This word “water” at once introduces,
and apparently for no purpose, a new set of ideas connected with an outward
form of rite—a form or rite to which the Saviour Himself, in His last words on
earth, assigned a remarkable position in His spiritual system; but a form or
tie which (on the strict principles on those who deny baptismal regeneration)
it is the most dangerous delusion possible to mix up with Regeneration.
Our Lord must have foreseen that this
His express mention of water would put, for many hundred years, His whole
Church collectively, and the best and humblest souls in it, on a wrong track as
to His meaning.
Consider the persons who have stumbled
at this one word, “water,” and have been naturally led by it to interpret this
important place as asserting the need of a change connected with water
Baptism—Hermas, Justin martyr, Irenaeus, Clement, Tertullian, Origen, Cyprian,
Athanasius, Ambrose, Chrysostom, Augustine, Bernard, Luther, Melanchthon,
Bucer, Cranmer, Ridley, Jewel, Hooker, Bishop Hall, Mede, barrow, Jeremy
Taylor, Beveridge.
All the Fathers of the first three
centuries, without exception, i.e., the champions of the faith of Christ, in
ages when to be a Chrisitan was to be ready at any moment to surrender goods,
reputation, family, liberty, life itself for Christ. All the great leaders of
the Reformation in Germany and England almost without exception—all the great
and good men whose names are household words in the Church of England—that
Church itself, in all her three authorized Baptismal Services, and in her Order
of Confirmation, formularies every word of which has been weighed, sifted, and
assented to by the first theologians and scripturists of their day-all these
have, on the strength of our Lord’s mention of water, interpreted this text as
an enunciation of the need of Baptismal engrafting into Christ’s Church. (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], 34-35)
