HKB
mystic water would cleanse the baptized person from all sin and (if he died immediately after the performance of the ceremony) send him pure and spotless into the other world.
Nor is this all. The preventive remedy applied by the Church is legitimated as well as additionally recommended by the following consideration. Where a ceremony answered and was intended to answer several purposes, which purposes at its first institution were blended in respect of the time, but which afterwards, by change of circumstances (as when, for instance, a large and ever-increasing proportion of the members of the Church, or those who at least bore the Christian name, were of Christian parents), were necessarily dis-united--then either the Church has no power or authority delegated to her (which is shifting the ground of controversy)--or she must be authorized to choose and determine, to which of the several purposes the ceremony should be attached.--Now one of the purposes of Baptism was--the making it publicly manifest, first, what individuals were to be regarded by the world (Phil. ii. 15.) as belonging to the visible communion of Christians: inasmuch as by their demeanour and apparent condition, the general estimation of the city set on a hill and not to be hid (Matth. v. 14.) could not but be affected--the city that even in the midst of a crooked and perverse nation was bound not only to give no cause, but by all innocent means to prevent every occasion, of rebuke. Secondly, to mark out, for the Church itself, those that were entitled to that especial dearness, that watchful and disciplinary love and loving-kindness, which over and above the affections and duties of philanthropy and universal charity, Christ himself had enjoined, and with an emphasis and in a form significant of its great and especial importance,--A New Commandment I give unto you, that ye love one another. By a charity wide as sunshine, and comprehending the whole human race, the body of Christians was to be placed in contrast with the proverbial misanthropy and bigotry of the Jewish Church and people: while yet they were to be distinguished and known to all men, by the peculiar love and affection displayed by them towards the members of their own community; thus exhibiting the intensity of sectarian attachment, yet by the no less notorious and exemplary practice of the duties of universal benevolence, secured from the charge so commonly brought against it, of being narrow and exclusive. "How kind these Christians are to the poor and afflicted, without distinction of religion or country; but how they love each other!"