even at this distance. Every man in the Christian Church hath frequently, in his life, a power to partake of God's ordinary preparing graces and it is some degree of obedience, though no work of regeneration, to make good use of them; and if he without the inhabitance of the Spirit, cannot make such use as he should, yet to make the best he can: and thus, I say, [i. e. in a parallel way] the Spirit appears to the unregenerate, almost every day of our lives. 2ndly, when this Spirit comes a guest to lodge with us, then he is said to enter; but till by actions and frequent obliging works, he makes himself known to his neighbours, as long as he keeps his chamber, till he declare himself to be there, so long he remains a private secret guest, and that is called the introduction of the form, that makes a man to be truly regenerate; when the seed is sown in his heart, when the habit is infused, and that is done sometimes discernibly, sometimes not discernibly, but seldom, as when Saul was called in the midst of his madness, Acts ix., he was certainly able to tell a man the very minute of his change, of his being made a new creature. Thus they which have long lived in an enormous Antichristian course, do many times find themselves strucken on a sudden, and are able to date their regeneration, and tell you punctually how old they are in the Spirit. Yet because there be many preparations to this Spirit, which are not this Spirit, many presumptions in our hearts false grounded, many tremblings and jealousies in those that have it, great affinity between faith natural and spiritual: seeing it is a Spirit that thus enters, and not as it did light on the Disciples, in a bodily shape, it is not an easy matter for any one to define the time of his conversion. Some may guess somewhat nearer than others, as remembering a sensible change in themselves; but, in a word, the surest discerning of it is in its working, not at its entering. I may know that now I have the Spirit, better than at what time I came to it. Undiscernibly GoD's supernatural agency interposes sometimes in the mother's womb, as in John Baptist springing in Elizabeth at Mary's salutation, (Luke i. 41.) and perhaps in Jeremy, (Jer. i. 5.) "Before thou camest out of the womb, I sanctified thee," and (in Isa. xlix. 5.) "The LORD that formed me from the womb to be his servant." But

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this divine address attends most ordinarily till the time of our Baptism, when the Spirit, accompanying the outward sign, infuses itself into their hearts, and there seats and plants itself, and grows up with the reasonable soul, keeping even their most luxuriant years within bounds; and as they come to an use of their reason, to a more and more multiplying this habit of grace into holy spiritual acts of faith and obedience; from which it is ordinarily said, that infants baptized have habitual faith, as they may be also said to have habitual repentance, and habits of all other graces, because they have the root and seed of those beauteous, healthful flowers, which will actually flourish there when they come to years. And this, say, is so frequent to be performed at Baptism, that ordinarily it is not wrought without that means, and in those means we may expect it, as our Church doth in our Liturgy, where she presumes, at every Baptism, that it hath pleased God to regenerate the infant by his Holy Spirit. And this may prove a solemn piece of comfort to some, who suspect their state more than they need, and think it impossible

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that they should be in a regenerate condition, because they have not as yet found any such notable change in themselves, as they see and observe in others. These men may as well be jealous they are not men, because they cannot remember when their soul came to them if they can find the effects of spiritual life in themselves, let them call it what they will, a religious education, or a custom of well-doing, or an unacquaintedness with sin; let them comfort themselves in their estate, and be thankful to GoD who visited them thus betimes; let it never trouble them that they were not once as bad as other men, but rather acknowledge GOD'S mercy, who hath prevented such a change, and by uniting them to Him in the cradle, hath educated and nursed them up in familiarity with the Spirit.

TAYLOR, BISHOP, Confessor, and DOCTOR.-Life of Christ, sect. 9.-On Baptism, part ii. 16.

Thirdly, in baptism we are born again; and this infants need in the present circumstances, and for the same great reason that men of age and reason do. For our natural birth is either of

itself insufficient, or is made so by the fall of Adam, and the consequent evils, that nature alone, or our first birth, cannot bring us to heaven, which is a supernatural end, that is, an end above all the power of our nature as now it is. So that if nature cannot bring us to heaven, grace must, or we can never get thither; if the first birth cannot, a second must: but the second birth spoken of in Scripture is baptism; "a man must be born of water and the Spirit." And therefore baptism is λουτρὸν παλιγγενεσίας, "the laver of a new birth." Either then infants cannot go to heaven any way that we know of, or they must be baptized. To say they are left to GOD, is an excuse, and no answer; for when God hath opened the door, and calls that the "entrance into heaven," we do not leave them to GOD, when we will not carry them to Him in the way which He hath described, and at the door which Himself hath opened: we leave them indeed, but it is but helpless and destitute: and though GOD is better than man, yet that is no warrant to us; what it will be to the children, that we cannot warrant or conjecture. And if it be objected, that to the new birth are required dispositions of our own, which are to be wrought by and in them that have the use of reason; besides that, this is wholly against the analogy of a new birth, in which the person to be born is wholly a passive, and hath put into him the principle that in time will produce its proper actions; it is certain that they that can receive the new birth, are capable of it. The effect of it is a possibility of being saved, and arriving to a supernatural felicity. If infants can receive this effect, then also the new birth, without which they cannot receive the effect. And if they can receive salvation, the effect of the new birth, what hinders them but they may receive that, that is in order to that effect, and ordained only for it, and which is nothing of itself, but in its institution and relation, and which may be received by the same capacity, in which one may be created, that is, a passivity, or a capacity obediential?

Fourthly; concerning pardon of sins, which is one great effect of baptism, it is certain that infants have not that benefit, which men of sin and age may receive. He that hath a sickly stomach,

drinks wine, and it not only refreshes his spirits, but cures his stomach he that drinks wine, and hath not that disease, receives good by his wine, though it does not minister to so many needs; it refreshes, though it does not cure him: and when oil is poured upon a man's head, it does not always heal a wound, but sometimes makes him a cheerful countenance, sometimes it consigns him to be a king, or a priest. So it is in baptism: it does not heal the wounds of actual sins, because they have not committed them; but it takes off the evil of original sin: whatsoever is imputed to us by Adam's prevarication, is washed off by the death of the second Adam, into which we are baptized.

HEYLIN, PRESBYTER AND CONFESSOR.-On the Apostles' Creed. Art. x. Chap. vi.

In which, [Article the 27th] lest any should object, as Dr. Harding did against Bishop Jewell, that we make baptism to be nothing but a sign of regeneration, and that we dare not say, as the Catholic Church teacheth, according to the Holy Scriptures, "That in and by baptism, sins are fully and truly remitted, and put away," we will reply with the said most reverent and learned prelate, (a man who well understood the Church's meaning), That we confess, and have ever taught, that in the Sacrament of Baptism, by the death and blood of CHRIST, is given remission of all manner of sins; and that not in half, or in part, or by way of imagination and fancy, but full, whole, and perfect of all together; and that if any man affirm, that " Baptism giveth not full remission of sins," it is no part nor portion of our doctrine. To the same effect also saith judicious Hooker, "Baptism is a Sacrament," &c. [quoted above]. ...... But because these were private men, neither of which, for aught appears, had any hand in the first setting out of the Book of Articles, (which was in the reign of King Edward the Sixth,) though Bishop Jewell had in the second edition, when they were reviewed and published in Queen Elizabeth's time; let us consult the Book of Homilies, made and set out by those who composed the Articles; and there we find, that by God's mercy and the virtue of that sacrifice which our High Priest and SAVIOUR CHRIST JESUS, the Son

of GOD, once offered for us upon the cross, we do obtain GOD'S grace, and remission, as well of our original sin in baptism, as of all actual sin committed by us after baptism, if we truly repent and turn unfeignedly unto Him again. Which doctrine of the Church of England, as it is consonant to the Word of GOD in Holy Scripture, so is it also most agreeable to the common and received judgment of pure antiquity. For in the Scripture it is said expressly by St. Peter, &c. &c. This also was the judgment of the ancient writers, and that too long before the starting of the Pelagian heresies, to which much is ascribed by some as to the advancing of the efficacy and fruit of baptism, by succeeding Fathers. For thus Tertullian; "Now (saith he) do the waters daily preserve the people of GOD, death being destroyed and overthrown by the washing away of sins; for where the guilt is taken away, there is the punishment remitted also." St. Cyprian thus; "That the remission of sins, whether given in baptism, or by any other of the sacraments, is properly to be ascribed to the Holy Ghost." The African Fathers in full

doth Origen also for the

Council do affirm the same, and so Alexandrian, of both which we shall speak anon in the point of Pædobaptism. Thus Nyssen for the Eastern churches: "Baptism (saith he) is the expiation of our sins, the remission of our offences, the cause of our new birth and regeneration." Thus do the Fathers in the Constantinopolitan Council profess their faith in one baptism (or being only once baptized)" for the remission of sins." And finally, that this was the doctrine of the Church in general, before Augustine's time, who is conceived to be the first that did advance the power and efficacy of baptism to so great a height, in opposition to the Pelagian heresies, appears by a byword grown before his time into frequent use; the people being used to say, when they observed a man to be too much addicted to his lusts and pleasures, Let him alone to take his pleasure, "for as yet the man is not baptized." More of this we shall see anon in that which follows. Nor is this only Primitive, but good Protestant doctrine, as is most clear and evident by that of Zanchius, whom only I shall instance in, of the later writers. "When the minister baptizeth, I believe