eternal life. It does not follow from this that faith stands alone ; that obedience is not necessary. But obedience is the fruit of faith. He that does not obey, does not believe. For any one, therefore, to say that although a man truly believes the record God has given of his Son, yet that he is not a Christian, unless he belongs to some particular church organization, unless he is bap- tized with water, unless he comes to the Lord's table, contradicts not the general teaching of the Bible only, but the fundamental principle of the gospel method of salvation. Even Gabriel would not dare to shut the gates of paradise on the thief converted on the cross, because he had not been baptized.
2. It is plain that baptism cannot be the ordinary means of re- generation, or the channel of conveying in the first instance the benefits of redemption to the souls of men, because, in the case of adults, faith and repentance are the conditions of baptism. But faith and repentance, according to the Scriptures, are the fruits of regeneration. He who exercises repentance towards God and faith in our Lord Jesus Christ is in a state of salvation before baptism and therefore in a state of regeneration. Regeneration consequently precedes baptism, and cannot be its effect, according to the ordinance of God. That the Apostles did require the pro- fession of faith and repentance before baptism, cannot be denied. This is plain, not only from their recorded practice but also from the nature of the ordinance. Baptism is a profession of faith in the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit ; not of a faith to be obtained through the ordinance, but of a faith already entertained. When the Eunuch applied to Philip for baptism, he said : "If thou believest with all thine heart thou may est." Of those who heard Peter's sermon on the day of Pentecost it is said, " they that gladly received his word were baptized." (Acts ii. 41.) On this point, however, there can be no dispute. The only way in which Romanists and Romanizers evade this argument, is by denying that faith and repentance are the fruits of the Spirit, or of regeneration. They are in their view not gracious, but natural works, works done before regeneration ; works which leave the soul in a state of perdition. But in this they contradict the ex- press words of Christ, who says, whosoever believes shall be saved. And, in contradicting Christ, they contradict the whole Bible.
3. The doctrine of baptismal regeneration, in the sense above explained, is opposed to the whole nature of true religion as set forth in the Scriptures. The two great errors against which
602 PART m. Ch. XX. — THE MEANS OF GRACE.
the Gospel, as taught by Christ and unfolded by his Apostles, was directed ; were first the doctrine of human merit ; the merit of good works, the doctrine that men are to be saved on the ground of their own character or conduct ; and the second was ritualism, the doctrine of the necessity and inherent supernatural virtue of external rites and ceremonies. Our Lord taught that men were saved by looking to Him as the dying Hebrews in the wilderness were saved by looking to the brazen serpent. He further taught that unless a man, no matter how punctilious in observing the ceremonial law, was born of the Spirit, he could not enter into the kingdom of God. And the great burden of apostolic teach- ing was first, that we are saved, not by works but by faith, not for our own righteousness, but on the ground of the righteousness of Christ ; and secondly, that religion is a matter of the heart, not of ritual or ceremonial observances. The Jews of that day taught that no uncircumcised man could be saved. Romanists and Ro- manizers teach that no unbaptized person, whether infant or adult, is saved. The Jews taught that " no circumcised person ever entered hell," provided he remained within the pale of the theocracy. Romanists and Romanizers say that no baptized person is ever lost, provided he remains within the pale of the Roman Church. The Jews believed that circumcision secured its benefits, not only as a seal of the covenant, but from its own sanc- tifying power. This was only one aspect of the doctrine of salva- tion by works, against which the sacred writers so earnestly protested. " He is not a Jew," says St. Paul, " which is one outwardly ; neither is that circumcision, which is outward in the flesh : but he is a Jew, which is one inwardly ; and circumcision is that of the heart, in the spirit and not in the letter ; whose praise is not of men, but of God." (Rom. ii. 28, 29.) The doctrine of the Bible, therefore, is that he is not a Christian who is one out- wardly, but that he is a Christian who is one inwardly ; and the baptism which saves the soul is not baptism with water, but the baptism of the heart by the Holy Ghost. This doctrine of salva- tion by rites was, in the view of the Apostles, a much lower form of doctrine, more thoroughly Judaic, than the doctrine of salvation by works of righteousness.
It is evident that the doctrine of baptismal regeneration, as held by Romanists and their followers, changes the whole nature of religion. It makes mere external observances the conditions of Balvation, assuming that outward rites are exclusively the channels through which the benefits of redemption are conveyed to the