The teaching of Baptismal Regeneration
is diametrically opposed to that spirit of fanaticism which altogether sets
aside the educational aspect of Christianity.
The prevailing form of fanaticism is a
caricature, or rather a dangerous perversion, of the true doctrine of
conversion. It is that every man, no matter what his previous life, must at
some definite moment pass through an internal spiritual revolution into which
he enters into a state of the deepest despondency and from which he emerges in
a state of peace. Before his moment all his life practically counts for
nothing, either for or against God. All that we are led to expect from the
teachings of Scripture is reversed. Innocence of youth is practically treated
as dangerous, making its possessor more liable to the spirit of legality, or
Pharisaism, and the greater the wickedness of an ill-spent youth the more
marked and distinguishable the signs of the great change, and so the less
danger of self-reliance. Till this change takes place and can be accurately
described and registered, no one can be called for a moment a child of God; his
virtue is either mere natural virtue or else it is hypocrisy; his faith in the
Divine mission of the Son of God, or even in His Deity and Atonement, puts him
in no better position than if he were a heathen. (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], 226)
