," wrote Jerome, "by which one could swim out of
the sea of his sins." "No," exclaimed Luther, in the Large
Catechism, "the ship of our baptism never goes down. If we fall
out of the ship, there it is, ready for our return." [10]

There are, then, no vows whatever that can be substitutes for our
baptism, or can supplement it. The baptismal vow comprehends
everything. Only one distinction is admissible. While the vow
made in baptism is universal, binding all alike to complete
obedience to God, there are particular spheres in which this
general vow is to be exercised and fulfilled. Not all Christians
have the same office at the same calling. When one answers a
divine call directing him to some specific form of Christian
service, the vow made in response to such call is only the
re-affirmation and application to a peculiar relation of the one
obligatory vow of baptism.[11]

While the divine institution and Word of God in baptism are of
prime importance, the office of faith must also be made
prominent. Faith is the third element in baptism. Faith does not
make the sacrament; but faith appropriates and applies to self
what the sacrament offers. _Non sacramentum, sed fides sacramenti
justificat_. Nor are we left in doubt as to what is here meant by
the term "faith." In paragraph fourteen it is explicitly
described. Faith, we are then taught, is nothing else than to
look away from self to the mercy of God, as He offers it in the
word of His grace, whereof baptism is the seal to every child
baptised.

Luther's purpose, in this discussion, being to guard against the
Mediaeval theory of any _opus operatum_[12] efficacy in the
sacrament, he would have wandered from his subject, if he had
entered at this place into any extended discussion of the nature
of the faith that is required. A few years later (1528), the
Anabaptist reaction, which over-emphasised the subjective, and
depreciated the objective side of the sacraments, necessitated a
much fuller treatment of the peculiar office of faith with
respect to baptism. To complete the discussion, the citation of a
few sentences from his treatise, _Von der Wiedertaufe_, may,
therefore, not be without use. Insisting that, important as faith
is, the divine Word, and not faith, is the basis of baptism, he
shows how one who regards faith, on the part of the candidate for
baptism, essential to its validity, can never, if consistent,
administer baptism; since there is no case in which h