Phases of Faith | Page 6

well rid" of the Athanasian Creed; which seemed
a mere offensive blurting out of intellectual difficulties. I had, however,
no doubts, even of a passing kind, for years to come, concerning the
substantial truth and certainty of the ecclesiastical Trinity.
When the period arrived for taking my Bachelors degree, it was
requisite again to sign the 39 Articles, and I now found myself
embarrassed by the question of Infant Baptism. One of the articles
contains the following words, "The baptism of young children is in any
wise to be retained, as most agreeable to the institution of Christ." I was
unable to conceal from myself that I did not believe this sentence; and I
was on the point of refusing to take my degree. I overcame my scruples
by considering, 1. That concerning this doctrine I had no active
_dis_-belief, on which I would take any practical step, as I felt myself
too young to make any counterdeclaration: 2. That it had no possible
practical meaning to me, since I could not be called on to baptize, nor
to give a child for baptism. Thus I persuaded myself. Yet I had not an
easy conscience, nor can I now defend my compromise; for I believe
that my repugnance to Infant Baptism was really intense, and my
conviction that it is unapostolic as strong then as now. The topic of my
"youth" was irrelevant; for, if I was not too young to subscribe, I was
not too young to refuse subscription. The argument that the article was
"unpractical" to me, goes to prove, that if I were ordered by a despot to
qualify myself for a place in the Church by solemnly renouncing the
first book of Euclid as false, I might do so without any loss of moral
dignity. Altogether, this humiliating affair showed me what a trap for
the conscience these subscriptions are: how comfortably they are

passed while the intellect is torpid or immature, or where the
conscience is callous, but how they undermine truthfulness in the active
thinker, and torture the sensitiveness of the tenderminded. As long as
they are maintained, in Church or University, these institutions exert a
positive influence to deprave or eject those who ought to be their most
useful and honoured members.
It was already breaking upon me, that I could not fulfil the dreams of
my boyhood as a minister in the Church of England. For, supposing
that with increased knowledge I might arrive at the conclusion that
Infant Baptism was a fore-arranged "development,"--not indeed
practised in the first generation, but expedient, justifiable, and intended
for the _second_, and probably then sanctioned by one still living
apostle,--even so, I foresaw the still greater difficulty of Baptismal
Regeneration behind. For any one to avow that Regeneration took place
in Baptism, seemed to me little short of a confession that he had never
himself experienced what Regeneration is. If I could then have been
convinced that the apostles taught no other regeneration, I almost think
that even their authority would have snapt under the strain: but this is
idle theory; for it was as clear as daylight to me that they held a totally
different doctrine, and that the High Church and Popish fancy is a
superstitious perversion, based upon carnal inability to understand a
strong spiritual metaphor. On the other hand, my brother's arguments
that the Baptismal Service of the Church taught "spiritual regeneration"
during the ordinance, were short, simple, and overwhelming. To
imagine a twofold "spiritual regeneration" was evidently a hypothesis to
serve a turn, nor in any of the Church formulas was such an idea
broached. Nor could I hope for relief by searching through the
Homilies or by drawing deductions from the Articles: for if I there
elicited a truer doctrine, it would never show the Baptismal Service not
to teach the Popish tenet; it would merely prove the Church-system to
contain contradictions, and not to deserve that absolute declaration of
its truth, which is demanded of Church ministers. With little hope of
advantage, I yet felt it a duty to consult many of the Evangelical
clergymen whom I knew, and to ask how they reconciled the Baptismal
Service to their consciences. I found (if I remember) three separate
theories among them,--all evidently mere shifts invented to avoid the
disagreeable necessity of resigning their functions. Not one of these

good people seemed to have the most remote idea that it was their duty
to investigate the meaning of the formulary with the same unbiassed
simplicity as if it belonged to the Gallican Church. They did not seek to
know what it was written to mean, nor what sense it must carry to
every simpleminded hearer; but they solely asked, how they could
manage to assign to it a sense not wholly irreconcilable