FOUNDATIONS OF THE ANGLICAN CHURCH

ON THE 39 ARTICLES

 

CHAPTER TWENTY SEVEN

Of Baptism.

 

Baptism is not only a sign of profession, and mark of difference, whereby Christian men are discerned from others that be not christened, but it is also a sign of Regeneration or nee birth, whereby, as by an instrument, they that receive Baptism rightly are grafted into the Church; the promises of forgiveness of sin, and of our adoption to be the sons of God by the Holy Ghost, are visibly signed and sealed; Faith is confirmed, and Grace increased by virtue of prayer unto God. The Baptism of young Children is in any wise to be retained in the Church, as most agreeable with the institution of Christ.

 

Again, if there is not Confirmation as a Sacrament for the fathers and mothers to cultivate that tree of life, Baptism of children is unworthy of Christ. Baptism is a Confession of Faith for grown people, and with it comes the Doctrine of the Kingdom of God, by adult people understood in all the lines. A child cannot be baptized but under the Sacramental duty of the fathers to water its soul in the name of the Power given from God to Man as procreator, working hand by hand with God himself, through His Church, for the Formation of men and women as a sons of God.

Baptism operates all the attributes given in the Article on grown people alone. Children baptized left to their own will live a dead faith. Faith will be dead in them. A seed sleeping in the soil.

To pretend, as this Article does, that by the Baptism of the Children all the graces of the Baptism on an Adult flows from Christ to the child is a denial of the Work of God.

In the beginning God called His sons to Confirm Mankind, to act as Co-creators. It was from this Act of Confirmation of the Faith in God, from Nature taken, that Man was given the power to be a son of God. This is the power from God to the procreators given, which reaches its fullness by the co-creative act of Confirmation, God acting in Both :  Church and fathers.

Confirmation is needed. Jesus said it very clear : “Let’s the children come to me”. This is to say, to the Church, where the Water of Life is taken, for the tree of Faith be grown and its Life may kindle in the soul the freedom of a son of God. A freedom which, it is to be understood, cannot be “most agreeable with the institution of the king”, or any other institution based on the mental slavery of the sons of men.