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To
the Editor of the Occident.
Sir:—It is allowed that the dogmas of the Christian
religion are to be received with “a charitable
construction,” that is to say as “not strictly
true;” but it is not often that we are told in what
degree they are to be modified. In fact it would
appear that the Church has not any fixed standard of
orthodoxy. This <<145>> has been strongly
exemplified in the recent Gorham case, where the
Bishop of Exeter had declared the opinion held by
Dr. Gorham on the subject of Baptism, to be
heretical, and the Judicial Committee of the Privy
Council has declared them to be orthodox, and not
to be deemed an objection to his holding the cure of
souls. The Bishop of London, who supports the Bishop
of Exeter, has, in a charge to the Clergy in his
Diocese, brought forward the arguments on which he
founds the opinion of Dr. Gorham’s errors. He shows
that the Church teaches that by the sacrament of
baptism, the recipients are regenerated and receive
the forgiveness of sins, the new nature, adoption
into the family of God, the being made members of
Christ, children of God and inheritors of the
kingdom of heaven. Dr. Gorham, on the other hand,
contends that these benefits are not conferred by
the rite of baptism, but must be bestowed, if at
all, by an act of Praevenient Grace that baptism is
so far an effectual sign of God’s grace bestowed
beforehand. According to this doctrine, the rite
does not bestow any benefit, but is merely an
outward sign that such benefit is supposed to have
been received, and reducing it to a mere ceremony of
no value, not being essential to salvation, unless
accompanied by the benefit of an act of grace, which
may be bestowed at, on, or after baptism, or wholly
withheld.
Will Dr. Gorham, after the opinion to which he has
arrived, ever perform the ceremony of baptism,
which, he says must be ineffectual without a
praevenient act of grace, which, in the case of an
infant who is a few weeks old, he cannot be assured
of? If he does, is it not a mockery of his God, and
a shameful imposition on the parents of the child,
who believe that by the performance of the rite
their child has been absolved from sin, and received
those benefits, which he says are only conferred by
an act of grace?
The Bishop of London remarks, that only the least
objectionable parts of Dr. Gorham’s doctrine are
referred to in the report of the Privy Council, in
which the more important errors are passed over in
silence, a silence on which the Bishop congratulates
himself, since, if it does not condemn the errors,
it does not sanction. them but although the report
does not expressly condemn <<146>> them, the Queen,
by declaring that Dr. G. is not unworthy of
exercising the cure of souls, has tacitly sanctioned
them. Dr. G. has publicly avowed his opinions, which
have as publicly been censured by the Ecclesiastical
Court, and it is highly disgraceful to the Judicial
Committee, if they did not consider all the
available evidence which could bear on a case which
was brought before them for adjudication; and they
are still more culpable if, having before them the
expression of opinions “precisely and dogmatically
opposed to the doctrine of the Church,” they did not
visit them with the severest censure.
The whole of this litigation has inflicted a deep,
and I think irreparable, injury on the Anglican
Church; but speaking as a Jew, I view it as an
additional safeguard to the lukewarm and wavering
among us; for however little they may be inclined to
investigate the warrants for the veracity of
Christianity, they cannot shut their eyes to the
fact that one of the principal dogmas of the Church
had been attacked with impunity by one of her
ministers. The same reasoning which shows the rite
of baptism not to be of any efficacy for the object
to which it was directed, will make the sacrament of
confirmation equally useless; since there is no
certainty that the advantages which arc supposed by
it to have been received in baptism, and which it is
the object of the sacrament to confirm, have really
been received.
In
attempting to define the real doctrine of the Church
as to the effect of baptism, we are referred to
Bishop Beveridge, who says: “Although our blessed
Saviour saith to Nicodemus that except a man be born
of water and of the Spirit he cannot enter into the
kingdom of God, yet he does not say, that every one
who is so born shall inherit eternal life. It is
true, that all who are baptized, or born of water
and the Spirit, are thereby admitted into the
kingdom of God upon earth; but except they submit
to the government, and obey the laws established in
it, they forfeit all right and title to the kingdom
of heaven.” Now this opinion certainly favours the
teaching of Dr. Gorham; inasmuch as it asserts the
inefficacy of baptism by itself; but it insists on
the necessity of baptism, without which all other
merits will not insure salvation.
<<147>>
“One baptism for the remission of sin.”—Now when
applied to infants, what sin can there be to require
remission? But the Church tells us that every one is
born with the taint of the original sin, and
deserves God’s wrath and damnation; therefore the
necessity of baptism to cleanse the newly born
infant from it. But how impious is the doctrine that
God has created a soul, and sent it into the world
in a state that merits damnation, and that He should
have instituted a ceremony to expiate a sin which He
had infected it with! when it is most natural to
believe the soul to have been created pure, and that
the sin which may afterwards subject the man to
punishment has been incurred by his inclinations and
his passions. But this dogma being assumed, the
necessity of pardon for an unintentional and an
imaginary sin was inculcated; this pardon was to be
conferred by the ceremony of baptism, to which
Jesus is said to refer when he spoke of a man being
born of water and the Spirit. Since then the idea
has been amplified, and the rite, independent of the
pardon of sin, is said to confer on the recipient a
new nature: adoption into the family of God, the
being made a member of Christ, a child of God, and
inheritor of the kingdom of heaven. These splendid
benefits of baptism cannot be taken in the literal
sense, nor perhaps in any other sense; they have not
even the merit of being figurative expressions, used
to inculcate the practice of virtue, making us in
some sense the children of God and inheritors of the
kingdom of heaven, in the reward which virtue will
receive, seeing that they are applied to children,
and made dependent on their future conduct.
The Christian theology represents the Son as
begotten, not created, and as “the only begotten;”
but how then can the baptized infants be the
children of God? how can they be said to be members
of Christ?
Father and son are correlative terms. The second
Person of the Trinity, and the children of God as
made by baptism are all in the same position.
The practice of baptism was not instituted by Jesus;
John baptized his followers and preached repentance;
but we do not find that he prescribed it as having
any efficacy to salvation. Ablution was a prevalent
custom among the Jews, who meditated repentance,
and was used on many other occasions.
<<148>>
The Bishop observes that the controversy which has
so long been going on respecting the efficacy of
baptism, has arisen from the different meanings
which have been attached to the word regeneration.
It is very strange that the Church should employ a
word which was capable of different meanings, and
yet not have declared the precise meaning in which
she used it. The term regeneration in its strictest
sense means reproduced, and is applied to baptism as
indicative of a change in the nature or disposition
supposed to take place in the being who undergoes
the rite; but a change in the disposition of the
subject is not a reproduction; the implanting of a
new nature in the human frame infers, that the old
nature has been expelled, and therefore has not had
the effect of cleansing the old, but of supplying a
new nature; consequently it is not true that in
baptism the recipient is regenerated, nor can it be
said that he is born of water and the Spirit, nor
born again. (John iii. 3.)
(To be continued.) |
