Page:Tracts for the Times Vol 2.djvu/294

84 "unto sin, and a new birth unto righteousness," is hereby conferred upon all who are brought to be engraffed into their by Baptism. For the question is not, whether Infant Baptism be "most agreeable to the Institution of ," but (it being allowed so to be,) whether the full privileges of Baptism be thereby conveyed to all who are brought to in it, or whether some receive the reality, others the empty sign only? And since infants are all alike incapable of opposing the Divine benefits, and the wilfulness which they might hereafter show, has no place there, and in His Word has given us no ground for making any distinction between them, we must conclude, as the whole Antient Church did, that the benefits of Holy Baptism are by virtue of the Sacrament itself, and of the Divine Institution, imparted to all infants. And herein is a great mercy of, that this first primary grace, which is the pledge and condition of all the rest, and without which we have no title to them, but should remain "children of wrath and strangers to the covenant of promise," is bestowed upon us at a time when we cannot by our own wilfulness or carelessness fall short of it. It appears also a great charity of our Church, that, whereas we know not when the seeds of evil first spring up in a child, she has ordered Baptism to be administered at the earliest period practicable, that so the spiritual antidote might be infused into its frame before the latent poison of inherited corruption should begin to work. The principle that children are regenerated by virtue of the Sacrament of the Baptism, because they put no bar,