: already baptized, to pray for Regeneration of course, not on the ground that none in the congregation are regenerated, but on the ground that there may be some present who have received the outward sign of baptism without the inward grace. Exactly the same doctrine is implied throughout the second Homily for Whitsunday. Persons who have indisputably been baptised in their infancy, are still spoken of as unregenerate: and the only sure test of Regeneration is most scripturally determined to be a production of the fruits of the Spirit. With this accords the judgment of the great Augustine. Using the word charity in its largest sense, he pronounces that "They, "who have charity, are born of God; and they, that have it not, are not born of God." 1 5. Thus it turns out, that what Mr. Gresley unskilfully calls "Modern Evangelical or Puritan Doctrine," so far from being a manifest departure from the Doctrine of our English Reformers, is really the very Doctrine which they propounded. And small wonder is it, that these deeply-read Divines did propound it: for, so far as we can trace it in the eminently valuable evidential Writings of the early Fathers, it is no other than the very Doctrine of the Catholic Church from the beginning. But, upon this copious subject, as well as upon the real Doctrine of the Reformed English Church, I need not here enter. Each topic, I trust, has been sufficiently exhausted in my Primitive Doctrine of Regeneration: and, to that, I beg to refer both Mr. Gresley and any other readers. There are some few additional remarks, which I may be allowed to make in the way of a supplement. I. Mr. Gresley adduces some modern writers, who say respectively: "Fully convinced, that Baptism was never designed to "convey Regeneration and has no such promise, I confidently "conclude, that no mortal ever was so regenerated.-(p. 24.) 1. Had these writers simply asserted, with Archbishop Usher, that "the inward grace in Baptism doth not ALWAYS attend upon "the outward sign in every particular infant;" or had they, with the judicious Hooker, maintained, that "grace is not abso"lutely tied to sacraments," so that Regeneration can never take place WITHOUT Baptism; or had they, with Bishop Burnet, simply denied, that "EVERY person, who was born of the water, "was also born of the Spirit, and that the renewing of the Holy Tractat. v. in 1 Epist. Joan. Oper. vol. ix. p. 220. 2 Body of Divinity, pp. 385, 391, 392, 396. I "Ghost did ALWAYS accompany the washing of regeneration ;" 1 or had they, with Archbishop Tillotson, declared, respecting "a "real change made by grace both in the temper of men's minds "and in the course of their lives," that, "when this is done. and NOT BEFORE, they are said to be regenerate : "2 had they been content with such statements, though peradventure Mr. Gresley might have loudly denounced them as dishonest heretics, they would have spoken the words of soberness and truth, both according to Scripture, and according to the Early Church Catholic, and according to the Church of England which is a revival of the Early Church. But, unhappily, if Mr. Gresley represents their opinions correctly, they have not done so. On the supposition of his correctness, therefore, which I do not undertake to dispute, I can only say, that, with such exaggerating doctors, as my old popish antagonist Bishop Trevern phrased it, I have no more sympathy than Mr. Gresley himself. At the same time, I put it to his more calm judgment, whether it be candid to bring forward such crudities, as if they spoke the deliberate sentiments of those whom he is pleased to call The Evangelical or Puritan or Anti-Church-Party. Truly, the adduction of the insulated crudities is worthy of the absurd and groundless imputations, which he professes to convey by the title.3 2. The doctrine of the Church of England, touching the Sacraments, is neither that of the Tractarians nor that of the ill-advised individuals censured by Mr. Gresley. In her judgment, so far as I can honestly learn from her documents, the sacraments are neither mechanically efficacious ex opere operato, nor are they to be erected into Saviours supersessive (in a manner) of Christ. But then, on the other hand, they are not to be lowered to mere empty signs or forms. So far from it, they are the ordinary appointed channels, through which God is pleased to convey their appropriate respective graces. Under this aspect, however, they are beneficial or efficacious, not in the way of a magical charm, but only when they are rightly or worthily received: and, to make a born child of sin and wrath a worthy recipient of either, a prevenient act of grace, suitable to the peculiarity of each sacrament, must be wrought in the soul. Such being the sound scriptural doctrine of our Protestant 1 Expos. of the Thirty-nine Articles, Art. XXVII. pp. 382-384. Oxon. 2 Serm. on Galat. v. 15, Serm. cix. vol. ví. pp. 371, 372. In the Appendix to my Primitive Doctrine of Regeneration, I have additionally cited, to the same effect, a numerous body of our best divines, who all maintain the doctrine which Mr. Gresley reprobates. 3 There is an excellent Sermon in an excellent volume of Sermons, recently published as his last bequest by my venerable friend Mr. Fawcett of Carlisle, on the subject of Circumcision and Baptism, in their respective Dispensations, being Seals of the Righteousness of Faith. Rem acu tetigit, like a true son of the Church. English Church, which alike condemns Popery on the one hand and Pelagianism on the other, the inevitable result is, that the typified inward grace is not ALWAYS and INVARIABLY tied to the typifying outward sign. The sign may subsist without the grace: and, conversely, the grace (as Hooker wisely rules) may be conferred without the sign. Thus, in the Rubric to the Office of the Communion of the Sick, the Church very solidly determines, with an evident reference to the popish superstition of Transubstantiation: that, where, from any just impediments, a sick man does not receive the Sacrament of Christ's Body and Blood, provided he has the prerequisites for a worthy reception of it, "he doth eat and drink the Body and "Blood of our Saviour Christ profitably to his soul's health, although he do not receive the Sacrament with his mouth." The same analogy, as the Early Church well contended, appertains to the other Sacrament of Baptism. Hence originated the theological fiction, that unbaptised martyrs were baptised in their own blood and hence the great Augustine, like the scarcely less great Hooker, pronounced; that Spiritual Regeneration may be received without Baptism, but not with contempt of Baptism. In this manner, doth our Church, with her wonted sobriety, neither elevate the Sacraments into a sort of deities, nor degrade them to mere inefficacious forms. She assigns to them their true place and it would be well if all her children did the same. : II. Mr. Gresley speaks of some exaggerating doctors, as I have called them, who wish to have our Baptismal Offices altered, and who, on their own responsibility, "refuse to use those portions of "the Service in which Regeneration is asserted or implied." Though I never met with such cases myself, I am bound to conclude that Mr. Gresley is correct in his statement. For my own part, I can honestly say, as I have already said with my annexed reasons in my Primitive Doctrine of Regeneration, that most sorry should I be to see our Baptismal Offices either altered or mutilated. When received, as common sense teaches us they ought to be received, not insulated and still less with an exclusive confinement to the Office of Infant Baptism, as Mr. Gresley would fain persuade us, but with the qualifying explanations contained in the rigidly strict Doctrinal Articles, they are wholly unexceptionable. He would strangely set Office against Article: those, whom he so indecently reviles, would interpret the Offices by the Articles. He may, what certainly shews no great amount of clerkship, scoff at the "hypothetical" construction of the office for Infant Baptism; the exactly parallel Office for Adult Baptism he wholly pretermits but this very "hypothetical" construction of both : Offices inevitably flows from the explanatory statements in the Articles. I mean no intentional disrespect for him but it is impossible to read his two pamphlets without a full conviction that he is writing on a subject which he has never thoroughly studied. III. His grave lecture to the collective Bench of Bishops, wherein he rates them soundly, because they do not concur to mount Tractarianism, like Dean Swift's Jack, upon a tall horse, and there enable him to eat custard in all the solitary dignity of exclusiveness, may be simply amusing from the very circumstance of its extreme badness of taste. But his indecent personal attack upon those two excellent and truly apostolical prelates, the Bishops of Chester and Calcutta, whom it has long been my privilege to reckon among my most honoured friends, serves only to exemplify the familiar practice of an irreverent Tractarian, whenever his petulant humour is thwarted by the constituted Ecclesiastical Authorities. As long as a Bishop will submit to be the humble servant of the Party, he may expect to be lauded as the very impersonation of Christ upon earth. But let him put forth his hand, and touch, either positively or even negatively, all that Tractarianism hath and it will curse him to his face. In the odd provincialism of our northern Palatinate, Tractarianism" is a very meek child, and cannot bear to be con"tradicted." : IV. We need not, I trust, apprehend any Real Danger to the Church of England from the mingled Heresy and Treason of " the Evangelical or Puritan or Antichurch Party:" but, should Tractarianism ever be in the ascendant, I should be sorry to insure our Protestant Church for even half a dozen years. The Laity, who have no great relish for Popery however disguised by the skill of Tractarian cookery, have given us a sufficiently intelligible hint, though it may not always have been expressed in the very wisest mode possible, that the Dominance of Tractarianism would be the Establishment of Dissent. We might, for a season, retain our churches: but, with some trifling exceptions here and there, we should find ourselves doomed to read, what, at Oxford, in my younger days, some half century ago, were facetiously denominated Wall-Lectures; and, when once we had only the walls for our congregation, it may be doubted, whether even that respectable audience would not soon desert us. In short, if our Bishops wish to bring real danger upon the Church of England, let them call in Mr. Gresley as their Mentor. Sherburn-House, Aug. 31, 1846. 1846. 4 Y G. S. FABER. TO THE EDITOR OF THE CHURCHMAN'S MONTHLY REVIEW. SIR,-Having read with attention the article on works on "Sacred Chronology," in your Number for August, I beg to return to the Reviewer my best acknowledgments for the courteousness of his style towards myself personally. But being unable to acquiesce in the charges he brings against me of false and inconsistent reasoning, it is my intention to investigate the grounds upon which they rest, and I hope to show that the false reasoning is on the side of the Reviewer himself. But as that which I am preparing for the press will be too long to offer for insertion in your journal, I intend to publish it separately. I request therefore that you will do me the favour to insert this letter in your next Number, that such of your readers as feel an interest in the great question of the true date of the Passion of our Lord and Saviour, may be aware of my intention of vindicating the received date of that great event, as held by nearly all our best chronologers for some centuries, including the names of Usher, Scaliger, Petavius, Whiston, Prideaux, Vossius, Lloyd, Calmet, Kennedy, Bedford, L'Art de Verifier les Dates, not to speak of Blair, and I think Playfair, who are rather copyists than original writers; and of showing the utter futility of the arguments which the writer of your review advances against it. When, however, any real errors are discovered in my works, I am so far from wishing to conceal them, that, on the contrary, I desire to be the first to acknowledge them to the public. I beg, therefore, now to state, that in the calculation of the time of the true new moon, in March, A.c. 33, which will be found in p. 172 of my Synopsis, there is an error of about 8 hours. The new moon at Jerusalem was, on the 19th, about 1h. 36m. in the afternoon, and not, as there given, at 10h. 9m. This error arose from my omitting a figure in taking out the lunar anomalies for the equations of time; but it is happily not of sufficient magnitude to affect the accuracy of my reasoning in p. 134, as to the date of the 1st, and consequently the 14th of Nisan, in the year 33. To have justified Mr. Browne's date, the new moon at Jerusalem ought to have been, on the 18th, at 12 at night. I have the honour to be, Sir, Your most obedient Servant, Lainshaw, 17th Sept. 1846. This calculation is made from the table in Fergusson's Astronomy (Brewster's edit.) The tables in the Encyclopedia Britannica make the new moon about 50 min. earlier. |