" Thou art in the gall of bitterness and the bond of iniquity, — thy heart 'S not right in the sight of God, — thou hast neither part nor Ijt in this matter." (Acts viii. 21 — 23.) The assertion, therefore, that '•' water " must mean baptism, is a mere gratuitous assumption, and must fall to the ground.
(c.) Thirdly, if " water " in the text before us means baptism^ it fallows as a logical consequence that baptism is absolutely necessary to salvation, and that all who have died unbaptized since these words were spoken, have been lost! The penitent thief was lost on this theory, for he was never baptized ! All infants who have died unbaptized have been lost ! The whole body of the Quakers, who die in their own communion, are lost! There is no evading this conclusion, unless we adopt the absurd and untenable hypothesis that the kingdom of G-od in this solemn passage means nothing more than the visible church. Where our Lord, in declaring a great general truth, makes no exceptions, we have no right to make them. If words mean anything, to refer " water " to baptism excludes unbaptized persons from heaven ! And yet there is not another instance in Scripture of an outward ordinance being made absolutely necessary to salva- tion, and specially an ordinance which a man cannot confer on himself. A new, regenerate heart is undoubtedly necessary to the salvation of every one, without exception, and it is of this only, I behave, that the text before us speaks.
(cZ.) Fourthly, if we accept the theory that baptism is the ordinary means of conveying the grace of regeneration, that all baptized persons are necessarily regenerated, and that all who are " born of water " are at the same time born of the Spirit, we are irresistibly involved in the most dangerous and pernicious consequences. — We pour contempt on the whole work of the Spirit, and on the blessed doctrine of regeneration. We bring into the Church a new and unscriptural kind of new birth, a new birth that cannot be seen by its fruits. We make out that people are " born of G-od " when they have not one of the marks of regeneration laid down by St. John. — We encourage the rankest antinomianism. We lead people to suppose that they have grace in their hearts while they are servants of sin, and that they have the Holy Spirit within them while they are obeying the lusts of the flesh. — Last, but not least, we pour contempt on the holy sacrament of baptism. We turn it into a mere form, in which faith and prayer have no place at all. We lead people to suppose that it matters nothing in what spirit they bring their children to baptism, and that if water is sprinkled, and certain words are used, an infant is, as a matter of course, born again. Worst of all, we induce people secietly to despise baptism, because we teach them that it always conveys a mighty spiritual blessing, while t^eir own eye? teU them, that, in a multitude of cases, it