which is consistent with the Sacraments remaining mere signs. And so to the notion of "those[1] who hold that God, by a sort of covenant, operates on occasion of the Sacraments, (although they ascribe all the efficacy to God, not to the Sacraments,") they oppose the reformed doctrine, that God is wont to give His grace before Sacraments are received, and that these are only signs and indications that such grace has been received; "and the notion of uniting God's grace with the Sacraments they regard as little differing from a magical superstition of words and signs;" and when, on the other hand, a writer of this Church[2] would assert more efficacy than usual to the Sacraments, the statement which he denies is that of this school, that "Sacraments only seal grace already received," and he asserts that they "are also means of receiving grace, and signs of grace which is present, and communicated and conferred together with them,—that in the right use of the Sacraments, a certain Divine power is connected therewith, which, through the sure covenant and promise of God, confers a salutary grace on the receiver, and acts in his soul."
Henceforth then there were these two opposite views of the Sacraments: that of the old Church that they were "efficacious instruments or channels of grace to all not unworthy receivers," and the modern one, that "they were signs of grace, which grace was imparted then, or previously, or subsequently directed by the action of the Holy Spirit on the soul of the receiver, in consequence of and through faith, and not through the Sacrament."
Infant Baptism the Ancient Church accounted (as above explained) an efficacious channel of grace to all; only they held that the grace so imparted might be subsequently withdrawn, if the individual permanently resisted its workings; otherwise, by virtue of that Sacrament, they held that the new nature then implanted would gradually overpower, weaken, destroy the old man; the leaven then infused would, at the last, "leaven the whole lump." In adults, faith was required, but
