Page:Tracts for the Times Vol 2.djvu/408

198 dark place, is the temper of mind which He would form in us; yea, where a part of object is, that they who acknowledge, that of themselves they see not, should see, and they who think they see should be made blind. As in parts of Scripture, the trial of our faith is, whether we will adhere to the letter and omit what under the letter is conveyed; so, in plain statements, such as these, it is, whether we will accept His truth or His commands to the very letter. There is a letter, we know, which killeth; but there is a neglect of the letter, which also killeth, (as in Socinian exposition, or neglect of duty) for it causes men to exclude themselves from the covenant of.

When then the plain letter of Scripture says, "we are saved by Baptism," and men say, "we are not saved by Baptism," our says, "a man must be born of water and the Spirit," man, that "he need not, cannot be born of water;" Scripture, that "we are saved by the washing of regeneration," man, "that we are not, but by regeneration which is as a washing:" Scripture, that we are "baptized for the remission of sins," man, that we "are not, but to attest that remission;" Scripture, that "whosoever hath been baptized into Christ, hath put on Christ," man, that he hath not; Scripture, "that they have been buried with  by Baptism into death," man, that they have not; Scripture, that " cleansed the Church by the washing of water by the word," man, that He did not, for bare elements could have no such virtue; Scripture, that "we were baptized into one body," men that we were not, but that we were in that body before; surely they have entered into a most perilous path, which, unless they are checked in pursuing it, must end in the rejection of all Scripture truth, which does not square with their own previous opinions. It did once so end; and it is a wholesome, but awful, warning, for those who will be warned, that it was out of the school of Calvin, from familiar intercourse with him, and the so-called "Reformed" Church,—that it was out of and through the Reformed Doctrine, that Socinianism took its rise; that "the chief corrupters of the Polish and Transylvanian Churches passed through Calvinism or Zuinglianism to their