The Mosaic law was a written code, consisting of many precepts, intended for the Israelites alone, with a promise of [temporal] life to such as should keep them, and a curse on such as should be disobedient; to the end that they being led thereby to an acknowledgment of the depravity of mankind, and consequently of their own, might have recourse to the righteousness of the promised Saviour, and that they, and in process of time all other nations, might be led, under the Gospel, from the weak and servile rudiments of this elementary institution to the full strength of the new creature and a manly liberty worthy the sons of God.

The Gospel is the new dispensation of the covenant of grace, far more excellent and perfect than the Law, announced first obscurely by Moses and the Prophets, afterwards in the clearest terms by Christ himself and his Apostles and Evangelists, written since by the Holy Spirit in the hearts of believers, and ordained to continue even to the end of the world, containing a promise of eternal life to all in all nations who shall believe in Christ when revealed to them, and a threat of eternal death to such as shall not believe. On the introduction of the Gospel or new covenant through faith in Christ, the whole of the preceding covenant,-in other words, the entire Mosaic law,--was abolished. . . . We are therefore absolved from subjection to the Decalogue as fully as to the rest of the Law.

...

This last position he proves with great copiousness and force of argument. But he subjoins :

It appears therefore, as well from the evidence of Scripture as from the arguments above adduced, that the whole of the Mosaic law is abolished by the Gospel. It is to be observed however that the sum and essence of the Law is not hereby abrogated, its purpose being attained in that love of God and our neighbour which is born of the Spirit through faith. It was with justice therefore that Christ asserted the permanence of the Law. Matt. 17; Rom. iii. 31, viii. 4.,

V.

The sacraments,* or outward signs of the sealing of

*It is rather remarkable that Milton should have retained this term, which is only to be found in the Fathers. It was the application to Christianity of the Roman sacramentum, or military oath, and therefore properly belongs only to baptism. This view of it is given in our Baptismal Service.

the covenant, come next under consideration. These under the Law, he says, were two-Circumcision and the Passover; under the Gospel they are two also-Baptism and the Lord's Supper :

Baptism is that rite wherein the bodies of believers who engage themselves to pureness of life are immersed in running water, to signify their regeneration by the Holy Spirit and their union with Christ in his death, burial, and resurrection.

Hence it follows that infants are not to be baptized, inasmuch as they are incompetent to receive instruction or to believe, or to enter into a covenant, or to promise or answer for themselves, or even to hear the word. For how can infants, who understand not the word, be purified thereby, any more than adults can receive edification by hearing an unknown language? For it is not the outward baptism, which purifies only the filth of the flesh, that saves us, but "the answer of a good conscience," as Peter testifies; of which infants are incapable. Besides, baptism is not merely a covenant containing a certain stipulation on one side, with a corresponding engagement on the other, which in the case of an infant is impossible, but it is also a vow, and as such can neither be pronounced by infants nor required of them.

He then, in his wonted manner, discusses and refutes the "futile arguments," as he terms them, of those who maintain the contrary opinion. In this he had an easy task, for few will venture to deny that infant baptism rests entirely on the authority and practice of the Church.

We have seen that Milton holds immersion, and even that in running water, to be essential to baptism. The passages (Mark vii. 4, Luke xi. 38) quoted to prove that to dip and to sprinkle mean the same thing, do not so, he says, by any means, " since in washing we do not sprinkle the hands, but immerse them."* Observing

* Yet surely the jailor at Philippi and his family could hardly have been baptized in a running stream, or indeed, we may almost say, by immersion at all.

that the Apostles and many others seem to have rested in the baptism of John, he proceeds to say :

According to which analogy I should be inclined to conclude that those persons who have been baptized while yet infants, and perhaps in other respects irregularly, have no need of second baptism when arrived at maturity.* Indeed I should be disposed to consider baptism itself as necessary for proselytes only, and not for those born in the Church, had not the Apostle taught that baptism is not merely an initiatory rite, but a figurative representation of our death, burial, and resurrection with Christ.†

The Lord's Supper is [he says] a solemnity in which the death of Christ is commemorated by the breaking of bread and pouring out of wine, both of which elements are tasted by each individual communicant, and the benefits of his death thereby sealed to believers.

Among the passages of Scripture adduced by Milton on this subject we find a part of the sixth chapter of the Gospel of St. John, but he acknowledges that it does not exclusively relate to the Lord's Supper, but to the participation by faith of any of the benefits of Christ's incarnation. He adds more correctly-" That living bread which Christ calls his flesh, and that blood which is drink indeed, can be nothing but the doctrine of Christ's having become man to shed his blood for us." In fact, the whole and sole object of that Gospel,—in which we rarely meet with moral precepts,-seems to have been to prove that Christ was the Logos who had taken flesh. The bread, then, which came down from heaven was the Logos, and the eating of it was, the believing in the

* This was evidently Milton's own case. It would seem that he had not adopted these new views respecting baptism until after the birth of his children, for they must have been christened in the usual manner.

+ This is but feeble reasoning, for no doctrine or practice should ever be founded on figurative language. Still we can not see any valid objection to infant-baptism when properly understood as a solemn rite of admission into the Christian Church.

incarnation. It does not appear that there was, or well could be, any allusion to the Lord's Supper, which, according to this Gospel, was not instituted till a year afterwards, and of the institution of which it gives no account.

Consubstantiation, and above all the papistical doctrine of transubstantiation or rather anthropophagy, for it deserves no better name—are irreconcilable not only with reason and common sense and the habits of mankind, but with the testimony of Scripture, with the nature and end of a sacrament, with the analogy of baptism, with the ordinary forms of language, with the human nature of Christ, and finally with the state of glory in which he is to remain till the day of judgement.

As great stress is laid by the advocates for that monstrous doctrine on the words "this is my body," he quotes numerous passages from Scripture where a thing is said. to be what it represents. Such are "It (i. e. the lamb) is the Lord's passover," Exod. xii. 11; "Is not this (i. e. the water) the blood of the men that went in jeopardy of their lives ?" 2 Sam. xxiii. 17; "That rock was Christ," 1 Cor. x. 4; "The seven kine are seven years," Gen. xli. 27; "The seven heads are seven mountains," Rev. xvii. 9 ; "The ten horns are ten kings," ib. 12. In fact there is hardly a language on the face of the earth that does not employ this most simple figure. Do not we ourselves say in looking at a portrait, That is such-a-one ? Even in the plays of little children we may observe the frequent use of this metaphor.* Yet we see what a structure of priestly domination Rome has reared on it!

Sacraments, in the opinion of Milton, are not abso

*"This shoe," says Launce, "is my father . . . this shoe is my mother. . . this staff is my sister . . . this hat is Nan, our maid; I am the dog," etc.-Two Gent. of Verona, ii. 3. We trust we shall not be accused of levity in quoting this passage; our object is to show the universality and familiarity of this mode of speech.

lutely indispensable, for many have been saved without participating in them; and the seal does not constitute the covenant, but is only an evidence of it. "Assuredly," says he, "if a sacrament be nothing more than what it is defined, a seal or visible representation of God's benefits to us, he cannot be wrong who reposes the same faith in God's promises without as with this confirmation, in cases where it is not possible for him to receive it duly and conveniently; especially as so many opportunities are open to him through life of evincing his gratitude to God and commemorating the death of Christ, though not in the precise mode and form which God had instituted."*

As it is nowhere said in Scripture that the Lord's Supper was administered by an appointed minister, Milton knows "no reason why ministers refuse to permit the celebration of it except when they themselves are allowed to administer it." To the argument from the example of Christ he replies that it is not said that he gave it to each person individually, and besides he was acting in the character of an institutor, not of a minister. To that from 1 Cor. iv. 1, where St. Paul seems to speak of himself and others as "ministers and stewards of the mysteries of God," he replies by showing that the mysteries in question were doctrines and not sacraments. From the analogy of the passover he concludes "that the master of a family, or any one appointed by him, is at liberty to celebrate the Lord's Supper from house to house, as was done in the dispensation of the passover; if indeed. we are to suppose that any distribution of the elements by an individual officiator was then or is now requisite.'

The Mass of the Papists differs from the Lord's Supper in several respects. In the first place, the one is an ordinance of our Lord,

* Here again Milton had his own case in view.