be bedewed with water, in whom the gift of the Holy Spirit, (which Holy Scripture testifies, that no others received, unless baptized,) had appeared conspicuously by that sure token (in conformity with that period), viz., that they spake with tongues. Yet they were baptized, and in this event we have apostolic sanction for the like. So surely ought no one, in whatever advanced state of the inner man, (yea, if haply, before Baptism, he should have advanced through a pious heart to a spiritual understanding,) to despise the Sacrament which is administered in the body by the work of the ministers, but thereby God spiritually operates the consecration of the man."
II. There was yet another school, which, not agreeing with Calvin in his theory of the Sacraments, but taking in their obvious sense the statement of our Articles (that "the Sacraments are effectual signs"), were yet deterred from fully embracing the doctrine of Baptismal regeneration, by another doctrine of Calvin,—the indefectibility of grace. This school rested not their objections upon any Scriptural statement of the doctrine of Regeneration, nor upon any new interpretation of Holy Scripture, nor upon any supposed inconsistency between the old interpretation and the actual history of the human soul: that interpretation was virtually admitted to be the more obvious. Temporary wickedness, and utter abandonment to sin, was held (and could not but be held) to be no objection whatever to the truth that such had been regenerated; a man, though, for the time, immersed in sin[1], if elect, and, consequently, destined finally to recover, was held to have been regenerated in Baptism. The objection originated on grounds altogether distinct from the subject itself—the indefectibility of grace.
- ↑ So, at some length, Burges' Answer to Objections, obj. vi. pp. 263–297. So also Beza:—"They whom God, by His eternal and secret counsel, has ordained to grace and eternal life, to these He gives faith and the Holy Spirit, which also they retain and never lose, although they sometimes sin, as happened to David. For such return to themselves, though even after a long period, and do not finally fall from the grace of God. But they whom God has not so elected, yea, if they were baptized a thousand times with the outward Baptism of water, faith and the Holy Spirit is never given to them; but, left to the just judgment of God, they perish by their own fault."—Colloq. Mompelg. p. 305.
