The first thing we have to notice is, that in the Prayer Book of the Reformed Church of England, which was so largely purified of Romish superstitions and tradition in the reign of the youthful King, Edward VI., one sad trace of Romish tradition was allowed to remain. We refer to the very evil and unscriptural doctrine of Baptismal Regeneration whereby an infant, baptized by a priest, is falsely claimed to be made a member of Christ, the child of God, an inheritor of the Kingdom of Heaven." This was pure Romanism, and utterly opposed to the teaching of Scripture.
This delusion, Satan taking advantage of it to prepare the way for worse things to follow, reminds us of the dykes of Holland. How carefully they are guarded. Any tiny trickle seen to be filtering its way through the dyke is repaired with the greatest promptitude and thoroughness. Were the trickle neglected, unseen it would grow stronger and stronger, until the wild waves of the ocean would sweep away all barriers, flooding whole provinces of that wonderful little country, so largely reclaimed from the sea.
This little trickle of evil doctrine has not to this day been eliminated from the Prayer Book, and alas! is followed by a veritable flood of evil Romish doctrines; in short, undoing the work of the glorious Reformation, as we shall now see.
Many of the clergy seized upon this Romish doctrine of Baptismal Regeneration as giving them power over a credulous laity, akin to that which was acquired by the Romish priests. Multitudes have been lulled into a false peace by it, -a peace as cruel as it is false, leading souls down to perdition. Even in the Old Testament there is the warning against the priest dealing falsely, saying, "Peace, peace: when there is no peace " (Jer. 8:1111For they have healed the hurt of the daughter of my people slightly, saying, Peace, peace; when there is no peace. (Jeremiah 8:11)).
Once the power, we have described, was tasted, it created the craving for more. Political and military ambition have wrought much evil in the world, but religious ambition is worse than all, so much so, that Gibbon, the author of The Rise and Fall of the Roman Empire, declared that the history of the Church was the annals of hell. When one reads the disgraceful history of the Church in the dark Middle Ages, of ambitious, worldly popes, some leading openly dissolute lives, one wonders that Christianity survived at all. One rises from the study of Church history at that time with the profound conviction that Christianity is heaven-born, that it is divine in its origin, and that, in our Lord's own prophetic words, " The gates of hell [Greek,, Hades] shall not prevail against it " (Matt. 16:1818And I say also unto thee, That thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will build my church; and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it. (Matthew 16:18)). But for this the professing Church must have perished in its own corruption.