washed in the blood of Christ. The outward washing or sprinkling doth represent the sprinkling and washing which is wrought within us; the water doth signify the Blood of Christ. If we were nothing else but soul, He would give us His grace barely and alone, without joining it to any creature, as He doth to His Angels: but seeing our spirit is drowned in our body, and our flesh doth make our understanding dull, therefore we receive His grace by sensible things. St. Chrysostom

saith, "I am otherwise affected, than is he who believeth not. When he heareth of the water of Baptism, he thinketh it is nothing else but water: but I see (not the creature only, which mine eyes do see, but also) the cleansing of my soul by the Holy Ghost. He thinketh that my body only is washed: I believe that my soul is thereby made pure and holy and withal I consider Christ's burial, his resurrection, our sanctification, righteousness, redemption, adoption, our inheritance, the kingdom of heaven, and the fulness of the Spirit'." For I judge not of the things

:

1 Aliter ego, et aliter incredulus disponitur. Ille cum, &c. Hom. vii. in 1 Cor.

I see by my bodily eyes, but by the eyes of my mind.

When one that is unlearned, and cannot read, looketh upon a book, be the book never

so true, never so well written, yet because he knoweth not the letters, and cannot read, he looketh upon it in vain he may turn over all the leaves, and look upon all, and see nothing; but another that can read, and hath judgment to understand, considereth the whole story, the doughty deeds, grave counsels, discreet answers, examples, promises, threatenings, the very drift and meaning of him that wrote it. So do the faithful receive the fruit and comfort by the Sacraments, which the wicked and ungodly neither consider nor receive. Thus do the Sacraments lead us, and instruct us to behold the secret and unknown mercies of God, and to carry ourselves to the obedience of His will. And this is the other cause, why Sacraments were ordained.

Thirdly, they are seals and confirmations of God's promise. St. Paul saith, “ Abraham received the sign of circumcision, as the seal of the righteousness of the faith which he had

when he was uncircumcised"." By these, we stop the mouth of heretics: for if they deny that our Lord Jesus Christ was delivered to death for our sins, and is risen again for our justification; we shew them our Sacraments, that they were ordained to put us in remembrance of Christ, and that by the use of them, we shew the Lord's death till He come. We tell them, these are proofs and signs, that Christ suffered death for us on the cross. As St. Chrysostom saith, "Laying out these mysteries, we stop their mouths"."

What? are they nothing else but bare and naked signs? God forbid. They are the seals of God, heavenly tokens, and signs of the grace, and righteousness, and mercy, given and imputed to us. Circumcision was not a bare sign. "That is not circumcision which is outward in the flesh," saith St. Paul," but the circumcision of the heart." And again, "In Christ ye are circumcised with circumcision made without hands, by putting off the sinful body of the flesh, through the circumcision

Rom. iv. 11. n Chrysost. in Matt. Hom. lxxxiii.

• Rom. ii. 28.

of Christ P." Even so is not Baptism any bare sign. St. Chrysostom saith, "Christ's Baptism is Christ's Passion 9." They are not bare signs; it were blasphemy so to say. The grace of God doth always work with His Sacraments: but we are taught not to seek that grace in the sign, but to assure ourselves by receiving the sign, that it is given us by the thing signified. We are not washed from our sins by the water, we are not fed to eternal life by the bread and wine, but by the precious Blood of our Saviour Christ, that lieth hid in these Sacraments.

St. Bernard saith, "The fashion is to deliver a ring, when seisin and possession of inheritance is given: the ring is a sign of the possession. So that he which hath taken it may say, The ring is nothing, I care not for it; it is the inheritance which I sought for. In like manner, when Christ our Lord drew nigh to His passion, He thought good to give seisin and possession of His grace to His disciples, and that they might

P Coloss. ii. 11.

9 Baptisma ejus, etiam Passio ejus est. Ad Hebr. Hom. xvi.

receive His invisible grace by some visible sign"."

St. Chrysostom saith,

"Plain or bare

water worketh not in us, but when it hath received the grace of the Holy Ghost, it washeth away all our sins'."

So saith St. Ambrose also; "The Holy Ghost cometh down, and halloweth the water." And, "There is the presence of the Trinity'." So saith St. Cyril; "As water, thoroughly heated with fire, burneth as well as the fire: so the waters which wash the body of him that is baptized are changed into divine power, by the working of the Holy Ghost"."

So said Leo, sometime a Bishop of Rome; "Christ hath given like preeminence to the water of Baptism as He gave to His mother. For that power of the Highest, and that

r Datur annulus ad investiendum, &c. Serm. de cœna Domini.

In nobis non simplex aqua operatur: sed cum accepit gratiam Spiritus, abluit omnia peccata. Hom. xxxv. in Johann.

t Spiritus Sanctus descendit, et consecrat aquam. Præsentia Trinitatis adest. Ambr. de Sac. lib. i. cap. 5.

u Quemadmodum viribus ignis aqua, &c. Cyril. in Johan. lib. ii. cap. 42.