JEBB, BISHOP-Pastoral Instructions. Disc. vi. p. 112. But how, may it be asked, are the benefits and blessings of spiritual regeneration conferred upon infants in their tender years? To this inquiry we need not be careful to reply: we need only state, that in this, as in various other instances, it hath pleased Almighty GoD to set limits to the presumptuousness of human curiosity; and thus, at once to try our humility and our faith. It is enough for us, rest assured, that GOD is now, and ever, the same all-good and gracious Parent; that, as in times past, it was "out of the mouths of babes and sucklings he perfected praise:" and as "He revealed unto babes those things which were hidden from the wise and prudent," so He is, at all times, abundantly able to pour forth the dew of His blessing upon infants who are faithfully brought to the baptism of his Son. It is enough for us to believe and cherish the preva lent sentiment of the universal Church, as it has been maintained from the age of the Apostles, that at the time of baptism, a new nature is divinely communicated, and gracious privileges are especially vouchsafed, in such measure and degree that, whosoever are clothed with this white garment, may, through God's help," keep their baptism pure and undefiled, for the remainder of their lives, never wilfully committing any deadly sin.”

VAN MILDERT, BISHOP.-Bampton Lectures, vi.

Regeneration is represented, by a certain class of interpreters, as an instantaneous, perceptible, and irresistible operation of the Holy Spirit upon the heart and mind; which, whether the person have been baptized or not, affords the only certain evidence of his conversion to a saving and justifying faith. By others, it is regarded as a continued and progressive work of the Spirit, or as a state commencing in baptism, but not completed until, by perseverance to the end, the individual has "finished his course, and is about to enter upon his final reward." Others again, separating what the Scriptures state to be joined together in the work of the new birth, maintain a distinction between baptismal and spiritual regeneration; the former taking place in the Sacrament of Baptism; the latter subsequent to it, and, whether progressive or instantaneous in its operation, equally necessary with baptism to a state of salvation.

But here the analogy of faith seems to be violated throughout. For how can any of these views of regeneration consist with the plain and simple notion of it as an entrance upon a new state, or a sacramental initiation into the Christian covenant? Nay, how can they consist with the terms and conditions of the covenant it

self? If the Gospel be a covenant, admission into which, on the terms of faith and repentance, gives an immediate title to its present privileges, with an assurance of the spiritual helps necessary for the attainment of salvation; and if baptism be the divinelyappointed means of admission into that covenant, and of a participation in those privileges; is not the person so admitted actually brought into a new state? Has he not obtained that thing which by nature he cannot have? "And being thus regenerated and born anew of water and of the Holy Ghost," to what subsequent part of his Christian life can a term so peculiarly expressive of his first entrance upen it be with propriety applied?

MANT, BISHOP.-Bampton Lectures, vi.

Verily, verily, I say unto thee, Except a man be born of water and of the Spirit, &c. ... It should appear, I say, that he was here alluding by anticipation to the Sacrament of Baptism, which he intended to ordain: and to that supernatural grace, which was thereby to be conferred through the instrumentality of water, and by the Holy Ghost; adopting, not only the ceremony itself, which he meant to exalt to more noble and spiritual purposes, but also the very term by which the Jews had described the change wrought in the baptized, although he undoubtedly employed it, in a similar sense indeed, but in an infinitely more dignified sense. To the proselyte from heathenism to the Jewish faith, baptisin 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 profession of the Christian faith, and who should be "born not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh," &c. . . . . it was to be a death unto sin, and a new birth unto those spiritual privileges, which should accompany his deliverance "from the bondage of corruption into the glorious liberty of the children of GOD." The Jewish proselyte had been baptized with water: the Christian was to be baptized, not with water only, but with the Holy Ghost.

THE TIMES.

TRACTS FOR THE

No. 77.

ON THE DANGER OF RIDICULE IN RELIGION.

[The following is Dr. PUSEY's answer to an Anonymous Pamphlet, reflecting on these Tracts, which appeared in the end of March 1836. The Pamphlet professed to be a "Pastoral Epistle from the Pope to some Members of the University of Oxford." Dr. PUSEY's answer was entitled “An Earnest Remonstrance to the Author of the Pope's Letter, on the Danger of Ridicule in Religion." Tract 74 was added to it as an Appendix. Two extracts have been added by the Author in the second reprint.]

SIR, Two reasons induce me to appeal to you, in reference to your recent Letter: First, that I have escaped your censures : Secondly, that (if report speaks right) you are one from whose straight-forwardness, sincerity, and love of truth, I once anticipated much. In both ways, therefore, I am freed from the risk of personal feelings.

I would, then, regard you as the representative of a certain class, (as every one is, more or less ;) and would direct my observations to an evil prevalent in these times, not to you. That evil (and there could scarcely be a greater) is the use of banter and jest in things serious. It is true that the minds of a large portion of our countrymen seem to have become so inured to this, that persons have even despaired of addressing them, except in a tone even lower than that low tone to which they have sunk. It is true, that even among the better-instructed orders, persons, in their degree serious-minded, have often thought themselves obliged to condescend to the conventional language of the day, as their only hope to gain a hearing. It is true, also, that the appetite has grown with its unwholesome nourishment; and now, as by a self-created necessity, all seem to be absorbed into the tide; and it is rare to find any cause advocated in the plain, open, straightforward tone which was once the characteristic of our land. Not simply our periodical literature, or our journals, but our courts of law, and that branch of the legislature which is liable to be affected by popular taste, are infected by the malaria of this destructive habit. Man's happiness, or God's displeasure, domestic misery or national sin, are continually a jest. Adultery, fornication, theft, drunkenness, lying, are daily matters of sport. If justice is to be perverted, men's minds blinded to sin,

escape unpunished, a jest is the refuge; caricatures are the vehicles of public instruction, and "a mock at sin" the source of public amusement.

It is indeed strange, and a lamentable part of this sad merriment, that many right-minded people are so little sickened at it, or so little express their weariness. But so it is with every other prevailing sin; those who live amidst it are, in their several degrees, infected by it: the fineness of our moral perceptions is blunted by the very acquaintance with sin, all mention whereof we at first loathed; our ears become untuned to the chords of Heaven, by listening constantly to the jarring sounds of earth, and are less offended by their discordancy. Most men feel themselves compelled to an over-acquaintance with the things of the day, and so are insensibly inured to its wretchedness, and deem it irremediable. They are indeed mistaken; the more earnest spirit is not fled: it sleeps only, or rather is drugged by these continued poisonous appliances; and brighter days may yet come, when our countrymen shall again be spoken to, not as members of a vast machine, or as the slaves of temporal interests, but as responsible immortal agents, as Christians, as members of Christ the Son of God.

It is one consolation, that if all our outward privileges, yea, every thing except truth, be lost, then the temptation of appealing to any other principle but truth and holiness, will be removed

also.

These however have been, in many cases, worldly things, treated of by men of this world: a pernicious principle was admitted; but the source of truth and holy earnestness was not yet poisoned; banter had not yet been employed upon things Divine. This is now inadvertently commenced, and the more dangerously because inadvertently. Hitherto it had scarcely been found except among Infidels.

I would then, Sir, request you for a while to lay aside the thoughts of the amusement which your Letter has caused to yourself or others, and to consider in earnestness some of the evils into which it has betrayed you, and may and must betray others. I will confine myself to three

1. Irreverent treatment of holy things.

2. Sacrifice of truth.

3. False insinuation, and consequently slandering.

And these I impute, not to yourself: on the contrary, I think that, in your natural character, you would be very far from them. I would speak of them only as inseparable consequences of the line which you have taken.

I. IRREVERENCE.-It may suffice, Sir, to mention some of the subjects which were necessarily brought into your ill-advised jest.

1. Persons' belief as to our Lord's presence in the Communion.

2. The mode in which the Commission ordained for the preaching and maintenance of the everlasting Gospel has been continued to this day.

3. The maintenance of the form of our public worship, and the doctrines therein contained.

4. The comfort which the dying Christian obtains from the provisions of our Church.

5. The unity of the Church of Christ.

6. The Authority of His bishops, or of His Church.

7. The quiet frame of mind of a simple, undisputing Christian. It is not here the question, whether any of the writers whom you ridicule, over-stated the truth upon any of these points. I am convinced that they have not. But granting that they had, is ridicule a safe, a Christian, a godly, weapon to employ in such matters? Is it possible that those who should have been thereby made ashamed of, or scared from, any of those statements, would approach the consideration of the truth itself with that deep and considerate earnestness and reverence of mind which the subject requires,―if, indeed, you yet hold that there be any truth at all connected even with these subjects? Is it not too probable that the infection of this ridicule will extend to other truths; some of which, I presume, you would not wish to see thus assailed? since the efficacy of Baptism, the strengthening of the believer's soul by the Body and Blood of his Lord in the holy Eucharist, the Divinity of our Redeemer, and His sacrifice for sin, have been, and still are by some, represented as relics of Popery? The Socinians, and, more recently, the Rationalists of Germany, regarded or represented themselves as carrying on the work of the first Reformers, in purging Christianity from Papal corruptions.

Ridicule cannot be employed with impunity as a test of truth error and truth often lie so closely together, nay, most religious error has so much of truth mingled up with it, that the very love of truth ought to preclude the use of jesting; not to say that the fearfulness of the subject, and the majesty of Almighty God, might well instinctively awe man into sobriety. For, through this close connexion of truth and error, mire cannot be cast at error, without defiling the truth also. To take the most palpable errors,-Could a man jest at Transubstantiation, and not thereby unfit his mind for the reception of the holy mystery of the Communion? or would not a mocking at the false doctrine of the Mediation of the Saints lower men's notions of their high and holy state? or has not the jesting, even at the most unreal delusions of the imagination, injured men's faith in the influences of God's Blessed Spirit? Throughout, Sir, we are standing upon holy ground; and it beseems us to pull the shoes