to this, another ceremony was appointed by the Jews themselves, derived, as they imagined, from the law of Mofes, and certainly ftamped with the fanction of high antiquity. Proud of their own peculiar fanctity, as the elect people of God, and regarding all the rest of mankind as in a ftate of uncleannefs, they would not admit converts into their church without washing, to denote their being cleanfed from their natural impurity. Profelytes, thus purified and admitted into the Jewish church by baptifm, were faid to be regenerated, or born again: nor was this a mere empty appellation; but being confidered dead to their former relations, they became intitled to rights and privileges, from which by nature they 'were excluded.

The duration of God's covenant with the Jews being limited, the rite of circumcifion was of courfe limited, and was to cease upon the completion of God's promise in the fending of Chrift. God had now accomplished his covenant with Abraham by fending that feed of Abraham, in whom all the nations of the · earth were to be bleffed. And as there was no longer to be any distinction in favour of the Jews, the children of Abraham, above the other nations of the world, the outward mark of diftinction was no longer ufeful. God was now to show no refpect unto perfons, to the

circumcifed or to the uncircumcifed; but in every nation, among the Gentiles as well as among the Jews, he that feared God and worked righteoufnefs was equally to be ac cepted with him.

But upon the introduction of the new covenant in Chrift, God was pleased to institute a new ceremony; whereby mankind at large were to be admitted into covenant with him, as the Jews had been by the rite of circumcifion. For this purpose Chrift adopted baptism, which had been confecrated by his brethren after the flesh to a fimilar ufe; and ordained it as the rite, by which thofe, who believed in him, fhould be admitted to the privileges of his religion." He kept the ceremony," fays Bishop Taylor, "that they, who were led

only by outward things, might be the better ❝ called in, and easier enticed into the religion, "when they entered by a ceremony, which "their nation always used in the like cafes: “and therefore, without change of the out"ward act, he put into it a new fpirit, and 66 gave it a new grace and a proper efficacy: "he fublimed it to higher ends, and adorned "it with ftars of heaven: he made it to fig

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nify greater myfteries, to convey greater blef"fings, to confign the bigger promises, to "cleanse deeper than the skin, and to carry

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profelytes farther than the gates of the in

"ftitution. For fo he was pleased to do in "the other facrament: he took the ceremony "which he found ready in the custom of the "Jews, where the Major-domo after the Paf"chal fupper gave bread and wine to every perfon of his family; he changed nothing of "it without, but transferred the right to greater "mysteries, and put his own Spirit to their fign, "and it became a facrament evangelical"."

It was to this facrament of baptifm, the inftitution of which he was anticipating, that our Saviour alluded, when he declared to the Jewish Rabbi, who was inquiring into the nature of his doctrine, "Verily, verily, I fay unto "thee, Except a man be born again, he cannot "fee the kingdom of God:" and when, in reply to a farther inquiry, he repeated his former declaration, and stated it in more limited and specific terms, “ Verily, verily, I

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fay unto thee, Except a man be born of wa

ter and of the Spirit, he cannot enter into "the kingdom of God." It should appear, I fay, that he was here alluding by anticipation to the facrament of baptifm, which he intended to ordain; and to that fupernatural grace, which was thereby to be conferred through the inftrumentality of water, and by the agency of the Holy Ghoft: adopting not only

Life of Chrift, part i. fect. 9.

the ceremony itself, which he meant to exalt to more noble and spiritual purposes; but also the very term, by which the Jews had defcribed the change wrought in the baptized, although he undoubtedly employed it, in a fimilar indeed, but in an infinitely more dignified fenfe. To the profelyte from heathenism to the Jewish faith, baptifm had been a death to his natural incapacities, and a new birth to the civil privileges of a Jew: to him, who should be admitted to a profeffion of the Chriftian faith, and who should be "born not "of blood, nor of the will of the Flesh, nor of "the will of man, but of God "," it was to be a death unto fin, and a new birth unto those fpiritual privileges, which fhould accompany his deliverance "from the bondage of corrup"tion into the glorious liberty of the children "of God." The Jewish profelyte had been baptized with water: the Chriftian was to be baptized, not with water only, but with the Holy Ghoft. 'Baptism," fays the fame pious and learned Prelate, to whom I just referred, afferting at the fame time the doctrine, and explaining the ground of it; "Baptifm is a

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new birth, by which we enter into the new "world, the new creation, the bleffings and "fpiritualities of the kingdom. And this is

John i. 13.

Rom. viii. 21.

"the expreffion, which our Saviour himself "ufed to Nicodemus, Unlefs a man be born "of water and the Spirit. And it is by St. « Paul called λουτρον παλιγγενεσίας, the laver of regeneration. For now we begin to be "reckoned in a new cenfus or account, God

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is become our father, Chrift our elder bro"ther, the Spirit the earnest of our inheritance, "the Church our mother; our food is the body and blood of our Lord; faith is our learning; religion our employment; and 66 our whole life is fpiritual, and heaven the object of our hopes, and the mighty price of our high calling. And from this time for"ward we have a new principle put into us, "the Spirit of grace, which, besides our foul "and body, is a principle of action, of one na"ture, and fhall with them enter into the por"tion of our inheritance. And because from "henceforward we are a new creation, the "Church uses to affign new relations to the "catechumens, fpiritual fathers and fufcep"tors "."

I make no fcruple of confidering the words of our Saviour in the text, as indicating the facrament of baptifm; because I believe it to be the doctrine of the Bible, and I am fure it is the doctrine of the Church of England,

d Life of Chrift, part i. fect. ix.