Page:Tracts for the Times Vol 2.djvu/196

vi those whom he respects, or his own spiritual proficiency or usefulness has, as he imagines, become connected with it. Few can see, or even induce themselves to weigh an exposition contrary to that which they have received; and very few ought, or have been intended, so to do; unless indeed they have the weight of higher authority against them, as in cases where the Church having decided one way, individual teachers have instructed them in another.

Still, those who, under more popular names, are following the teaching of Zuingli, and, with Zuingli, explain away the force of their Saviour's words, are very far from meaning to be guilty of this irreverence. It is not because I think that they love not their Saviour, but because they love Him, and because I think that that love is in danger of being injured by the slight which modern systems put upon His ordinances and His words, that I have especially urged, (p. 16 sqq.) them to reconsider His words (St. John iii. 4), and the rejection of an explanation of those words, which they have inherited, but which seems to me in itself inconsistent with reverence for Him. I wished namely that they would ponder the bearing of His words "Except a man be born of water and the Spirit," apart from any modern systems, any temporary circumstances, any regard to consequences, not as a text in a theological controversy, but as uttered by Him, before whose mind the future history of His Church was open, and who was providing for her necessities. And since His Church has, from the very first, rested the doctrine of the heavenly birth in Baptism upon these His words, and has regarded that His gift as unreserved as His words are unlimited, surely we must think that if He had intended her to understand His words more restrainedly, He would Himself have limited them. As it is, He has given no hint, either that the peculiar privileges and powers of the Christian new-birth are bestowed ordinarily, without the "water," or are not bestowed with it.