is repeated in the three sons of Noah. It is the meaning of the Indian Trimurti where the impersonal Brahm is manifested in three persons. According to the doctrine of metempsychosis each of the sons of Noah was animated by the spirit of his father, and that father was himself animated by the spirit of Adam. The universal demon, father of gods and men, triplicated himself and yet continued one. Through all the forms of the gods is seen this one demon or hero god, the ancestor of the human race. On the side of Nature this father was the sun, and the many gods were the sun and moon and other natural objects under different aspects. As the great father was the sun, so the earth was the great mother from whose fruitful womb all existence has proceeded. In the year 1816 Faber had published sermons on baptismal regeneration. In 1840, he resumed the subject, advocating the same doctrine as in the sermons. The one, however, was baptismal regeneration according to Scripture, and the other according to the primitive Church. He followed the principle that the Fathers were the best interpreters of Scripture, quoting Chillingworth, who to his famous aphorism The Bible and the Bible alone is the religion of Protestants,' added 'The Bible interpreted by Catholic written tradition.' Three systems are given as held by modern theologians, that regeneration is a federal change of man's state before God, that it is a moral change, that it is both moral and federal, and that baptism is its outward and visible sign. Those who accept the first definition of regeneration believe it to be always connected with baptism. Those who follow the second believe the same, while those who follow the third, as they identify regeneration with conversion, believe it may be in, before or after baptism. The language of the New Testament concerning the new birth cannot be reduced to a mere federal change. It means principally a moral change of disposition, and subordinately a federal change of relative condition. In the primitive Church regeneration meant a moral change, but with some Fathers, it also meant a federal along with a moral change. Justin Martyr, and Clement of Alexandria speak of the baptised as the illuminated, and this illumination is by baptism. Regeneration is here a moral have this regeneration. Cyril of Jerusalem answers with the case of Simon Magus who was baptised but not illuminated. Jerome and Augustine gave the same answer; the latter explaining that though Simon Magus was born of water, he was born in vain, for he wanted charity, without which none are children of God. Augustine allows to baptised infants only a federal change as they are incapable of the moral that is conversion. Baptism is only one medium of Regeneration, and not every one baptised is therefore necessarily regenerated in the sense of a moral change. Clement of Alexandria gives the key to the whole question of baptismal regeneration. He said that as it was impossible to determine the exact time when regeneration took place, it was generally assumed to be at the time of baptism. Faber thought to settle the doctrine of predestination in the same fashion by an appeal to the early Church.1 It was not known before St Augustine who was charged with innovation, not only by the Pelagians, against whom he wrote, but by those who agreed with him against the Pelagians. This was purely a question of fact. The charge was fully established and Augustine could not answer it. On Art. XVII, Faber agreed with Laurence, who thought he escaped the obligation to Calvin by supposing that our Reformers followed Melancthon and the Augsburg Confession. Faber says there was no predestinarian theology among the fathers. It began with Augustine, was revived by Calvin and could not be the doctrine of our Articles, as they were not taken from the Calvinistic Confessions. Faber was also an authority on the interpretation of prophecy.1 During the 1260 days, which are prophetic years, the Church will be in a state of great depression. The papacy is not Antichrist. It has never denied the Father and the Son, which is St John's mark of Antichrist. The apostacy, however, which was to prevail during these 1260 years, was 1 The Primitive Doctrine of Election 1836. 1 A Dissertation on the prophecies that have been fulfilled, are now fulfilling, or will hereafter be fulfilled relative to the Great Period of 1260 years, the Papal and Mahommedan apostasies and the tyrannical reign of Antichrist or the Infidel Rome and the is repeated in the three sons of Noah. It is the meaning of the Indian Trimurti where the impersonal Brahm is manifested in three persons. According to the doctrine of metempsychosis each of the sons of Noah was animated by the spirit of his father, and that father was himself animated by the spirit of Adam. The universal demon, father of gods and men, triplicated himself and yet continued one. Through all the forms of the gods is seen this one demon or hero god, the ancestor of the human race. On the side of Nature this father was the sun, and the many gods were the sun and moon and other natural objects under different aspects. As the great father was the sun, so the earth was the great mother from whose fruitful womb all existence has proceeded. In the year 1816 Faber had published sermons on baptismal regeneration. In 1840, he resumed the subject, advocating the same doctrine as in the sermons. The one, however, was baptismal regeneration according to Scripture, and the other according to the primitive Church. He followed the principle that the Fathers were the best interpreters of Scripture, quoting Chillingworth, who to his famous aphorism The Bible and the Bible alone is the religion of Protestants,' added The Bible interpreted by Catholic written tradition.' Three systems are given as held by modern theologians, that regeneration is a federal change of man's state before God, that it is a moral change, that it is both moral and federal, and that baptism is its outward and visible sign. Those who accept the first definition of regeneration believe it to be always connected with baptism. Those who follow the second believe the same, while those who follow the third, as they identify regeneration with conversion, believe it may be in, before or after baptism. The language of the New Testament concerning the new birth cannot be reduced to a mere federal change. It means principally a moral change of disposition, and subordinately a federal change of relative condition. In the primitive Church regeneration meant a moral change, but with some Fathers, it also meant a federal along with a moral change. Justin Martyr, and Clement of Alexandria speak of the baptised as the illuminated, and this illumination is by baptism. Regeneration is here a moral have this regeneration. Cyril of Jerusalem answers with the case of Simon Magus who was baptised but not illuminated. Jerome and Augustine gave the same answer; the latter explaining that though Simon Magus was born of water, he was born in vain, for he wanted charity, without which none are children of God. Augustine allows to baptised infants only a federal change as they are incapable of the moral that is conversion. Baptism is only one medium of Regeneration, and not every one baptised is therefore necessarily regenerated in the sense of a moral change. Clement of Alexandria gives the key to the whole question of baptismal regeneration. He said that as it was impossible to determine the exact time when regeneration took place, it was generally assumed to be at the time of baptism. Faber thought to settle the doctrine of predestination in the same fashion by an appeal to the early Church.1 It was not known before St Augustine who was charged with innovation, not only by the Pelagians, against whom he wrote, but by those who agreed with him against the Pelagians. This was purely a question of fact. The charge was fully established and Augustine could not answer it. On Art. XVII, Faber agreed with Laurence, who thought he escaped the obligation to Calvin by supposing that our Reformers followed Melancthon and the Augsburg Confession. Faber says there was no predestinarian theology among the fathers. It began with Augustine, was revived by Calvin and could not be the doctrine of our Articles, as they were not taken from the Calvinistic Confessions. Faber was also an authority on the interpretation of prophecy. During the 1260 days, which are prophetic years, the Church will be in a state of great depression. The papacy is not Antichrist. It has never denied the Father and the Son, which is St John's mark of Antichrist. The apostacy, however, which was to prevail during these 1260 years, was 1 The Primitive Doctrine of Election 1836. 1 A Dissertation on the prophecies that have been fulfilled, are now fulfilling, or will hereafter be fulfilled relative to the Great Period of 1260 years, the Papal and Mahommedan apostasies and the tyrannical reign of Antichrist or the Infidel Rome and the that of the Papacy which began about 606, when the Pope took the title of universal bishop. The Papacy is the little horn in the West, as Mohammedanism is the little horn in the East, and the wilful king, who was afterwards to come was not Napoleon himself, but the Empire which he established, the infidel kingdom of France. The first angel in the Apocalypse was Martin Luther. The second was John Calvin, the third was the Church of England. It is not necessary to go further. Alexander Knox, a layman of the Protestant Church of Ireland, may be noticed here. He was a private gentleman who spent his life in the study of theology.' He might be described as a High Churchman, an Evangelical or a Broad Churchman, yet in each case, with qualifications and reservations. He was an intimate friend of John Wesley though a much younger man. He confessed to owing much to Wesley while far from calling him master. Knox might be regarded as a fossil specimen of a race that seemed almost extinct, a specimen of what might be called a Churchman after Wesley's type. He regarded Wesley not only as the greatest Saint, Apostle, Evangelist of modern times, but as one that taught the most rational theology, or the true philosophy of Christianity. Though accepting Augustine's theology without the Predestinarian decrees, he yet followed the system and lived in the spirit of St Chrysostom. He rejected the modern notion of forensic justification, maintaining the necessity of a moral change, or a justification of them that fear God and work righteousness. He also taught that the kingdom of heaven is upon earth, and that we may be members of it now in this world, and reach such a state of perfection as to dread sin more than its punishment and to love righteousness more than its reward. Knox found in the New Testament a system of doctrine, but one very different from the subtle and metaphysical systems of later times. That system is not merely redemption, 'His 'Remains' were published in 1834. 2 Wesley wrote to him friendly letters calling him 'My dear Alleck.' He wrote two letters to Hannah More on Southey's Life of Wesley, which correct some of the defects of that excellent book |