conveys in his letter to Trajan, concerning the Christians in the end of the first century, his expression may suggest that there was conceived to be a peculiar propriety in giving this name to the Lord's Supper, from the analogy between the engagement to abstain from sin, which those who partook of that rite contracted, and the military oath of fidelity, which was known in classical writers by the name sacramentum. It appears, then, that the word, in the sense in which it is now used, is an ecclesiastical, not a scriptural word, and that the amount of that sense is to be gathered, not from the original meaning of the word, but from the practice of those with whom it occurs. For from the etymology nothing more can be deduced, than that a sacrament is something, either a word or an action, connected with what is sacred; and this is equally true, whether we annex to it the Popish sense, the Socinian sense, or the sense in which it is understood by the greater part of the reformed churches. Sacraments are conceived in the church of Rome to consist of matter, deriving, from the action of the priest in pronouncing certain words, a divine virtue, by which grace is conveyed to the soul of every person who receives them. It is supposed to be necessary that the priest, in pronouncing the words, has the intention of giving to the matter that divine virtue, otherwise it remains in its original state. On the part of those who receive the sacrament, it is required that they be free from any of those sins called in the church of Rome mortal; but it is not required of them to exercise any good disposition, to possess faith, or to resolve that they shall amend their lives. For such is conceived to be the physical virtue of a sacrament, administered by a priest with a good intention, that, unless when it is opposed by the obstacle of a mortal sin, the very act of receiving it is sufficient. This act was called, in the language of the school, opus operatum, the work done, independently of any disposition of mind attending the deed; and the superiority of the sacraments of the New Testament, over the sacraments of the Old, was thus expressed, that the sacraments of the Old Testament were effectual ex opere operantis, from the piety and faith of the persons to whom they were administered; while the sacraments of the New Testament convey grace, ex opere operato, from their own intrinsic virtue, and an immediate physical influence upon the mind of him who receives them. The arguments opposed to this doctrine by the first reformers will readily occur to your minds, from the simple exposition of it which I have given. It represents the sacraments as a mere charm, the use of which, being totally disjoined from every mental exercise, cannot be regarded as a reasonable service. It gives men the hope of receiving, by the use of a charm, the full participation of the grace of God, although they continue to indulge that very large class of sins, to which the accommodating morality of the church of Rome extends the name of venial; and yet it makes this high privilege entirely dependent upon the intention of another, who, although he performs all the outward acts which belong to the sacraments, may, if he chooses, withhold the communication of that physical virtue, without which the sacrament is of none avail. The Socinian doctrine concerning the nature of the sacraments is founded upon a sense of the absurdity and danger of the popish doctrine and a solicitude to avoid any approach to it, and runs into the opposite extreme. It is conceived that the sacraments are not essentially, distinct from any other rites or ceremonies; that as they consist of a symbolical action, in which something external and material is employed to represent what is spiritual and invisible, they may by this address to the senses be of use in reviving the remembrance of past events, and in cherishing pious sentiments; but that their effect is purely moral, and that they contribute by that moral effect to the improvement of the individual in the same manner with reading the Scriptures, and many other exercises of religion. It is admitted, indeed, by the Socinians, that the sacraments are of further advantage to the whole society of Christians, as being the solemn badges by which the disciples of Jesus are discriminated from other men, and the appointed method of declaring that faith in Christ, by the public profession of which Christians minister to the improvement of one another. But in these two points, the moral effect upon the individual, and the advantage to society, is contained all that a Socinian holds concerning the general nature of the sacraments. This doctrine is infinitely more rational than the popish, more friendly to the interests of morality, and consequently more honourable to the religion of Christ. But, like all the other parts of the Socinian system, it represents that religion in the simple view of being a lesson of righteousness, and loses sight of that character of the gospel, which is meant to be implied in calling it a covenant of grace. The greater part of Protestants, therefore, following an expression of the apostle, Rom. iv. 11, when he is speaking of circumcision, consider the sacraments as not only signs, but also seals of the covenant of grace. Those who apply this phrase to the sacraments of the New Testament admit every part of the Socinian doctrine concerning the nature of sacraments, and are accustomed to employ that doctrine to correct those popish errors upon this subject, which are not yet eradicated from the minds of many of the people. But although they admit that the Socinian doctrine is true as far as it goes, they consider it as incomplete. For while they hold that the sacraments yield no benefit to those, upon whom the signs employed in them do not produce the proper moral effect, they regard these signs as intended to represent an inward invisible grace, which proceeds from him by whom they are appointed, and as pledges that that grace will be conveyed to all in whom the moral effect is produced. The sacraments, therefore, in their opinion, constitute federal acts, in which the persons who receive them with proper dispositions, solemnly engage to fulfil their part of the covenant, and God confirms his promise to them in a sensible manner; not as if the promise of God were of itself insufficient to render any event certain, but because this manner of exhibiting the blessings promised gives a stronger impression of the truth of the promise, and conveys to the mind an assurance that it will be fulfilled. According to this account of the sacraments, the express institution of God is essentially requisite to constitute their nature; and in this respect sacraments are distinguished from what may be called the ceremonies of religion. Ceremonies are in their nature arbitrary; and different means may be employed by different persons with success, according to their constitution, their education, and their circumstances, to cherish the sentiments of devotion, and to confirm good purposes. But no rite which is not ordained by God can be conceived to be a seal of his promise, or the pledge of any event that depends upon his good pleasure. Hence that any rite may come up to our idea of a sacrament, we require in it not merely a vague and general resemblance between the external matter which is the visible substance of the rite, and the thing thereby signified, but also words of institution, and a promise by which the two are connected together: and hence we reject five of the seven sacraments that are numbered in the church of Rome, because in some of the five we do not find any matter, without which there is not that sign which enters into our definition of a sacrament; and in others we do not find any promise connecting the matter used with the grace said to be thereby signified, although upon this connexion the essence of a sacrament depends. Burnet's exposition of the 25th article shows upon what grounds, and with what strict propriety the church of England says, "those five commonly called sacraments, that is to say, confirmation, penance, orders, matrimony, and extreme unction, are not to be counted for sacraments of the gospel, being such as have grown partly of the corrupt following of the apostles; partly are states of life allowed in the Scriptures, but yet have not like nature of sacraments with baptism and the Lord's supper; for that they have not any visible sign or ceremony ordained by God." In baptism and the Lord's supper, to which the name of sacraments is, according to our definition, limited, we find all which that definition requires. In each there is matter, an external visible substance; and there is also a positive institution authorising that substance to be used with certain words in a religious rite. And we think that both from the nature of the institution, and from the manner in which each sacrament is mentioned in other places of the New Testament, the two are not barely signs of invisible grace, or badges of the Christian profession, but were intended by him who appointed them to be pledges of that grace, and seals of the covenant by which it is conveyed. Erskine's Dissertations. Macknight's Preliminary Dissertations. CHAPTER VI. QUESTIONS CONCERNING BAPTISM. SECTION I. THE washings and sprinklings, which formed part of the religious ceremonies of all nations, arose probably from a consciousness of impurity, and an opinion that innocence was acceptable to the gods; and they were originally intended, on the part of the worshippers, as a profession of their purpose to abstain, in future, from the pollutions which they had contracted. Those who were initiated into the mysteries of the heathen religion bathed, before their initiation, in a particular stream, where they were supposed to leave all their previous errors and defilements, and from which they entered pure into the belief of new opinions, and the participation of sacred rites. When any inhabitants of the countries adjoining to Judea turned from the worship of idols, and, professing their faith in the God of Israel, desired to be numbered as his servants among the proselytes to the law of Moses, they were baptized; and those who had formerly been held in abhorrence were, by this ceremony, admitted into a certain degree of communion with the peculiar people of God. When John appeared preaching in the land of Judea, he came baptizing, and his baptism was emphatically called the baptism of repentance, because the substance of his preaching was " Repent ye, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand."* The people who "went out to him and were baptized, confessing their sins," had been accustomed to wash from the errors of idolatry those who became proselytes to their law. But they themselves had need of washing, before they were admitted into the kingdom of the Messiah; and his days were the time of the fulfilment of that word which God spake by the mouth of Ezekiel : "Then will I sprinkle clean water upon you, and ye shall be clean; from all your filthiness and from all your idols will I cleanse you." In accommodation to this general practice, and to these peculiar opinions of the Jews, Jesus, as soon as he asssumed the character of "a teacher sent from God," employed his apostles to baptize those who came to him: and having condescended, in this respect, to the usage of the times while he remained upon earth, he introduced baptism into the last commission which he gave his apostles, in a manner which seems to intimate that he intended it to be the initiatory right of his universal religion. Πορευθέντες ουν μαθητεύσατε παντα τα έθνη, βαπτίζοντες αυτους. But in order to render it a distinguishing rite, by which his disciples should be separated from the disciples of any other teacher who might choose to baptize, he added these words, εις το όνομα του Πατζός και του Υιου και του άγιου Πνεύματος. * Those who were baptized among the heathen were baptized in certain mysteries. The Jews are said by the apostle Paul to have been "baptized unto Moses," at the time when they followed him through the Red Sea, as the servant of God sent to be their leader.t Those who went out to John" were baptized unto John's baptism," i. e. into the expectation of the person whom John announced, and into repentance of those sins which John condemned." Christians are "baptized into the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost," because in this expression is implied that whole system of truth which the disciples of Christ believe; into the name of the Father, the one true and living God whom Christians profess to serve; of the Son, that divine person revealed in the New Testament, whom the Father sent to be the Saviour of the world; of the Holy Ghost, the divine person also revealed there as the comforter, the sanctifier, and the guide of Christians. As all who were baptized at the first appearance of Christianity had been educated in idolatry, or had known only that preparatory dispensation which the Jews enjoyed, it was necessary that they should be instructed in the meaning of that solemn expression which accompanied their Christian baptism. Accordingly, the practice of the apostles in administering baptism, judging by the few instances which the book of Acts has recorded, corresponds to the order intimated in the commission of our Lord, where the instruction that makes men disciples is supposed to precede baptism. Thus to the minister of the queen of Ethiopia Philip first "preached Jesus;" he then said, "if thou believest with all thine heart, thou mayest be baptized; and when the man answered, "I believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God, Philip baptized him."§ The following phrases, which occur in different epistles, "the form of sound words, the principles of the doctrine of Christ, the doctrine of baptism," probably mean some such short summary of Christian doctrine, as we know was used in the age immediately succeeding that of the apostles, for the instruction of persons who came to be baptized. Peter's joining to baptism, 1 Pet. iii. 21, συνειδήσεως αγαθής επερώτημα εις Θεον seems to imply, that in the apostolic age questions were always proposed to them. And this is confirmed by the expression, Heb. x. 22, " having our bodies washed with pure water, let us hold fast the profession of our faith:" the most natural interpretation of which words is, that persons at their baptism were required to make a declaration of their faith; and we know that, if not from the beginning, yet in very early times, there * Matt. xxviii. 19. + 1 Cor. x. 2. |