lent. SECT. I. of the erroneous to John iii. How truly did "the adversary perforate the shell, and Application withdraw the last atom of the kernel" of the ordinance of baptism, when this "vain philosophy" of the early principles Fathers led them to apply that saying of our Lord, 5. "Except a man be born of water and of the Spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God," to that holy ordinance ! Not one word throughout the whole dis a Ancient Christianity, p. 116, VIII. CHAP. course of our Lord to Nicodemus, has the least reference to baptism, or any other form. He is speaking, first, of the influence of the Spirit in regeneration, and then of the love of God in the sacrifice of his Son-the essentials of salvation. The passage plainly means, "of water even of the Spirit ;" the former being the figure of the purifying influence of the operation of the Divine Spirit. I am well aware that baptists even have been misled by the early Fathers on this point. Of late, however, the incorrectness of this interpretation and its formalizing tendency have been more generally acknowledged. Certain it is, that the reference is to the heavenly state; for any one can see that men can and do enter the visible "kingdom of God" without the Spirit;" and "God forbid" we should follow the Fathers in entertaining the idea that none can enter heaven without the "water." of these trine of Application One of the most glaring instances of the vicious principles philosophy which led the Fathers to patronize formal to the doc institutions of men-made virtues, instead of the simple perpetual spiritual truths of the New Testament, is the bold and virginity. zealous advocacy, nay, the impious exaltation of the virtue of a perpetual virginity. This "forbidding to marry," is the favourite doctrine (above all others,) of those great patrons of infant baptism, Cyprian and Augustine; indeed, absurd and corrupting as it was, this doctrine evidently preceded, as well as accompanied that of infant baptism; for even Tertullian, who could argue so strongly against administering baptism to children, maintained strenuously the monstrous notion we are referring to. Egregious "The command, Increase and multiply,'" says this doctrine of celebrated Father, "is abolished. Yet, as I think, (contrary to the Gnostic opinion) this command, in the first Tertullian. I. instance, and now the removal of it, are from one and SECT. the same God; who then, and in that early seed-time of the human race, gave the reins to the marrying principle, until the world should be replenished, and until he had prepared the elements of a new scheme of discipline. But now, in this conclusion of the ages, he restrains what once he had let loose, and revokes what he had permitted. The same reason governs the continuance at first, of that which is to prepare for the future. In a thousand instances, indulgence is granted to the beginnings of things. So it is that a man plants a wood, and allows it to grow, intending, in due time, to use the axe. The wood, then, is the old dispensation, which is done away by the gospel, in which the axe is laid to the root of the tree!" Cyprian enters largely upon the glory of the state of And of Cyprian. perpetual virginity. After reprehending at length, and on various grounds, costly and meretricious decorations of the person the means and materials of which, says the good bishop, were given to mankind by the apostate angels-he proceeds to specify and reprove still more criminal excesses which had become matter of scandal, within and without the church, and had afforded too much colour to the calumnies of the heathen : "Listen, then, to him who seeks your true welfare; lest, cast off by the Lord, ye be widows before ye be married; adultresses, not to husbands, but to Christ, and, after having been destined to the highest rewards, ye undergo the severest punishments... For, consider, while the hundred-fold produce is that of the martyrs, the sixty-fold is yours; and as they (the martyrs) contemn the body and its delights, so should you. Great are the wages which await you, (if faithful;) the high reward of virtue, the great recompense to be conferred CHAP. upon chastity. Not only shall your lot and portion (in VIII. the future life) be equal to that of the other sex ; but ye shall be equal to the angels of God!" b favourite of Cyprian the Can it excite our surprise that a man, who could thus podobaptist go directly in face of the Scriptures, in their plain testiwriters. mony to the honourable character, and even divine Connection of these institution, of the marriage state, should blunder as egregiously on the institution of baptism? How fond Dr. Miller is of Cyprian! My pædobaptist readers may imagine that there is no connection between the sentiments of the early Fathers, which could consign their daughters to the nunnery, that they might have the rank of angels, and their sentiments and practices respecting the ordinance of baptism: that connection has, however, for their enlightenment, been clearly traced out by the author of Ancient Christianity. "There is, I believe, no controversy," says Mr. Tayerroneous lor, "concerning the historical fact, that practices had principles been established, and that notions were prevalent relating with baptism. to the ritual parts of Christianity, in the fourth century, of which we can discover scarcely a trace in the apostolic age. No one pretends to affirm that Chrysostom, Ambrose, and Augustine, speak of baptism, and the eucharist, precisely as Paul, and Peter, and John, had spoken of them. A difference then, in this respect, had arisen in the course of three hundred years; but this difference, say the modern advocates of church principles, was nothing more than the ripening, or natural expansion of certain rudiments, which the Apostles had mingled, silently, yet designedly, with the Christian institute. Discerning, or thinking that we discern these rudiments, even in the apostolic writings, we do well, it Ancient Christianity, p. 121. I. is said, to derive our own notions and practices from the SECT. mature, rather than from the crude era of their history. If what was done and taught by the Nicene divines, in regard to the sacraments, was nothing more than what had been foreseen, and intended by the Apostles, our part is to consult the Nicene, rather than the apostolic : writings, on such points. "But let it be asked, under whose auspices had this gradual expansion of ritual notions and practices been effected? This question is surely a pertinent one, and the answer it must receive brings us at once to the alleged connection between the ascetic and institute (especially the clerical and monastic celibacy) and the sacramental doctrine and practice of the Nicene age. "This doctrine and this practice were nothing else than what men, so placed as were the clergy of the ancient church, would inevitably move toward and adopt. That an unmarried clergy, professing and admiring the wildest extravagances of the oriental ascetism, should have adhered, century after century, to the modesty, simplicity, and unobtrusive seriousness, of the apostolic sacramental doctrine, would have been a miracle far more astounding than any of those to which the church, even in St. Dunstan's time, pretended. Every principle of human nature forbids such an incongruity, nor is an example of the sort presented by history :-it could not have been ;-it is not to be believed;-it was not the fact. The Nicene sacramental doctrine was just such as might beseem, and accord with, the ascetic feeling and condition of the clerical body. tal doctrine "This insensible substitution of the form for the sub- Sacramenstance is so prominently characteristic of the ascetic of the scheme of life, that I cannot suppose it to be called in Fathers. question. But now, what was the sacramental doctrine |