The argument contained in this paper was drawn up in the year 1850, when the ‘Gorham’ judgment of the Court of Arches was under the review of the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council, in compliance with the request of one of the prelates who was an assessor in that review, and who was pleased to say that the paper contained a reasonable solution of the main difficulty of the case.

As soon as the judgment of the Privy Council was delivered, vindicating the conditional interpretation of the Baptismal Service, the paper was laid aside, in the hope that the judgment would close the controversy. This was for a time the result of that celebrated judgment. But of late years the attempt has been revived to fix the interpretation of absolute baptismal regeneration upon the Service of our Church. Foes and friends of the Church of England have strangely put forward this sense of the words as the true one, disallowing the only interpretation which has been pronounced legal. In our own day also we have witnessed the rise of an analogous controversy upon the sacrament of the Lord's Supper.