126 DISCOURSES OF FATHEK HYACINTHE. 



you have renounced, and to v.'lncli, with the Catholic 

 Church, you have said. Anathema. But Protestantism 

 has not been the only thing in your past religious life : 

 by the side of its negations have been its athrmations, 

 and, like a savory fruit enclosed in a bitter husk, you 

 have been in possession of Christianity from j^our 

 cradle. 



Before coming to us, you were a Christian by baptism 

 validly received ; and when the hand of the minister 

 sprinkled the water on your brow with those words of 

 eternal life, " I baptize thee in the name of the Father, 

 and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost," it was Jesus 

 Christ himself who baptized you. " The hand is noth- 

 ing,'' says iSaint Augustine; "be it Peters or Paul's, 

 the hand is nothing — it is Christ that baptizes." It was 

 Christ who betrothed you, wlio received your faith and 

 pledged to you his own. The depth of your moral 

 nature, that sacred part of noble souls which instinc- 

 tively shrinks from error, the Word has consecrated to 

 himself, that he "might present it to himself as a 

 chaste virgin,"* reserving it for heaven. 



You were a Christian, also, by the Gospel, as well as 

 by baptism. The Bible was the book of your childhood, 

 and you learned from it the secrets of this divine faith 

 which belongs to every age, because it comes from eter- 

 nity, with the accents of that Anglo-Saxon tongue which 

 belongs to every land, because it prevails throughout the 

 world by virtue of its civilizing force. The free exer- 

 cise of private judgment, under the spirit of which you 

 have grown uj), is, doubtless, the source of numberless 

 errors; but — thank God again for tliis — besides the 

 Protestant principle, there is also tlie Christian prin- 

 ciple among Protestants; 1)csides privalo judgment, 



* 2 Corinthhius, xi. 2. 



