The-papacy-its-history-dogmas-genius-and-prospects-wylie

IMMACULATE CONCEPTION OF MARY. 283not SO much an oiTor on the function of thebaptismal rite,as an error on the yet more fundamental point of man\sstate. They cannot realize man as fallen, and thereforethey cannot realize him as regenerated.All the regenerationhe needs is not the creating of him anew, but the clotliinnof him anew,—the impartation of those superadded giftswhich he has lost ;and this, they believe, the sprinkling of alittle water by the hands of a priest can effect. Baptism,then, restores man to the state in which he existed beforethe Fall.By baptism, the Church of Rome holds, originalsin is taken away, and sanctifying grace, of which the Falldenuded man, is restored. Every man who is baptized, accordingto this doctrine, begins life with the same advantageswith which Adam began it,—he begins it in a state ofspotless and perfect innocence. At this early stage, then,even that of the Fall, do the Popish and Protestant theologiesdiverge,—diverge never more to meet. The one flowsbackward into the dead sea of Paganism,—the other expandsmto the living ocean of Christianity.In the course of the debates in the Council of Trent, amomentous question was raised touching the conception ofthe Virgin. If, as the council had decreed, Adam hadtransmitted his sin to all his posterity, did it not follow thatthe Virgin Mary was born in sin ? It is well known thatsince the twelfth century at least the Church of Rome hasleaned to the doctrine of the " immaculate conception," accordingto which the humanity of the Virgin is as untaintedby sin, and as holy, as is the humanity of the Saviour.Conflictingparties have always existed within the Church onthis subject. Many and furious have been the wars theyhave waged with one another. The Franciscans have violentlymaintained the immaculate conception, and the Dominicanshave as violently denied it. The most delicatemanagement and the most skilful manoeuvring of the Popehave sometimes been unable to maintain the peace betweenthese hostile parties, or to avert from the Church the flagrantscandal of open schism.In the seventeenth century,