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they are bound to perform." Nothing can be more manifest than that the Church lays the whole stress of the reasonableness of admitting infants to baptism on the promises made by them in the person of their sureties: so far is she from pronouncing absolutely as to its effects, except in the case of departed infants. After the example of her Divine Master, and by his appointment, she receives the children to her arms in baptism -she stipulates for the necessary condition required by Christ; and having done that, she has no right to do otherwise than pronounce their regeneration. Nay, she is bound to do so by the law of regeneration," which is visibly sealed in baptism. She has Christ's authority for their admission to baptism; but his written word demands pre-requisites which they cannot perform. She might, one thinks, have admitted them on the thought of the divine warrant, and simply baptized them in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost; but being assured that, without these pre-requisites, baptism will not be available, she stipulates for them as necessary to perfect her act. And in due time, as we have seen, she will exact the conditions, and, on their fulfilment or non-fulfilment, she will admit them as regenerate to her full communion, or, silently repel them as the children of the world.

The principles and doctrines of the Church are in glorious advance; but, it is only in proportion as they are consistent with the spirit and genius of Christianity, that they can eventually triumph. The spirit of Christianity is to recover, exalt, and refine the soul-its forms are grand and simple, and correspond with its spirit and intentions, and they are degraded by all admixtures that tend to obscure their intentions or weaken their force. Whatever has a tendency to divert the streams of Christianity from their proper course, and to prevent their flowing through the human heart-recovering it from its desolation-purifying and renewing its powers, is of the spirit of anti-christ. Many of our excellent divines, in order to prevent so calamitous an effect, with respect to baptism, established the distinction between regeneration and renovation-a distinction which we consider untenable. We cannot improve Christianity: it must be allowed to stand upon its own principles, and to be promulgated on its own terms. Happily, the Church of England does so. Daily experience teaches us, that in doctrine and practice she occupies an impregnable position, far removed from Sectarianism on the one hand and Popery on the other. Her formalaries are so wise and prudent, that the more we search into them the more we find them in advance of our agein moderation, scriptural wisdom, and primitive consistency—pre

pared to lead on her sons into coming times of still increasing light and splendour. As to the semi-heathen practices connected with baptism, which have found their way into the unhappy Church of Rome during the long night of superstitious infatuation, they have been for ever abolished from out of the midst of her. The reformed branch of the English Catholic Church can never return to such degrading thraldom, unless her numerous sons should be smitten with sudden blindness, or the Church, advancing in light and knowledge, should be overwhelmed with sudden darkness. But her trust is in the Most High, and she shall not miscarry such to our minds, or the prognostics of her onward course, that we are satisfied no approximations to the doctrines or practices of the Roman Church will be tolerated within her jurisdiction, and every attempt to induce her to symbolise with her apostate sister will be frustrated. The gulf between them must increase. Witness the fate of the attempt of the Tractarian leaders. There was every thing in themselves, and every thing in the circumstances of the times, to aid their enterprise; and so far as it was wise and proper that they should succeed they have succeeded. But when, urged by their success, they ventured to innovate, and to exceed the fixed and fundamental principles of the Church, and "teach for commandments the doctrines of men," they have been repulsed and discomfited. The two prelates to whose Charges allusion has been made in these pages have nobly and ably defended the cause of that Catholicity which must ever protest against Romanism. And, later still, the Bishop of Llandaff, examining into the hidden mystery, has laid bare and undermined its foundations: and so far as the principles of Tractarianism are inconsistent with Christianity, they have received from that learned prelate a death-blow, under which they may linger, but from which they cannot survive.

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We have not entered at large upon the subject of the baptismal interrogations. . They are as old as the Church, and, no doubt, together with sponsorship, were adopted from the ritual of the Jewish Church. We need not produce authorities, for amongst those who have searched into these things, the fact is notorious; nor will this be considered surprising, when it is known that our Lord borrowed the expression "born again from that very ritual—a fact which explains our Lord's expression of surprise, when Nicodemus misunderstood its application: "Art thou a ruler in Israel, and knowest not these things?" Notwithstanding, however, the antiquity of the observance, the sponsions in infant baptism has often been a subject of serious thought and enquiry amongst the ministers of the

Church. We remember being forcibly struck with the epistle of Boniface to St. Augustine, as quoted by Hooker, in his Ecclesiastical Polity, wherein the former seeks information on the propriety of sponsorship in infant baptism. He acknowledges the immemorial custom-(This correspondence took place about 290 years after the apostles)-but wishes to be resolved as to its reasonableness by St. Augustine himself. Hooker does not give the Bishop of Hippo's answer; but since writing_the above we met with it whilst looking into Wall on "Infant Baptism." In this important document we may justly expect to find the fullest information that can be afforded by that age of the Church. The enquiry is made by a learned and enlightened bishop, and the answer is from a bishop whose reputation for wisdom was famous throughout the world. It is not our intention to quote the whole of this letter, which is long, but to take one or two passages which bear upon our subject: and first on the term regeneration, as applied to baptism :

"Sacraments would not be sacraments if they had not a resemblance of those things whereof they are the sacraments; and from this resemblance they commonly bear the names of the things themselves."

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"So the apostle, on this same subject of baptism, says: buried together with Christ by baptism unto death.' He does not say 'we signify a burial,' but we are buried;' so that he calls the sacrament of so great a thing by the name of the thing itself."

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"And so an infant, though he be not yet constituted a faithful, by that faith which consists in the will of believers, yet he is so by the sacrament of faith: for as it is responded for him that he believes, so he is also called a faithful; not by assenting to the thing itself in his mind, but by partaking of the sacrament of the very thing. And when a man, he begins to have a sense (of religion), he does not repeat that sacrament, but understands it, and with the harmonious consent of his will, will be fully assimilated to the truth contained it." (Aug. Epist. Bon. 23; Wall, 109.)

We now leave it with the intelligent reader to say whether these extracts do not confirm and strengthen our statements?

In concluding this subject, we cannot but feel supported from the circumstance, that in the statements upon which we have ventured to enlarge we are substantially borne out by the authority of an ancient bishop, whose position in the Church afforded him an opportunity of knowing what had been the doctrine from the beginning. Hence we conclude that it is the

fundamental law of baptism, that without a profession of faith and obedience, the sacrament cannot "rightly" be administered.

But there is an exception to the general law: children are not capable of professing their faith and obedience; and yet it is gathered from Scripture, and the universal practice of the Church in all ages, that children are to be baptized. The principle of the law is not changed, but the law is accommodated to their imperfections. The blessings of the sacrament are provisionally granted to the infants of believers by the law of Christ; the rationale of which may be conveyed in this form:

Baptism is the initiatory rite into the Church of Christ. Repentance and faith are the terms of admission to that holy

sacrament.

"He that believeth and is baptized shall be saved.”

His children also, instead of being accounted as heathens, shall be considered "holy," and engrafted, by baptism, into the body of the Church, and entitled to all the blessings conferred by the sacrament.

Provided, that when they come to years of discretion they believe "the promises made to them in that sacrament," and consecrate themselves to the service of God. The law of faith is

not abolished, it is only adapted to a peculiar case.

In the mean time the infant lives in the family-has a Christian name given to him-he is instructed as one of the family--is treated with honour and consideration-has an immediate access to God-a direct interest in the blood of Christ, and a powerful claim upon the influences of the Holy Ghost. These are privileges great beyond conception, and flow, necessarily, from that covenant relation into which it has pleased God to receive the child. He has pledged himself to be his Father, Redeemer, and Sanctifier.

Blessed are the children who are brought up in such principles, and urged by such motives to the practice of Christianity; and still more blessed when, by the exercise of faith and repentance, they enter into the full force and meaning of the sacrament, and fully partake of all the blessings which it represents and actually conveys to faith: or, as expressed by St. Augustine, "ejus veritati consonâ voluntate coaptabuntur."

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ART. IV. A Letter from the Earl of Shrewsbury to Ambrose Lisle Phillipps, Esq., descriptive of the Estatica of Caldaro and the Addolorata of Capriana. Being a second edition, revised and enlarged; to which is added, the relation of Three successive Visits to the Estatica of Monte Sansavino, in May, 1842. London: Dolman. 1842.

THIS extraordinary reproduction presents the particulars of what the title announces. The first subject is the ecstatic female, Maria Mörl, of Caldaro, a place rather nearer to Botzer than Trent; and without troubling ourselves or our readers with the picturesque and sentimental imagery of the story, the individual was found, upon his lordship's visit, in an act of graceful devotion, absorbed and entranced. She is one of the many favoured individuals of Rome who have received the honours of stigmatization, or impressions of the five wounds of the crucifixion on corresponding parts of their own bodies-a miracle, of which St. Francis, of Asissium, was the first patient or inventor, and of which, unless Jetzer be an exception, the female sex alone has since had the monopoly. Her stigmata were quite regular, and occasionally emitted blood. They were marked, not indeed so graphically as St. Francis's, yet, by a red spot, about a quarter of an inch in diameter. Another miraculous peculiarity in Maria was, that, using our author's words, "on Sunday it generally happens that she is raised off her knees, resting only on the tips of her feet, as if enjoying a nearer prospect of heaven," &c. She is represented as continuing for hours in her ecstacies, and suffering much during their continuance. We, of course, omit a great deal of regular circumstance, but beg the reader to keep in memory the stigmata, and the præternatural elevation, which latter is repeated; and in a letter, written at Lord Shrewsbury's request by Dr. Weedall, who had witnessed the edifying scene, is represented as "an unearthly position." The account is confirmed by the testimony of Görres, a man, whose magnetic point must have been popery in some form from the beginning. He beheld the damsel, "like a glorious angel, scarcely touching the bed with the points of her feet, splendid as a rose, her arms extended in the form of a cross plunged in the joys of love. All present could then see the stigmata upon her hands, and the miracle could no longer be kept secret." Again, in a note (p. 25), "Such an atmosphere of truth surrounds her, that all who approach her feel implicit confidence, and dream of no deception; and hence the immense impression which her quiet virtues and touching history have produced upon the people."

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