaikson this mibjp<t supplementary, to thise which have already been rffe-rd by your able correspondents, " \ Member of the Church of England," and " A L*y Member of the Anglican Church ;" for, in addition to my 6ensi> of the general inexpediency of making the spiritual verities of our holy religion the theme of controversial discusion in a secular journal, I am a<*are thai many readprs regard such disrussions as an unwarrantable intrusion on *p=»re which i hey would pie'er seeing occupied hy articles on politica' or commercial topics, or the passing news of the diy. It is to be letnembered, however, that this question is not only of the utmost importance. in itselt, but is just now engaging lively attention through almost the whole, of Christendom ; «nd that a consideration of it has been forced upon us in those Colonies by the recently published Minutes of the Proceedings a' the Conference of Australian Buhops held in Sydney in October last. Had the Rifjht Reverend Prelates confined themselves to the oHjects of their Meeting, as they have slated them at pa^e 5 of their pamphlet, (that is, to con sultation on the state of Ecclesiastical Law and the means of preserving Ecclesiastical Order in the Province, and the adoption of a plan of Missionary effort), there would piobably have been little moie beard here thin the faint echoes of the gre^t contention to which the Gorhak case has imparted renewed and peculiar earnestness in England. But >he<r Lordships have judged it right to f?i*e publicity and prominence to their views on Baptismal {^generation ; a step on their part which excites ihe more especial nonce, because they did not druw up even in outline a general Confession of Faith, or summary of Church of E' gland doctrines, but singled out this particular question from amongst all the d\*yu ed teueis of the ChU'ch, as that one on which they would openly take a side. Such a declaration coming from bo justly respected a source could not have f.nled to secure atiention, even if the Bishops had all been of one mind upon it ; but that attention is necessarily fixed and rentlerrd keener by ihe fait that they were not so, but that, even out oi the small number of six, one felt constrained to place on record before the world what, though not in name, is in reality a formal Ppotgst against the views of his biethren in 'he Australasian Episcopate. Ido not presume to cavil at the course taken by their Lordships in the matter. I simply wish it to be borne in mind that the origination of the present discussion is to be traced to their adoption of that course. Had they passed by this vexed question as they passed by other doctrinal points, your former correspondent! (ai appears pin nly from their letters) | would no 1 have addressed you on the subject, and you certainly would not have been troubled by this communication fr.im my humble self. A^ to the examination of i lie subject in a gpcular newspaper, I netd only remaik that secular newspapers are heie the only literary channels through which any subject can be publicly discus-ed. I have intimated that my observations would he supplementary to those which you h»ve already pub» lished ; my purpose being go far as I m<y be able, to submit to your readers a few brief comments on the text supplied by your c respondents, and a few considerations without which the case would not, I think, stand in Us full and fair aspect belore the vi*w of the inquirer after truth. I have veiy little to remark however, on the letter of " A Member of the Church of England." Although I was baptized by, and received some of my early religious instruction from, a clergyman who was a firm upholder of views of Baptism il grace, scarcely, if at all, differing from those ati uched by the majority of the Bishops ht Sydney, and whose learning and intellectual powers, commanded my admiration in proportion at I was better able to appreciate their rare excellence, >et I subsequently became convinced that »uch views were not in accordance either with the Word of God, or wuh the doctrinal teaching of the Church of England, —taking that teaching not exclusively as it may be inferred from some incautious and unfortunate expressions in the Prayer Book, but, more compreben* siveJy, as it is set forth in the Articles, tbe Homilies, and the un official writings of the Reformers. I hate only ocen confirmed in this conclusion by all 1 ha*e read and heard in later years, during which I have bren ntither a carele«s, nor, I tiust, an obstinately prejudiced observer of the controversy I therefore am agreed with "A Member" on the general question, and I entirely enter into his apprehensions of the consequences which might entue in these Colonies, should any of ihe live Bishops " rente Hie Gorhara case" by refusing to <>rdain a candidate for Holy Ordeis, or to grant a license to a Clergyman, because of his holding the view* usually known as lk Evangelical" on the fubject of Bnpti>m. I believe there are in every diocese in Australasia, — (I am sure there are in the diocese of New Zealand), clergymen who could not be induced by any earthly lonsideration to declare assent and consent on this question to the dogmas of the Bishop of Excteb, re-stated by the five Buhopj. Should such a collision occur, who does not fee how portentom it would be of revolutionary action in the Church in the Colonies ? The letters of " A Lay Member of the Anglican Church" call for fuller no-ice. The writer is an unhesitating and uncompromising adherent of the five bishops. What they think respecting " Holy Baptism," he thinks also. He believes with them that " nil infants do by Boptiam receive tbe grace of It?generation," and that this Regeneration implies not merely a relative or federal change of condition, but a moral and spiritual renovation, by whiih "infants baptized with water, in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, die unto tin, and rise again uno righteousness." This doctiine, that washing a child with water, and repeating ovr him a form of word-, constitutes him an heir of eternal life and renews big spirit after the image of God, is in itself so extraordinary, that, while we may not reject it on account of its mysteri iu»ness or its incompatibilny with our preconceived views of the Divine Government we yet may surely feel warranted in demanding full and un eqwivocalproof before we implicitly receive it. The •' Lay Member" proceeds to what be regards as po t but be adducei scarcely any evidence directly diawu irom the Scriptures, preferring to accumulate quota tions from human compositions, designed to show tint the doctrine was held by the Ancient Fathers, by tbe Reformers, and, in abort, " by the vast majority of the Church's teachers in all ages," Now, although I waiflU'U that no amount of traditionary support from

the opinions of even 'be wiiest and best of uninspired m*n — no Catena of human authorities, however elaborately for«ed and cl >sely linked— no application, bowever successful, of the ("am us Traotarisin test, Quod sem;<er , qu od übique qwd ab omnibus traditum est — n » hm){ short of a e'ear revelation ot it w God's own B'ok, pould mlfice to the establishment of the doctrine ,18 Heaven's truth;— yet it may be well to look foi a moment or two at the value of the support which it is said to receive from the early Fathers, and at the allegation that it is really the doctrine of the Church of En-jlnnd. I have no disposition to speak lightly of the Fathers ; on the contrary, I regret ihat the abuse of their writings, in which the Tractarinn sect has, as in other thing 1 !, followed closely in the track of its Romish onginal, has led many to treat with unmerited disrepect <he memory of men, some of whom nt least were eminently holy and useful servants of Christ and his Church. But as men, they were fallible, and n would he easy to multiply evidences of dogmatical assertions maiie by them which it would be as difficult to receivr as it would be to believe that there is no such place as New Zealand, because St. Augustine expressly declared it an " incredible fable" thdt " people inhabit a land where the sun rises whin it sets with us, and go with their feet opposite to ours."— (City rf God, Book xvi. chap 9.) On this particular subject of Baptism, they ran into not a few inconsistent and wild notions. A short passage from Dr. Halley's learned work on the Sacramems, (even though it ha* proceeded from the pen of " an irreveient Dissenter," as Mr. Froude would have stigmatised its author) is worth quotation as nmply illustmttve of this rem»rlc. Adverting to the absurd results to which the Tractarian theory of alinott unqualified revereuce for Patristic teaching respecting Baptism would legitimately conduct, he says,— " Why not consistently and uniformly follow the authority of the ancients 1 Why not maintain the presence of Christ's blood in the water after couseciation, with Gregoiy Nazianzen, and Basil, and Piosper, and Jeiomo, and many others ? Why not declare that the consecrated water is led as it moves in the blessed font of immortality ? VI by not say with Isidore that it is leally the water which flowed trom the side of Christ ? Why not avow, with Cyril ot Alexandria and others, the orthodox doctrine ot a trans-elementation of water, so that by consecration its nature is completely changed ? Why not, with the old writer appended to • lenient, risserttnat in Baptism the horoscope is reversed, to the confusiou of the astrologers? But wheie can we stop in these inquiries? We might go through a long series of similar questions until we reached the climax oi aosurdity. or rather ot bla phemy, and ask, Why not believe with Leo, the Pontiff, that a man, alt r baptism, is not the same as he was belore, but the body being regenerated, becomes thefleb/i of Him who was cruci-* fled ? These opinions are all more or less dependent upon the same authority, the same tradi ions, the same holy Faihers., sainted bishops, and blessed martyrs, as are the acknowledged doctrines of the Tiacurian party." Setting aside, however, those Patrietical notions which are merely fanciful, if not worse, I observe that the more grave and chastened opinions of the Fathers re-pecting Baptism cannot be rightly judged of by det>ched pa*s>ges, but require curetul comparison of one stBicment with others, and » constant recollection of the | (act that the particular question now under considerntion was not usually referred to by them as a matter of controversy, and therefore was not treated with any guarded precision of language. A key also 'o the understanding of their real meaning may be found in the dutinstion between the outward Baptism by water and i he inward Baptism of the Spa-it, to the latter of which not a few of those statements were almost certainly intendel to apply, which disputants on " A Lav Member's" tide ot the argument are accustomed to appropriate to the former. Tins point is worthy of the serious attention of those who attach great impoitanceto the voice of ecclesiastical antiquity. For my own parti however, I am much of the same mind as the pi or man who, when he was plied by a Romish priest with reasonings founded on the alleged authority of the Fnihets, only replied that he " was not learned enough to know what the Faihers caught, but he understood and was satisfied witu the teaching of the Grand-Fathers,' 1 meaning, of course, the Evangelists and Apostles. The same observations are substantially applicable lo the array of quotations advluced by " A Lay Member" wiih a view of showing that Baptismal Regeneration, in his sense of the expression, is ihe doctrine of the Anglican Church. There is confessedly little ' difficulty m mustering an apparently formidable number of surh passages ;— ihe Catena Patrutn, in the Tracts for the Times, No. 76, would have supplied the j wriier with many more than he has collected ;— and the language employed in the Bap ismal Service is so strong that it undoubtedly (*s "A Lay Member" intimates) has been a source of great embanassment to many Evangelical Clergymen, who felt the inconsistency between their own belief, and what seem* to be the obvious meaning of the expressions they were bound to use. They, however, all back upon the Article on Baptism (the 271h), in which 'he Sacrament is explicitly characterised as " a sign,'' — not the nece»wary and inseparable means of " Rrgeneruion or New Binh," — and " an Instrument wheicby they that receive Baptism tightly are g raited inio the Church,'' 1 that is. ihe visible Church ; aud whereby 1 the promises of forgitentss of sin, and of our adoption to be the t-ons of God by the Holy Gho,t are" (not necessarily fulfilled in a spiritual aud saving sense, but) "' visibly signed and sealed," — it remaining that the coufi mation of F«uth, and the increase of Grace are to be subsequently obtained " by virtue of Prayer to God." In accordance with this teaching, the Bishop of Melbourne maintains that the language of the Church in the Office ia only " that of jailh and hope, and is not to be understood as declaring positively a fact wtucb. U cannot certainly know, viz., that every baptized infant, or every baptized adult is regenerate.' 1 This has notoriously been \he view taken by many of the brightest ornaments of the Anglican Church; as it is stated in the Judgment of the Judicial Committee of Pi ivy Council on the Gorham case, "It appears tbat opinions, which ne cannot in any important particular distinguish from those en ertuined by Mr. Gorham, have been propounded aud maintained, without censure or reproach, by many eminent and illustrious Prelates uud Divines, who have adorned the Church from the time when the Ai tides were first established." . It is added that (*itli the single exception of Vice-Ch»ncellor Knight Bkucej " all the members ol the Judicial Committee who we epteseni are unanimously tigieed in opinion — that the doctrine held bv Mi. Gokham is not contrary or repugnant to the declared djdrine of the Church uf I£7igla?id as by law eilabhshed.' To the same efftct is the language of the Archuinhop of Canterbury in hs Reply to an Atldrekß from the Tra. tariamzed " C huich Union," (as puolishe '. in your journal of me IBih u|t.),— -' I must remind y<'U tha y ur op u ons are directly opp' site to those of a numerous body of intelligent and a lached mamhers i f om Church, tiuin clergymen and l,v> men, who al>hou 9 h they have htiherto obseivtfd a prudent and respectful silence, are yet deliberately convinced that no other determination ot th* quention at issue would have been in accordance with the Articles of our Church, and the known principles of thofce who framed them."

Before leaving thii part of ibe subject, let me be permitted to make an extract closely bearing on it. from a late number of the fVesleyon Methodist Magazine which has been lent lo me since I commenced this letter. It 13 not the less—but rather llie more— deserving the attention of Churchmen because it appears in the official oigan of a Nonconformity Body :- " That the connexion of baptism with what is termed resrencation is asserted in the form provided for baptism, no one can deny. But the question atises, To what did the compilers of the Liturgy intend to apply the term which they thus employed? Circumstances which need not now be detailed hive led modern theologians, since the revival ot religion by means of Methodism, to the more careful study of those evangelical doctrines which are immediately connected with the inward power of godliness; and this li<is iesulti»d in an accuracy of definition which gives to theological terminology far more of clearness and precision than it could possibly possess immediately after the lieloi mdtion. The tatal crrois of Popery had powerfully affected the \ery language of divimty. The Rcfouuers had to eugage 111 stormy coutioversy for the establishment of truths which had almost disappeared horn \ icw and if, in thoii (wst acquaintance with what would be to them a new system, and with the mental disturbances unavoidably "occasioned by earnest and continue! disputation, their views weie not so clear as are those o r their successors who live in times much more favouiable to the calm and diligent study of truth in itself considered ; it, in short, they at first only saw men as trees walking, and their descriptions iiad the vagueness and imperfection oh their views, none will be surprised. The wonder is, that they saw the great truths of sp'i'itual leligion so clearly. On the suUlect ol justification by faith they were thoroughly sound; and they evidently" intended "to make that the key stone of their whole system, so that all else was to be lefeired to it, and all subordinate incoirectness explained and lectified by it- What can be cleaicr than their statement on justification itself, that it {is only a ful.ei , brighter view of the great blessing of forgiveness ot sin ? What mpie plain than their account of justifying faith,— that it is the gilt of God, (" not only in the object, but also in the act,' 1 afterwards said that accurate and profound theologian, Bishop Pearson,)— and that it is not merely the receiitiou of the Articles of the Chustian revelation, but an appiopriating, tiusting confidence in the mercy of God, through the merits of Christ"! We are >>ot bound fo defend the correctness of all their interpretations of cvai gelical doctrine, nor the accuracy of all their theological definition-, and. phrases, if they made some mistakes in the matter of then teaching, and expiessed themselves incautiously, Ufi.lei the influence of the system out of the darkness of which they had so recently emerged, mistakes and want of caution affect not us. But every English P.otestant owes them a large debt, and is bound to assert and defend their honesty. They did not blow hot and cold with the same bre.ah. Tliey fixed in the Chu-ch tha ev.uigelically-l'iotestant elcmeut, fidelity to which would long ago have crushed and extirpated that Popish element which was insinuated by a power they could uot resist, ami which Jus since derive.) its support fiom expressions whicn they unhappily placed in the Service Book, partly because ot that remaining obscurity which sail prevented in them clearness of vision, and paitly from tneir desire to conciliate their opponents by speaking as far as they o-uld in lan* guagr to which, loitnerly, they had all been accustomed,—takinu care, at the same time, by the erection of visible and most decided laukmarks, that their sense should not be misunderstood. Who, among the Bi hop of Exeter's party, will state as unequivocally as is done in the Homilies the gieat and distinguishing doctrine of justification by faith? The members ot that party well know -no one knows beter than tliey-th.it this doctrine, and that of church and sacramental salvation as proclaimed by the Tractanans and their abettois, are utteily inconsistent with each other ; that they are the lespectn-e symbols of sj stems irreconcila -ly opposed ; and that they cannot dwell together in the same mind: contmclmg, theiefore, as they do, tor what they choose to call the " Catholic teaching" of the Church, they either lejfct the other doctrine altogether, or so explain it as to give it a meaning which the Anglican Reformers would have indignantly tramp.cd under toot Whatever they did mean by the expressions they employed in the form provided by them tor the baptism of infants, they could not mean to assert the doctrine of baptismal legeneratiou in the sense which polemics like the Bishop of fcxeter now seek to give to the term; for that sense completely contradicts ttieir language respecting justification by faith, and by> this language they evidently designed to stand or fall.' But, after all, Sir, there is a higher and purer standaid tUn the writing* of Fatheri and Doctors, or the dogmatical teaching ot any Church, or of all the churches in the world collectively. To that tribunal this great question must be ultimately appealed 1 adhere to Chillingw O i th's immortal saying, "The Bib&b, the Umlq onfy, is the religion of Protestants." I cordially subscribe to the Sixth Article of the Church ot England— " Holy Scripture contdineth all things necessary to salvation, so that whatever is not read theiein, nor may be proved thereby, is not to be required of nny man ihat it tihould be believed as an article of the Faith." 1 reverentially bow to the saying of tv» one iutallible authority, " ]'o the Uw and to the testimony ; if they speak not according to this word, it ib because there is no light in them." (Lai. viii. 20 ) I had intended t 0 niake the all important cnquiry-What does Holy Writ teach on the subject ?— the piincipal theme of the present communicaiion ; but the length to which I have already tres* passed on your kindness precludes the pos-ibility of my entering upon it now. But may I be permuted respectfully to urge on any whose m'mtfs may be undecided, a bimple, earnest, and prayerful Btudy of what Gnd has himself revealed as his truth in the case ; an imitation of the conduct of those bereans whom the Holy Ghost has pronounced "noble" because they would not receive even the teaching of Paul and Silas without " searching the Scripiures daily whether these things were to." The sincere seeker after Scti|>tural truth will find much to elevate the Sacrament of Baptism in his estmidtiou. He will be instructed to prize it as an ordinance of God, in which faith may expect the Divine presence and blessing ; us a badge of disciple - •hip, introducing to the vast privileges of connexion with the visible Church of Christ; and as an initiatory sign and seal of the covenant of redeeming gi ai c a pledge of acceptance through that covenant. But he will not Irarn that there is connected with the performance of the ceremony any opus opeiatum influence necessarily hccuiiug either adoption or regeneration ; he will not find any evidence of that figment of" sacramental salvation" which is the legitimate coniequence of the views of Baptismal Rrgenoration held by the Romanists, the Tractarians, the High-Church-raen, the fire Bishops, and " A Lay Member,"--a foment which (a«. ha* been well shown in ihe extract given above) is subversive of that grand and fundamental doctrine which is •• most wholesome and very tml of comfort,"— Luther s test of " a standing or a tailing Church" —" that we are justified by Faith omy, '—a figment the prevalence of which in the Chmch of liugland might well make the Confessora and Martyrs of »ur blessed Protestant Reformation weep— 'jl ihey bad not rented from their labours in that better land where th, re are no tears, as there is na ciror or heresy or sin. I am, Sir, Yonra faithfully, A Catholic Prqmstant. Febr wry 4, 1851.