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Law charges Hoadly with Socinianism.

errors is that he does not believe that Jesus was truly and essentially God, as well as perfect man. Socinianism was, in Law's view, closely connected with Deism, or natural religion as opposed to revealed; and, accordingly, against this tendency, which was very prevalent when Law wrote, he directs the whole of the remainder of his treatise. As Law's views on this question will be discussed later on, they need not be dwelt on here. Let us conclude with a passage which shows us what Law's view of the Holy Communion was after he became a mystic. You must consider,' he says, 'the Sacrament purely as an object of your devotion, that is to exercise all your faith, that is to raise, exercise, and inflame every holy ardour of your soul that tends to God. It is an abstract or sum of all the mysteries that have been revealed concerning our Saviour, from the first promise of a "seed of the woman to bruise the serpent's head" to the day of Pentecost. Jacob's ladder, that reached from earth to heaven, and was filled with angels ascending and descending between heaven and earth, is but a small signification between God and man, which this holy Sacrament is the means and instrument of. Whatever names or titles this institution is signified to you by-whether it be called a sacrifice, propitiatory or commemorative-whether it be called an holy oblation, the Eucharist, the Sacrament of the body and blood of Christ, the Sacrament of the Lord's Supper, the heavenly banquet, the food of immortality, or the Holy Communion-all these names are right and good, and there is nothing wrong in them but the striving and contention about them; for they all express something that is true of the Sacrament, and therefore are every one of them, in a good sense, rightly applicable to it; but all of them are far short of expressing the whole nature of the Sacrament, and therefore the help of all of them is wanted.'

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'Christian Regeneration.

(2.) The Grounds and Reasons of Christian Re

generation.'

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As the preceding work gave us Law's sentiments on one of the Sacraments of the Gospel, so the title of this would lead us to expect that he would here give us his sentiments on the other. And we are not disappointed. It might seem at the first glance that Law's mystic views were plainly inconsistent with the doctrines taught in the Church Catechism and the Baptismal Service. If Christ be literally 'the light which lighteth every man that cometh into the world;' if 'all men, as sons of Adam, are by the free grace of God made sons of the second Adam,' and as such have a seed of life in them from Him;' if this seed of a new birth, or light of life, is the general and preventing grace of God,' so that 'all mankind may, in a certain and good sense, be said to be sharers of this regeneration'-and these sentiments are affirmed in various forms over and over again in Law's mystic works, and especially in the treatise now before us-what becomes of the doctrine that children, 'being by nature born in sin and children of wrath, are by baptism made the children of grace'?

An answer to this question will at once be found when it is remembered that Law drew a marked distinction between what he called 'original Christianity' and 'Gospel Christianity.' All are partakers of the new birth, inasmuch as all are partakers of original Christianity-the 'Christianity as old as the creation,' in which Law believed as firmly as Tindal himself, though what he understood by it was as different from the Deist's meaning as light is from darkness. But of the new birth of Gospel Christianity, Law held that Holy Baptism was not only the sign and

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290 Baptism, the Sacrament of the New Birth.

pledge, but actually the vehicle. In his mystic, as in his earlier days, it was still to him the Sacrament of Regeneration. 'Our baptism,' he says in this treatise, 'is to signify our seeking and obtaining a new birth; and our being baptized in, or into, the "name of the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost," tells us in the plainest manner what birth it is that we seek, namely, such a new birth as may make us again what we were at first, a living, real image or offspring of the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. It is owned on all hands that we are baptized into a renovation of some Divine birth that we had lost; and, that we may not be at a loss to know what that Divine birth is, the form in Baptism openly declares to us that it is to regain that first birth of Father, Son, and Holy Ghost in our souls, which at the first made us to be truly and really images of the Holy Trinity in Unity. The form in Baptism is but very imperfectly apprehended till it is understood to have this great meaning in it. Baptism is the appointed Sacrament of this new birth; and how finely, how surprisingly, do our first and our second birth answer to and illustrate one another! At our first birth it is said thus: "Let us make man in our Image, after our own Likeness." When the Divine birth was lost, and man was to receive it again, it is said, "Be thou baptized into the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost," which is saying, "Let the Divine birth be brought forth again in thee," or "Be thou born again such an image of Father, Son, and Holy Ghost as thou wast at first."'

In the following passage he shows still more clearly how he reconciles his doctrine of an universal redemption, or regeneration (for in Law's view these expressions mean the same thing), with the belief which he unquestionably retained in baptismal regeneration.' The mystery,' he

On the Grace of Holy Baptism.

291 says, 'of an inward power, of a salvation hidden in all men, has had just such degrees of obscurity and manifestation as the nature, and birth, and person of the Messiah have had; that is, as the nature and person of Jesus Christ, as an Atonement, Saviour, and Redeemer of mankind, were for several ages of the world only obscurely pointed at and typified by the religion of the Jews, so this end of a new birth, or saving power of Christ hidden in the souls of all men, was through the same ages under the same veil and obscurity. . . . When Jesus Christ came into the world. declaring the necessity of a new birth, to be owned and sought by a Baptism in the name of Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, this was not a new kind or power of salvation, but only an open declaration of the same salvation, that had been till then only typified, and veiled under cértain figures and shadows, as He Himself had been.'

In a word, if Law held clearly that all men had in them a seed of life that is contrary to their corrupt nature, which seed they partake of as heirs of the first grace granted to Adam in the ingrafted Word,' he also held quite as clearly that all Christians are in a higher and further state of regeneration by the grace of Baptism in the name of the Holy Trinity.'1

This short treatise, besides giving us the clearest indication which we possess of Law's views, as a mystic, on the initial Sacrament of the Christian life, is also interesting and important as giving, in a concise form, a very complete statement of Law's mystical sentiments generally. Law himself regarded it as a sufficient exposition of his views ; for he constantly refers his reader to it in his later works,

1 See Works, vol. v. (2) pp. 28, 61, 64, 75, and passim. This treatise being very short, it did not seem necessary to indicate the exact page from which each quotation was made.

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Value Law set on this Book.

and in one passage declares that, if he could afford it, he would have this little book sent gratis into all parts of the kingdom.' As the reader is already familiar with Law's views, there is no need to dwell further on this abstract of them.

1 See Works, vol. vi. p. 46.

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