First of all is the forgiveness of sins. The Spirit takes them out of that state of alienation in which they are born, and unites them to His Body; and in so doing He effaces both the birth-sin and every actual sin which they may have committed. This is that plenary forgiveness of sins, the pure gift of God unpreceded by any merit on man’s part, which greets the new-comer out of Adam’s body of sin into the Body of Christ. It is imparted by and from the Body, and to its members alone. The second quality is that illumination of the mind, irradiated by the truth, the whole compass of which exists in the Body. This illumination is the root of the virtue of faith, by means of which the individual mind appropriates the divine truth presented to it. The force of the virtue differs in the individual as the keenness of sight in the natural man, but the visual power is the same in quality in all. By it the mind of the believer lays hold in ever varying degree, one more and one less, of that great harmony of truth which is held in its completeness, its manifold applications, and all but infinite relations, only by the Body. For the truth with which we deal is not unlocalised and scattered, the prey, as it were, of the individual mind, which can hunt it down and take it as a spoil, but it is a divine gift, orbed in the sphere which was created for it, the Body of that Word who is the Truth. Hence the first question to the applicant for baptism: What askest thou of the Church of God? and the answer is, Faith.