The Conservative Reformation and Its Theology - Saint Mary ...

earthly fold itself, reared in the valley of peace, which lies along that water
which ripples with something of a heavenly music, is a sure token of a love
which will never fail of its object--a visible pledge that it is not the will of
our Father in heaven that one of these little ones should perish.
The Augsburg Confession, to sum up, affirms, as we have seen, that
there is an absolute necessity that every human being should be born
again. It affirms, moreover, that the work of the Holy Spirit is absolutely
essential to the production of this change. These points we have
endeavored to develop. It affirms or implies, moreover, that Baptism is one
of the ordinary means by which the Holy Spirit works the change, and that
Baptism is the only ordinary means of universal application, that is, the
only means applicable alike to adults and infants.
In this is implied:
1. That the Holy Spirit ordinarily works by means.
2. That the Water and Word of Baptism is one of those means.
3. That the Water and Word of Baptism operates not as the proper
agent, but as the means of that agent.
4. That the Holy Spirit may, and where He will, does work the new
birth in, with, and under the Water and Word of Baptism, so that Baptism,
in its completest sense, is the inseparable complex of Water, Word, and
Spirit, bringing heavenly grace.
5. That this grace is offered whenever Baptism is administered, and is
actually conferred by the Holy Spirit, whenever the individual receiving it
does not present in himself a conscious voluntary barrier to its efficacy.
This barrier, in the case of an individual personally responsible, is unbelief.
In the case of an infant, there is no conscious voluntary barrier, and there is
a divinely wrought receptivity of grace. The objector says, the infant
cannot voluntarily receive the grace, therefore grace is not given. We
reverse the proposition and reply, the infant cannot voluntarily reject grace,
therefore the grace is given. When we speak of a divinely wrought
receptivity of grace, we imply that whatever God offers in the Word or
element bears with the offer the power of being. received.