Some of the questions which of late years have been discussed, touch what we hold to be the very marrow of our Church-that is, its Protestantism. We rejoice in the title of Protestant. The time has not come when we can allow it to be dropped from our standards. What the Protestant Reformers of the English Church contended for, has yet to be defended. The doctrines which they opposed, at the cost of blood, have by no means been driven from the world. The time may come (certainly we pray for it) when all lines of denominations shall be erased, and all who love the Lord and hold his word may be properly and sufficiently known by the name first given to the disciples at Antioch, the blessed name of Christian. But that time is not yet. That precious evangelical name is borne, in common, by individuals, communities, and nations, in such application as that it hardly expresses any distinction but what descends by blood, or is merely corporate or civil, or is simply a badge of separation from sheer heathenism. We have the name of Protestant by inheritance from our forefathers in the Church. But we have other reasons, than that of mere lineage, for holding it fast. It expresses most important ideas in regard to the position of our Church. It connects us historically with one of the happiest events that has occurred in the history of the Church since the first descent of the Holy Ghost on the Apostles on the day of Pentecost. But even the name Protestant has become in some measure indefinite, for the same reason that the sacred name of Christian has become so. There is a Protestantism which is merely a negation of Roman Catholicism, a Protestantism which is merely political, and one that is purely dogmatic or controversial. In the minds of the honest men whom God raised up to reform the Church in the sixteenth century, it was purely a religious interest. It was a revival of the Gospel in truth and life. In other hands afterwards, it did become a political or party interest, but then its spirit had declined or fled. Important as it may be politically as a question of national economy, in that regard we have here nothing to do with it. Protestantism we would uphold as it was in the minds of the true men who first broke the yoke of ecclesiastical Rome. In them it was a newly-implanted life. It wrought in their souls as a

quickening spirit, before it took form in their Confessions or Symbols. It wrought from within outward. It was not a skeleton of faith made up of the dry bones of mere dogmas. It was a living body of truth, the Spirit of God having breathed therein a living soul.

The formal principle of Protestantism is the setting up of the text of the Bible as the rule for trying all doctrines, precepts, and practices in religion. "I would know," says Hooker, "by some special instance, what one article of Christian faith, or what duty required necessarily unto all men's salvation there is, which the very reading of the Word of God is not apt to notify." "Of things necessary to all men's salvation, we have been hitherto accustomed to hold (especially since the publishing of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, whereby the simplest having now a key unto knowledge, which the Eunuch in the Acts did want, our children may of themselves, by reading, understand that which he, without an interpreter, could not) they are in Scripture plain and easy to be understood." (Ecclesiastical Polity, Book V., 22.) When we say this is the guiding principle of Protestantism, it is not meant that the history of the Church has given us no lessons, and that, disregarding all things in the Church before the era of the Reformation, as a mere series of corruptions and errors, we are to step back over nearly fifteen centuries, and look for our formulas of doctrine to the age of the Apostles. The formulas of the first ages would not have sufficed for the times of the Reformation, nor for our times. And this, not because the faith of the first Christians was not as to its body complete, but only because its form or expression had no reference to questions which have, since then, divided Christendom. The primitive creeds were framed with reference to their instant controversies. Questions have arisen since, and modes of thought and language concerning Christian doctrines, which then had not appeared and could not have been anticipated. In expounding or defining the Christian faith now, we have need to regard the history of the Church in its past, and its now existing controversies. The time has been (before the Nicene Council) when our present formula on the subject of the Divine nature, the Trinity, was not used nor needed. No change has been made in the

proper faith of Christians, and never can be. Like its Author, it is "the same yesterday, to-day, and for ever." It may be needful, however, that this unchangeable faith be expressed in terms suited from time to time to the demands of controversy. This is nothing more than a translation. It is rendering the faith from the language of times before controversy, that is, of the first ages, into the language of times of controversy. It is giving the facts, which are the substance of the faith, a dogmatic form. Whether this be in itself desirable or not, is not now the question. The disputings of men occasion or require definitions to be made. The same is the case of the great principles which lie at the base of all proper legislation. No statesman can go beyond the law, as to security of property, "thou shalt not steal." Yet the diversities in men's condition, from time to time, require definitions or expositions of that commandment, not before made or used.

Our Thirty-nine Articles set forth the Christian faith without the addition of a doctrine. In their language, this faith is so rendered as to discriminate it in the midst of errors and corruptions, the growth of times after the days of the Apostles. Since the time of the first framing of those Articles, questions have arisen, even among those who have subscribed them, touching points of great moment. Some of these are points too, which are ruled by our Articles, though it may be in some respects without reference to questions since agitated. The implicit meaning of the affirmations may be plain enough, when the language does not expressly shut out all liability to misconstruction. There have been questions, for instance, concerning Justification, Regeneration, the Church, the Sacraments, etc. On these points, with relation to existing questions, we have decided views. We hold what we understand to be the Protestant or Evangelical position. Before any thing further, we notice some points, on which we presume all Protestant Episcopalians are agreed.

1. As to Episcopacy, or the constitution of the Christian Ministry in the three orders of Bishops, Priests, and Deacons, as set forth in our standards, we are all of one mind. The ordinal contains the formal language of the Church as to this matter: "From the Apostles' time, there have been these

orders of ministers in Christ's Church, Bishops, Priests, and Deacons." We have never met with a professed Episcopalian who did not in good faith affirm with our Church in this language. When we go beyond this simple affirmation, and maintain that no other ministry, but that so constituted and historically shown to be derived from the Apostles, by an unbroken chain of ordination through bishops, is valid for the purposes of the Christian ministry, then we are on disputed ground. We go beyond the Church, and get into the field of private opinion. In that wide field there is room enough for private opinion, and, in all good conscience, let freedom of thought and of speech on the subject be granted in full, so long as it is liberty only that is asked, and not authority to bind down all to a position never assumed by the Church.

2. As to the Sacraments, Protestant Episcopalians join heartily in the language of the 25th Article, that they are "not only badges or tokens of Christian men's profession, but rather certain sure witnesses and effectual signs of grace and God's good-will towards us, by the which he doth work invisibly in us, and doth not only quicken, but also strengthen and confirm our faith in Him." We allow no question as to the obligation, by divine institution, of the Sacraments, nor as to their value and efficacy as divinely-ordained means of grace. Let the language be strong on these points. They are of inestimable value for the nourishment and growth of the spiritual life, and are most precious pledges and seals of the divine covenant. The proper question among us is not concerning the efficacy and value of the Sacraments as means of grace, but concerning the conditions of their efficacy. "They that receive the Sacraments unworthily," affirms the 25th Article, "purchase to themselves damnation, as St. Paul saith." It is generally agreed, as to the Lord's Supper, that none can receive it worthily who are not qualified by actual repentance and faith. While it is a means of grace," of strengthening our faith," it pre-supposes in them who partake of it, grace already received as a preparation.

The question is chiefly in relation to baptism, and almost exclusively the baptism of infants. It is generally conceded that in order to the grace of baptism in adults, true repentance and

faith are pre-requisites. The point in controversy is, Is baptism invariably efficacious for regeneration in the case of infants? The word regeneration, in some of the senses in which it has been taken, such as a change of relations or of state, would hardly occasion controversy. The proper question is, Whether or not, in the baptism of infants, as such, regeneration, in the sense of the birth of the new man in Christ, or the implanting in the soul the germ of the new life in Christ, always takes place? We may answer, that we do not know what takes place in the soul of an infant. Scripture is silent, and in that silence we may stand. We are taught, however, that, "by their fruits, ye shall know them," "that they who are after the flesh do mind the things of the flesh." Do baptized children, when they come to years, differ from others in regard to this point of "minding the things of the flesh," so generally as to prove the existence of the rule, that in baptism they always receive the new life in Christ, or become "spiritually minded"? If there be any capacity in us for distinguishing the works of the flesh from those of the Spirit, do not multitudes who were baptized in infancy, show by their works that they are, in the proper sense," carnal," and that they do need, before they can become "spiritually minded," to be, in the proper sense, born of the Holy Ghost?

Whatever may seem to be taught by the Church in the office for baptism of infants, the same language is used in the baptism of adults. What the simple text of the baptismal office may seem to teach in the one case, it teaches in the other also. The Catechism teaches that the grace to be received in baptism, even of infants, is suspended on conditions. Infants are baptized, on the ground that they are, by their sureties, bound to fulfill the proper conditions. The history of the compilation of the several reviews of the Book of Common Prayer, and the history of religious controversies in England, prove that the compilers themselves never meant to fix in the office for baptism, the doctrine that infants are invariably regenerated in the Sacraments. The Puritans and Non-Conformists, in all their complaints against the Prayer Book, never found fault with its language on the subject of baptism, till the Savoy Conference, more than one hundred years after it was framed, that is, till the