Monday, February 10, 2025

John Jewell (1522-1571) Affirming Baptismal Regeneration

  

. . . in Baptism our bodies are washed with water, we are taught that our souls are washed in the blood of Christ. The outward washing or sprinkling doth represent the sprinkling and washing which is wrought within us; the water doth signify the blood of Christ. If we were nothing else but soul, he would give us his grace barely and alone, without joining to it any creature, as he doth in his Angels; but seeing our spirit is drowned in our body, and our flesh doth make our understanding dull; therefore we receive his grace by sensible things. (John Jewel, “Treatise on the Sacraments,” in Treatises on Scripture and the Sacraments, ed. Andrew Brashier [South Bend, In.: North American Anglican Press, 2022], 64)

 

 

In baptism, the nature and substance of water doth remain still, and yet is not bare water. It is changed, and made the sacrament of our regeneration. It is water consecrated, and made holy by the blood of Christ. They which are washed therein are not washed with water, but in the blood of the unspotted Lamb. One thing is seen, and another understood. We see the water, but with the eyes of our understanding we look beyond these creatures; we reach our spiritual senses into heaven, and behold the ransom and price of our salvation. We do behold in the Sacrament, not what it is, but what it doth signify. When we receive it with due reverence and faith, we say, as said St. Gregory [of] Nyssa: “I know another kind of meat, bearing the likeness and resemblance of our bodily meat, the pleasure, and sweetness whereof passeth only into the soul.” It goeth not into the mouth or belly, but only into the soul, and it feedeth the mind inwardly, so as the other outwardly feedeth the body. (John Jewel, “Treatise on the Sacraments,” in Treatises on Scripture and the Sacraments, ed. Andrew Brashier [South Bend, In.: North American Anglican Press, 2022], 94)

 

 

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