The primitive doctrine of baptismal regeneration

Preface

In a Treatise which I published last year, I discussed the predestinarian language of Scripture in general. I now come to a particular instance of that language, viz., the term " Regenerate ;''^ — a term which, taken in this connection, will be found to have a particular meaning ; which meaning of the term regenerate, will explain and decide the doctrine of baptismal regeneration.

On the important subject of Divine Grace, and the rule on which it is bestowed, two great positions claim our attention ; one of which the Chui'ch imposes, and the other tolerates. The position which the Church imposes is, that God gives regenerating grace to the whole body of the baptized ^ ; the

* The phrase that " all the baptized are regenerate," is used throughout this treatise as expressing the doctrine of baptismal regeneration. I am aware that it does not express it accurately, because in cases of adult baptism, the doctrine even of baptismal regeneration does not allow the individual to be regenerate, unless he has fulfilled the conditions of faith and repentance ; and, therefore, inasmuch as all adults may not fulfil these conditions, the doctrine even of baptismal regeneration does not assert that all the baptized are regenerate. I use the phrase, however, for the sake of convenience and shortness, and because no argumentative consequence is involved in it, as compared with a more correct one. The more correct mode of stating the doctrine of baptismal regeneration would be to say that all persons baptized in infancy were regenerate. But whether I used this or the former and more summary statement, would make not the slightest difference to the argument of this treatise from first to last. The hypothetical nature of the assertion of regeneration, as made of the baptized, is exactly as evident made of all persons baptized in infancy, as it is if made of all the baptized. For the body of persons baptized in infancy are evidently not all good or holy persons ; which is the relevant point, and that upon which the argument turns. Under such circumstances the use of the shorter and more summary phrase is a legitimate saving both to the writer and the reader.

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position which the Church tolerates is, that God gives grace sufficient for salvation, only to some of this body. These two positions, inasmuch as the Church contemplates the case of one and the same person holding both, cannot really be in collision with each other; yet apparently they are. Some explanation, then, is evidently wanted to reconcile the two, and show their consistency. I have endeavoured to give this explanation. And for this purpose I have entered fully and carefully into each of these two positions or doctrines. The predestinarian doctrine I examined in a treatise published last year : the doctrine of baptismal regeneration I examine in the present treatise.

Now I can imagine it said, '^ Why not take statements as they stand ? Here is a plain assertion in our baptismal service ; take it in its plain meaning, and do not trouble yourself with elaborate explanations and inquiries."

But the answer to this is obvious. It is very easy and very proper to take a statement as it stands, if there is no other statement either required or allowed, to which it is opposed. But if there is, our attitude is immediately altered. We cannot help ourselves, then, but are obliged, instead of taking one statement as it stands, to go into and examine two statements. The line of simplicity is over, and that of explanation has come ; and, the surface once broken, there is no knowing how much work there may be underneath. Single truths may be taken simply ; but if we have to combine conflicting truths, we must go more or less deep for the point of junction ; for truth is like a tree, the more space it covers above ground the further it goes below, the more comprehensive it is, the deeper its root or basis is. Do those who say generally " take statements as they stand," see difficulties as they stand ? or rather, do they not live in a world of truth of their own, wholly different from the real one ?

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The course they recommend is doubtless much the simpler one, and truth also would be much more simple if it was not so complex. But truth being the complex and conflicting system which it is, this general maxim is for us visionary and impracticable. Let persons, then, who repeat this maxim beware that, in saying " take statements as they stand," they do not practically mean " take statements without understanding them," take them by themselves, out of their place, apart from their relation to other truths.

This will explain, then, why, with a view to reconcile the two positions on the subject of grace, to which I have referred, a treatise on predestination was needful — a treatise to a certain extent metaphysical. To reconcile these two positions, it was necessary to enter fully into both ; and it was impossible to go at all fully into the predestinarian position without a certain amount of metaphysics.

I am aware that metaphysics are looked upon with suspicion by many sincere religious minds ; that they regard all inquiries of this nature as fanciful and gratuitous speculations, useless, if not dangerous, to the cause of religious truth. But a little reflection will, I think, show that a distinction should be drawn here. Metaphysics may doubtless be carried into subtleties and refinements, which tend to perplex and confuse, rather than clear, religious truth. But within certain limits they are both useful and necessary for explaining religious truths, even primary and fundamental ones, even Bible-truths. I do not mean to say, of course, that such truths may not be understood for all purposes of practical religion without such kind of reasoning, but for intellectually embracing them (in that sense in which such truths may be embraced), for seeing them in their consequences and relation to each othei', some metaphysical thought is necessary. The doctrine of grace, revealed in the Gospel,

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takes us immediately into the question of the Divine Power and Human Freewill, which cannot be made other than a metaphysical question. Nor can these two great ideas be at all fully or adequately embraced in themselves, in their contradiction to each other, in the consequences of each, and the mutual check of these consequences upon each other, and the general balance which ensues, without a train of reasoning sufficiently metaphysical to require very close and accurate attention. Yet, from first to last in such an inquiry, we are never out of sight of the most broad and elementary truths of our religion, such as we carry with us everywhere, and have always in a certain sense in our minds.

Within certain limits, then, and on certain subjects, metaphysics are but another name for thought ; and if we are to have such an understanding of Bible-truths, and the fundamental ideas of our religion, as I have described, — and persons who profess to be theologians ought not, perhaps, to have much less, — we cannot avoid the obligation of going through some kind of metaphysical thought.

I have referred to elementary Bible-truths. It may be said that predestination is not one of these truths, and that therefore we need not undertake the examination of it. But whether elementary or not, predestination is undoubtedly a Bible-truth. Nobody who reads St. Paul's Epistles can deny that. And, moreover, the doctrine of predestination is only the doctrine of Grace under another name.

To a person, then, who objected to metaphysics in connection with theology, and put aside such reasonings at once as wholly unnecessary and gratuitous, I would simply say. Do you wish to embrace, in an intellectual way, the elementary ideas of your religion? If you do not, there is no obligation on you to do so; you may accept them for all the purposes of practical religion, without such an understanding.

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But if you want intellectually to embrace them, you must not object to this style of thought ; for you might as well try to comprehend a proposition of Euclid without mathematical thought, as thus to embrace the Bible doctrine of grace without metaphysical ; involving, as this doctrine does, the ideas of the Divine Power and man's free-will, and their relation to each other. So far as metaphysics are a simple entering into, and oblighig the mind to dwell upon, and lay hold of, certain great and fundamental ideas of your religion, so far they are simply the natural exercise of your reason upon religious truth, for the legitimate and modest object of a rational comprehension of it. Do not, then, summarily reject such metaphysics as these.

I have spoken of Bible theology ; I will speak now of Patristic. If one. father has, in the theological movement of the last twenty years, been quoted and appealed to more than another, it is St. Augustine. Yet I must be pardoned if I say that this constant appeal to his authority has not involved much apparent acquaintance with his system of doctrine. By his system of doctrine I mean that great system of which he was the first expounder in the Church, and which will always be connected with his name. St. Augustine's typical interpretations of Scripture, his devotional "writings, and other portions of his works not connected with his characteristic teaching, have been read and quoted ; but that great doctrine which constitutes his peculiarity as a teacher and crowned his theological career, which fixed him alike in the chair of mediasval and Protestant theology, and to the inculcation of which the principal energies of his life, as a thinker and writer, were devoted, has hardly been looked into. With the exception of a faint allusion to it here and there, Augustinianism has been left untouched, and persons have been content with the vaguest ideas of

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what Augustine said or did not say, on what was to him the most important and absorbing question of his whole theological life. With a general impression that he taught predestination, nobody appears to have examined at all the particulars of his doctrine, to have compared his statements, elicited his grounds, or made out his system and rationale. This was not, of course, to knoio St. Augustine, for persons cannot be correctly said to know an author if they have not made themselves acquainted with his distinctive and characteristic teaching. But want of acquaintance with St. Augustine was not of itself, perhaps, a matter of so much consequence. What made it of consequence was, that he was often quoted as a witness to a particular doctrine to which his doctrine of predestination bore an important relation— a relation intimately affecting the mode and sense in which he held the former doctrine; — I refer to the doctrine of Baptismal Regeneration. It ought to have been ascertained what his doctrine of predestination was, before he was brought forward so confidently as a witness to a doctrine of baptismal regeneration.

In this state of the case, I endeavoured, however Imperfectly, to fill up the gap which had been left, and to explain the distinctive portion of St. Augustine's theology. But St. Augustine, it is no incorrectness to say, was a metaphysician, and it was impossible to explain a metaphysician without some metaphysics.

So much for the treatise I published last year. The present treatise enters into the other position which was to be examined ; that, namely, of baptismal regeneration. But before I launch the reader into particulars. It may not be amiss to give him a general outline of the argument of the treatise, leaving him, if he feels inclined to pursue the subject, to fill up the sketch out of the body of the work.

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The question of baptismal regeneration belongs to the general question of literal interpretation, and must be settled by those rules by which the question of literal interpretation in other cases is settled. All baptized Christians are asserted in Scripture to be regenerate. I say this with the full knowledge that my statement requires explanation ; but the explanation is not difficult. First, then, under the phrase *^ asserted to be" regenerate, I mean to include all those places in which Christian communities are addressed as such ; in which, that is, the fact is implied, or taken for granted, rather than stated. And this may fairly be done, for a reference to a fact is equivalent to asserting it, and it is all one whether you say something of a person, or address him as being it. Again, under the term regenerate, I include a class of expressions synonymous with it, and obviously signifying or implying a new or second birth. Thus, Christians are addressed by St. Paul as " dead to sin " ; but a death implies that a former life is over, and that the life which the Christian is living now is a new or second life, which, of course, involves a new or second birth. They are addressed again as " dead with Christ," " buried with Christ ; " and of these expressions the same may be said that was said of the preceding one. Again, they are addressed as " risen with Christ," and a resurrection is the commencement of a second life, or a new birth. They are addressed again as " quickened," as " alive from the dead," " alive unto God," — expressions which are obviously synonymous with regenerate or born again. The members, then, of the Christian societies to which St. Paul writes are all, without distinction, addressed as regenerate or born again ; and therefore it may correctly, and with perfect truth, be said, that Scripture asserts all baptized Christians to be regenerate.

Now, how is4;hls assertion to be interpreted? It may be

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said that we must go to the Fathers for this purpose ; but the Fathers tlirow no new light on this language, for they simply repeat it. They use substantially the same language which Scripture uses, only somewhat expanded and enriched ; and therefore, instead of interpreting Scripture, the Fathers have themselves to be interpreted as much as Scripture has to be. It may be said again that our own baptismal office at any rate interprets this language ; but our baptismal office again simply repeats it. For the interpretation of this assertion of Scripture, then, we are thrown back upon Scripture itself, that is to say, upon the ordinary and received rules or principles of interpretation which we apply to Scripture.

Now the received rule for the interpretation of Scripture is, that where a text can be taken literally, consistently with sound reason and facts, the literal interpretation has the precedence; but that where this cannot be done, the literal interpretation must give way for another.

Let us take, for example, the maxim in Scripture, " Resist not evil." The Quakers interpret this text literally, and so condemn all war and the use of arms, as contrary to Scripture. But to this it is replied, that society could not be maintained and human interests protected without the liberty of appeal to force ; and therefore, that, in the case of this text, the literal meaning cannot be the true one. Again : the Roman Catholics interpret the text, " Tins is my Body," literally ; but to this it is replied, that on any principle of litei'al interpretation, our Lord's body was His visible natural bod}', then present at the Last Supper, while the bread was the material bread on the table ; that, this being the case, it is contrary to possibility that one thing can be another ; and that here again, therefore, the literal interpretation cannot be the true one. And in the case of many other texts of Scripture, we reject without much scruple the literal mean-

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ing, where we see that such meaniog is contrary to sound reason, or to other texts of the same Scripture.

Indeed, however natural and proper a general bias in favour of literal interpretation must be admitted to be, the rule of literal interpretation must be seen, when we calmly examine it, to need many checks, and to be only as a limited and qualified rule a useful and true one. If we adopt it exclusively, or abandon ourselves to it, it becomes instantly as foolish, wild, and extravagant a principle of interpretation as any that could be named, — the fruitful source of all kinds of mistakes and excesses, and even the greatest follies and absurdities in religion. This has evidently been the result very often in fact ; but it will be useful, perhaps, to enter a little into the reasons of it.

Persons, then, who demand a literal interpretation of statements and texts of Scripture, on the mere ground that it is the literal one, forget to begin with one very important and fundamental consideration, and that is, the nature of human language. To judge from their law of interpretation, one would suppose that language had nothing else to do but to express simple matters of fact in the simplest way. Such may have been the original stock of human language ; but, if it was, there has been a very large aftergrowth upon it. Human language is a growth, a structure, an accumulation of a wonderful and complex kind ; it contains the most apt and versatile machinery for the expression of all the relations in which the human mind stands to persons and things around it ; not only the perception of matters of fact, but all the postures and attitudes of thought. It invents as it advances new modes of statement, and accumulates means and expedients for giving force to expression ; it seeks not only to inform nakedly and correctly, but to strike, attract, and impress. All this is an advance upon the original mode

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of literal assertion, and often a departure from it. Thus metaphor is a mode of expressing truth, which is a departure from the literal one ; and thus the proverbial and didactic department abounds in terse and pithy forms, which, taken literally, would be very extreme pieces of advice indeed, and anything but safe rules to act upon, but which are not designed for such interpretation; the extreme form being fixed on for the purpose of startling, seizing the attention, and occupying the memory, and the correction being left to common sense to provide. A great positive advantage is thus gained by a departure from the literal style ; while it is properly assumed that people are reasonable enough not to be misled by the mere form, which they are intended to take in the spirit in which it is selected. And what goes on thus obviously in the departments of metaphor and maxim, goes on more or less in the whole of language. Every department of language abounds in forms and modes of speaking, which are not designed to be understood literally, but which must be taken with a salvo. A sort of tacit understanding thus goes on, as it were, between the constructors — if it be allowable thus to impersonate them — of human language, and those who use and apply it, i. e. society at large. The user knows what the constructor intended, and does not misunderstand his expression, or take it to mean more than it really does. And this knowledge is gained so gradually, and so easily, so entirely by merely living in society, talking to others, and seeing the meaning of what they say to us, that it becomes at last an unconscious intuition ; nor are we in numberless cases the least aware how much of this understanding in reality we practise, and how largely we have to interpret what we hear in social conversation or read in books. We should be indeed surprised, did we examine the naked grammatical meaning of a large part of speech and writing, how little

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purely literal statement there was in language, and how much of it had to pass through this medium of tacit explanation. The intercourse of man with man is almost one act of mutual interpretation, in which allowance is made for forms of speech ; but the process is so familiar to us, that we forget that we are interpreting, and seem to ourselves to be taking only literal statements in their literal sense.

To apply these observations to the interpretation of Scripture. One often hears one party and school in religion charging another with not interpreting Scripture literally. ** You are explaining away the sacred text," it is said ; " you are not taking plain words in their plain meaning; the inspired writer says so and so, you must take him to mean what he says." Now it may be the case that the literal meaning of a passage in Scripture is the true and natural meaning ; and that an interpreter, in opposing the literal, may be guilty of violating the true and natural, meaning of a passage. An enlightened and candid reason must determine where this is the case. But to say that because such a meaning is the literal, it therefore must be the true one, is a most serious error ; because it may often be the very reverse. The inspired writer need not always confine himself to the original stock of human language when he inculcates a duty, or informs us of a truth. He may, and he often does, use its aftergrowth and later formations, — those parts of human language which come to us in the first instance accompanied by a tacit understanding, and arc originally designed for an interpretation different from what they grammatically bear — language, therefore, which to interpret literally is simply to violate the very design and meaning of its employer. The writer himself does not mean himself to be understood literally ; he is only using some mode of speaking which language has naturally in its progress and history contracted :

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he does not, e. g.^ mean to be understood so universally as he actually expresses himself; he supposes that his readers virill modify his statement for themselves ; he employs some excess of expression which he supposes they will of themselves correct and reduce to its real signification, some figure of v^hich he assumes they will be able to see the substance. In such cases, then, we must set aside the literal understanding of a passage for one to which the general growth and expansion of language directs us. Nor can we on many occasions do greater injustice to an inspired writer than by understanding him literally.

Thus, to take the maxim in Scripture, already quoted — " Resist not evil." It is evident that the injunction here is given thus universally for the sake of proverbial force and efiect ; the universal form being one of those forms and modes of speaking which mankind have adopted and use when they want to impress some particular truth, or inculcate some line of conduct very strongly upon others. The form proceeds upon this idea, that the truth or duty in question must be made as much as possible to absorb and occupy the mind of the hearer, who is too biassed against it to make such a monopoly at all dangerous, the danger being in fact the other way : so exceptions are not, for the time, recognised ; for this would be to divide the hearer's attention, and give him an excuse for indulging his bias against the truth, by giving a partial sanction to it ; so that he would be thinking of the exception, just at the time you wanted him to think of the rule. The universal form thus meets us continually in conversation ; and Never do this, it is said, or Always do that, and the like. Scripture, then, adopts this form in the case before us, and says absolutely — '' Resist not evil." But it would be absurd to imagine, therefore, that we were intended literally never to resist evil. Mankind are too

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prone to resistance In the case of any yoke or grievance ; they are impatient, headstrong, violent. When quietness and passiveness, then, are inculcated upon them, they are inculcated universally, because the duty stands in need of all the force that can be given to it, and must be made to monopolise their attention as much as possible. But Scripture supposes that this will be understood by a reader, and that he will not give to the form in which the maxim is put, more than was intended by it.

The same remark may be made on another form in which this duty is put in Scripture : " Whosoever shall smite thee on thy right cheek, turn to him the other also ; and if any will take away thy coat, let him have thy cloak also ; and whosoever shall compel thee to go a mile, go with him twain." Here the form selected is not the simply universal, but the symbolical one. An extreme case is put, and is made to stand for a forcible and striking image of the duty. But, having answered this purpose, it would be most unreasonable to insist on the extreme instance itself, and take literally what was only intended to be symbolical.

And so with respect to the text, " This is my Body." Mankind have in all ages largely employed forms of statement which are not literal, for the expression of truths ; and Scripture follows the general usage. It would be unreasonable, therefore, to suppose that we were intended to accept, at whatever cost to common reason, the literal interpretation of this text. So far, indeed, from being the natural interpretations, are not all these literal interpretations of Scripture language I have mentioned, most unnatural, forced, and artificial? Are they not evidently a strain upon the language of Scripture, instead of the easy and natural explanation of it? Does not Scripture leave us to our common sense, to modify and correct for ourselves, the naked grammatical meaning of

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many of Its injunctions and statements? And are we using this common sense, and obeying the intention of Scripture, when we insist on the naked grammar ; when we refuse to this language the medium through which it was intended to be seen, and which is, in fact, its legitimate complement, without which it is defective and incomplete language?

Now to bring these considerations to bear upon the subject before us. The question of baptismal regeneration comes under and belongs to the general question of literal interpretation, and must be settled by those rules upon which the question of literal interpretation in general is settled. On the one side it is maintained that the assertion that all baptized persons are regenerate must be taken literally ; that a plain statement must be understood in its plain meaning, in which meaning it asserts a fact. On the other side, it is maintained that this assertion must not be understood literally, but hypothetically, as a charitable presumption made respecting the whole body of the baptized. The question of literal interpretation, then, in the case of this statement, must be decided by the same rules by which we should decide it in the case of any other statement or text of Scripture. Can it be interpreted literally, without prejudice to sound reason or facts ? If it can be, let it be ; but if it cannot be, then we must take some interpretation of it which is not literal, i. e. the hypothetical one; that being in the present case the alternative. We interpret numberless other texts of Scripture differently from their literal meaning ; nothing is more common ; and, therefore, why should we not do the same in the case of the present statement, if circumstances require it ?

Now in the case of the assertion that the whole body of the baptized are regenerate, there is one consideration, which absolutely precludes a literal interpretation, viz., that such an interpretation would be opposed to the plainest facts. The

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term regenerate involves in its Scriptural meaning real goodness and holiness ; St. John saying that " whosoever is born of God sinneth not," and " whatsoever is born of God overcometh the world;" and St. Paul saying that "as many as are led by the Spirit of God, they are the sons of God ;" and that " he that is dead {i. e. dead to sin, and alive unto God, an expression which is equivalent to born again or regenerate) IS freed from sin," and cannot " live any longer therein." But it is quite evident that the whole body of baptized Christians are not good and holy men. Just as a literal interpretation then would, in the case of the text " Resist not evil," be contrary to the plain needs of society, and, in the case of the text " This is my Body," to the possibilities of things, so, in the case of the present assertion of Scripture, it would be contrary to facts.

The literal interpretation, then, being impossible, — in this state of the case, the consideration, that was adduced above, of the nature and constitution of human language, comes in to help us to the right and true interpretation of the assertion. Human language is, as I have said, a complex creation, and contains forms and expedients for expressing all the attitudes of human thought. But the attitude of presuming something about another, which we do not know in fact, is a common attitude of the human mind, which has come in along with human intercourse and society. This being a natural attitude of the human mind, then, language undertakes to express it; and it expresses it by means of a peculiar kind of assertion ; — an assertion, in form, literal and matter of fact, but seen, when taken in connection with the circumstances and whole context, to be really hypothetical. As human language contains the universal assertion for didactic, and the metaphorical one for illustrative purposes, so it has the hypothetical one for presumption ; and public