not baptized in infancy will cease. The word that puzzles all is, vov, in that sentence, where the father says to the son, "You have not lived so many years in all, as, are the years of my sacrificing;" by which must be meant (if that word be allowed) of my officiating as a Christian priest;' which will make the son (who is often spoken of by himself, by the writers of his life, and by others, as one that lived to a very great age) to have lived no longer than sixty-one or sixty-two; for he died in 389; and there must be some time supposed to have passed between his father's conversion, which was 325, and his ordination. Papebrochius thinks that, instead of διῆλθε θυσιῶν, it was διῆλθ ̓ ἐτησίων; which will make the father say to the son," You are not so old as I."— I should rather think (if we may venture to amend) that θυσιών has been written instead of πολιών (or for the verse's sake, TV mov); which will make him say,

You are not so old as my grey hairs are ;" or, have not lived so long as I have been grey-headed. The objection against this amendment, which arises from the construction of the verse, is not considerable in this case; because Gregory, in that poem, does commonly put an anapastus for the fourth foot of his Iambic: that is certainly the scope of the place; for the father there entreats the son's assistance in his weakness and extreme old age; and the father is, by the history, known to have been old before the son was born. I have since that time lighted one proof more, That the son must be considerably older than sixty-one when he died; for St. Hierom mentioning him de Scriptoribus Eccl. calls him one of his Masters, by whom he had in his younger years been instructed in the study of divinity; whereas by this account St. Hierom was within four years as old as he; for at 389 he was fifty-seven, as is easily computed by the history of his life.

Mr. Bernard here adds, That he is "convinced that infants are to be baptized;" but he does not think baptism to be of absolute necessity; or that it is this sacrament" which makes us true [or proper, veritable] Christians." This is wonderful cautious.

As to the

necessity, we should, methinks, account all our Saviour's commands to be necessary; and I had quoted to him Calvin's acknowledgment: "We do confess the use

of baptism to be necessary: that it is not lawful to omit it by negligence or contempt. We do not count it free [or indifferent]; we do not only strictly oblige Christians to the use of it, but do affirm it to be the ordinary instrument of God, to wash and renew us, and to communicate to us salvation. This only we except, that God's hand is not so tied to the instrument, but that it can of itself effect our salvation; for where there is no possibility of baptism, God's promise alone is abundantly sufficient. Antidot. ad Synod. Trident. sess. 7, de Baptismo. Here it is owned to be necessary not only necessitate præcepti, but also necessitate medii, in God's ordinary way.

They will not have it said, That we are made Christians by it; yet Calvin here says, "It is the ordinary instrument of God to communicate to us salvation;" and it may, one would think, be as well owned to be the ordinary instrument of God to make us Christians; and that this is a fitter theological expression than that which I quoted of a new-fashioned English divine, “We are born members of the Christian church ;" which is the direct contrary to the maxim of the ancient Christians: Christiani non nascimur sed fimus. Calvin says (Inst. lib. 4, c. 15) "The children of the faithful are not baptized for that reason, that they may then first be made children of God, &c. ; but rather they are, therefore, received by that solemn sign into the church, because they did before belong to the body of Christ, by virtue of the promise." The Church of England, in the Catechism, makes the catechumen say, "In my baptism, wherein I was made a member of Christ, a child of God," &c. A like dispute might be raised about the efficacy of sealing a deed of land. One may sayIt is the sealing that conveys the right to the land;' - another, 'It is not that, but the will of the donor.' Both will agree, that it is not the parchment,' wax, &c. but the will of the donor solemnly signified by

those tokens. Bishop Stillingfleet does well observe, in the place I there quoted (Unreasonableness of Separation, part 3, sect. 36)"That the Church of England, by requiring sponsors, does not exclude any title to baptism, which the child has by the right of the parents;' but he shews at the same 'place, that if the parents be supposed to have no right, yet, upon the sponsion of Godfathers, the church has a right to administer baptism to infants (which Mr. Bernard, as we shall see presently, owns to be the sense of other Protestant churches); and that those who think themselves bound to baptize children, only by virtue of their parents' right, will run into many perplexing scruples, of which Mr. Bernard will give me occasion to speak by and by.

As for the assurance which they express, That where baptism cannot be had, God will in mercy make up the defect, and take the sincere will of the parent for the deed,-no Protestant, that I know of, will dispute against them, but have hopes of the same; but this is by extraordinary mercy, and should have no effect to alter the offices of the church visible, which cannot properly (in an office for burial, or any other occasion) call a person one of her members till he has been regularly received as such, by the ordinary way of God's appoint

ment.

At page 572, where I had said that all the ancient Christians (without the exception of one man) do understand that rule of our Saviour (John iii. 5) to mean baptism, and that I believed Calvin to be the first man that ever denied it so to be meant, Mr. Bernard, not willing to let Calvin's name pass without pleading something for him, makes this reflection: -"It must nevertheless be owned, that there are considerable difficulties in this explication of that passage given by the antients, and which our author takes to be the true one. It is hard for any one to think, that none of all this discourse of Jesus Christ to Nicodemus is to be understood of the

[or proper, veritable] regeneration; which baptism cannot confer of itself, at least, unless one would say

Mr. Bernard seems here not to have a right conception of the meaning of these ancient Christians. They did not think that the outward part of baptism was all that Jesus Christ understood or meant by this discourse; but that he comprehended in these words, born of water and of the spirit, both the outward part, the water, &c. and also the inward part, that operation of the Holy Spirit, by which the baptized person is, by God's mercy and his gracious covenant, received into a new spiritual state, translated out of the state of nature (to which a curse is due) into the state of grace and mercy in Jesus Christ; or (as Calvin's words are) renewed and brought to a state of salvation. St. Austin, in the words which I cited (part 1, chap. xv) shews how he and the antients understood the regeneration or new birth of an infant in baptism, as meant by our Saviour, in the plainest words possible. Aqua exhibens forinsecus sacramentum gratiæ, et spiritus operans intrinsecus beneficium gratiæ, solvens vinculum culpæ, &c. These taken together, he means, do regenerate the infant:- and is not this a happy and desirable regeneration for the infant? Is not the spiritual state of the child, by this merciful method of God's appointment, so altered for the better that he may well be said to be born anew, and entered into a new state? When he was by nature born in sin, in a state of spiritual pollution, subject to God's wrath, &c. are not the pardon of that sin or pollution, the release of the old bond, the admittance into a new covenant, the adoption into God's family, to be partaker of Christ's purchase, &c. sufficient to denominate a veritable regeneration?

But Mr. Bernard says, " Baptism cannot confer this of itself." Not the water of itself for certain; but the water, and the grace or mercy of God, applied to the person by the Holy Spirit (whose good offices, Christ has promised shall accompany his ordinances) can.

But then it will follow, he says, that" all baptized infants are actually regenerate.”

In this sense of the word [entered into a new spiritual state, which is the old sense of it] they are; and they have consigned to them the promises of such assistances of God's Spirit as they shall from time to time be capable of; and in that state they continue for ever, if they themselves do not by actual wickedness break, forfeit, and disannul the gracious covenant into which they are then entered.

Mr. Bernard argues, that if our Saviour had meant no more than this, "That would have been to no purpose, which he speaks of the action of the Spirit upon the heart of those who are regenerated, and which he compares to the wind." &c.

That grace of the Spirit which we have mentioned, is given both in the case of the adult, and also of infants. There are some other graces of the same spirit, which are given peculiarly to the adult in their baptism; as a present converting the heart, enlightening the mind, comforting the soul, &c. When we maintain, that this discourse of our Saviour concerning baptism and the regeneration of the person, is applicable to infants, we do not think that it relates to them only. On the contrary, in this and most other texts, where our Saviour or the apostles do speak of baptism, though their words do comprehend and reach to the case of infants; yet they seem to have a more especial eye to the case of the adult persons of that time; inasmuch as (though both were to be done) the baptizing of the adult, and the converting and fitting them for it, was the first and chief thing which the apostles had at that time to do. Now our Saviour's general words [born of water and of the Spirit] do comprehend both these gracious effects of God's Spirit, adapted to the several subjects according to their respective capacities.

Whereas Mr. Bernard brings in, as an objection against. this, those other words of our Saviour there:-That which is born of the flesh is flesh; and that which is born of the Spirit, is spirit. St. Austin's explication of that place which I recited, is natural and plain; as it is applied by him to infants (as well as adult per