It was already breaking upon me, that I could not fulfil the dreams of my boyhood as a minister in the Church of England.  For, supposing that with increased knowledge I might arrive at the conclusion that Infant Baptism was a fore-arranged “development,”—­not indeed practised in the first generation, but expedient, justifiable, and intended for the second, and probably then sanctioned by one still living apostle,—­even so, I foresaw the still greater difficulty of Baptismal Regeneration behind.  For any one to avow that Regeneration took place in Baptism, seemed to me little short of a confession that he had never himself experienced what Regeneration is.  If I could then have been convinced that the apostles taught no other regeneration, I almost think that even their authority would have snapt under the strain:  but this is idle theory; for it was as clear as daylight to me that they held a totally different doctrine, and that the High Church and Popish fancy is a superstitious perversion, based upon carnal inability to understand a strong spiritual metaphor.  On the other hand, my brother’s arguments that the Baptismal Service of the Church taught “spiritual regeneration” during the ordinance, were short, simple, and overwhelming.  To imagine a twofold “spiritual regeneration” was evidently a hypothesis to serve a turn, nor in any of the Church formulas was such an idea broached.  Nor could I hope for relief by searching through the Homilies or by drawing deductions from the Articles:  for if I there elicited a truer doctrine, it would never show the Baptismal Service not to teach the Popish tenet; it would merely prove the Church-system to contain contradictions, and not to deserve that absolute declaration of its truth, which is demanded of Church ministers.  With little hope of advantage, I yet felt it a duty to consult many of the Evangelical clergymen whom I knew, and to ask how they reconciled the Baptismal Service to their consciences.  I found (if I remember) three separate theories among them,—­all evidently mere shifts invented to avoid the disagreeable necessity of resigning their functions.  Not one of these good people seemed to have the most remote idea that it was their duty to investigate the meaning of the formulary with the same unbiassed simplicity as if it belonged to the Gallican Church.  They did not seek to know what it was written to mean, nor what sense it must carry to every simpleminded hearer; but they solely asked, how they could manage to assign to it a sense not wholly irreconcilable with their own doctrines and preaching.  This was too obviously hollow.  The last gentleman whom I consulted, was the rector of a parish, who from week to week baptized children with the prescribed formula:  but to my amazement, he told me that he did not like the Service, and did not approve of Infant Baptism; to both of which things he submitted, solely because, as an inferior minister of the Church, it was his duty to obey established authority!  The case was desperate.  But I may here add, that this clergyman, within a few years from that time, redeemed his freedom and his conscience by the painful ordeal of abandoning his position and his flock, against the remonstrances of his wife, to the annoyance of his friends, and with a young family about him.