[20] When the invitation is received, “Arise, and be baptised, and wash away thy sins, calling on the name of the Lord,” (Acts xxii. 16,)—our church has guided us at once to say, it is the mystical, that is, the significant, washing away of sins, that is then accomplished; but so signifying the true, that a lively recollective enjoyment of it is excited in the mind. When we are called to obtain the true remission of sins, it is thus,—“Repent,” (there is the spiritual operation,) “and be baptized, every one of you, in the name of Jesus Christ,” (there is the outward sign) “for the remission of sins;” or, without any notice of the sign at all, “Repent, and be converted, that your sins may be blotted out.” But repentance, and faith, and conversion, are the fruits of regeneration. Baptism was no more intended to impart the spiritual cleansing from sin, than was the offering of the blood of bullocks and goats; and yet the people are spoken of as purged by that blood, and remission of sins as received by it. It was only a mystical ceremony.—Circumcision was the same: the thing itself was mystical: And Baptism is its counterpart; and both of them are significant of the remission of sins, “the putting off the body of the sins of the flesh,” a death unto sin, and a new birth unto righteousness in Christ Jesus, effected by the Holy Spirit of God implanting the seed of the Word of Christ in the soul and vivifying it; before even it is proper that baptism should be administered.
[22a] 1 John v. 1. Whosoever believeth that Jesus is the Christ is born of God.
[22b] “Except a man be born of water and of the Holy Ghost, he cannot enter the kingdom of God.” Of the Holy Ghost comes the spiritual birth, and thereby the entrance into the spiritual kingdom or church of God: if the water of baptism be meant, then also figurative birth, and concurrently the visible kingdom or church to which baptism is the only door: a proper parallelism of idea being sustained. But probably, as the expression “baptize with the Holy Ghost and with fire,” means, baptize with the Holy Ghost as a spirit of burning, so “born of water and of the Holy Ghost” means, “born of the Holy Ghost as a Spirit of washing,” the real “washing of regeneration.” This last expression is most frequently understood, and by Archbishop Whitgift and Bishop Hopkins amongst others, to refer to the sacramental washing, not the spiritual. But why the force of the term regeneration should not preponderate over that of washing, I cannot see. So “the washing of water by the Word,” wherewith Christ sanctifies and cleanses His church, is the ablution, like as of water, that is by the Word, when the Holy Ghost uses that Word in the hearts of men.
[23a] Matt. iii. 11.
[23b] 1 Cor. xii. 13.
[23c] Rom. vi. 3, 4, 6, 13.
[24a] 1 Pet. iii. 21.
[24b] Col. ii. 11, 12, 13.
[24c] James i. 18
[25a] 1 Pet. i. 23, 25.