His appeal is from bishop to bishop, and from doctor to doctor, according to his own private judgment. We are pained more than we can express at the malicious quibbles which distort words so emphatically plain. We submit that, if Jesus Christ is present in the Eucharist, he must be adored by all but infidels; and, secondly, that, if the bread is his body, as he said it was, it cannot at the same time be bread, since two substances cannot coexist in the same space. All changes of words upon the terms “spiritual and corporal” are only the unfortunate sophistries of
a deceiver or of the deceived. If our ritualistic brethren have any doubt as to the meaning of the bishops, let them go and ask Dr. Smith, or Drs. Lee and Coxe, Potter and McIlvaine. They will give a clear reply, we do believe.
We approach another and most important act of the Council of Episcopal bishops which will certainly render this convention memorable for all time. They have, in the most solemn manner, given their definition of the term “regeneration” which is used in the offices of their church. The Twenty-seventh of the Thirty-nine Articles was probably framed to suit different opinions among the followers of the Reformation of Luther. There baptism is called “a sign of regeneration,” though it is not declared to be the instrument of regeneration, and may be only a mere sign without the substance. But the Office for Baptism in the Prayer-Book is in no way equivocal. There it is distinctly taught that the child baptized is regenerated by the Holy Spirit. According to all the received acceptation of words and the doctrine of formularies from which this office was derived, regeneration means the new birth by which through divine mercy the child, naturally born of Adam, is supernaturally born again of water and the Holy Ghost, receives the new life of grace, and becomes really the child of God. Such are our Lord’s words to Nicodemus, wherein he instructs him concerning baptism: “That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit.”
Ever since the formation of the Episcopal Church the great majority of her members have found the words retained in the baptismal service onerous and out of place. For they do not believe in any such doctrine, since they have adopted the heretical notions of Calvin and Luther concerning
the new birth. Only a few High Churchmen have ever held to baptismal regeneration, yet they have had the language of the Prayer-Book to sustain them in controversy. One of the best and most learned of the Episcopalian ministers, for many years professor in the General Theological Seminary, taught that “regeneration” in the baptismal service, by a special use of terms, meant only a “change of state,” and that the doctrine that baptism was the new birth was utterly untenable in the Episcopal Church, and contrary to the whole spirit of its creed. The united voice of the bishops now comes to declare the same opinion, and to make of the regeneration taught in their offices only such an external change by which the child is promised unto God, and, without any interior operation, is adopted into the visible fold of Christ. We give the language of this most remarkable definition:
DECLARATION OF THE BISHOPS IN COUNCIL, OCTOBER 11, 1871.
“We, the subscribers, Bishops of the Protestant Episcopal Church in the United States, being asked, in order to the quieting of the consciences of sundry members, of the said church, to declare our convictions as to the meaning of the word ‘regenerate’ in the ‘Offices for the Ministration of Baptism for Infants,’ do declare that in our opinion the word ‘regenerate’ is not there so used as to determine that a moral change in the subject of baptism is wrought in the sacrament.”
To this declaration are appended the signatures of forty-eight bishops, all but two, we believe, of the whole of their hierarchy. Now we were somewhat prepared for attempts to wrest the meaning of these very plain words, but not for the flagrant dishonesty of some of the High Church journals. Let us call things by their right names, and speak the truth, if need be, in all sadness. We were not prepared to hear that “the bishops were not asked
nor did they profess to say what regeneration means”; that in saying what it was not, they aimed to give no explanation whatever of the word. We give two short extracts, one from the Churchman, and the other from the Church Weekly, which for candor and sincerity certainly deserve the first premium:
“The object aimed at was ‘the quieting of the consciences of sundry members of the church.’ It was not to give an exhaustive definition of the word. Certain persons claimed that the term might be interpreted to signify a moral change in the subject of baptism. They knew that many would so understand it. And so the bishops, being asked, stated what no sound churchman ever denied, and no well-read theologian and respectable student of the meaning of language ever denied, namely, ‘that the word is not so used’ in that connection. The thing asked for was granted. The object aimed at was accomplished, and those who represented the unquiet consciences have acknowledged their grateful appreciation.