Page:Tracts for the Times Vol 2.djvu/197

Rh The argument briefly is; He, by His Divine foreknowledge, must have known this, that His whole Church would so understand His words, and in His goodness, He could not mislead her. He must then have meant to teach as He allowed her to understand Him. The force of this argument is not weakened by the fact, that the modern Church of Rome, or other heretics, allege Scripture in support of their errors. For it can be shown, first, that, however Scripture may now be alleged in the support of these heresies, they did not originate in the misunderstanding of Scripture, but in human reason, worldly wisdom, or the like. Secondly, they are errors, not of the whole Church, but of later sects, who have forsaken the genuine tradition of the Holy Catholic Church. Thirdly, they are not founded on the obvious meaning of Scripture.

This argument weighed strongly in my own mind, so that I should have needed no other; and it is, I think, calculated to have much weight, not with the disputer, but with those who wish simply to know their Lord's will. And therefore, (not with any idea of judging others,) I felt and said that "with one who loved His Saviour, I should be content to rest the question upon this one passage."

Since, however, it is difficult to recover habits of mind, which have been once abandoned, and the teachableness, which in better days followed out the hint of one single expression in Holy Scriptures, is, in our disputatious, demonstrating age, well nigh gone, and people look with an involuntary suspicion upon any doctrine rested upon a single passage, I thought it well to bring together the several passages of Holy Scripture wherein Baptism is mentioned, not with any notion of setting forth all their teaching, but simply of showing that it all led us one way, that it would all tend to far more exalted notions of Holy Baptism, than are in these days current among those who think that they appreciate it even highly. This