586 APPENDIX TO PART III

be baptized, and go through the ceremony decorously, would the Grace of Christ be given here? If not, what is the exact difference in the sight of God between a man’s hearing a service without understanding it, or without attending to it? and would not God be quite as likely to give His Grace at the prayer of a Heathen who listened to the service which he did not understand, as of the respectable English Sponsor who understood the service to which he did not listen? Again, if people are forced, against their wills, to ask God in a set form of words for something which they do not care whether He gives them or not-perhaps even without believing that God hears them or that He exists-will God assuredly give it them?

Are not people usually forced to baptize their children, because everybody would be shocked if they did not? Would they not sometimes in their own hearts be quite as glad to give the child a name at home, and save the fees? When they do baptize their children, do they know exactly what they are to expect, or care for anything that God is to give them? Is God then likely to give them anything for lying in public, and saying that they renounce the Devil, when they are his sworn servants, and that they “steadfastly believe” what they totally deny.

We have no record in Scripture of an hypocritical or formal prayer offered to Christ. But we find one prayer refused, when they who offered it knew not what they asked; and we are told what is to be the reward of them who “for a pretence make long prayers.” Greater Damnation!¹

§ 23. It may be asked, on the other side, how we are to define the exact measure of Faith which will make Baptism Efficacious.

But it is not for us to define exactly the number of tears with which a father ought to ask for his child’s salvation, or of prayers which Christ may require before answering, or of knocks which must be repeated before He opens.² But we know that He will open at last, and that a Faithful Parent praying for the regeneration of his child, is as likely to be accepted as if he prayed for his own. Is the Generation of the Upright not Blessed, in spite alike of the parent’s prayers and of God’s promise? Is it objected that in thus supposing the efficacy of Baptism dependent on the Parents’ or Sponsors’ faith, I suppose the child will be punished for the Parents’ want of faith? Well, if a father diligently taught his child to cheat at cards, and the child finally shot himself over the card-table, you would probably have some doubts of his salvation, and might admit that some drops of his blood were to be required of his father’s hand. But if the father only mean the lighter sin of lying to Christ, and mocking God in a polite manner at the Baptismal font, for this sin you think it rash to say that the child may suffer, and the parent be made responsible for the suffering.

§ 24. Well, but you still think the salvation of a child too great a boon to be granted to a Parent’s prayer. Be it so. High or Low Churchmen, you will at least grant this much, that Christ is as ready now to receive and to bless your children, as even when He stood “by the father side of

¹ [Matthew xxiii. 14.]

² [Matthew vii. 7; Psalms cxii. 2.]

[Version 0.04: March 2008]