ments on some subjects, each seizing on what accords with himself, claim it as their own on both sides.

Let it be acknowledged, as in fairness and candour it ought to be, that in the simplest, most obvious, and most natural sense of our language, each side has some claim upon it. To instance in your lordship's favourite topic, one who holds baptismal regeneration can quote from the Prayer-Book that baptism is regeneration: another who rejects the opinion, can quote from the Prayer-Book that baptism is a sign of regeneration. One can quote concerning all baptized persons that they are thereby made the children of grace. Another can quote, that in those only who worthily receive baptism it has a wholesome effect or operation.

This is not an opinion. It is matter of fact. And as such what does it demand before we go further? Surely, my lord, it demands either an alteration which shall deprive one party of their quotations, or forbearance from both parties. If your object be alteration, why not avow it? It is a legitimate object. Our system ought not to be inconsistent with itself. But you have not avowed it. Your lordship aims at what would be tantamount to an alteration, and what would practically work as an alteration, while you profess to desire no alteration. Is this candid?

2. But secondly, and with reference to proportions on either side, the great bulk of the Prayer-Book, all of it, indeed, except three or four sentences, is clearly and powerfully on the side of your Metropolitan's private judgment. Three or four sentences of it are as clearly on the side of your lordship's private judgment. To make the Prayer-Book harmonise with your Metropolitan, and consistent with itself, the erasure of three or four sentences would be abundantly sufficient.

To make it harmonise with your lordship, and consistent with itself, it should be all re-written, except three or four sentences.

For example. The archbishop and those who agree with his grace find their views admirably expressed in the natural sense of the Thirty-nine Articles, and would not if they might make the least alteration while the natural sense of the Thirty-nine Articles absolutely demolishes all the peculiarities of your lordship's scheme. Mr. Newman, when writing his celebrated Tract XC., found it impossible to reconcile his views of sacramental grace with the natural sense of the Thirty-nine Articles. He frankly avowed a non-natural sense. He has since made progress; but his views then appear to have been very identical with your lordship's views now.

"ONE BAPTISM FOR THE REMISSION OF SINS !" This is the article of the faith for which your lordship is so deeply concerned. Of their adherence to this, you invite from the clergy of your diocese a fresh avowal. It may not be uninteresting to your lordship to know what some of the clergy and laity in other parts of the kingdom think upon this subject; and a public address to your lordship, under existing circumstances, can scarcely be deemed intrusive in any member of the Church.

I must premise that, taking our sixth article literally and naturally, I believe that "whatsoever is not read in Holy Scripture or may be proved thereby," without the aid of any human authority, "is not to be required of any man to be believed as an Article of the Faith, or be thought requisite or necessary to salvation."

Although the sacred writers have not said so much on the subject of Baptism, commonly so called, as certain controversialists in all ages have been disposed to do, yet they have said something, and it is obviously our first duty in this matter carefully to examine what they have said, praying for and expecting the teaching of God the Holy Ghost, by whom alone, in this and in everything connected with our Lord Jesus Christ, we can be guided into saving truth.

Putting the subject catechetically, to begin with, I may ask, What mean we by this word Baptism? This may seem a strangely elementary question in a letter to your lordship; but "it is worth observing," says Archbishop Whately, in his instructive Treatise on Logic, "that the words whose ambiguity is the most frequently overlooked, and is productive of the greatest amount of confusion of thought and fallacy, are among the commonest, and are those of whose meaning the generality consider there is the least room to doubt. It is, indeed, from those very circumstances that the danger arises: words in very common use are both the most liable, from the looseness of ordinary discourse, to slide from one sense into another, and also the least likely to have that ambiguity suspected. Familiar acquaintance is perpetually mistaken for accurate knowledge."1

On the importance of defining words in common use, the same acute writer remarks:

"It is important to observe, that the very circumstance which in any case makes a definition the more necessary, is apt to lead to the omission of it; for when any terms are employed that are not familiarly introduced into ordinary discourse, such as parallelogram,' or sphere,' or 'tangent,'-' pencil of rays,' or 'refraction,' 'oxygen,'

1 Whately's Logic, p. 346-Edit. vii.

or alkali,' the learner is ready to inquire, and the writer to anticipate the inquiry, what is meant by this or that term. And although, in such cases it is undoubtedly a correct procedure to answer this inquiry by a definition, yet of the two cases a definition is even more necessary in the other, where it is not so likely to be called for; where the word not being new to the student, but familiar to his ear, from its employment in every-day discourse, is liable to the ambiguity which is almost always the result, for in respect of words that sound 'something new and strange,' though it is, as I have said, much better to define them in the outset, yet even without this, the student would gradually collect their meaning pretty correctly, as he proceeded in his study of any treatise, from having nothing to mislead himnothing from which to form his notions at all, except the manner in which the terms were employed in the work itself that is before him. And the very desire he had felt of a definition would lead him in this way, to form one, and generally a sufficiently correct one, for himself." "It is otherwise with terms to which we are familiarly accustomed. Of these, the student does not usually crave definitions, from supposing, for that reason, that he understands them well enough: though, perhaps (without suspecting it), he has in reality been accustomed to hear them employed in various senses, and to attach but a vague and inaccurate notion to them. If you speak to an uninstructed hearer of anything that is spherical, or circular, or cylindrical, he will probably beg for an explanation of your meaning; but if you tell him of anything that is round, it will not strike him that any explanation is needed, though he has been accustomed to employ the word indiscriminately, in all the senses denoted by the other three." 1

Convinced as I am that a serious fallacy has arisen, not from the indiscriminate, but from the limited use of the word baptism by ecclesiastical writers, I revert to the question, What mean we by this word? The right answer, in the first place, if we would avoid ambiguity, is this-The meaning of the word depends upon the context wherein it is found: for, in Holy Scripture, the word baptism does not, in every passage where it occurs, mean the same thing. What, then, are its various scriptural meanings?

I. Baptism signifies acute sufferings. So our Lord Himself uses the word to express His own sufferings and also the sufferings of His disciples.

His own sufferings "I am come to send fire on the earth; and what will I, if it be already kindled?"

'Whately's Logic, pp. 214, 215.

"But I have a baptism to be baptized with; and how am I straitened till it be accomplished?"

I have a suffering to suffer, and how am I pressed, and anxious, and uneasy-pained is our marginal translation (ws σvvexoμai)—until it is accomplished! Here, then, it is not to be denied that baptism is used in a figurative or metaphorical sense, to signify suffering, and especially that suffering which was peculiar to our Lord Himself. In a similar way, He uses the word to express those sufferings of His, of which His disciples were to be partakers: "Can ye drink of the cup that I drink of, and be baptized with the baptism that I am baptized with ? And they say unto Him, We can. And Jesus said unto them, Ye shall indeed drink of the cup that I drink of; and with the baptism that I am baptized withal, shall ye be bap tized."2

Can you, as witnesses for God, suffer patiently from an evil world as I do? We can. Ye shall indeed so suffer. Ye are not of the world, as I am not of the world. If they call the Master of the house Beelzebub, they will equally miscall those of His household who are true to Him. If they persecute me, they will also persecute you. If they give me a cup of bitterness to drink, and baptise me in blood, you may prepare yourselves for similar treatment at their hands. Here again it is so clear, that nothing can be clearer, that baptism is used to signify suffering.

II. Secondly. Baptism signifies endowment with the miraculous powers of the Holy Ghost.

In this sense John the Baptist used it, when speaking of what Christ would confer on His disciples: "He that cometh after me

not worthy to bear: He

is mightier than I, whose shoes I am
shall baptise you with the Holy Ghost, and with fire."3

In the same sense our Lord used the word, when He spoke to His disciples, after His resurrection from the dead: "Wait for the promise of the Father, which, saith He, ye have heard of me for John truly baptized with water; but ye shall be baptized with the Holy Ghost, not many days hence."4

And so it is applied by St. Peter, when giving an account of what occurred in the house of Cornelius, the Roman centurion: "As I began to speak, the Holy Ghost fell on them, as on us at the beginning. Then remembered I the word of the Lord, how that He

1 St. Luke xii. 49, 50.

2 St. Mark x. 38, 39.

3 St. Matt. iii. 2.

Acts i. 5.

said, John indeed baptized with water; but ye shall be baptized with the Holy Ghost."

"1

III. Thirdly. Baptism signifies what by some is called conversion, by some regeneration-what our Lord calls being born of the Spirit, what St. Paul calls a new creation. It is that inward and spiritual change, by the secret energy of the Holy Spirit, whereby a sinner is renewed in the spirit of His mind, united spiritually with Jesus Christ by faith, in His death and in His resurrection-dead with Christ, buried with Christ, risen again with Christ, pardoned in Christ, clothed with Christ, a new creation in Christ.

Thus St. Paul writes to the Romans: "Know ye not, that so many of us as were baptized into Jesus Christ were baptized into His death? Therefore we are buried with Him by baptism into death; that, like as Christ was raised up from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so we also should walk in newness of life. For if we have been planted together in the likeness of His death, we shall be also in the likeness of His resurrection. "2

The meaning of this passage will not be altered by substituting for baptism, conversion, or regeneration, or renewal. Know ye not, that so many of us as were renewed into Christ were renewed into His death. Therefore we are buried with Him, by renewal (or conversion, or regeneration), into death; that like as Christ was raised up from the dead by the glory of the Father, even we also should walk in newness of life, being converted or regenerated. On the fifth verse we may remark, that whatever baptism in this passage means, it is inseparable, according to St. Paul, from salvation. If we have it, or, as the apostle himself here paraphrases what he had said, if we have been planted together (another figurative mode of saying the same thing) in the likeness of Christ's death (by baptism into Him), we shall be also in the likeness of His resurrection-i.e., we shall have glory, body and soul, or finished salvation in the image of Him.

Similar is St. Paul's use of the word baptism, in his Epistle to the Colossians: "Ye are complete in Him who is the head of all principality and power; in whom also ye are circumcised with the circumcision made without hands, in putting off the body of the sins of the flesh by the circumcision of Christ: buried with Him in baptism, wherein also ye are risen with Him, through the faith of the operation of God, who hath raised Him from the dead. And you, being Acts xi. 15, 16.

2 Rom. vi. 3-5.