Page:Tracts for the Times Vol 2.djvu/337

Rh the soul, which approaches to the nature of physical causes:" wherein, in words only physical operation is excluded, in fact, all that is hyperphysical, in other words, all that is supernatural. It is essential (at the risk of prolixity and repetition) to have the character of these two views fully impressed upon our minds; for upon them depends the whole manner in which we receive spiritual influences; and in this age, which so loves what is clear, and definite, and rational, as readily to forfeit all that is deep, and mysterious, and indefinite, because infinite, and which is consequently already swept and garnished for the reception of rationalism, it is of vital importance to see into which of these two paths we are entering. For thereon the whole faith of our country may depend. It is not then the question, whether men call the Sacraments physical or moral causes, but what they mean by denying them to be physical, or asserting them to be moral causes; for although this may formerly, in a different section of the Church, have been denied or asserted, in a sense which did not alter men's notions of the Sacraments, it was not so in the Reformed Church, nor is it so now. The question then at issue between the Ancient, the English, and the Lutheran Church on the one side, and the School of Zuingli and Calvin, and so most of the Reformed Church on the other, was this: whether (to take the statement of the pious and learned John Gerhard as to his own Church) "the Sacraments were instruments, means, vehicles, whereby offers, exhibits, and applies to believers the especial promises of the Gospel, remission of sins, righteousness, and life eternal ." What namely is