It may be said that because St. John
does not mention Baptism when he says, “Whosoever believeth that Jesus is the
Christ is born of God,” he intends to disconnect all ideas of the New Birth
with it.
Now, when I consider that the same St.
John in his Gospel records our Lord’s words to Nicodemus, “Except a man be born
of water and of the Spirit,” and that he was among the number of those who head
the parting words, “He that believeth and is baptized shall be saved.” I feel
assured that such a thing never could cross his mind as that a person
professing to believe in God’s only-begotten Son, should refuse the right of
initiation into Him. I do not think that he could realize such a thing to be
possible. He would ask, “Can that even the seed of belief which could so treat
the last solemn injunction of the ‘Word made flesh’?”
And now let me say something
respecting the practical application of John’s doctrine, “He that is born of
God doth not commit sin,” “Every one that loveth is born of God,” and knoweth
God.” The most strenuous defenders of Baptismal Regeneration, when occasion
requires use either St. John’s language, or language founded upon it.
Not only do such use it, as I shall
show, they are the only persons who use it in its integrity. Let the reader
mark well the following passages out of the Sermons of one who has done as much
to defend the High view of Baptismal grace as other living man.
“Whosoever believeth that Jesus is the
Christ is born of God.” This is the first source of our life, our strength, our
victory, we have strength not our own, but by a new and spiritual birth of
God—a birth whereby a new and spiritual life above the world, apart from the
worlds life, and unknow to the world, is imparted to the soul; and man, through
grace, becomes the Son of God. Of this birth the proofs are, the love of
Christ, the love of one another as members of Christ, the love of God in
keeping His commandments. Love is the proof of our birth of God, because God is
love. The son hath a likeness of the Father. He, then, who is a child of God,
must have a likeness to his Father. How could he be a Son of God who had not that
in him which God is—love? He, then, who is born of God must have the love
of God; he who loveth the Father must love Him, the Son, who is begotten of
Him; he who loveth the Son must love them also who are members of Him, the
children of God in Christ.
This passage is an extract from a
sermon by Dr. Pusey. The reader will observe how unreservedly he speaks of the
spiritual, obedient, loving Chrisitan being the regenerate man, the true child
of God. And yet in the same sermon towards the conclusion he speaks
unreservedly of the seed of this grace being implanted in Baptism.
So mostly it is with the grace of God.
God lodges it in the soul. He places in Baptism a principle of life within us,
which if we allow it to work, as we grow on will fill out every power,
penetrate our whole souls, transform this heavy mass of our earthliness into
its own. Divine nature, make us “friends of God, fellow-citizens, of the
angels, lord of the world, rulers of ourselves.” (Pusey’s Parochial Sermons,
vol. 2, pp. 345, 350)
It will be clear from these two
extracts from the same sermon how they would hold the doctrines of Baptismal
Regeneration most unreservedly can yet speak of the true Chrisitan as the only
regenerate man, or child of God.
The real point in dispute in this. To
what we are to attribute the fact that a man duly baptized lives the life of
one who knows not God? The Calvinist virtually says that it is because God has
withheld grace from the man. The Churchman, on the contrary, says that it is
because the man has opposed or sinned away God’s grace. Rather than suppose
that God has withheld His grace the Churchman will always no matter how great
the difficulty about the assumption) assume that the man in question has fallen
from grace, or has, through his own fault, not retained a seed, or has not
continued in the goodness of God, or has forgotten that he was purged from his
old sins (Gal. 5:4; 1 John 3:9-15; Rom. 11:22). And we have shown throughout
this book, he has the most solid Scripture grounds for making such an
assumption.
And, again, I believe that none but
those who hold the Church view can adopt the language of St. John in these
passages in its integrity. They who identify Regeneration with Conversion and
sever it from Baptism, almost invariably lay down marks of conversion which,
when examined, are found to differ essentially from the marks laid down by the
Apostle. The term “conversion” is now virtually restricted to a change of views
and feelings with reference to the work of Christ, whereas the New Birth, as
described by St. John, is absolute freedom from sin, and the love of our
brethren .(M. F. Sadler, The Second Adam and the New Birth, or, The Doctrine
of Baptism as Contained in Holy Scripture [Oxford: Oxford University Press,
1860, repr., Monroe, Louis.: Athanasius Press, 2004], 154-56)
