Page:Tracts for the Times Vol 2.djvu/375

Rh effluence from God. Or, because God, ordinarily, to His first gift of regeneration, adds the gift of His word, of the teaching of the Church, of the Communion of the Body and Blood of Christ; shall we dare to pronounce, that, if He please to exclude any one from that Communion, or from that outward teaching, therefore that former gift would have none effect? that they, to whom had by Baptism given the earnest of the  in their hearts, would have that earnest withdrawn, unless retained by other outward means, or religious instruction? that He could not, or would not, provide for those whom He admitted to be members of His ? "Is the 's arm shortened, that He cannot save?" And shall we say even of those, who through our neglect, are in the great towns of our Christian land educated worse than Turks and Heathens, trained to sin—shall we say, that even these, as many as have been baptized, have no strivings of the of  within them, to which they are entitled through Baptism; that  admitted them into His Church, only, forthwith, utterly to cast them off; that they have not oftentimes been restrained from sin, by a Power which they scarcely knew, but which still withheld them, with a might stronger than sin and death and Satan—the might of the  of ? Or have we not often seen how, as if to vindicate His own gift, has to many children of His Church, turned into gain what to our shallow judgments seemed destruction unavoidable; has prospered their faithfulness "in few things, and so made them rulers over many things;" while others, who in outward spiritual advantages were first, by their own negligence became last? Surely, then, it were truer, as well as more humble, to abstain from thus narrowing the operations of God! It were profaneness, indeed, and a wanton contempt of 's mercies, to trust in Baptism alone, when He has vouchsafed us means for cultivating the grace bestowed upon us in Baptism: but it argues no less a narrow-minded unbelief, to deny the power or the will of to make Baptism alone available, when He, from the time of Baptism, has, not for any want of faithfulness in the child, withdrawn every other means. "And they were sore amazed in themselves beyond measure, and wondered: for they