they are given in vain. But I have felt it due to iryself, in maintaining an opinion about a most important text which is not commonly held, to state fully my reasons, and to show that my opinion is not hghtly maintained.
Before leaving this subject, I think it right, in self-defence, to say something about the fact, that the view I maintain is not held by the great majority of commentators. This fact undoubt- edly cahs for some explanation.
With regard to the Fathers, no one can read their writings without seeing that they were fallible men. On no point doea their weakness appear so strongly, as in their language about the sacraments. The man who intends to abide by all the opinions of the Fathers about the sacraments, will have to swallow a great deal. After all, the very earliest Father, whose commentary on St. John's Gospel is extant, is Origen. who died in 253, A.D. The true view of the text before us, might easily be lost in the period of at least 150 years between Origen's day and the days of St. John. Tertulhan incidentally applies tho text before us to baptism, in one of his writings. But even he was not born till 160, a.d., at least two generations after St. John's time.
"With regard to the Lutheran writers, their avowed opinions upon the sacraments make their interpretations of the text before us of little weight. They have a peculiar sacramental theory to maintain when they expound Scripture, and to that theory they steadfastly adhere. Yet even Brentius on this text confesses, that the baptism here signified by " water," means something much more than the sacrament of baptism, and includes the whole doctrine of the Gospel. — The Roman Catholic commentators are, of course, even more fettered in their views of the sacraments than the Lutherans, and hardly call for any remark. Their con- i^nt endeavour in expounding Scripture, is to maintain the sacramental system of their own church, and a text like that before us is unhesitatingly applied to baptism.
"With regard to our own English reformers and their immediate successors, their opinions about a text like this are perhaps less valuable than upon any subject. They always display an exces- sive anxiety to agree with the Fathers. They were anxious in every way to conciliate opponents, and to support their own Protestantism by appeals to primitive antiquity. When, there- fore, they saw that the Fathers refer-ed the text before us to baptism, and that at best the point was doubtful, we cannot wonder that they held, that to be "born of water" was to be baptized. Yet even they seem not unanimous on the point ; and Latimer's well-known assertion, that "to be christened with water is not regeneration," must not be forgotten. — The famous