The Promise of Regeneration The Order of Baptism in the Cranmerian Prayer Book

In the liturgical revolution enacted by the 1979 Prayer Book, there were some concessions made to the liturgical conservatism of Episcopalians. Versions of the Cranmerian rites were preserved with some changes, and faux-Tudor texts were added to them, for Morning and Evening Prayer, for the Burial of the Dead, and the Eucharist. To the dismay of progressive liturgists, while these Rite One alternatives were intended as a merely temporary expedient, many congregations have clung to them tenaciously, who were forbidden the use of the previous editions of the Prayer Book, and by them they have maintained the liturgical tradition of Anglicanism, albeit in a sometimes attenuated form.

There is, however, no Rite One version of the Baptism in the 1979 Prayer Book. Its absence no doubt reflects the claim of the Liturgical Movement to have ‘renewed’ the theology and practice of Baptism as a complete sacramental initiation into the Christian community, a celebration of communal solidarity. But it may also point to a relative lack of attachment to the classical rite of Baptism and lack of appreciation for its merits. Already in the 1928 Prayer Book the 1552/1662 rite of Baptism had been subjected to deletions and rearrangement. Even today, with growing appreciation for and rediscovery of the classical Prayer Book rites, there is little attention to the classical Order of Baptism. Yet the rite itself is as much a masterpiece of liturgical craft as other rites of the classical Prayer Book, and it is ripe for rediscovery and revival. Fortunately, the 1662 International Edition provides easy access to the classical rite, and it may also be easily found online.¹The 1662 Book of Common Prayer International Edition, ed. S. L. Bray and D. N. Keane (InterVarsity Press, 2021). In this essay, I attempt a thorough commentary on the text of 1552, the prototype of 1559 and 1662, which I hope will assist in this rediscovery and revival both in understanding and in practice.²The 1552 rite cited in this essay may be found here: http://
justus.anglican.org/resources/bcp/1552/BCP_1552.htm

The modern rites of Baptism, such as those found in the Prayer Books of 1979 (TEC) and 2019 (ACNA), are generally organized according to a linear logic and gather all the euchology of Baptism into one prayer over the water of the font. The Order of Baptism in the Prayer Book of 1552, however, takes a different approach. First, like other services in the Prayer Book, it employs as the fundamental building block of the liturgy, the Pauline triad of repentance, faith, and works (or guilt, grace, and gratitude), a commonplace of Protestant orthodoxy by the 1550’s but based on Luther’s and Melancthon’s reading of the Epistle to the Romans.³Cf L. D. Bierma, An Introduction to the Heidelberg Catechism:
Sources, History, and Theology (Baker Academic, 2005), p. 81ff. Second, the euchology of Baptism is spread throughout the entirety of the service, and its meaning and implications are unfolded gradually, and in a fashion that is not linear. As I put it in a previous essay on the Cranmer’s Order for the Lord’s Supper:

[T]o comprehend Cranmer’s art, one must also attend to the observation of Rowan Williams, that Cranmer does not lay out his ideas in the linear fashion often found in recent liturgies, but is content to revisit themes already touched on…. The result, as Williams points out, is a kind of spiral movement (not unknown in other literature, such as the Gospel of John), so that one returns to similar ideas, but from a different angle, in a different context, recapitulating what has already been said but also revealing something new. The effect on the worshipper of this cyclical spiral motion is profound. Each return to the idea reinforces it, while at the same time allowing it to be expanded and deepened.⁴G. Dunbar, ‘Like Eagles in this Life: a Theological Reflection on The Order for the Administration fo the Lord’s Supper or Holy Communion in the Prayer Books of 1559 and 1662’, in The Book of Common Prayer: Past, Present, and Future: a 350th Anniversary Celebration, ed. P. Dailey (Continuum International Publishing, 2011), pp 85-105. Cf also Rowan Williams, ‘Sermon on the 450th anniversary of Cranmer’s martyrdom’, Tuesday 21 March 2006, given at the invitation of the Prayer Book Society, at St Mary the Virgin, Oxford. The full text may be found at: http:// www.archbishopofcanterbury.org/353.

Within that framework, one can begin to understand what Cranmer was doing.

He began, of course, with the late medieval rite of Baptism according to the Sarum rite. It was an elaborate and unwieldy service, constituted by the amalgamation of the Lenten rites of making catechumens (originally devised for adults) with the Litany and Blessing of the Font from the vigils of Easter and Pentecost. When a bishop was present, the baptized were to be confirmed and communicated at the Mass of the feast.⁵For a translation of the Sarum rite into English, see E. C.
Whitaker, Documents of the Baptismal Liturgy (SPCK, 1970). In cathedrals and larger churches, this could have made for an impressive ceremony on those greater feasts. One wonders just how it was actually administered in everyday practice, especially in the rest of the year, and what short-cuts were adopted, as seems likely: in any case, the rubrics make clear that the only infants baptized on those feasts were those born (if any) in the previous week, baptism shortly after birth and in houses by laymen or women being a common expedient.

In any case, the Sarum rite was ripe for revision, and to guide him Cranmer had before him recent revisions of the rite of Baptism in Germany, especially that found in the Simple and Religious Consultation of Hermann von Wied, the reforming Archbishop of Cologne, first published in German in 1543, and published in English in 1547.⁶The 1547 English translation of the Consultation can
be be found here: https://quod.lib.umich.edu/e/eebo2/A03087.0001.001?view=toc Drafted in large part by Martin Bucer and Philipp Melanchthon, it was based on Luther’s 1526 Order of Baptism, which in turn was based on virtually the same medieval rites as were used in England. We also know that he looked at some ancient Gallican source, probably the Mozarabic liturgy, for from it he drew the short petitions said after the promises; but like the other reformers, and unlike the liturgists of the twentieth century, Cranmer’s priority was the revival of ancient church’s doctrine, not its liturgical praxis, and it was the teaching of the scriptures, as also of the church fathers, that guided his revisions, together with an eye to the pastoral needs of the English people in the middle of the sixteenth century.

So much indeed is evident from the rubrics which stand at the head of the 1552 rite, The Ministracion of Baptisme to be used in the Churche.

It appeareth by auncient wryters, that the Sacramente of Baptisme in the olde tyme was not commonlye ministred but at two tymes in the yeare: at Easter and Whytsontyde. At which tymes it was openly ministred in the presence of all the congregacion: whiche custome (nowe being growen out of use) althoughe it cannot for many consideracions be well restored agayne, yet it is thoughte good to folowe the same as nere as conveniently [ie fittingly] may be….

Given the very different circumstances of the sixteenth century, when virtually all candidates for baptism were infants, in an age of high infant mortality the reservation of baptism to one or two days a year was impractical. What Cranmer wants to revive, is the public administration of baptism, in the presence of the whole congregation:

wherefore the people are to be admonished, that it is most conveniente that Baptisme should not be ministred but upon Sundayes, and other holy dayes, when the moste noumbre of people maye come together as well for that the congregacion there present may testifye the receyving of them, that be newely Baptysed, into the noumbre of Christes Churche, as also because in the Baptisme of infantes, every man present may be put in remembraunce of hys owne profession made to God in hys Baptisme. For whyche cause also, it is expediente that Baptisme be ministred in the Englishe tongue. Neverthelesse (yf necessitie so requyre) chyldren maye at all tymes be Baptized at home.

The overriding priority for Cranmer is not fidelity to ancient rites, but the edification of living Christians. (Edification is the reason also for its being administered ‘in the Englishe tongue’, a novel practice in 1552 for which Cranmer thought it necessary to provide a reason.) Though private baptism in houses was to be administered in cases of necessity, namely, the risk to the child’s life, public baptism has two signal benefits. Not only does the fact of one’s baptism into the Christian community become a matter of communal witness, shared memory, and mutual recognition, but also ‘every man present may be put in remembraunce of hys own profession made to God in hys Baptisme’. As Robert Crouse observes, ‘Israel is faithful when, and only when Israel remembers’, and that applies both to the remembrance of the works of God but also of the promises of his covenant people.⁷R. D. Crouse, ‘Tradition and Renewal’, in ‘Tradition, Received and Handed On’: A Theological Conference held at the Cathedral Church of St. Peter, Charlottetown, P.E.I. 27th June- 1st July, 1993, p 92. The faith of the baptized depends radically on their remembrance of the promises made in Baptism.

Under the title Publique Baptism, a second rubric follows, with practical instructions on notifying the priest, and the place and time of baptism:

When there are chyldren to be Baptized upon the Sunday or holy day, the Parentes shall geve knowledge over nyght or in the morning, afore the beginning of Morning prayer, to the Curate. And then the Godfathers, Godmothers, and people, with the children, muste be ready at the Fonte, eyther immediatly after the laste Lesson at Morning prayer, or els immediately after the last Lesson at Evening prayer, as the Curate by his discretion shall appoynte.

Most churches in North America, Orthodox, Roman Catholic, or Protestant, have largely abandoned the ancient pattern of worship on Sundays and holy days, which included the daily office as well as the Eucharist, and was the normal context for other rites. Cranmer worked within the ancient tradition of a fuller and more leisurely observance of Sundays and holy days. Rather than being squeezed into the Sunday Eucharist, as the 1979 Prayer Book requires, Cranmer gives it a place after the second lesson in Morning or Evening Prayer (the reading from the New Testament), and before the final gospel canticle (either Benedictus or Nunc Dimittis).

This location is significant. Cranmer’s revision of the daily office also followed the Pauline or gospel pattern of guilt, grace, and gratitude (or repentance, faith, and works). The congregation assembled for Baptism, therefore, had already made a corporate confession of sin, in which they acknowledged ‘there is no health in us’, and had been assured of God’s readiness to pardon and absolve ‘all them which truely repent, and unfeynedly believe his holy Gospel’. From penitence it had turned to praise of God for his forgiving grace, in the recitation of psalms, in hearing two chapters of Scripture, one from each testament, and in canticles of praise and thanksgiving that followed each lesson. The brief final part of the service (corresponding to works of gratitude) comprised the Apostles Creed and a version of the medieval preces (greeting, bidding, Kyrie, Lord’s Prayer, versicles and responses, collects).

Thus the opening acts of guilt and grace – not only the confession and absolution but also the reading of Scripture both old and new, with its teaching on the law and gospel – established an appropriate context for baptism’s intensified and elevated engagement with the same principles. The rite of Baptism ends abruptly, with the result that the final canticle serves as a thanksgiving for the grace not only of Scripture but also of the Sacrament. The incorporation of the child into the body of Christ is dramatically evident when the sponsors join with the congregation who witnessed the Baptism in reciting the Apostle’s Creed in its declaratory form, just after having made on the infant’s behalf the first profession of faith in response to the interrogatory form of the Apostles’ Creed; in the prayers that follow he takes his place in the community of faith, and of gratitude for grace. As Stephen Sykes observes in his sensitive reading of the 1662 rite of Baptism: ‘it is wholly appropriate that there should be no formal closure because the liturgy itself opens out on to the daily service of the church, the life of growth in all virtue and godliness of living.’⁸Stephen Sykes, ‘Baptisme doth represent unto us oure profession’ in Unashamed Anglicanism (Abingdon Press, 1995), p 16.

The Promise of Regeneration

Perhaps a reflection of their different civil polities, the idea of covenant was more prominent in the theology of the Swiss reformers than among the English, but the covenantal aspect of Baptism is inescapable, even if the word nowhere appears. In structure and content, the service has the form of a covenant between God and the child. In the first part, a ministry of the Word, establishes God’s promises in the gospel; in the second part, the promises required of God are made on the child’s behalf; and in the third part, a ministry of the Sacrament, the covenant is ratified and the promises sealed.

Unlike the ministry of the Word in the Lord’s Supper, it is invariable, and centers around the need for the benefits received by baptism, and assurance that God wills to impart them:

• A short invitation to prayer for the grace of baptism
• Two prayers for the grace of baptism (guilt)
• Gospel lesson – Christ’s receiving and blessing little children (grace)
• An Address to the godparents – assurance of God’s good will toward infants brought to baptism, declared by Christ’s receiving them (grace).
• Thanksgiving and prayer for the knowledge of God’s good will (gratitude)

As noted above, within this ministry of the Word, as elsewhere, the fundamental structure is that of the Pauline or gospel triad of guilt, grace, and gratitude.

The opening address to the congregation sets out the need which impels us to pray for the grace of baptism:

for asmuche as all men bee conceyved and borne in synne, and that oure Saviour Christ saith, none can entre into the kingdom of God (except he be regenerate and borne a newe of water and the holy Ghost); I beseche you to call upon God the father through our Lord Jesus Christ, that of his bounteous mercie, he will graunt to these children, that thing which by nature they cannot have, that they may be Baptized with water and the holy ghoste, and receyved into Christes holy church, and be made lyvely membres of the same.

This is a call to prayer, concisely stating why we must pray for this infant – he was ‘conceived and born in sin’, which excludes him from the Kingdom of God. (These words, based on Psalm 51:5, ‘in sin hath my mother conceived me’, were found offensive and deleted from the 1928 Prayer Book, though Massey Shepherd rather emphatically claimed this omission ‘was not intended in any way as a rejection of the doctrine of original sin and the need of its remission’.⁹M. H. Shephard, Jr, The Oxford American Prayer Book Commentary (New York, 1950), notes on pp 273-274. They were replaced more happily in the 2019 BCP of ACNA with ‘Scripture teaches that we are all dead in our sins and trespasses’, an allusion to Ephesians 2:1.) The call to prayer also declares the remedy we must pray for – regeneration by water and the Holy Ghost (St. John 3:5). The congregation is exhorted to pray on the children’s behalf for ‘those things which by nature they cannot have’, which is baptism ‘with water and the Holy Ghost’, and reception ‘into Christ’s holy church’, the fellowship of the baptized.

One of the most valuable and overlooked pre-tractarian commentators on the Anglican liturgy is Thomas Comber (1645-1699), who was Dean of Durham from 1691 till his death, an heir of the high church tradition of John Cosin, an important contributor to the 1662 revision, who had been Bishop of Durham from 1660 to 1672. His multi-volume commentary on the 1662 Prayer Book, A Companion to the Temple (fourth edition, 1701-2), is remarkable for its comprehensiveness, learning, and eloquence. On this call to prayer, he observes:

Nature hath polluted, but it cannot cleanse; the parents have transmitted sin, but cannot remove it; the minister can provide water and perform the external rite, but it is above human power or the possibilities of nature to make these things effectual to the child’s eternal salvation; wherefore we have the more reason to cry out most passionately to him that only can effect all this.¹⁰T. Comber, A Companion to the Temple, or a Help to Devotion in the Use of the Common Prayer (Oxford, 1841).

Comber stands in the tradition that goes back to Hooker and Cranmer, of making a sharp distinction between the outward sign and the inward spiritual grace of the sacrament, without separating them. But in later modern evangelical pietism, ‘being born again’ means the experience of conversion; in such traditions, baptism is therefore separated from regeneration, and much ingenuity is exercised in proving that what Scripture means by ‘water’ and ‘washing’ is purely figurative. But in the earlier Augustinian and Reformed teaching, baptism is (as Article 27 says) the ‘sacrament of regeneration’. The conditions of this regeneration, its meaning and implications, are spelled out only as the service unfolds, and will not be fully apparent until the concluding prayer.

To obtain this grace on behalf of the infant, the Prayer book supplies two prayers, the first, based on a 1523 composition by Luther for a German Baptism liturgy, known commonly as the flood prayer, and the other from the Sarum rite, known as the promise prayer. At the core of each prayer is a petition based on Titus 3:5, ‘the washing of regeneration’. In the flood prayer, the priest asks: ‘sanctifie them and washe them with thy holy ghoste’; in the second prayer (the English version of the Sarum collect) he asks for ‘remission of theyre sinnes by spirituall regeneracion’. Though the prayers center on the same grace, each provides its own distinctive frame for understanding it.

A version of the flood prayer was part of the order of baptism in the Consultation of Hermann von Wied, by Martin Bucer and Philipp Melanchthon. Though somewhat condensed and revised, Cranmer’s version of it retains its rehearsal of Old Testament types of salvation through water – the ark of Noah, the passage through the Red Sea – and of their fulfillment in the baptism of Christ, and thus in Christian baptism:

Almighty and everlasting God, which of thy great merce diddest save Noe and his familie in the Arke from perishing by water: and also dyddest safely leade the chyldren of Israel, thy people throughe the redde Sea: figuring thereby thy holy Baptisme and by the Baptisme of thy welbeloved sonne Jesus Christe, dyddest sanctifye the floud Jordane, and al other waters, to the mistical washing away of sinne:

Comber observes:

Now if God did twice save the whole church by water, on purpose to typify the efficacy of baptism before it was instituted, we may very reasonably believe that now the substance is come, he will much more save these children, or believing persons, thereby. And it is the more probable that we shall prevail when we ask this mercy, because that our Lord himself was pleased to honour this ordinance, by causing it to be administered to himself by St. John in the river Jordan.¹¹Ibid p 377.

Following Luther’s original, the flood prayer in the Consultation and in Cranmer’s revision is a petition for the fulfillment in the life of the child of the grace figured in salvation history. In the Consultation as in Luther’s original, the hinge upon which fulfilment depends is a petition for the faith of the infant:

we praye the for thy exceadynge mercie loke fauourably upon thys Infante, gyue hym true fayeth, and thy holie spirite, that what so euer fylth he hath taken of Adam, it maye be drouned, and be put awaye by thys holie floude, that being seperated from the numbre of the vngodlie, he maye be kepte safe in the holie arke of the churche, and maye confesse and sanctifie thy name wyth a lustie, and feruent spirite, and serue thy kyngdome wyth constant truste and sure hope, that at lengthhe maye atteyne to the promises of eternal lyfe wyth all the godlie.

Cranmer’s revision condenses this text, and replaces the petition for ‘true fayeth’ with a petition for the gracious work of the Spirit by means of the sacrament: that God would ‘mercyfully loke upon these chyldren, sanctifie them and washe them with thy holy ghoste’, with the result:

that they, beyng delivered from thy wrath, may be receyved into the Arke of Christes Church, and beyng stedfast in fayth, joyeful through hope, and rooted in charitie, may so passe the waves of this troublesome world, that finally they maye come to the lande of everlasting lyfe, there to reygne wyth thee, worlde without ende.

Having refocused this prayer on the saving grace of the Spirit, Cranmer also fills out more completely the fulfillment of this grace in the entire life of the baptized. Thus baptism is not just the beginning of the Christian life, but supplies (as Stephen Sykes pointed out in his sensitive reading of Cranmer’s rite) ‘a sense of the totality of the Christian’s life within the Church’, ‘a structure and framework for the whole of Christian living’.¹²Stephen Sykes, ‘Baptisme’, pp 13-14. This attention to the completeness of a Christian’s life is also reflected in the completion of the Consultation’s ‘constant truste and sure hope’ by the addition of the third of the theological virtues, ‘beyng stedfast in fayth, joyeful through hope, and rooted in charitie’. ‘All these graces’, notes Comper, ‘are the fruits of that one Spirit, so that if here it be received, all these happy effects will be the consequents thereof’.¹³Comber, Companion, p 379.

Cranmer’s version of the Promise prayer frames the petition for the same baptismal grace in terms of God’s power and will to do so. We ask regeneration and remission of sins from him who is described, in terms of escalating grandeur, as ‘the ayde of all that nede, the helper of all that flee to thee for succour, the lyfe of them that beleve, and the resurreccion of the dead’. As Comber observes, ‘he giveth eternal life to believers, and raiseth those that are dead [John 11:25], and therefore he is the fittest to be solicited in behalf of a weak and helpless infant, dead in trespass and sins [Ephesians 2:1]’.¹⁴Ibid. That he is not only able but willing to do so, however, is based on the promise made by Christ:

sayinge Aske, and you shal have, seke, and you shal fynd, knocke, and it shal be opened unto you. So geve now unto us that aske. Let us that seke fynde. Open the gate unto us that knocke, that these infantes may enjoye the everlasting benediccion of thy heavenly washing, and may come to the eternall Kingdom, which thou haste promysed by Christe our Lorde. Amen.

We are assured in emphatic terms on the basis of Christ’s own promise of God’s willingness to give the regeneration we ask for.

Thus the two collects have moved from the past of salvation history to its fulfilment in Christ and in the Church, in the present and future; and from the power of God to give new life to his will to do so, revealed in the promise of his Son. With this preparation, this articulation of need and longing, we are ready to hear the answer to these prayers, in which the theme of the Father’s good will declared in the Son’s promise will be picked up. The Scripture selected for the answer to these prayers is St. Mark 10:13-16, Jesus’ receiving of little children. St Matthew’s characteristically condensed version of this story (19:13 15) was the one read in the Sarum rite, in line with the general preference of western liturgy for the gospels of St Luke and St. Matthew over St. Mark. Its deliberate replacement by St. Mark’s characteristically fuller and more detailed version is significant of an appreciation for its rhetorically
persuasive impact. That purpose is brought into clear focus by a short address (based on passages from Hermann von Wied’s Consultation) to the congregation (regrettably omitted in the 1928 American Prayer
Book), which draws out the application of the gospel lesson to the matter we have been praying for, God’s willingness to receive children into his favor:

Frendes, you heare in this Gospell the wordes of oure saviour Christe, that he commaunded the children to be brought unto him: how he blamed those that would have kept them from him: how he exhorteth al men to follow their innocencie. You perceyve how by his outward gesture and dede he declared his good wyl toward them. For he embrased them in his arms, he laide his handes upon them, and blessed them. Doubt not ye therefore, but earnestly believe, that he wyll lykewise favourably receyve these presente infantes, that he wyl embrase them with the armes of his mercie, that he wyll geve unto them the blessinge of eternal life, and make them partakers of his everlasting kingdome. Wherefore we beeing thus perswaded of the good will of our heavenly father towards these infantes, declared by his sonne Jesus Christ; and nothinge doubtinge but that he favourably alloweth this charitable worke of ours, in bringinge these children to his holy Baptisme: let us faithfully and devoutly give thanks…

As Sykes perceptively notes, the word ‘receive’ or ‘reception’ plays a key role in the entire service.¹⁵Stephen Sykes, ‘Baptisme’, pp 11. At the head of the service, the word ‘reception’ is used to describe the purpose of baptism. It is used in the introductory call to prayer, in the two collects, and in the gospel, and in the address that follows the gospel. ‘Here Christ’s action of taking children into his arms and blessing them is used as an analogy of baptism’; ‘the emotionally powerful image of the child being embraced in the arms of Jesus’ mercy forms the affective heart of the liturgy’.¹⁶Ibid. The language of ‘reception’ echoes through four more uses of the word ‘receive’ in the remainder of the service (in the address to the godparents, in the blessing of the water, in the priest’s declaration after baptism, and in the prayer of thanksgiving). Thus when contemporary liturgies omit this gospel lesson because it does not speak explicitly about baptism, this is, as Sykes forcefully notes, ‘pedantry of the first order’:

The justification for baptizing infants lies not in any direct precedent of Christ’s, but in the quality of his response to little children, conveyed by the phrase ‘embrace with the arms of his mercy’.¹⁷Ibid pp 11-12.

What’s behind that use of the language of Christ’s receiving of children is the good will of the Father revealed by the Son. By receiving children, ‘by his outward gesture and dede he declared his good wyl toward them’; and likewise ‘the good will of our heavenly father towards these infantes’ was ‘declared by [the welcoming word and action of] his sonne Jesus Christ’. In this action, we have the assurance of his good will toward these infants, authorizing the church to proceed with their baptism. Comber again:

It appears both by the words and deeds of our Lord in this case, that infants are beloved by him and by his Father; that he will receive them kindly when they are brought unto him; that he will give all the grace and blessing which is needed by them or desired for them: it is evident that thtey are capable ot being adopted into the church, and that the kingdom of heaven may be estated on them, yea, if they die after they have received Christ’s blessing, and have done nothing to evacuate it, there is none more fit or likely to enter into everlasting glory, whither we ourselves cannot come unless we be likeunto them.¹⁸Comber, Companion, pp 383, 384.

This ‘good will … declared by … Christ’ is the ‘knowledge of thy grace’ to which the congregation
has been called, and for which they next give thanks, as the ministry of the Word modulates from
the moment of grace to that of gratitude and confident expectation:

ALMIGHTIE and everlasting God, heavenly father, we geve thee humble thankes, that thou haste vouchsafed to call us to the knowledge of thy grace, and faith in thee: encrease this knowledge, .and confirme this fayth in us evermore: Geve thy holy spirite to these infantes, that they maye bee borne agayne, and bee made heyres of everlastinge salvacion…

It is this knowledge of God’s grace – now particularized as the specific benefits promised by Christ – supplies the starting point for the covenant promises made by the godparents on behalf of the infant, in the second part of the service.

The Promise of Man

Like the order of the Lord’s Supper, the basic pattern of the Order of Baptism is tripartite: a ministry of the Word connected to the ministry of the Sacrament by a transitional element. Each of these three parts is itself triadic in structure, following the Pauline or gospel triad of guilt, grace, and gratitude (or repentance, faith, and good works). In the Lord’s Supper this transitional element is found in the confession (guilt), the absolution and comfortable words (grace), and the sursum corda, preface, and sanctus (gratitude).

In Baptism this transitional element is supplied by an ancient element of the baptismal rite, the promises made by the godparents in the name of the child, but now reframed within a covenantal structure. The priest reads this preface to the promises:

WELBELOVED frends, ye have broughte these children here to bee Baptyzed; ye have prayed that oure Lorde Jesus Christ would vouchsafe to receive them, to laye his hands upon them, to blesse them, to release them of theyre sinnes, to geve them the kingdome of heaven, and everlasting lyfe. Ye have heard also that our Lorde Jesus Christ hath promysed in his Gospell, to graunte all these thinges that ye have prayed for: which promyse he for his part wyl most surely kepe and perfourme.

In the beginning of the ministry of the Word, we prayed for the grace of regeneration; here at the beginning of the promises the promise of Christ to grant the benefits of this grace is unhesitatingly affirmed. With these words of Christ’s promise ringing in their ears, and the expectation of these benefits, the priest will invite the sponsors to make the promises of baptism on behalf of the child they bring to the font:

Wherfore after this promise made by Christ, these infants must also faithfully for their part promise by you that be their suerties, that they wil forsake the devil and al his workes, and constantly beleve gods holy worde, and obediently kepe his commaundmentes.

The benefits of Baptism are real, but they are given – like any other benefit of the gospel – to faith, and to a faith which responds to this grace in repentance and good works. Though truly bestowed, the benefit of baptism is conditional, as Article 27 says, on its being ‘rightly received’, in the fulfilment by the child of the promises which the gospel itself requires as the condition of enjoying its benefits. In the conscious willing of God’s good will, in promise-making responsive to Christ’s promise, does that good will and promise come to fulfilment in and through them.

In the pre-Reformation rites the promises of Baptism comprised a renunciation, in the answer to three questions, of Satan, his works and pomps; and a threefold confession of faith, also made in answer to three questions, based on an abbreviated interrogative form of the Apostles’ Creed. In the Prayer Book rite these ancient interrogatories were simultaneously combined and expanded. The renunciation in three questions of Satan, his works and pomps, is combined in the answer to one question, which was itself expanded into a threefold renunciation, of the three enemies of God and man as the Bible names them (the world, the flesh, and the devil). The threefold confession of faith in God, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost, is made in answer to three questions, in an unabbreviated interrogatory form of the Apostles’ Creed. (Unfortunately this full recital of the Creed was replaced in the 1928 Prayer Book with one question asking for belief ‘in all the Articles of the Christian Faith, as contained in the Apostles’ Creed’.) Moreover, in the introduction to these promises, and in line with the third element of the Pauline or gospel triad (the works of gratitude), a third promise is added to those of renunciation and faith: ‘these infants must also faithfully for their part promise by you that be their suerties, that they wil forsake the devil and al his workes, and constantly beleve gods holy worde, and obediently kepe his commaundmentes’. The Prayer Book Catechism commentary likewise assumed a third promise to have been made by the sponsors, ‘to keep God’s holy will and commandments, and to walk in the same all of the days of my life’, and to that end provided an age-appropriate explanation of the Ten Commandments; but it was not in fact until 1662 that the making of this third promise was incorporated in the rite of Baptism, with a wording that closely follows the Catechism: ‘obediently [to] keep God’s holy will and commandments, and to walk in the same all the days of thy life’.

How then to ensure its being rightly received by the child? At the conclusion of the service the godparents are charged:

To that see these infantes be taught, so sone as they shalbe hable to learne, what a solemne vowe, promise, and profession they have made by you. And that they maye knowe these thinges the better, ye shal call upon them to heare sermons: And chiefly ye shal provyde that they may learne the Crede, the Lordes prayer, and the ten Commaundements, in the Englishe tongue, and all other thyngs whiche a Chrystian man ought to knowe and beleve, to his soules health: and that these children may be vertuously brought up to leade a godlye and Christen lyfe….

There is nothing magical about baptism; the real privileges and benefits it bestows depend upon its being rightly received according to the capacity of the receiver; its right reception requires in those who have come to years of discretion the faith that has been instructed by catechesis and inflamed by homiletic exhortation. In modern rites, as in this essay, the charge of Christian nurture is made an explicit promise by the sponsors, which implicitly is made a condition of baptism – a reflection of our late modern anxiety. For Cranmer however, this action follows from the objectivity of the sacrament, and does not precede it. His order moves directly from the covenant promises themselves to the ratification of the Sacrament, and the bestowal of the grace of regeneration which has been promised and prayed for. Once again, as in the beginning of the the first two parts, this third part will begin with a confident expectation of the benefits of regeneration.