In article
XXVII “Of Baptism” in the Thirty-Nine Articles of the Church of England, we
read the following (I am using the American Revision [1801]):
Baptism is not only a sign of profession, and
mark of difference, whereby Christian men are discerned from others that are
not christened, but it is also a sign of Regeneration or New-Birth, whereby, as
by an instrument, they that receive Baptism rightly are grafted into the Church;
the promises of the forgiveness of sin, and of our adoption to the sons of God
by the Holy Ghost, are visibly signed and sealed; Faith is confirmed, and grace
increased by virtue of prayer unto God.
The Baptism of young Children is in any wise
to be retained in the Church, as most agreeable with the institution of Christ.
Commenting
on this article, Philip Schaff in his The Creeds of Christendom (3 vols.) wrote:
On the subject of baptism the Anglican Church
agrees much more with the Lutheran than with the Calvinistic creed. She
retained the Catholic doctrine of baptismal regeneration, but rejected the opus operatum theory, and the doctrine
that baptism destroys the nature of original sin as well as its guilt.
Baptismal regeneration is taught indefinitely in Article XXVII., [4] more
plainly in the Catechism, and in the baptismal service of the Liturgy, which
pronounces every child after baptism to be regenerated [5]. (Philip Schaff, The Creeds of Christendom, vol. I: The
History of Creeds [revised by David S. Schaff; New York: Harper and Row,
1931; repr., Grand Rapids, Mich.: Baker Books, 2007], 639)
The
footnotes for the following are also very revealing:
[4] The second question: ‘Who gave you this
name? Ans. My godfather and godmother
in baptism, wherein I was made a member of Christ, the child of God, and an
inheritor of the kingdom of heaven.’
[5] After the public baptism of infants, the
priest shall say: ‘Seeing now, dearly beloved brethren, that this child is
regenerate, and grafted into the body of Christ’s Church, let us give thanks to
Almighty God for these benefits,’ etc. And in the prayer which follows: ‘We
yield thee hearty thanks, most merciful Father, that it hath pleased thee to regenerate
this infant with thy Holy Spirit, to receive him for thine own child by adoption,
and to incorporate him into thy holy Church.’ The same prayer is prescribed for
the office of private baptism of infants. The baptismal service is derived from
the Sarum Manual and 0ofrom the ‘Consultation’ of Archbishop Hermann of
Cologne, which was borrowed from Luther’s Taufbüchlein.
See Daniel, Cod. Liturg. Eccl. Luth. P.
185, and Procter, History of the Book of
Common Prayer, p. 371, 11th ed. (1874). Among the eight particulars in the
Prayer-Book, which Baxter and the Nonconformist brethren objected to as sinful,
the fourth was ‘that ministers be forced to pronounce all baptized infants to
be regenerate by the Holy Ghost, whether they be the children of Christians or
not’ (Procter, p. 133). The last clause intimates that baptized children of Christian
parents were regarded by them as regenerate.
Incidentally,
in article XVI, “Of Sin after Baptism,” we find the following which shows one
can lose their salvation:
Not every deadly sin willingly committed
after Baptism s sin against the Holy Ghost, and unpardonable. Wherefore the
grant of repentance is not to be denied to such as fall into sin after Baptism.
After we have received the Holy Ghost, we may depart from grace given, and fall
into sin, and by the grace of God we may arise again, and amend our lives. And
therefore they are to be condemned, which say, they can no more sin as long as
they live here, or deny the place of forgiveness to such as truly repent.
