218 THE GERMAN REFORMATION. A.D. 1517 To 1530.
to God is our thanks, our possessions, and our whole person. He also objects to the use of the Latin language in the mass, and demands the vernacular.
2. The sacrament of Baptism. Luther thanks God thai . this sacrament has been preserved uninjured, and kept from “ the foul and impious monstrosities of avarice and supersti- , tion.” He agrees essentially with the Roman doctrine, and _ considers baptism as a means of regeneration ; while Zwingli and Calvin regarded it merely as a sign and seal of preceding regeneration and church-membership. He even makes more of it than the Romanists, and opposes the prevailing view of St. Jerome, that penitence is a second plank of refuge after shipwreck. Instead of relying on priestly absolution, it is better to go back to the remission of sins secured in baptism. — “When we rise out of our sins, and exercise penitence, we are simply reverting to the efficacy of baptism and to faith in it, whence we had fallen; and we return to the promise then made to us, but which we had abandoned through our sin. For the truth of the promise once made always abides, and is ready to stretch out the hand and receive us when we return.”
_ As to the mode of baptism, he gives here, as elsewhere, his preference to immersion, which then still prevailed in England and in some parts of the Continent, and which was nota point of dispute either between Romanists and Protestants, or between Protestants and Anabaptists ; while on the question of infant-baptism the Anabaptists differed from both. “ Baptism,” he says, “is that dipping into water whence it takes its name. For, in Greek to baptize signifies to dip, and baptism is a dipping.” “Baptism signifies two things, —death and resurrection ; that is, full and complete justification. When the minister dips the child into the water, this signifies death ; when he draws him out again, this signifies life. Thus Paul explains the matter (Rom. 6: 4)... . I could wish that the baptized should be totally immersed, according to the mean-
§ 45. BABYLONIAN CAPTIVITY OF THE CHURCH. 219
ing of the word and the signification of the mystery; not that I think it necessary to do so, but that it would be well that so complete and perfect a thing as baptism should also be completely and perfectly expressed in the sign.”
Luther’s view of baptismal regeneration seems to be inconsistent with his chief doctrine of justification by faith alone. He says, “It is not baptism which justifies any man, or is of any advantage; but faith in that word of promise to which baptism is added: for this justifies and fulfills the meaning of baptism. For faith is the submerging of the old man, and the emerging of the new man.” But how does this apply to baptized infants, who can not be said to have faith in any proper sense of the term, though they have undoubtedly the | capacity of faith? Luther here brings in the vicarious faith of the parents or the Church. But he suggests also the idea | that faith is produced in the children, through baptism, on the ground of their religious receptivity.
3. Lastly, Luther attacks the traditional number of the sacraments. He allows “only two sacraments in the Church of God, Baptism.and Bread; since it is in these alone that we see both a sign divinely instituted, and a promise of remission of sins.” In some sense he retains also the sacrament of Penance, as a way and means of return to baptism.
The rest of the seven Roman sacraments — confirmation, marriage, ordination, and extreme unction—he rejects because they can not be proved from Scripture, and are not — commanded by Christ.
Matrimony has existed from the beginning of the world, ‘and belongs to all mankind. Why, then, should it be called a sacrament? Paul calls it a “ mystery,” but not a sacrament, as translated in the Vulgate (Ep. 5:32); or rather he speaks there of the union of Christ and the Church, which is reflected in matrimony as in a sort of allegory. But the Pope has restricted this universal human institution by rigorous impediments derived from spiritual affinity and legal relation-