BAPTISM AND ORIGINAL SIN.*
WE seldom read anything published on the subject of baptism by an Anglican clergyman without being led anew to regret that the Thirty-nine Articles continue to disfigure the formularies of the Church of England, and that even under the modified conditions still imposed on our clergy, the general tenor of these Articles must be accepted by them. It is perfectly true that the Calvin- ism of the Thirty-nine Articles is an extremely mild one, hardly, perhaps, to be called Calvinism at all. Still, that the spirit of Calvinism is more or less distinguishable in several of them, especially in the Ninth Article, on "Original or Birth Sin," and in the Thirteenth, on "Works before Justification," we cannot seriously doubt ; and we see the natural results in Sermons like those which we have placed at the foot of this review—earnest, simple, straightforward sermons, saying much that is very true and very wise in the most unaffected manner, but saying some things also that seem to us neither true nor wise,—though com- pletely in keeping with the Articles to which we have referred,— things calculated to repel from the Church that very large number of persons who will not accept at any price a Christianity tainted with what seems to them a fundamental injustice.
This is the more to be lamented that amongst the many clergymen who probably feel bound by the doctrine of the Articles,. there are not a few—and we should suppose that Mr. Sanders, the author of these Sermons, is amongst them,—who would other- wise incline to reject the narrow Puritan theory of the utter corruption of the natural man altogether. It is not a disputable fact that men do inherit from their ancestors what theologians have every right to call a perverted nature,—a nature inclining them to prefer their pleasures to their duty, and constantly to. shrink back from the higher dictates of their conscience. If that were all that was involved in the doctrine of original sin, it would be accepted by all mankind, by sceptics themselves with at least as much frankness as by theologians. But the tendency,—and we think we may say the natural meaning,— of some of the articles, goes a great deal beyond this. "Original sin," says the Ninth Article, "is the fault and corruption of the nature of every man that naturally is engendered of the off- spring of Adam, whereby man is very far gone from original righteousness, and is of his own nature inclined to evil, so that • Necessary to Salvatimi. By Rey. C. E. Sanders. 11.A., Vicar of Betchwortb. Dorking: R. J. Clark. London : Griffith and Farran. the flesh luste,th always contrary to the spirit." So far, we . jim should all c 'Cur in the drift of the Article, holding, as Cole- ridge ex: ined it, that the "very far gone "—quant longis- sime eaus "as far zone as was possible compatible with his havitig any redeemable qualities left in him. To talk of man being utterly lost to good is absurd ; for then he would be a .-0'' devil, or worse" (Coleridge's Table-Talk, p. 202). But then, unfortunately, Coleridge did not grapple with the real difficulty of this Ninth Article. The Article proceeds :—" And, therefore, in every person born into this world, it" [i.e., we suppose, "the fault and corruption of the nature of every man "] " deserveth God's wrath and damnation." Now, of course, it may be said that God's " wrath " means only what Mr. Sanders terms it, namely, displeasure ; and displeasure may be further whittled away into dissatisfaction, while damnation may possibly be explained as mere "condemnation ;" and con- demnation, again, as the sentence passed by the judgment on what it disapproves. And if these equivalents be accepted, the article would come to no more than this, that God desires to see those perversions and deformities in our nature which we have inherited from our first parents, removed and purged away,—which is a mere truism, and, essential to the very idea of the Divine nature. Unfortunately, however, the word " wrath " is a much truer translation of the Greek than dissatisfaction ; and the connection between wrath and con- demnation leaves the meaning almost unmistakeable, that there is something in " original " or " birth-sin " which deserves the anger of the Most High, and his deliberate retributive punishment. Now, what can be more unjust than to assert of any being that he feels anger against the involuntarily-inherited qualities of any creature, and regards them as worthy of a merited punishment? Such a doctrine is of a kineto repel all who are doubting of the character of Christianity, and we believe it to be as utterly destitute of any plausible defence derivable from the letter of Revelation as it is intrinsically unjust. So far as we know, the phrase "children of wrath," which Mr. Sanders applies in these Sermons, as the Ninth Article would naturally lead him to apply it, as if it meant children under the wrath of God, occurs only once in the New Testament, and that once in a context which renders it nearly impossible that the "wrath of God" should be meant at all. The Ephesians (ii., 3) are told that they were formerly "dead through their trespasses and sins," which means, we suppose, not merely that they had inherited the tendency to sin, but that they had committed in abundance .actual voluntary sins, "wherein aforetime ye walked accord- ing to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, of the spirit that now worketh in the sons of .disobedience; among whom we also all once lived in the lusts of our flesh, doing the desires of the flesh and of the mind, and were by nature children of wrath even as the rest." (Revised Version.) Surely the whole passage shows that St. Paul is insisting on the evil state in which the Ephesians were before they received the message of God's love,—on the evil heritage, first, of the consequences of voluntary disobedience, and then of the natural passions with which they were beset when the succour of the Gospel reached them. If "Sons of disobedience" cannot possibly refer to the attitude of God towards the Ephesians, but only to the attitude of their ancestors towards God, surely "children of wrath by nature," as the apostle subsequently terms them, cannot possibly refer to the wrath felt by God towards their fathers, but only to the unbridled passions of which their fathers were conscious, and which those fathers had transmitted to them. The whole meaning of the Gospel, as we read it, whether in St. Paul or elsewhere, is that God is revealing his love towards all men, that the light "which lighteth every man which cometh into the world," whether baptised or unbaptised, heathen or Christian, is striving to break through the darkness of inherited evil, and to bring to Christ, first unconsciously, then consciously, all on whom it shines. To say, as the Ninth Article does, that involun- tary deformities of nature are regarded by God with" wrath," is to 'cancel this message. To say, as the Thirteenth Article does, that all the works done "before the grace of Christ and the inspira- tion of his spirit" "have the nature of sin," is either to assert what is almost nonsense, that it is of the nature of sin to yield to the first touch of divine inspiration, or else to deny that the spirit of man has even so much freedom as is implied in yielding to the inspiration of God, which would make of man a mere irre- sponsible machine, and throw all the responsibility of his transgressions on his Creator. We are far, indeed, from wishing it to be understood that in what we have said we are depreciating in any way the teaching of those who, like Mr. Sanders, urge most earnestly on their people the importance of the baptismal sacrament. It is clear, if anything in the world is clear, that the immediate disciples of Christ understood his own teaching in that sense; and that even those who had already received the gift of the Spirit, like the Roman centurion, treated that as merely an unanswerable reason why the sacrament of baptism should not be withheld. It is idle first to accept a divine revelation and then to ignore as "mere forms" all those parts of it which may seem to our reason as non-essential. But it is still more dangerous so to exaggerate their import- ance as to teach, against all the implied teaching of the Gospel, that all who have not received them are under God's wrath, even though, as happens now-a-days in a rapidly in- creasing multitude of cases, it is the misfortune of their circum- stances, and of their circumstances alone, that they have not received it. The true Christian teaching we take to be, that nothing is absolutely "necessary to salvation" except dutiful- ness, that is, the spirit to be guided by the divine light whenever and wherever it is perceived; though, of course, we believe that in a sober mind and a Christian country, that guidance will lead at last to Christ, and to the sacraments which Christ ordained. But nothing can tend so dangerously to reduce the number of the persons who will be willing to re- ceive this light, as to tell them that it is no wonder, if they have not been baptised, that they do not discern it, since all who are not baptised are living under God's wrath. "As we look at the little, helpless infant just born into the world," says the earnest and thoughtful preacher, on whose Sermons we are commenting, "it is a terrible thing to realise that it is, because a child of Adam, a child of wrath. It is an awful thing to go to that child's mother and say, That child is under God's displeasure ; the taint of sin is upon it." Well, to our minds, no statement could be less in keeping with the letter and spirit of the Gospel. That the tendencies to sin are there, no one can deny ; but that God is wroth with the infant for what it could not help, is one of the most incredible doctrines ever invented by theological ingenuity. Baptism is good because Christ who revealed the love of God, ordained it, and therefore, doubtless, also it bestows a grace of its own, which would otherwise be wanting. But is the clergyman to teach that if that be withheld by another's error or fault the child will risk the loss of the re- generating spirit altogether,—that no inward guidance towards the Redeemer will be granted it, which guidance, if accepted, will commence in another way that work of regeneration which might have been begun more naturally and genially by its formal reception into the Christian community and by the grace of a Christian sacrament? It seems to us a kind of heathenism to preach such a doctrine. Regeneration begins in all kinds of ways,—often no doubt with the sacrament which Christ ordained, but not exclusively in that way, or Cornelius must have been utterly unregenerate when he was told that his prayers and his alms were gone up as a memorial before God; and to talk of such a man, with such a revelation specially granted to him, as an utterly unregenerate child of wrath, seems to us ab- solutely absurd. We heartily wish that the very narrow theology of some of the Thirty-nine Articles could be expunged altogether from the formularies of the Church of England. Till it is expunged, we shall always have earnest clergymen who have been educated to reverence those formulas, struggling, and struggling in vain, to adapt their theological teaching to the still nobler teaching that all regeneration is of God, and that the regenerating spirit is at work in all men. On this point, the theology of the Council of Trent was far more generous than that of the reformed Churches ; and the great majority of our best Anglican teachers would, we believe, be willing and even glad to substitute the teaching of the Council of Trent, on original sin and justifica- tion, for the teaching of the English Articles. Coleridge assuredly taught on this point something very different from the obvious meaning of the Articles, and very near to the teaching of the Council of Trent.
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