SERMON XV.

CREEDS.

TRINITY SUNDAY.

ACTS viii. 36, 37.

"The eunuch said, See, here is water; what doth hinder me to be baptized? And Philip said, If thou believest with all thine heart, thou mayest. And he answered and said, I believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God."

FROM the ease with which Baptism is obtained in a Christian country, we are very apt to overlook the great privileges of which it is the sign and seal. It has been administered to us all in infancy; and the public profession of faith which is previously required was necessarily made, not by ourselves, but by Christian friends, who undertook, under a solemn responsibility, that as we grew in years we should be instructed in the sacred obligations then bound upon our consciences. The benefits which we must expect from Baptism depend upon our willing, hearty confirmation of the covenant thus made between us

and our heavenly Father; and as an important means for inclining our will to the acceptance of the mercy which he freely offers us, we ought often to meditate on the glorious privileges, to which as Christians we become heirs, and on the conditions, to the performance of which those privileges are promised. The blessings of forgiveness of sins, of reconciliation to God, of the promised Spirit to help our infirmities and to enable us to serve God acceptably, are greater than the heart can imagine or the tongue express. No one is capable of forming any estimate of their value, but he who has in some measure partaken of them. To the thoughtless, irreligious children of this world they are foolishness, they have never deeply felt their need of them, they cannot therefore comprehend how they are more desirable than the temporal pleasures and possessions, on which their affections have been fixed from infancy. But these privileges, however undervalued by multitudes, are too vast to be hoped for through a mere outward acknowledgment that "Jesus Christ is the Son of God." We must, it is true, like the treasurer of queen Candace, be always ready and willing to profess with our mouth that we believe on him; that confession, however, is accepted by the minister of God as a sufficient ground for admission into the Church, only upon the persuasion that the confession of the lips is an index to the belief of the heart. God, who searcheth the heart, knows assuredly whether it be so or not and if the truth and sincerity of the pro

fession bear his piercing examination, assuredly he ratifies the work of his minister: "Whatsoever we bind or loose on earth, is bound or loosed in heaven 1." But still, it must never be forgotten, that the belief of the heart alone entitles us to the privileges of which Baptism is the seal-to be children of God, members of Christ, and inheritors of the kingdom of heaven. By the heart is meant the will and the affections; and it is the distinguishing character of Christian faith, that it engages the affections and inclines the will. The believer that Jesus is the Son of God not merely acknowledges this to be a true fact, but rejoices in this truth, and willingly and cheerfully receives it as the ground, on which he builds all his hopes of peace and comfort here and of happiness hereafter. He believes that Jesus Christ is the Son of God; therefore, that he is able to save to the uttermost all that come to God by him: he believes that this divine Personage became Man, and suffered for our sins, the just for the unjust, that he might open to us an access to his Father, might unclose the gates of mercy, which sin had barred against us: he is conscious of his own need of this almighty Saviour, appropriates to himself the blessings thus richly provided for all who accept them, and takes upon himself the yoke of Christ, as his only Lord and Master, who has redeemed him body and soul, and to whose love and service he dedicates

1 Matt. xviii. 18.

himself body and soul through the ages of eternity. Such is the import of the good confession, "I believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God," when it flows from a believing heart. This is the belief which is imputed for righteousness; this is the confession which is made unto salvation 1.

Instead

Happy would it have been for the Church of Christ, if no farther confession of faith, no additional creed had been found necessary. This confession involves within itself all essential truths. The Holy Scriptures are but an expansion of them, a fuller detail of the doctrines and duties, of which Jesus Christ, the Son of God and the Son of Man, is the root. But men of curious and presumptuous minds have ever been fond of prying into mysteries, which God has not pleased to make plain to us. of using those weighty truths, which are revealed, for their own edification and the profit of others, they have found employment for their ingenuity less irksome to corrupt nature than repentance and amendment, and active employment in good works. They have speculated on the nature of God, and on the wonderful union of God and Man in Christ, and endeavoured to make clear to man's reason subjects infinitely beyond the reach of our capacities. The consequence has been such as might easily be foretold. They have fallen into dangerous errors and heresies, have corrupted the simplicity of the Bible,

Rom. x. 10.

and have imposed on the Catholic Church the necessity of drawing out Creeds, much longer and more subtle than the original Creed in my text, in order to guard her sons from the snares thus spread for them. This is the origin of creeds-in particular of those three creeds, which the Church of England acknowledges, and which are commonly called the Apostles' Creed, the Nicene Creed, and the Creed of St. Athanasius. Each of them is a summary of the belief of the Church of Christ, drawn from the Bible, and worded in such a way as to confute and condemn certain wrong opinions which mischievous men were spreading in the Church, more than a thousand years ago. Some of these errors have long slept in deserved oblivion with the misguided inventors of them; others are still fermenting among us. It is highly useful that we should possess such formularies, in which the grand truths of our faith are collected, in order that we may refer to them, whenever we are required to give an account of what we believe, or when seducers endeavour to wrest the holy Scripture to their own notions. It is highly

useful that we should know what has been the faith of holy men from the days of the Apostles to the present hour; that we should be able to say, These are the truths in which the Church of Christ has always agreed; in reliance on which all its orthodox members have lived in peace and died in hope; this is the faith in which I will live and die. In this view Creeds are beneficial to preserve the orthodox