Page:Tracts for the Times Vol 2.djvu/193



The following tracts having been written in some degree, as they were published, separately, it may, perhaps, contribute to clearness to state their object and their plan. Their immediate object was to aid in removing the perplexities of different individuals, who were harassed by the conflicting opinions, which in these last times, have existed on the subject of Holy Baptism. With one of these individuals my office had brought me into connection. My original purpose was rather to have given hints, which might aid others in thinking profitably upon the subject, than myself to have written at length. I wished to recall men, from their abstract way of looking upon the question as a subject of theological controversy, to their Saviour's feet, and to induce them to think (apart from modern systems) what His words, teachably considered, would lead to. For it is a fearful evil of theological controversy, that men accustom themselves to bandy about words of Holy Scripture, forgetting words they are.

When a text has been repeatedly and familiarly used in support of any doctrine, persons, on the one side or the other, involuntarily contract a habit of looking upon it in the abstract as a mere dictum probans; they consider what the words in themselves may, or (as they think) need not, mean, leaving out of sight what they must mean in His mouth, who spoke them. And hence is produced an irreverent mode either of alleging or arguing against