penances that are prescribed among them as means of expiating their sins? What is their auricular confession, their priestly absolution, their adoring of the consecrated wafer, and their administration of extreme unction ? Some, I trust, there are, who are enabled to look simply to Christ through all the mists that are cast around him : but those who regard the dogmas of popery as the only ground of their hopes, are as far from God and truth as either Jews or heathens.]
Would to God that the Protestant world were blameless in relation to this matter !
[The light which we enjoy ought long since to have dis- pelled the clouds of popish superstition : but amongst the generality there still remains a most astonishing blindness respecting the Gospel of Christ. How many are there who imagine that repentance has in itself a power to wash away their sins! How many regard the Lord's supper, not as a mere commemorative ordinance in and through which divine blessings are dispensed, but as a sacrificial act, that expiates their guilt, and insures their forgiveness! Baptism, in like manner, is supposed by many to take away our sins, yea, and to renew our natures also, not as it is received, but simply as administered: and they who deny this, are represented as denying the sacramental character of the ordinance. Thus do many amongst ourselves run into the very same absurdity as the Jews did in relation to the brasen serpent. God once conveyed bodily health by a sight of the brasen serpent ; and he now conveys spiritual health in and through the ordinance of baptism. But the serpent did not heal all, but those oidy who looked to it hy faith : nor did it heal them by any jwtver of its own, but otily as aj^pointed of God to he a medium of communication from him to them. When the Jews ascribed the honour to the brasen serpent, and looked to it for future benefits, they erred: and precisely in the same manner do they err, who ascribe power to baptism as an act, instead of looking simply to God for his blessing on the use of it as an instituted ordinance, and a medium of communication with him. As rea- sonably might any person ascribe the refreshing water which he drinks to the pipe which conveys it to him, as imagine that the mere act of baptism can justify and sanctify his soul. There is a fomitain to which the stream must be traced : and, if we suffer our views to terminate on any thing short of that, we are guilty of the grossest superstition.
In a word, there is in every man by nature a tendency to this fatal evil, and a readiness to rob God of his glory, by giving to the creature that honour which is due to him alone.]