the difficulties of this doctrine, and must confine ourselves to a historical statement. Gregory jSTazianzen sees in baptism all blessings of Chris- tianity combined, especially the forgiveness of sins, the new birth, and the restoration of the divine image. To children it is a seal {a(f)pajl<i) of grace and a consecration to the service of God. According to Gregory of l^yssa, the child by baptism is instated in the paradise from which Adam was thrust out. The Greek fathers had no clear conception of original sin. According to the Pelagian Julian of Eclanum, Chrysostom taught: We baptize children, though they are not stained with sin, in order that holiness, righteousness, sonship, inherit- ance, and brotherhood may be imparted to them through Christ.' ' The passage is not found in the writings of Chrysostom. Augustine, however, does not dispute the citation, but tries to explain it away (contra JuUan. i. e. 6, § 21). VOL. II. — 31 482 THIED PERIOD. A.D. 311-590. Augustine brought the operation of baptism into connection with his more complete doctrine of original sin. Baptism delivers from the guilt of original sin, and takes away the sinful character of the concupiscence of the flesh/ while for the adult it at the same time effects the forgiveness of all actual trans- gressions before baptism. Like Ambrose and other fathers, Augustine taught the necessity of baptism for entrance into the kingdom of heaven, on the ground of John iii. 5, and de- duced therefrom, in logical consistency, the terrible doctrine of the damnation of all unbaptized children, though he assigned them the mildest grade of perdition.'^ The council of Carthage, in 318, did the same, and in its second canon rejected the notion of a happy middle state for un])aptized children. It is remarkable, however, that this addition to the second canon does not appear in all copies of the Acts of the council, and was perhaps out of some horror omitted.' In Augustine w^e already find all the germs of the scholastic and Catholic doctrine of baptism, though they hardly agree properly with his doctrine of predestination, the absolute sov- ereignty of divine grace and the perseverance of saints. Accord- ing to this view, baptism is the sacrament of regeneration, which is, negatively, the means of the forgiveness of sin, that is, both of original sin and of actual sins committed before baptism (not after it), and positively, the foundation of the new spiritual life of faith through the impartation of the gratia operans and co-(yperans. The subjective condition of this effect is the wor- thy receiving, that is, penitent faith. Since in the child there ' Do nupt. et concup. i. 28 : " Dimittitur concupiscentia carnis in baptismo, non ut non sit, sed ut in peccatum non imputetur." "^ " Parvulos in damnatione omnium mitissima futures." Comp. De peecat. mer. i. 20, 21, 28; Ep. 186, 27. To the heathen he also assigned a milder and more tolerable condemnation, Contr. Julian, iv. 23. " Comp.