Christ bleeding, agonizing, pouring out His soul unto death as the penalty of man's transgression. And we cannot be admitted into communion with an atoning Christ without coming in for our share of the benefits of His atonement, which are the washing away of past sins, and the renewing grace of the Holy Ghost.1 But the Collect, when it speaks of Baptism, must refer to its administration to infants, this being the usual practice in long Christianized countries like our own, and cases of adult Baptism being in such countries very rare. Do infants, then, receive in Baptism that washing away of sins, and that renewal of their nature, which are the fruits of Christ's death? Unquestionably they receive all the forgiveness and grace which their condition as infants allows of. They have no actual sin to be forgiven. But there is in them the "fault and corruption of nature," attaching to every man "that naturally is engendered of the offspring of Adam," and which goes under the name of original sin. The guilt of original sin is in their Baptism washed away, and a germ of divine grace, corresponding to the germ of natural depravity, is sown in their moral nature, which, if fostered by Christian education, will counteract the evil that is in them as soon as their faculties are developed. And this Baptism does for them, because it is an instrument for applying Christ's death to them, and so bringing them in for a share of its benefits; "We are baptized into the death of thy blessed Son our Saviour Jesus Christ." Then we proceed to follow into after life those who have been as infants admitted by Baptism into communion with a dying Christ, and made partakers of the benefits of His death. So by continual mortify " 1 See Acts xxii. 16; 1 Cor. vi. 11; and Tit. iii. 5. 2 9th Article. ing our corrupt affections, we may be buried with him." "The infection of nature," says our Article,1 "doth remain, yea in them that are regenerated." They carry about with them still the body of sin, that is, the old corrupt nature, with its various actings of lust, pride, temper, sloth, envy, and so forth. This "body of sin,"2 corrupt nature, or old self (all different phrases for the same thing), received sentence of death in our Baptism, when also power to execute the sentence was communicated to us. For the death of Christ, into which we were baptized, struck a death-blow at sin, both in its condemning guilt, and in its power over the soul. But a sentence of death, after it is passed, has to be put in force. A criminal is not executed, because sentence has been passed upon him, nor even because the judge has delivered him to the officer, to be shut up in prison till the day appointed for his execution comes. then, to put the corrupt nature to death, to executioners, nailing it to the cross of Christ. than that, we have to bury it. Christ not only died, but was buried; and His burial is insisted upon as an article of faith, because it was an evidence of His having really died. Now, the best evidence that the body of sin is dead within us is that we are doing our best to bury it. To be buried is to be put away out of sight of men; as to remain unburied is to be under their eyes, infecting by decomposition the air which they breathe. If the old self, the body of sin, is allowed to remain with us unburied, it will breed a moral pestilence, which will infect our own souls and those of others. address ourselves to bury it then, 19th Article. and how? 2 Rom. vi. 6. We have, act as its And more We must By con 3 tinual mortifying our corrupt affections,"" continual"our whole life must be, as it were, one great act of interment, a casting of our "earthly members "2 into a cave of sepulture, and a rolling great stones to the mouth of the cave, as the Israelites did with the bodies of the five kings whom they slew and hanged on trees. The body of sin must be hidden away from God's eyes, from our neighbours' eyes, nay, from our own. When disquieting thoughts of our own guilt arise in our hearts, we must put them away with the thought that Christ died to purchase our pardon, and that in Him we too died, and have paid the penalty of sin. And when the various movements of the corrupt nature make themselves felt in our consciousness, and we are tempted to indulge feelings of pride, or lust, or revenge, we must allow the thought no breathing-room in our hearts, inust overwhelm, crush, stifle it, turning the mind by an effort to something good and holy, or diverting it by active work. As good Bishop Andrewes prays; "Grant me grace to worship the Lord Jesus, for His cross, in crucifying the first motions of the flesh; for His death, in mortifying the flesh; for His burial, in burying evil thoughts by good works."4 Burying the flesh goes beyond mortifying (or killing it); to 1 These words of the Collect should be compared with the admonition to the Sponsors at the end of the Baptismal Service, from which it is probable that they were taken, but in which, it will be observed, that there is no explicit reference to Christ's burial, but only to His death: "Remembering always, that Baptism doth represent unto us our profession; which is, to follow the example of our Saviour Christ, and to be made like unto him; that, as he died, and rose again for us, so should we, who are baptized, die from sin, and rise again unto righteousness; continually mortifying all our evil and corrupt affections, and daily proceeding in all virtue and godliness of living." 2 See Col. iii. 5. 3 See Joshua x. 26, 27. 4 Devotions on the Creed for Sunday, in the “Preces Privata.” mortify is to inflict a death-wound; to bury is to put away out of sight and mind. "And that through the grave, and gate of death, we may pass to our joyful resurrection." The point to be remarked here is that the connecting link between death and resurrection is burial,-"the grave and gate of death." It was so with our Lord. He did not rise from the cross, after He had given up the ghost thereon; He must first pass through the sepulchre, and lie there within death's jurisdiction for two nights. I say, within death's jurisdiction; for the words "gate of death" have no doubt reference to the Eastern custom of administering justice in the city gates. Our Lord could not have risen again without having been first formally consigned by burial to the power of death. And, similarly, while the old self," the body of sin," still is allowed to hang about us, as if we were chained to a corpse, and while we draw our breath in a moral atmosphere tainted by it, we too cannot "attain unto the resurrection of the dead,"" either spiritual or bodily. Sentence of burial, as well as of execution, was passed upon the old self in Baptism, and was symbolized either by hiding the body under the water, or throwing water upon it, just as earth is thrown upon the corpse at a funeral; and this sentence must be executed by the putting away of sin in all its actings, if our Baptism is to take its full and legitimate effect within us, if the force of those words is to be realised within us," Buried with him in baptism; "3 "Therefore we are buried with him by baptism into death," 4__ solemnly consigned to death's power and jurisdiction. 1 Rom. vi. 6. 3 Col. ii. 12. 2 See Philip. iii. 11. VOL. I. 2 A CHAPTER XXXIII. EASTER DAY. Almighty God, who through thine only-begotten Son Jesus Christ hast overcome death, and opened unto us the gate of everlasting life; We humbly beseech thee, that, as by thy special grace preventing us thou dost put into our minds good desires, so by thy continual help we may bring the same to good effect; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Ghost, ever one God, world without end. Amen. Deus, qui hodierna die per Unigenitum tuum eternitatis nobis aditum Devicta morte reserasti: bota nostra quae praeveniendo aspiras, etiam adjuvando prosequere. Per eundem.1-Greg. Sac.-Miss. Sar. THE revision of old prayers, under light thrown by the Church's experience upon her needs, was not a new thing in the time of our Reformers. It had been done long before their days by the editors of the Sacramentaries. Our Easter Collect furnishes an instance of this. The first half of it is found in the Sacramentary of Gelasius. But only the first half. Gregory, thinking probably that more point could be given to the petition of the Collect in connexion with the doctrine of 1 The end, as given by Muratori [Tom. ii. Col. 67], is Per eumdem Dominum nostrum, etc. |