The union of the soul with God is initiated solely by God. He stirs the spiritually inert and hostile heart to seek after him by changing its affections and thereby liberating its will. Divine love subdues human hate, grace woos the heart to God, and the sinful, savage nature of man is sweetened by sacred influences that draw us willingly to his presence and the pleasure of his companionship.

The cord that binds creature to Creator is faith, an aliveness and attraction to God that is supernaturally bestowed and miraculously wrought within the unfathomable depths of the chosen ones. The connection is instantaneous. The preparation may have been prolonged. The consequences are progressive. But the moment that faith is the evidence of our being fastened to God a new human entity has been crafted from above. An individual has been born again, not of the will or working of man.

Confidence in the Lord, contrition before him, and coming to him, are actions of the soul utterly impossible before new birth and independent from external causes manipulated by man. The Lord Jesus joins us to himself by his Word and Spirit operative within the heart. It is the occurrence of a nanosecond that results in the “big bang” of a sanctified life gradually expanding towards completion in Christ. The touch of the Saviour is the source of authentic life in and for God.

Our views of the means of grace and divine ordinances are dictated by the biblical facts of regeneration and God-given faith. One of the aspirations of Anglican theology is to use sanctified reason in the formation of our convictions. To this end the quotation of texts in pursuit of a Scriptural conclusion is often insufficient and naive. Scripture is akin to a mosaic, and texts are analogous to tiles that need to be fitted in according to an overall pattern discerned from a panoramic view of the revelation of God in Holy Scripture. Revelation is a stream, not a series of isolated bubbles.

When it comes to an Anglican view of the sacraments real attention has to be given to:

*The guiding principles of Scripture concerning the need, nature, and method of grace.

*A clear grasp of the views of the authors of our constitutional documents (what did they mean by the theological principles they actually enunciated).

*An actual recognition of the nature and poetic license of sacramental language (charitable supposition) that distinguishes it from formal dogmatic declaration.

Admitted biblical exceptions to the supposed absolute necessity of the sacraments to salvation (the criminal on the cross next to Jesus-proximate and close to him, Cornelius, etc.) cannot be lightly dismissed, but must be fully weighed as to our comprehensive evaluation of the purpose and benefits of the sacraments.

The command to a sacramental life and obedience is not doubted by well-informed believers. The grace they confer is not denied but correctly descried. The immediacy of access to Christ and union with God cannot be compromised or deferred by any lapse in time concerning the administration of the signs and seals of the covenant. They are signs, pointers to gospel promises the regenerate already believe; they are seals of promises fulfilled to faith already active. They mediate the meaning of the cross of Christ and magnify his saving accomplishment to us. Is this approach actually to evacuate the sacraments of efficacy and significance? It actually seems to mesh with the overall intent and teaching of scripture calmly considered. Christ is the true ministrant in each of the two sacraments.

We embrace Christ in the sacraments but we enter him in our hearts, whatever chronological order applies to our inward conversion to him. To aver that remission of sins is suspended until baptism is disastrous to pastoral and evangelistic practice. Anxious souls actually need to be appeased over issues like these e.g. wartime children actually misinformed, or uncertain, as to their baptism having taken place in a period of social disturbance, and perplexed in adulthood about the reality of their historical relationship with God and all they have professed as believers (I am aware of, and have administered the remedy, of conditional baptism including folk who have confidently averred baptismal regeneration only to find that their reception of the sacrament was unfortunately omitted - but conditional baptism does not solve the problem of previous religious experience and its authenticity).

Augustine was mistaken to separate and delay his regeneration from his wondrous conversion experience in the garden. And it was his errant subscription to baptismal regeneration (inconsistent with all his other views on grace) that caused him to advocate the possibility of some of the recipients of justifying grace failing to persevere (Bishop Davenant paid close attention to Augustine on this matter and concluded, from an examination of most of his relevant statements, that overall the great church father, by no means the final authority on theology, overcame this flaw in his thinking in practical and pastoral terms).

Whilst “sacramentalist” views are often incorrectly attributed to our founders and Reformers it seems that their reservations and warnings are not seriously taken into account. Archbishop Ussher appeals to us not to make idols out of the sacraments. Other Reformers teach us how to regard them with appropriate care. Christ is our Focus and faithful Redeemer and it is his blood-shedding alone that secures our salvation, as we pastors assure every dying soul to whom we minister, and every sinner terrified of his exposure to the imminent wrath of God. In the majority of cases sacramental grace, as it is expounded, is cheap grace eclipsing the reality of a changed heart and purified life. In other ways it is a cruel prevention of immediate peace with God - in a moment as it were - a moment that brings deliverance, assurance, freedom and joy that only the burdened can fiercely desire. Feel the fires of deserved damnation and then know the suddenness of grace that brings relief without delay. Sacerdotalism and sacramentalism are alien to the gospel. This is no fireside debate. This is not to deny the beauty and benefit of the sacraments rightly perceived and administered. Texts! Texts! They are to fit in with the total texture of Scripture not to be pulled out and displayed as separate threads from the whole weave.

Every Reformer proclaims “faith” as the means of our connection with Christ. Our union with him, through faith, is saving: “Cranmer sought to show that this conversion happened in an instant, so that he could argue . . . that ‘we be made partakers of the divine mercy through the blood of Christ, as soon as earnestly and with all our heart we turn to God from our evil ways’” (Ashley Null, Thomas Cranmer’s Doctrine of Repentance, OUP, 2000. Page 189, underlining the author’s. This book is an absolute gem and essential to an understanding of Cranmer).

The Rev. Roger Salter is an ordained Church of England minister where he had parishes in the dioceses of Bristol and Portsmouth before coming to Birmingham, Alabama to serve as Rector of St. Matthew's Anglican Church