DONNE, PRESBYTER. -Serm. xxxi. p. 309.

The water of Baptism, is the water that runs through all the Fathers; all the Fathers that had occasion to dive or dip in these waters (to say anything of them) make these first waters, in the creation, the figure of baptism. Therefore Tertullian makes the water, Primam sedem Spiritus Sancti, the progress, and the settled house, the voyage, and the harbour, the circumference, and the centre of the Holy Ghost. And therefore St. Hierome calls these waters, Matrem mundi, the Mother of the world; and this in the figure of baptism. The waters brought forth the whole world, were delivered of the whole world, as a mother is delivered of a child; and this, in figura baptismi, to foreshew that the waters also should bring forth the Church; that the Church of GOD should be born of the Sacrament of Baptism. So says Damascen, and he establishes it with better authority than his own. The divine Basil said, (saith he) "The Spirit of God wrought upon the waters in the creation, because he meant to do so after, in the regeneration of man. And therefore, Pristinam sedem recognoscens conquiescit, till the Holy Ghost have moved upon our children in baptism, let us not think all done that belongs to those children; and when the Holy Ghost hath moved upon those waters, so in baptism, let us not doubt of His power and effect upon all those children that die so. We know no means how those waters could have produced a minnow, a shrimp, without the Spirit of GOD had moved upon them; and by this motion of the Spirit of GoD, we know they produce whales, and leviathans. We know no ordinary means of any saving grace for a child but baptism; neither are we to doubt of the fulness of salvation, in them that have received it. And for ourselves, mergimur et emergimus, in baptism we are sunk under water, and then raised above the water again; which was the manner of baptizing in the Christian Church, by immersion, and not by aspersion, till of late times: Affectus et amores, (says he,) our corrupt affections, and our inordinate love of this world is that, that is to be drowned in us; Amor securitatis, a love of

peace, and holy assurance, and acquiescence in God's ordinance, is that that lifts us above water.

Therefore that Father puts all upon the due consideration of our baptism: and as St. Jerome says, Certainly he that thinks upon the last Judgment advisedly, cannot sin thus; so he that says with St. Augustine, Let me make every day to God, this confession : Domine, &c. O Lord my GoD, O holy, holy, holy Lord my God; I consider that I was baptized in thy name, and what thou promised me, and what I promised thee then, and can I sin this sin? can this sin stand with those conditions, those stipulations which passed between us then? The Spirit of GOD is motion, the Spirit of God is rest too; and in due consideration of baptism, a true Christian is moved, and settled too; moved to a sense of the breach of his conditions, settled in the sense of the mercy of his GoD, in the merits of his CHRIST, upon his godly sorrow. So these waters are the waters of baptism.

FIELD, PRESBYTER.-Of the Church, book i. chap. xii.

This was the fault of sundry in the Primitive Church; and which was yet more to be condemned, many did therefore defer and put off their baptism, that so whatsoever evil things they did in the mean time, might in that laver of new birth be washed away, thereby taking greater liberty to offend, for that they had so present means of full remission, and perfect reconciliation; so making that which was ordained against sin, and for the weakening and overthrow of it, to be an encouragement thereunto, and to give life and strength unto it.

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JACKSON, PRESBYTER AND DOCTOR.-On Christ's exercise of his everlasting Priesthood, ch. i. (vol. iii. p. 271.)

It is no part of our Church's doctrine or meaning, that the washing, or sprinkling infants' bodies with consecrated water, should take away sins by its own immediate virtue. To affirm thus much implies, as I conceive, a contradiction to that apostolical doctrine. "The like figure whereunto even Baptism doth also now save us (not the putting away the filth of the

flesh, but the answer of a good conscience toward God) by the resurrection of Jesus Christ, who is gone into heaven," &c. 1 Pet. iii. 21. The meaning of our Church intends no further than thus: That if this sacrament of Baptism be duly administered, the blood, or bloody sacrifice of Christ, or (which is all one) the influence of His Spirit doth always accompany, or is concurrent to this solemn act. But whether this influence of His Spirit or virtual presence of His body and blood be either immediately or only terminated to the soul and spirit of the party baptized, or have some virtual influence upon the water of Baptism as a mean to convey the Grace of Regeneration unto the soul of the party baptized, whilst the water is poured upon him, is too nice and curious a question, in this age, for sober Christians to debate or contend about. It may suffice to believe that this sacramental pledge hath a virtual presence of Christ's Blood, or some real influence from his Body, concomitant, though not consubstantiated to it, which is prefigured or signified by the washing or sprinkling the body with water.

But it will be, or rather is objected, but only by private or some saucy spirits, That if the doctrine of our Church were true and sound, then all that be rightly baptized should be undoubtedly saved, being once washed or cleansed from their sins. The objection were of some force, if the Church of England did hold or maintain such doctrine or tenets as they do which make or favour it; to wit, That the sins of the elect only are remitted by Baptism, or by Sacrament of Christ's Body and Blood; or, that sins once remitted cannot be remitted afresh; or, that the party which is once pardoned for his sins, before committed, cannot afterwards be condemned. The orthodoxal truth is, That albeit the original sin of children truly baptized in the name of Christ, or the actual sins of young or elder men so baptized, and the sins of their forefathers (so far as it concerns men of riper years to repent them of both) be so truly remitted in Bap-. tism, that neither young men nor old may be baptized again; yet the stipulation of a good conscience, wherein the internal Baptism (as St. Peter tells) doth consist, may and ought, by the law of God and of Christ's Church, to be reiterated.

And this stipulation of every Christian, male or female, though baptized after they have passed their nonage for civil contracts, ought to be resumed or reacknowledged as often as they intend to receive the sacramental pledges of Christ's Body and Blood, either privately or in the public congregation. But for all such as have been baptized in their infancy, the personal resumption or ratification of that vow, which their fathers and mothers in God did make for them at the sacred laver, is to be exacted of them, ore tenus, in some public congregation, before they can be lawfully admitted to be public communicants of Christ's Body and Blood.

Ibid. Ch. lv. (p. 298.)

If either the actual sins of all men, or the sins of the elect in special, had been so remitted by Christ's death, as some conceive they were, that is, absolutely pardoned before they were committed, there had been no end or use of Christ's Resurrection in respect of us; no need of Baptism: yet was Baptism, from the hour of His resurrection, necessary unto all that did believe in His death and resurrection. The urgent and indispensable necessity of Baptism, especially in respect of actual believers, is not anywhere more emphatically intimated than in St. Peter's answer to the Jews, whose hearts were pierced with sorrow that they had been the causes of Christ's death. They in this stound or sting of conscience demand, "Men and brethren, what shall we do? And Peter answered them, Repent, and be baptized every one of you, in the name of Jesus Christ for the remission of sins. And they that gladly received the word were baptized the same day." Acts ii. 37, 38. 41. These men had been deeply tainted with sin, not original only, but with sins actual of the worst kind; guilty they were, in a high degree, of the death of the Son of God, yet had they as well their actual as their original sins remitted by baptism. It is then unsound and imperfect doctrine, that sin original only is taken away or remitted by Baptism; for whatsoever sins are remitted or taken away by Christ's death, the same sins are in the same manner remitted and taken away by Baptism into His death;

actual sins are remitted, in such as are guilty of actual sins when they are baptized, though only sin original be actually remitted in those which are not guilty of actual sins, as in infants. Now man's sins are actually remitted before he be actually guilty of them.

The question is, how either sin original is remitted, or how any work of Satan is dissolved by Baptism; and this question, in the general, is rightly resolved, by saying, “They are remitted by faith." But this general resolution sufficeth not, unless we know the object of our faith in this particular. Now the particular object of our faith, of that faith by which sins (whether by Baptism or otherwise) are remitted, is not our general belief in Christ; even our belief in Christ dying for us in particular, will not suffice, unless it include our belief of the everlasting virtue of His bloody sacrifice, and of His everlasting priesthood for purifying and cleansing our souls. No sins be truly remitted unless they be remitted by the office or exercise of His priesthood; and whilst so remitted they are not remitted by any other sacrifice than by the sole virtue of His body and blood, which He 66 once offered for all," for the sins of all. It is not the virtue or efficacy of the consecrated water in which we were washed, but the virtue of His blood which was once shed for us, and which, by Baptism, is sprinkled upon us, or communicated unto us, which immediately cleanseth us from all our sins. From this everlasting virtue of this His bloody sacrifice, faith, by the ministry of Baptism, is immediately gotten in such as had it not before. And in such as have faith before they be baptized, the guilt of actual sins is remitted by the exercise or act of faith, as it apprehends the everlasting efficacy of this sacrifice, and by the prayer of faith, and supplication unto our High Priest. Faith, then, is as the mouth or appetite by which we receive this food of life, and is a good sign of health; but it is the food itself received, which must continue health and strengthen spiritual life in us; and the food of life is no other than Christ's body and blood; and it is our High Priest himself which must give us this food.

Baptism, saith St. Peter (1 Pet. iii. 20.), doth save us. What