wrote, regard himself as but nominally interested in the blessings of redemption? Was his faith nothing more than a profession of Christian doctrine? If he must have meant something more than this; if his own faith and his own sanctity were living and real, the effect of the Holy Spirit's operation; then, inasmuch as he makes no distinction, as regards this point, between himself and those whom he addresses, we must suppose that he looked upon them also as real saints and believers. The language of the inspired writers of the New Testament is the expression of that Christian experience, or conscious participation in the blessings vouchsafed through Christ, which the Holy Ghost had shed abroad in their hearts: their idea, therefore, of a saint, or a believer, being derived from their own spiritual consciousness, must have been the highest of which the words will admit. But in the sense in which they supposed themselves to be Christians, do they, to all appearance, apply that title to those to whom they write.

It will be urged, however, that there are convincing reasons why we cannot suppose St. Paul to have employed the terms alluded to, and others of similar import, in their highest signification: the principal of those reasons being, first, that the various appellations applied to Christians in the New Testament-such as "saint," "called," "elect," "the sons of God," &c.,-being manifestly derived from the elder economy, must be understood to bear the same sense which they did under the law; but under the law, these expressions implied nothing more than the admission of the Jewish people, as a people, to the privileges of the Mosaic covenant, the nation being a nation of "saints," an "elect" nation, and possessing the privilege of adoption, whether the individuals of which it was composed were personally sanctified or not: and, secondly, that every visible Church is, and must be, a mixed body, comprising both tares and wheat, or nominal and true believers, which it is impossible to sever from each other; besides which, it is to be observed that the same persons who, in the beginning of St. Paul's epistles, are described as saints and believers, are, very frequently, in the course of those epistles, severely reprehended for, not only errors in doctrine but, gross inconsistencies in practice; of which the first epistle to the Corinthians presents a striking example.

The plausibility which attaches to the former of these positions, and the frequency with which it is urged in opposition to the teaching of evangelical Protestantism, render it necessary to bestow particular attention upon it. To specify the productions of authors

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would be invidious; but there is no reader of modern English theology who will not be able to call to mind works (in other respects of great merit) in which the Law has been so made to expound the Gospel that the meaning of the inspired writers, and especially of St. Paul, has been most successfully diluted into something very different from that which their language appears

to convey.

Briefly stated, the argument is as follows:-In the Old Testament the Jews, as a people, and irrespectively of the moral state of individuals, are called the "chosen nation," the "called" of God, the "sons of God"-("Israel is my son, my first-born"), and a holy people, or a people of saints. Now it is evident that none of these terms necessarily imply the presence of reali. e. personal-sanctity, for many, perhaps the majority, of those to whom they are applied were not, at any period of the Jewish history, truly pious: we read that even a whole generation was, for its personal demerits, deprived of the privilege of entering the Holy Land. Still, whatever the spiritual state of individuals in the sight of God might be, the whole nation-the unsanctified equally with the sanctified portion of it—was said to be elect, to be consecrated to the service of God, and to enjoy the blessing of adoption. Now since the Apostles were Jews, and Christianity is the historical offspring of Judaism, we must suppose that the Apostles, in applying to Christians the terms above mentioned, attached to them the same meaning which they bore under the Mosaic economy; and that when they called the members of a visible Church elect, believers, saints, or sons of God, they merely meant that such persons, like the Jews of old, had been admitted to certain privileges (e. g. the opportunity of hearing the Word, of receiving the Sacraments, and the means of grace generally), which privileges, however, they might reject or despise (that is, they might never advance to saving union with Christ) without detriment to their title of saints and elect. In short, all the members of a visible Church, be their inward state what it may, are equally chosen, and equally saints; for they are all chosen to the same privileges, and to all equally the means of grace are offered, by the due use of which they may become fitted for the inheritance of the saints.

That the fact, as regards the Jews, was as it is stated to be is most certain. It was only in a national and external sense that they were termed the elect, or the called, of God. It was the nation, as such, that was termed holy: it was Israel, not the individual Jew,

of whom it was said that he was the son of God. But is not this very fact sufficient to throw a doubt upon the correctness of the reasoning by which the terms in question are made to mean the same, and nothing more, under the Gospel? For if it be admitted that the Jewish nation, in its corporate aspect, was like all the other parts of the Mosaic economy, typical of what was to come, the inference appears to be that, while the same terms may be used under both dispensations, their meaning will be different, according as they are applied to the type or to the antitype.

Here, in fact, is the real source of the error. While the typical character of the Mosaic institutions in general is recognised, it has not been sufficiently borne in mind that the Jewish nation itself, in its external or political aspect, was a type, and nothing more, of the Christian Israel, that is, as Protestants call it, the invisible Church, and Scripture the mystical body of Christ. In its peculiar relation to Jehovah, as its tutelary God, in its deliverance from Egypt, its wanderings in the wilderness, and its settlement in Canaan, the Hebrew nation was a figure, or symbol, of the true Church of Christ, precisely as the paschal lamb, or the sin-offering, was a figure of the one great sacrifice to be offered up upon the cross. This will be clearly perceived when it is recollected that what passed into Christianity, when the latter became a religion distinct from Judaism, was not the Jewish nation in its corporate capacity, but the pious part of it, those who, like Nathaniel and Simeon, were waiting for the consolation of Israel. The nation, as such, rejected Christ; and for this sin, the national polity, if not existence, was broken up by the destruction of the temple. It is, therefore, not literally, but in its antitype, that the nation survives in Christianity, just as the paschal lamb appears, under the Gospel, not in its proper literal character, but in Him whom it prefigured, -the Lamb of God who taketh away the sins of the world. It is a rule, which holds good universally, that whatever belonged to the Jewish people in its corporate capacity-as, for instance, the temple, the priesthood, the Levitical sacrifices, the solemn feastspassed into Christianity, not in their actual literal form, but spiritually, or as the type becomes realised in the antitype, the shadow in the substance; so that while the names may remain the same, the thing signified by them is altogether different. Thus, for example, the word temple, as used by the inspired writers of the New Testament, signifies, not, as of old, a material building in which the presence of God was symbolically manifested, but, the Church, or body of those among whom Christ dwells by His Spirit, Christians

being the living stones which compose the spiritual building;* so that, wherever Christ, according to His promise, is present in the midst of those assembled in His name, there is now the temple of God. In like manner, the words priesthood, sacrifice, sabbath, and other terms belonging to the Law, are retained under the Gospel; but while thus retained they all undergo an essential modification of meaning, and denote the spiritual realities of which the literal objects signified by them were the type. We have only to extend this undoubted principle of interpretation to the Jewish people itself, in its national-that is, its legal-character, to perceive that the terms by which, in the Old Testament, its privileges are expressed, assume, when applied to Christians, a different meaning, or rather betoken the spiritual realities of which the former were but the types.

The oversight, in short, which is committed in the whole of this reasoning from the Jewish economy to the Christian, is the forgetting, that, while the Jew was a Jew by natural birth, no one is a Christian until he be born again. † Every descendant of Abraham after the flesh was, by the mere fact of his being a Jew by birth, entitled to the privileges, such as they were, of the Mosaic cove nant; just as the subjects of this kingdom are, by virtue of their natural birth, entitled to the privileges of Englishmen. Those privileges were, as St. Paul tells us, the possession of "the oracles of God;" the "glory," or visible symbol, of the presence of God in the temple; the "covenants" by which temporal blessings were promised to the obedient; "the service," or prescribed worship of God; and the "promises" of a Saviour to come. These advantages belonged to the nation as such, and upon the enjoyment of them the Jew entered at once, by virtue of his natural birth; consequently, they were possessed equally by the unsanctified and the sanctified part of the nation. True it is that, in the high spiritual sense of the word, he was "not a Jew" which was "one outwardly:" the unsanctified Jew was not a spiritual descendant of, Abraham, was not what he ought to have been: nevertheless, the privileges of the Mosaic covenant still belonged to him, because he had received them, not by spiritual, but by natural, birth. In the spiritual sense of the expression, every believing Gentile was as much a son of Abraham as was his believing brother of Jewish origin. Gal. iii. 7; Rom. iv. 11. But under the Christian dispensation, no one is entitled to the privileges of the new covenant by natural birth: no one, unless he be born Ephes. ii. 22; 1 Pet. ii. 5. + John, iii. 8. + Rom. ix. 4.

of the Spirit, can see the kingdom of God. And so the whole question ultimately turns, as most of these discussions do, upon the meaning which we are to attach to regeneration, or its equivalent, the new birth. Does it mean a mere admission to Christian privileges-such as the means of grace, the ordinary influences of the Spirit, &c., an advantage which may be enjoyed by those who have never experienced what is commonly called a change of heart, or such an enjoyment of those privileges as necessarily implies inward sanctification by the Spirit? Is the regenerate man one to whom the blessings of the Gospel are merely offered, or one who, besides receiving the offer, has accepted it? But upon this point some observations have been already made, to which the reader is referred. There is nothing more certain than that he only is in the New Testament said to be born again, or born of God, who is (or is supposed to be) in saving union with Christ; is sanctified, and led, by the Spirit of Christ; is a new creature, morally as well as mystically; and enjoys that witness of the Spirit with his spirit which is the pledge and foretaste of eternal life. To denude regeneration of its moral element-to make it signify the mere act of admission into a visible Church—a thing, that is, which may be possessed equally by those who are and those who are not led by the Spirit of God-is as much at variance with the statements of Scripture as it is with the instinctive feelings of the Christian.*

Perhaps there is no passage which throws greater light upon the point under discussion than Acts, ii. 47., in which it is said, "that the Lord added to the Church daily such as should be saved." Our translation, as is well known, fails to give the simple meaning of the original, which is, that the Lord added to the Church (rous owCouέvovs) those who were being saved, or who were at the time in a state of salvation: the question of

For this reason, it is not without concern that the biblical Christian witnesses attempts made, in some quarters, to procure an authoritative declaration that the word regeneration, as used in the book of Common Prayer, and especially in the service for Infant baptism, signifies merely such a change of state as may belong equally to the sanctified and the unsanctified members of a visible church. We may of course attach any arbitrary meaning we please to any scriptural term; but to maintain that by the expres sion "new birth," as used in Scripture, a state is denoted which does not necessarily imply sanctification by the Holy Spirit, is not to interpret, but to impose an interpretation upon, the Word of God. It is better far that the difficulties and inconsistencies which prevail in our services should remain than that a positive error should be formally introduced. The word "regeneration" in the service for infants means neither more nor less than what it does in the service for adults; the two services being the same, and intentionally so throughout: or if there is a difference, it is only one analagous to that which exists between the infant and the adulti. e. a difference not in kind, but in degree, or, rather in the measure of development, which of course varies with the subject.

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