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born regenerate." Dr. Nadal refers to this theory, and repudiates it as being "certainly in the very teeth of the teachings of the Orthodox Church in all ages." When this view was advocated by Mercein, Hibbard, and Gilbert Haven, it was rejected very indignantly by most of our best thinkers; and, in humorous allusion to the initials of the last writer, (now one of our Bishops,) it was said that G. H. stood for "Great Heretic." Yet we believe it clear that Dr. Hibbard's view is about the view of the Church, if her formulas are to decide the question.

One minute but important correction, however, is to be made. Arminius, Wesley, Fletcher, and Fisk could not be said to hold that infants are "born regenerate." The true statement would be that they are born into the world depraved; but, as Fisk expresses it, "the atonement meets them with its provisions at their entrance." Their justification or regeneration, so far as it exists, is not congenital but post-genital. The atonement fills this probationary world with its influence, and the human being receives his atoning justification consequent upon his having entered into it. It is as if a room were filled with a purifying influence, and a leper is cleansed by entering within its walls. The question is not as to the genuineness or the depth of the depravity as derived from Adam, or from the immediate parent. That depravity is done up in all the elements of the foetal man. Nor does regeneration, infant or adult, absolutely remove it until completed at the glorification; for both infant and adult still retain susceptibility to temptation and sin, mortality, disease, and death, until the final renovation.

And here comes in our reply to Dr. Nadal's argument against infant regeneration, pushed by him with much emphasis, drawn from the fact of the sinfulness of the growing and grown-up race. It is much the same argument as Watson pushes against the nondepravity of the race drawn from the uniform wickedness of the race. But Nadal's argument has none of the force of Watson's. Our inherent depravity is not entirely removed by regeneration until the regeneration is completed at the resurrection. For the best of us, the maintenance of our saved or regenerate state is a work of care, skill, and firm volition. These qualities the unnurtered child does not possess, and hence falls an easy victim to sin. The nurtured child may retain an unforfeited Christian character. It is at this age, indeed, that docility to truth, conscientiousness, and simple piety often unfold themselves.

Here let us observe, 1. Our later writers do not rigidly insist on FOURTH SERIES, VOL. XXV.-9

the word regeneration as the technic to designate this saved state of the living infant. That word is framed in Scripture normally for adults. And it may be objected as absurd that a man should be generated and regenerated in instantaneous succession. This is ,not, indeed, a very valid objection. What is meant by these writers is, that the state of the saved living infant is essentially the same for an infant as the state into which regeneration brings the adult. And so infant justification is, for the infant, the same as that justification into which faith brings the adult believer. The adult believer is not baptized-let our Baptist brother mark this— because he believes; but because he is justified and regenerated in sequence to his belief. The infant, possessing that same justification, is entitled to that same baptism.

2. This does not imply baptismal regeneration or ritualism. The infant is not regenerate because he is baptized, but is baptized because he is virtually a believer, and so virtually justified and regenerate.

3. This avoids the danger of an unregenerate Church-membership. If the infant so grows up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord as never to lose his saved state, (no imaginary case,) he needs no conversion. He will bring forth the fruits showing him entitled to an unforfeited Church-membership. Otherwise, his membership is forfeited, as in any other case of apostasy. Nevertheless, not only most children, but most adults, often need converting over and over again.

With regard to our standard authors, in view of this discussion, we reproduce a few paragraphs published by us in our October Quarterly for 1864 in noticing a book by Miss Beecher :

Miss Beecher announces that a new development is taking place in the Methodist Episcopal Church, which, she imagines, will result in childhood Church-membership. We doubt the newness of the matter she describes. To show how great our advance is, she quotes a passage from Arminius, in which that great doctor taught that infants are by "the covenant comprehended and adjudged in their parents," and so have "sinned" and become "obnoxious to God's wrath." But if she will turn to his works, vol. i, page 318, (American edition,) she will find that by that same covenant there is, in his opinion, a provision of grace in which children are so included, as putative believers, "as not to seem to be obnoxious to condemnation." Both of these views are consistent, and may be correct. Condemned by the covenant in Adam, living children, like believers, may be justified in Christ. If Miss Beecher will turn to Fletcher's Checks, vol. i, page 461, she will find that writer expressly maintaining the doctrine of both the "justification" and the " regeneration" of living infants. In a note he adds these remarkable words: "Those who start at every expression they are not used to will ask if our Church admits the justification of infants? I answer, UNDOUBTEDLY; since her clergy, by her direc tion, say over myriads of infants, 'We yield thee hearty thanks, most merciful Father, that it has pleased thee to REGENERATE this infant." He then proceeds

to prove that this regeneration is antecedent to baptism, and universal. And he instructs us so to construe his mention of "the regeneration of infants," in his Appeal, (a work adopted in our course of ministerial study,) Part V, Inference 7, as designating regeneration unconditional upon baptism, and of course as existing in the case of every living infant. So firmly convinced was Fletcher that Adamic depravity does not preclude infant regeneration, that it was in a powerful work in favor of depravity that he maintained such regeneration. If this be a new devel opment, Miss B. may be thus assured it is by no means "a new doctrine." According to Fletcher's interpretation, indeed, our infant baptismal service teaches the same doctrine. Our baptismal Scripture lesson from Mark x, 13, etc., which declares "of such is the kingdom of heaven," teaches, in his view, that infants are truly born of the Spirit as ground of their now being baptismally "born of water." They are to receive the outward sign because they have received the inward grace. We say not that these teachings of Fletcher are an article of our Church faith, nor that they are true or false. We only say that they are found in one of the standards which has always been put by our Church into the hands of her young ministers; and such is even there affirmed to be the doctrine of our standing Ritual. If Fletcher's interpretations be true, Miss B. will specially observe, we have been proclaiming living infant regeneration at every infant baptism from the very foundation of our Church. But this Arminian and Fletcherian view is very different from her Pelagian denial of a depravity by nature derived from Adam.

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Mr. Wesley's views of the baptismal Scripture lesson appear scarce different from Fletcher's. "The kingdom of heaven" there mentioned he held to be the "kingdom set up in the world," (see his comment on Mark x, 14, and Matt. xix 14,) that is, the regenerate earthly Church; he held that little children "have a right to enter" that kingdom or Church; and that "the members of the kingdom "are such," that is, "natural" children, or "grown persons of a childlike spirit." That membership he interprets to be not contingent and prospective, or conditioned upon death, but real and present. And yet he believed that no one can be within that kingdom who is not regenerate. (See his note on John iii, 5.) We have, then, the syllogistic premises: All members of the kingdom of heaven are regenerate; Children are such members; and then what conclusion a logician like Mr. Wesley would draw we leave others to decide.

Dr. Fisk's view appears in the following words:

"Although all moral depravity, derived or contracted, is damning in its nature, still, by virtue of the atonement, the destructive effects of derived depravity are counteracted; and guilt is not imputed until by a voluntary rejection of the Gospel remedy man makes the depravity of his nature the object of his own choice. Hence, although, abstractly considered, this depravity is destructive to the possessors, yet through the grace of the Gospel ALL ARE BORN FREE FROM CONDEMNATION. So the Apostle Paul: "As by the offense of one, judgment came upon all men to condemnation, so by the righteousness of one, the free gift came upon all men unto justification of life."-Calvinistic Controversy.

Here we are told that all are born "free from condemnation;" and this freedom from condemnation is identical with the "justification" named by St. Paul. And this freedom from condemnation or justification (not merely a title to contingent prospective justification) is at birth upon each living individual infant; and universal, being in spite of our depravity derived from the atonement. The infant does not wait for death before he is justified. Death, actual or approaching, is no condition of salvation.

In regard to Mr. Fletcher's doctrine of infant justification we remark: 1. No one affirms that the regeneration of an infant, as taught by Fletcher, is psychologically absurd, or contrary to human or Christian consciousness. The doctrine of infant regeneration, either unconditional or conditional upon baptism, is no new doctrine, but has been a dogma in all the great sections of the Church, whether Greek, Roman, or Protestant. This is a valid contradiction to Dr. Nadal's statement quoted above, that infant regeneration is "in the teeth of the teachings of the Orthodox Church of all ages." The regeneration of the infant is nothing different in nature from that in the adult, except as modified by its subject; and the use of the term is in both cases equally proper, involving no innovation in theology of

either thought or language. If an infant can be depraved it can also be undepraved; if it can be positively unregenerate it can also be regenerate. In the infant nature as truly as in the adult there may exist all the potencies, predispositions, and predeterminate tendencies, natural or gracious, for an actual, though not responsible, moral nature, good or bad.

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2. The doctrine of depravity is neither invalidated in nor modified by the doctrine of infant regeneration, whether unconditional or conditioned upon birth, baptism, or death, actual or approaching. In either case the depravity comes from Adam, is by nature, and is equally complete; and, in either case, regeneration comes from Christ and is by grace, being extra to and above nature. The unborn John the Baptist was "filled with the Holy Ghost," (Luke i, 15,) and "leaped" at the approach of the mother of the unborn Saviour. The unborn Jesus was that holy thing." And such cases at once explode the objection of the "manifest absurdity of "regeneration between conception and birth." Nor is there any more absurdity in the infant being regenerated between conception and birth, than in his being depraved at conception or between conception and birth. And this would seem to finish, too, all the argument about the absurdity of generation and regeneration being simultaneous.

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3. If Arminius, Wesley, Fletcher, and Fisk are right in their positions, then the Arminian doctrine of falling from grace must be true. All adult sinners are apostates. And we see the reason why Calvinists must reject those positions unless they would become Arminians. All who become unregenerate or unjustified, that is, all adult sinners, as Fletcher expresses it, have "sinned away the justification of infants." Or, as Fisk says, the "man makes the depravity of his nature the object of his choice," and not until then is "sin imputed unto him." If there be those happy exceptions, who have evidently not "sinned away the justification of infants," Fletcher would doubtless have held them to be Christians, and at responsible age have admitted them to communion. And an Arminian like Fletcher would have no difficulty with our Lord's declaration to Nicodemus, "Except a man be born again," etc.; for he would understand that such words are addressed to all apostates, that is, to all adult sinners, entirely irrespective of any past experience, whether of an infant or a previous adult regeneration.

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To all this we may add that the Seventeenth of our Articles of Faith declares that "Baptism is . . . a sign of regeneration; and that "The baptism of children is to be retained in the Church." That is, children are to receive the "sign of regeneration." But, surely, the sign ought not to be conferred where the reality does not and may never exist. The "outward sign of an inward grace" is a false sign where there is no "inward grace."

English Reviews.

BRITISH AND FOREIGN EVANGELICAL REVIEW, October, 1872. (London.)-1. The "Servant of the Lord" in Isaiah. 2. Of the Beautiful in Worship. 3. Phenomenalism in Morals. 4. Frederick Denison Maurice. 5. The Philosophy of Prayer. 6. The Problem of Job. 7. The Presbytery of Wandsworth, erected in 1572. 8. Reprinted Article-The Antagonism of Religion and Culture. EDINBURGH REVIEW, October, 1872. (New York: Reprint-Leonard Scott, 140 Fulton-street.)-1. Corea. 2. New Shakspearean Interpretation. 3. Memorials of Baron Stockmar. 4. Terrestrial Magnetism. 5. The Fiji Islands. 6. The Life of Henry Thomas Colebrooke. 7. The Progress of Medicine and Surgery. 8. Grote's Aristotle. 9. The Past and Future of Naval Tactics.

LONDON QUARTERLY REVIEW, October, 1872. (New York: Reprint-Leonard Scott, 140 Fulton-street.)-1. The Duke of Wellington as a Cabinet Minister. 2. The Completion of St. Paul's. 3. Baron Stockmar. 4. The Consciousness of Dogs. 5. Velasquez. 6. Journal of a French Diplomatist in Italy. 7. East Africa Slave Trade. 8. The Position of Parties.

WESTMINSTER REVIEW, October, 1872. (New York: Reprint-Leonard Scott, 140 Fulton-street.)-1. The Heroes of Hebrew History. 2. Pindar. 3. Free Public Libraries. 4. The Descent of Man. 5. The Scotch Education Settlement of 1872. 6. France: Her Position and Prospects. 7. The Esthetics of Physicism.

LONDON QUARTERLY REVIEW, October, 1872. (London.)-1. Music and Poetry: Their Origin and Functions. 2. William Tyndale. 3. The Higher Ministry of Nature. 4. New England Puritan Literature: Michael Wigglesworth. 5. Lutheranism. 6. London: Civic and Social. 7. The Bampton Lecture on Methodism.

The London, under the editorship of Rev. Dr. Rigg, sustains well a comparison with the other British Quarterlies. It is modeled after the standing pattern, in style, size, and, unfortunately, in the practice of withholding the names of the writers of the Articles. This rule was adopted by the original of the Quarterlies, the Edinburgh, from the fact that the clique of fast young Whigs who started that concern possessed more brains than reputation as yet, and the revelation of the authorship would have destroyed the power of the production. As our conservative friend, Mr. Bull, is still fond of perpetuating an institute long after the reason for its existence has ceased, from the pure respectability, not to say the absurdity, of the thing, this unwise custom seems to be held by all the English Quarterlies with the sacredness of a fetich. The best French and German high periodicals give the names. Even our own old North American, that so long aped its English predecessors, has, in accordance with the spirit of "modern thought," commenced the habit of placing the full name of the writer at the bottom of each Article, like a signature to a bank-note. The withholding of the names cheats the reader of a pleasure, and the author of his just right. To the reader of a good Article it is a just and honorable enjoyment to know the name and to thank and honor the man by whose labor and talent he has been gratified and benefited. To the author belongs a right to the just reputation accruing from his productions; and last of all should a Quarterly, which remunerates most poorly of all periodicals, cheat the author of his fame as well as of his money. It is, indeed, often the case that an accident is manufactured to enable his name to leak out; or a newspaper paragraphist is

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