Read The Promise of Regeneration: The Order of Baptism in the Cranmerian Prayer Book, Part I here.
The third part of the service, a ministry of the Sacrament, is centered on the sign of ‘going under water’ (either by immersion or affusion) in the name of the triune God. As with the ministry of the Word, the concluding ministry of the Sacrament is also triadic in structure:
The promises to renounce the three foes of man, to believe the Christian faith, and to keep God’s holy will and commandments cannot be kept without God’s grace and help, and so we transition from the covenant promises to the ministry of the Sacrament by three short prayers – based on Gallican texts perhaps found in the Mozarabic rite – that articulate the sanctifying grace of baptism we seek for the regeneration and the renewal of the child in terms that (like the flood prayer) provide a frame for the whole of the Christian life.
The Restoration divine Thomas Comber who in his Companion to the Temple provides the best exposition of their line of thought. First, the ‘old Adam’ must be buried, that the ‘newe man maye be raysed up.’ Dean Comber notes its basis in Rom 6:4-6:
Hence this is a prayer that the child ‘may be born again in this laver of regeneration, and not only have the guilt but also the power of original corruption taken away also’:
Next, Comber explains:
‘The third collect goes further’, says Comber, ‘and sues for spiritual strength, not only that it may not be conquered, but may conquer and triumph over those enemies which this person hath now defied’:
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