MR. SADLER ON BAPTISM.

The Sacrament of Responsibility; or testimony of Scripture to the teaching of the Church on Holy Baptism, with special reference to the case of infants, and answers to objections. Fifth Edition. London: Bell and Daldy.

The Second Adam and the New Birth; or, the doctrine of Baptism as contained in Holy Scripture. By the Rev. M. F. SADLER, M.A., Vicar of Bridgewater, author of "The Sacrament of Responsibility." Second Edition, enlarged.

THE five editions through which the former of these publications has travelled is a sufficient evidence of its intrinsic merits; and we are glad to see that the author has pursued the subject, and given us the result of his studies in a more extended form. "The Second Adam and the New Birth" is, in its way, the best book we have ever read on the subject of which it treats. There is this peculiarity about it, that the reasoning is almost exclusively derived from Scripture; and this is likely to make it all the more convincing to those who impugn the Sacramental System. We do not know whether Mr. Sadler has had the advantage of a legal training, but certainly his skilful and dispassionate discussion of difficulties strikes us as belonging to a man who has been accustomed to weigh and sift evidence. The objections usually urged against the doctrine which he advocates are fairly stated, rigidly cross-examined, and calmly annihilated. We will state the object of the book in the author's own words :

"The object of this short treatise is to give, in as plain terms as possible, the Scripture testimony to the doctrine of the Initial Sacrament. To this end, the reader's attention is called to the position assigned to Baptism by CHRIST and His Apostles. The more prominent places of Scripture which teach us any truth respecting it are examined, and their plain meaning indicated from falsely spiritual interpretations. The analogy between the two Adams, as implying the transmission of the nature of each respectively, is considered with reference to its bearing on Sacramental doctrine. The terms used by the inspired writers, in addressing the whole body of the Church, are also carefully examined, with the view of ascertaining in what state, whether of grace or otherwise, the persons they speak to are presumed to be.

"The more he thinks of the present state of the question, the more he is convinced that it must be treated as a Bible rather than a Church question. It involves no less than the one principle on which the hortatory teaching of God's Word can be applied, in its entireness, to the present visible Church.

"We are asked for a revision of the Prayer Book, with the view of

modifying or omitting those statements in the Baptismal Service and Catechism which assert that the present Kingdom of God's grace is designed by its Divine Founder for all infants, and that at Baptism they are in very deed born into it, and made partakers of its distinguishing grace.

"The writer has abundantly shown in the following pages, that this language of the Prayer Book, taken in its most literal sense, is the mere echo of the language of God's Word. The expressions which include the whole Church in the net of Divine grace are more absolute in the New Testament than in the Prayer Book."

The rejection of the Sacramental System is, in effect, the rejection of Christianity itself, as any one will see who examines the question apart from the necessities of a preconceived system. For what is Christianity? It is the undoing in the Person of the Second Adam of the mischief which was wrought by the first in Eden. Twice, and twice only in the history of mankind, have the destinies of the race hung on the fortunes of an individual: the race of man fell in Adam's transgression; it rose when CHRIST triumphed over sin and the grave. Adam in Eden, CHRIST on Calvary, were each the representative of humanity, so that whatever was achieved by the head was inevitably bequeathed to the aggregate of members. When Adam fell, he did not fall alone; he involved in his own ruin the countless myriads of individuals who were yet to derive from him their being. And this he did by transmitting to them a corrupt and poisoned nature. Only the sin of the first pair could affect the race. Had Adam and Eve remained innocent, the race would have been safe. Cain might still have murdered his brother, but the sin and the loss would have been his own alone. But when Adam fell, mankind fell with him.

"GOD ordained," as our author says, "that he should transmit his human nature, whatever that nature might be, to his posterity, so that if he continued holy, he should transmit to them a holy nature, but if he became sinful, he must, of necessity, transmit to them a sinful nature. Through his own free will he ate of the forbidden fruit, and became sinful, and this before any children had been born to him; so that when he begat children, he transmitted to them, not the sinless nature which he possessed originally, but the sinful nature he received the moment he transgressed. Hence the fountain of human nature became poisoned at its source; the root of human nature became evil before a single branch or bud had sprung out of it. Hence when Adam begat children, they were in his likeness. Hence all mankind are sinners from the womb."-P. 9.

The author also reminds us of a truth, which we wish the opponents of the Catholic doctrine of Baptism and the Holy Eucharist would lay to heart :

:

"There are three ways in which sin may be engendered in a person, -by nature, by temptation, and by example. Now, we find that evil tempers and dispositions show themselves in children spontaneously, as it were, when no temptation presents itself; so it cannot be by temptation that all mankind are sinful. And we find that the children of godly parents, who have seen in their parents a holy example, show the same seeds of evil as the children of the ungodly. It is through generation, then, and that alone, that each one of the human race exhibits so early the traces of moral evil in his nature and disposition."-P. 9.

"How, then, is the awful mystery of moral evil naturally engendered -of moral evil transmitted to those who receive it whilst they are in a state of unconsciousness-with the very seeds of their being? Along with the flesh and blood of our parents, we receive their spiritual corruption, as they received theirs from their parents, and they from theirs. Our first parent, in whose loins were all his posterity, sinned, and so received into his nature the seeds of corruption, both moral and physical, and he begat children in his own likeness, not only with outward frames like his, but with souls like his in their taint of evil. And he transmitted to each one that was engendered of him and of his offspring the corruption which he had received. To each unconscious babe he transmitted the corruption which he himself had received in a state of the highest moral consciousness."—P. 10.

Thus man fell; but his fall was not like that of Satan and his rebel host irretrievable. The mercy of GoD interposed between man and that abyss of wickedness by settled habit, which makes the state of the fallen angels a state of insalvability. A Deliverer was promised, Who should one day bruise the serpent's head, and retrieve the loss sustained in Eden; and thus, in the fulness of time, "the Word became flesh, and dwelt among us."

Now, as Mr. Sadler reminds us, in order to be a complete Deliverer, it was necessary that the Incarnate Word should procure two things for mankind-pardon, and a new nature: for Adam's transgression involved these two things-it vitiated his nature, and it placed him and his descendants in a state of guiltiness before GOD. The cure, therefore, to be effective and complete, must cover the disease. CHRIST must reconstruct humanity, and make atonement for transgressions. How has this been done? In answering this question, we must remember that mankind may be regarded either as an abstract unity, or as a collection of individuals. We are one by the identity of a common nature; we are individuals by the gift of personality.

The Son of GOD, by His Incarnation and self-sacrifice, saved and atoned for human nature, but He did not save the individual members of it; He saved the race, and therefore rendered possible the salvation of the individuals.

It is the common belief of those who reject the true doctrine of the Sacraments, that when CHRIST died and ascended into heaven, the work of salvation, as far as He is concerned, was done and fin

ished, and that nothing now remains for men to do but to believe in His meritorious passion and victory, and live accordingly. Very different is the doctrine of Scripture, which tells us that the individual salvation of mankind only commenced after the session of CHRIST at GOD's right hand had begun. That nature which He had raised and purified by union with the Godhead, He began to diffuse among the individuals of the race on the first Christian Pentecost; and that by means of a sacramental agency.

"It could not be in the way of nature, seeing that mankind, by the very condition of their being, could have but one origin; they could only spring from one man, because GOD originally created but one; and having derived their being from him, they could not be born by way of nature from another. If in this respect JESUS CHRIST, the second Adam is to answer to the first (i.e., if He is to be an Adam at all), if His undefiled human nature is to be to mankind, or any part of them, a principle of life counteracting the death received from the human nature of the first Adam, this cannot be in the way of nature, it must be effected supernaturally."-P. 12.

That is to say, the nature of the Blessed SAVIOUR must be capable of being imparted to and diffused amongst His brethren, and means must be provided to bring about that result. That CHRIST'S nature was so constituted as to be capable of being imparted is expressly asserted in 1 Cor. xv. 45: "The first Adam was made a living soul, the last Adam was made a quickening (i.e., life-imparting, worоou) Spirit."

"Now what is meant by this?" pertinently asks our author. "Certainly not that CHRIST's Spirit merely imparts religious knowledge; for if that is all, in no sense would He be an Adam. Adam imparted not instruction, but a nature, to those sprung from him." S. Paul evidently means, as the context shows, that after His Resurrection, our SAVIOUR'S Body assumed the properties of Spirit, and became a source of life to those who should avail themselves of the channel through which that life was ordained to flow.

But how was this to be accomplished? How was the human nature of GOD Incarnate to be diffused among the individuals of the human race? By the power of the HOLY GHOST, who came on Pentecost to make CHRIST present, not to supply His absence, as some suppose,—

"The Spirit does not in this dispensation regenerate and strengthen man by Himself, as it were, but by the very light and strength of the second Adam, JESUS CHRIST-CHRIST, not as GOD, for as GOD He is everywhere, but Whole CHRIST-the CHRIST Who is "perfect GOD and perfect man, of a reasonable soul and human flesh subsisting."

Thus, by the operation of the HOLY GHOST, CHRIST is made present, "not merely in the heart, as one friend's image is in the

heart of another friend. This is a figurative, and, in a certain sense, an unreal presence. It is a human way of speaking, to denote love for one absent; whereas the Scripture speaks of a presence, over and above this- —a presence, it is true, to bring about CHRIST'S love in the heart, but still a presence beside it-over and above it" -a real, though supernatural, presence of CHRIST's Person and Humanity.

"But why should this be? Why should we not be saved by having CHRIST presented to our minds and hearts merely in His offices of love? Why should there be such an unspeakable mystery as the diffusion of His whole life-giving nature? I answer,-Because CHRIST is the Second Adam. If GOD, in His Word, calls His Son the second Adam, I am led to expect a communication of His nature that I may be restored, because it is by the communication of the first Adam's nature that I am lost. We are lost, not because we imitate Adam, but because we are born in Adam, and so partake of that from Adam, which is the cause of sin and death in us. The recovery must be analogous to the ruin."

The real truth is, that those who reject the sacramental system are, however they may disguise it from themselves, Pelagians at heart. If they deny that we are transplanted into, and feed upon the true, real, and substantial humanity of CHRIST, they must, by a logical necessity, either deny that we have inherited from Adam a corrupt nature which needs to be renewed, or they must hold that Christianity is a fiction, and human nature as yet unredeemed. If the redemption achieved by CHRIST is indeed commensurate with the mischief wrought by Adam, then nothing can be more certain than that we receive from CHRIST, not simply a saving knowledge, or an infallible example, or an effluence of Divine grace, but a new life. In no other way could CHRIST be the second Adam. He has graciously willed to infuse a new and divine life into the old and effete stock of Adam's nature, and that through the outward media of sacraments.

Mr. Sadler having then laid down the rationale of the doctrine of the new birth, proceeds to test it by the touchstone of Holy Scripture. He naturally begins with our Blessed LORD's conversation with Nicodemus. The "Master of Israel" came to the wonder-working Teacher to receive instruction; but JESUS tells him that something more than mere knowledge, however noble and elevating, is necessary in order to salvation. There must be a living union with Him, the Second Fountain of Humanity, a new birth into His very substance; "Except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of GOD."

Now, according to the interpretation put upon this passage by those who reject the doctrine of baptismal regeneration, Nicodemus ought to have seen no great difficulty in our LORD's assertion. In