Page:Tracts for the Times Vol 2.djvu/232

22 error; and, where our Forefathers found fervid and heart-uplifting descriptions of our Baptismal privileges, of good gifts, which had been actually conferred upon us, these men now find only an emblematic statement of our duties. Take St. Paul's appeal to the Romans (vi. 3.), why they should not continue in sin. "Know ye not, that so many of us as were baptized into, were baptized into His death? Therefore we are buried with Him by Baptism into death; that like as was raised from the dead by the glory of the , even so we also should walk in newness of life. For, if we have been planted together in the likeness of His death, we shall be also of His resurrection: knowing this, that our old man is crucified in us, that the body of sin might be destroyed." Now, probably, all that a large number of Christians, at the present day, will find in this passage, will be, that Baptism represents (as it does) to us our profession, that we, having been baptized, and having acknowledged as our, are bound to lead a new and godly life, and to be crucified to sin and the world, as He was crucified for our sin; and, if so, that we shall rise with Him. This is very true, and is certainly in the passage; but the question is, whether this be all? whether St. Paul speaks only of duties entailed upon, and not also of strength imparted to us. The Fathers certainly of the Christian Church, educated in holy gratitude for their Baptismal privileges, saw herein, not the death only to sin, which we were to die, but that also which in Christ we had died, the actual weakening of our corrupt propensities, by being baptized and incorporated into ; not the life only which we are to live, but the life which, by Baptism, was infused in us, and which as many of us as are now "walking in newness of life," are living in, by virtue of that life. St. Paul, namely, is setting, side by side, our means of grace, and the holiness which we are thereby to strive to attain unto. "We have been all baptized into ," i.e. into a participation of, and His most precious death, and union with Him, we, i.e. our old man, our corrupted selves, have been buried with Him, by Baptism, into that death, that we may walk in newness of life. Again, we have been planted in the likeness of His death—