baptized persons are not regenerate at all, and receive no benefit
and wise, as any divines who ever held baptismal regeneration. It is sufficient to say that Archbishops Cranmer, Whitgift, Usher, and Leighton, Bishops Latimer, Ridley, Jewell, Davenant, Carleten, Hopkins, and Robert Abbott, have left distinct evidence that they did not consider the grace of spiritual regeneration to be necessarily and invariably tied to baptism. After all, in questions like these we must call no man Master. It matters little what man says. What saith the Scripture?
17. But does not this view of regeneration, according to which many baptized persons are not regenerate at all, and receive no benefit whatever from their baptism, do great dishonour to one of Christ's sacraments, and tend to bring it into contempt?
Not at all. The truth is exactly the other way. To say that infant baptism confers grace mechanically, as a chemical solution produces an effect on a photographic plate, and that if water and certain words are used by a thoughtless, careless clergyman over the child of thoughtless, ignorant parents, the child is at once born again,-to say, furthermore, that an immense spiritual effect is produced by baptism when no effect whatever can be seen, -- all this, to many thinking persons, seems calculated to degrade baptism! It tends to make observers suppose that baptism is useless, or that regeneration means nothing at all. He that would do honour to baptism should maintain that it is a high and holy ordinance, which, like every ordinance appointed by Christ, ought not to be touched without solemn reverence; and that no blessing can be expected unless it is used with heart, and knowledge, and faith, and prayer, and followed by godly training of the child baptized. Above all, he should maintain that when baptism does good, the good will be seen in the life and ways of the baptized. Those who do not feel satisfied about this matter will do well to study attentively the strong language which God uses about His own ordinances, when used formally and carelessly, in the prophet Isaiah (Isa.1:11-12).
What did the prophet mean when he wrote these words: "To what purpose is the multitude of your sacrifices unto Me? saith the Lord. -- I delight not in the blood of bullocks or of lambs"? He evidently meant that God's own ordinances may be made perfectly useless by man's misuse of them.