rit the kingdom of heaven. Men cannot, in all cases, separate between the visible and spiritual: charity sometimes forbids, our own infirmities would still more frequently frustrate the attempt. But God doth separate between them with an unerring eye; and he hath set in the heart of each man a witness from himself, to enable him to learn, at least with considerable assurance, whether or no he is himself a member of the Church spiritual; and, perhaps, we are permitted to speak to none in a more indignant tone of reproof, than to those who talk of their relation to the true Church, but hold the truth in unrighteousness; to those who boast of the mystery of the Church's holiness, yet themselves remain immersed in the sensual and vicious gratifications of the world.

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SERMON XV.

THE SACRAMENT OF BAPTISM.

MATT. xxviii. 19.-Go ye and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost.

A due administration of the sacraments enters into the simplest possible definition of the church which we call Holy and Catholic; we could scarcely, therefore, conclude an exposition of the article of the Apostles' Creed, I BELIEVE THE HOLY CATHOLIC CHURCH, without an express statement of the doctrine of the Sacraments. I propose, then, to state in this discourse the doctrine of our church, and of the word of God, concerning the sacrament of Baptism; and in the following discourse to enter more fully on the sacrament of the Lord's Supper.

But there is one important question to be discussed common and preliminary to both: What is a sacrament?

Now, to this question our church herself affords the best answer, when she teaches us in her catechism to say, "A sacrament is an outward and visible sign of an inward and spiritual grace given unto us, ordained by Christ himself, as a mean whereby we receive the same, and a pledge to assure us thereof.”

Every word of this comprehensive, though short, definition hath its importance; but for our present purpose we need lay peculiar stress only on the assertion, that a sacrament is not merely "an outward and visible sign of an inward and spiritual grace given," and "a pledge to assure us thereof:" but that it is also (and you will observe that this is an assertion of much higher efficacy)" a mean whereby we receive the same.”

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And it is the more necessary to call your attention to this statement, because we are surrounded on all sides by sects which have grievously lowered the efficacy of the sacraments in their avowed articles of faith; and whose members and ministers, of course, openly maintain their doctrines upon this subject : while many, I might perhaps say most, even of ourselves, though perhaps they be restrained, by respect to the plain declaration of our own church, from openly expressing it, are internally influenced by a similar error and some (I say it with sorrow and with shame) are not afraid to call themselves sons of our church, and even to minister at her fonts and at her altars those very sacraments, to her doctrines concerning which they openly oppose their private judgment, while they decry in their own words what they

are obliged to assert in the words of the church whose articles they have solemnly embraced, and to whose liturgy they have pledged themselves to conform.

The sum of the difference between the catholic doctrine and that class of errors of which I have now been speaking is this: That the church declares of the sacraments, that they are the medium through which certain blessings are conferred upon men ; while those who differ from her deny that any blessings are thus bestowed, or at least that any blessings are thus bestowed any otherwise than the same blessings are bestowed by other means of grace. The part which the sacraments bear in their system is that of a mere external sign and assurance of those spiritual benefits which the person who receives them had already possessed; and which, if he hath not already, the sacraments are of no use whatever. As if, for instance, Baptism be taken for the sacramental rite of admission into the spiritual church, then the baptized person is, according to them, first admitted into the church by a true spiritual regeneration; and then that spiritual regeneration is attested to him at his baptism but if he had not already received the necessary spiritual grace, he is neither more or less a member of the spiritual church of Christ than he was before his baptism. Or if the Supper of the Lord be taken as the sacrament of renewing grace, then that grace has already been received before and without respect to the Lord's Supper, which supervenes only as an additional assurance to his faith that such

grace

*

is already his and if not, then the Eucharist is nugatory, a sign of nothing. But, according to this false doctrine, the church gains positively nothing by the sacraments which were committed to her with such solemnity, which she guards with such care, and administers with such reverence: for she hath, in answer to prayer, and in the written word, and in the ministrations of her clergy, and in the fruit of the Spirit, just as certain and more intelligible assurances of grace given, than in the sacraments. And if any say that still the sacraments are peculiarly valuable as means of instruction, we answer with Hooker, "When the word of God may be heard, which teacheth with much more expedition and more full explication any thing we have to learn, if all the benefits we reap by sacraments be instruction, they which at all times have opportunity of using the better mean to that purpose will surely hold the worse in less estimation. And unto infants, which are not capable of instruction, who would not think it a mere superfluity that any sacrament is administered, if to administer the sacrament be but to teach receivers what God doth for them ?"

On the other hand, the orthodox Christian saith, that the sacraments are divinely appointed channels, each of its appropriate blessing; and that in such a sense, that ordinarily at least, those blessings are not conferred except on the recipients of those sacraments, and through their means respectively. That baptism

Ecc. Pol. v. 57.