If Calvin neither understands the nature of Faith, nor of Justification, we shall not wonder when we find that no more is he credited with comprehending Regeneration, ‘You have not understood true Regeneration, nor the Celestial Kingdom, whereof Faith is the gate. Regeneration, I maintain, comes through baptism; you say that Christ thought nothing of the water. But is it not written that we are born anew by water? and is it not of water that Paul speaks when he designates baptism the Laver of Regeneration, saying, “We are cleansed from sin by washing with water?” Men, you say, are regenerate when they are enlightened; you must therefore concede that they who are baptized in their infancy, being without understanding and so unenlightened, cannot be regenerated. Yet do you contend that they are properly baptized. Dissevering regeneration from baptism you make baptism a sign of adoption; but you deceive yourself in this, the Scriptures declaring that adoption is effected when to the believer is given the spirit of the divine Sonship--πνεύμα Ὑωοθεσίος. On your own showing, then, infants, being unregenerate, can enter the Kingdom of Heaven neither by faith nor by hope; and thou, thief and robber--_tu Fur et Latro_(!)--keepest them from the gate. As a prelude to Baptism Peter required repentance. Let your infants repent, then; and do you yourself repent and come to baptism, having true faith in Jesus Christ--_pœniteat te igitur, et vere Jesu Christi fide ad baptismum accede_--to the end that you may receive the gift of the Holy Spirit promised therein. But you satisfy yourself with illusions, and say that the infants who die [unbaptized?] were predestined, impudently misusing sacred speech as is your wont; for in the Scriptures predestination is not spoken of save in connection with belief and believers. God, I say, sees no one justified from eternity unless he believes.’ Let us think of Calvin, spiritual dictator to one half of reformed Christendom, schooled in this style by the poor body-curer of Vienne! called thief and robber to his face, and all the more irate with his teacher from feeling, as we fancy he must have felt, that he had not always the best of the argument. Servetus’s dialectic is at least a match for his own. But our restorer of Christianity has not yet done with his pædo-baptism: the subject is continued in the next letter, which closes with a prayer in the very finest spirit of piety, but to Calvin may possibly have seemed profane, he having made up his mind that Servetus was not only without religion himself, but bent on effacing religion from the heart of man. Here is the prayer:-- ‘O thou, most merciful Jesus, who with such signs of love and blessing didst take the little ones into thine arms, bless them now and ever, and with Thy guiding hand so lead them that in faith they may become partakers of Thy Heavenly Kingdom. Amen!’