It is the Apostle's object in this condensed doctrinal statement to emphasize the fact that it was "not by works in righteousness which _we ourselves_ did," but by the work of the Blessed Trinity, that we were placed in a state of salvation. He does not stop to make the qualifications, which, however true and necessary, do not alter this fact. In the case of adults, who are converted to Christianity,--and it is of such that he is thinking,--it is necessary that they should be duly prepared for baptism by repentance and faith. And in the case of all (whether adults, or infants, who live to become responsible for their actions), it is necessary that they should appropriate and use the graces bestowed upon them; in other words, that they should grow in holiness. All this is true; but it does not affect the position. For although man's co-operation is indispensable--for God saves no man against his will--yet without God's assistance man cannot either repent or believe before baptism, nor can he continue in holiness after baptism. This passage expressly denies that we effect our own salvation, or that God effected it in return for our merits. But it gives no encouragement to the belief that we have nothing to do with "working out our own salvation," but have merely to sit still and accept what has been done for us. That "the washing of regeneration," or (as the margin of the R.V. more exactly has it) "the _laver_ of regeneration,"[81] signifies the Christian rite of baptism, ought to be regarded as beyond dispute. This is certainly one of those cases to which Hooker's famous canon of interpretation most thoroughly applies, that "where a literal construction will stand, the farthest from the letter is commonly the worst" (_Eccl. Pol._, v. lix. 2). This Hooker holds to be "a most infallible rule in expositions of sacred Scripture"; and although some persons may think that assertion somewhat too strong, of the soundness of the rule no reasonable student of Scripture can doubt. And it is worth our while to notice that it is in connexion with this very subject of baptismal regeneration that Hooker lays down this rule. He is answering those who perversely interpreted our Lord's words to Nicodemus, "Except a man be born of water and the Spirit" (John iii. 5), as meaning no more than "Except a man be born of the Spirit," "water" being (as they imagined) only a metaphor, of which "the Spirit" is the interpretation. On which Hooker remarks: "When the letter of the law hath two things plainly and expressly specified, Water, and the Spirit; Water as a duty required on our parts, the Spirit as a gift which God bestoweth; there is danger in presuming so to interpret it, as if the clause which concerneth ourselves were more than needeth. We may by such rare expositions attain perhaps in the end to be thought witty, but with ill advice." All which may be fitly applied to the passage before us, in