We introduce a new formulation of baryon chiral perturbation theory which improves the ultraviolet behavior of propagators and can be interpreted as a smooth cutoff regularization scheme. It is equivalent to the standard approach, preserves all symmetries and therefore satisfies the Ward identities. Our formulation is equally well defined in the vacuum, one- and few-nucleon sectors of the theory. The equations (Bethe-Salpeter, Lippmann-Schwinger, etc.) for the scattering amplitudes of the

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... cleon sector are free of divergences in the new approach. Unlike the usual cutoff regularization, our 'cutoffs' are parameters of the Lagrangian and do not have to be removed.