Page:Tracts for the Times Vol 2.djvu/292

82 taught that God hath set open the gates of mercy to all worthy penitents, yet concerning repentance they had other thoughts than we have; and that, in the pardon of sinners, there are many more things to be considered, besides the possibility of having the sin pardoned."

Yet another and more concise test as to the agreement of our views with those of the whole Christian Church will be furnished to us by considering carefully within ourselves, in what way we consider Baptism to be a Sacrament. For we know how often mankind deceive themselves by words, and, because they retain "the form of sound words," imagine falsely that they hold the substance. And it is an additional blessing in this form of words, that, by comparing our own actual and practical belief therewith, we may often detect in ourselves many lurking tendencies to error, and an unacknowledged abandonment of truth. We need not point out this in detail; any one, whose creed is now sounder than it once was, will at once acknowledge how unmarked a substitution was once going on in his own mind; how unawares to himself his silver was becoming dross. The same names of doctrines were retained, but their substance was gradually departing. Or one may observe it in the gradual declension of the German divines of the last century; or, one can hardly look abroad into the world without observing how much Socinianism, Pelagianism, Anti-Catholicism, Anti-Christianism there is every where in persons who think themselves severally secure from these charges, and would look upon the imputation as a slander. So also with regard to Sacraments: we can easily see how, in Hoadley's time, many, in fact, held neither to be a Sacrament in the Church's meaning of the word, though they persuaded themselves that they held both. And have we no symptoms of the same defect in our days? does not the very rareness of our Communions, even among earnest-minded Christians, imply that men scarcely regard it as a necessary means of grace? Where is our longing for "our daily bread?" and does not again the very name by which we ordinarily speak of the Lord's Supper—the Sacrament, imply that we have virtually one Sacrament only? for this is not the language