Page:Tracts for the Times Vol 2.djvu/202

xii in the early ages ." He admits that these views are countenanced by our blessed Saviour's declaration, that "virtue had gone out of Him;" but His saying is regarded, not as matter of instruction to us, but as "a mode of speaking, characteristic of the prevalent idea concerning the operation of the Divine influence." St. Augustine's maxim "Accedit verbum ad elementum et fit Sacramentum," which expresses what has hitherto been the acknowledged teaching of the whole Church, is designated as "an adaptation of the popular belief respecting the power of incantations and charms to the subject of religion." The tendency of this whole lecture is to decry the Church's doctrine, that the Sacraments are instruments or channels of grace, and to transfer their whole efficacy to the simple operation of the mind of the believer. The faith of the believer is not only essential to his beneficial reception of it, but is "the true consecrating principle,—that which brings down Christ to the heart of each individual ."

On one point, I fear that the doctrines of the ancient Church are so distinct from modern ultra-Protestant theology on the one hand, (as also) from the Romanist on the other, that the view, which I have exhibited, of the character of grievous sin after Baptism may cause perplexity. It cannot be otherwise; and I pray only that it may be healthful. For our modern system, founded, as it is, on the virtual rejection of Baptism as a Sacrament, confounds the distinction of grievous sin before and after Baptism, and applies to repentance, after falling from Baptismal grace, all the promises which, in Scripture, are pledged, not as the fruit of repentance simply, but as God's free gift in Baptism. Yet our reformers thought differently; for had their theology been like our's, there had been no occasion for an article