1. Negatively. They do not become effectual means of salvation by any power in themselves to answer this end; for we are not to suppose, that they are more than ordinances, by which God works those graces which we receive under them; which it is his prerogative alone to confer. Again, it is farther observed, that this privilege is not derived from the piety or intention of them by whom the sacraments are administered; who, though they are styled _stewards of the mysteries of God_, 1 Cor. iv. 1. as persons to whom the administration thereof is committed; yet they have not the least power to confer that grace which is Christ’s gift and work: Thus the apostle says, _Who then is Paul, or who is Apollos, but ministers by whom ye believed, even as the Lord gave unto every man_, chap. iii. 5.[55] This is contrary to what the Papists maintain, who suppose that the efficacy of the sacraments arises, partly from an internal virtue which there is in them, to confer grace, (which they illustrate by a far-fetched similitude, taken from the virtue which there is in food, to nourish the body, which is nothing to the purpose, since no external act of religion can have a tendency to nourish the soul, without the internal efficacious grace of the Spirit accompanying it;) and partly from the design or intention of the priest that administers them, as they are consecrated and designed, by him, for that end. There is also an absurd notion which is maintained by some Protestants, as well as the Papists, _viz._ that the sacrament of baptism, administered to infants, washes away the guilt of original sin, and gives them a right and title to heaven, so that by virtue thereof they are saved, if they happen to die before they commit actual sin: But this account of the manner in which the sacraments become effectual to salvation, is absurd to the last degree; for it puts a sanctifying and saving virtue into that which is no more than an outward and ordinary means of grace. And as to what respects the efficacy of the sacraments, arising from the intention of him that administers them; that is, to lay the whole stress of our salvation on the secret design of men, in whose power it is supposed to be, to render or prevent these ordinances from being means of grace; which is in the highest degree derogatory to the glory of God.