ART.

them, that therefore, because matter and form are observed, they should be true Sacraments. But though we XXVI. make the serious appearances of a Christian action to be necessary to the making it a Sacrament; yet we carry this no further, to the inward and secret acts of the Priest, as if they were essential to the being of it. If this is true, no man can have quiet in his mind.

It is a profanation for an unbaptized person to receive the Eucharist; so if baptism is not true when a Priest sets his intention cross to it, then a man in orders must be in perpetual doubts, whether he is not living in a continual state of sacrilege in administering the other Sacraments while he is not yet baptized; and if baptism be so necessary to salvation, that no man who is not baptized can hope to be saved, here a perpetual scruple must arise, which can never be removed. Nor can a man be sure but that, when he thinks he is worshipping the true body of Jesus Christ, he is committing idolatry, and worshipping only a piece of bread; for it is no more according to them, if the Priest had an intention against consecrating it. No orders are given if an intention lies against them; and then he who passes for a Priest is no Priest; and all his consecrations and absolutions are so many invalid things, and a continued course of sacrilege.

Now what reason soever men may have in this case to hope for the pardon of those sins, since it is certain that the ignorance is invincible; yet here strange thoughts must arise concerning Christ and his Gospel; if in those actions that are made necessary to salvation, it should be in the power of a false Christian, or an atheistical Priest or Bishop, to make them all void; so that by consequence it should be in his power to damn them: for since they are taught to expect grace and justification from the Sacraments, if these are no true Sacraments which they take for such, but only the shadows and the phantasms of them, then neither grace nor justification can follow upon them. This may be carried so far as even to evacuate the very being of a Church: for a man not truly baptized can never be in orders; so that the whole ordinations of a Church, and the succession of it, may be broke by the impiety of any one Priest. This we look on as such a chain of absurdities, that if this doctrine of intention were true, it alone might serve to destroy the whole credit of the Christian religion, in which the Sacraments are taught to be both so necessary and so efficacious; and yet all this is made to depend on that which can neither be known nor prevented.

D d

1 Sam. iii. 11.

19, 20. vi. 3, 4, 5.

Ꭺ Ꭱ Ꭲ. The last paragraph of this Article is so clear, that it XXVI. needs no explanation, and is so evident, that it wants no proof. Eli was severely threatened for suffering his sons to go on in their vices, when by their means the sacrifice of God was abhorred. God himself struck Nadab and Abihu dead, when they offered strange fire at his altar; and upon Levit. x. 3. that these words were uttered, I will be sanctified in them that come nigh me, and before all the people will I be glori1 Tim. v. 1, fied. Timothy was required to receive an accusation of an Elder, when regularly tendered to him; and to rebuke before all those that sinned; and he was charged to withdraw himself from those Teachers who consented not to wholesome words, and that made a gain of godliness. A main part of the discipline of the primitive Church lay heaviest on the Clergy and such of them as either apostatized, or fell into scandalous sins, even upon their repentance, were indeed received into the peace of the Church; but they were appointed to communicate among the Laity, and were never after that admitted to the body of the Clergy, or to have a share in their privileges. Certainly there is nothing more incumbent on the whole body of the Church, than that all possible care be taken to discover the bad practices that may be among the Clergy; which will ever raise strong prejudices, not only against their persons, but even against their profession, and against that religion which they seem to advance with their mouths, while in their works, and by their lives, they detract from it, and seem to deny its authority. But after all, our zeal must go along with justice and discretion: fame may be a just ground to enquire upon; but a sentence cannot be founded on it. The Laity must discover what they know, Gal. v. 12. that so these who have authority may be able to cut off those that trouble the Church. Discretion will require that things which cannot be proved, ought rather to be covered than exposed, when nothing but clamour can follow upon it. In sum, this is a part of the government of the Church, for which God will reckon severely with those, who from partial regards, or other feeble or carnal considerations, are defective in that, which is so great a part of their duty, and in which the honour of God, and of religion, and the good of souls, as well as the order and unity of the Church, are so highly concerned.

ARTICLE XXVII.

Of Baptism.

Baptism is not only a Sign of Profession and Mark of Difference, whereby Christian Men are discerned from others that be not Christened; but it is also a Sign of Regeneration or New Birth, whereby, as by an Instrument, thep that receive Baptism rightly, are grafted into the Church. The Promises of the Forgiveness of Sin, of our Adoption to be the Sons of God by the Holy Ghost, are visibly Signed and Sealed, Faith is confirmed and Grace increased by virtue of Praper to God. The Baptism of poung Children is in any wise to be retained in the Church, as most agreeable with the Institution of Christ.

WH

HEN St. John Baptist began first to baptize, we do plainly see by the first chapter of St. John's Gospel, that the Jews were not surprised at the novelty of the rite; for they sent to ask who he was? And when he said he was not the Messias, nor Elias, nor that Prophet, they asked, Why baptizest thou then? Which shews, not only John i. 25. that they had clear notions of Baptism, but in particular that they thought that if he had been the Messias, or Elias, or that Prophet, he might then have baptized. St. Paul does also say, that the Jews were all baptized unto 1 Cor. x. 2. Moses in the cloud, and in the sea; which seems to relate to some opinion the Jews had, that by that cloud, and their passing through the sea, they were purified from the Egyptian defilements, and made meet to become Moses's disciples. Yet in the Old Testament we find no clear warrant for a practice that had then got among the Jews, which is still taught by them, that they were to receive a proselyte, if a male, by Baptism, Circumcision, and Sacrifice; and if a female, only by Baptism and Sacrifice. Thus they reckoned, that when any came over from heathenism to their religion, they were to use a washing; to denote their purifying themselves from the uncleanness of their former idolatry, and their entering into a holy religion.

And as they do still teach, that when the Messias comes, they are all bound to set themselves to repent of their for

-ART. mer sins; so it seems they then thought, or at least it XXVII. would have been no strange thing to them, if the Messias

had received such as came to him by Baptism. St. John, by baptizing those who came to him, took them obliged to enter upon a course of repentance, and he declared to them the near approach of the Messias, and that the kingdom of God was at hand; and it is very probable, that those who were baptized by Christ, that is, by his Apostles; for though it is expressly said, that he baptized none, yet what he did by his Disciples, he might in a more general sense be said to have done himself; that these, I say, were baptized upon the same sponsions, and with the same declarations, and with no other; for the dispensation of the Messias was not yet opened, nor was it then fully declared that he was the Messias: howsoever this was a preparatory initiation of such as were fitted for the coming of the Messias; by it they owned their expectations of him, as then near at hand, and they professed their repentance of their sins, and their purposes of doing what should be enjoined them by him.

Water was a very proper emblem, to signify the passing from a course of defilement to a greater degree of purity, both in doctrine and practice.

Our Saviour in his state of humiliation, as he was subject to the Mosaical Law, so he thought fit to fulfil all the obligations that lay upon the other Jews; which, by a phrase used among them, he expresses thus, to fulfil all righteousness. For though our Saviour had no sins to confess, yet that not being known, he might come to profess his belief of the dispensation of the Messias, that was then to appear. But how well soever the Jews might have been accustomed to this rite, and how proper a preparation soever it might be to the manifestation of the Messias; yet the institution of Baptism, as it is a federal act of the Christian religion, must be taken from the commission that our Saviour gave to his Disciples; to go preach and xxviii. 19, make disciples to him in all nations, (for that is the strict signification of the word,) baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost; teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you.

Matth.

20.

By the first teaching or making of disciples, that must go before Baptism, is to be meant the convincing the world, that Jesus is the Christ, the true Messias, anointed of God, with a fulness of grace and of the Spirit without measure, and sent to be the Saviour and Redeemer of the world. And when any were brought to acknowledge this, then they were to baptize them, to initiate them to this reli

gion, by obliging them to renounce all idolatry and un- ART. godliness, as well as all secular and carnal lusts, and then XXVII. they led them into the water; and with no other garments but what might cover nature, they at first laid them down in the water, as a man is laid in a grave, and then they said those words, I baptize or wash thee in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost: then they raised them up again, and clean garments were put on them: from whence came the phrases of being baptized into Christ's death; of Rom. vi. 3, being buried with him by baptism into death; of our being col. ii. 12. risen with Christ, and of our putting on the Lord Jesus Col. iii. 1, Christ; of putting off the Old Man, and putting on the 9, 10. New. After Baptism was thus performed, the baptized Rom. xiii. person was to be farther instructed in all the specialities of the Christian religion, and in all the rules of life that Christ had prescribed.

This was plainly a different Baptism from St. John's; a profession was made in it, not in general, of the belief of a Messias soon to appear, but in particular, that Jesus was the Messias.

4, 5.

14.

The stipulation in St. John's Baptism was repentance; but here it is the belief of the whole Christian religion. In St. John's Baptism they indeed promised repentance, and he received them into the earnests of the kingdom of the Messias; but it does not appear that St. John either did promise them remission of sins, or that he had commission so to do: for repentance and remission of sins were not joined together till after the resurrection of Christ; that he appointed that repentance and remission of sins should Luke xxiv. be preached in his name among all nations, beginning at Je-47.

rusalem.

In the Baptism of Christ, I mean that which he appointed after his resurrection, (for the Baptism of his Disciples before that time was, no doubt, the same with St. John's Baptism,) there was to be an instruction given in that great mystery of the Christian religion concerning the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost; which those who had only received St. John's Baptism knew not: they did not Acts xix. so much as know that there was a Holy Ghost; that is, 2, 3, 4, 5. they knew nothing of the extraordinary effusion of the Holy Ghost. And it is expressly said, that those of St. John's Baptism, when St. Paul explained to them the difference between the Baptism of Christ, and that of St. John, that they were baptized in the name of the Lord Jesus. For St. John in his Baptism had only initiated them to the belief of a Messias; but had not said a word of Jesus, as being that Messias. So that this must be fixed, that