2.  Because no sinner is morally qualified for pardon, until he has been regenerated, and has consecrated himself to the service of God; but multitudes receive the sacrament who are unregenerate, and who therefore cannot be justified or pardoned, even by the sincere reception of the sacraments.  Hence as the reception of the sacraments is no certain proof of pardon, it cannot be the immediate condition of it.

3.  The sacraments are not immediate conditions of justification or pardon, because previous faith is required in the recipients of each of them.  “He that believeth and is baptised, shall be saved,” [Note 20] says the great Redeemer; “but he that believeth not shall be damned.”  But if some may be baptised who are destitute of faith, then the existence of faith is not necessarily involved in baptism.  And as baptism without faith does not rescue the soul from damnation, it evidently cannot be the immediate or certain condition of pardon; for if the immediate condition of a blessing is performed, that blessing must be conferred.  And since previous faith is required in baptism, and none but the baptised are admitted to the Lord’s Supper, it is evident that faith is also required of communicants.

4.  That they are not immediate conditions of pardon, is evident, because the same truths which the sacraments inculcate, do not when taught orally or in God’s word, invariably or necessarily secure the pardon or justification of all attentive hearers.  The result of the proper use of the truth preached or read, is invariably the spiritual advancement of the sinner, whatever the stage of his progress may be.  And such appears to be the operation of the sacraments.  As it is absurd to affirm that each sermon preached, will convert or affect the pardon of every sinner who attentively hears it; so it were equally gratuitous to affirm the same of the sacraments.  If the sinner had been on the verge of regeneration and faith before he heard the sermon in question, and the hearing of that discourse completed the change, the result might be affirmed of the last sermon which preceded his faith, but not of its predecessors; and so also of the sacraments as means of grace.  Every sermon attentively heard will benefit all who thus hear it.  But whether it will produce conviction, or penitence, or faith, or a sense of pardoned sin, depends on the recipient’s previous stage of progress in the divine life.

5.  If the sacraments were possessed of a sin-forgiving power, in such a sense, as to be the immediate conditions of pardon or justification, then the sinner would be dependent for pardon on the sacraments, and on the clergyman who administers them, and not immediately on the Spirit of God.  But this would virtually be one of the most dangerous features of Puseyism and Romanism, by which the minister is thrust in between the penitent, sinner and his God, and the priest is elevated to the position of the dispenser of pardon,