Page:Tracts for the Times Vol 2.djvu/248

38 would shew, is that such was the received usage of the word "seal" in the time of St. Paul; but no one, admitting this, will readily suppose, that St. Paul would have used the term with regard to Christians, unless he had meant it to be understood of the Sacrament of Baptism. The Fathers, moreover, uniformly speak of Baptism as sealing, and so keeping, guarding us, as it were a seal placed upon us, &c.; moderns call it a seal, ratification, or outward mark, of covenant. The two metaphors are essentially distinct; our modern usage is borrowed from St. Paul's description of the older covenant, whereof circumcision was the seal, but was no sacrament; that of the Fathers agrees with this reference to Baptism, which, being a Sacrament, seals, guards, preserves us, as well as guarantees the promises of towards us.

It would appear then, that the interpretation which perhaps most among us would in the first instance have looked upon as cold and formal, is, I might say, certainly true: and if so, it may well be a warning how we hold any thing, which ties us down to sacraments, to be cold or formal; for in this case it will be  Holy Spirit which we have ignorantly suspected of teaching coldly and lifelessly. Not as though we supposed that the Apostle here speaks of a sealing, which having taken place once for all, it then remained, as it were on a lifeless mass of goods, or would keep us safe without any effort, self-denial, or prayer; but rather, that as a living seal stamped upon our souls by the Spirit of life, and bearing with