;$5 nj ^ a. •j^ .5 ♦5f ^ J5 A.^ _c itr *-i Q. w *^ ^ o to $ ' « *^ S q; V ' c ■* ^ o GJ) C\ .S Eh <:' :§ l^ g 3 " ^ £ .^ *i I-" I'j •vi ^ « CO ■g. S Ct ^ t c S V* (U -^ ^. ^ dl 1^ 5^:i£c, .„:^->u. PREFACE. W. Arthur.— "Every power has its own sphere." — Tonyue of Fire, p. 105. Dr. W. Steadman. — " I think a thousand times more of my spending my days 'well on thig Side death, and my soul being happy after death, than of any thing that can be said or written concerning me when I shall be out of hearing.' — Let. to I. Mann. James Read. — " We live in an age of feeble convictions."— G. B. Mag., p. 134, 1866. Dr. Mellor. — " The contempt which men are pouring on dogma, and the sharpness with which it is being contrasted with life, as if the two held no reciprocal relation, cannot be praised for philosophical perspicacity or consistency." — Addr., April, 1869. John Foster. — " The right disposition of mind is that which desires earnestly ' the truth,' in whatever manner it may come to us." In preparing so large a volume, though it be on an ordinance of Chi'ist, it has sometimes been difficult to avoid envying the position of those who, full of the Holy Ghost, are uttering truthful and burning words, which are made the power of God unto the salvation of the ignorant, the god- less, and the perishing among my countrymen, or who by a similar pro- clamation of Divine truth abroad, and by the translation of God's oracles into a language in which they have not before been read, or by dissemi- nating the glorious gospel through preaching and printing, where to a very limited extent it has been previously possessed and known, are chasing away heathen darkness and iniquity, Mohammedan delusion, or papal superstition. I am, nevertheless, not insensible to the importance of exposing and aiding to terminate the eiTor of infant baptism, not only among those who associate with it deadly heresy, but even among those who as firmly as Baptist Christians hold the fundamental truths of Christi- anity, and exemplify the spirit and conduct of Jesus not less honourably and usefully than ourselves. It is matter for thankfulness that so many who practise and advocate infant baptism are free from the lamentable error of supposing that a child by baptism is recovered from Satan's power and translated into God's kingdom ; but this fearful and fatal error is not likely to be eradicated till the scriptural ordinance is confined to the rightful subjects. The words of an eminent Reviewer are worthy of extensive and serious consideration. He says, " Thank God, there is not one word in the New Testament which in the slightest degree sanctions so terrible a doctrine ; we are spared the pain, to say the least, of seeing the Christian Scriptures contradicting then' own idea of Christianity. The origin of the mischief is plain. The baptismal service is founded on Scripture, but its application to an unconscious infant is the veal fans malt' (Nor. Brit. Ecv., Aug., Vi PREFACE. 1852). The reviewer says that "a brighter day is dawning;" that eminent ecclesiastics " are perceiving that the practice of infant baptism is not found in Scripture. When the fact," says he, " is universally recognized, the controversy will assume a new form. The ground will be completely cut away from beneath the sacramental theory, and Protestants will have the full benefit of their own principle — the appeal to Scripture as the foi-m of religious truth." Many Nonconformists will probably conclude that my time would have been better spent — if anything in such a direction could by me have been accomplished — had I sought to subvert or diminish the sacerdotalism and establishmentarianism of our land, or had I appealed especially to the evangelical portion of the Established Church in this country to withdraw from a church demanding the utterances of impiety at certain interments, requiring the declaration of words at baptism and in subsequent catechising which tend to deception and eternal ruin, sanctioning a dishonourable farce in the election of its bishops, and being in other things confidently believed to be unscriptural, while the system of establishing truth or eiTor by civil enactments lacks the Divine authority. But while there is room for a work difiering, so far as I know, from any of the excellent works bearing on this subject, I have sufficient reason to believe that God wills not that such should be my present employment. It is natural for each to wish another error than that which he does not see to be his own should be combated. In the words of the Rev. J. Sibree, " The objector will often allow that any opinions and practices maybe justifiably controverted except those entertained and adopted by himself " ('O/i iVo/ic, p. 288). Thus the Evangelical Episcopalian admits controversy on infidelity and popery ; but a work on Nonconformity he believes to be as unnecessary and unwise a spending of time as the Pasdobaptist Dissenter regards it when spent in defence of believers' immersion. Indeed one of the latter, in his Homilctic Commentary on the Acts of the Apostles, can speak of the mode in which the three thousand were baptized, as " a trifle that is only interesting to those religionists who live upon such rites !" Also many Baptists, believing that this and the other outpost has been abandoned" by Pa>dobaptists, will deem much that is now written to be superfluous. It is for instance thought by one that " later Psdobaptist theological writers have swept away for ever" all supposed foundation for infant baptism from circumcision and the Abrahamic covenant ; that Dr. Halley has smitten the argument from the Abrahamic covenant hip and thigh, so that it is never heard of now ; but without denying the ample force of what has been written by Dr. HjiUcy and others, I can express my conviction in remembrance of what Prof. Hodge and others have recently written, and pf what Dr. Candlish and Prof, Rainey have more recently commended, PREFACE. vii that were the subject discussed fi-om a thousand Pfedobaptist pulpits next Lord's day, the majority of the preachers would refer to Gen. xvii, as if Dr. H. and some others had never written in proof of the futility of Paedobaptist arguments from such a source ; to the children mentioned in the Gospels, to the promise by Peter of remission of sins and the gift of the Holy Ghost to the penitent and baptized upon the name of Christ, to household baptisms, to conjugal and filial sanctification, as if perfectly ignorant that the most eminent writers on their side had admitted the worthlessness of all their arguments. I have omitted, with the exception of a few words, distinct sections which had been briefly written on the spiritual and unworldly, the personal, and voluntary character of Christianity, as not encoui'aging the baptism of infants. I conceive that in the volume at large ■■' this clearly appears, although the value of the work might have been enhanced by something on these ideas more lengthened and elaborate. Moreover, I have not had in view the enlightening of those who accept with Dr. Pusey the doctrine of the recent Tracts for the Times. These gentlemen, as well as the Broad Churchmen, I leave to others, and to a distmct work. This will account or apologise for what otherwise would be most meagre- on baptismal regeneration. On the benefits of baptism claimed by Episcopalians, I have almost confined my quotations and animadversions to writers deemed evangehcal ; and in the section on baptismal regeneration, I have sought, as on Christ's commission, and especially in the Appendix, to prevent among Nonconformists the error and muddling on a supposed baptismal discijAeship, Hke that which among evangelical Anglicans exists on a kindi-ed, yea equivalent topic, haptismal regeneration, A work entering comprehensively into the controverted subject of Christian baptism — an exhaustive work, to be used as a booh of reference, not of continuous reading — as well as one more briefly stating and enforcing the truth, I conceive to be desirable for the sake of those whose vocation or special circumstances demand minuteness or brevity, the one for the few, the other for the many. The exhaustive one, with acknowledged imperfection and some now regretted exceptions, is before the reader ; while the briefer I leave to futurity and the indications of God's will. It should, I conceive, ever be felt that the earnest enunciation of the glorious gospel of the blessed God is the appropriate, grand, and efficient work of Christian preachers, rather than frequently and controversially reasoning on baptismal and other errors. " It is generally positive didactic preaching * Valnablo tliouglits oa this may be met wifh iu a Tract on " The Importance of Eight Views on Baptism," by F. Clowes, published by the BaptUt Traet Society, and by E. Stock, Patsmostej Eow, price f d. viii PEEFACE. which brings sinners to repentance and does the most to promote experimental and practical religion." The gi-eat desire should be to make known as speedily and widely as possible the glad tidings of salvation through the propitiatory sufferings and death of the Son of God on man's behalf. Let Baptists, pastors and people, holily and earnestly, self-denyingly and unitedly, prayerfully and perseveringly seek the salvation of the world and the glory of God by the preaching of Christ and Him crucified, and by sustaining all that is benevolent and Divine, and Baptist sentiments will extend and prevail, such a work as this, or the very best that can be produced, proving only in a small degree subsidiary to that which under God is the grand means. Instead of beheving that this work will decide the controversy, whatever it ought to do, I simply believe that it will have some influence in discountenancing a human invention, and upholding a Divine institution. Unless this work prove a som-ce of instruction and benefit to Baptists and Psedobaptists, unless, by supplying, almost on every bearing of this controverted subject, both Ptedobaptist and Baptist sentiment, and vindicating the Divine, it economize the time of some of my junior brethren, whose great calling is "to preach the gospel," my wishes will not he-realized. I desire no shrinking from a proclamation of the Divine will on baptism, but I desire that universally this were subsequent to the earnest and faithful proclamation of the glorious gospel, as it was heard by the Pentecostal thousands, the centurion and them that were with him, the jailer and all his, &c., the Divine Sjnrit being now abundantly poiu'ed out on hearers, while richly dwelling in pastors and people, and manifested in holy and consistent devotedness, in prayerful, self-denying, persevering, and successful efi'orts for the salvation of perishing sinners, and the edification of those who through grace have believed. Those who think with Mr. Gamble, that *'' if there is any controverted question which should be examined more carefully than any other, it is infant baptism," will not complain of the size of this book. " No investigation," says he, "can be too minute, and no study too laborious, if we would thoroughly understand this Divine revelation." With such knowledge and means as were possessed, I have endeavoured to record instruction on most aspects of the baptismal controversy, so that the doubting inquirer, wdthout reading the whole, might read on the particular theme of his own perplexity. Were this or a similar book to be read by the many, I should feel as sincerely, if not as deepl}', sorry as some of my Pfcdobaptist brethren. Wore a w^orthy epitome of this work to be read by hundreds of thousands of Piiidobaptists and Baptists I should be thankful; not that I believe error and perplexity in any to arise from obscurity or (Icficioncv in Divine revelation, PEEFACE. « I am not only deeply conscious of my inferiority to very many in literature and logic, but also of many imperfections in what I have already attempted. I have therefore unhesitating assurance that six of our most learned men, having such a work as this divided — as by one has been recommended — into six parts, would have produced a work having recommendations to which I can and do lay no claim. A work on baptism in every respect desirable, exposing every ingenious quibble and specious fallacy by which error has been sustained, requires not only a library of original works which I do not possess, or at least easy access to these, but time which I desire not thus to spend, and memory and learning beyond what I possess. I nevertheless trust that the work which I am now giving to the Christian world contains a "body of divinity" on the Subjects of Christian baptism, and to those who are open to conviction a sufficient vindication of believers, or those who make a credible profession of faith in Christ, as the only rightful subjects of this ordinance. I also desire, if time and strength are graciously afibrded (unless strictures on this prevent my future appearance thus prominently), to provide, as on the act of baptism, a smaller and better work * for a greater number of readers; although, as Dr. Rippon respecting his Register wrote, " had the difficulties and expenses of the undertaking been aZ^ foreseen, it is probable they would never have been encountered." I can also, in the words of others, request that the reader "will not satisfy himself with carping at occasional inadvertencies, but candidly consider the scope and force of the arguments, and especially the Scriptures adduced in support of them," that he will not deem it commendable, "to throw aside a book on account of a few real or fancied discrepancies, or to condemn all the arguments because of some trifling mistake or illogical deduction." Nevertheless I shall be thankful to be made acquainted, by Baptist or Pajdobaptist, with any lapsus scribendi, or with any error that in any statement may be detected, and to be supplied with or directed to any facts corroboratory of Divine truth on Christian baptism. If I, from reading and meditating on this particular subject, do over-estimate its importance, and being free from any misgiving as to the coiTCctness of my sentiments and the force of my general reasoning, have expressed myself strongly, it has ever been with high esteem and cordial • The kind of book that commends itself to my judgment and heart for extensive circulation, is one that records and defends the truth, disputing with persons sparingly and of necessity, but freely adducing individual concessions to truth. Neither the recording nor the reading of what wo believe to have been foolishly and mistakenly -written by the honoured living or departed, is pleasant. But to sentiments recorded and still embraced, and which are believed to be unscriptural and injurious, the reference is necessary. The name Hand-Book would not have appeared in connexion with this volume, on account of its size, but for its previous selection. The smaller type ju many parts of this work has been chosen to keep down the price and size. X PREFACE. affection towards those who evidence supremacy of love to our common Lord and only Saviour. My intercourse has been more with Independents, Wesloyans, and Episcopalians, than with Presbyterians ; but the excellent of the earth have adorned each of these denominations ; and, while exposing the error of an opponent on baptism, T will, whenever it is possible, cheerfully admit that his praise is, and deservedly is, in all the churches. I have judged that certain writers on behalf of infant sprinkling were not sufficiently acquainted with the concessions of our opponents in favour of believers' immersion, and that the adducing of these admissions would not only increase modesty in the advocacy of what I believe to be error, but promote Scriptural knowledge and practice ; although some, who would have deemed me to be honoured as being "under the shelter of these great names," if they had been quoted on behalf of some other sentiments, may strongly and contemptuously condemn my course. I admit that I have spoken confidently, but I maintain that my affirmations are almost unexceptionably sanctioned by the affirmations of the most eminent among my opponents, who destroy each his fellow, and surrender all booty to the Baptists. I believe that " obvious and undeniable reasons" for departing from immersion, or for baptizing any other than those who, so far as we can judge, receive the word, with the heart believing, have no existence ; and that the amount of quibbling, equivocation, contradiction of themselves, of one another, and of God's word, by those who have written in defence of infant sprinkling, can be imagined by no man who has not read the works of Pfedobaptists on this subject. Although God's word — whether it be myself or my opponents that are in error — is sufficient for all who are free from improper bias, I believe that the works of our opponents, compared and contrasted with themselves, with one another, and with God's word, constitute a muTor in which some might very profitably behold themselves and their productions. Yet I would not recommend this glass in preference to the mirror of Divine truth, in which on baptism Mr. Pengilly and others have beheld and examined themselves, and to their "surprise" have found Scripture " entirely silent" on the baptism of infants, the use of sponsors, and the introduction by baptism into God's covenant and sealed blessings. Although my views on baptism are decided and strong, I am conscious of having no desire to exercise lordship over differing brethren. The volume on the Act of baptism — on the mode of baptism I have scarcely wi-itten a word, beyond applying Paul's exhortation, " Let all things be done decently and in order" — contained, whether wisely or unwisely, an Appeal (by its Appendices) on the Charity which ought to distinguish PREFACE, il Christians on the subject of Communion, and on the obligation of Paedobaptists generally to provide for pouring and immersion as much as for sprinkling, in order to consistency with their own sentiments ; but not a word in favour of strict or open communion, nor, so far as I know — unless what I have now mentioned be an exception — in favour of any ism except baptism. This freedom from other isms in a work on baptism was deemed appropriate, while there was no concealing of belief on the fundamental truths of Christianity. Consistency with sentiments believed and professed, I not only regarded as desirable and important in itself, but I also believed it would be helpful to closer fellowship between some of the diflering brethren, and that it was destined to end in the triumph of truth, to whichever side it might belong. From the sentiment of these Appendices, notwithstanding some strongly expressed Pa3dobaptist dissent, I am unable to recede, either as to their requirement or their results. To insist on my calling sprinkling a baptism, I conceive to be tyrannical. The Ptedobaptist may think me mistaken in believing the act of baptism to be immersion, and nothing less ; but if he demand that I acknowledge his sprinkling to be baptism, I strongly oppose and emphatically condemn his injustice. We can bear the taunt of having assumptions sustained neither " by influence, nor learning, nor superior numbers, nor superior sanctity," whether or not we admit its partial truthfulness ; but we believe the epithets "pitiable and melancholy," the affirmation that we " attempt to legislate for others," and claim to be i' infallible expounders" of God's will on baptism, belong rather to those who demand that we regard their sprinkling as a baptism, and that we refuse or receive at the Lord's Supper according to others' convictions of what in this is our duty to God, and not according to our own. On everything let each, whether correct or erring, have the conviction, that the course he pursues is acceptable to god. Indeed, if there is one thing on which many of our opponents, when not speaking of baptism — and some of them when on this theme — reason more frequently, earnestly, and excellently than on another, it is on the importance of adhering to the Oracles of God, And though I have in this work again and again referred to this, I should rejoice to see on baptism a volume minutely and elaborately discussing this from the stand-point of Divine requirement, corroborated by historic and present facts, and by all that is known respecting futurity. While such a work would be profitable to many, it is especially needed by those who admit immersion to be the enjoined act, and yet practically regard it as but an accident of the rite, which may be altered at pleasure ; who admit the absence of all precept and precedent for the baptism of infants, in God's word, and the absence of all evidence that infant baptism existed in apostolic times, and who yet recommend its XU PREFACE. practice, and deem it an improvement on the apostolic and inspired model. Perhaps such a desired work will be undertaken by some one who will not deem this an inappropriate precursor. While strongly dissenting from a portion of Pfedobaptist sentiment and practice, I am far from maintaining the perfection of Baptists in every doctrine and practice. Confining my present statements to baptism, I strongly deprecate the use by Baptists of the phraseology baptism by immersion, and mode of baptism, except when the connexion necessitates the use of such a phrase. "Immersion is not a mode of baptism," but the act itself. I beHeve there is, too, among Baptists much unscriptural delay in administering the ordinance ; a credible profession of faith in Christ at the time of desiring baptism being all that is wan'anted by the records of inspiration. Let us withhold from babes in Christ nothing suited to then- growth and vigour. Feed them with the sincere milk of the word. Let love to Christ and souls prompt in all a wise and earnest and constant tending of the lambs of the flock. Thus does God will that we promote steadfastness in apostolic doctrine and practice. I also think that much is said by some Baptists on the publicity of the sacraments, which God's word does not authorize. I admit that John's baptism of so many in the Jordan must often have had a public character ; but while I read of his baptizing in a certain place because there was much water there, I read not of baptism in any place because of its publicity. Complete privacy, which in supposable cases would be most injudicious, we need not advocate, nor suppose ever to have been the rule. Yet I know not, nor do I believe that any man knows, that Christ's baptism, so often spoken of as His public inauguration, or pxiblic designation, was witnessed by any mortal except John, or that in any other baptism there was greater publicity than accorded with convenience, discretion, or necessity. In thus speaking I shall by none be understood as affirming that Christ's baptism and the visible descent of the Spirit were not seen, and that the voice from heaven was not heard, by others in addition to John. I do mean that in my judgment some Baptists speak and act on the jmblicity of baptism far beyond what is warranted by any part of Holy Writ. I write not this in forgctfulness that if we are here ashamed of Christ and His words, He will hereafter be ashamed of us. That person whose whole life is consistent with discipleship to Christ, is making a Christian profession both public and worthy. Respecting all that we see in Pajdobaptists, in any, that is virtuous and praiseworthy, let us say that it becomes us "in all humility to copy such examples," while "above all" we keep Christ "and His word before our eyes" (E. Baines). Indeed, while I admit that there is sometimes reason to say, "He secures the loudest applause who verges most nearly on latitudinarianism" (H. R. PEEFACE. xiu Eeynolds), <' I do not conceal from myself that, beyond all other things, the improvement of our piety is the most pressing and imperative business" (J. Kelly). I have added in different sections select portions fi'om Dr. Stennett, Mr. M'Lean, and others, some of whose baptismal sentiments I had not read when first writing this work. The wisdom and cogency of these extracts, it is trusted, are not such as to detract from the value of this volume. I regret that in pursuing my object I have felt obhged to "reply to arguments which some of my brethren may conceive to have been abandoned, to arguments which by some of the most eminent Pasdobaptists are abandoned (indeed which arguments are the exceptions to this it would be difficult to determine) ; that I could not discard "a partial repetition" when my argument "would be incomplete without it" (Wardlaw) ; and that "line upon line" should in the nineteenth century be "necessary" in the chm'ch of Christ for the vindication of a Divine ordinance. I also fear that there may occur some instances of quotations from the same author (as fi'om Boston, Hey, and others), partly from one and partly from another edition, having made some quotations from others before I possessed the works of these authors, and not having subsequently made all the references to correspond with one edition. The greatest clearness and readiness of proof would have required in all instances a mention of the edition, or of the time and place of pubhcation, which is more than I have attempted, or have in this case deemed necessary. The works specially criticised I have possessed. Let every drawback from human testimony lead to the exaltation of that which, being Divine, is unerring and authoritative. That this volume may have the Divine benediction, may promote the Divine pm-pose and glory, is the earnest desire, the fervent and hopeful prayer of the author. The former part of this work, that is, to the end of § 1, in Section IV, along with the Appendix (with slight alterations now made), has been previously issued, partly from the diffidence of the writer in opposing so directly and strongly views which had been put forth by a learned opponent as demanded by the grammar of Christ's Commission. This work, embrac- ing one hundred and fourteen pages, was entitled The Theology of the Commission on the Subjects of Christian Bajytism. No attempt from Baptist or Psedobaptist, so far as I know, having been made to shew the error and futihty of my reasoning, it is now, with slight alterations, reprinted according to the original design. The following is the conclusion of the Preface in the previously issued fragment. "The reformation from medieval error, and from error into which early Christian fathers fell, I hold to be incomplete ; while I forget not that I am fallible, and with XIV PREFACE. others liable to latent prepossessions. I feel assured, however, that while early associations and instruction may have created in me an unconscious bias, there have been other things, the tendency of which has been opposed to my adhering to the sentiment and practice now advocated. ** While frankly acknowledging the liability of all to err, and that our time should not be constantly occupied in testing the reality of our piety, or the scriptui-alness of particular sentiments, I also maintain that the removal of doubts, where they exist, as to the truth of our sentiments, or rectitude of our practice, and that the increase of scriptural knowledge and conformity to all the Divine will, are constantly and universally desirable. Nor do I regard a desire to know and do all God's will as sufficiently characteristic of God's professing people, either among Establishmentarians or Nonconformists. We welcome too cordially that which will supply an excuse for remaining where we are and as we are. If we have improved in the conducting of controversy by avoiding harsh censure, offensive personalities, and sweeping condemnation, we have not yet attained to a universal and sufficiently earnest desire in baptism, in the Lord's Supper, and in all that we do, to confer not with flesh and blood, but to promote the praise and glory of God. What the author of Schism says on Union, I believe to apply equally to the rectitude of theological sentiment and practice at large : ' There are but too evident proofs, that nothing can effectually unite Christians but a higher tone of personal religion than now generally exists in the professing church. Other means may have a favourable tendency — but this is the grand remedy.' " 2, Aked's Boad, Halifax. ^ CONTENTS. %'^^^::o- '»T^Vrrr*^^ Preface Contents ...... Introductory ..... SECTION I. — John's Baptism .... II. — Christ's Baptizing by His disciples III. — Christ's Commission IV. — Apostolic Baptisms. § 1. — Baptism of about three thousand . § 2. — Baptism of the Samaritans § 3. — Baptism of the Eunuch § 4. — Baptism of Saul § 5. — Baptism of Cornelius and his kinsmen § 6. — Baptism of Lydia and her household § 7. — Baptism of the Jailer and all his § 8. — Baptism of Crispus and other Corinthians § 9. — Baptism of about twelve men at Ephesus V. — Express Scriptural reference to baptism. § 1. — Eomans vi, 2-4 § 2.— 1 Cor. i, 13-17 ; xvi, 15 § 3.— 1 Cor. X, 1, 2 § 4.— 1 Cor. xii, 13 § 5.— 1 Cor. XT, 29 § 6.— Gal. iii, 27 § 7.— Eph. iv, 5 § 8.— Col. ii, 12 § 9.— Heb. vi, 2; ix, 10 § 10.— 1 Pe. iii, 21 VI. — Supposed Scriptural Confirmation op Infant § 1. — John iii, 5 § 2.— Acts XT, • Gal. § 3, — Eomans xi § 4.— 1 Cor. vii, 14 § 5.— Eph. T, 26 § 6.— Titus iii, 5 § 7.— Heb. X, 22 § 8.— The Children in the Gospels § 9. — Children, Babes, Lambs, in the Epistles, &c. § 10. — Many Old and New Testament Scriptures VII. — On God's Covenant with Abraham VIII. — On the Co'n^enant of Circumcision Baptism SVl CONTENTS. 8KCTI0N IX.- X.- XI.- XII.- XIII.- XIV.- XV.- XVI.- XVII.- XVIII.- XIX.- XX.- XXI.- XXII.- XXIII.- XXIV.- XXV.- XXVI.- XXVII.- XXVIII.- XXIX.- XXX.- XXXI.- XXXII.- XXXIII.- Appendix -On the Covenant of Gbace .... -On the (supposed) Ancient Jewish Church . -On Hereditary Right to Baptism . -On Baptizing Infants unless Prohibited -On Baptism as a Seal ..... -On Jewish Proselyte Baptism . -On Sponsorial Justification of Baptism -On the Faith of Infants .... -On Infants, Servants, and Disciples -On Infant Citizenship and Membership -On Baptism as Infant and Monumental -On Baptism as Infant and Symbolical -On Baptism as Infant and Regenerating -On Baptism as Infant and Dedicatory -On Baptism as Infant and Indiscriminating . -On Baptism as Infant and Spiritual -On the Essence op Baptism -On Fitness for Baptism and the Lord's Supper -On Women's Right to the Lord's Supper —On the Sufficiency of Baby Baptism —Historic Testimony. § 1. — Inspired Historic Testimony . . § 2. — Uninspired Historic Testimony. 1. — Barnabas 2. — Hermas 3.— Polycarp - • 4. — Ignatius 5. — Clement 6. — Dionysius 7. — Apocryphal Gospels, Acts, &c. 8.— Justin Martyr 9. — Irenffius 10.— Melito 11.— Theophilus 12. — Clement, of Alexandria 13.— Tertullian 14. — Origen 15.— Hippolytus 16.— Cyprian and the early Church -On the Meaning of Infant -On the Burden of Proof -On the Advantages or Evils of Infant Baptism -Concluding Remarks ..... Index I. — Authors ,, II. — Subjects ,, III. — Scriptures PAUT II. V / SUBJECTS OF BAPTISM. INTEODUCTORY. Tertullian.— "No one can prescribe to truth."* Dr. H. BoNAH. — " I dare not choose my lot : I would not, if I might ; Choose thou for me, my God, So shall I walk aright." " Not mine, not mine the choice, lu things or fji-eat or small ; Be Thou my guide, my streagtli, My wisdom aud my all." — Ili/inn-i, pp. 257, 3t8. C. H. Spuegeon.— " To endeavour to convert men to our views is our duty." — Sword, rofc3=ed that all the prcjixed quotations are from Padobantht ■writers. Other quotations are from Piujobaiitist authors, or are mcatioucd to bo from Baptis^ts, or arc from those 80 well kaown that the mention of denomination has been considered unnecessary. ^ SUBJECTS OF BAPTISM. error, it is absolutely unnecessary to a training up in the nurture and ad- monition of the Lord, and that no good can, on the whole, possibl,y result ? from the substituting of a human invention for a Divinely-ordained practice. My first and principal aim shall be to prove that the baptism of pro- fessing believers is alone sanctioned by scriptural precept and precedent. The objections and 'concessions of opponents will be noticed as I proceed to adduce inspired testimony to the correctness of my sentiments, or eccle- siastical corroboration of their truthfulness. In speaking of believers and professing believers, I shall here remark that I may sometimes use the word "believers" when "professing" is not expressed with it, in accordance with the Spirit of inspiration in using the word "disciples," in application to those who cordially receive the Lord Jesus as their Saviour, and who may be called disciples of Christ, or Christians, and to those vi]xoprqfessedhj belong to this character. SUBJECTS OF BAPTISM;. (P^*^ '- SECTION I. John's baptism. Luther.—" Joliu tlie Baptist was a new prophet ; and baptism for repentance and remission of sins was a new rite." T. Lawson (Frieiul).— " Faith and repentance were the C[ualiScations of such as ■were admitted to John's baptism." Prof. H. .J. RiPLEV. — " Baptized unto (more properly into) repentance, by which phrase baptism is indicated as an avowal of repentance, and as a xdedgo of entering on a penitent and righteous life." — Notes, on Ko. vi, 3. Dr. J. M. Cramp. — "Obedience to John's baptism was at that time a test of character ; had tho Saviour neglected it lie could not have affirmed that Ho ' did always the things which pleased' His llGavciily Father."— Cafe, p. 83. Dr. D. Thomas.—" Whatever is duty, positive or moral — however apparently trivial or mo- mentous— I shall obey. ' It becomes us to fulfil all righteousness.' This is the spirit with which our great Master begins His public life." — Ocnius, -hat vv'e meet with in Webster's Sijnt. and Syno. of th3 Greek Tes., '^ Biipiisma meift/'ioic/s, baptism which binds to repentance, to change of heart and life" (p. 73), maybe admissible, being capable of a truthful application ; but it is only proper as we consider baptism to be an intelligent act, constituting a conscious and solemn profession of repentance then experienced. Baptism, in regard to the period subsequent to its reception, binds to the immediate and permanent fruits and evidences of repentance, rather than to repentance itself. Again, Mr. Webster says, "The meaning of eis with hcqitizo appears twofold; unto, object, purpose. Malt, iii, 11 ; Acts ii, 38 ; into, union and communion with, the context shcv/ing whether it be of the most com- plete and mystical nature as Gal. iii, 27 ; Eom. vi, 3; 1 Cor. xii, 13 ; or as in 1 Cor. x, 2, necessarily less comprehensive" (p. 161). The words follow iug eis are not the same in all these places. I prefer "into" as the rendering in each place. Wo have not access to the heart ; but John's baptism was into repentance, the state professed, and the state which the sincere experienced. Those who repent and are baptized upon the name of Jesus Christ, being sincere, repent and believe on Jesus Christ, and come into a possession of the remission of sins and the gift of the Holy Ghost. The inspired, like other writers, presume on sincerity, and speak of professing Christians as baptized into Jesus Christ, and into His death ; b SUBJECTS OF BAPTISM. faith in Jesus, in His death, and resm-rection, being the proression of all "who were baptized in, into, or upon His name, the sincere realizing the union (and communion) with Christ, and the enjoyment of all the atten- dant blessings which, in baptism, are professed to be expected from ChriKt. Dr. Halley himself, when he is speaking of Apollos, says, " Im- perfectly acquainted with the Gospel, he baptized his disciples after the manner which John employed, probably as John had done, rnito the profession of repentance, preparatory to the reception of the Messiah. But if this form of baptism were proper and valid, as vv'e believe it was, when administered before the resurrection of Jesus, for the apostles and early disciples had no other,'" &c. {Concj. Lee, vol. x, p. 158.) This accords with the meaning, though not the primary meaning of eis, "on account of " as given by Donnegan, Parkhurst, and others. Matthiaa says that eis "frequently means 'with respect to,' quoi attinet ad, a general reference, which in English is often expressed by the more definite 'on account of,' 'in consequence of ' " (§578c). The word "frequently" similarly occurs when Matthia3 is mentioning an import of participles for which Dr. Halley pleads universality (§ 558.) "The collection (eis) for the saints," in 1 Cor. xvi, 1, was assuredly the collection on behalf of the saints. The inherit- ance reserved in heaven (eis) for Christians (1 Pet. i, 4), is on behalf of Christians. The fruits worthy of repentance to which John exhorted, v/hile he baptized with water unto repentance, were not fruits worthj^ of a subsequent repentance, but of one supposed to have taken place, or at that time to be at least professed. Those baptized by John unto (into) repent- ance, did not promise by themselves, or their parents, guardians, or other sureties, that they would or might at some future time repent, but in con- nexion with, and in order to their baptism, they personally professed re- pentance, as the entire records clearly and sufHciently testify. Dr. E. Williams teaches according to Dr. Kidd, that as women are not mentioned in connexion with John's baptism, we might as well say that no women as that no children were baptized by him, as if the records of confessing sin, &c., did not necessarily exclude infants without at all excluding women. — Can. Eea., p. 156. It would be well if those who advocate infant baptism from the sup- position that Christ, though not mentioning it, would certainly expect His disciples to perform it on account of their previous practice, vrould candidly consider the Divine testimony which is borne to the baptism of John, and that of Christ by means of His disciples, and to these alone as previously existing. As the baptism of John was that of repentance, of those who confessed their sins, and of those who believed in the Messiah about to appear, and as Jesus, on this, is only said to have made and baptized disci- ples, baptizing by His disciples, previous practice ought to confound our opponents, unless infimts can repent, confess, and (as some have main- tained) believe. I admit that the disciples of John might have many ob- scure and many erroneous conceptions of Christ ; that to many of them lie might prove a stumbling-block when His spiritual character and work were developed; and that the "least in the kingdom of heaven is greater than" John; but I deny any argument hence in favour of the baptism of infants. JOHN'S BAPTISM. 7 On iucliscriminato baptism, besides occasional reference to it, I con- template a distinct section. The following is a portion of Picdobaptist testimony to tlie cbaracter of John's Baptism.* Dr. Erskine. — " John's baptism was termed the baptism of repentance, and bap- tism to repentance, because he required of all whom he admitted to baptism, a pro- fession of repentance." — Theol.Diss., p. 79. Assembly of Divines. — " Unto repentance. That thereby you may make profes- sion of your repentance (Mar. i, 4), which by that rite or seal of God's covenant, is on man's part obsigned." — Anno., on Matt, iii, 11. Dr. J. Owen says of baptism "in its first institution : God calls a man in a mar- vellous and miraculous manner ; gives him a ministry from heaven ; commands him to go and baptize all those who, confessing their sins, and professing repentance of them, should come to him," &c. — Works, vol. vi, p. 465. L. EcHARD. — " V/ho, confessing their sins before God, were entered into this new institution by baptism . . . showing by it that they were now to be entered and transplanted into a new profession." — Eccl. Hist., p. 47. A. PiRiE. — " The baptism of John . . . was a sign of repentance, or of putting on a new character . . . of faith in the Messiah as about to come." — On Bap., pp. 20, 21. W. Btjrkitt. — " John admitted these persons to baptism, upon their confession of sin, and promises of amendment." " John's baptism was the baptism of repentance, of which infants were incapable." — Com., on Matt, iii, 6 ; xix, 13-15. TuRRETiNE. — "John admitted none to baptism but those who confessed their Bins ; because his business was to baptize the adult." — Ins., §14, qucs. 22. Dr. Whitby. — " They were sensible of their sins, and so repaired to his baptism ; professing their repentance for them." " The baptism then used by John and Christ's disciples was only the baptism of repentance, and faith in the Messiah which was for to come (Acts xix, 4), of both which infants were incapable." — Com., on Matt, iii, 6 ; xix, 14. Grotius thus explains Matt, iii, 11 : "I baptize you upon the profession of re- pentance which ye make." — In Dr. Gill's Com., on Matt, iii, 11. W.Gilpin. — "Who, being convinced by his doctrine, confessed their sins and were baptized." — Expos., on Matt, iii, 5, G. Dr. G. Benson. — " He preached concerning the speedy approach of the Messiah's kingdom, and baptized the proselj'tes whom he made." — Hist, of Chris., p. 4. C.Taylor. — He " baptized unto repentance." "He caused them (those whom he baj)tizecl) to pledge themselves to a new life." — Facts and Evi., pp. 16, 9. Beausobre and Lenfant. — " Upon the administering of it, they also bound and engaged themselves to lead holy and unblameable lives : baptism was an open pro- fession of this engagement." — Com., on Matt, iii, 6. Bengel. — " At the baptism of repentance men confessed their sins." " Preaching the baptism, an abbreviated expression for [preaching the preaching of repentance, and baptizing the baptism of repentance." — Gnomon, on Mark i, 4. Dr. J. Stack. — " That baptism, which was to repentance and faith in Christ." — Lectures on Acts, p. 279. Dr. Watts. — John " was sent to preach the doctrine of repentance and forgiveness of sins, to baptize, or wash with water, those who professed their repentance, and to direct the people to Christ as the Savioiu*." — Works, vol. iv, p. 474. E. Wynne. — " 'And were all baptized by him in the Eiver Jordan, confessing their sins,' that is, all who confessed their sins and showed signs of repentance." — The New Tes., on Matt, iii, 7. Bp. Hall. — " Those that came to be baptized of him, presented themselves to him with an humble confession of their sins. "(Para., on Matt, iii, 11.) — Nor do we read of any being carried to him for baj)tism. Pres. Edwards. — " They came confessing their sins, manifesting their humiliation for sins (Matt, iii, 6), and the baptism they were baptized with, was called the baptism of repentance." — Rel. AJec, part iii, sign xii. R. Baxter. — " John requires the profession of true repentance." " The Baptist enforced repentance, and bapti.?m as a sign and proof of it" {Par. and Notes, on Mar, * These, and succeeding extracts, are not given in chronological order, although some of the last arc usiially from living or recently deceased writers. o SUBJECTS OF BAPTISM. i, i). " Thoy a-11 flocked to liim to be baptized, professiu" repentance" (on Matt, iii, 5). — rhatthis and inucli more is plainer than the Scriptures, i do not maintain ; but per- haps, ■where man's words have led to a departure from Scripture, man';5 words may cfTcct a return. A^-ain, on Mark i, 4, John " baptized those that professed this" ropcuiance. Also, " John baptized those who professed repentance and faith in the Messiah just now at ha,nd" (On Acts xix, 4). On baptism into rcpcutojicc as mcan- ingp '' that John did enjagc them to repent, but not requiring' a profession of repentance as forcgoin^^ baptism," he teaches " that this is against tlio whole current of exposi- tors, ancient and modorn, and against the plain scope of the text. Matt, iii, 6." A. Calmet. — " He induced many persons to confess their sins ; whom he baptized in the river Jorda,n, exhorting them to believe in Him who was coming after him." — Die. of Bi., Art. John. Dr. S. Clarke. — "John instructed those that were to be ba.ptized by him." " They who, by the preaching of John the Baptist, were prevailed upon to repent and amend their lives, through a firm belief of the promises God had given them of the Messiah then speedily to appear, were baptized." — Par., on Matt, iii, 13; >S'er. on 1 Cor.i, 13. T. Williams speaks of John's baptism " as a symbol of rer)ontanco and a new life." — Cot. Bi., on Matt. iii. J. Brown. — " Such as professed their repentance, and made confession of their sins, he baptized." — Blh. Die. : Art. John the Bap. J. Trapp. — " John did baptize in the wilderness. Like as at the promulgation of the law, the people were commanded to wash their garments, and sanctify themselves ; BO at the first publication of the Gospel, to wash their hands and clea,nse their hearts ; and in tostimoay or i^rofession thereof, to believe and be baptized" (Com., on Mark i, 4). — Also, on Matt, iii, G, he speaks of our being " baptized, and thereby enrolled among the citizens of the New Jerusalem ;" and of baptism, at which " we swear (as David did) ' to keep God's righteous judgments.' " G. Wakefield. — "And were baptized by him in Jordan, upon confession of their Bina."— Trans., Matt, iii, 6 ; Mark i, 6. M. Mautindale. — " . . . penitential acts, wherewith ha required this ceremony to bo attended. Ho exacted not only sorrow for sin, but a change of life." — Bib. Die, Art. i'ap. T. Scott. — " Ho was called the Baptist, or the Bai)tizer, because he admitted the Jews into the number of his disciples by the external rite of baptism, as a sign or pro- fession of rei^cntance." " V/hen thoy were brought to confess their sins, and to profess repentance, and a purpose of submitting to the Messiah v/ho was at hand, and leading a now life, they wore baptized by John." " It does not appoar that any but adults were baptized by him." "Adult Jews, professing repentance and a dispo.sition to become the Messiah's subjects, were the only persons whom John admitted to bap- tism."— Com., on Matt, iii, 1, 5, 6. Dr. Doddridge. — " Those that were awakened to repentance were all baptized by liim in the river Jordan, expressing the convictions they were under by confessing their sins, and by submitting to this rite engaging thcmsolYoa for the future to refor- mation and obedience." — Exp., on Matt, iii, 6. M. Henry. — "Those who received his doctrine and submitted to his disciplino wore baptized of him in Jordan, thereby professing their ropentanco, and their belief that the kingdom of the Messiah was at hand." — Com., on Matt, iii, 7. Bp. Burnet. — " The stipulation in John's baptism was repentance." — Exp. of the XTsixArt., p. 405. E. BiCKERSTETH. — " His baptism was connected with the confession of sin." — Trc, on Bap., p. 14. E. Watson. — " John's baptism was a profession of repentance, and faith in the Bpeedy appearance of Him who was to baptize with the Holy Gliost and fire." " It was a declaration of repentance and renunciation of sin, and it was a profession of faith in the immediate revelation of the Messiah, and of trust in Him to take away sin." — Thcol. Ins., vol. iv, p. 415 ; Expo, of Matt., iii, 3. J. Wesley. — "Confessing their sins — Of their own accord freely a,nd openly" (Notes on Matt.'^iii, 6). " Preaching the ba^otism of repentance — That is, preaching repentance, and baptizing as a sign and means of it" (On Mark, i, 4). — Is baptizing a sign and means of repentance in infants ? Doe.i Scripture teach that baptism is a means of repentance in any? Dr. A. Clarke. — "John, surnamed the Baptist, because he required those to bo baptized who professed to be conti-ito because of their sins." — Com., on Matt, iii, 1. S. Bromley. — " He baptized in the riyer Jordan v.'hen thoy confessed theii' sins." — Life of Christ, p. 42. JOHN'S BAPTISM. V Dr. D. Davidson. — " Groat nnmbers stibmitted to his b.aptism, professing repent- ance by confession of sin. Baptism, or sacred washing, enjoined on all who approved of the ministry and doctrine of John, strong'ly indicated the introduction of a change in the national constitution of Israel." " Baptism of repentance signifies that sacred washing enjoined on those who repented after hearing the message of John. Thus the rite belonged to repentance." — Poch. Com., on Matt, iii, 1-8 ; Acts xix, 4. J. BxiEWSTER. — " His baptism implied . . . the expectation of Him who was to come after him." — Lee. on Acts, i). 355. Dr. G. Hill. — " ' Baptized unto John's baptism,' i.e., into the expectation of the person whom John announced, and into repentance of those sins which John con- demned."— Lcc. in Div., vol. ii, p. 331. M. Poole. — " Sent before Him, to baptize men with the baptism of water, in tes- timony of their repentance." — Coin., on Matt, iii, 11). "John baptized them in Jor- dan, confessing their sins." — On Matt, xxriii, 19. Dr. Neander. — " Eepentance and the sense of sin" " were essential preliminaries to the baptism of" John. — Life of Christ, p. G7 (Bohn's Edition.) Dr. J. P. Smith. — '■ John's baptism was on the profession of a Messiah expected." — First Lines of Theol., p. G63. Dr. J. EoBiNSON. — " The Baptist rcquii'ed a personal profession of faith." — Theol. Bib. and Ecc. Die., on John's Baptism. A. S. Paterson. — " Such as professed repentance and made confession of their sins, he baptized with water" {Ch. His., vol. i, p. 305). — Nor does the inspired record add any others. J. Fawcett (of Carlisle). — " To be baptized in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, would be a vain ceremony, unprofitable to those who submitted to it, if they did not believe in that name. Faith must go before baptism." J. W. Etheeidge thus tr.anslates the Syriac : " And were baptized of him in Jur- dan, the river, while they were confessing their sins." — Matt, iii, 6. T. Boston. — "Let us view those Scriptures that directly hold forth the nature, ends, and use of baptism, Matt, iii, 11, 'I indeed baptize you with water unto repent- ance,' eis inatanoian. So it is called the baptism of repentance. Acts xix, 4, ' John verily baptized with the baptism of roponta,nce,' not in respect of repentance to come after, but going before ; for John baptized none but those that confessed their sins, Matt, iii, G, and he required of them a profession of their faith in Him that was to come. Acts xix, 4." — Worlcs, p. 384. Dr. J. Macknight. — " John's was the baptism of repentance, whereby all that had a sense of their sins and professed repentance were promised pardon, and exhorted to believe in the Messiah who was soon to appear." — Par. and Com., §14, pp. 28, 29. W. DODWELL. — " They made a public iirofes.'^ion of repentance, and, in token of it, were baptized by him in the river Jordan, confessing their sins, and binding them- selves for the future to reformation and obedience." — Par., on Matt, iii, G. Dr. E. Hodgson teaches that Paul, to the tv/elve men at Ephesus, " explained the nature of that baptism which was to repentance and faith in Christ." — Lee. on Acts, on Acts xix, 4. The Ci^iiBKiDGE Platform: (U.S.) in advocating repentance and faith in members of churches, adduces the three thousand bai^tized on the day of Pentecost, and tho.se baptized pre^aously by John ; on the latter, saying — " John Baptist admitted men to baptism, confessing and bewailing their sins ; and of others it is said that they came, and confessed and showed their deeds." — Cong. Order, p. 127. W. Thorn. — " There is a sense in which it may be said, all that were baptized by John and the immediate followers of Christ, v.'ere converted. Their minds were changed, or their views respecting the coming Messiah, were altered ; or they would not have become his temporary disciples, or have been admitted to hia purifyings and consecrations." — On Inf. Bap., p. 29S. Dr. G. C. Knapp. — " John exborted the persons baptized by him to repentance (metanoia), and to faith in the Messiah who was shortly to appear." — Lee. on Chris. Theol., p. 427. Dr. M. Bland. — " Baptisma Metanoias. Exhorting men to repent of all the irregularities of their lives, and to be baptized in token of their sincere desire to be washed and cleansed from them." — Anno., on I.Iark i, 4. Dr. D. Welsh thus speaks of John's baptism : " involving as adminstered by him, on the part of those who observed it, a confession of pollution and need of pardon, and the expression of a purpose of futxire pimby, the rite being at the same time significant of the remission of thsir sins." — Ch. Bis., vol. i, p. 115. Dr. Dick. — " John verily baptized with the baptism of repentance. It is called 10 SUBJECTS OF BAPTISM. the baptism of repentance, because he required from those whom he admittecl to it, the coufossion and renunciation of their sins, and such a change of views and dispo- sitions as was necessary to prepare them for becoming' disciples of the Messiah." — Lee. 011 Ads, on xix, 1-20. He also says: " John baptized his disciples into the faith of the Messiah as to come ; we are bajitized into the faith of him as actually come." r. W. Robertson. — "John'sbaptism, besides, implied the importance of confession. ' They wore baptized confessing' their sins.' On the eve of a promised new life, they were required to acknowledge the iniquity of their past life." — Serm. First Series, p. 135. Dr. J. CAMPBELTi. — " The baptism of repentance is designated such because the duty of repentance was the great topic of John's ministration, and baptism its seal. Those who did not repent were not baptized, so that baptism was the line of demarca- tion between the penitent and the impenitent ; although, doubtless, then, as now," &c. —M'Phun's Bible, on Mark i, 1-13. Dr. KiTTO says respecting John and those baptized by him, that he " performed upon them the rite with which he crowned his instructions." (Dai. Bi. III., Eve. Be., vol. iii, p. 19iJ. Also, that "he required repentance, therefore CBaptisrna vietanoiasj, as a prei)aration for the approaching kingdom of the Messiah." — Cy. Art. John's Bap. Dr. J. Harris. — " He awoke in them vague but elevated anticipations of ' Him that should come,' and took from them a solemn pledge, by baptism, that as soon as that illustrious personage appeared, they would enrol themselves among His disciples." — Qr. Tea., p. 7. Dr. A. Beith. — " Multitudes, confessing their sins, were baptized into his doctrine, and thus publicly professed their adlierenca to it." " To faith, therefore, as supposed to exist in them, his word and the celebration of the emblematic ordinance, were addressed." " John baptized into the faith of the Messiah who was to come." — Christ our Life, pp. 83, 81, 159, 417. Dr. A. Barnes. — " The hnptisrn of repentance. Having special relation to repent- ance, or as a profession that they did repent of their sins." — Coin., on Acts xix, 4. Prof. J. H. Godwin admits that the baptism of .John indicated " a professed "willingness to commence" "a new course of life," " embodying in a public act the re- solution to pursue purity." It was " the avowal of a present resolution to live in the manner required," made by " professed penitents." — O/w. Bap., pj). 235, 236. J. P. Lav\'son. — " Many confessed their sins and were baptized, professing their repentance and preparation for the coming of the kingdom of God." — Bi. Cy., vol. iii, p. 432. Dr. Stier. — The baptism of John "demanded not merely a symbolical but a real repentance." — Words, Sfc., vol. viii, p. 293. Clarks' Edition. Bp. Hinds. — John's baptism "was a sign of admission into the temporary society over which he presided ; and as such, a pledge also that the initiated would conform to the will of that society." — Rise, Sfc., p. 132. Also on Christ's being baptized by John, he says that " Christ must be considered in this, and in several acts of His life, as fulfilling the office of pattern to His church, and to each individual ; and as doing, not what was needful for Him, but what was needful because ' thus it becometh us to fulfil all righteousness.' " — Caiechist's Maniial, p. 14. W. S. Edv?ards. — " The people were exhorted to repent . . . In the event of their compliance, they were also to submit to a certain ordinance, in token of the fact." Heroes, SjX., pp. 29G, 297. GiESLER. — " Before Jesus, appeared one of His relatives, .Tohn, in the wilderness of Judea, with the solemn call, 'Eepent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand,' and dedicating his followers to this altered state of mind by a symbolic washing of the body." — Eccl. His., vol. i, p. 57. Dr. E. Burton. — " The disciples of the Baptist were brought to acknowledge that they had offended God, and that they had no nieans in themselves of obtaining recon- ciliation" (His., tizoiites, in other words, if the participial form "baptizing" re- quires that it records the making of disciples as to be eflected by baptizing, the participial form " teaching," equally connected with discipling, will require that we understand discipling to mean, and to be eflected by, bap- tizing into the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost, and teaching them to observe all things whatsoever Christ has commanded. According to this interpretation — although in its coi'rect- ness I do not believe — infants cannot, we maintain, bo rightful subjects of bap- tism ; and I can leave the reader to judge of the accordance of this in- terpretation wdth indiscriminate baptism, or with the baptizing of all applicants. Further, if no order is to be observed in the directions, "baptizing" and "teaching," baptizing may be the first or the last act. It may be an introduction into the church of Christ, or almost a wash- ing for the shroud ; or it may take place in the middle or in any other 24 SUBJECTS OF BAPTISM. part of a Christian's career. It -would seem as if a departure from tlio obvious import of the Saviour's instructions would necessarily lead to absui'dity or impossibility. The baptism into the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost, imphes faith in God the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, and an act of worship, and consecration to the triune God, totally at variance with infant or indiscriminate baptism. It has, it is true, been maintained that the proper antecedent to the masculine pronoun (autous) them, is the neuter noun (cthne) nations, aud that discipling and baptizing are co- extensive. But this assertion respecting the antecedent of autous is as unnecessary as it is incapable of proof. In being commanded to discij^e, they were commanded to make Christians, to make believers. Hence wo read, " The disciples came together to break bread." " The disciples were called Christians first in Antioch." In addition to disagi-eement in gender, which I admit is not a proof that ethne is not the antecedent to autous, in addition to such an interpretation as discipling hij baptizing being not required by the idiom of the Greek language, this interpretation would demand that we baptize fornicators, idolaters, adulterers, thieves, di'unkards, the covetous, &c. ; for assuredly to make them disciples of Christ, so far as with His help and blessing we are able, is our dvLiy. Likewise the duty of "teaching them to observe all things whatsoever " Christ has commanded, shows that infant or indiscriminate baptism is not taught, unless infants can know and receive Divine truth, and they, along with persons known to be unconverted, are to be instructed to partake of the Lord's Supper which, is one of the all things Christ has commanded to bo observed. Whatever weight may be attached to the fact of order in the command to make dis- ciples . . . baptizing . . . teaching, &c., those who violate the order of Christ's words should have more in vindication of their conduct than the simple ability to speak scornfully and reproachfully of a point of order. If we obey the great commission of the Saviour according to the order of His words, we must not practise infant or indiscriminate baptism. Whether with some we adopt the authorized version, " teach," or its marginal and more correct reading, "make disciples, or Christians, of all nations," we reject infant baptism if we follow the order of the commission. Nor is the commission of Christ whether recorded by Matthew, Mark, or Luke, a revelation respecting the salvation of infants. This doctrine must be learnt elsev/here. To some of those who admit the absence of all encouragement or reference to infant baptism in the only express command of Christ on baptism — the commission — but who maintain that elsewhere it has express or implied encouragement, I hope to speak when noticing other portions of Divine revelation, and other pleas for the baptism of in- fants. The extracts from Predobaptists on the Divine and only law of Christian baptism, a law required and admitted to be explicit, shall be somewhat numerous. It will be seen that many Pjedobaptist ■wTiters — • I believe it a fact that most of them, notwithstanding practice to the con- trary— allow that infant baptism could not be contemplated by Christ in His commission, or they admit that the obvious import of the commission CHEIST'S COMMISSION. 25 certainly and necessarily excludes infant and indiscriminate baptism. In the appendix at the conclusion of this work, Christ's words are more largely explained, and their import, as demanded by the rules of grammar and the analogy of Scripture, more fully vindicated. The following is a portion of Paidobaptist sentiment on the import of Christ's commission, with occasional reference to the manner in which some seek to justify human practice in opposition to their own interpretation of inspired precept. Wycltffe. — " In the last cliapter of Matthew, Christ commands His disciples, saying', ' Go yo, therofore, and teach ail nations, baptizin^j them in the name of tlio Fatiier, the Son, and the Holy Ghost.' And accordingly Phiiijj, when about to baptize the eunuch, Acts viii, first instraccsd him in the faith, as did tlie apostles. Acts ii, when they baptized the people." He says, "on account of the last chapter of Matthew our church introduces believers, who answer for the infant, which has not yet arrived at years of discrotiori " ('Tracts and Treittises, p. 15S, published by the Wijcliffe Society), But where is the Divine authority for sponsors ? Calvin.—" The evangelists frequently use the terms believers and disciples as equivalent, and especially Luke, in tlie Acts of th3 Apostles." " Christ orders those to be baptized who shall have given their name to the gospel, and shall have professed themselves disciplos : partly that baptism may be to them tlie watchword of eternal life before God, partly the external sign of faith amongst men. Therefore in Mark it is said, ' He that believeth and is baptized.' By which words Christ joins baptism to doctrine, so that the former may b3 merely an accession to the latter." LiMBORCH. — " Tiiey could not make disciples but bj' teaching. By this instruction the disciples were bi-ought over to the faith before they were baptized. Mark xvi, 15, 16." "Hence also our Lord commanded that men should first be taught, and brought over to the faith, and after that bo baptized, Matthew xxviii, 19 ; Mark xvi, 15, 16." — Ins., I. V. c. 68, § 2. Grotius. — " Since there are two ways of teaching, the one imperfect, by intro- duction to the first principles ; the other by more extensive instruction : the former seems to be intended by riiatheteuein : for it means to initiate as it were into the doctrines, and this is to precede baptism : the latter is pointed out by didaskein, which is to follow baptism." — Anno., on Matt, xx^'iii, 20. Dr. Stier, having quoted the above, adds that " to be baptized into any one, or into his name, is to devote one"s-soLf to him, and wish to be called by his name."— Words, &c., vol. viii, p, 299. EiOALTius. — " The words of our Lord are exceedingly clear, who commands to teach before they baptize." This is not commanded expressly, but is taught by just and necessary implication. We have not in the commission the words firstly and secondly, but we have such an order in the instruction that Piedobaptists say with Jerome : " He commands the apostles first to teach all nations." It is very clear that the commission makes no distinction between baptizing some and baptizing others. If it implies that teaching and dis'jipliug are in one instance to precede baptism, it implies that all are to be taught and made disciples before baptism. Erasmus, Beza, Castalio, and others, translate the words, " Teach all nations." English Reformers (by T. Russell). — " Baptism is an ordinance instituted of God, and no practice of man's imagination, put in use in Christ's time, and after His resurrection commanded to be ministered unto all that believe, whether they were Jews or Gentiles ; for Christ saith to His apostles, Go ye and teach all nations, bap- tizing thom in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost." — Vol.'iii, p. 291. Venema, on Matt, xxviii, 19, 20, says : " This is an excellent passage, and explains the whole nature of baptism. Before persons were baptized, it was necessary for them to boUeve the preaching of the a.postles, which faith they were to profess in baptism." — Biss. Sac, I. ii, c. xiv, § 6. Episcopius. — " It is objected iihat mcitheteusate does not properly signify to teach, but to make disciples. Be it so, yet disciples could not be made except they were taught those things that pertained to the religion of Christ; for a disciple and a teacher are correlates."~JJesp. ad Quces., cj^uccs, sxxvii, 26 SUBJECTS OF BAPTISM. Maccovius. — " Wo assert that our Lord enjoing two different things upon His disciples, to teaeh and to baptize." " To teacli the thing's to be believed, is not the same as to baptize. They were commanded to be tauj^ht the former, that they might believe ; then to be baptized after they believed." — -Com., on Matt, xsviii, 19, '20. HoORNBEEK. — " Without faith water-baptism cannot by any means be lawful, for the command is believe, first ; then also, and not otherwise, be baptized. ' He that believeth and is baptized,' Mark xvi, 16" (Socin. Conf., torn, iii, p. 389). The duty recorded in this passag'o before being baptized, and evidently intended to have a previous observance, is that of believing. — " Matlieteusato indeed properly signifies to rtiake a disciple, but . . . that is not done without instruction" (p. 325), J. Cotton. — " Now a disciple, as the meaning of the word implieth, is a scholar in Christ's school ; and therefore when the apostles were directed to make disciples before they did baptize them, they were not only to convert them to the faith, but also to gather them as disciples or scholars into a school of Christ." — Way of the Ch., p. 82. Bp. Burnet. — " By the first teaching, or making of disciples, that must go before baptism, is to be meant the convincing of the world that Jcsiis is the Christ, the true Messias," &c. " And when any were brought to acknowledge this, they were to baptize them," " After baptism was thus performed, the baptized person was to be further instructed in all the specialities of the Christian religion, and in all the rules of life that Christ had prescribed." — Expo, of xxxix A7-t., p. 374. Dr. Barrow, on Matt, xxviii, 19: " The action is baptizing, or immersing in water; the object thereof those persons of any nation, whom His ministers can by their in- struction and persuasion render disciples : that is, such as do sincerely believe the truth of His doctrine, and seriously resolve to obey His commands." — Works, vol. i, p. 518. Saurin. — " In the primitive church instruction preceded baptism, agreeably to the order of Jesus Christ : ' Go, teach all nations, baptizing them. ' " J. Trapp, — " And teach all nations. Gv. Disciple them, make them Christians first, and then teach them to observe, &c., ver. 20, as in baptism they have promised" (Com. on Matt, xxviii, 19). He says on Mark xvi, 16, " and is baptized. As content to givo up himself to Christ, and to receive His mark, making a public profession of the faith," R, Wynne. — " ' He who believeth and is baptized;' i.e., he who sincerely believes your testimony, and as a proof of that cordial faith, is baptized in My name," &c. T, Adam. — " ' Baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost.' That is, into the belief and service of the Father," &c. — Expo., <^c., on Matt, xxviii, 20. R. Baxter. — " ' Go disciple Me all nations, baptizing them.' As for those that say, they are discipled hy baptizing, and not before baptizing, they speak not the sense of that text ; nor that which is true or rational, if they mean it absolutely as so spoken ; else why should one be baptized more than another ? . . . When Christ layeth down in the apostolical commission the nature and order of His apostles' work, it is first to make disciples, and then to baptize them into the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. And as it is a making disciples which is first expressed in Matthew, so Mark expoundeth . . . ' He that believeth and is baptized, shall be saved.' This is not like some occasional historical mention of baptism, but it is the very commission of Christ to His apostles for preaching and baptism, and purposely exprcsseth their several works in their several places and order. Their first task is by teaching to make disciples, which are by Mark called hclicvcrs. The second work is to baptize them. . . . The third work is to teach them all other things, which are afterwards to be learned in the school of Christ. To contemn this order is to renounce all rules of order : for where can we expect to find it if not here ? I profess, my conscience is fully satisfied, that it is one sort of faith, even saving, that mast go before baptism," "Christ saith. Matt, xxviii, 19, Disciple mo all naiions, hapdzing them; They must be initially made disciples first, by consent, and then be invested in the visible state of Christianity by baptism." " To be baptized into the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, is no less than by solemn covenant to givo up one's-self to God the Father," &c. (Dispu. of Right to Sac, &c). — I admit that Baxter and some others could qualify their remarks by confining their application to adults ; but if they rightly interpret this inspired ^vrit, baptism is divinely intended only for disciples, for believers. Thus wrote ho, who also dared to advocate the discipling and baptizing of infants, as if infants could possibly take up their cross and follow Christ. In his Paraphrase on the New Testament, he writes on Matt- xxviii, 19. " Make all nations (to the uttermost of your power) my disciples; taking thorn into mj CHEIST'S COMMISSION 27 church by solemn covenant, celebrated by baptizing them into the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost." Also he teaches that the gathering of Christians out of kingdoms " maketh not all to be Christians, but only such as are discipled." Thus he properly uses Christians and disciples, as being synonymous ; and the advocate of baptizing infants says that " merely to consent to learn of Christ makes one a baptizable disciple." Elsewhere, speaking of adults he says : " They were to be baptized into the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost ; therefore were to profess that they believed in the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost" {Confir. and Rcsto.,-p.25). He also says on, " Go, disciple me all nations," that " men must be first disciples by the professed consent before they are declared such by the seals." GoMARUS. — "In Matt, xxviii, 19, our Lord speaks not concerning infants, but adults, who are capable of instruction," — Opera Theol., p. 148. Beckmann. — " That the word inatheteuein, according to its etymology, signifies to mak'3 disciples, is readily allowed by all. But this is not eflected without instruc- tion ; for he who, as mathetes, learns from another, is rationally taught something by him. They therefore are disciples, who are taught and learn," — Kver. Theol,, exer, xvii. S. Palmee. — "There is nothing in the words of the institution respecting the baptism of infants." — Ans. to Br. P., p. 7. Dr. Wall. — " The commission given by our Saviour to His disciples in the time of His mortal life, to baptize in the country of Judea, is not at all set down in Scripture ; only it is said that they baptized (1) a groat many. And the enlargement of that commission given them afterwards. Matt, xxviii, 19, to perform the same ofiice among all the Heathen nations, is set down in such brief words, that there is no par- ticular direction given what they were to do in reference to the children of those that received the faith. And among all the persons that are recorded as baptized by the apostles, there is no express mention of any infant." (Inf. Sop., vol. i, pp. v, vi). To the word nations in the commission we may apply the words of Dr. W. : " There are in all writers and in all books, some sayings or rules, in which, though they are expressed in general and comprehensive terms, yet infants are not meant to be included." The apostles clearly so understood Christ's words. In his Paraphrase on Hard Texts, this worthy and inconsistent author says on Matt, xxviii, 19 : " I give you, my apostles, commission and charge to go and teach all nations of the world ; adkjing to your doctrine the seal of holy baptism whereby you shall initiate all believers into my church ; baptizing them, as, by calling upon the name of God the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost, one in essence, three in distinction of persons, so in the authority of the same one God, and into the profession of the one faith and religion of that one God." He also says : " To disciple the nations to Christ, is the same thing as to proselyte them to Him." — His., ^x., vol. i, p. Ixxxvi. Dr. Owen. — " This is the method of the gospel, that, first, men by the preaching of it be made disciples, or be brought unto faith in Christ Jesus ; and then be taught to do and observe whatever He commands (Matt, xxviii, 18-20). First to believe, and then to be added to the church (Acts ii, 41, 42, 46, 47)." Hence he says : " By disci- ples of Christ I intend them and them only who profess faith in His person and doctrine, and to hear Him, or to be guided by Him alone, in all things that appertain unto the worship of God, and their living to Him." — Inquiry into Origin, &c,, pp, 120, 149. Dr. Doddridge. — " Proselyte all the nations of the earth to the faith and obedience of my gospel, baptizing them . . . that by this solemn initiatory ordinance they may profess their subjection to each of these Divine persons." "I render the word matheteusate, proselyte, that it may truly be distinguished from didaslcontes, teaching (in the next verse), with which our version confounds it. The former seems to import instruction in the essentials of religion which it was necessary adult persons should know and submit to, before they could regularly be admitted to baptism." (Par. and Notes, on Matt, xxviii, 19, 20). If the word divinely chosen requires instruction in the essentials of religion, can it possibly have the Divine approval to receive to baptism those that are incapable of instruction ? Dr. D. also thus paraphrases Mark xvi, 16. " He who sincerely believes your testimony, and, in token of that cordial faith, is baptized in my name," &c. M. Henry. — " By our being baptized we solemnly profess, (1) our assent to the Scripture revelation concerning God, the Father, Son and Holy Ghost. We confess our belief that there is a God, that there is but one God," &c. "Those that are thus baptized and enrolled among the disciples of Chrst must be taught, ver. 20. Teaching them to observe all things ivhatsovcr I have commanded you. This speaks two 28 SUBJECTS OF B4.PTIS:vI. things ; 1. Tho duty of disciples, of all baptized Cliristia.n3 ; they must observe all things whatsoever Christ has commanded ... 2. The duty of the apostles of Christ," &c. Also, M. Henry teaches on Gal. iii, 27, that it was tho apostolic " practice to baptize those whom they had diacipled to the Christian faith." Com, on Matt, xxviii, 19, 20; Gal. iii, 27. W. BuRKiTT.— " In the name of tho Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. Where we have a profession of our belief in tho Holy Trinity, a dedication of the person to the worship and service of the Holy Trinity, and a stipvilation or covenant promise that we will continue faithful in the service of Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, to om- lives' end." — Com. on Matt, xxviii, 19. Dr. Hammond. — " Call all nations to discipleship : or instruct them in the faith and discipline. Testify the resurrection of Christ to all, and by preaching the gospel in all parts, gather disciples ; and having gathered them, baptize and teach them." Dr. Whitby. — " Baptizing them in the name (or into the belief) of the Father," &c. " Matheteaein hero is ' to preach the gospel' to all nations, and to engage them to believe it, in order to their profession of that faith by baptism : as seems apparent, (1.) from the parallel commission, Mn.rk xvi, 15, ' Go preach the gospel to every creature. He that believeth and is baptized shall be saved.' (2.) From the Scripture notion of a disciple, that being still the same as a believer ... If hero it should be said that I yield too much to the Anti-PaBdobaptists, by saying, that to be made disciples is to be taught to believe in Christ ; I desire any one to tell me how the apostles could 'inatlteteuein, m.ake a disciple of a heathen, or unbelieving Jew, without being . . . teachers of them ; whether they were not sent to preach to those that could hear, and to teach them to whom they preached, that 'Jesus was the Christ,' and only to baptize them when they did believe this." — Anno, on Matt, xxviii, 19. Abp. Newcome. — " I suppose it granted that Jesus could not make disciples without instructing them in the nature of His kingdom." — Duration, tfc. T. Boston. — " The commission for baptizing runs so, first, to ' make disciples,' then to ' baptize ' Matt, xvviii, 19. And this is the very native order of these things. " — TForfcs, p. 344. J. FisHEB and E. Erskine. — " Ought not teaching or preaching of the word to go before baptism? Yes ! Because ourLordhas joined them together. Matt, xxviii, 19. Go yo therefore and teach all nations, baptizing them, &c. And accordingly it was the uniform practice of the apostles to preach when they baptized. Acts ii, 38, 41 ; viii, 35, 38 ; xvi, 32, 33."— Fisher's Caic., p. 293. M. Poole. — " ' Go ye therefore, and teach all nations.' The Greek is Matheteusate, make disciples of all nations ; but that must be first by preaching, and instructing them in the principles of the Christian faith ; and Mark expounds it, telling us our Saviour said ' Go ye into all the world, and preach the gospel to every creature ; ' that is. to every reasonable creature capable of hearing and receiving it. I cannot be of their mind who think that persons may be baptized before they be taught : we want prccedents'of any such baptism in Scripture ; though indeed we find precedents of persons baptized who had but a small degree of the knowledge of the gospel ; but it should seem that they were first taught, that 'Jesus Christ was the Son of God* and were not baptized till they profesfed such belief." — Com., on Matt, xxviii, 18-20, He nevertheless, with others, commends a baptizing of the children of professors, believintr that " the apostles were commanded to baptize all nations ! " Dr. BooTKEOTD. — " When made disciples they were to be baptized into tho name," &c. J. Benson. — " Our Lord's words, taken together in both verses, distinctly enjoin these things, and that in the foUo^ving order, mcdhetcucin, baptizein, didasl'eiyi, i.e., to proselyte men to Christ, to baptize, and to teach them." — On Matt, xxviii, 19, 20. C. Simeon, on Matt, xxviii, 19, 20 : "1. They were to teach all nations. 2. They were to baptize their converts in the name of the sacred Three." Dr. Grosvenoe.. — "To be baptized into any one's name, is solemnly, by that ceremony, to enter himself a disciple of him into whose name he is baptized, with profession to receive his doctrine and rules, and submit to his authority." — Ser., ivith Eecommen. Pref. hy Br. Bogue, p. 109. Dr. Watts. — " When we are baptized into the name of God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, we do hiambly accept of God," &c. "Those who are baptized are pro- fessed Christians — they are avowed disciples of Christ." " Tho coinmission which Christ gave to the first ministers of tho rosidcI, ' Go, disciple all nations, baptizing them ' who are willing to become my disciples, and teach them to observe whatsoever I bare coiuiuandod yoii." — Worli^f vol. i,^. COO, CHRIST'S COMMISSION. 29 Bengel. — " Tlio confession of the Holy Trinity was closely interwoven with baptism." " The entire sum of saving' knowledge and doctrine is bound up with baptism." "The disciples had been instructed in order that they might instruct others — terein to observe, to keep, as it becomes the baptized to do by virtue of faith." —(7)10., on Matt, xxviii, 19, 20. Dr. A. Clarke. — "' Mathcteusafe make disciples of all nations, bring them to an acquaintance with God who bought them, and then baptize them in the name of the Father," &c. — Com., on Matt, xxviii, 19. J.Wesley. — ^^ Disciple all nations — make them my disciples. This includes the whole design of Chi-ist's commission. Baptizing and teacliing are the two great branches of that general design" CNotes on N. T.,- on Matt, xxviii, 19). — Can those who are incapable of being taught, by possibility be made Christ's disciples by ia- struction and baptii^m, or be included in this commission ? J. SuTCLiFFE. — " Unfold . . . that with an enlightened mind and a willing heart, they may come to baptism and make an open profession of my name." — Com. on Matt, xxviii, 19, 20. Bp. Patrick. — " Go and teach, or disciple all nations, and so on. Where there are two teachings, the one before, the one after baptism ; the first can be no more than a persuasion of them to become the disciples of Christ, and put themselves into His school, because He was the Son of God ; and then, after they were baptized, follows a more accurate and full instruction of them in all the parts of their duty." — Disc, of the Lord's Supper, p. 455. C. Taylor. — "' Teach aiJ nations,' as you have taught the Jews; baptize all nations, as you have baptized the Jews, is their unlimited commission. Those who were baptized by John and by the apostles, were all volunteers." — Facts and Evi.^ 2nd Let., p. 10. I. CoBBiN. — "Teach all nations : instruct them with a view to disciple them." — Dom. Bi., on Matt, xxviii, 19. Dr. T. Gibbons. — " A person may be called a disciple or scholar, who well under- stands what his tutor has taught him, and well knows what are bis maxims, lectures, and so on. But may not he also, with stUl greater reason, be styled the disciple or scholar of another, who imitates or resembles his master, and forms his heart and life, and maxims, according to his example ? I suppose Pythagoras and Socrates would hardly have called that person their disciple, who did not strive to imitate them, as well as to imbibe their precepts. In like manner I call him a disciple of Jesus Christ, who is formed accoriling to his Master in disposition, conversation, and behavioiu'." — Sermons, vol. i, p. 380. Dr. DwiGHT. — " The apostles are directed to make disciples of all nations and then to baptize them ; that they understood their commission in this manner, is un- doubtedly evident from their own declarations." Also on Matt, xxviii, 19, he says : "In the text Christ commands His apostles and all His succeeding ministers, to baptize those whom they should make disciples. In obedience to this command tho apostles accordingly baptized all those who were made disciples by them. Those who followed them in the ministry, followed them also in this practice." He teaches on Matt, xxviii, 19, that baptism " is a duty which the apostles were required to perform towards all nations, so far as they made them disciples of Christ." Agaia, " In tho text, tho apostles are directed to make disciples of all nations, and then to baptize them. That they understood their commission in this maimer, is unanswerably evident from their own declarations. Repent, therefore, said Peter to the Jews, and be baptized, every one of you, in the name of the Lord Jesus. When the eunuch said to PhiLip, See, here is water, what doth hinder me to be baptized ? Philip replied, If thou believest with all thine heart, thou mayest. The jailor was baptized in con- sequence of his faith. So was Paul. So were Cornelius and his household." — Dr. D., like many others, after explicitly confining the explanation of the commission to adults, most fallaciously jjleads for the lawfulness of infant baptism from this or other passages of Scripture. Dr. G. Campbell. — " Go, therefore, and convert all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and so on. There are manifestly three things which our Lord here distinctly enjoins. His apostles to execute, with regard to the nations; matheteucin, haptizein, didashein : that is, to convert them to the faith, to initiate the converts into the church by baptism, and to instruct the baptized in aU the duties of the Christian Ufe." Dr. Rees. — "The baptism of Jesus was, like that of John, a reception to His instruction, or information ia His doctTine, or concenoing Him ; as appears from Hia 30 (SUBJECTS OF BAPTISM. own injunction, Matt, xxviii, 19, 20 ; and also from that clause whicli has been con- sidered as the form of baptism. . . . On the part of the baptizer, baptism was a form of reception to instruction ; and on the part of persons coming to baptism, it was an acknowledgment of the truth of the pretensions of the person who baptized . , . and a desire of being initiated." — Cy. Art. Bap. E. Leigh. — " Didasko ... is distinguished from mafheteuo (Matt, xxviii, 19), as species from kind." " Mathetcuo, 1 tea,ch, or make disciples. It signifies, to de- liver the doctrine of faith, to imbue with, to indoctrinate in, the chief elements of the Christian religion." " Matheteuomai, to be taught, Acts xiv, 21. To lead by teaching to the faith of, as Syrus, the interpreter, rightly explains. Matt. xx\dii, 19." " Matheteicein is to teach and direct those who are alienated from authority and our doctrine, that they may be made disciples ; but didaskein signifies to teach those who are already made disciples, and are already given up to our precepts." — Crit. Sa., on Didasko and Mathctcuo. T. Williams. — " The commission which Messias gives to His apostles and others to disciple, to proselyte, to Christianize, or as Milton better expresses it, to evan- gelize the world." " The word teach here, is quite different from the one used in the next verse. The word signifies to disciple, or make disciples (or Christians) of aU nations, and is so rendered in our margin, and to the same effect, we believe, by aU modern translators." — Cot. Bi., on Matt, xxviii, 19. W. DoDVsrELL. — " I commission you, therefore, to go and make disciples to me in all nations, and baptize them with water, in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost ; and to instruct likewise all whom you baptize, to ob- serve carefully both in faith and practice aU the doctrines and duties which I have enjoined." — Par. on Matt, xxviii, 19, 20. J. Malham. — " St. Matthew, as Mr. Cooper properly observes, has placed teach- ing first." — Fam. Bible, on Mark i, 4. Le Clerc. — " Make disciples." " This is the proper meaning of the word mathe- teuein, and not to teach ; it is nevertheless very true that disciples are not made but by teaching." — Note, on Matt, xxviii, 19. TuRRETiNE. — Infants " are no more capable of actual faith'than they are of that instruction with which the adults are to be taught and made disciples of Christ, Matt, xxviii, 19." — Ins. Theol., p. ii, §9. Author of Dr. Hookwell. — " In the account given in St. Matthew's gospel, the commission is given to the apostles to go and first disciple all nations ; that is, convert them to the Christian faith ; secondly, to initiate them into the church and Christian congregation by baptism ; and thirdly, when baptized, to teach them to do all the commands of Christ, that is, to instruct them in all the doctrines and pro- gressive duties of the Christian life," — Prim. Ch. in its Epis., p. 23. Bp. Burnet. — ■" By the first teaching, or making disciples, that must go before baptism, is to be meant the convincing the world that Jesus is the Christ, the true Messias, anointed of God with fulness of grace, and of the Spirit without measure ; and sent to be the Saviour and Redeemer of the world. And when any were brought to acknowledge this, they were to baptize them," — On the xxxix Art., p, 300. Calmet, — " Our Saviour, when sending His apostles to preach the gospel, said. Go, teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost (Matt, xxviii, 19). Whosoever belioveth and is baptized, shall be saved ; but he that believeth not shall be damned (Mark xvi, 16 ; John iii, 18). Bap- tism, therefore, is the first mark by which the disciples of Jesus Chi-ist are distin- guished,"— Die. Ai-t. Bap, P. Edwards. — " The apostles are to make disciples — that is all mathetcusate im- ports. But still the question is, how are they to make them ? I answer, by teaching ; for neither adult nor infant can bo made a disciple without. And herein the Baptists are very right, and I agree with them, that adults and infants must be made disciples by teaching, or they will not be made so at all." — Cand. Rca., p. 125. Dr. Macknight. — " To be baptized into the name of any person, or into a person, is solemnly, as Locke observes, to enter one's self a disciple of him into whose name ho is baptized, and to profess that he submits himself implicitly to his authority, and receives his doctrine and rules" (Com., on 1 Cor., i, 13). " The truth is, both passages (Matt, xxviii, 19, 20, and Mark xvi, 15, 10) must bo interpreted according to tlie sub- jects treated of in thom, which are plainly adult persons." In his Par. on the Gos., he unites Matt, xxviii, 19, 20, with Mark xvi, 15, 16, and teaches that " they who believed were to be admitted into His church by the rite of baptism in the name of the Father," &c. CHRIST'S COMMISSION. 31 Many Ptcdobaptists record much truth on the import of the commission, admitting that the passage containing the only command of Christ to bap- tize, has exclusive reference to persons come to years of discretion, to whom the gospel could be preached. They admit that the entire passage has obvious and exclusive reference to such persons ; and that all the terms, "whether of making disciples, of baptizing into the name, &c., or of teaching to obseiTe all Christ's commands, in their order, and natural and necessary import, are corroboratory of this. They nevertheless think that the bap- tism of infants has the favourable regard of Christ, has encouragement from some part of Divine revelation, either the New Testament or the Old, and is to be continued. Those Protestants who maintain infant baptism from the commission, generally pervert the import of discipling. Agreeing with such Paedobaptists as admit that the baptism of infants is commanded here or nowhere, and with those who admit that there is not a word of refex'ence to infants in the enthe commission, I regi'ct that there should be per- severance in the advocacy of infant baptism, although it requires its advo- cates to maintain that disciples of Christ are not necessarily conscious beings, and that to become a disciple of Christ is not necessarily a personal and self-renouncing act. I regret that even Protestant dissenters, instead of allowing theu* want of authority from Christ's commission to baptize infants, are maintaining the idea of making disciples of Christ by perform- ing an outward, a symbolic rite on unconscious beings. Surely this idea was unknown in apostolic times, is condemned by the silence of Christ's words and of all revelation respecting it, and must be abandoned by the entrance of that light which in regard to many is now prevented only by their prepossessions. Dr. S. Clarke. — "Go ye therefore and preach the gospel to all the world, making disciples out of every nation, and baptizing them with water in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost ; that is, receiving them to a profession to the belief, and an obligation to the practice of that religion which God the Father, has revealed," &c. " Our Lord, when He sent forth His disciples to preach the gospel to all nations, commanded them to baptize every one that was converted, in the name of the Father," &c. Again, after speaking of John's baptizing his disciples, he says, " In like manner they who afterward by the preaching of Christ and His apostles, were converted to the belief and profession of the gospel, were baptized in the name, or into the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost ; that is, they made a solemn profession of their believing the doctrines, and of their resolving to obey the precepts of that religion." — Par., on Matt, xxviii, 19 ; Ser., on Eo. vi, 3, 4. Abp. TiLLOTSON. — " The form of baptism in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost, refers to the profession of faith that was required of those that were baptized." Bp. Hebek. — " The manner in which the commission is to be executed." " I. The general character of these directions is mildness and persuasion ; knowledge conveyed into the mind of man ; moral instruction gaining its influence over it. It is a com- mission working by motives, benefits, spiritiial obligations on the conscience. Here is no force" f Sermons, pp. 372, 374). How admirably consistent vrith Paedo-baptism is all this on persuasion, instruction, and no force ! How beautifully the whole chimea with the position of a Bishop of the Church of England, as by law established ! Elslet. — "■ Matlieteusate, i.e. (make disciples) persuade and instruct in order. Compare Mark xvi, 15. This was the regular course. So Ignat. Ep. ad Eom. explained by the Constit. Clement, 'to change the asehcia of the converts into the eusebeia, and render them worthy of baptism.' Grotius. Thus a disciple was a believer ; as in Moses, John ix, 27, 28 ; so in Chiist. Beza. This is obvious from the gospels, as John 82 SUBJECTS OF BAPTISM. vi, 60, 61, and tlie Acts, as vi and ix passim; and is what evidently necessary in itself, is expressly said by Justin Martyi-, P. ii, p. 93, to have been the practice of the first ages." " Maihelcuein is the first initiation into the principles preparative to baptism ; didasliein, the more complete iastruction afterwards imparted." — Anno., on Matt, xxviii, 19, 20. Dr. Lardner. — " The language may bo paraphrased thus : Go ye therefore into all th6 world, and teach, or disciple aU nations ; baptizing them into the profession of faith in, and an obligation to obey the doctrines taught by Christ." — In Dr. G. Payne's Lcc. on Chris. Theol., vol. i, p. 299. Dr. E. PovAH, speaking of those that were baptized on the day of Pentecost, says : " To them the apostles administered that holy sacrament, after they had first in- structed them accordiag to the Divine commission which they had received from their Master." — Lee. on Acts, p. 387. Bp. PoRTEUS. — " Go ye and teach all nations, baptizing . . . The ceremony then by which our Lord's disciples were to be admitted into His religion, was baptism." " By being baptized in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost, we are dedicated and consecrated equally to the service of each of those three Divine persons ; we are made the servants and discix)les of each" (Lcc. on Matt, xxviii). — Rather, we become the professed disciples, &c. Dr. J. Stagey. — " To be baptized into the name of any one is to be devoted to him, by some approin-iate ceremony, as a religious teacher and guide." T. Scott. — " There are two words in this passage which are translated teach and teaching ; but they are of a different meaning. The former means that general in- struction which was necessary to bring men to profess themselves disciples of Christ ; and the other relates to their more particular subsequent instruction in all the various parts of Chi'istianity. . . . The apostles and preachers of the gospel were ordered to baptize those who embraced the gospel ' into the name ' (not names) ' of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. . . . To be baptized into the name of any one, implies in the person so baptized, a professed dependence on him, and devoted subjection to him." — Com. on Matt, xxviii, 19. The readers of Commentaries on the New Testament and works on Baptism will find many to speak of Baptism '• into the name " that which is as undoubtedly correct, as it is condemnatory of infant and indiscriminate baptism. Hence, in addition to Dr. A. Barnes and many others, Grotius says : " To be baptized into any one, or into his name, is to bind and devote one's-self to him, and to wish to be called by his name." Poole says : " In the name of the Father, &c. In the Greek it is eis to onoma, into the name ... in the authority, or (which is indeed the chief) into the pro- fession of the Trinity of the persons in the one Divine Being." Dr. W. Hanna. — " To be baptized into the name, is to be taken up into, to bo incorporated with Him whose name is Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. The term is impressive or symbolic, not of a mere outward and formal acknowledgment or con- fession of our faith in the Divinity, as Ho has been pleased to reveal himself to us under that mysterious distinction of a threefold personality ; but of an inward and spiritual communion, fellowship, with the Father, the Son, the Holy Ghost"! — The Forty, &c., pp. 174, 175. Dr. J. Owen. — " That we are baptized into the name of Jesus Christ, and that distinctly with the Father, is a sufficient evidence of the necessity of faith in His person ; for we are therein given up unto universal sph-itual subjection of soul unto Him, and dependence on Him. — Not to beUevo in Him, on His name, when we are so given up imto Him, or baptized into Him, is virtually to ronoimoe Him." (Worlcs, vol. i, pp. 129, 130). Again, (vol. iii, p. 73). "By being baptized into the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost, we are sacredly initiated and consecrated, or dedicated unto the service and worship of the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. This we take upon us in our baptism. Herein lies the foundation of all our faith and profession, with that engagement of ourselves unto God which constitutes oar Christianity." He has just before said that this baptism includes " our rcUgiona owning the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, in all our Divine worship, faith, and obedience." Also on tlie import of a disciple and of a Christian, much might be extracted from Piedobuptist Commentaries and Biblical Dictionaries con- demnatory of making disciples by baptism as -well as of baptizing infants CHRIST'S COMMISSION. 33 and those known to be unregenerate. — Comp. Luke xiv, 25-27 ; Matt. xxviii, 19; Acts xi, 26, &c. Suppose that we find the word Christian or behever used in reference to a man who professes to be a Christian, to be a believer, and it is afterwards ascertained that he is insincere in his profes- sion, or that he was partial and temporary in his adherence to Christ, are we to conclude from this that the word Christian, or believer, has no definite meaning, that its import instead of being confined to a person accepting the Saviour, embraces equally such a character, or one who by self-decep- tion lacks the one thing needful, or a wicked hypocrite, or any base un- believer ? Were such a course pursued with words generally, we could attach no definite meaning to writings human or Divine. The tendency of so perverting instead of interpreting God's word is inevitably towards Rome or infidelity. Dr. Stacet says : " The great requirement of baptism, as to its form, appears to be the use of water, as the emblem of spiritual influence in the initiation of a person into the household of faith, according to the formula prescribed by Jesus Clu-ist in the terms of the commission" (p. 177). Can Christ's commission on baptism be a baptis- mal initiation into the Jiousehold of faith, and can the baptism of infants, and those kno-wn to be ung'odly have His approval ? Can the baptism of iafants and unbelievers be an initiation into the household of faith ? Dr. G. Patne. — " The apostles were to teach the Gentiles that they must turn from those vanities which they worshipped, to the living God : and those who received their instructions they were to baiJtize in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost."— Lcc, on Chri. Thcol, vol. i, p. 293. Abr. Scott. — " This ordinance is the form of admission into the visible church of Christ, and therefore all v,-ho are qualified for admission into this community, are proper subjects for baptism. At the commencement of Christianity, a profession of faith in Christ qualified both Jews and Gentiles to receive baptism ; and it remains the same to the present day. All who are out of the pale of the Christian church, are to be received into it by baptism." Are infants received into the church by baptism, or are they in the church before baptism, or are they baptized " on thcii- professing faith in Clu-ist F" Notwithstanding the above acknowledgment, when our Saviour teaches the condemnation of the unbeliever, and the salvation of him " that believeth and is baptized," he excludes unbelieving infants as much from salvation as from baptism ! Also, " Our Lord's command is, ' Go and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost.' This command extends to persons of every description of which nations are composed : there is no limitation with resjvect to either age or sex." But " the chief thing which requires our notice is, in what sense the apostles were most likely to understand this command ; whether it included children or excluded them. To determine this point, it must be remembered that infant baptism was the practice of the Jewish church." (Trea. on Bap., pp. 5-8). The chief thing determining the point for the baptism of infants from Christ's com- mission, is the pre-esistence of Jewish baptism ! The chief requisite for ascertaining Christ's vdll in His commission is an acquaintance with Rabbinical traditions of which we have not a syllable in God's word — except it be their condemnation ; and a know- ledge that Dr. Lightfoot, &c., are right in believing that this baptism, of Mishnaite and Talmudic revelation, ages after apostolic times, had an existence when Christ gave His commission ; and that Dr. Owen, &c., are wrong in disbelieving this ! Can any Christian ordinance or Protestant ceremony have a more despicable foundation ? J. Gltde. — "'Go ye,' said oui- Lord, 'make disciples of all nations, baptizing them,' that is, those who become disciples, ' in the name of the Father,' " &c. " Our Lord sends forth His disciples to preach His kingdom, and institutes baptism, which may be strictly called Christian. For when he bids them preach the gospel of the kingdom, and baptize in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost, how con^dncingly yet emphatically does He teach that men become the true members of that kingdom only as they become the children of God by faith in His Son, through the power of the Spirit" f Memoir, &c., p. 405). — Many Paedobaptists who are not ignorant of the absiu'dity of maintaining that infants by natural birth or by baptism become members of the believing church of Christ, do yet maintain that infants have 34 SUBJECTS OF BAPTISM. all the requisites for baptism and the kingdom of God, and should by baptism be re- ceived into the kingdom of God or church of Chiist ! In supplying the deficiency, they alter the character, of Christ's commission. J. E. Pitman. — "Go ye and (matlietcusatc) disciple or convert all nations, (Matt, xxviii, 19) : baptism was thereby appointed as the symbol of conversion, or the mark of having entered the church of Christ" (Lee. p. 121). — Many whom wo quote plead for the baptism of infants in opposition to their own iaterpretation of the com- mission. Dr. G. Hill. — " Christians are baptized into the name of the Father, the one true and living God, whom Christians profess to serve ; of the Son," &c. " Baptizing into the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, while it certainly implies a profession of faith in," &c. — Lee. on Div., vol. ii, pp. 331, 335. E. BicKERSTETH. — " To iisc to the utmost every means that He has given us for knowing, worshipping, and enjoying Him, is our clearest duty. The direction to bap- tize all nations into His name distinctly shows that God would have all nations brought to this their highest happiness." " Our Lord carries on His commission by giving the following injunction with reference to those thus baptized, ' teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you.'" "All the blessing is received through faith." — We have, however, no hope of converting those who believe that " the infants of believing parents are, from their very birth, learners of Christ." —On Bap., pp. 40, 45, 48, 36. Dr. Wakdlaw, on Mark xvi, 15. — " Here the commission embraces all the world — every creature : and nothing can well be clearer than that all nations in the passage (Matt, xxviii, 19) is of the same meaning with all the world in the other ; and it no more follows from the one that they were to baptize all nations collectively, than from the other that they were to baptize the world collectively. On the contrary we have the distributive sense of both expressions decidedly fixed by the Saviour himself. "While He gives the universal commission, He limits the baptism to the individuals who should believe, just as He limits the salvation. No such thing is contemplated by Him who gives the commission, as either the baptism of nations or the baptism of all mankind. The commission is universal, the anticipated results personal. The preaching is to all for the purpose of making disciples : those disciples were to con- sist of the individuals of all nations who should believe : and to them — that is to such as make a credible profession of faith — the baptism was to be restricted " (Let. to McNcileJ. — Dr. W. had before written on " Preach the gospel to every creatiu-e," that "the language refers to mankind in general to whom the gospel couZd be preached; that is, to adults, who were capable of hearing and understanding what was said." — (On Inf. Bap., p. 158). How different from Dr. Williams, and how much more correct are these than ho who says, " Our Lord's precise meaning seems to be that gospel ministers should proselyte, disciple, or teach, and baptize sMpiroper subjects in all nations, introducing them thereby into the gospel kingdom, and exercising their com- mission discretionallt" (In Cand. Re., p. 162). — The emphasising is not Dr. W's. Dr. J. Bennett. — " ' Go ye into all the world,' says the Saviour, as His words are reported by Mark, 'and preach the gospel to every creatiu-e.' The words Matthew gives are ' Go ye, therefore, and teach all nations,' which would be better translated, if the word wore admissible, ' disciple all nations,' i.e., bring them all under the dis- cipline of Christian instruction." — Lee on His. of Christ, pp. 567, 568. Dr. G. Benson, epitomising Christ's directions before His ascension — "When the Spirit shall be pom-cd out upon you, then do ye go forth into all the world, and preach the gospel unto every human creature, Jews and Gentiles. Ho that belicvcth yoiu' testimony, and in token of the sincerity of his faith, takcth upon him the pro- fession of My reMgion by baptism, and acts accordingly, he shall obtain eternal sal- vation. But ho who will not receive the gospel, when attended with such abundant evidence, he shall be condemned. I therefore give you a strict charge to make dis- ciples of, or proselyte all nations upon earth, baptizing them," &c. — Life of Christ, p. 552. Ii. Watson. — " The connection of these words with the foregoing is highly im- portant. Go ye TiiEREFOEE, that is, because I have all the power in heaven and earth, go ye and teach all nations, 'preach the gospel to every creature' (Mark x^-i, 15) ; for to Mc belongs the right to command their faith and obedience, and to prescribe the terms of their reconciliation to God ; and I have power to bless and to save, to con- demn and to punish . . . Teach all nations. — Make disciples of all nations ; which means, instruct them in the faith and persuade them to the belief and reception of it ; for how else should men be made disciples, but by instructing them in the doctrine held out to theii' acceptance?" — Very truly, how else? "The truth is, that adults could only be spoken of in the text . . . 'To make disciples, implies, as abovo ob- CHRIST'S COMMISSION. S5 served, teaching, in order to knowledge and faith; but this is elementary teaching, and is not intended to supersede the more copious and constant teaching which is to suc- ceed baptism." " Baptism was expressly made the initiatory rite by which believers of all nations were to bo introduced into the chiu'ch." Baptism is "a rite which de- mands or requires something of us — what that is we learn from the words of the Lord — it is faith in Christ." — If this teaching is not condemnatory of infant and ui- discriminate baiDtism, I know not what is. If our Wesleyan and other Pa;dobaptist friends are not satiated, I request them also to mark, learn, and inwardly digest the following : " By what means, therefore, were all nations now to be brought into the church of God, which from henceforth was most truly to be cathoUc or rmiversal ? Plainly by baptizing them that believed the good news and accepted the terms of the new covenant. This is apparent from the very words ; and thus was baptism express- ly made the initiatory rite by which beUevcrs of all nations were to be introduced into the church and covenant of grace." — Sec E. W.'s Exj^o. on Matt, xxviii, 19, 20, ; and Inst., vol. iv, pp. 394, 395, 403. E.. MiMPRiss. — " Matheteusate, 'proselyte,' 'disciple,' or 'make disciples of.'" " The way to make disciples of all nations is as clearly stated as is the aiithority under which the work is to bo performed. It is by ministering the saving and purifying truth respecting Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, and by instructiug them in the per- formance of the duties taught and exemplified by Christ, by leading them into the faith and walk becoming the Christian." — Treas. Ear., pp. 970, 971. W. Thorn. — •" The Saviour's commission — Proselyte, Baptize, and Teach" (Inf. -Bap., p. 107). " John the Baptist, and the Sa^dour's apostles, taught the candidates for this sacrament, before administering it to them " (p. 107). " The preaching of the gospel is undoubtedly one means of inducing people to become disciples, but they must go further than hearing, or they will stop short of discipleship — Acts xiv, 21," (p. 532). And yet this author teaches that we are to disciple by baptizing, and also that those who can ascribe certain important results to baptism, are not far from the kingdom of the Pope (pp. 276-278). Ho says that there is " a propriety in the original terms of the commission which, by general consent, does not appear in the transla- tion ; and in so important a law or institution, wo may expect to find precision of expression, if it is to be foimd in any part of the Divine oracles " (p. 232). Believers in Christ become by baptism " His disciples by position and profession " (p. 234). The public teacher does not recognize those as disciples who congregate to hear, " but those only who formally place themselves, or who are i^laced by others, under his more private and systematic instructions. It may be safely assumed that no persons, old or young, openly became disciples of Christ till dedicated to him by baptism. The question is, at what age may this discipleshiio begin ? All reply, as soon as the first elements of Christian truth can be received or felt" (p. 234). — Does Mr. T. himself always thus speak of discipleship to Christ ? He teaches that "Under Moses the people were (1) proselyted or discipled to him, by being brought to regard and follow him as their appointed deliverer and guide ;" and he says that " One might almost conclude that the Saviour had this Hebrew baptism in His eye, when His own com- mission was given to His eleven disciples. In both instances the same order was observed, and similar results ensued" (p. 224). He considers the really explicit and necessarily precise commission of Clirist to be threefold or twofold, but if his oppo- nents prefer the threefold, he will give them the advantage of it (p. 226). He says : " In every instance the apostles followed their Lord's direction — proselyting and bap- tizing, and then teacliing thom all whatsoever He commanded them" (p. 228). The reason why in rendering the commission he says, " disciple," or " proselyte," is that matheteuo signifies " to be, or to be made a disciple, or learner " (p. 231). Also (p. 140) he thus speaks of Christ's commission : " ' Proselyte all nations ' — make disciples, col- lect scholars, then baptize and teach them." Let the reader reconcile the above, if he can, with itself, with infant, or with indiscriminate baptism. Dr. BooTHROYD. — ^'Baptizing them, &o. When made disciples, as the initiatory rite of Christianity, they were to be baptized into the name, belief, or profession of the Father, &c." National Ctclo. — " ' Go ye, therefore,' &e. The apostles acted according to this injunction. The rite was regarded by the apostles and first Christians as an instituted ordinance of the Christian church. The meaning of Christian baptism differed little, if at all, from the baptism of John. It im^Dlied repentance and faith." — Art. Ba^o. J. CoNDER. — " The tenor of the commission which our Lord gave His disciples to proselyte all nations, constituted it the essential peculiarity of Christian baptism, that they should baptize in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost . . . The belief which the baptismal confession expressed, was that Jesus is 86 SUBJECTS OF BAPTISM. tlie Son of God. It related to His Divine character ; it involved the recognition of the only true God, the Jehovah, as manifested by the clearer discoveries of the new dispensation ; it was an act of religious obedience, of self-consecration, and of faith." — On Prot. Noil., vol. i, p. 458. Stoeb and Flatt. — " Christ commanded that all those who would be His Disci- ples should, at the time of then.' reception into the chm-ch, be once baptized. . . . This command is given in Matt, xxviii, 18, &c. ; Mark xvi, 16." " According to the formida of baptism, the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, are the God of those who re- ceive that ordinance . . . Christ, when giving His apostles the command to baptize His futui-e disciples, places in immediate connection with it the injunction that they should teach the subjects of baptism to keep His commandments." — Bih. Theol., pp. 215, 220. Dr. G. C. Knapp. — " He requires His disciples, ver. 19, to go forth and proselyte all nations. . . . they were reqiured to baptize their converts, eis to onoma To bai^tize in the name of a person or thing, means, according to the usus loquendi of the Jews, to bind one by baptism to profess his belief, or give his assent, or yield obedience to a certain person or thing. . . . One thing, however, is evident from this text — viz., that Christ considered the doctrine concerning Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, as a fundamental doctrine of His religion, because He requires all His followers to be bound to a profession of it immediately on their being admitted as members of His church, by the initiatory rite of baptism." — Tlieol. Lee, pp. 119, 120. LuTZ. — " Infant baptism is essentially excluded by the words of institiition. Matt. xxviii, 19, Mark xvi, 16: for the words matlieteuein and pisteiiein preceding the haptizein, shut them out as incapable of both." " It must be admitted that the baptism of children has no ground in Scripture."— In Stier's Words, vol. viii, p. 313. Dr. KiTTO. — When Christ " could no longer personally and immediately choose and receive members of His kingdom, when at the same time all had been accom- plished which the Founder thought necessary for its comi^letion, He gave power to the spu'itual community to receive in His stead members by baptism (Matt, xxviii, 19 ; Mark xvi, 16). Baptism essentially denotes the regeneration of him who receives it, his participation both in the Divine life of Christ and the promises," &c. Paul under- stands by baptism " not only the union of the individual with the Head, by the giving ono's-self up to the Redeemer and the receiving of His life. Gal. iii, 27, but also the union with the other members (ib. 28; 1 Cor. xii, 13; Eph. iv, 5; v, 26)." This exclusion of infants from the commission to baptize is further corroborated by the import of "disciples" as given by him : " Disciple fmathetesj, a scholar, or follower of any teacher, in the general sense. It is hence applied in the gospels not only to the followers of Christ, but to those of John the Baptist (Matt, ix, 14, &c.), and of the Pharisees (Matt, xxii, 16). Although used of the followers of Christ generally, it is applied in a special manner to the twelve apostles (Matt, x, 1 ; xi, 1 ; xx, 17 ; Luke ix, 1). After the death of Christ the word took the wider sense of a beKever, or Christian, i.e., a follower of Jesus Christ." — Cy. of Bih. Lit., Ai't. Pap. Principal Dewae. — " We are said to be baptized into the name of the Holy Spirit, as well as into the name of the Father and Son. Docs not this clearly imply that we own the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, to be alike the object of faith and obedience i" (In Wallace, on Bap., p. 55). Do infants thus oion the Father, &c. ? Olshausen. — "In the words describing the institution of baptism, in Matt, xxviii, 19, the connection of matlieteuein with haptizein appears quite positively to oppose the idea that the baptism of children entered at first into the view of Christ." " Baptizein eis Una signifies baptism as involving a binding obligation; a rite whereby one is pledged ; and the sublime object to which baptism binds, consists of Father, Son, and Holy Ghost ... to which believers bind themselves by bap- tism."— Com. on Acts xvi, 15; Matt, xxviii, 19, 20. Dr. Eadie teaches that a disciple is " one who professes to receive instruction from another (Matt, xi, 2 : Lu. xiv, 26, 27, 33 ; John ix, 28). In the New Testament it denotes the professed followers of our Saviour, but not always His true followers (Matt, xvi, 20, 21 ; John vi, 66). To all His disciples the language of the Master ia ' Learn of Mo.' " — How appropriate all this to unconscious babes ! Dr. Stier. — " Make disciples . . . as ye now are My disciples, in order that many, many may become what ye are become . . . And whom are they to make disciples — whom are they called and commissioned to eudoavoiu' at least, with all their might, to convert, if so be they may succeed P All peoples." " Matlietcuo means first, discipulus sum alicui, as in that Matt, xxvii, 57, and then, as here, I make an- other a disciple. See Acts xiv, 21, and Matt, xiii, 52." "The mathetcuthent es were to be called and consecrated — and this is the general and siu-e meaning, without any CHEIST'S COMMISSION. 37 reference to the special meaning of eis to onoma — to tlie knowledge and confession of the one li^^ng• God." Eis to onoma. " Into the name now giving itself to them, and to be henceforth by them more and more (lovingly) known and worshipped in faith ; into the power and grace of that name which now begins to work in them. Ami what is the thing pre-supposed for the reception of this baptism ? Assuredly a faith which knoweth and calleth upon the name of CTod." — With Dr. S. the meaning of mathetcuo is Blalcc disciples, " as ye now are my disciples, in order that many, many may become what yo have become (Acts xxvi, 19)." " All this makes the two things clear — that one who has become a wa^/icfes in its perfection has learned from the Master; and that a general kerussein miist precede as a condition the making all nations into dis- ciples." He teaches that the English Bible "says more accurately in the margin — make disciples or Christians of alt nations ;" and that baptizing into the name points " to the now established communion of the baptized with the Triune God." " He who devotes himself to learn and follow the Master becomes thereby his mathetcs." Well may ho know and admit that, " proceeding from the first manifestation of baptism, argument has been foimd for the exclusion of infants." Nor can he expect all to approve with him of infant baptism, who may agree with him that in the commission "there is no ordinance, no direction, no record, no single word" on its behalf (See vol. viii, pp. 285, 2S0, 298, 309, &c.). The inconsistency of the commission with infant baptism is expressly asserted and painfully felt by our opponents ; biit Dr. S. thinks that the faith of the chvu'ch will answer for them. Others advocate the faith of parents, or of one parent, or of a more distant progenitor, or of a somebody some- where as a substitute for the want of faith in infants. Some believe that infants, or that some infants possess faith. Learning and prejudice do not in some deny what unsophi'^ticated reason clearly sees to be the import of the commission on the subjects of baptism ; but a practical regard to Christ's words is variously evaded. It is ad- mitted that oiu' Lord did not here appoint, and has not appointed infant baptism; but, say our opponents, in the words of Dr. S., "Where is it written that we should not baptize them ?" To what a shift may a good man be driven ! Where is it wi-itten that wo shoiLld not baptize bells and horses ? But what hope can we have of over- throwing the baptism of infants, when such as Dr. S. tell us that " their faith, quickened by God from baptism onwards, may gradually apprehend the truth ?" — Words of Jesus, vol. viii, pp. 285, 288, 290, 297, 302, &c. Spangenbkrg — as quoted by Stier. — " Infant baptism is neither expressly com- manded nor expressly forbidden in Scripture;" on which Stier immediately adds, " But after all, at the solemn consecration of a Sacrnmcvt, the not mentioning would be equivalent to a prohibition." — Words, i^-c, vol. \'iii. p. 315. Dr. Lange, says Stier, " unfolds and paraphrases in its fulness of meaning the eis to onoma : 'they must bo baptized in His presence, by His authority, into fellowship with Him, and blessed knowledge of His nature.' " — Words, 4"c. (Stier), vol. viii, pp. 308, 309. The following is extracted from the Commentary of Dr. Lange : "Make disciples of, mathcteusate — Luther's translation, teach, is quite in- correct. So also is the Baptist exegesis. In every case, first complete instruction, then baptize. To make disciples of, involves, in general, it is true, the preaching of the gospel ; but it marks pre-eminently the moment when the non-christian is brought to a full willingness to become a Chris- tian" (On Matt, xxviii, 19). Yet, among other contradictions of reason and revelation, he says, on Christ's commission : " This willingness in the case of the children of Christian parents is pre-supposed in the willingTiess of the parents," as if an infant or older child became willing when the Christian parents became willing ! He more properly speaks of Christian baptism as " a baptism under the authority" and into "the authority of the Trinity." " A baptism in the name of Christ," he says, " were con- ceivable only when that confession was accompanied by an acknowledg- ment of the Father and of the Holy Spirit." Also, " Teaching them — These words mark on the one hand the continuance of the apostolic ac- tivity after that matheteuein and bajJtizein had preceded ; upon the other, 38 SUBJECTS OV BAPTISM, the course of tlie Clirlstian which should run on parallel to this actmty." *' It is pre-supposed in matheteusate, that persons are to be induced to be baptized by the use of gospel means." It is much more easy to assent to this than to the " god-parentship " -which he demands on behalf of childi-en, but which is in Scripture as expressly mentioned or obviously implied as is the name of Dr. Lange. He says that " in the case of children, these vows are to be made by parents or godparents." Yet he afterwards says, " Baptism in the name of the Triune God is a personal covenanting. 1. — the promise of God, Father, Son, and Spirit unto the baptized one ; 2 — his vows in which he yields and binds himself unto the Father, Son, and Spirit." On Mark xvi, 16, he says, "Baptism is not named along with faith as an additional, in itself indispensable, matter, but as the natural, certainly also necessary, consequence of faith." " The promise of salvation, of deliverance, is not annexed to baptism in itself, but to the faith which receives its completion in baptism." He speaks of " 1 — the personal stage, preaching the gospel ; 2 — the social stage, the sacrament." In illustration and confirmation he also quotes Pdeger, as teaching that though "immersion" may be changed into "an aspersion" or "a sprinkling," yet it must maintain the depth of " baptized into the death of Christ, and to a new life." Also Meyer : — "The name of the Father is to be the object of faith, and the subject of confession." And Zeisius : — "It is not enough to be baptized, but there is likewise demanded a holy zeal to live after the baptismal covenant, and to walk blameless. 1 Pe. iii, 21." And Lisco : — " Baptism is an incorporation into the body of Christ, which is governed by His Spirit." " He who is ashamed of such a con- fession of Christ [baptism] should think of Matt, x, 32, 33. In the name of Jesus, in faith upon Him," &c. And Gerlach, as teaching that the acknowledgment of repentance and faith, though not associated with clear knowledge, was deemed a justification of baptism. And Heubner : — " We must profess the faith we have in our hearts (baptism)." Dr. Lange also on Acts ii, 38, says: — "It was entirely in accordance with the command of Jesus (Matt, xxviii, 19) that those who were prepared honestly to re- ceive the testimony of Jesus, were immediately baptized ; further in- struction in doctrme (didaskontes) could fitly follow afterwards." Di*. E. Burton. — "The doctrine itself may be explained in a few words. Tliey were to preach faith in Christ crucified. Men were to be taught to repent of their Bins and to believe in Christ, trusting to His merits alone for pardon and salvation, and those who embraced this doctrine were admitted into the Christian covenant by baptism, as a token that they were cleansed from their sins, by faith in the death of Christ ; upon which admission they received the gilt of tlie Holy Ghost, enabling them to perform works well-pleasing to God, which they could not have done by their own strength. The commission to preach this doctrine, and to admit the believers into the Christian covenant by baptism was given by Christ, whilst He waa upon earth, to the eleven apostles."— C'/i. His., p. 22. Dr. TwEEUiE. — " An important question is raised and must be considered : To whom is baptism to be administered ? or. Who may claim it ? And we give a general answer by saying, that baptism is to be administered to all that hold and profess the faith of Christ — that believe in Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. When the Savioiu- appointed the onlinance. His injunction was, first to make disciples of all men, and then baptize them. As soon then as any man becomes a disciple of Christ, he is to )po baptized." "Aa God's chiklrcn, then, we in baptism vow to obey Him— as His CHRIST'S COMMISSION 39 redeemed, we vow to trust and love Him — as renewed, or led hy His Spirit, we vow not to vex or grieve Him ; and such is plainly the meaning of the rite, according: to the formula employed in the ordinance " (The Sac. of Bap., pp. 9, 10, 16, 17, 46). — The very formula of baptism teaches that it is for believers. What inconsistency in using the Divinely enjoined formula, and yet baptizing those who are known to be incapable of faith ! J. BuKDEB. — " ' Go, teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost ! Who were the people to be baptized ? People of the nations ; the heathen, who, previously to their being taught Christianity, had been, for the most part, idolaters." " The baptized person is no longer an idolater, but a worshipper of that God in whose name he is baptized." — Lcc. on Eel., p. 335. Dr. D. Davidson. — " He gave them authority to teach all nations, and collect into societies those taught, that they might observe all his commandments." — Com., on Matt, xxviii, 19, 20. Dr. J. P. Smith. — " Observe the order :mai7iefetcsaractice involving so much absurdity or inconsistency. Blacklet and Hawes. — " To observe— to keep, as becomes those who are baptized by the power of faith, not as a mere legal duty." — Com., on Matt. 28, 20. Dr. E. Valpy. — " There are manifestly three things, v/hich our Lord here distinctly enjoins His apostles to execute with regard to the nations, including not merely the Jews as before, x, 5, G, but also the Gentiles : and they are matlieteusate, bapitizontes and didaskontes, i.e., convert them to the faith, initiate the converts into the church by baptism, and instruct the baptized in all the duties of the Christian life. See mai/ieteito, xiii, 52, and Acts xiv, 21. . . . E is to onoma, pleonnHticvilly ior eis ton patera; to be baptized into any one is to be baptized into the obligation, belief, and profession of," &c. — Gr. Tes., on Matt, xxviii, 19, 20. W. Arthur, on Matt, xxviii, 19, has written : "'Teach:' here the weapon — the word of God. ' All nations.' Here the extent. ' Baptizing them in the name of the Fatiier , and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost.' Here the badge of citizenship" 46 SUBJECTS OF BAPTISM. (Tongue of Fire, p. 9). — Can the word of God be our weapon with infants ? Does bap- tisni make infants (or any others) into citizens, or is it to infants a badge of citizen- ship ? Dr. Donaldson. — " In baptism he consecrates himself to God and is re-born. The public confession is regarded as the consummative act of his whole conversion." —Crit. His, 4-c., p. 307. Dr. R. Vaughan records that Christ's " teaching was not simply to instruct men, and then leave them to themselves. It was to enrol them as His disciples. The Pharisees had their disciples. So Christ is said to have had His di.sciples. The Jewish rulers shew us what is meant by this term, when they say, ' Thou art His disciple ; we are Moses' disciples.' The Saviour, too, says, ' If ye continue in my word, then are ye my disciples indeed ; and ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.' To indicate the sort of fraternity which this discipleship em- braced, it is said that whosoever should give a cup of cold water to a disciple ' in the name of a disciple ' shall in no wise 'lose his reward.' The commission given to the apostles, accordingly, was not merely to teach, but, as the margin reads, to discivle all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost ' " (Church and State, pp. 95, 96). Is it possible not merely to teach, biit also to disciple infants ? Can language by implication be more condemnatory of the meaning which certain advocates of infant baptism endeavour to piit on disciples of Christ ? Dean Alford, with wonderful perspicacity, sees baptizing and teaching to bo " the conditions of the imperative preceding." He is also gratified to observe " that in our Lord's words, as in the church, the process of ordinary discipleshiij is from baptism to instruction ;" " the exception being what circumstances rendered so fre- quent in the early church, instruction before baptism in the case of adults " (On Matt, xxviii, 19, 20). What a consolation that the commission, though not quite accordant with apostolic practice, thoroughly chimes with that "in the church," or what would be the practice if her teaching were but universal and regarded ! And how comfort- ing to notice the consistency of the Divine arrangement " from baptism to instruction," in the Church's Catechism, whore we read, " Wha,t is required of persons to be bap- tized ? Ans. Eepeutance, whereby they forsake sin ; and Faith, wherebv they stead- fastly believe the promises of God made to them in the sacrament!" "V\athout doubt the provision of the sponsors in the case of little children is, equally with discipleship from baptism to instruction, in the commission of Christ ! It might be comforting to some not belonging to our church by law established to be assured that, whether from special and favouring circumstances, or from some other cause, they more literally obey Christ's commission than did the apostles ! And wore it not for the happy (Divine or human) invention of sponsors, how difficult it would have been to reconcile "the subjective confession of Father, Son, aiid Holy Ghost" in baptism, with the l:)aptizing of infants ! We agree with him when he says on the commission : " It is unfortunate again here that our English Bibles do not give lis the force of the eis. It should have been into (as in Gal. iii. 27) both here and in 1 Cor. x, 2, and wherever the expression is used." The following is also worthy of praise : " There is peculiar meaning in malte disciples of . . . The purpose of the Lord is to bring men to the knowledge of the truth — to work on and in their hearts, and lift them up to be partalcers of the Divine nature. And therefore it is not ^ siibdue,' hvA make disciples of." — Gr. Tes., on Matt, xxviii, 19. J. C. Eyle. — " ' Go and teach all nations ' . . . They were to strive to make disciples of all nations, to tell the v/hole earth that Christ died for sinners . . . The plain practical lesson of the words is the necessity of a public profession of faith in Christ. . . . The point settled by the text is not so much what ought to bo done with the children of Christians, as what ought to be done with heathens when converted" (Expos. Thoughts on the Scrip. ; on Matt. xxAdii, 11-20). If this is Christ's only command to bai:)tize, and it says not a word about infants, the point is settled that they must pass from infancy into a capability of understanding the gospel be- fore the commission has anything to do with them. Bp. Goodwin. — " The mai'gin of our Bibles very jn'operly g^ves the expression, inalce disciples, or Christians, of all nations, the word teach hy no means giving the force of the original. Dean Alford well remarks upon the emphasis of tho word in connection with tlio mention of power just preceding : All power is given Mo — go forth . . . subdue ? Not so : the purpose of the Lord is to bring men to the knowledge of the truth — to work on and in their hearts, and lift them up to be partakers of the Divine nature. And therefore it is not suhdue, but malie disciples of." — Com., on Matt, xxviii, 18-20. H. W. Beecheb. — " I concede and assert, first, that infant baptism is nowhere CHEIST'S COMMISSION. 47 commanded in the New Testament. No man can find a passage that commands it ; and if it can stand only on that ground, we may as well give it up fii'st as last." — Ser., p. 202. Unless to baptize is, in accordance -svitli tlie tenets of papists and some others, to make disciples or Christians, infants have no place in Christ's commission. If any order in Christ's words is to be noted, infants are excluded. If the definition of making disciples, as given by Christ or by His apostles, is to be regarded, infants are excluded. If the obvious im- port of words in the commission can have corroboration from Christ's previously making and baptizing disciples, from John the Baptist's bap- tism of repentance, and of those who confessed their sins, and from the subsequent practice of apostles, the baptism of professing believers has alone Christ's sanction and approval. If the commission of Christ teaches that baptizing is co-extensive with the preaching of the gospel, we depart from the commission if we preach to those we are not to baptize, or if we baptize those to whom we are not to preach ; or if the commission of Christ is to baptize all appli- cants, and the baptism is co-extensive with the preaching of the gospel, we have been disobedient to Christ if we have carried the gospel to India, China, or any other place, before we received an application for it. And if the commission teaches us to disciple by baptizing, we all ought to have made it our first business to baptize. Also Paul should have bap- tized the Philippian jailer before he told him to " believe on the Lord Jesus Christ," and before he "spake unto him the word of the Lord, and to all that were in his house ;" and he made a gross mistake in regard to his commission when he said, " Christ sent me not to baptize, but to preach the gospel." Some readers may think that on the commission, I have not done jus- tice to the hj'pothesis, that baptism is the completion of discipleship. But whatever inclination towards this I may have ever felt, I am unable to reconcile it with the fact that discipleship to Christ has its seat in the heart, and that a certain change here constitutes any man a disciple of Christ ; this change, through God's grace, ever producing and being mani- fested by a desire to do all that is pleasing to Christ, so that when baptism is clearly taught and explicitly understood to be Christ's will respecting those who believe on Him, no disciple of Christ will refuse baptism, and no neglector of baptism will be believed to be a disciple of Christ; nor can I reconcile it with the ditlerent parts of the commission itself, accord- ing to their natural, grammatical, and, as I think, necessary import, an import of which the correspondent conduct of the apostles gives sufiicient confirmation. Notwithstanding the number of quotations given from a conviction that they confirm our view of the import of this important passage as yielding no countenance to infant or indiscriminate baptism, but implying its con- demnation, believing that the vaiters quoted would not have acknow- ledged Chi-ist's commission as sanctioning alone the baptism of professing believers, if they could otherwise have written without consciously misin- terpreting inspired writ, I nevertheless admit the right of every one to 48 SUBJECTS OF BAPTISM. judge for himself on the import of all Divine truth. I remember also that many of our opponents whose acknowledgments are recorded, do never- theless maintain that infant baptism is right. The commission — and the only commission to baptize — they believe to have only adults in view, but the apostles arc by some confidently supposed to be acquainted with the proselyte baptism of infants, although it is not kiioioi to have then had an existence. This supposed acquaintance of the apostles with proselyte bap- tism is supposed to have caused the apostles to need no instruction on the baptizing of infants, knowing it to be their duty, although Christ referred only to the baptizing of adults ! Why on this supposition they needed more on the baptizing of adults I am not able to say. And why in this commission, intended for the church's guidance to the end of time, we have, for the sake of those who have succeeded and must succeed the apostles, no reference to the proselyte baptism of the Jews, now maintained to be — although there is no mention of it in any part of the oracles of God — Divinely sanctioned, I am unable to conceive. But by supposi- tions respecting proselyte baptism on the part of some, and by other hypotheses advanced by others, the plain commission, admitted to teach alone the baptism of disciples, is tortured to allow, or metamorphosed to sanction, the baptism of infants. Thus the v/ords of Him in whose mouth was no guile, are mangled in a manner more worthy of Simon, the Jesuit, than of the humble follower of the Lamb. The supposition that grammatical requirements embrace infants, is as destitute of foundation as are extracts from the Mishna or the Talmuds. And to our opponents who say that such passages as Matt, xxviii, 19', 20, and Mark xvi, 15, 16, can refer only to persons capable of faith, I reply that this is an admission that the only commission to baptize which Christ has given, says not a word on the bap' ism of infants, but has exclusive reference to persons ca- pable of faith ; and which I maintain cannot be otherwise than an enjoined baptism either of believers or persons of every character ; yea certainly of believers, or disciples of Christ. If the reader is not a subject of believers' baptism, what ought to be his thoughts and solemn purpose, if the obvious import of the commission, admitted by so many distinguished Ptedobaptists, is believed also by him to be its true import ? The words which Christ has left on record in the inspired volume v.'ill at the last day, on this matter as on others, determine our innocence or guilt. If Christ's commission is profoundly silent respecting the baptism of any but disciples, believers, converts, it could not be the Saviour's intention that infants who arc incapacitated by nonage, or that unbelievers who are incapacitated by ignorance or the want of faith, should be baptized. Whatever may be the baptism of unbelievers, the baptism received in unconsciousness and administered by coercion is a nullity. Believe and obey. The further elucidation and confirmation of Christian duty, as taught in Christ's commission when grammatically and correctly understood, is attempted in the Appendix. APOSTOLIC BAPTISMS. 49 SECTION IV. APOSTOLIC BAPTISMS. Dr. D. Young.—" Baptism is ordained to continue so long as tlie work of regeneration con- tinues."—T/te Laiv of Christ, d-c, p. 19. Dr. W. Cooke.—" Baptism as a ceremony was as distinct from baptism by tlie Holy Gliost as any two things can be. The apostles understood the command of our Lord as enjoining a duty at once imperative and indispensable." " What God has ordained, let no man dare to disannul."— Jnf. Bap. Def., p. 4. S. Davis.— The conduct of the apostles and their believing hearers at Pentecost, and after- wards, is an inspired commentary upon our great Master's pleasure." — Sh. View, p. 3. C. H. Spdegeon.— " There is the same authority for requiring baptism as repentance and faith."— Sijcec/i, April 29th, 1869. Dr. Stock.—" Men by faith in the Lord Jesus Christ become Christians, and by the power of that faith, in the ordinance of baptism they become the professed disciples of ChxisX."— Speech, April 29th, 1869. It will not be deemed necessary that I refer to the baptism of the Spiiit on the day of Pentecost, as that was by Christ and not by His apostles. I however deem infants to be as expressly mentioned here as in any apostolic baptism, or in Christ's commission, or in John's baptism of repentance. And I conceive that grammar, analogy, and inference, as justly sustain the conclusion that they were a part of the one hundred and twenty disciples in the upper room, as that they were a part of any pre- ceding or succeeding disciples. The records of apostolic precept and practice I believe to be as silent in reference to infant and indiscriminate baptism as the commission of Christ. I do not believe that we are required to know the heart, a know- ledge of which is not requisite to pastors or people previous to an admis- sion to membership in the church of Christ, or to a filling of the highest office in Christ's body. I believe that faith ought to be possessed by the baptized, and that we who administer this ordinance should know nothing of insincerity in those who profess this pre-requisite to baptism. That apostolic conduct must give a correct exposition of Christ's commission, I regard as incontrovertible. Let us emulate those who have "done homage to the principle of neither forcing anj'thing upon a speaker or wi'iter, of which it is not apparent that he thought, nor of allowing them- selves to be fettered by any tradition, in a work that demands such an en- tire surrender of oneself to that which is written." — Doedes's Her., pp. 27, 28. § 1.— THE BAPTISM OF ABOUT THEEE THOUSAND. Dan Tayloe.— " On all other subjects we think it proper to consult the precepts and examples which relate to them." — Comp. Vieio, p. 4. W. Thorn. — "Three thousand on the day of Pentecost were converted to Christianity and baptized."— /n/. Bap., p. 272. Dr. Owen. — "He repenteth not, who hath not faith toward God." — Expo, of Hcb., vi, 1. Dr. Halley. — " If we allow the exigencies of controversy to create a new sense of phrases, we may prove any thing we lolease from Scripture." — Cony. Lee, vol. xv, pp. 27, 28. Dr. DoEDES. — " Be very careful, then, lest you make those ScrJiitures say what you would like to find in them." " What have people not extracted from the New Testament ? i.e., what have people not introduced into it ?"—Ecr,, pp. 11, 12. E 50 SUBJECTS OP BAPTISM. On the clay of Pentecost Peter said to tliose'who after an address from him "were pricked in their heart," and inquired, " Men and brethren, what shall we do ?" — " Repent and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the remission of sins, and ye shall receive the gift of the Holy Ghost. For the promise is unto you and to your children, and to all that are afar off, even as many as the Lord our Grod shall call." The inspired writer also adds : "And with many other words did he testify and exhort, saying, Save yourselves from this untoward generation. Then they that gladly received his word were baptized ; and the same day there were added unto them about three thousand souls. And they continued steadfastly in the apostles' doctrine," &c. — Acts ii, 37-42. Here the persons addressed are said to be "pricked in their heart." In connexion with the command to be baptized is given the command to EEPENT ; and the duty of repentance, whether by accident or design, is at least first mentioned. Also, Peter exhorts to be baptized in (epij the name of Jesus Christ, which implies that their baptism would be an ac- knowledgment of the previous sin of unbelief, and of their present faith in Jesus the Messiah. Peter exhorts every one to repent and be baptized. He does not say. Let all repent and some be baptized ; nor does he say, Let some repent and all be baptized ; nor. Let those that will, repent, or let all repent, and let those that are willing, or that by the willingness of parents or guardians can be laid hold of for the administration of baptism, be baptized. Nor do our opponents attach all these meanings to. his words. Nor does he say that every one is to repent and be baptized and his children, or children and servants, or a part of them along with him; nor that the children, or children and servants, or children and servants under a certain age, are to be baptized along with penitent parents. The record respecting the baptized who gladly received the apostle's word, is in accordance with the precept. Nor do I hesitate to express my senti- ments in the words of Dr. P. Fairbairn : " There can be no reasonable doubt that the repentance toward God, and faith toward the Lord Jesus Christ, which formed the sum of apostolic teaching, was in some form implicitly or expressly demanded of the applicants for baptism." " Such as failed in these respects were treated as unwarranted intruders into the Christian fold ; and hence the sincere reception of baptism is regarded as necessarily carrying along with it ' the answer of a good conscience,' a conscience purged through right views of sin, and faith in the power and work of the Saviour." "Explicit statements of baptism being ad- ministered to the children of believers, are not to be found." — Imp. Bi. Die, Art. Bap. The Rev. W. E. Boardman says, " The apostle Peter's answer to the question, ' What must we do ? ' of those pricked to the heart by his preg- nant words on the day of Pentecost, was substantially the same as the apostle Paul's answer to the trembling, prostrate Philippian jailor, 'Be- lieve on the Lord Jesus Christ and thou shalt be saved.' " Veier virtually said. Repent, and accepting the name of Jesus Christ as the foundation of all spiritual hope, declare in baptism that you are resting on this founda- tion, Peter knew the commission ho had received, and spoke by the BAPTISM OF ABOUT THEEE THOUSAND. 61 authority of his risen Lord and Saviour. The baptism of those whom he exhorted to repent and save themselves from that untoward generation, obviously involved a profession of faith in the same Saviour as Peter had preached to them, who had recently by wicked hands been "crucified and slain," whom God had "raised up," who had "ascended into the heavens," and had "shed forth" the Holy Spirit, the fact of which was. demonstrated by what they saw and heard. Only by thus believing on Christ, which v/ould be associated with a surrender to Him, was it possible for them to save themselves ; to which Peter by many words exhorted them. Whether an individual on repenting enjoys the remission of sins, is no more stated here than is it stated in "he that believe th and is bap- tized shall be saved," whether the person who believes is in a state of sal- vation before he is baptized. That repentance is a change of mind in- volving altered feelings and an altered conduct, and that believing on Christ we become new creatures in Christ Jesus, I fii-mly believe. Nor do I doubt that any one truly repenting, or believing with the heart on Christ will neglect or refuse, except through ignorance or mistake, to be baptized. I also believe that " God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son that whosoever believeth on Him should not perish." Mr. M'Lean (a Baptist) speaks of an opponent who "insists that the promise. Acts ii, 38, 39, is the promise made to Abraham, because the apostle mentions that promise on another occasion, ch. iii, 19-25 (strange logic indeed), and because the blessing of Abraham includes the promise of the Spirit, Gal. iii, 14, as if that was the only promise of the Spuit which Peter could refer to in Acts ii ! Yet Peter speaks not a word of the promise made to Abraham in the whole of the discourse, but cites at large the promises of the Spirit from Joel, shews its begun accomplishment in what was then seen and heard, and applies it to the Jews nearly in the very words of that prophet — C'omj)., ver. 39, Avith Joel ii, 32." — Works, vol. vii, p. 284. Perhaps it is thought that I am forgetting the word children, which occurs when the apostle enforcing his exhortation, says, " For the promise is unto you and to your children." But that the word children does not signify and necessarily include infants, that it is often used for posterity, is known to every one who is familiar with God's word, with human writings, or with common conversation. Does " the children of Israel," Avhich in God's word so often occurs, mean the infants of Israel ? Did John the Baptist by " children " mean infants, when he said to the Pharisees and Sadducees : " Think not to say within yourselves. We have Abraham to our father : for I say unto you, that God is able of these stones to raise up children unto Abraham ?" Did the apostle Paul by "children" mean infants, when he said, "And we declare unto you glad tidings, hovv^ that the promise which was made unto the fathers, God hath fulfilled the same unto us their children?" Is it possible that the apostle Peter could here mean infants ? Consider the following facts : 1. The persons addressed are in a state of which infants are incapable. The facts and reasoning in the apostle's previous address had greatlj'' agitated theii" minds, and caused the earnest enquiry, "Men and brethren what shall we do ?" 2, 52 SUBJECTS OF BAPTISM. The duties enjoined in reply to the anxious query are duties of which in- fants are utterly incapable. They cannot repent, or yield themselves to baptism. 3. The promise of the apostles is clearly conditional, and it is on condition of those very things of which infants are certainly incapable. The promise of remission of sins and of the gift of the Holy Ghost is on condition of repenting and being baptized in (epi) the name of Jesus Christ. The extending of a conditional promise, if the condition is inap- plicable and impossible to infants, implies most clearly the exclusion of infants. Can any be interested in a conditional promise who do not per- form the conditions of that promise ? According to the teaching of Peter as well as of Paul, we " receive the promise of the Spirit through faith." 4. The blessings included in this promise are totally inapplicable to in- fants. Peter says, " The promise is unto you, and to your children." The promise to the children is as clearly of the same blessings, as it is on the same conditions as to themselves. This promise, without violence and a plain perversion of the passage, can refer only to " the gift of the Holy Ghost," or to " remission of sins," or to both of these. The apostle had just promised to those who obeyed the command to repent and be baptized in (ept) the name of Jesus Christ, " the remission of sins " and " the gift of the Holy Ghost." In his previous addi'ess he had mentioned the ful- filment of Joel's prophecy, "I will pour out of my Spuit," &c. If the promise unto them and to their children is this special promise in Joel, in the fulfilment of which sons and daughters would prophesy, the sup- position that children means infants is. forbidden. If the promise is general, and refers to " the gift of the Holy Ghost " in His sanctifying, comforting, and invigorating influences, infants cannot be meant. Or if the promise refers to remission of sins, or to remission of sins and the gift of the Holy Ghost, infants cannot be meant. If the forgiveness of sins takes place previous to baptism on the exercise of trust in Christ, the fact is not contradictory to Peter's words which mention duties to be dis- charged and blessings that will be enjoyed, without mentioning whether or not both duties must be discharged previous to an enjoyment of either promised blessing. Elsewhere on this Ave are instructed. Here, as else- where, where promises and commands are given to the children of Israel, by children is meant posterity, descendants. 5. The words immediately following the declaration. The promise is unto you and to your children, equally prove the impossibility of infants being intended. It is immedi- ately added, " And to all that are afar ofi", even as many" (not as shall be born, or as are infants or children, but as many) " as the Lord our God shall call." Until the Lord our God shall by His servants address His calls to unconscious babes, the attempt to deduce from this passage the right to baptize infants, will be futile. 6. Infants were not among the baptized. The Divine testimony is : " Then they that (gladly) received his word were baptized . . . And they continued steadfastly in the apostles' doctrine and fellowship, and in breaking of bread, and in prayers." The baptism was preceded by a reception of apostolic truths, and was immediately succeeded by a union with the Christians at Jerusalem, and by a steadfast continuance in the apostles' doctrine, &c. These facts BAPTISM OF ABOUT THEEE THOUSAND. 53 while precluding the idea that the infants even of helievera were baptized along with their believing parents, which would in all probabihty have added thousands more to the number of the baptized, also pre- clude the possibilty of children here meaning infants. The promise, on the conditions stated, was to them and then* descendants, yea to those near or distant, to Jew or to G-entile, to " as many as the Lord our God shall call." 7. The word children here means posterity, or religion is not personal, but its richest blessings are an inheritance from man ! A be- lieving parent, immediately on believing, gives the richest blessing of heaven to his children ; or is the cause of God's Spirit, or God's Spirit and the for- giveness of sins, being immediately given to his children ! According to this, a parent's faith is of wonderful efficacy ! A believer who is not a parent obtains salvation, but his faith is efficacious, so far as we know, only for himself. He occupies a substitutionar}^ position for no mortal. God's conditional promise belongs to him ; but he not being a parent, this promise does not also through him unconditionally stretch forth to others. The faith of one man is immediately and infinitely more efficacious than the faith of another, through the gracious and equitable arrangement of Him who " is no respecter of persons!" 8. The word children here means posterity, because if it meant those having the same earthly parent — which it must mean if it does not mean posterity — it would embrace not only the infants and little chilcken, but all of every age, whether two or twenty, thirty or fifty years old, who could call the converted father or mother their parent ! Thus the infant and ungodly adult through parental repentance toward God and faith in the Lord Jesus become immediately recipients of Heaven's richest blessing. Transubstantiation is not less worthy of belief than this filial translation through parental piety ; nor is baptismal regeneration a more damnable heresy than this destruction of religious personality in those that are come to years of maturity. 9. Not only does the connexion demand that posterity be the import of children, but the most eminent Psedobaptist historians admit that there is no e^ddence of the existence of infant baptism in the apostolic or imme- diately subsequent age. Also the entire record is as condemnatory of indiscriminate as of in- fant baptism. Surely those reverend and learned gentlemen who deem the glorious Pentecost to have been a season unfavom'able to genuine, and speedy, and evident conversion, never pray for a Pentecostal season ! And assuredly such as can see in the baptism of those who received the apostle's word, and continued steadfastly in the apostles' doctrine and fellowship, what " seems precisely equivalent to baptizing all apphcants," although this baptism was to the number of " three thousand," and " in the first day of their conviction," have powers of vision to which few can lay claim. Dr. Halley gives us instruction on eJcastos humon, translated every one of you, as "referring to the personality, and not to the universality of the address. Each one was to act for himself, and not to wait for the example of others " (Eejily, dr., p. 104). This accords -ndth the baptizing of them only "that (gladly) received his word." It is true that Dr. H. elsewhere teaches that the gi-ound of baptism according to Peter's words ■54 ■ SUBJECTS OF BAPTISM. was " the promise," a promise belonging to adults, godly or ungodly, and therefore justifying indiscriminate baptism, a promise belonging to children and to "infants" (vol. xv, p. 59), and therefore justif3'ing infant baptism ! Dr, H. also says, " If *the promise' to them was a reason for their being baptized, 'the promise' to their children was equally a reason for their children's baptism, and 'the promise' to all afar off was also a reason for their baptism" (p. 58). True, "if" — ! But if the promise is the promise of remission of sins, and of the gift of the Holy Ghost, on condition of re- penting and being baptized upon the name of Jesus Christ, what authority is here given for the baptizing of those known to be impenitent, and for the baptizing of infants ? Also Dr. H., separating repentance from baptism in the words of Peter, says in another place, " they were told to be bap- tized for the remission of sins" (p. 21). Yet in the next page he says, "they were assured that on their repentance and baptism, they should receive the gift of the Holy Ghost." Is not repentance here as distinctly and inseparably united with baptism in the condition of remission of sins as in that of the gift of the Holy Ghost ? The possibility of forgiveness preceding baptism must be learnt in other inspu'ed records, not here. Dr. H., in his despising of all order in words and sentences when this is needed by him, in his firm belief that we may baptize those who either cannot or will not repent, is as happy in advocating the baptism of infants and the ungodly as if he had received a direct revelation from heaven to separate at pleasure things which God has joined together. He says on Acts ii, 37-42 (vol. xv, p. 115 ), " The process seems to have been : — They were first baptized, and then taught, and then admitted to the fel- lowship of the chiu'ch, and the Lord's supper, and daily prayers" ! He does not see that they were first taught, and that on receiving the apostle's word they were then baptized. Or there was no teaching in Peter's words, Repent and be baptized each one of you upon the name of Jesus Christ, nor in his previous address. Or they were baptized when Peter said. Re- pent and be baptized, or before under the inspiration of the Spirit he had uttered a single word. Elsewhere Dr. H, says : " ' The promise is to you and your children, and to all that are afar off; even as many as the Lord our God shall invite.' All Gentiles brought under the sound of the gospel are put upon a trial of their faith. They are all inserted in the good olive tree, to ascertain if they will bring forth fruit" (p. 50). I object not to God's invitation by the gospel being spoken of as putting persons on the trial of their faith. The idea of this invitation being to all, their insertion in the good olive tree, I reject. Elsewhere, speaking of these invited or called by the Lord, he says, " This calling is therefore some external privilege, of which the impenitent and their children may partake " (p. 58). He also says that the pertinence of Peter's "address depends entirely upon the fact of the parties who heard it having ' the promise' " (p. 58). It does not accord with Ptedobaptism to paraphrase Peter's words thus : Whatever pri\'ilego and duty belong to you belong to yom' children also. It is your duty and privilege to repent, and be baptized on the name of Christ, thus having remission of sins and the gift of the Holy Ghost. Your children have the same duty and privilege. Let them repent and BAPTISM or ABOUT THREE THOtJSAND. 5S tlius be baptized, and they shall have the Divine forgiveness and the in- dwelling Spirit. As our opponents would find a greater objection to im- mersion, if Peter, as Dr. J. A. Alexander says, had required " this vast crowd to be baptized upon the spot" — for I doubt not Peter's hearers were not standing in water two or three feet deep — so they would find greater encouragement to the baptizing of infants, if Peter's words read, Eepent and be baptized every one of you, and your infants and little chil- di'en along with you. How possible it is for the learned and pious, pos- sessing too an ordinary amount of charity towards opponents, to mis- understand, mystify, and pervert inspired teaching, which, read and un- derstood as other Divine and human writings, is free from all contradic- tion, equivocation, obscurity, or difficulty ! If we knew that there were fifty thousand infants and little children present on the day of Pentecost, we should reject the idea that a single one was baptized, because the in- spired record says, ** Then they that (gladly) received His word were baptized." But if children did not (in Acts ii, 39) mean posterity, but meant simply the natural children of those addressed, what an awful limitation of the promise is involved ! What has become of generations, then unborn, and what will become of generations yet unborn ? Moreover, I do not forget the idea that instead of forgiveness of sins and the gift of the Holy Ghost being enjoyed by the three thousand who heard and regarded Peter's word of instruction, they had "a baptism for the remission of sins," and not " in a bad sense," but "as designating the introduction into a course of instruction, in which the whole doctrine of the remission of sin is fully explained" (p. 118)! There is nothing ungrammatical, and no in- terpolation in this ! This is the blessed and glorious privilege condition- ally promised by Peter, and rejoicingly reaUzed by the obedient portion of his auditory ! Dr. Stacey teaches that " the promise to which Peter refers can hardly be the promise of mu'aculous endowments," partly because " it seems im- probable that the apostle would hold out the hope of sui^ernatural gifts as an inducement to repentance and baptism." This "gift of the Spirit" " was, in truth, that abundant and continued outpouring which gives to the gospel its pre-eminence and glory as the dispensation of the Spirit : and hence its bestowment was the unsealing to mankind of the fountain of life, and the arrival of that day ' in which prophecy declared living waters shall go out of Jerusalem.' " This promise is the promise of " spiritual blessing, containing the germ and fulness of all spixitual bles- sings." This promise is in Christ's words; "If any man thirst, let him come unto me and drink. He that believeth on me, as the Scripture hath said, out of his belly shall flow rivers of living water." "The sense in which the Spirit is promised in these passages, is that in which His pre- sence is the crowning excellency of the Christian economy. It is that, therefore, demanded by the work of Christ in order to its effectual applica- tion in the sinner's conversion, and the believer's sanctification. Grace is to be given, and this grace is hving water, vv^hich, when a man receives, he is not only purified and refreshed himself, but becomes a channel to convey the gracious current to others" (Sac, pp. 77-79). Apply " the 56 SUBJECTS OF BAPTISM. promise," as thus expounded, to babes, remember its connexion with the twofold exhortation, " Repent, and be baptized every one of you in (upon) the name of Jesus Christ," and consider this as with many Pajdobaptists, the grand foundation, the esphcit and Divine authority, for the baptizing of infants ! Dr. Wilson says "that Baptist writers both in earlier and more recent times have felt it difficult to dispose of the children comprehended in this precious promise " finf. Bcqy., p. 504). I am in entire ignorance respect- ing this. It is indeed a precious promise. We thank God for the pro- vision of salvation in the gift of His Son and Spirit for ourselves, our children, and children's children to the end of time. Dr. W. thinks that the Baptist exposition recognizes the classes denoted by you and all afar off, but blots " your children " out of the promise. Not only our heart, but most explicitly our creed also embraces " children," for whom, blessed be the Lord, is provided the same blessing as for ourselves, and on the same terms. Dr. W., on the calling here spoken of, says, "This term oc- curs with considerable frequency, and unless the passage before us form the exception, it is not once applied to the inward effectual call of God drawing the soul savingly to himself" (p. 509). He says, " A general gospel-call is the doctrine of the text." Who does not say, Ergo, how clear that infants are here meant by or included in the "children !" And how consistent with Psedobaptism is the following valuable advice — ■ "Let it be remembered also that when the apostle says, " The promise is unto you, he does not assert either a 2Jresent or future fulfilment of it ; but merely holds up the promised good as attainable by the instrumentality of repentance towards God, and faith in our Lord Jesus Christ" (p. 511). If the following from Ptedobaptist pens should tend to remove error, and promote a scriptural practice, the transcriber will say, " Not unto us, 0 Lord, not unto us, but unto Thy name, give glory." On this passage, as on others, I endorse not all that I extract. My own sentiments have been or will be made apparent. Those who admit that professing believers alone were baptized, or who admit that none but persons capable of un- derstanding were addressed or referred to by Peter, corroborate believers' baptism. Also those who teach that on the day of Pentecost there were about three thousand converts ; and that about three thousand were bap- tized, like the inspired historian, leave no room for adding infants and little children to this number, or for admitting them as part of the number baptized. Calvin. — " Altliougli in tte connexion of the words baptism here precedes the for- giveness of sins, yet in order it follows." — On Acts ii, 38. Venema. — " The command of Peter was, ' Eepent and be baptized' (Acts ii, 38,) the effect of which was, that they who gladly and sincerely believed his gospel were baptized." " In baptism, therefore, we have a sign and testimony of present regenera- tion" (Diss. Sac, I. ii, c. xiv, § 4). " The promise is unto you and to your children. . . . Nor is there any doubt but the apostle had in his eye the second chapter of Joel ; both because he had just cited that prophecy, verse the seventeenth, and be- cause he takes the last words of our text from Joel ii, 32. Sons, therefore, as in Joel, are here the citizens of Jerusalem, young men, such as thcapostles were, and as many as should believe in Christ." — Diss. Sac, I. iii, c. iv, § 7, 8. LiMBOBCH. — "Bjtehiia, the apostle imderstands, not infants, but children, or BAPTISM OF ABOUT THEEE THOUSAND. 57 posterity, in which signification the ■word fehia occnrs in many places in the New Testament : see among others, John viii, 39. And here Peter comprehends in that expression their unborn posterity. . . . Whence it appears that tlie argument which is very commonly taken from this passage for the baptism of infants, is of no force, and good for nothing, because it entirely departs from the design of Peter." — Com., on Acts ii, 37-42. WiTSitrs and Dr. Owen, with many more, explicitly teach that the promise of which Peter speaks is " the promise" of the Spirit. Dr. Hammond say.s : " If any have made use of that very inconcludent argument (Acts ii, 39), I have nothing to say in defence of them. I think that the practice is founded on a better basis than so ; and that the word children there is really the posterity of the Jews, and not their infant children." — Works, vol. i, p. 490. L. EcHARD teaches that Peter exhorted them to repent and "to be all baptized in the name of Jesus Christ whom they had not before acknowledged, and that they should be partakers of the gifts and benefits of the Holy Ghost. For that the pro- mises of the gospel did belong to them, their children, and their successors, even as many as obeyed the call of heaven." — Eccle. His., p. 150. D. RussEN admits that there were " baptized three thousand in one day who em- braced the promises of the gospel." — In J. Stennctt's Ans., p. 97. J. MiLNER says that the apostle exhorted them to receive God's "grace by believing on Jesus for the remission of sins, with a submission to His ordinance of baptism, as an emblem of washing away their sins. . . . And the Holy Ghost should be poured on them also ; for the promise of it was very general — to them, to their children, to the most distant lands, wherever God should call men to reconciliation through Jesus Christ." — Ch. His., p. iv. J. Howe teaches on the sins of Peter's hearers that "to repent of them was to believe, which yet is more fully expressed by that which follows, ' and be baptized.' " They were to "be baptized into the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, epi to onomati, or unto a covenant surrender of themselves to Christ, whereof bajjtism was, it is true, to be the signifying token for the remission of sins." Peter exhorts to sincere be- lieving, and becoming " Christians, whereof your being baptized, and therein taking on Christ's badge and cognizance, will be the fit and enjoined sign and token." " Upon that faith which is o\vc entrance into the gospel covenant, the curse which withheld the Spirit is removed, and so we receive the promise of the Spirit (or the promised Spirit) by faith" (Works, vol. i, pp. 334-33G).— Think of Peter thus speaking, and then baptizing a mingled group of believers, unbelievers, and infants, who continued stead- fastly in the apostles' doctrine ! Abp. TiLLOTSON. — " Three thousand converted at one sermon, being convinced by the evidence of this miracle.' ' " Because this profession of faith was made in baptism, whereby men are solemnly initiated into the Christian religion, hence it is that this gift of the Holy Ghost is in Scripture i^romised and said to be conferred in baptism." ~8er. 12th. Baxter. — " Eepent of this and all your sins, and give up yourselves by faith to Christ in the baptismal covenant, and your sins shall be remitted, and this Holy Ghost which you now admire shall also be given unto you" (^Par., on Acts ii, 38). Elsewhere he says, "That it was saving faith that was required of the Jews, and professed by them (Acts ii, 38-42), is showed already and is plain in the test." Again (in Dispu., p. 359), he says, " God giveth right to sacraments to none but those to whom He giveth right to remission of sin." W. Gilpin. — " Peter earnestly exhorted them to be baptized in the faith of Christ. , . . At the conclusion of these exhortations not fewer than three thousand were baptized, and embraced the faith of Christ."- — Expo., Acts ii, 38, 41. Dr. J. Stack. — " Thousands were then converted to the true faith." " The new converts, we are told, continued steadfastly in," &c. — Lee. on Acts, pp. 34, 49. Dr. R. Povah. — " He mentions emi^hatically the name of Jesus Christ, in order to impress upon their hearts and memories the fact that they were now about to bo bap- tized into the faith, and take upon themselves the profession of Him whom before they had so much despised." " ' Then those who gladly received the woi-d were bap- tized.' It is not said that all this numerous people whom the miracle, which had been displayed in the person of the apostles, had assembled together, were baptized, but all 'they that gladly,' " &c. — Lee. on Acts, p. 384. Dr. Watts. — " Peter jpreaches to this multitude . . . leads them to Christ as a Saviour and Lord, calls them to repentance of their sins, and a profession of their faith in Jesus by being baptized in His name." — Works, vol. iv, p. 496. R. Wynne. — " ' For the promise is to you, and to your children, and to all those 58 SUBJECTS OF BAPTISM. who are afar off,' i.e., the remotest nations and latest posterity, wlio will listen to the call of God, calling' them to ropontance, &c., in the g-ospel." — New Tes., on Acts ii, 39. W. BuBKiTT. — " Upon their repentance, their owninof of, and believing in Christ, he directs them to be baptized in His name, and then they should be capable of the gifts of the Holy Ghost. . . . Learn hence that baptism is a solemn ordinance and sacred institution of Jesus Christ, which is not to be administered to any out of the Christian church, till they profess repentance and faith in Christ, and a sincere obedience to Him." — Com., on Acts ii, 38. Dr. Doddridge. — " Repent therefore of this aggravated crime, and in token of your desire to be washed from the guilt of that blocd which you have so rashly imprecated on yourselves and your children (Matt, xxvii, 25), be each of you baptized in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ." " The promise is to you and to your children. Consider- ing that the gift of the Spirit had been mentioned just before, it seems most natural to interpret this as a reference to that passage in Joel which had been so largely cited above (17 v., &c.), where God promised the effusion of the Spirit on their sons and their daughters ; and accordingly I have paraphrased the latter clause of this verse as referring to its extraordinary gifts : and the rather as the sanctifying influences of the Spirit must already have been received to prepare them for entering into the church by baptism." " They therefore who received his word with readiness were baptized, thereby taking upon them the public profession of faith in Jesus as the Messiah." — Expo., Acts ii, 38, 41. M. Henry. — " Eepent, change your mind, change your way, admit an after- thought. Be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ, that is, firmly believe the doctrine of Chi'ist, and submit to His grace and government, and make an open, so- lemn profession of this, and come under an engagement to abide by it, by submitting to the ordinance of baptism." M. Henry teaches that a former covenant had been " national, but now every one of you distinctly must bo baptized in the name of the Lord Jesus, and transact for himself in this groat affair." " Be baptized into the faith of Christ." On the 2y'romise he says, " The following limitation, even as many of them, as many particular persons in each nation as the Lord our God shall call." " They were baptized ; believing with the heart they made confession with their mouth, and enrolled themselves among the discii^les of Christ by that sacred rite and cere- mony which Ho had instituted" (Com., on Acts ii, 37-41). — Can exposition of Divine truth be more condemnatory of infant baptism and of the fallacies by which M. Henry and others have sought to defend it ? Bbngel. — " They who did not stop short with mere compunction, biit willingly (gladly), and in very deed, were obedient to the exhortation . . . were baptized." — Gno., Acts ii, 41. Dean Stackhouse. — " This sermon" "converted no less than three thousand souls, who thereupon were received into the profession of the Christian faith by bap- tism."— His. of theBible, vol. ii, p. 1516. Bp. Burnet. — " The promises of the gospel run all upon the condition of repent- ance."— On the xxxix Art., p. 283. J. Tbapp. — " TFere baptized. They gave up their names to Christ, and took His mark upon them." — Com., on Acts ii, 41. Dr. Ebskine. — " Peter demanded repentance of his hearers in order to baptism ; and only they that gladly received his word were baptized." — Thcol. Dis., p. 79. Dr. G. Benson. — " Eepent and be baptized every one of you in th3 name of Jesus as the Messiah, and you also shall receive some extraordinary and miraculous powers. For the promise of the gift of the Holy Spii'it extends unto you, and to your children, and to persons at the remotest parts of the earth ; even unto all who shall have the gospel preached unto them, and who shall accept of that Divine call. This is the sum and substance of what St. Peter then said. . . . This discourse, joined with the labours of the other apostles, had so good an effect as to convince about three thou- sand, who joyfully embraced the Christian doctrine, and were baptized that very day in the name of Jesus as the Messiah."- — His. of Chris., pp. S3, 85. M. Poole. — " The name of Jesus Christ is here mentioned, but they had not yet known (but persecuted and slain) Him whom henceforward they must profess." — Com., on Acts ii, 38. J. Wesley. — " Eepent — and hereby return to God : Be baptized — believing in the name of Jesus." — Notes, on Acts ii, 38. T. Williams. — " Such were the wonderful effects of Peter's sermon, or rather of the Divine influences that attended it, that nearly three thousand persons v/ere thereby converted, and united to the church by Christian baptism." — Cot. Bi., on Acts ii,38. T. Scott, — " The apostlo replied, by exhorting them to repent of that, and all their BAPTISM OF ABOUT THEEE THOUSAND. 59 otter sins ; and openly to avow their firm belief that Jesus was Indeed the Messiah, by being baptized in His name." " Peter exhorted the Jews to bo baptized in the name of Jesus Christ as professing their faith in Him as the Messiah." — Com., Acts ii, 37-41. Elsley. — " In the nams of Jesus Christ. To express as Jews, who already be- lieved in God tlie Father, and the Holy Ghost inspiring the prophets, their belief in Jesus as the Messiah. Lightfoot. Whitby." — Anno., Acts ii, 38. G. Bliss. — " By the tenor of God's covenant in Christ Jesus all who repent and be- lieve are in a state of pardon ; but baptism is here represented as a seal of this par- don ; and compliance with the ordinance is here enjoined as a public token of a Christian profession." — Expo. Notes, on Acts ii, 38. Fletcher (of Madeley). — " Peter answered and said. Repent and be baptized every one of you (that is, cordially believe, and then by baptism make a public confession of that faith) in the name of Jesus Christ for the remission of sins, and ye shall re- ceive the gift of the Holy Ghost." — For. of St. Paul. Dr. A. ChARKE.— "And be baptized every one of you,. Take on you the public pro- fession of the religion of Christ by being baptized in His name, and thus acknowledge yourselves to be His disciples and servants." " It was by being baptized in the name of Christ that men took upon themselves this profession of Christianity." — Com., on Acts ii, 38. Dr. Rees. — " Persons are required to be baptized in the name of Christ, or said to be baptized into Christ; i.e., they made a profession of faith in .Tesus as the Christ, and acknowledged their obligation to Him by being baptized. — Acts ii, 38," &c. T. Boston, on Acts ii, 38. — " H". is plain tliat ho requires their repentance ante- cedently to baptism, as necessary to qualify them for the right .and due reception thereof ; and there is no example of b.aptism recorded in the Scriptures where any were baptized but such as appeared to have a saving interest in Christ" (Works, p. 384). " When Peter in the name of the Lord commands every one of those to whom he spoke, to be baptized. Acts ii, 38, it did indeed oblige them to submit to that holy ordinance, but in the meantime to go about it in God's own way, and to be persons duly qualified for baptism" (p. 385). " Let us suppose a master commands his servant to sow his ground ; doth this give a right to him to go immediately and east in the seed, before that ever he break the ground with the plough, and make it fit for the receiving of the seed ? Should he go thus to work, he were a disobedient servant. Neither could it excuse that he had his master's immediate command to sow his ground Even so in the present case" (p. 38G). "Tlie apostle requires in the first place, that they should repent, and stays their baptism till they have evidenced their repentance." *' Wlien the apostles do fall a baptizing, they baptize those, and those only, who gladly received Peter's word." "None but Christ's disciples ought to be baptized. Matt, xxviii, 19. They could not be accounted Christ's disciples till they professed their faith in Him, and their repentance ; and consequently till then could have no right coram ecclesia to baptism in His name" (p. 394). — On "the promise" Mr. B. per- tinently remarks, " But howsoever it be understood it is clear that these promises being to them gave them not a right to baptism, but that repentance was pre-required of them in order thereunto" (p. 415). Dr. Whitby. — "These words will not prove a right of infants to receive baptism. The promise mentioned here being that of the Holy Ghost." — Anno., Acts ii, 38, 39. Pe. Edwards. — " I do not consider this historical account as having force enough of itself to evince the baptism of infants." " It passes with the common people in- stead of a hundred arguments." — Cand. Rea., pp. 85, 86. Pros. Edv/ards. — " The apostle Peter says to the Jews, Repent and be baptized ; which shews that repentance is a qualification which must be visible in order to bap- tism, and therefore ought to be publicly professed." — Eel. Aff., part iii, sign xii. Dr. G. Payne, referring to those whose baptism is described in the Acts, teaclies that the inspired writers intended " to state that they were initiated into a profession of the Christian religion" (Lee., vol. i, id. 298). — It is to me unaccountable that our opponents should credit God's word that about three thousand were baptized, and believe that since they received the apostle's word, they were disciples of Christ, eon- verts to the faith of the gospel, and that the number of converts who were baptized is the exact number of the converts and their families that were baptized. Dr. J. W. CoLENSO. — "They gladly received the word, they believed and were baptized. Thus they made profession of their faith in Jesus." "Professing such a faith as that above described, and making such an acknowledgment as this of Him whom God had made both Lord and Christ, were those three thousand baptized on the day of Pentecost, and many others afterwards." — On St. Paul's Epistle to the Ro- mans, pp. 13, 18. 60 SUBJECTS OF BAPTISM. Dr. D. WeI/SH. — "Three thousand conTerts were the fruit of their first day's labours" fCh. His., vol. i, p. 117). — Many of our opponents would have it that these and their children were " added to the church." Dr. IsLAT Burns. — " They believed, confessed, and were baptized, and on the same day there wore added unto the church three thousand souls !" (Ch. His., p. 26). Do such statements as this admit the Pentecostal baptism of other than professed believers ? T. BowRiNG. — " He exhorted them to be baptized into the profession of His [Christ's] religion, and was so successfiil that three thousand persons were on the same day converted." — Ear. His., &c., p, IG. Prof." A. A. Hodge. — " In the case of the three thousand on the day of Pentecost, the people of Samaria, and the disciples of John at Ephesus, crowds were baptized on the very spot on which they professed to believe" (Outl. ofThcol., pp. 503, 504). God's word, which teaches that on their receiving the word of tnith then they were baptized, or that when they believed the truths of Christianity they were baptized, does not teach that they were baptized "on the very spot." — We admit the professing to believe. G.Wilkinson. — " He whom they had crucified is the same to whom they must look for salvation. The Messiah they had disowned is He whom they must receive and avow ; and on these conditions there was mercy for ' every one' of them, and this is true always." " The saved multitudes at once pledge themselves by open profession to devoted fidelity to His service. ' Then they that gladly received his word were baptized.' " — Pente., p. 7. J. A. James. — " Read the account of the three thousand converted on the day of Pentecost ; up to the time when they heard Peter's sermon — they were the murderers of Christ ; by that sermon they were convinced of sin, and on the same day they were rejoicing in the assurance of pardon." "Then they that gladly received his word were baptized — they gladly received the word, that is, they believed the promises, and were made glad. Here was immediate faith, producing instant joy" (Aiix. Inq.J. — This Pentecostal and sudden conversion is what some Paadobaptists will, on Divine testimony, hardly regard as possible. E. BiCKEKSTETH. — " They were exhorted to repent and be baptized, and then they that gladly received his word were baptized, and the same day there were added unto them about three thousand souls. We see here Tepentance and faith preparing the minds of the converts for baptism." — It is more convenient than honourable to seek to evade the charge of inconsistency by professing to be speaking of adidt baptism. If apostolic and Christian baptism accorded with the above exposition, it was not in- fant baptism. " Our Lord," says Mr. B., " on one occasion of His mentioning baptism, speaks of faith as a first requisite" (On Bap., pp. 94, 95). — Unless some of us mistake, our Lord as certainly taught that faith should precede baptism in Matt, sxviii, 19, as in Mark xvi, 16. W. Trollope. — "The call of God here mentioned is an universal invitation to embrace the gospel ; and the salvation spoken of in w. 40, 47, denotes the state of sal- vation into which those who obey the call are admitted." — Anal. Theol., on Acta ii, 37. J. G. Manly. — " They that were baptized are described simply as they that asked and accepted Peter's teaching; and their baptism constituted their addition, for the statement of the latter follows immediately the statement of the former. Professed faith is therefore the condition of ecclesiastical admission, and baptism is the mode." " Glorious achievements crowned the means and ministrations of the day of Pente- cost." "All resulted in the belief and batDtism of three thousand soiUs." — Eccle., pp. 41, 42, 149. J. Glyde. — " On the day of Pentecost three thousand converts were baptized" (On Bap., p. 53). — If this is the number of converts, and the number of the baptized, how is it that so many will believe that the families of the converts were baptized ? G. H. Taylor.—" ' Repent and bo baptized.' . . . They were first to repent and then to be baptized in the name of Jesus." — Word Pic, p. 282. J. Ely. — " The new converts were required to avow their discipleship to the gospel of Jesus." " The immediate reception of baptism was inculcated; for by baptism were they visibly to make acknowledgment of Messiah, and to put themselves under the discipline of tlio new economy." — Winter Lee., pp. 436, 437. T. H. Hobne. — " Three thousand of those very persons, who biit just before had joined in putting Christ to a painful and ignominious death, immediately submitted to be baptized in His name, and made an open profession of theii' faith in Him as tho true Messiah that was to come." — Intro., vol. i, p. 484. BAPTISM OF ABOUT THEEE THOUSAND. 61 I. CoBBiN. — " Be hapiized : tliey were to baptize all that believed : see Matt, iii, 6 ; xxriii, 19 ; Mark xvi ; by being baptized they would publicly acknowledge their faith in the Messiah." — Com. Dr. W. Cooke Taylor. — " Three thousand were converted on that day and ad- mitted by baptism in the Christian church." — His. of Christi., p. 124. W. Thorn. — "Change your opinion and be baptized." "Here repentance is as necessary to the recei^^ng of the Holy Ghost and the remission of sins, as to being baptized." " Three thousand were proselyted at once on the day of Pentecost." " In Acts ii, 38, repentance is rendered a pre-requisite to baptism" (On Inf. Bap., pp. 197, 198, 227, 200). — If repentance was a pre-requisite to baptism on the day of Pentecost, why is it not so now ? For our relief from monotony, and om- further instruction, let us read tlie following from the Baptist Macallan, on Acts ii, 37-39. " The first thing to be remarked here is, that the phrase ' j-ou and j'our children ' is a Hebraism, by no means importing infant children, nor that the children were to enjoy the promise in consequence of connexion with their parents, or on any other footing than the parents themselves. The following are a few examples of similar phraseology : — Eze. xxsvii, 25, * And they shall dwell in the land that I have given unto Jacob My servant, wherein your fathers have dwelt; even they and their children, and ?/(f/r children's chil- dren, for ever.' Deu. xxx, 2, 'Thou shalt return unto the Lord thy God, and shalt obey His voice, according to all that I command thee this day, thou and thy children, with all thy heart, and with all thy soul.' Ps. cxv, 14, ' The Lord shall increase you more and more, you and your children.' Deu. xxix, 29, ' Those things that are revealed belong to us and to our children for ever, that we may do all the icords of this hue' Matt, xxvii, 25 : ' His blood be on us and on 02ir child/ en.' " As a key to this form of speech, Mr. M. adduces Acts xiii, 32, 33, " We declare unto you glad tidings, how that the promise which was made unto the fathers, God hath fulfilled the same unto us, their children." He maintains that "children" means " posterity," without respect to age, but sometimes, as is proved by the passage quoted, " adult children, able to act on their own responsibility. The same phraseology is used in other places where the blessing to parents and children is obviously successive, as in the case of the children of kings inheriting the throne of their fathers. Thus Deu. xvii, 20 : 'To the end that he may prolong his days in his kingdom, he and his childi'en in the midst of Israel.' Ps. cxxxii, 12, 'Ii thy children will keep my covenant and my testimony that I shall teach them, their children shall also sit on thy throne for evermore.' Observe," he continues, " this promise was to the children of David, and their children; but the latter could not, in the ordinary course of events, enjoy the promise till the death or abdication of the former, and only on the same terms too (See 2 Chron. xii, 7). No argument, therefore, can be built upon the phrase 'you and your children.' But 2. Though the term ' children ' did not so generally mean posterity, the next clause in the passage entirely precludes the sense that is required to be of any use to our Pjedobaptist friends. 'The promise is to you and to your children, and to all that are afar off.' Here is a plain and simple enume- ration of the parties to whom the promise (whatever that promise is) be- longs, and there is no more connexion between the second member of the 6^ SUBJECTS OF BAPTISM. enumeration and the first, than there Is between the third and first." " Any conckision that may be drawn in the one case, must be equally le- gitimate in the other. 3. The promise is limited, as it respects each class in the enumeration, by the following clause, ' even as many as tlte Lord our God shall call.' " Having spoken further on "the promise," " the parties," and " the limitation," he maintains that " this passage seems to have no more reference to the promise made to Abraham, than to the promise made to our first parents after the fall," and that " the 'children of faith,' under the gospel, have no more title to the peculiar blessing that belonged to the father of the faithful and his natural seed, than 'the royal priesthood,' under the gospel, have to the peculiar blessing of Aaron and his sons." — On Chris. Bap., pp. 74-78. J. CoNDEE. — " They tliat gladly received tlie word were baptized, and ttus be- lievers were added to the Lord." — On None, p. 97. J. J. Blunt. — "The act according to this (the inspired) authority, by which these first converts to the gospel were admitted into the church, was baptism ; ' they that gladly received ' St. Peter's ' word were baptized.' . . . We have now a band of baptized believers in Christ established in a central part of the world — a nucleus destined to expand itself by degrees and occupy the whole of it." — His. of the Christ. Church during the first three Centuries, p. 7. 2nd edition. AV. G. Humphry. — " The name of Jesus is mentioned emphatically, to shew that they were to receive His baptism and no other ; . . . and which . . . required above all things faith iu His name. So St. Paul, Eo. vi, 3, ' as many as were baptized into Jesus Christ'" (Com. on Acts ; on Acts ii, 38). We admit with Dr. M'Crie " that the Acts of the apostles present us merely with a history of the foundation of the Christian church;" but why now give to baptism and church membership other characteristics and another position ? Present historical records thus read : " On last Sabbath day I had the unspeakable pleasure of baptizing thirteen adults and sixteen children." "I baptized twenty-five children" (Evang. Mag., pp. 346, 453, 1837). And says the justly celebrated Mr. Vfilhams — " We have now baptized 268 adults and 202 children."— ii/e (by M. Prout,) p. 39. Dr. C. Hoffman. — " Repent and be baptized . . . Baptism . . . was no longer merely an indication of a mind turned to the Eternal One, but rather the act of ad- mission into the community in which the Spirit of the world to come presided ; and this admission implied participation in this Spirit, and the renunciation of everything opposed to this participation." — Christia. in the first Century, pp. 87, 88. Dr. J. Bennett teaches that the baptism enjoined by Peter, was " an overt act of submission to the name of Jesus as Christ or Messiah," and " was necessary for everyone who would prove that he had repented of rejecting Him." The name of Jesus "refers to the authority of Christ who enjoined baptism, and not to the form of words in which it was administered." — On Acts, p. 30. Dr. R. Hodgson on this passage remarks that baptism and repentance " must be in conjunction." — Lee. on Acts, p. 46._ KuiNOEL. — " Repent and he baptized, &c. Change your mind, and let every one of you by receiving baptism profess himself a follower of Jesus the Messiah, that yoru' sins may be forgiven." — Neiv Tes., on Acts ii, 38. Dr. Waedlaw, with a host of others, is so confident and happy in the belief of what Peter's hearers thought when they " heard of a promise to them and to their children," tha.i he says, "could their minds fail, on such an occasion, to go back to the promise of the covenant made with their fathers?" "Peter's auditors were habituated to the idea of the connection of their children with themselves in the promise of the covenant." "There was but one sense in which the heai-crs of Peter could iinderstand the designation 'yoiu- children.'" The gift of the Holy Ghost " another apostle (Paul) designates ' the blessing of Abraham,' — or declares it to bo at least included in that blessing. Gal. iii, 14," (On Inf. Bap., p. 99). — The language of Paul to which our venerated opponent refers, thus reads : " That the blessing of Abraham might come on the Gentiles through Jesus Christ; that we might receive THE PROMISE OF THE SPIRIT THROUGH FAITH." Could language bc uiore confound- ing to one who from this promise is advocating the baptism of the infants and little BAPTISM OF ABOUT THREE THOUSAND. 63 cMldi'en of believing parents on account of tlie connection of children with their parents ? That great spiritual blessing of the new covenant, which includes all others, which is received by faith, is undoubtedly promised by Peter to the infants and little children who are blessed with a believing' parent ! And since this had been the spirit- ^lal connection of children with their parents imder the previous economy, when in token of such a covenant God required all male children and male servants of the Jews to be circumcised, so every Jew would know that the promised Spirit received by faith must ever embrace along with the believing parent every chUd, male or fe- male, not having come to years of accountability, and that these children and none others were proper subjects of baptism, equally with the believing parent ! Dr. Bloomfield. — " BapUxestltai epi to onomati '"may be explained 'to solemnly profess to be a follower of Jesus, and to bind oneself to embrace His doctrine." — Bee. Syn. on Acts ii, 38. Dr. E. Burton. — " On this, which was the first day of their preaching, no fewer than three thousand persons were baptized, professing themselves to be believers in Jesus Christ." — Ch. His., p. 24. Dr. Neandhr. — " Peter called on them to repent of their sins, to believe in Jesus as the Messiah who would impart to them forgiveness of sius and freedom from sin — in this faith to be baptized and thus outwardly to join the communion of the Messiah." — On the promise to them, to their children, &c., he says, " The promise related to all believers without distinction, even to all in distant parts of the world, whom God by His grace should lead to believe in Jesu.s as the Messiah." — His. of Plant., &c., p. 19. Bohn's edi. J. G. MiALL. — " Peter preached to them the gospel of his new commission, ex- horted them to repent of their sins, and to receive by faith the atonemdtt of the glorified Jesus, submitting to baptism in His name." " The close of that day wit- nessed the astonishing rosiUt of three thousand new converts baptized and pledged to the party of the crucified Nazarene " {Blemo. of Ear. Chr., p. 13). — Let this first and apostolic practice be followed undeviatingly and vrithout additions. Winer. — " Baptism in the name of Christ is baptism founded on the acknowledg- ment of His name." — Grain., vol. ii, p. 411. Olshausen. — " To the question of the hearers, ti poiesomen, the apostle replies by admonishing them to repentance and faith, both of whicharopre-supposedin baptism. . . . With this metanoia baptism is then connected, which necessarily pre-supposea faith, because it requires an acknowledgment of Christ as the Messiah." "As tho hearers received with joy the iutclligcuce of salvation presented by St. Peter, baptism was immediately administered to three thousand i^ersons." — Com., on Acts ii. Dr. J. A. Alexander. — " The change of mind required, was to be attested by an outward act : repent and be baptized." "In tho name of Christ, i.e., by His authority, acknowledging His claims, submitting to His doctrines, engaging in His service, and relying on His merits." — Com. on Acts ; on Acts ii, 38. A. S. Pateeson. — " That very day three thousand believed and were added to the Christian church." — His. of the Church, vol. ii, p. 29. Webster and Wilkinson. — '' Epi to onomati. With the name for the basis of profession, belief, trust." " It had been the object of Peter's speech to prove, and it was essential for the Jews to believe that Jesus was tho Messiah" (Gr. Tes., on Acts ii, 38). They also add : " In Acts viii, 1<3 ; xis, 5 ; 1st Cor. i, 13, 15, eis to cnoma, ' to the profession of.' In Eo. vi, 3; Gal. iii, 27, eis Chr., 'to be Christ's.' Eis aphesi7i, the forgiveness of sins being the end, the object to be kept in view; that for which you believe in Jesus Christ." Dr. H. Thomson. — " He exhorts them to repent of their sins and turn from them unto God, to have recourse to the atonement of Christ for pardon and reconciliation, and to profess their faith in Him and subjection to His laws, by submitting to be publicly baptized in His name." "The meaning plainly is. Have recourse to the mercy of God as it is revealed in the sacrifice of Christ for the pardon of your offences, andpiibUcly profess your reliance upon it by submitting to be baptized in His name." " Upon the very first sermon preached to the Jews, upon the first accession of con- verts to the Christian faith, he required them to submit to the sacrament of baptism as a public testimony, on the one hand, that they acknowledged Jesus as the Messiah, and would obey His authority ; and on the other, that they were received by his minis- ters as members of His visible church, and were entitled to all its privileges." — Disc, on Acts, pp. 13&-, 148, 150. Dr. Dick. — " The particular course which he directs them to take is repentance and baptism." " Repentance is equivalent to that complete change of views and dis- positions which is implied in a cordial reception of the gospel." " With repentance, 64 SUBJECTS OF BAPTISM. baptism in the name, or by the authority of Christ is conjoined ; and Peter required it from his hearers for the three following reasons : first, as a solemn and pvibUc declara- tion of the change of their views and dispositions, the baptism of Christ being like that of John, a baptism of repentance ; secondly, as a testimony of their subjection to Jesus, by whom this ordinance was aj^pointcd ; and lastly, as the sign and seal of the new covenant, by which the remission of sins is represented to all, and confirmed to those who belong to that covenant." — Lcc. on Acts ; on Acts ii, 37-47. Dr. G. C. Knapp. — " In the words of Peter we have an example of the instruction commonly given before baptism." " It may be remarked in general that some of the usages common in many places at infant baptism, are not at all suitable to children, and have been transferred, without much judgment, to their baptism from that of adult persons." " Peter (Acts ii, 38) exhorts his hearers to suffer themselves to be baptized eis aphesin amartiov, but he exju'cssly requii-es as an essential condition, the metanoein (which is effected by God through the use of Christian doctrine) ; and it is the same in the baptism of John, Mark i, 4, seq." — Theol. Lee, pp. 429, 430, 431. Dr. S. Davidson. — " In Acts ii, 38-41, when three thousand were converted in a day to Christianity . . . the number of the converts renders it probable that many of the hundred and twenty disciples assisted at the general baptism" — Cong. Lee, vol. xiii, p. 322. Abp. Sumner. — " Ye shall receive the gift of the Holy Ghost. Not such gifts as the apostles had received, and many afterwards received ; the gift of tongues, or of healing, or of prophecy ; these were not granted indiscriminately to all who should repent and be baptized. But there is a gift of the Holy Ghost which is needful to every one ; such a gift as shall render him what all must be who are in Christ Jesus, ' a new creature.'^' Dr. S., in subsequent reference to the promise of the Spirit in John xvi, 8, says, "We see, now, the explanation and fulfilment of that promise. That so many, even three thousand souls, should so suddenly and so gladly receive the word, and be baptized as believers in Christ, can be ascribed to nothing but the Spirit of God." — Expo., on Acts ii, 37-47. Baumgabten. — " By the rite of the baptism the hitherto excluded Jews were placed on perfect equality with the disciples." " Those who had been baptized had become partakers of the same Spirit" (Apos. His., Acts ii, 37-47). — The apostles are believed by Baumgarten thus to have understood and obeyed Christ's commission; yet he can say : " The fact of His personally laying His hands on the little children furnished an incontrovertible warrant for our practice of infant baptism ! " If the three thousand had also "the Spirit of Christ" as had the one hundred and twenty, and were " received into the same form of fellowship," the first baptism was neither indiscriminate nor infant. Dr. J. Moeison. — " What are the two duties which the apostle urges upon the awakened Jews F He calls on them to repent and to be baptized. . . . What is the force of the second requirement ? That, in token of their genuine repentance, their sorrow of heart for their dreadful guilt, they would every one of them be baptized in the name of that Jesus whom they had wickedly crucified." — Com. on Acts, ii, 37-47. Family Treasury. — " In telling them what to do we may observe that he 1. Calls on them to repent ; 2. Directs them to Jesus Christ for pardon ; 3. Calls on them to avow their trust in Christ for the remission of their sins by being baptized in His name; and 4. Promises that they should receive the gift of the Holy Ghost." "Three thousand were baptized. They took the decisive step, renounced the world, threw in their lot with Christ" (Vol. i, p. 90). — If this is implied in apostolic baptisms, what authority can there be for the baptism of infants or known unbelievers ? Dr. J. Campbell. — "The repentance enjoined by Peter comprised faith in the Lord Jesus Chi'ist, belief of the facts which had been recorded concerning Him, as well as sorrow for the sin which had been committed. This faith produced peace, and more, they ' glady received the word,' and were baptized to the extent of three thousand souls. The stability of these believers showed their sincerity." — M'Phun's Bi., on Acts ii, 41-47. Dr. W. L. Alexander. — " It is forgotten that Peter says ' Eepent,' as well as 'be baptized,' and that it is as consequent upon this change of mind, as well as of pro- fession, that the gift of the Spirit was to be enjoyed. Had Peter said simpl3', ' Be baptized, and ye shall receive the Holy Spirit,' or, ' Be baptized, that ye may repent,' or ' By baptism your sins shall be forgiven,' the case would have been one clearly in Dr. Pusey's favour. But as the passage stands, it shows that repentance was to pre- cede baptism, and that repentance followed by baptism into the name of Christ, was the divinely-appointed way of obtaining the remission of sins and the gift of the Holy Spirit" (Anglo-Cath., pp. 309, 310).— But for infant baptism all ouj: intelligent opponenta BAPTISM OF ABOUT THEEE THOUSAND. 65 would assent to Dr. S. Stennett, wliere he says, " Tlae promise is to you, ■whom the Lord our God hath called; to your children whom the Lord our God shall call; and to all that are afar off, whom the Lord our God shall call," Dean Alford, — " Repent. The word imports change of mind ; here, change from thinking Jesus an impostor, and scorning Him as one crucified, to being baptized in His name, and looking to Him for remission of sins, and the gift of the Spirit." " The internal change of heart and purpose is insisted on, to be testified by admission into the number of Christ's followers." " Epi to ononi. lesou Christou, 'on the name,' i.e., on the confession of that wMch the name implies," " The result of the baptism to which he here exhorts them, preceded by repentance and accompanied by faith in the forgiveness of sins by Christ, would be, a receiving of the gift of the Holy Ghost." This first baptism " was conferred on the i^rofession of repentance, and faith in Jesua as the Christ."— ffr. Tcs., on Acts ii, 38. 41, Dr. KiTTO. — "'What shall we do?' The answer was ready: that they should repent and be baptized into the name of the Lord Jesus for the remission of sins — thereby attesting their belief in Him as their Messiah and Redeemer, and expressing their purpose of heart to become His followers and disciples." — Dai. Bi. Ulus., vol. viii, pp. 21, 22. C. MoLTNETJX says that "regeneration is invariably required as a pre-requisite to baptism." — Mod. Bit., &c., p. 26. Dr, DoLLiNGEE, — " It is not said that the three thousand converts were baptized the same day, but only ' on that day were added three thousand souls' (Acts ii, 41), i,e., their conversion and belief took place on that day." — First Age of the Chris., &c., p. 160. Dr. A. Barnes. — "Be baptized. The direction which Christ gave to His apostles was, that they should baptize all who believe ; Matt, xxviii, 19 ; Mark xvij 16. The Jews had not been baptized, and a b.aptism now would be a jDrofession of the religion of Christ, or a declaration mado before the world that they embraced Jesus as their Messiah. It was equivalent to saying that they should publicly and professedly em- brace Jesus Christ as their Saviour. . . . They are to exercise repentance, and then, without any unnecessary delay, to evince it in the ordinances of the gospel. . . The profession which they were to make amounted to this : a confession of sins, a hearty purpose to turn from them, a reception of Jesus as the Messiah and as their Saviour, and a determination to become His followers, and to be devoted to His ser- vice. Thus (1st Cor. s, 2), to be baptized imto Moses means to take him as the leader and guide. . . . There is nothing in baptism itself that can wash away sin. That can be done only through the pardoning mercy of God through the atonement of Christ. But baptism is expressive of a willingness to be pardoned in that way ; and a solemn declaration of our con\action that there is no other way of remission. . . For the promise, that is, the promise respecting the particular thing of which he was speaking — the influences of the Holy Ghost. ... To your children. In Joel, to their sons and daughters, who should, nevertheless, be old enough to prophesy. Sim- ilar promises occvu* in Is. xliv, 3. 'I mil pour out of my Spirit on thy seed, and My blessing on thine offspring ;' and Is. lix, 21. In these and similar places their descen- dants and posterity are denoted. It does not refer to children as children, and should not be adduced to establish the propriety of infant baptism" (Com., on Acts ii, 38, 39). — Thus does one Psedobaptist knock from under another the main support on which he was resting. Dr. G. V. Lechlee. — " The rite of baptism is here supposed as known from John the Baptist, and from the works of Jesus, What Peter requires thus amounts to a change of mind and faith ; and baptism is accordingly, in the first instance, to be viewed as a moral act of the person baptized." Peter " demands 1. that they change their minds, their moral disposition fmetanoeite) ; 2. that they be baptized in the name of Jesus cpi to onoriiati I.X., that is, on the ground of their faith in Jesus — of their acknowledgment of and subjection to Him as Lord and Messiah." "And also your children, that is, it is not limited to the parents, but stretches itself to the future, the posterity of Israel," On verse 42, he says : "It was entirely in accordance with the command of Jesus (Matt, xxviii, 19), that those who were prepared honestly to receive the testimony of Jesus, were immediately baptized ; further instruction in doctrine (didaslcontesj would fitly follow afterwards." " The baptized person by re- ceiving baptism confesses Jesus as his Lord (in other words, confesses the triune God as his God) : and inasmuch as the church which administers baptism to him receives him as a member and unites him to itself," &c. — In Dr. Lange's Com, on Acts; on Acts ii, 38-42. Dr. K. Wilson. — " This baptism was administered, not to the people at large, F 66 SUBJECTS OF BAPTISM. but to professed converts. We are not told that the whole multitiade was baptized, nor even that the rite was administered to all who made application. The desire of candidates is not presented as the ground or directory of apostolic procedui-e ; on the contrary the cordial reception of the gospel constitutes the practical qualification for baptism. ' Then they that gladly received his word were baptized.' This language discloses an important principle of discrimination. It is not said that all gladly re- ceived his word — nay the statement rather implies the existence of exceptions — and the baptism is thus limited to a very suitable qualification in the candidates. It appears then, so far as we have proceeded, that conviction of sin, repentance, and the glad reception of the word disting-uished the parties to whom alone this apostolic bap- tism was administered" (Inf. Bap., p. 358). — He also teaches that Christ's commission to baptize into thenatne of Father, &c., jn-oves an acknowledgment of, and faith in the Father, &c. ; and yet he teaches that " infants are included" both in Christ's commission and " in the apostolic administration of baptism." Dr. J. Stagey. — " They are commanded to repent and to be baptized. . . , Bap- tism is the outward ceremony by which they are ostensibly to anite themselves to the 'promise,' as repentance is the moi-al change by which they are to secure its fulfilment in the remission of their sins, and the gift of the Holy Ghost" (Tlie Sac, p. 80). He also, speaking of the Lord's Supper, says, " The thousands converted on the day of Pentecost ' were added' to the number of disciples already existing, and these ' were together,' 'continuing daily with one accord in the temple . . . and in breaking of bread and in prayers.' On the visit of Paul to Troas, ' the disciples came together upon the first day of the week to break bread' " (pp. 243, 244). — Does this accord with making disciples by baptism, or with indiscriminate or infant baptism ? To sj)eak of the three thousand as "these first converts" — after the example of T. Morrison and many others — they having received the word of truth and been bajstized, is natural and proper ; but to suppose that some of them, or others to whom the same condi- tional promise applied, were infants, is opposed to reason. Dr. S. (p, 102) can speak of the conversion of the three thousand as " not impossible," but what can " hardly be inferred" in the circumstances so " little favourable to reflection and self-inquiry ;" though he believes in reference to the present time, that " many can fix upon some particular occasion as that on which a change in their character became so decided that old things passed away and all things became new ;" and in "The Church and the Age" he can speak "of seasons when thousands were converted under one single discoui'se" (p. 17). Dr. E, Valpt. — "And to all that are afar off, even as many as the Lord our God shall call; i.e., and to all the Gentiles who shall obey, and come in to Christ at His call, or upon oui- preaching to them" fGr. Tes., on Acts ii, 39). — This explanation, of which many more that are similar could be given, excludes infants. The promise to them being conditional, and necessarily the same to all others, the Baptist argument is not aflfected by considering the call as referring only to a preaching of the gospel, or to this along with obedience ; nor by confining those afar off to Jews or Gentiles, or regarding both as being embraced. Blackley and Hawes thus comment on Acts ii, 41, 42. — " They — Those who did not stop short at mere comxDunction, but spontaneously, and in very fact, obeyed." "Received" — "They accepted the saying, worthy of all accei^tation. — 1st Tim., i, 15. Were ha'ptized — Understand, and received the gift of the Holy Ghost. And — and so. There were added — There had been iDreviouslj'' but one hundred and twenty names, and yet about three thousand souls are said to have been added." " Marvellous power of the gospel ! They — The whole body of believers, including the three thousand, con- tinued steadfastly," &c. — Crit. JSng. Tes., on Acts ii. J. GxjTHEiE. — " In Acts ii, 38, 39, when gathering in his first fruits, when dealing with his first converts, in answer to their anxious enquiry, ' l^Tiat shall we do ?' Peter tells them to ' repent and be baptized every one of them in the name of Jesus Christ for the remission of sins,' and as if opening out the meaning of the baptismal rite, ho adds, ' And ye shall receive the gift of the Holy Ghost.' Here then is a cordial wel- come to the first Christian proselytes." — The siibsequent words of Peter, that the promise is unto you and to your children, &c., so correspond with "to thee and thy seed after thee," as to leave us " in no dubiety" that God who expressl}^ commanded Abraham to circumcise all his male children and male servants when he commanded him to circumcise himself, meant through Peter's words, without mentioning it, that we are to have all our children under some age, male or female, baptized along with ourselves, if we have such children ! "I know," says he, " that it will be replied that Peter's words mean no more than that the gospel should pass from parents to children, and Christianity propagate itself onward and downward to the end of time ; but this BAPTISM OF ABOUT THEEE THOUSAND. 67 bald truistic interpretation . . , I can never accept as anythingr better tban a shallow caricature of this precious and far-reaching text" (8er. on Acts ii, 39). In the same sermon he teaches that Christ's commission to "proselyte the nations to the Christian faith" being' given to Jews, who " knew well the proselyte," and also " knew well the superadded custom, cm-rent in theii- day, of baptizing as well as cii-cumcising the proselyte and his family," who were so familiar " with the former as well as the latter, that neither Josephiis, in referring to John, nor any Jew in the New Testa- ment, expresses the least difficulty in regard to baptism, as if it were a novel rite," the apostles " must have understood Christ to say, ' Go and disciple unto Me all na- tions, baptizing them and their children along with them.' " — The silence of Josephua and all the Jews as to any difficulty with John's baptism as if it were a novel rite — although what difficulty in any way they should have with it, whether it be immersion, pouring, or sprinkling, I cannot see — the fact of the disciples undoubtedly knowing of proselyte baptism as added to the Divine law of circumcision, although even tradi- tion is silent on this till ages after Christ, and the command God gave to Abraham a,bout two thousand years before to circumcise every male, make the "ground" so '■■ firm beneath" Mr. G., that " to overlook these broad features and peddle with details, looks uncommonly like the proverbial attempt to repel the Atlantic with a broom !" Dr. Hallet's words on the Scripture to which " this precious and far-reaching text" is so confidently believed to have a blessed reference and glorious coincidence, may here be given and emphasized : " ' I will be a God to thee, and thy seed' (posterity, not immediate children only) 'after thee' — or ' I will establish My coven- ant between Me and thee, and thy seed after thee, in their generations.' " — Reply, &c., p. 135. . « 1 J> Dr. W. Cooke. — " On the day of Pentecost, when three thousand were added to the church, they were all admitted thereto by baptism ; and this was the constant process in apostolic times. The command of Christ required, and the labours of the apostles exhibited, the uniform practice of baptism as the badge of the Christian profession, and the formal recognition of all who received the gospel, and passed from Judaism and heathenism into the Christian church" (Inf. Bap. Dcf., p. S). — Yet this same learned and worthy brother is so confident that infants are " actual members of the true spiritual church of Christ," and "fit to be recognized, and are recognized by God as members of the visible church" Lhe does not say that God baptizes them, nor that God's recognition of them as members of the visible church is subsequent to their baptism, but] that "their relation to Himself should be openly indicated and recog- nized," God having taught this " by fixing upon them the sign and the seal of His gracious covenant of salvation ; under the Jewish ceremony, by circumcision, and under the Christian, by baptism" (p. 11) — he is so confident of this, that though he can speak of "repentance and faith being required as antecedent qualifications for baptism, in such passages as these : ' Repent ye, therefore, and be baptized ;' ' he that beUeveth and is baptized shall be saved,' &c., for all such passages were addressed to adults" (p. 13), he can also say on Acts ii, 38, 39, "the declaration of the apostle reassured them that the Abrahamic covenant, in all its fulness of spiritual blessings, was reiterated and ratified under the Christian dispensation. ' The promise is unto you and your children,' just as the promises of old" (p. 14). — Did the apostle here leap from adiiits to unconscious babes, speaking to adults when he exhorts. Repent and be baptized unto the remission of sins and the reception of the Holy Spirit, and referring to adults and infants when he enforces his exhortation by adding that the promise of these inestimable blessings is to them and their children, and those afar off, even as many as the Lord our God shall call ? The promise of these blessings to any is in this passage on the condition of repentance and being baptized upon the name of Jesua Christ- I see as much a numbering of the stars, as a re-assuring that the Abrahamic covenant was reiterated and ratified under the Christian dispensation. Nor has it ever been, that I am aware of, under the Abrahamic or any Divine covenant, that the fulness of spiritual blessings was enjoyed by one tlu-ough the repentance, faith, and obedience of another. To what strange ideas does the advocacy of error unconsciously lead ! Dr. C. appears to see in Christ's commission a command to baptize all nations, in apostolic obedience the baptism of believers, and in the covenant of circumcision the foundation for infant baptism ! Prof, M. Mahan. — " Three thousand souls were forthwith converted to the gospel, and . . . those who believed were baptized" — Ch. His., j). 10. Prof. J. H. Godwin, on the baptism of Jesus by His disciples, and on subsequent apostolic baptisms, says : " Baptism hitherto had been an acknowledgment of Jesua as the Lord and Saviour of men." "When Christ required confession by baptism, He attached no importance to the outward act alone." " Those who trusted to Him 68 SUBJECTS OF BAPTISM. would bo saved, and this confession was one of tlio eifects and exhibitions of thattrnst — important as all His requirements were, but not more important than others. For- giveness of sins is only needed by those who have sinned, and it is promised only to those who repent and trust to the Saviour." " That all who repent and trust to Jesus, and confess Him before men, will obtain forgiveness of sins, and receive the gift of the Holy Spirit, is the plain doctrine of tlie sacred text." — Chris. Bap., p. 352. Dr. W. Hanna, like a host who could be quoted, speaks of " The three thousand who were converted on the day of Pentecost." — The Forty, &c., p. 170. ' Dr. W. Smith. — "Their cry to Peter and the apostles, 'Men and brethren what shall we do ? ' was answered by the call to repentance, to bo signified, as under John, by baptism, but now into the name of Christ, that their sins might be remitted, and they might receive the Holy Ghost." "All who ' received the word,' that is who sim- ply professed faith in the truth preached by Peter, were baptized and added to the church" (New Tes. His., pp. 324, 325). — No profession of faith, however simple, and no signification of repentance, can belong to infants. We have now seen extensive acquiescence by eminent Predobaptists in what I have maintained to be Divine teaching on John's baptism, on the baptism of Christ by His disciples, on the commission of Christ on baptism, and on the first teaching and prac- tice of the apostles on this Christian ordinance. § 2.— BAPTISM OP THE SAMARITANS. Teetullian.—" Whatever savours contrary to truth is heresy, though it be an ancient custom." Cyprian.—" The custom of men ougiit not to be followed, but the truth of God." The Divine record respecting the baptism of the Samaritans is, " When they believed Philip preaching the things concerning the kingdom of God and the name of Jesus Christ, they were baptized, both men and women. Then Simon himself believed also : and when he was baptized, he con- tinued with Philip, and wondered, beholding the miracles and signs which were done." — Acts viii, 12, 13. This is clearly a record of the baptism of professing believers. Not a word is said respecting infants. If the children of believers, if any children were baptized, this record is unac- countable. There is every probability, I will not say certainty, that children belonged to these believers. If the command of Jesus had been to baptize all children, or the children of all believers, can we suppose that these believers (if they had children) would have refused to allow their children to be baptized, or that Philip would have been disobedient to the instruction of his Saviour and Sovereign, or that the children were baptized along with their parents, and that the sacred historian recorded it not ? The record is equally opposed to infant or indiscriminate baptism. The record of Philip's baptizing believers, men and women, implies that he did not baptize infants and unbelievers. It is said that Simon himself believed also. Through the incapacity of men to search the heart, persons may be introduced by baptism into the fellowship of the church of Christ, whose faith is not true and saving, or whose profession of faith is insin- cere ; but the record respecting Simon plainly teaches that his case was an exception, not the rule ; that he was baptized too, as a professing be- liever ; that in this sorcerer and deceiver of the people a great outward change took place ; and that when that faith which works by love, purifies the heart, aud at once introduces into a state of justification, was dis- BAPTISM OF THE SAMAEITANS. 69 covered to be lacking in Simon, he was treated as one having no part nor lot in the privileges of Christians. * Nothing could more strikingly cor- roborate the fact that Scriptural baptism is the baptism of professing be- lievers than the record in this chapter of the conduct of Philip. The record teaches that the administrator of baptism is not required to search the heart, or to delay for days or Aveeks the baptism of the apparently sincere believer. No sin, no negligence, or imprudence, is attributed to Philip. If there had been no record in Scripture of the baptism of one whose faith was insincere, no one can tell what would have been the re- sult. Possibly both ordinances would long ago have ceased to be observed, no one daring to administer them. Certainly there would have been more ground for impertinent remarks respecting the need of a " special re- velation," and more plausibility in the idea of needing for believers' bap- tism " a faculty of discerning spirits approaching to omniscience." Yet these insinuations and inferences come from one who demands for the Lord's Supper all that we demand for baptism ! Another president of a Pfedobaptist college from this record appears to believe that " Philip bap- tized all who applied without inquiry or selection." He can say on Ro. siv, 1 : " It is very obvious that the direction to ' receive the weak in the faith ' conveys by implication the prohibition to receive the absolutely un- believing." But he does not see at all that the record of baptizing be- lievers implies that they did not baptize the known unbelievers ! He can see that " to adduce the instance of Judas as a precedent for the admis- sion of ungodly persons to the Lord's Supper, is with the same breath to furnish a precedent for the appointment of the vilest and most unprincipled men to the highest office of the Christian church," but he does not see that to adduce the instance of Simon Magus, whose heart subsequently to his professed faith and baptism was proved to be not right with God, as a precedent for administering the initiatory ordinance to any of the ungodly except scofiers, is to furnish a precedent for utterly destroying the line of demarcation between the baptized and the unbaptized. I " scarcely know in what terms to characterise so aggravated a profanation" of this Divine institution. In opposition to those Pajdobaptists who here main- tain that nothing is implied, I believe that the particularizing of believing men and women in this and other places, and the constant omitting of all mention of infants, clearly indicate that the apostles knew nothing of in- fant baptism. It may be deserving of remark that Dr. Halley disclaims all argument from the apostolic baptizing of "bad men." He says : " I lay no stress upon the numbers who were baptized in Samaria, nor upon the fact that a wicked man Avas baptized with them. I only refer to the ex- treme ignorance of the baptized magician." Though to him Christ was preached, and he became a professed believer, he knew not " the simplest principles of the gospel." Either Philip we are told had not preached these, or Simon who believed had not heard or did not understand. I ac- knowledge gross ignorance in Simon ; but I believe it as e^ddent that * C. Stovel. — " The ocean is the gathering together of the waters, though other things may be cast into it ; the body of Christ is the gathering together of believers, though other men may Ibe intruded."— Cft)-is. Dis., p. 278. 70 SUBJECTS OF BAPTISM. Philip preached another gospel, or was an impostor, as that he knowingly and indiscriminately baptized the children of God and of the devil. I doubt not there is much ignorance in many members of Baptist and Pffidobaptist churches, with which sincere piety (which in Simon was wanting) has an existence. On the principles of Dr. H. it might be de- nied that the church at Corinth was a church of Christ, because there they could not have been so ignorant and wicked as to allow of and glory in the conduct of the incestuous member. Besides it should never be forgotten that Simon's speaking of "the power of the Holy Ghost" as "purchasable commodities" is subsequent to his baptism. When his character by this was revealed, he was dealt with accordingly. Before baptism he professed faith in Christ, and undoubtedly would appear the very contrast of his former self, the sorcerer. Insincerity and unworthi- ness were not evidenced till after the arrival of Peter, so far as the oracles of God inform us. Let P^edobaptist acknowledgments on the baptism of the Samaritans have the attention and influence which they may be con- ceived to deserve. And let the record of Paedobaptist practice be com- pared with the record respecting Philip. J. Tbapp. — Simon Magus " carried the matter so clearly and cunningly, that Philip took him for a true convert and baptized him." — Com., on Matt, iii, 2. E.Baxter. — "This sudden baptizing yet implieth time for instruction, and pro- fession of all essential to Christianity" {Par. on N. T., on Acts viii, 12). " We must be content with less evidence for a man than against a man." " If a man will say he is a believer, and profess himself to be a godly man, that is, a lover and honourer of God, I will take him for a believer, and a godly man, till I can disprove his profession" ('Disjjn., pp. 342, 343). Again (p. 355), " When the church administereth sacraments to hypocrites, as they do but their duty, so God approvoth their action." It may be sinful "to claim and receive" baptism, when it is right on the administrators to give it. T. ScOTT. — They were led "to profess faith in Christ by being baptized." Dr. Doddridge. — " And Simon himself also believed the truth of that doctrine which this Divine messenger taught, though his heart was not savingly transformed by its power; and being baptized on a profession of faith," &c. — Par. of Acts viii, 13. Dr. J. Bennett. — " Simon was baptized, as others were, on the first profession of faith." J. G. Manly, after stating respecting the first church, the church at Jerusalem, " Professed faith, therefore is the condition of ecclesiastical admission, and baptism is the mode," immediately adds: "So also the first ultra- Jerusalemite church was formed among the Samaritans, consisting of professed believers, ecclesiastically in- corporated by baptism." — Eccle., pp. 41, 42. T. Morrison says of Simon : " He professed his faith in Christ, and, on his pro- fession, received the sign of baptism." Prof. Hodge says that these Samaritans were " baptized on the very spot on which they professed to believe " (Outl., &c., pp. 503, 504). — He does not say whether they were standing in the water at the very time of professing to believe. Probably re- specting this he has had no revelation. Dr. A. Barnes. — " And ivhen he teas haptizcd. He was admitted to a profession of religion in the same way as others. Philip did not pretend to know the heart ; and Simon was admitted because he professed his belief." Dr. J. Stacet. — " The apostles communicated the Holy Ghost by the laying on of hands to newly baptized disciples, as in the case of the Samaritans." " The cere- mony had reference not to children to confirm them in the faith, but to adults to qualify them," &c. (p, 13). Here, says Dr. S., " faith in a general sense, is said to have preceded baptism " (p. 103). — He unworthily seeks to disparage the faith that pre- ceded baptism, because the baptism so speedily succeeded the acceptance of the gospel, and because that of Simon was insufficient. I am aware of no evidence that Simon equally with the others did not appear to Plulip cordially to embrace the glorioua BAPTISM OF THE SAMAEITANS. 71 tnitlis which he delivered, and equally with them to yield himseK i\p to Divine iu- struction and government. The believing of Simon is as expressly stated as if to pre- vent the possibility of supposing- that any, whatever may be their real character, pre- sent or subsequent, are baptized otherwise than on a profession of faith. I also regard the conduct of all who scandalize apostolic baptisms from the character of Simon, developed after his baptism, to be very reprehensible. Dr. E.. Wilson. — " It is true, indeed, as Dr. Halley asserts, that ' good men wero baptized by the apostles, and so were bad men ;' but we are not aware of a solitary instance, and he has produced none, in which the rite was administered to any but professed believers " (p. 362). "Had Simon been baptized without a profession of faith — had the Scriptiu-es even maintained silence on the point, — his baptism would have maintained an aspect which a little ingenuity might have turned to some account. But the record of the entire transaction is in complete and emphatic accordance with our views of the necessity of certain qualifications for baptism " (p-p. 361, 362). Dr. W. makes a just distinction between a right before God to receive baptism, and the duty of man to administer baptism, saying that " Simon Magus had no right in tho sight of God, yet Philip felt it his bounden duty to admit him to baptism " (p. 482). Dr. S. Stennett thus replies to Dr. Addington, who had insinuated "that Simon's profession was not credible." " What authority he has for this insinuation I cannot perceive. I am sure there is none in the story. It is true he turned out a bad man, as Judas Iscariot had before him ; but did it thence follow that tho one or the other did not make a credible profession ? or that Philip was chargeable with rashness or imprudence for baptizing Simon, any more than oui* Saviom* for admitting Judas among His disciples and apostles ?" — Ans., p. 162. Tlie contrast between inspired and Pcedobaptist records of baptisms will appear on a perusal of the following, to any who are acquainted with God's word. In a Paidobaptist " Missionary Register " vre read respect- ing South Africa, that in one year " twenty adults and twenty one chil- dren were baptized." A missionary in Western Africa states: "Sept. 3rd, Sunday. — I preached, &c., and then baptized twenty three adults and three infants." At a later date : " On the first Sunday of this month I baptized thirty four adults and three children; forty eight in all." The Rev. C. Moult writes from Nagercoil, East Indies : " Last month I baptized five adults and four children." The Rev. C. Barif writes from Huahine, South Sea Islands: "Thirty were added to the church during our visit, and a number baptized. Among those baptized were sixteen infants" (Miss. Chron.J. The inspired record, as I think, "ofiers neither vindication nor apology for the service " to infants which I have now transcribed, nor for baptizing every applicant without making "inquiry or selection." How is it that the apostles in propagating the gospel among unbelieving Jews and idolatrous Gentiles have left no such records as the above? In the words of a Baptist I say: "If adult persons were not admitted to baptism, till they were taught the main points of the Christian religion by the preaching of the word, so as to understand and believe them, and till they were converted, it seems rational to ex- pect, that the apostles in the H0I3' Scripture would have given some reason for their difierent procedure toward infants, if they had admitted them to baptism without these qualifications, or at least would have expressly de- clared their practice, and signified the mind of Christ therein, for the regulaticn of the practice of the church in succeeding times" (J. Stennett's Alls, to Piussen, pp. 29, 30). Also Dr. S. Stennett mentions that however certain records might be supposed to omit infants, it is strange, that " they should be passed over in silence iu the account given of the bap- 72 SUBJECTS OF BAPTISM. tism of tlie Samaritans," tlie historian, having thought fit here to specify men and women, might so naturally and would so properly have added children, if their baptism had taken place, as we read of the feeding of about five thousand men, besides women and children. — Aus., &c., p. 212. § 3. — BAPTISM OF THE EUNUCH. W. Thork. — " Wliat truly Christian people would not deem the state of that heart sad indeed, ■which fi-ames selfish and sinister excuses for neglecting God's commands." — Inf. Bap., p. 608. Dr. Hooker. — " If Chiist himself who giveth salvation, do require bax)tism, it is not for us to sound and examine him, whether unbaptized persons may be saved; but seriously to do what is required !" The baptism of the eunuch I regard as an indubitable instance of be- liever's baptism. He was a devout proselyte to Judaism, returning from the worship of God at Jerusalem. Philip was divinely directed to his chariot, where he found him reading "the prophet Esaias." He preached to him the gospel contained in the prediction of the prophet ; and when they came to a certain water, the eunuch solicited and received baptism ; and "he went on his way rejoicing." Philip did not attempt first to bap- tize him. He did not understand the Saviour to have taught that all nations were to be discipled by baptism. "Without controversy" Christ was preached to the eunuch before he was baptized. Believing the truths taught by Philip, he wished to profess his faith in Jesus in the ordinance of His appointment. Having come up out of the water, he went on his way rejoicing. Let the 37th verse, because of its non-existence in some of the ancient manuscripts, be regarded as an interpolation by all who so judge ; yet not one word in this record favours infant and indiscriminate baptism, or encourages delay or cavilling instead of prompt and cheerful obedience. The following is a record of eminent Ptedobaptist opinion on the baptism of the eunuch. Dr. KiTTO says: "And so lie went on preaching Clu-ist crucified; and as the mystery of man's redemption gradually opened to the astonished vievr of the eunuch, his heart was filled vnth holy rapture and gratitude, and he longed to enrol himself under the banner of that King whose realm was not of this world. From Philip's discourse he had gathered that this was to be accompanied by the sign of baptism ; and when, therefore, as they rode along, a stream of water was reached, he cried oiit vrith eager- ness, ' See, here is water ! What doth hinder me to bo baptized ?' Philip answered, ' If thou believest with all thine heart thou mayest.' On which the other, ^vith solemn earnestness, declared, ' I believe that Jesus is the Son of God ; ' not only that Jesus was the Christ, a Messiah, but that He was the Son of God, and as siich able to pardon sin, and mighty to subdue it. Philip being satisfied with his avowal, the chariot was stayed, and the two went down together into the water, where the evan- gelist baptized the illustrious convert." Dr. M'Leod. — "As they came to a certain water, he asked, ' Wliat doth hinder mo to be baptized ? ' May I also receive the sign and seal of His covenant, and bo num- bered among His disciples ? . . . And Philip answered, ' If thou beHovest, thou mayest.' If thou believest in the Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God, the Divine Savioiir of sinners, if thou canst put thy hearty confidence in Him, thou mayest as- suredly receive the outward sign,"&c. — Dr. Halley here sees corroborative evidence of indiscriminate baptism. Such sudden conversion is not to bo supposed ! Credible evidence of conversion is not in such circumstances vrithin the range of possibility ! Baptism told nothing except respecting instruction to be subsequently given, sooner pr later, if j and possibly at some time to be accepted and regarded ! BAPTISM OF THE EUITOCH. 73 Dr. Dick says — '■' The preacher was wise, the hearer was prompt to learn, and the Holy Spirit by illuminating his mind, and affecting' his heart, enabled him to make rapid advancement in knowledge. To every person in similar circumstances baptism will recommend itself on several accounts. It is the rite by which we publicly recog- nize Jesus Christ as our Saviour, and dedicate om'solves to His service. It is the sign of our admission into the society of His disciples " (Lee. 011 Acts ; on Acts viii, 2G-40), He says that " faith is the qualification for baptism prescribed by oiu* Saviour." " It is only faith unfeigned which gives any man a right to the ordinance in the sight of God." Dr. D. commends the prudence of Philip in guarding the "institutions of the gospel against profanation," by appealing to the eunuch's conscience in the words, " If thou believest with all thine heart, thou mayest." Dr. Stacet says that the eunuch's baptism " recognized him as a professed dis- ciple of Jesus ?" and as it was with him, " so it was with others " (p. 242). — He is speaking of adult baptism ; but I believe the one baptism of Scripture to exclude equally, according to the language quoted, both infants and unbelievers. Dr. S. has before spoken of the eunuch's '"short course of instruction," and of his baptism "before he can well realize a true acceptation of it" (p. 106). Tome it is passing strange that those who believe that thousands have entered the sanctuaries of their denomi- nation in the present century in a state of gross ignorance and utter carelessness, and have come out new creatures in Chi-ist Jesus, experiencing the liberty of God's chil- dren, should reflect on results in one to whom God miraculously sent one of His su- pematurally qualified servants to instruct him, an humble inquirer after the will of God, to whose instruction, obedience, and joy, the inspired writer gives the most un- equivocal testimony. Would that the entire church of God equalled the eunuch in evincing the possession of saving faith. Dr. Baeth. — " At this time it was that the treasurer of the Queen of Ethiopia found, on his journey home, a treasure of more value than all those treasuries over which he presided ; and we are not surprised that he went on his way rejoicing." —Ch. His., p. 4. Dr. Stiek says : " Though Acts viii, 37, may not be regarded as geniune, it ex- presses only the genuine truth." "Indeed after the deception practised by Simon, * with all thine heart ' seems exceedingly appropriate, and thus speaks for its genuine- ness."— Words, vol. viii, p. 332. Dr. E. Wilson, having decided against employing the 37th verse, having noticed the flagrant assumption of Dr. Halley in favour of indiscriminate baptism from the early baptism of the eunuch, previously a stranger to Philip, and having referred to the recorded facts which preceded his baptism, says on the last: "Combining these considerations with the fact that after his baptism this man ' went on his way re- joicing ' as a Christian convert, we conceive we have solid reason for maintaining that his baptism was preceded by a religious profession." — Inf. Bap., p. 364. Dr. J. Campbell. — "With what cordiality the eunuch receives the Divine testi- mony concerning Christ, and with what promptness he follows the Lord fully touching the ordinances by which he was to confess his faith" (M'Phun's Bible, on Acts viii, 26-40). — The eunuch was a happy and obedient believer, and well would it be for us, if believing and obeying we bore a greater resemblance to this eminent convert. Dr. A. Baknes, speaking of the possibly spurious 37th verse, says, "It contains however, an important truth, elsewhere abundantly taught in the Scriptures, that faith is necessary to a proper profession of religion." Instead of adducing others who transcribe from Holy Writ what cannot be made more clear, and what is almost universally admitted, we shall proceed to the next record of baptism. § 4. — THE BAPTISM OF SAUL. T. Boston. — " Paul is first converted, and then baptized. . . . Neither can any instance be adduced wherein the matter ajipears to bave been handled otherwise." — Worlds, p. 345. Dr. L. Woods. — " Some of the early Christian fathers called baptism regeneration, doubtless because baptism was an indication of regeneration, or spiritual cleansing. And the same figure seems to be used in some passages of Sci'ipture ; for example, Ananias said to Paul, 'Arise, and be baptized, and wash away thy sins,' baptism being a sign of such washing."— IForfcs, &c., vol. iii, p. 309. When Saul, the persecutor, approached Damascus, a light from heaven shone around him, and a voice of remonstrance was heard. In 74 SUBJECTS OF BAPTISM. answer to his inquiry, lie learnt that It was the voice of Jesus, whom to his own Injury he had persecuted. " He trembling and astonished said, Lord, what wilt Thou have me to do ? And the Lord said unto him. Arise and go into the city, and it shall be told thee what thou must do." Ananias is sent unto him, with an assurance that " he prayeth, and hath seen in a vision a man named Ananias coming in, and putting his hand on him, that he might receive his sight." To Ananias objecting, It is said, " Go thy way : for he is a chosen vessel unto Me to bear My name," &c. Ananias went, and "putting his hands on him said. Brother Saul, the Lord, even Jesus, that appeared unto thee in the way as thou camest, hath sent me that thou maj^est receive thy sight and be filled with the Holy Ghost. And Immediately there fell from his eyes as it had been scales ; and he received sight forthwith, and arose, and was baptized. And when he had received meat, he was strengthened. Then was Saul cer- tain days with the disciples which were at Damascus. And straightway he preached Christ In the synagogues, that He is the Son of God." — Acts ix, 3-20. Saul's baptism Is not believed to be a case of infant baptism, but our learned brethren, Drs. Halley and Stacey, maintain that certain arguments of the Baptists require that baptism here preceded and should precede the washing away of sins ; and with an Ingenuity worthy of a better cause, endeavour to draw from it encoiiragement to indiscriminate or unbelievers' baptism. Dr. S. teaches that Saul's " actual forgiveness appears to have been subsequent to his baptism, or at the most coincident with It" (p. 109). "And yet, though still an unpardoned sinner, no hindrance existed to his baptism" (p. 110). Ananias Is supposed to urge him "to do that very thing the doing of which ensures acceptance with God, and joy In the Holy Ghost." As Paul's baptism and forgiveness are supposed to have taken place at the same time and place, we are saved from the unhappy sus- picion that when "straightway he preached Christ," he preached Him being himself unpardoned ! Dr. H. believes that Ananias "did not address him as a man whose sins were already forgiven" (p. 26). How far the words of Dr. H. to some opponents, belong to those who advocate indiscriminate baptism, I will not say. He says : "Is there any other reason for this exposition than the exigency of those who support It " (p. 27) ? "As this Is a comment made for the controversy, we are bound to reject it" (p. 28). My conviction is that the instruction on baptism which is afforded by the Inspired record of Saul's baptism is, that baptism Is the certain and immediate duty of those who believe on the Lord Jesus. Do our oppon- ents who teach that a strict literal regard to the order of the words would require that baptism precede the washing away of sins accept in the most literal and comprehensive sense the exhortation, "Wash away thy sins ? Do they believe that Paul subsequently or previously to baptism was literally to blot out or wash away his transgressions ? Paul being immersed as a believer In Christ Jesus, could emblematically wash away his sins. Nor do I believe that more Is Intended than that he should attend to that ordinance which symbolized the Inestimable blessing which all who In a right state of mind received this ordinance, did really enjoy. But I shall BAPTISM OF SAUL. 76 at present reply to the argumentation of our learned opponents who advo- cate the baptism of every one (the scofler excepted), only by recording the sentiments of a few Psedobaptists, including the convictions of some rela- tive to Saul's conversion at the time of his baptism. Dr. A. Clarke. — " Tliis baptism of Saul proved, at once, his own sincerity, and the deep and thoroiigh conviction he had of the truth of Christianity." " Be baptized. Take now the profession of Christ's faith most solemnly upon thee, by being baptized in the name of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit." " Wash away thy sins. Let this washing of thy body represent to thee the washing away of thy sins." — Com., on Acts ix, 18 ; xxii, 16. T. Scott. — " When this token of reconciliation had been granted him, he arose, and, by bemg baptized, professed himself a disciple of the Lord Jesus." — Com., on Acts ix, 17-22. J. Newton speaks distinctly of Saul as " a new man," a disciple of Christ, previous to his baptism. E. Bickersteth. — " At the time we are actually baptized ... we are acknowledged to be no more stra7>gers and foreigners, but fellow-citizens with the saints and of the household of God (Eph. ii, 19). We see this in the case of the apostle Paul : the scales had been removed from his eyes ; he had been converted to God. It was true previously — Behold ho i^rayeth ! But he had not been joined outwardly to the church, and therefore Ananias is sent to bid him. Arise now, and be baptized." " The baptism of Saul was 'preceded by his conversion" fOn Bap., pp. 70, 71, 96). — This passage can afford no encouragement to infant, or indiscriminate, or regenera- ting baptism. If we were to consider the words. Wash away thy sins, as not in allu- sion to the immersion, and to the washing away of sin by the blood of Christ which in the external ordinance is represented, they are associated with " calling on the name of the Lord." If the Tractarian or Romanist wished to maintain that by bap- tism sin was washed away, without referring to other portions of God's word, this final clause forbids his assumption. Mr. B. also adds : " There is in baptism the con- firmation of faith," &c. (p. 71). W. DoDWELL. — "Arise and be baptized in His name, in testimony of thy faith in Him for the pardon of thy sins, with earnest prayer," &c. — Par., on Acts xxii, 14-16. M. Henry. — " Be baptized. . . . This must now be done immediately on his conversion." " He was baptized, and thereby submitted himself to the government of Christ." " Saul is now a disciple of Christ, not only ceaseth to oppose Him, but devotes himself entirely to His service and honour." — Com., on Acts xxii, 16 ; ix, 18. G. Wall, with many more, speaks of Saul's conversion as taking place on his way to Damascus. — Bi. Die, Art. Paul. Dr. D. Davidson. — " The restoration of his sight intimated the astonishing change effected on him by the power and grace of the Lord Jesus." " Baptism is the sign or seal of pardon and salvation, 1 Pe. iii, 21. Submission to it cannot wash away sin in any other sense than as it is the first public act of the confession of the faith with wMch pardon is inseparable. Eo. x, 9-11." — Com., on Acts ix, 18 ; 22, 16. W. G. Blackie. — "A voice speaks to Saul in the Hebrew tongue ; only two short sentences are uttered ; but they come home to him with such Divine power, that in a far more profound sense than the words were used of his namesake, he is changed into another man. The persecutor rises from the ground an apostle" (Bi. His., p, 387). Similarly Dr. Eadie in his Bib. Cy. Dr. Dick. — " ' And was baptized.' Thus he was received into the communion of the church, and dedicated to the service of Christ" ('iec. ou .4cfs, on Acts ix, 1-22). " The conversion of Paul was sudden and complete." " In most cases, there is a pre- vious process, of which the steps are distinctly marked." "The conversion of Paul, like the creation of light, was accomplished in an instant. He who but a moment be- fore breathed threatenings and slaughter against the disciples of Jesus, lies prostrate before Him, and says, ' Lord, what wilt Thou have me to do ?' " — On Acts xxvi. Dr. Kitto. — " The full meaning of every word the voice uttered went to the heart of Saul, and threw into his mind a flood of light, stronger far than that which had rendered his outward vision blind. Completely humbled he could only answer, ' Lord, what wilt Thou have me to do ?' . . . He becomingly casts himself upon the good pleasure of Him who had now revealed Himself to his soul, and as an obedient con- vert, submissively waits His direction." "It is observable that Ananias does not say » word for the instruction of the convert, nor does he ask him any question as to the 76 SUBJECTS OY BAPTISM. measure of Ms knowledge or the state of his mind. He knew already that Saul had been taught of God, and needed no teaching of his." — Bai. Bi. III., Eve. Se., vol. iv, pp. 125-128. Dr. J. Stoughton says, " Paul was baptized immediately after his conversion, and forthwith proclaimed the name of Jesus in the synagogues of Damascus." — Stars, &c. p. 275. W. BuEKiTT. — " Observe, 2, the title given by Ananias to Saul ; brother Saul ; they were now brethren by faith and profession, owning the same God, united to the same Saviour. . . . Observe, 3, how this converted person, Saul, takes upon him the badge of Christianity by baptism. He arose, and was baptized." — Com., on Acts, ix, 17-19. Dr. Whitby. — " Arise and he ba'ptized, calling upon the name of^ the Lord. . . . Profess thy faith by being baptized in, and by calling on His name," — Com., on Acts ix, 14. M. Poole. — " Saul was become Ananias's brother, as professing the same faith, and heir of the same promise with him." — Com-., on Acts ix, 17. CoNTBEARE and HowsoN, in a note on " calling on the name of Jesus," say, "The reference is to the confession of faith which preceded baptism." — Life and Ejpis., &c., vol. ii, p. 319. Abp. Sumner. — " Arise and be baptized. ' He that believeth and is baptized shall bo saved.' To be baptized is the act of faith : the sign on man's part of his accept- ance of that offer, his entj-ance into that covenant of grace to which God has invited him." — Expo, of Acts, xxii, 16. J. G. Manly says, " Saul of Tarsus was baptized after conviction, a message of mercy to him from Christ, and the gift of the Holy Ghost, implying faith on Saul's part." Dr. W. Smith on Paul as a "new convert" when baptized, says, " Externally there was a flash of light. Spiritually ' the light of the gospel of the glory of the Christ, who is the image of God' shone upon Saul, and convicted the darkness of the heart which had shut oiit Love and knew not the !glory of the cross. Spiritually he was prostrated by shame when he knew whom he had been persecuting. . , . He gave himself up, without being able to see his way, to the disposal of Him whom he now knew to have vindicated His claim over him by the very sacrifice which formerly he had despised. The Pharisee was converted, once for all, into a disciple of Jesus, the crucified."— SiK.'s N. T. His., p. 350. Dr. A. Barnes. — " Receive baptism as an act expressive of the washing away of sins." "That ordinance was expressive of a purifying which the Lord only could produce. It is proper that the rite of baptism should be attended with extraordinary prayer, and that he who is to be baptized should make it the occasion of peculiar and very solemn religious exercises." — Com., on Acts xxii, 16. Blackley and Hawes. — " Brother, By the old tie of Judaism, and the new one of Christianity." — Com., on Acts ix, 17. Author of "The Footsteps of St. Paul," speaking of St. Paul's baptism, says, " Pre- vious to this there ' had fallen from his eyes as it had been scales,' and he had his sight restored to him. He was a new creature." — p. 75. A Baptist has thus written on Paul when baptized : " That he was converted is clear from the whole narrative. He had submitted to the authority of Christ, when with the deepest humility and the most complete change of views and feelings, he said, ' Lord, what wilt Thou have me to do ? ' Jesus had Himself already said of him, ' Behold, he prayeth.' Can any circumstantial accoiint more plainly describe that state of mind as already existing, wliich, in other instances, is placed first ? Peter said, ' Repent, and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the remission of sins.' Ananias comes to Paul as already a penitent ; he addresses him as a ' brother ;' he does not urge him to do that which he had ah-eady done, but that which yet remained. It seems, then, to us, perfectly clear, that by washing away sins, in connection with baptism, must be meant here (unless we receive baptismal regenera- tion), attend to the outward rite, baptism, which is the symbol of the washing away of sin." " Dr. Halley maintains that infant bajstism is apostolic, and also that faith is not a pre-rcquisite. Allowing tlic former position, how can ho account for the very early corruption of the chui-ch, as to the latter ? Wo can understand how infant bap- tism should be engrafted on believers' baptism by the introduction of sponsors ; the Church of England (to go no further) explains this difficulty ; biit by what process could faith become a pro-requisite, if infant baptism be genuine?" — Bap. Eec, p. 569, 1844. Mr. Ckaps might well ask, " Can any baptism but that of a penitent believer be BAPTISM OF SAUL. 77 connected -mth tlie remission of sins ? Are not repentance and faith essential to the remission of sins ?" — Con. Vieiv, p. 7. E. Watson differs so widely from certain learned Pcedobaptist dissenters as to teach that Paul's " miraculous conversion took place" " as he was upon his journey" to Damascus. — Die, Ai-t. Paul. Bp. Mann. — "Ananias now acknowledged him for a brother Christian." — Four Gos. and Acts, on Acts ix, 17. T. Lewin. — " The prostrate Saul at the present moment was dead, indeed, to Judaism, in which he had grown to manhood, biit alive to Christ, to whom he was now born again as a little child." " The scales had fallen from his intellectual sight, and his life from this time till the day when he laid his head upon the block, was to be one unbroken series of toil and suffering, of contempt of the world and defiance of danger, of struggles through good report and evil report, to the crown of everlasting glory" — Life and Epis. of St. Paul, p. 58. Library of Bib. Lit. — "Ananias . . . instructed by a vision from heaven, over- comes his dread of the persecutor, as well as his scepticism of the great change," &c. —Vol. ii, p. 34. John Brown. — " Saul had no sooner recovered his sight than he made a solemn profession of his faith, was baptized, and afterwards filled with the Holy Ghost." — Bi. Die., Art. Paid. Dr. Macknight. — "Ananias in allusion to the emblematical meaning of baptism, said to our apostle (Acts xxii, 16), 'Arise and be baptized and wash away thy sins :' Be baptized in token of the resolution to forsake thy sins." — Com., on Ti. iii, 5. J. Clyde, — " Saul was baptized three days after his conversion, on the first visit of Ananias (Acts ix, 9-18)." — On Bap., p. 21. Dr. J. Bennett. — " Said arose and was baptized, and was publicly recognised a pardoned sinner, a brother, a believer, a member of the Christian church" (Lee. on Acts, -p. 14:7). "Ananias had already laid his hands on him, that he might be filled with the Holy Ghost, which shews that the washing away of his sins by baptism was the public sign and testimony of forgiveness which had previously taken place before God." — Lee. on Acts, p. 147. J. P. Lawson. — " Ananias obeyed the command given him — laid his hands upon the penitent — restored him to sight, comforted, instructed, and baptized him, .in proof of his repentance, and faith, and forgiveness." — Bi. Cy., vol. iii, p. C09. I. Cobbin. — "Brother: recognizing him as a fellow-Christian." "Wash away: receive baptism as an act expressive of the washing away of 'sins." — On Acts ix, 17 j xxii, 16. T. BowRiNG. — " Immediately the new convert proceeded to the Damascene syna- gogues, and ijreached there that name he had so repeatedly blasphemed" (The Ch. and the Sav., p. 22). — So Clarke, on Intol., vol. i, 110 ; Dr. Eadie, Bi. Cy., Ai-t. Bap. ; Dr. Barth, Ch. His., p. 6; Webster and Wilkinson, On Acts ix, 11, and xvi, 30, 31; and numerous Histories and Commentaries. Annot. Par. Bible. — " 'And wash away thy sins.' Camp. ch. ii, 38. Baptism is thus spoken of because it is the outward sign of the repentance and faith which are essential to salvation." — On Acts xxii, 16. Dr. W. C. Taylor. — "Ananias, a disciple who resided at Damascus, was sent to restore his sight and to receive him as a convert into the Christian church." — His. of Chris., p. 132. Dr. DwiGHT. — " The jailor was baptized in consequence of his faith, so was Paul." —Ser. 156. Dr. G. Benson speaks of the Lord Jesus as saying to Ananias, " I have not only pardoned him, but I regard him also as a chosen vessel." " He is become a sincere convert." — His. of Chris., vol. i, p. 176. Dr. Stebbing speaks of there faUing from the eyes of Saul as it had been scales, which " was emblematical of his recovery from spiritual darkness." — Dia. N. Tes., on Acts ix, 18. Dr. Stier thus represents the commission of Ananias to Saul, " Eaise him out of the deep depression of his penitence ; give him gracious and new light concerning bis election; take him as a believer into the fellowship of those who belong to Me." — Words, &c., vol. viii, p. 33. Dr. Guthrie, in a sermon on Acts ix, 6, says that the question asked, " Lord, what wilt Thou have me to do ?" implies that Saul was " converted." " Saul of Tar- sus was dead; it was Paul the apostle that lived." The " convert said, ' I have done with myseK : I no longer live. I have no will but Thy will ; tell me what I am to do, and I will do it.' "—In S. 8. U. Mag., pp. 33-35. 18G1. 78 SUBJECTS OF BAPTISM. Battmgaeten. — " He prayeth." " If then he prays, it can only be in faith. The name of Jesus, sounding forth from the heavens had, like a stroke of lightning, struck Saul to the earth," &c. — Com., on Acts ix, 1-36. J. A. James. — " Consider the conversion of the apostle Paul, who was a bloody persecutor, and a day or two after, not only a pardoned sinner, a baptized believer, a rejoicing Christian, but also a consecrated apostle." Dr. TwEEDiE. — " You may regard baptism further, as a sign of the pardon of sin, according to the text, 'Arise and be baptized, and wash away thy sin'" — On Bap., p. 19. Dr. J. A. Alexander. — "He was baptized, a sign of his initiation into the Chris- tian church, and of that spiritual renovation, without which mere external member- ship must be for ever worse than unavailing" (Com. on Acts, ix, 18). "Calling on the name of the the Lord (or according to the latest critics His name), i.e. invoking it in worship, recognizing Christ's divinity and sovereignty as an indis^jensable pre-requi- site of baptism." — Can Christian baptism be infant or indiscriminate with such a pre-requisite ? E. Baxter. — " Praying was (next to resolved obedience and submission) the first fruits of Saul's conversion" (Par., on Acts ix, 10). In his Dispu. (p. 149) he says, " Paul was baptized after true conversion." Dr. W. L. Alexander. — "He must be regarded as really a Christian before Ananias was sent to him." — Anglo-Cath., pp. 311, 312. Prof. Wilson, replying to Dr. Halley's advocacy of baptizing the unregenerate, from the baptism of Saul by Ananias on " the first interview of Saul with a Christian on friendly terms," says: "Wliat though it was the first interview? That neither proves Saul destitute of repentance and faith, nor Ananias ignorant that Saul possessed these qualifications. Ananias and Saul did not meet as strangers. The Lord had in- formed Ananias that Saul was a chosen vessel to bear His name before the Gentiles and kings and the children of Israel (Acts ix, 15). With such an introduction, and finding the lion persecutor changed into a lamb, is it wonderful that Ananias urged Saul to be baptized ? The strongest advocate for pre-requisite penitence and faith, we are satisfied, would not hesitate to administer the ordinance in similar circumstances. . . . The persecutor gave sufficient evidence of the reality of his conversion, by instantly exchanging a career of atrocity and blood, for a course of humble obedience to the voice of the Lord Jesus. Still further, when the Lord said of Saul, prior to his baptism, ' Behold he prayeth,' we recognized in this exercise the first-fruits of a change of heart eifoctod by the saving grace of God. Nor have we yet seen cause to alter these views, which are very generally taken by intelligent men, who study the passage for instruction and edification." Having referred to Acts ix, 17, he says: " Did Ananias perform this Act on a reputed unbeliever ? How we are to reconcile this laying on of hands, in order to the bestowment of the gifts of the Spirit, with the supposition that Paul was regarded as an unbeliever, we know not, and Dr. Halleyhaa not told us. Ananias also addresses him as 'Brother Saul.' . . . Does any one believe that Ananias would have called him ' brother Saul,' had not the Lord assured him that Saul was no longer a persecutor, bvit a chosen witness and minister of Jesua Christ ? On such grounds we contend that Ananias considered Saul, prior to his baptism, to bo a believer, and therefore ijardoncd and accepted through Jesus Christ." In reply to Dr. Halley's interpretation, "Be baptized and believe on Him whose blood cleanseth from all sin, calling on the name of the Lord," amongst other things Dr. W. says : " To baptize or ivash, calling on the Lord, is a plain and natui-al mode of ex- pression ; but to believe on Jesus, calling on the Lord, appears to lie out of the common path of Scripture phraseology. ... In the two-fold injunction, Baptisai Icai apoloiosai, we understand baptism and quashing to denote the same rite, viewed under different aspects. The former exhibits the ordinance vmder its apiDropriated name ; the latter presents before us its spiritual character as symbolic of purification. Thus Dr. W. believes in Paul's " entering, m baptism, upon a course of new and evangelical obedience, in prayerful dependance on that Savioiu- who had called him 'to glory and virtue.' "—Inf. Bap., pp. 369- 375. BAPTISM OF COBNELIUS. 79 § 5. — BAPTISM OF CORNELIUS, "HIS KINSMEN, AND NEAR FRIENDS." Assembly's Confession of Faith.—" It is a great sin to contemn or neglect that ordinance." The baptism of Cornelius and tliem that were with him accords with all that we have yet noticed respecting the subjects of baptism. It is said that he was " a devout man, and one that feared God with all his house." Divinely directed, he sent for Peter. While Peter and certoin brethren from Joppa were coming, " Cornelius waited for them, and had called together his kinsmen and near friends ; and, amongst other things, he said to Peter on his arrival, "Now therefore are we all here present before God, to hear all things that are commanded thee of God." Is it possible that infants constituted a part of this company ? Do the descent of the Spirit and the speaking with tongues by the persons assembled encourage indiscriminate baptism, although the baptism took place, as Dr. Halley says, "on the day in which they first heard the preaching of the gospel ?" That the inspired record teaches very diiierently is the opinion of the following among other Pa^dobaptists, and opinion so nigh to being univer- sal that I shall not quote more. Dr. J. A. Alexander. — " The sign might have seemed to be superfluous after the gift of the thing signified ; but baptism is a sealing and initiatory no less than a typi- cal ordinance, and is rendered necessary, not by utilitaria,n reasons, but by express Divine command." " In His name, by His authority, prof essing faith in Him, vowing obedience to Him, and entering into union vdt\\ Him." — Com. on Acts, x, 48. I. CoBBiN. — "They were manifestly the subjects of Christianity, the distinguishing mark of which they ought now to bear." — Com., on Acts x, 47. Gilpin. — Peter, " conceiving the gift of the Holy Ghost to be a suflScient evidence of the faith of these converts, ordered them immediately to be baptized." — Expo., on Acts X, 47, 48. Dr. Dick. — " Shall the sign be denied to those to whom the thing signified has been already granted ?" — Lee. on Acts, on Acts x. T. MOKKISON. — " Peter saw that the outward sign could not be withheld from those who had received what that sign simply represents and seals." — The Acts, &c., p. 62. J. Wesley can here be quoted with pleasure and commendation : " He does not say. They have the baptism of the Spu'it ; therefore they do not need baptism with water. But just the contrary. If they have received the Spirit then baptize them with water. How easily is the question decided, if we will take the word of God for our rule" (Notes, on Acts x, 47) ! — How discordant also is this with the idea of some, that the " one baptism" of the Christian dispensation is the baptism of the Holy Ghost! Dr. A. Clarke. — " In the name of Jesus Christ, which implied their taking upon them the public profession of Christianity, and believing in Christ Jesus as their Saviour and Sovereign ; for as they were baptized in His name, they professed thereby to be His disciples and followers" (Com., on Acts x, 48). — If baptism is such a pro- fession, can infants be its proper STibjects ? Dr. J. Stacet. — " God testified in the most remarkable manner, that ' He had opened the door oi faith to the Gentiles ' " (Hac., p. 107). — Notwithstanding this, we are not authorized by Dr. S. to regard Cornelius as a believer before his baptism. For though he is heard to " speak with tongues and magnify God," and though Peter says, " Forasmuch then as God gave them the like gift as He did unto us, who beUeved on the Lord Jesus Christ," yet " all that can be safely inferred from the history is that Cornelius, previously devout in sx^irit and exemplary for his character, was wrought upon to desire the privileges of Christian discipleship, and that Peter, warned of God not to reject him because he was a Gentile, ' commanded him with his kinsmen to be baptized in the name of the Lord !' " (p. 108). §0 SUBJECTS OF BAPTISM. Dr. Hallet is satisfied with the baptism of Cornelius and Ms friends, because, " as in all the preceding instances, the parties were baptized on the day in which they first heard the preaching of the gospel." — And when I learn that God through Peter was incapable in one day of effecting regeneration, and this credibly manifested, I will believe that Cornelius and his kinsmen might be all infants, or aU vmregenerate. Dr. E.. Wilson. — "Tliis was the first instance of Gentile conversion." "Both Peter and the church in Jerusalem regarded this out-poiu-ing of the Holy Ghost on Gentiles as the seal of God to their faith and repentance." " Dr. Halloy, however, alleges his prize objection, to the efi"ect that Cornelius and his friends ' were baptized on the day on which they first heard the preaching of the gospel.' Its validity in the present case may be left to the judgment of every candid reader." — Inf. Uap., p. 365. Dr. W. Smith. — " ' The water' fto hv.dor) is a name of baptism which occm-s in Acts s, 47. . . . St. Peter argued that no one could then reasonably withhold bap- tism (caning it ' the water') from those who had visibly received that of which bap- tism was the sign and seal." — I>ic. of Bible, Art. Ba_p. § 6. — BAPTISM OF liTDIA AND HEK HOUSEHOLD. J. Kelly. — "Against preconceptions, come from what quarter tliey may, it becomes us to be on our guard ; since there are few things more subversive of the correct understanding of Divina truth."— T/ie Div. Gov., p. 2. J. Craps. — " Let us just suppose, for the sake of gi-atifying our friends, that the wisest man in the world could not prove that there was not an infant in these households, would that prove that there was an infant in them ? Would an inability to prove a negative prove a positive ?" — Inf. Bap., p. 11. Dr. Caeson. — " The proof of the fact that Lydia had children, lies on those who need the assistance of the infants. I maintain that it is not in evidence that she was ever married ; and an argument cannot be founded on what is not in ertdence." "If the term household does not necessarily imjily infants, then there is no evidence from the term that there were infants in the households. Again, as such jihraseology is, in daily conversation, used with exceptions; so, though infants had been in those houseiiolds, the known limitations of the commission would except them." — On Bap., pp. 184, 191. Dr. Halley. — " I do not say that the mention of the baptism of a household would be of itself sufficient authority for the practice of infant baptism ; because the iutei-pretation of such a phrase must very much depend upon the information we can elsewhere obtain respecting the nature and object of the rite adminisiered, and the reason of its administration." — Vol. xv, p. 132. Dr. Chalmers.—" Eemember that the water of this ceremonial is a personal application, and be assured that the substantial thing represented by the water is a personal application also." — Inst., edi. by Dr. Hanna, p. 491. On the baptism of Lydia and her household, the inspired wiiter says, "And on the Sabbath we went out of the city by a river side, where prayer was wont to be made : and Vte sat down, and spake unto the women tnat resorted thither. And a certain woman named Lj^dia, a seller of pm-ple. of the city of Thyatu-a, which worshipped God heard us : whose heart the Lord opened, that she attended unto the things which were spoken by Paul. And when she was baptized, and her household, she besought us, saying, If ye have judged me to be faithful to the Lord, come into my house, and abide there. And she constrained us" (Acts xvi, 13-15). We subsequently read respecting Paul and Silas : "And they went out of the prison, and entered into the house of Lydia ; and when they had seen the brethren, they comforted them, and departed" (ver. 40). If the com- mission of the Saviour could be construed to aUow of any baptism but that of believers, and if the records respecting the baptized households of Scrip- ture supplied evidence that infants and little children belonged to these households, something more plausible than aught now in existence might be pleaded in favour of the baptizing of infants. But if in every instance save one where a baptism is recorded, the faith or professed faith of the baptized can be proved, and if there is no proof in this one instance that B4.PTISM OF LTDIA AND HER HOUSEHOLD. 81 any other than believers were baptized, it is assuredly fair in destitution of all evidence to the contrary, to conclude that this baptism was like the rest. In advocating the baptism of infants from the baptizing of Lydia's household, our opponents are obliged to assume, first, that Lydia at this time or lately had a husband. Secondly, that she then had an infant or little child or children not come to years of discretion. And, thirdly, that this child, or these children, were with Lydia at Philippi, the place to which she appears to have come on business, a city three hundred miles from that of Thyatira, to which she belonged. Or if our opponents will jyrove that L3'dia had permanently located herself at Philippi, had settled there, we will omit the last respecting her children. It is also maintained by ourselves, and admitted by our opponents, that the word house or household may be used when the whole of the family is not intended. This may especially take place when a house i3 said to do that which can only be done by that part which is come to years of discretion. Thus when we speak of a family being very penitent or zealous, very prudent or charitable, on any occasion, our common sense causes us to exempt infants in such an account, because they are incapable of being moved to these aflections, or characterized by these virtues. In like manner, if a family is baptized — since we learn from the commission of Christ, and the teaching and practice of the apostles in executing that commission, that repentance and faith, of which infants are incapable, are pre-requisites to baptism — must we not necessarily inteqwet the baptism of a whole house to be the baptism only of those capable of being made disciples by the preaching of the gospel, of being converted to the Chris- tian faith ? Indeed the Scriptures in every instance of a baptized family, with this exception, speak expressly of the family as hearing the word, believing, rejoicing, or addicting themselves to the work of the ministry, &c., of which infants are incapable. And if we admit, with Dr. Wardlaw, that these expressions do not prove that there were no children in these households, because we never scruple about such expressions as "The whole family are serious," &c., " notwithstanding the infants or young children that may be in the family, which are necessarily excluded ;" we must also maintain that the baptism of a household proves not the bap- tism of infants and young children, although these be in the family. In reference to L3'dia's house, the hypothesis of infants or little chikben is not merely a gratuitous assumption, but an assumption in direct opposition to all probability from every fact on record respecting this household. Dr. Jamieson says, "This amiable convert supported herself and her orphan family by carrying on a trade in purple cloth" (Eas. Man., vol. ii, p. 286). Whence the professor obtained his information respecting this family as orphan, he does not say. While we could wish that baptized house- holds were more numerous, we are thanliful that there are so many in Baptist churches, although few can say with Mr. Pengilly, that they have baptized a " Lydia and her household." Dr. Halley believes respecting the households of Lydia and the jailer, that "the families, whether infant or adult, were baptized as soon as the Q 82 SUBJECTS OF BAPTISM. opportunity was afforded, by the willingness of the heads to allow the administration of that ordinance" (Yol. xv, p. 29). As I agree with him on the impropriety of interpolating Scripture, and of adding to it, it is to me of little moment whether he means that the baptism of the heads is followed as speedily as convenient by the baptism of the infants, children, and adults in the family, through consent given before or after their own baptism, or — which I believe he does not mean — that the willingness of the parents is in itself the virtual baptism of their children. The Scrip- tures are as silent on these as on many other hypotheses. If the house- hold of Lydia were baptized on account of the faith of Lydia, her husband, if she had one, and he was then with her, must have been baptized on account of her faith, her adult as well as little children and her servants, male and female, old and young, pious or ungodly, would be baptized on account of her faith. The inspned historian gives us no information respecting Lydia's having husband or children, now, previously, or sub- sequently. The final record, that Paul and Silas went into the house of Lydia and comforted the brethren, does not prove that these brethren constituted the household of Lydia. I durst neither affirm nor deny, where Scripture supplies no proof. From their designation, "brethren," I conceive that they had received the truth in the love of it. It belongs to those who baptize little children, and advocate their baptism from the record re- specting Lydia and her house, to prove that little children were a part of the baptized household of Lydia. Nor does Lydia's " casually meeting with the apostle Paul," and being baptized "before returning to her house," give the least encouragement to indiscriminate baptism, Abp. Sumner speaks of Lydia's "household, moved no doubt by her advice, and influence, and example" [Expo, of Acts, xvi, 15). That the household was thus moved, I have no revelation. That we Baptists leave infants " for j^ears in the same ecclesiastical position with the masses of the heathen world," is dolefully mentioned by Prof. Wilson {Inf. Bap., p. 523), True it is that wdth us infants and children enjoy not church-membership, excepting those children who are also professed believers in the Lord Jesus. But this refusal of member- ship is not neglecting them, or depriving them of aught that would be to them a real privilege. Membership in the churches of Christ can only be a privilege to the disciples of Christ. We maintain equalty with our Psedobaptist brethren the duty of loving children, of instructing them as soon as they are capable, and of training them up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord. And whilst some of our opponents glory in the admission of infants into the church of Christ, almost all refuse them par- ticipation in the Lord's Supper, and many deny the membership of those whom they baptize, Dr, Wilson admits that the term household is used when some mem- bers are excepted ; but because he believes that the addition of households to the Lord's ancient people included the infants of those households, he believes the households of the New Testament include the infants. Why does Dr. W. accept the infants only, and reject the adults, except to screen BAPTISM OF LYDIA AND HEE HOUSEHOLD. 83 the deformity of his practice or the inconsistency of his reasoning ? The church of Christ, if I understand it, while in the world is not of the world, but is a community of professing believers on the Lord Jesus as the Saviour of sinful and ruined man ; and the burden of proof that it con- tains infants, or that infants should be baptized, rests on those who admit or baptize them. We need "no note of admiration" to the baptism of households, although it is not so common as we desire believing and bap- tized households to be. Our opponents read in Scripture of the baptism of households ; and the sacred writers not having superfluous^ said that there were no children in these families, they jump to the conclusion that the baptism of infants is undoubtedly scriptural. It has been my privilege to reside in a house which was one in a gi'oup of four, in three of which the whole households were professed believers, and had been baptized upon a profession of their faith. As the term household does not necessarily imply infants, there is no evidence from the baptizing of households that it is right to baptize infants. It devolves on our opponents who speak of the absence of infants from the baptized households of Scripture as "a. purely gratuitous assumption" and "exceedingly improbable," to prove the existence and baptism of infants in these households where, as Dr. Stacey says, "no choice is preferred, no exception made" (p. 148). In opposition to Dr. S., I also maintain that house or household properly includes domestics as well as childi-en ; that it embraces the residents of the house whether descendants, progenitors, collateral relations, or ser- vants, where there are these ; and that in a house or household there may or may not be infants, children, or servants. Our opponents too often "forget the difference between answering an objection and founding an argument. It may be so is enough to establish any thing as an answer to an objection ; it may not be so is enough to overturn it as an argument. When I attempt to prove believers' baptism I must produce arguments to establish it ; and my opponent will succeed if he can shew that these arguments do not establish my point. In obviating an objection, I succeed if I can shew that there is any way of understanding it consistently -^-ith my doctrine" (Carson, on Baj)., p. 182). Dean Alford does not on the baptism of Lydia's house seek to establish the baptism of infants. He admits with Meyer the possible invalidity of every "inference for infant baptism" from this Scripture. He believes nevertheless that baptism was in the place of circumcision, and on this assumption concludes that it would be adminis- tered "as matter of course." Dr. Whitby. — "And when slie and tliose of lier household were instructed in the Christian faith and in the nature of baptism required by it, she was baptized and her household." — Par., on Acts xvi, 14, 15. De Wette.— "This passage, as well as ver. 33, xviii, 8, 1 Cor. i, 16, has been adduced in proof of the apostolic authority of infant baptism, but there is no evidence that any except adults were baptized." — On Acts xvi, 15. T. Scott. — " There is no proof that there were any children in her family." — Com., on Acts xvi, 13-15. LiMBORCH. — " Whether any infants were in her house is uncertain. An undoubted argument, therefore, cannot be drawn from this instance, by which it may be demon- strated that infants were baptized by the apostles. It might be that all in her house were of a mature age ; who, as in the exercise of a mature understanding they believed, 84 SUBJECTS OF BAPTISM. so they were ablo to make a public profession of that faith when they received bap- tism."— Com., in loco. Assembly of Divines. — " And entered into the house of Lydia : doubtless to confirm them in the faith which they had preached to them — Lydia and hers hearing of their miraculous deliverance could not but be comforted and confirmed in the truth" (Anno., on Acts xvi, 40). — If I express myself not so strongly as some of my opponents, it is very evident that there is nothing in the baptism of these households opposed to the sentiments and practice of Baptists. Dr. A. Clarke. — " She attended unto the things — She believed them and received them as the doctrines of God, and in this faith she was joined by her whole family, and in it they were all baptized." — Com., on Acts xvi, 14. J. SuTCLiFFE. — " Whose heart the Lord opened, to wait for His word in faith and prayer, and with her family, to listen to the word with attention and deli!,'ht" (Com., on Acts xvi, 14). — And yet this Wesleyan brother, because of Scriptural testimony to the baptism of five households, Origen's reported declaration respecting the custom of the church, and Lightfoot's assertion on Jewish proselyte baptism, saw authority for infant baptism ! Wonderful evidence that the baptism of babes is a Scriphiral ordinance ! Dr. J. A. Alexandee. — "Her household, lit. house, supposed by some to mean her family, by others her assistants in her business. Both being mere conjectures, and entirely compatible with one another, there is nothing in the text to decide the con- troverted question, whether children were baptized on this occasion." He teaches that "the whole dispute" on this subject "rests on grounds entirely indeijendent of" the " mention of whole houses as baptized." — Com. on Acts, xvi, 15. E. Watson believed that "the baptism of whole houses as recorded in the Acts of the Apostles," marked "the common mode of proceeding among the first preachers of the gospel when the head or heads of a family believed ;" "that the majority of these houses must have included infant children ;" and that "it follows that the apostles practised infant baptism." The Baptists, he teaches, are " obliged to assume" that in the houses of Lydia, the Jailer, and Stei^hanas, there were not "any infants at all ;" and to conjecture respecting Lydia " that she had come a trading voyage from Thyatira to Philippi, to sell purple;" and that "her house" consisted " of journeymen dyers employed in preparing the purple she sold;" while, says he, "all, however, that the history states is, that the Lord opened Lydia's heart, that she attended unto the things which were spoken of Paul, and that she was therefore baptized and her house" (Inst., vol. iv, pp. 433-437). The assumptions in my judgment are needed exclusively by our opponents. I admit and regret what some Baptists have assumed respecting the brethren whom Paul and Silas " comforted." Instead of its being "the great difficulty with the Baptists," " to make a house for Lydia without any children at all, young or old," we are in no need of the attempt. And while R. W. can teach that " the history states" the opening of Lydia's heart by the Lord, and her attending to Paiil's words, " and that she was therefore baptized and her house," I read no such thing in the history. I do not read that she and her house were baptized on the same day. For anything " the history states," they might or might not be baptized at the same time. I learn from " the history" that the baj^tism of Lydia and her household preceded her kind entreaty to Christ's ambassadors, the inspired writer saying, "And when she was baptized and her household, she be- sought," &c. Meyer. — " Here, as well as in ver. 33, xviii, 8, 1 Cor. i, 16, some would find a proof for the apostolic baptism of children ; but there is nothing here which shows that any except adults were baptized." The household, he conceives, to have consisted pro- bably of women who assisted Lydia in her business. " When Jewish or heathen families became Christians, the children in them could have boon baptized only in cases in which they were so far developed that they could profess their faith in Christ, and did actually profess it ; for this was the universal requisition for the reception of baptism. See also vers. 31, 33 ; xviii, 8. On the contrary, if the children were still unable to believe, they did not partake of the rite, since they were wanting in what the act pre-supposed." — In Green's Hackett's Acts, vol. ii, pp. 19, 20. Baumgarten. — " It would seem that her faith had attained at once to such strength and definiteness, that she was able to impart the same to her whole house. In the converted and baptized family of Lydia, we have," &c. — I quote Baumgarten simply as teaching that he regards the whole house of Lydia as believers. I am as far from believing that Lydia imparted her faith, or that infants or any others were baptized on account of her faith, as from leaping to the conclusion, with Bengel, Alexander, and many others, that because so many (?) families were baptized, infants BAPTISM OF LYDIA AND HEE HOUSEHOLD. 85 must have been baptized. I would not affirm, -witb Abp. Sumner, that Lydia's house- hold wore " moved no doubt by her advice, and influence, and example" (Expo., on Acts, xvi, 15). For anything' I know to the contrary, the operation of the Spirit, in connexion with apostolic preaching of the gospel, might eti'ect a change in Lydia's household at the very time of the opening of her heart to the embracing of Christianity. T. Morrison. — '• She was baptized along with her whole household, and became the first-fruits of Europe to Christ." — The Acts, &c., p. 92. H. J. Gamble says, "The addition of one word to the narrative," would have sufficed to inform us that Lydia's family consisted of adult believers" (Ser. Bap., p. 144). — Would not the addition of one word have equally informed us that hers was a family of little children ? In the absence of such information we are obliged to con- clude that the apostle baptized here as elsewhere. Dr. J. Stacey says, " iUl that is said of her qualification for the ordinance is, that previously a worshipper of God, the Lord opened her heart that she attended to the things which were spoken by Paul" — and what more than this is needed? — " while of the religious condition of her family absolutely nothing is said" (p. 108). — Then there is no proof that her family were either unbelievers or infants, which proof from some source is needed by those who advocate the baptism of such. To speak of Lydia's casual meeting with Paul, and of her speedy baptism, as some do, is only to refl.ecton themselves. Dr. Stiee. — " It is true that the house of Lydia, ver. 15, could not contain any children." "Neander (to whom Hoffmann adheres in this) regards it as highly improbable that St. Paul, the opponent of all opus opera turn, without personal faith ' woidd have introduced, or permitted to bo introduced, a practice which might bo so easily perverted into a sanction for the delusion of a justification to be obtained by external things, and which would transfer the external righteousness of circumcision to Christian baptism.' " — Com., vol. viii, p. 325. Clark's Edi. Olshatjsen. — " For infant baptism nothing is to be adduced from the word oihos, as has been already observed . . . for the adult members of the family, or the slaves likewise, might bo signified by it." — Com., on 1 Cor. i, 17. Dr. J. Brown. — " It is a happy thing when the whole of a family is Christian, not in name merely, but in deed and in truth ; when, as in the case of Lydia, and of the jailer at Philippi, ' salvation came' not only to the heads of the family, but ' to all their house.' " — Expo, of Ro., p. 595. H. W. Beecheb. — " I affirm that the cases where it [infant baptism] is im- plied, are by no means conclusive and without doubt, and that if there is no other basis for it than that, it is not safe to found it on the practice of the apostles in the baptism of Christian families. Therefore I give up that which has been injudiciously used as an argument for infant baptism." — Ser., p. 202. Prof. Wilson. — " The Icnown must guide us iu determining the unknown. With the grounds of Lydia's baptism we are acquainted, and we confidently apply the same principles to the hyi^othetical case in the recorded baptism of her household. A credible profession of faith on their part, as on hers, plainly constituted the requisite qualification" (Inf. Bap., y>- 366). — Consistency with this is all that we request from Dr. W. and his Presbyterian brethren. Dr. Wardlaw. — " ' The whole family have of late become serious,' I should with- out hesitation say of a family where there were children, and never think it needful to except them." — Life, by Dr. Alexander, p. 28. A. M'Lean makes, among others, the following pertinent remarks in reply to Dr. Wardlaw : " He blames the Baptists for totally disannulling the connection between parents and their children. By this he cannot intend their naiuro.l connection, or the duties arising from it. He must therefore mean a supernatural or spiritual con- nection. But what spiritual connection have children with their believing parents, if they are not elect or believing children ? And if they are, wherein does their spiritual connection with their believing parents di3"er from that which subsists between the whole elect of God, who are all connected with each other by virtue of their union with Christ, theii* common Head ? If he means any other spiritual connection besides this, it must be something peculiar to the natmal relation, which, unless it be the benefit of parental instruction, I confess I do not understand. It is a fact which cannot be denied, that when C4od at first visited the nations to take out of thera a people for His name, the children of unbelieving idolaters were saved through faith in Christ, whilst the children of believing Abraham were rejected through unbelief. I cannot therefore see that the children of believers are saved in any other way, or upon any other ground than the children of unbelievers are, or that they have any her-qditary right to salva- tion, by virtue of their connection with believing parents, 13 ere than other children 86 SUBJECTS OF BAPTISM. have. It appears to me that they must be saved entirely of sovereign free grace, through the redemption that is in Jesus Christ, and that upon the same footing with others ; and I am of opinion that to instil other sentiments into their minds must have a very pernicious effect, so far as they put any confidence in them." Dr. W. on bap- tizing households " places the strength of his argument from these houses in the con- nection that existed between parents and children in the Jewish church ; in Gentile proselytes being received into that church by familiss, or households ; and in some expressions in the New Testament which he imagines exactly correspond to the Old Testament state of things, such as those in Lii. xix, 9 ; Acts xvi, 15, 31, 33 ; 1 Cor. i, 16. So that he explains these passages, not by the doctrine of the New Testament, or the history of facts recorded there, but by ' connecting them with 'pi'^vious circum- stances and prevalent ideas,' which, he thinks, rendered it needless to be very minute in specifying particulars (p. 84). This manner of reasoning, I think, after what I have already said, renders it equally needless for me to make any further reply. Only I would ask whether Mr. W. receives proselytes into the full communion of his chtrrch hy families or households, as the Jews did, and upon the same grounds" (Works, vol. vii, pp. 9fi-98). — Such reasoning as that from Dr. W., animadverted on by Mr. M., would equally with the baptizing of infants justify a worldly and national chvu-ch. Dr. Stennett, on Dr. Addington's saying, " when her heart was opened to receive the word, she was baptized and her household," remarks that her conversion is related in the fourteenth verse, and thattliebaptismof herself and her household is mentioned in the fifteenth, in a different connexion, i.e., in connexion with the request given to come into her house and abide there (Ans., p, 207). But because the baptism of a few households took place when the apostles at various places were baptizing thousands upon thou sands, are we to conclude that baptism is divinely intended to be administered to families collectively on one of the heads becoming a believer ? Do Baptists even now never baptize households, yea collectively, all the members of a house at the same time ? Unless families be collectively believers there is wanting Divine authority thus to baptize them. Without endorsing every word in the extracts, I maintain that if Paul had baptized other than believing households (judging from credible pro- fession) it would have been in opposition to Christ's commission to His apostles, to Peter's example in Acts and record in his epistle, and to all the records in Paul's epistles respecting the baptized, as Eo. vi, 1-6 ; Gal. iii, 26-28. Our Paedobaptist brethren, on the baptism of Lydia and her house, remind me of a rule in arithmetic which has long been taught to the youthful, namely, that in addition and subtraction a cypher makes no in- crease or diminution. But how strangelj'', with a few honoured exceptions, do our brethren countermand what in mathematics is universally accepted ! Nothing is said respecting the house of Lydia, as to whether it consisted partly of infants or young children. The baptism of the house is recorded. What proof of infant baptism can there be in this ? None. Can nothing, added to whatever you please, make any augmentation ? AVhat but the exigencies of PtiBdobaptism would have supposed that here is an argument, and the strongest in all Divine revelation, in favour of infant baptism ! § 7. — BAPTISM OF THE JAILEK AND ALL HIS. Dr. Haltley. — "Whether there were or were not children, we are not told." — Cong. Lee, vol. XV, p. 132. Dr. Cox. — " If the household of Lydia were baptized on account of her personal faith, that of the iailer was saved for a similar reason: the latter is thus appealed to by Paul, ' Believe on the Lord .Jesus Christ and thou shall be saved and thy house ' " On Bap., }). 100. Dr. Caeson. — " If there is a commission to enlist recruits six feet high, when we aftei'wai'ds read that a family were enlisted without specifying their height, we know that none of them were imder the standard." — On Bap., p. 191. D. Cramp.—" If a friend tolls me that he had an interesting conversation with a neighbour's family, I understand him to mean that he conversed with those of the family who were able to talk."— Caic, p. 14. D. Young.-" When we ascribe to a family any thing of which infants are incapable, we peither think of making a formal exception of them, nor of including ihem."—Measom, &c., p. 6. BAPTISM OF THE JAILER AND ALL HIS. 87 In the inspired statements respecting the Philippian jailer we read, " And they spake unto him the word of the Lord, and to all that were in His house. And he took them the same hour of the night, and washed their stripes ; and was baptized, he and all his, straightway. And when he had brought them into his house, he set meat before them, and re- joiced, beheving in God, with all his house " (Acts 16, 32, 34). These facts had been preceded by the display of God's power miraculously de- livering his servants from their unjust and cruel confinement, by the jailer's alarm, by his penitential and earnest inquiry respecting the way of sal- vation, and by a statement in reply respecting the way of salvation for him and for his house. The expression, " and thy house," where we read, "Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved, and thy house," must be understood as meaning, in connexion with the at- tendant words, that his house might be saved in the same way as himself. Otherwise we must conclude that, by his faith, not only he, but every member of his family, pious or wicked, would be saved. Such federal or hereditary salvation is as abhorrent to reason as opposed to revelation. The apostle, who elsewhere teaches that salvation is provided for Jews and Gentiles, here teaches the jailer that it is provided for him and his house, and is to be possessed by each one in the same way. The earthquake and its attendant facts appear to have aroused, if not to have alarmed, the household of the jailer as well as himself. The words " and thy house," render the presence of his house probable, while their presence is proved by the next words, which say that " the}' spake unto him the word of the Lord, and to all that were in his house." This very sentence ought to silence every one who has advocated infant baptism from the baptism of jailer and all his. The last record is as confirmatory of believers' bap- tism as it is opposed to infant and indiscriminate baptism : "he rejoiced, believing in God with all his house," or he rejoiced, having believed (pepistenkos). Dr. Halley does not discover that there were children in any baptized household, but he perceives " that baptism is something which can be done to households " (p. 132). And having learnt that baptism by Di- vine commission " was indiscriminately administered without any qualifi- cation whatever " (p. 31), he is happy to say on the baptisms recorded in Acts, that " there is not in one of them the slightest intimation of any pre-requisite." In the case of Lydia and the jailer, " the families, whether infant or adult, were baptized by the willingness of the heads to allow the administration of the ordinance " (vol. xv, p. 29)! If our brother had demanded and proved that baptism is in the place of circumcision, he might have advocated the baptism of male children and servants, young or old, converted or unconverted, willing or unwilling. But one brother attaches more importance to Rabbinical baptism, about which God's word is ominously silent, than to circumcision, about which God's word does speak without saying that baptism by the Divine pleasure has jumped into its place. God's word is equally silent on any members of a family being " baptized by the willingness of the heads to allow the administration of the ordinance." Nor does our brother approve of interpolating Scripture, o» SUBJECTS OF BAPTISM. It also appears to me that if Christ's commission, not inferentially, and analogically, but grammatically, necessarily, and explicitly teach that we are to disciple all by baptism, Paul should have said to the inquiry, "What must I do to be saved," first be baptized, and then (if need can then be) we will talk with thee about the way of salvation. Paul was such an ig- norant and inconsistent apostle that, instead of telling him that baptism was his imnediate duty, he said to the anxious inquirer, " Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shall bo saved and thy house — and they spake nnto him the word of the Lord, and to all that were in his house." They knew no better than that God's way of discipling was by the preaching of the gospel, and that discipling thus accomplished, was to be followed by baptism. Dr. H. most unworthily says, "As to the jailer we do not know that he himself was a believer when he was baptized. He was not a be- liever a short time before, he was a believer a short time afterwards ; but whether his baptism preceded his belief, or his belief his baptism, we do not know. All I know is, that his baptism with his household is mention- ed first, and his believing with his house is reported afterwards in the sacred nan-ative" (p. 30) ! That any candid student of holy writ would thus speak of the jailer, I do not believe. His language implies some re- gard to " the collocation of words " here. He says 'not that believing — • of which the original is not in the present tense — is either contemporane- ous with rejoicing or is its accomplishment. Dr. Stacey supposes the baptism of the jailer and all his to have taken place " under circumstances so exciting and confusing as to render intelli- gent reflection and a believing apprehension of Christ as the Saviour all but impossible " (p. 108) ! Previous to Paul's speaking the word of the Lord to the jailer, " and to all that were in his house," the Divine Being first of all kindly made their conversion next to an impossibility ! . No Methodist was ever "born in a storm!" A meeting in which there is some confusion is never productive of regeneration ! Sudden conversion is and always was almost or altogether an impossibility ! I advocate no confusion, while I deny most emphatically that the circumstances of the Philippian jailer were mifavourable to " reflection and a believing appre- hension of Christ." The idea of God's bringing about such a state of things is to be abhorred. Is it a candid and correct representation of Divine truth, to say that " some degree of religious awakening is no doubt implied in the inquir}', ' What must I do to be saved ?' and the impressions first produced were probably deepened by ' the word of the Lord ' which was spoken to him ?" That the jailer's acquaintance with the gospel was rudimentary I can admit; but I am not ashamed to believe that at " mid- night he was a heathen, an hour or two afterwards he was a baptized dis- ciple," giving evidence of conversion " not purely imaginary." A thou- sand times rather than write even with certain correctness on baptism, would I prefer to be instrumental in bringing about an approximation to that]very excitement and those blessed and glorious results which charac- terized apostolic times. It is possible for a good man under the influence of prepossessions to speak on certain parts of God's word most unadvisedly. Dr. S. with much plausibility, and whether with correctness I will not dispute, (although in opposition to Sclileusn^r, Stephen, Grotius, and BAPTISM OF THE JAILER AND ALL HIS. 89 others), unites panoiki to egalllasato, not to pepisteukos (p. 150), thus attributing the joy to the family and not faith, unless the individual joy resulted from incli\ddual faith. Whether "with all his house " belongs to rejoicing or believing, no other joy than that resulting from personal faith can this inspired language be proved to describe. Dr. S. concludes that "no historian would have dreamed of excepting 'little children ' in a narrative of domestic joy ; " and that "what with literal exactness could be truly said of one, would with conventional propriety be familiarly ap- plied to the other " (p. 150). I trow, however, that any historian, speak- ing of the confidence or joyfulness of a family arising from events that had just taken place, might intend only those parts of the family capable of understanding and appreciating the soui'ces of the faith or gladness ; and that I have ririht although not need to say that if little children were in the jailer's family, and were not baptized, that which "with literal ex- actness " applied only to those come to years of discretion, might " with conventional propriety" be spoken of as the experience and condition of the family. " If in a believing house, there may be unbelieving infants, so in a baptized house, there may be unbaptized infants. By the very same arguments that our opponents show that there might have been unbelieving infants in believing houses, we will show that there might have been un- baptized infants in baptized houses." — (Bap . by Dr. Carson, p. 185). On the conversion and baptism of the Philippian jailer and all his, read the following from Ptedobaptists. Gilpin. — " The keeper . . . received baptif3m himself, with his whole family* who all joined in praising God for His gracious mercies to them." — Expo, on Acta xvi, 33, 34. Baxter. — " His house would not be saved for his faith, without any of their own" (Par. on N. T., on Actt xvi, 31). " They instructed him and his household, that they might indeed believe and be saved " (on v. 32). " He and aU his house were presently baptized, as having professed their resolved faith in Christ " (on v. 33). Further, " The apostles delayed not baptism, when serious profession gave them right." Dr. Hawker says, " His faith was manifested to be genuine by the effects which followed. For we are told that he took tliem the same hour of the nir/ld and ivashed their stripes, and ivas baptized, he and all his, straightway, ... he rejoiced, be- lieving in God with all his hoiise." — Com., on Acts x, 25-31. Dr. DwiGHT says, " The jailer was baptized in consequence of his faith." " Bap- tism," he says, "is called the washing of regeneration, because it is symbolical of that change iu the heart." ScHLEUSNER. — " The jailer is said to have believed in God with all his house, i.e., with all his family to have accepted and approved the Chi-istian doctrine." — In Noel, on Bap., p. 84. Stephen. — " He exulted, because with his whole house he had believed in God." Grotius. — " On this account he rejoiced, that not on himself alone, but on his whole family such light had been poured." Calvin. — " Luke commends the pioiis zeal of the jailer, because he dedicated his whole soul to the Lord ; in which also the grace of God illustriously appeared, because it suddenly brought the whole ftimily to a i^ious consent." — Com., on the passage. M. Henry. — " The jailer and his family were immediately baptized, and thereby took upon them the profession of Christianity, submitted to its laws, and were ad- mitted to its privileges." " ' He rejoiced, believing in God with allhis house.' There was none in his house that refused to be baptized, and so made a jar in the harmony ; but they were unanimous in embracing the gospel, which added much to the joy." — Com., on Acts xvi, 33, 34. Bp. Patrick. — " If there were any infants in this person's family, it is certain they were baptized, for ' he was baptized, he and all his.' It is doubtful indeed whether there were any or not." — Disc, on Lord's Hup., p. 447. 90 SUBJECTS OF BAPTISM. T. Boston. — " Paul is first converted and then baptized, Acts ix, 18. The centu- rion and those with him received the Holy Ghost, and therefore none could forbid water. So Lydia, Acts xvi, 14, 15; the jailer — ver. 32, 33 ; Crispus, and others — Acts xviii, 8. Neither can any instance be adduced wherein the matter appears to have been handled otherwise." — Misd. Ques. Dr. G. Benson. — "The jailer , . . greatly rejoicing in the happy change; in that he and all his family had forsaken idolatry, believed in the one true God, and embraced the religion of Jesus." — His. of Clevis., p. 95. Dr. Doddridge. — -"And thine house too, if they also believe." "The meaning cannot be that the eternal salvation of his family could be secured by his faith." J. Newton. — " The jailer . . . with his household, were converted." — Works, p. 469. Dr. J. Stack says that the jaUer "was converted, with his whole family." — Lee. on Acts, p. 251. M. Poole. — " He had his family admitted into the covenant of God's grace, they also believing and being baptized." — Com., on Acts xvi, 34. T. Scott.—" They exhorted him to believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and assured him that in doing this he would certainly be saved." " They also included his house- hold in this assurance ; not that his faith would save them," " They then instructed him and all his family more fully in the doctrine of the gospel."- — Com. on Acts xvi, p. 29-34. J. Wesley. — " T/ioit slialt he saved, and thy house — If ye believe. They did so, and were saved" (Notes, on Acts xvi, 31). The same Wesley, on Acts xvi, 15, like hundreds more, assumes that which he ought to prove, or to give up his practice. M. Martindale says that Paul's imprisonment at Philippi " occasioned the con- version of the jailer and his family."- — Bib. Die., Art. PoaiI. Dr. A. Clarke. — " By teaching him and all that were in his house the doctrines of the Lord, they plainly pointed out to him the way of salvation. And it appears that he and his whole family, who were capable of receiving instruction, embraced this doctrine, and showed the sincerity of their faith by immediately receiving bap- tism."—Com., on Acts xvi, 32. J. Fletcher. — " Before the return of day, this converted jailer, snatched from the very brink of destruction, was seen, with all his believing family, rejoicing in God."— Por. of St. Paul. W. Dodwell. — " All his family believed and rejoiced with him." — Par. on Acts xvi, 34. Dr. Macknight. — "Having believed in Qodwith all his house; who, it seems, were equally impressed with Paul's sermon as the jailer was." — Life of Paul, ch. v. Abp. Sumner. — "And thy house. Thy family, which may follow thy example, all shall become part of the Lord's family." "And was baptised, he and all his straightivay. The same grace which had reached his heart, extended to his household also ; and they too received the message of the apostles, and were baptized." — JExpo., on Acts xvi, 33-40. Dr. Bloomfield. — " Kuinoel remarks (from Doddridge) that we are not by this to understand, if the jailer thiis believed, his ivhole family would be also saved, but that we have here a breviloquentia (examples of which figure may be seen in Glass. Phil. S. 120, 640) for, ' thou shalt be saved and all thy house, if they believe and obey in like manner.' "—Rec. Syn., on Acts xvi, 31. Dr. E. Burton. — " This miraculous release was the means of converting the jailer and his family to believe in Christ." — Ch. His., p. 81. Anno. Par. Bible. — "And 'all his house,' receiving instruction (v. 32), baptism (v. 33), faith and joy (v. 34), was saved v. 31) with him." — I know of no society more consistent with its unsectarian profession than the Society which issues this Com- mentary. Lib. of Bib. Lit. — " The jailer with his household are converted and baptized." This is published by the devoted and unsectarian S. S. Union. Dr. J. A. Alexander. — " Thou and thy house (or household, see above on v. 15) does not mean that they were to be saved by his faith, but by faith in the same Saviour." Com. on Acts ; on xvi, 31-33. Baumgarten. — " This, therefore, is the second house that, in the Eoman city of Philippi, has been converted by faith in Jesus." He speaks of " the conversion of the keeper of the prison and all his." — Apos. His., on Acts xvi, 11-40, Dr. W. Smith speaks of the words, " Believe on the Lord," &c., as "but the text of a fuller exposition of Christian truth, by which both the jailer and his family were led to saying faith ; for ' they spake unto liim the word of God, and to all those in his BAPTISM OF THE JAILER AND ALL HIS. 91 house;' and with this agrees the ensuing record of their common baptism and their common faith."— S^in.'s N. T. His., pp. 397, 398. Dr. E. Valpt. — " Having with his whole family, been blessed with the light of the gospel." — Gr. Tcs., on Acts xvi, 34. Dr. A. Barnes. — " Salvation was offered to his family as well as himself; implying that if they believed they should also be saved. 32. To all that ivere in his house. Old and young They instructed them in the doctrines of religion, and doubtless in the nature of the ordinances of the gospel." — Com., on Acts xvi, 31, 32. Dr. R. Hodgson. — "Who, being alarmed by an earthquake and the opening of the prison doors perceived the hand of God, and was converted with his whole family." — Lee. on Acts, p. 251. T. Morrison. — " Tlje jailer immediately assembled all his household, who listened to the word of life, which came to their hearts with power and in the demonstration of the Spirit."— r/ie Acts, &c., p. 96. B. BoucHiER. — " His whole household were so willing and ready to join their master and cast in their lot with his in their profession of the faith," — Manna, &c., on Acts xvi, 25-40. H. J. Gamble says, " His family are not represented as being saved by their own faith, but by their father's." To this I will simply say. No. But on the expression, " Thou shalt be saved and thy house," he says, " We can be at no loss to understand its meaning, if the family were composed of children ; it then implied that the means of salvation would be placed within their reach" (iicr. Baji., p. 148). Thewoi'ds imply as much that salvation would then be placed within the reach of the jailer, as within the reach of his house. And the words of Jesus in Mark xvi, 16, mean as certainly that he who believes and is baptized shall have salvation placed within his reach ! He says, "We often speak of a family hcm^ phmged in dccii distress. Who would conclude from this that there were no infants in that family" (p. 149) ? No one, I will suppose ; and equally no one would conclude that there is in the expression any reference to infants. Mr. G. is equally correct and wise in speaking of the " religious rite " of circumcision being " under the Old Testament economy administered to households," which it never was except a household contained no females ; but he supposes from this that the apostles would interpret their commission to be carried out " by baptizing families, rapidly preparing the way for the baptism of nations!" I should as easily believe that circumcision, " a religious rite, and a seal of the spiritual blessings of the cove- nant made with Abraham, confined originally to the Jews, but now comprehending all nations," was meant by the Saviour, when in enlarging the covenant with Abraham He said. Disciple . . . baptizing, &c. ! Might not a further acquaintance with " the general analogy which exLsts between circumcision and baptism " enable us to see that God commanded Abraham to circumcise his household " by baptizing and teaching ' ' them ! S. T. Coleridge. — "There are many Dissenters who endeavour to vindicate the practice of baptizing their children upon the supposition that there were infants in the various households mentioned in the Acts of the Apostles, and that consequently they were baptized with the older members of the ' family. This consequential mode of reasoning has been met, we think, successfully." "I have, I confess, no eye for these smoke-like wreaths of inference, this ever-winding spiral ergo from the narrovr aperture of perhaps a single text ; or rather an interpretation forced into it, by construing an idiomatic phrase in an artless narrative -with the same absoluteness as if it had formed part of a mathematical problem ! I start back from these inverted pyramids, where the apex is the base ! If I should inform any one, that I had called at a friend's house, but had found nobody at home, the family having all gone to the play ; and if he, on the strength of this information, should take occasion to asperse my friend's wife for unmotherly conduct in taking an infant, six months old, to a crowded theatre ; would you allow him to press on the words nobody and all the family, in justification of the slander ? Would you not tell him that the words were to be interpreted by the nature of the subject, the purpose of the speaker, and their ordinary acceptation ? And that he must or might have known, that infants of that age woiUd not be ad- mitted into the theatre ? Exactly so, with regard to the words, ' he and all his house- hold.' Had baptism of iafants at that early period of the gospel been a known practice, or had this been previously demonstrated, — then indeed the argument, that in all probably there was one or more infants or young chiLdron in so large a family, would be not otherwise objectionable than as being superfluous, and a sort of anti- climax in logic. But if the words are cited as the proof, it would be a clear petitio principii, though there had been nothing else against it. But when we tui-n back to the Scriptures fieceding ^the narrative, and find repentance and belief demanded ag 92 SUBJECTS OF BAPTISM. the terms and indispensable conditions of baptism — then the case above imagined ap- plies in its full force." — Aids to Ref., pp. 357-369. E. Watson is so opposite to Colerido-e, as to regard the burden of proof that there were no infants in the baptized households of Acts to rest on the Baptists, and to say, " The Baptist is obliged to assume that neither in the house of the Philippian jailer, nor in that of Lydia, nor in that of Stephanas were there any infants at all." "No one has the least authority to exclude children." " All is perfectly gratiiitous on the part of the Baptists." All " free from the bias of a theory " must see " that ' houses ' or 'families,' as in the commonly received import of the term, must be understood to comprise children of all ages, unless some explicit note of the contrary appear" (Inst. vol. iv, pp. 43G-440). Let tlie reader judge who VTi'ote under "the bias of a theory," whose pyi-amids have an apex for the base. Mr. W. speaking of the baptism of Lydia and her house, admits that " in all the other instances in which adults are mentioned as having been baptized along with the head of a family, they are men- tioned as ' hearing,' and ' believing,' or in some terms which amount to this." " The adults in the house of the jailer at Philippi were persons to whom ' the word of the Lord' was spoken." He teaches that " the words are more properly rendered, 'and he, believing in God, rejoiced with all his house ' — yet is the joy which appears to have been felt by the adult part of his house, as well as by himself, to be attributed to their faith." If the inspired historian had specified " the adult part of his house," aa does Mr. W., there would have been less assumption and greater weight through stricter adherence to Scripture in Mr. "W,'s remarks. J. MiLNER. — " ' Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and thou shalt be saved, and thy house.' They then instructed him and his household in the nature of the gospel, and opened to him the doctrine of forgiveness by the blood of Christ. His ready sub- mission to baptism, his affectionate treatment of those who had just before been the object of his severity, and his joy in the Lord, demonstrated that he was turned from Satan to God. His whole family shared with him in the same blessings." — Ch. His., p. 24. Neander. — " We cannot prove that the apostles ordained infant baptism from these places where the baptism of a whole family is mentioned, as in Acts xvi, 33, 1 Cor. i, 16. We can draw no such conclusion because the inquiry is still to be made, whether there were any children in those families of such an ago that they were not capable of any intelligent reception of Christianity, for this is the only point on which the case turns." " The jailer," says ho, " inquired what ho must do to be saved. His whole family assembled to hear the answer, and it was a joyful morning for all." — Ch. His., vol. i, p. 430; His. of Planting, p. 178. Olshausen. — " The remark in v. 3:2, that Paul preached not only to the jailer but also to all en te oilda, is plainly not favourable to the view, that infant children are included under this expression, for Paul could deliver no discourse to them." — Com,. on Acts xvi, 25-34. CoNYBEARE and HowsoN. — " ' Believe, not in'us, but in the Lord Jesus, and thou shalt be saved ; and not only thou, but the like faith shall bring salvation to all thy house.' From this last expression, and from the words which follow, wo infer that the members of the jailer's family had crowded round him and the apostles." "The meaning of 'faith in Jesus' was explained, and the gospel was preached to the jailer's family at midnight." " It was a night of happiness for all. They praised God that His power had been made efi'ectual in their weakness ; and the jailer's family had their first experience of that joy which is the fruit of believing in God" (Life and Epis. of Paul, vol. i, pp. 362, 363). In a note they say, " The preaching of the gospel to the jailer and his family seems to have taken place immediately on coming out of the prison" (w. 30-32) ; then the baptism of the converts, and the washing of the apostle's stripes (v. 33) ; and finally the going up into the house, and the hospitable refresh- ment there afforded." Dr. Lange. — " He and all his household (panoiki almost wholly among later classics) believed in God." — Com., on Acts xvi, 3k Dr. Stier. — " Verse 32 may show that there were no ' sucklings ' present . . . not, indeed, babes, yet paicZio, children, might rejoice with their parents after their manner, and in their degree." — Vol. viii, pp. 324, 325. W. Webster, — " In the following the action described by the participle is ante- cedent to the action described by the verb ; as . . . Acts xvi, 34, 37." — Synt. and Syno. of tlie Gr. Tcs. Webster and Wilkinkon. — " PanoiH is to be joined with egalliasafo. So Syriac V. — Pepisteukos, ' quximcredercl,' expressing the cause or reason ; that he with all his household believed " (Gr. Tcs., on Acts xvi, 34). Also on vcr, 32, " with all his house," they say, "i.e., on the same condition." BAPTISM OF CEISPUS AND OTHER CORINTHIANS. 93 Dean Alfobd. — "And thy house does not mean that Tiis faith would save his house- hold, but that the same way was open to them as to him : Believe and thou shalt be saved : and the same of thy household" (Gr. Tes., on Acts xvi, 31). On ver. 34 he says, "The full meaning is, 'rejoiced that he with all his house had been led to be- lieve in God.' " Dr. KiTTO. — "All his household shared these glad tidings, having been assembled for that pui'pose either at his suggestion or at the request of the apostles. He him- self and his household were washed witli the waters of baptism, and admitted into the church of Christ." — Bed. Bi. III., Eve. Se., vol. iv, p. 395. Dr. W. Cooke Taylor. — " He and his whole family were converted to the Lord." — His. of Christi., p. 145. Dr. Wardlaw. — "The very expression — 'he rejoiced, believing' — manifestly im- plies his being at the time in a believing state of mind, and experiencing a happiness, unfelt before, from the truth he had received — a happiness in which his believing family participated." — Inf. Bap., App. iv, p. 327. Dr. Dick. — " ' Thou shalt be saved and all thy house.' Those words cannot signify that through his faith all the persons, old and young, belonging to his family, should be entitled to salvation : but that such of them as believed in Jesus Christ should be saved as well as himself; and that his children" [say, believing children] " should be admitted into the covenant of God, in which He has promised to be ' a God to His people and to their seed after them.' " " How happy was this family. The new con- vert rejoiced, and so did all his house." — Lee. on Acts ; on Acts xvi, 19-40. Prof. Wilson. — " Not to baptism, biit to belief in Christ did the apostle, in the first instance, direct the anxious and alarmed inquirer. Nor did the ordinance im- mediately follow the first earnest exhortation to faith in the Saviour. The apostles proceeded (v. 32) to speak ' unto him the word of the Lord, and to aU that were in his house.' Concerned for his spiritual state, and that of his house, they opened up moro fully the glad tidings of salvation. This was no unmeaning parade, no empty cere- mony conducted by men who were prepared to baptize the jailer whether or not he professed faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. That the gospel message was received by him with all readiness of mind, it appears to us, in view of aU the circumstances, no easy matter to doiibt ; and besides, his baptism as a professed believer is the only hypothesis that can maintain a shadow of consistency between the apostles' faithful 2n-eaching of the gospel, and their administration of the ordinance. The jailer's recep- tion of the word paved the way for his admission to the ordinance ; and, as the happy result, 'he rejoiced, belieraig (exercising faith) in God, with all his house.' ' He is not said,' as Dr, Wardlaw well observes, ' to have believed afterwards, but to have "rejoiced believing." It is the joy, not the faith that is recarded as subsequent ' " CInf. Bap., pp. 367, 368). — Does not the latter part apply equally to the jailer and to all his house ? A. M'Lean (Baptist) pertinently says, on Paul's speaking to all in the jailer's house, " Wliy to all that were in his house, if he could have believed in their stead.?" " If the jailer had any infants, they are either excluded from the all that were bap- tized, or they must bs included in the all that heard the word, believed, and rejoiced." Apostolic teaching, instead of being " that a believer's house would be saved upon his faith, without believing themselves," was, that through Christ's name, "whosoever BELiEVETH ON HIM shall receive remission of sins." — WorJis, vol. vii, pp. 133-136. P. Edwards says : " I do not consider this historic account as having force enough in tself to evince the baptism of infants." " The very idea of baptizing a household does so naturally fall in with the views of Pajdobaptists, that I am inclined to think it passes with the common people instead of a hundred arguments." — Cand. Rea, p. 58. § 8. — BAPTISM OF CRISPTJS AND OTHER CORINTHIANS. Abp. Whately. — " Our safest and most humble pious course is, in any practical question, to endeavour to ascertain, in the lirst instance, what was the practice of the apostles. . . . We ought surely rather to put ourselves imder thoir teaching, where it is to be had, than to adopt and act upon the inferences drawn from any theological theory of our own." — On Bap., p. 15. We read respecting Paul at Corinth : "He reasoned in the synagogue every Sabbath, and persuaded the Jews and the Greeks. . . . And Crispus, the chief ruler of the synagogue, believed on the Lord with all 94 SUBJECTS OP BAPTISM. his house ; and many of the Corinthians hearing, believed and were bap- tized" (Acts xviii, 4, 8). The accordance of this with behevers' baptism, and the rebuke which such a record of apostoHc practice administers to those who baptize infants and known unbehevers, need no enlargement, when the mind is open to conviction. The former verse records the fact of apostolic preaching. The former part of the latter speaks of a believing family. The latter part speaks of believers who were baptized. This accords with the commission of Christ, and with apostolic conduct every- where pursued. In addition to these believers whom they baptized, wo read not, "and their children," or "and their little ones." It may as necessarily be inferred that in the families of Crispus, the jailer, Stephanas, and Cornelius there were infants who feared God, believed and rejoiced in Christ, and promoted the welfare of the Church of Christ, as that there were infants who were baptized. Let our opponents, who teach that it is " a purely gratuitous assumption" to suppose that there were no children of tender years in the baptized families mentioned in holy writ, prove that infants or known unbelievers were baptized in a single instance. It de- volves on those who advocate the baptism of infants and those known to be unregenerate to adduce a Scriptural precept or precedent. If, as Dr. Stacey maintains, " children, whether old or young," attend their parent, no exclusion taking place " on the ground of age or religious disqualifica- tion," then an unconscious babe, and a worshipper of Jupiter, Juggernaut, or Christ, must be equally eligible to this ordinance of initiation into the church of Christ, which stands at the threshold to guard its purity. Dr. Halley, who admits that the baptism of households is in itself no proof of infant baptism, says that " the manner in which the baptism of households is mentioned in the New Testament is in accordance with the views we have taken, in favour of the baptism of the children of every family brought under Christian instruction" (vol. xv, p. 131). I find nothing in the New Testament about "the baptism of the children of every family brought under Christian instruction," unless in opposition to Dr. H.'s design I construe his words so as to exclude from baptism not only infants but all of every age who did not professedly accept the gospel of Jesus Chi'ist. Would that comments on Scripture wherein baptism is mentioned were more worthy of the teaching in CasselUs Popular Educator, that Biblical Criticism " exhibits what the sacred writers did pen, and Hermeneutics explain and prove what they meant by what they penned." Ep. Baxter. — " Still we see households are converted and baptized together." — Par., on Acts xviii, 8. Dr. Doddridge teaches that the Corinthian believers " were baptized, and thereby entered into the Christian church." — Com., on Acts xviii, 8. J. G. Manly. — "In Corinth, baptism was administered to believers." — JE'ccZ.,p.42. § 9. — BAPTISM or ABOUT TWELVE MEN AT EPHESUS. Dr. E.vDiE.— " Do the will of God because it is the will of God."— ice. on the Bible, p. 112. We read next of the baptism of " about twelve " men at Ephesus, who are spoken of as disciples, on whom "the Holy Ghost came," " when Paul BAPTISM OF ABOUT TWELVE MEN AT EPHESUS. 95 had laid his hands upon them," and who "spake with tongues and prophesied" (Acts xix, 1-7). That infant or indiscrimmate baptism is here encouraged, I cannot perceive, although Dr. Halley, on "the baptisms mentioned in the Acts of the Apostles," says that "there is not in one of them the slightest intimation of any pre-requisite. In no instance was there any qualification specified. In no instance was there any hesitation or delay" (p. 31). Whether it is that he disbelieves in the sudden con- versions of apostolic times, and a sufficient evidence of the same, notwith- standing the testimony of inspiration, because he has not tested this in Manchester, as he disbelieves the testimony of inspiration respecting the immersion of the three thousand because it could not with decency take place in an afternoon in Manchester, I will not say. I dare not, however, bring down apostolic service to the level of a present ministry, nor " the effusion of the Pentecost" and the subsequent "plenitude of miraculous gifts," to a par with the Spirit's bestowment in our day and countrj'. Nor will I assert that Dr. Halley would thus affirm, although he can see no- thing opposed to infant and indiscriminate baptism where we read, "Re- pent and be baptized." " Then they that gladl}' received his word were baptized." "When they believed . . . they were baptized, both men and women." The three thousand are supposed to have been bap- tized "without time for the slightest inquiry ;" "Saul, previously to the remission of " his sins; Simon, "without a slight examination of his knowledge of the gospel ;" and "the families, whether infant or adult," "by the willingness of the heads to allow the administration of that ordin- ance !" "As to the jailer," says Dr. H., " all I know is that his baptism with his household is mentioned first, and his believing with his house is reported afterwards in the sacred narrative !" " The baptism of the twelve men of Ephesus," also, siijs he, "confirms our dediactions fi-om the pre- ceding instances !" I have the pleasure of believing that some of his gratuitous assumptions, daring inferences, and what appear to me to be glaring perversions of Divine truth, are far from having the sanction of the entire Congregational Union. Dr. Stacey rejoices that apostolic "practice strikingly corroborates" his conclusions ; that of apostolic baptisms " recorded in the New Testament three were of whole families." The baptism of these whole famihes is with him wonderfully prolific in facts and proofs. He sees in this, without any "repeal of the law" to circumcise male children and servants, that "a Divine enactment is translated from a Jewish into a Christian observance ;" that as "circumcision went by households baptism is made to follow the same rule." It might be inquired whether the apostles baptized only male children and servants, or whether the Jews cii'cumcised females. But "nothing is said of the exclusion from the rite of any member of the bap- tized families on the ground of age or religious disqualification," as if when Baptists baptize a family they for some reason exclude a part and state the reason ! If baptism should be administered to whole families on the ground of its being requested by the head and administered to him, it must necessarily be administered to children and adults, be administered ii'respective of age and moral qualification, yea, irrespective of willingness, 96 SUBJECTS OF BAPTISM. to the profligate or the pious, the idolater or the atheist, although it be protested against "mth oaths and curses. And this is the ordinance of initiation into the church of Christ to guard its purity ! And as to the "known experience" of " proselj'te baptism" by the Jews, it is a fact that no man knows that this rabbinically invented ceremony had then an existence. Though this is the last baptism recorded in Acts, except the second record of Paul's baptism, yet as we read in the first epistle of Paul to the Corinthians of the baptism of the household of Stephanas, some remarks will be reserved till we come to that baptism. Dr. W. Smith's Bib. Die. says of the twelve Ephesians in Acts xix : " They were evidently numbered among Christians, or they would not have been called mathetai." — Art. Bap. Prof. Wilson, in replying to Dr. Halley's advocacy of precipitate and indiscrimin- ate baptism from this record says : " The author does not inform lis that the sacred narrative styles these men disciples, and that Paul addressed them as persons who ha,d believed. . . . 'When they hoard' the apostle — hoard doubtless of the cruci- fied and exalted Messiah, and of salvation through Him — the theme which Paul never kept in the back ground—' they were baptized in the name of the Lord Jesus.' The Tieartnp predicated of these men, in connection with what follows, clearly implies assent to the doctrine promulgated, and professed belief in Jesus Christ, ' whom Paul preach- ed.' . . . The consequent effusion of the Holy Spirit in His supernatural influences we are constrained to regard as a crowning testimony to that faith in the profession and exercise of which these disciples made a baptismal dedication of themselves to the Lord Jesus."— J))/. £oj)-, PP- 3<38, 369. Dr. Bloomfield says : "^Eis ti ebaptisth.? A brief mode of expression, yet uncon- nected with ellipsis, denoting, as appears from the preceding context, 'tJnto what profession of faith were ye baptized ?' " — Gr. Tes., on Acts xix, 3. Dr. J. Bennett. — "And they, having heard, were baptized into the name of the Lord Jesus. Baptism is spoken of here, as well as in the commission to the apostles, not as we read ' baptize in,' but inio, or unto the name ; as if to show that baptism i3 dedication to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit." Concerning the baptized he says, " They who were [baptized], are called disciples, because they assem- bled with the Christians to learn ; and when Paul says, ' Since ye believed,' as one just arrived, he speaks of things as they appeared." — Lcc. on Acfs, pp. 301, 302. J. G. Manly, after referring to the baptisms in Acts as baptisms of professed be- lievers, says, "Thus did the apostles, withtheii- fellow-laboui-ers, fulfil the commission of Christ to teach and baptize." — Eccl., p. 42. Bp. Mann. — " Baptized in the name of the Lord Jesus." " Into the faith and obedience of the Christian religion, and in the form appointed by the Lord Jesus." — Four Gos., &c., on Acts xix. 5. Dean Alford. — " Unto luhat — unfo (with a view to, as introductory to) what pro- fession? They answer, unto (that indicated by) the baptism of John, viz. : repentance and the believing on Jesus, then to come, but now (see ch. xviii, 25, unto) the object of our faith." — Gr. Tes., on Acts xix, 4. T. Morrison, who on the Pentecost has said that " three thousand gladly received the word, and were baptized," and that " these first converts" " continued," &c., says here : " John's baptism was a baptism of repentance, anticipatory of the kingdom of God to come ; while Christian baptism was a baptism in the name of the Lord Jesus, as having come and made an end of sin by His death on the cross." — The Acts, &c., p. 120. Dr. J. Owen. — " Men may figuratively be said to be baptized into a doctrine, when their baptism is a pledge and token of their profession of it. So the disciples whom the apostle Paul met with at Ephesus (Acts xix, 3) are said to be baptized eis to loannou baptisma, ' into the baptism of John' — that is, the doctrine of repentance for the for^veness of sins, whereof his baptism was a pledge." — Works, vol. iii, p. 74. Dr. WardlAW. — "These men had received 'John's baptism,' — that is, baptism into the faith of ' him who should come after him,' — into the faith that the expected coming one was at hand." — A^ipen., p. 232. ON EOMANS VI, 2-4. 97 SECTION V. EXPRESS SCRIPTURE REFERENCES TO BAPTISM. § 1. ON ROMANS VI, 2-4. Dr. F. Wayiand. — " All tlie allusions to the ordinance of baptism in the New Testament, refer to the baptized as regenerate persons." — Princ. and Frac. of the Bap., p. 70. C. Stovel. — They could be "urged to sustain the character they had so openly and willingly, and solemnly assumed, and in which others wore implicated with themselves" (Dis., p. 276). "The beginning of the new life is never, in the inspired writings, urged on baptized persons."— Bop. jRec, p. 162. Dr. Chalmers — " We are given to understand that the initial step of this religion is renuncia- tion, in desire and purpose at least, of all sin. The outward and ceremonial baptism, in fact, is the sign of this."' — Insti., edited by Dr. Hanna, p. 492. Prof. Wilson. — " Baptism into Christ imijlies the acknowledgment of our blessed Lord in His personal and mediatorial character, and of the faith which He founded." — Inf. Bap., p. 308. Dr. J. Stock.— " The New Testament invariably addresses the baptized as having contracted a personal obligation in their baptism, and exhorts them to make good their deliberate engagement to their Lord. No exception to this remark can be adduced, which clearly shews that in apostoli- cal days there were not two baptisms, viz. : one of adults ol a profession of faith, and another of babes without such a profession." — Handh., &c. p. S0.5. Dr. Halley. — "Time, the great innovator, cannot change the sense of a record, however nu- merous may be the years which have gathered around it. Its language may become obsolete, but its meaning cannot vary ; its truth may gi-ow dim and obscure in the remote haze of antiquity, but a new interpretation— the creature of more recent times, cannot belong to it. The true sense of words when spoken is the sense, whether perceived or not, which is inherent and indestructible in them for ever."— Vol. s, pp. 186, 187. Baptism is spoken of by the apostle Paul in Lis epistle "to all that be in Rome, called to be saints," in a manner utterly inconsistent mth the idea that infants or unbelievers are its proper subjects ; indeed, in a way that proves scriptural baptism to be believers' baptism. His language embraces all the baptized. "I^ow ye not that so many of us as were baptized into Jesus Christ," &c. ? Would it not be preposterous to main- tain that in this baptism some might, at least professedly, and some might not be baptized into Jesus Christ ? That there was no instance of insin- cerity, we do not maintain. All that is needed by us is evidence that Christian baptism was enjoined on believers, and that those who under the apostles received baptism are thus designated, either expressly or by words having an equivalent import. The apostle having here spoken of all the baptized as being " baptized into Jesus Christ," further speaks of them as being "baptized into His death," both phrases implying a condi- tion or profession utterly inappropriate to unconscious babes, or unbelieving adults. The import of being baptized into Christ has been noticed in remarks on the commission. To be baptized into Christ's death, implies, as I judge, not only a professed belief of the fact of Christ's death, but professed fellowship with Him in the design of that death. The apostle adds : " Therefore we are buried with Him by baptism into death ; that like as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so we also should walk in newness of life. For if we have been planted together in the likeness of His death, we shall be also in the likeness of His resurrection. Knowing this, that our old man is crucified with Him, that the body of sin might be destroyed, that henceforth we should not B 98 SUBJECTS OF BAPTISM. serve sin" (Rom. vi, 3-6). Language, it is conceived, could not more obviously teach that the baptized are supposed no longer to serve sin, but to die to sin, and walk in newness of life. The language of the apostle, as I think, clearly supposes all the baptized to know that in this ordi- ance they declare themselves "dead to sin," and consequently that they will not "live any longer therein." Dr. R. Jamieson, on the inspired query, " Know ye not that they which run in a race," &c., says, "The whole customs connected with their national sports were matters of fa- miUar knowledge, and subjects of favourite conversation, amongst those to whom he addressed his epistle ; and, therefore, with the greatest pro- priety he introduces his illustration from the well-known amusement, with, * Know ye not,' " &c. {Eas. Man., vol. ii, p. 341). Hoornbeek says, "The apostle, speaking of what was notorious and certain, says, ' Know ye not that so many of us as,' " &c. So also many others. Dr. Halley's re- marks on allusions in the epistles to the obligations of baptism will be noticed on |Gal. iii, 26. The apostle appeals to the baptized as having made a personal, a conscious, and voluntary profession of Christianity. He speaks this of all the baptized. By everything uttered, and every- thing implied in the apostle's words, infant and indiscriminate baptism receives condemnation. The Roman and Colossian Christians had not seen Paul. But there was one practice among all the churches in regard to baptism. They baptized only those professing faith, and who conse- quently could be addressed as beUevers. Of all the baptized he could thus speak, and to all the baptized he could appeal for holiness of life from the fact and after the time of their baptism, when, having died, they were buried • when, having risen, the new life should ever afterwards appear. The reasoning of the apostle throughout this chapter demands this view. Persons were and are addressed according to their professed character. Such language requires not that all be undoubtedly sincere. As says the Rev. J. A. James, speaking of personal religion, "You, as professors, have, or are supposed to have that already." — Chris. Prof., p. 79. Almost all commentators allow that the action in baptism (immersion), and that the design of baptism as to the profession of faith in a Redeemer who died, was buried, and rose again, and of dying to sin and rising to newness of life, are taught in this passage. Let the reader peruse and candidly meditate on the following by commentators and others ; and, unless I mistake, he will conclude that as long as the epistles of Paul to the churches at Rome and Colosse remain a part of God's word, it may be asked of those who practise infant sprinkling, By what authority do you practise this innovation ? Some of these writers, it is true, expressly mention converts ; but their interpretation of the inspired Ian r/uage limits its application to such characters ; while the apostle is speaking of all. that were baptized into Jesus Christ, and no baptism which was not into Jesus Christ was either divinely enjoined or apostolically practised. Pres. Edwards. — "Baptism, by which the primitive converts were admitted into the church, was used as an exhibition and token of their being visibly regenerated, dead to sin— as is evident by liom. vi throughout." " He does not mean only that their baptism laid thorn under special obligation to these things, and was a mark and ON ROMANS VI, 2-4. 99 token of their engagement to bo thus hereafter : but ttes desig-ned as a mark, token, and exhibition of their being visibly thus already." — Evqui. info Qual.J'orfull Commu. Beausobre and Lenfant. — " This is ihe new life, Ro. vi, 4, ■which people engaged themselves to when baptism was administered to them." — Com., on Matt, iii, 11. Venema. — " Faith and repentance are pre-required in baptism. He who presents himself as a candidate for baptism, professes by that very act to be a Christian, de- clares himself to have passed into the discipline of Christ." C. Taylor. — '■ In baptism we profess death unto sin. . . . The apostle's pur- pose is one, though his similes be three. . . . He exhorts that (1) after baptism we should walk in newness of life : that (2) after transplantation we should conform to the holiness and resurrection of Christ : that (3) after crucifixion we should ' yield ourselves unto God as those who are aUve from the dead, and our members as instru- ments of righteousness unto God.' . . . We are now prepared to understand a literal version of the argument, ' How shall v e who are dead to sin live any longer therein ? Know ye not that whosoever of us are baptized unto a profession of Jesua Christ, are baptized unto a profession of His death?'" &c. — Facts and Evi., &c., pp. 50, 51. Dr. GooDvriN. — " He argues from the known and generally-received prof ession and practice of all Christians. Knoxc yc not that so mnny of us as tvere baptized — that is, whoever of us that profess baptism into Christ, profess baptism into His death, as the thing intended by it." — Worhs, vol. iv, p. 30. Vitringa. — ''To be baptized into Christ is beyond doubt to be baptized into this, that each should profess his communion with Christ ; that each by that baptism, as by a sign and testimony, shoidd avow that he had believed in Christ." — 06s. Sac, iii, 22. 822. Eigaltius. — " Men are not bom Christians, but made such. No man is accounted a believer till he knows Christ. Therefore he must first hear what belongs to the Christian faith ; and when he has heard and embraced it from his belief, he may be called a believer : and that the thing's which have entered his mind thi-ough his ears may by an (external) sign be submitted to his eyes, and may strike his mind the more powerfully, he is dipped or immersed in water, in a river, fountain, pool or laver. And as he had received three things ; — for first he received faith, and then by faith obtained the pardon of all his past sins ; and, moreover, had the pledge of a resurrection to eternal life : so these things are signified by baptism." — In Facts opposed to Fictizn, p. 51. R. Baxter. — " Know ye not that when men are baptized they are by vow, cove- nant, and profession, listed into the belief of a crucified Saviour, whc died for sin to save us from it ; and do profess that repentance by which we renounce it. as dead to it for the time to come P Therefore in our baptism we are dipped under the water, as signifying our covenant profession ; that as Ho was buried for sin, we are dead and buried to sin ; that as the glorious power of God raised Him from the dead, so we should rise up to live lo Him in holiness and newness of life" (Par. on N. T., on Rom. vi, 3, 4). " To be buried and risen with Christ signifi^th, A being dead to sin, and alive to God and newness of life : and it is not only (as is feigned by the opposers) an engagement to this for the future, but a profession of it al=o at the present ' (Dispu. of Right to Sac.) — Having- asked on baptism, '■ "What is it that God reeiuireth of man, and that he professeth F'" he answers, " I. The water. II. Anel the actions of both parties. 1. The action of the minister on God's part is to wash the body of the bap- tized with water, which, in hot countries, was by elipping them over head, and taking them up, to signify (1) That they are washed from the guilt of sin by the blood of Christ. (2) And are as dead or buried to sin, and the world and flesh, and ri=en to a new anel holy life and heavenly hope. (3) And that by this act we are solemnly bound by God to be Christians. 2. The action of the baptized is, to be a willing receiver of this washing, to signify his belie^nng anil thankful receiving these gifts of Christ, and his solemn self -engagement to be henceforth a Christian" (Prac. TForts, vol. iv, p. 154). " In our baptism we put off the body of the sins of the flesh, by the circumcision of Christ, being buried with Him, and ri-ing with Him through faith, quickened with Him, and having all trespasses forgiven" (p 29(3). Dr. J. Owen. — " The apostle, Rom. vi, 3-5, is dehorting from sin, exhorting to holiness and new obedience, and gives this argument from the necessity of it, and our ability for it, both taken from our initiation into the virtue of the death anel life of Christ, expressed in our baptism." The apostle encourages "unto mortification of sin and new obeelience, by virtue of power received from the death and life of Christ, whereof a pledge is given us in our baptism" (On Inf. Bap.) — Although I believe God wills that we should in baptism and the Lord's Supper be reminded of the riches of 100 SUBJECTS OF BAPTISM. His grace in the gift of Hia Son, and the willing shedding of that blood which cleanseth the believer from all sin, I boUeve that every inspired word respecting baptism repre- sents it as the believing sinner's covenanting with God. rather than God's covenant- ing with man. But if " a pledge is given us in our baptism" of mercy and grace, it is not given to us infants, but to us believers. Nor is there such a thing as baptismal initiation into the virtue of the death and life of Christ. Infants, without transgression and without faith, are the same when new-born and when baptized. Eeasonand re- velation teach that this initiation has taken place in the believer, is symbolized in his immersion, or "expressed in our baptism," and ought to be followed by that "new obedience" which in infants is an impossibility. Dr. J. Scott. — "The true import, therefore, of these baptismal actions must be, first, a solemn profession of oui" belief, that as we are buried under water, and raised up from the dead, which, being the principal articles of Christianity, do include all the rest. Secondly, they also import a solemn engagement of the party baptized to die to, and endeavour utterly to extinguish all his sinful lusts and affections, even as Christ died and was buried, and to rise from the spiritual death of sin into newness of life, even as Christ rose from His natural death to live for ever." " The meaning, there- fore, of the above-cited passage (Ro. vi, 3-5) is plainly this, 'You cannot be ignorant that when you were baptized into Jesus Christ, you made a solemn profession that you would conform yourselves to His death in dying to sin, even as He died for it, so that in your baptismal immersion you were representatively buried with Him : for if we conform to His death in dying to sin, as we promised to do in our immersion, wo shall be sure to conform to His resurrection also in living to righteousness, as we promised to do in our rising out of the water again.' By which it is evident that bap- tism is on our part a solemn engagement of ourselves to perform the conditions of the New Covenant. Indeed, the very phrase, baptized into Jesus Christ, can import no less than a resignation of ourselves to Christ in baptism." — Chris. Life, p. ii, eh. vii, §9. W. Gilpin. — " The Christian, by his profession, is dead to sin. The very act of his initiation implies it. What does baptism represent but our dying to sin, and rising to righteoasness ?" &c. — Expo., Rom. vi, 1-4. M. Henry. — "Our baptism signifies our cutting off from the kingdom of sin ; we profess to have no more to do with sin Baptism is exlerna ansa Clirisii, by which Christ lays hold oia men, and men offer themselves to Christ. . . . As Christ died for sin, so we should die to sin. This was the profession and promise of our baptism" (Com., on Ro. vi, 5). " Being baptized into Christ wc are baptised into his death, that as He died and rose again, so, in conformity thereunto, we should die unto sin, and walk in newness of life (Ro. vi, 3, 4)" (Com., on Gal. iii, 27). In his Treatise on Baptism, he says (p. 41), "We are said to he huried ivith Christ by bap- tism, and planted in the likeness of His death (Ro. vi, 4, 5) ; which intimates our dying to every sin." Again (pp. 43, 44), "Those who »re baptized into Christ, have professedly f)ui on Christ ; and it is inconsistent with our putting on Christ, to make provision for the flesh to fulfil the lusts thereof." English Reformers (by T. Russell). — "The signification of bajjtism is described of Paul in the sixth of Romans : that as wo are plunged bodily into the w.ator, even so we are dead and buried with Christ from sin : and as we are lifted again out of the water, even so we arc risen with Christ from our sins, that we might hereafter walk in a new conversation of life. So that these two things, i.e., to be plunged in the water, and lift up again, do signify and represent the whole pith and effect of baptism, i.e., the mortification of our old Adam, and the rising up of our new man." — Vol. iii, p. 289. Bp. Hall. — " Yea, our baptism doth not only represent unto us our death to sin, by the power of His death, but oiir burial also." " Ye are in baptism buried with Christ, in respect of the mortification of your sins, represented by lying under the water ; and in the same baptism you rise up with Him in newness of life, represented by your rising up out of the water again, through that faith of yours, which is grounded upon the mighty power of God, who raised Him from the dead." — Par., on Rom. vi, 4, and Col. ii, 12. Bp. Patrick. — " We are baptized into His death. — We are buried with Him in baptism." "We by going into the water profess that wo ai-e ^villing to take up the cross, and die for Christ's sake." — In Booth's Peed. F.r., vol. i, p. 136. Bp. Davenant. — •" In baptism the burial of the body of sin. or of the old Adam, is represented when the person to be baptized is put down into the water." — E,rpo., on Col. ii, 12. |Mastricht. — " In baptism we emerge out of a sepulchre of water, and pass, as it were, into a new life." — Theor. Prac, Theol., 1. vii, c. iv, § 10. ON EOMANS VI, 24. 101 Grotius. — "There was in baptism, as administered in former times, an imago both of a bnrial and of a resurrection ; which, in respect of Christ, was external ; in regard to Christians, internal." — On Col. ii, 12. LiMEOKCH. — "By that immer.sion into water, and continuance iindcr the water, which represent a burial, baptized pijrsons express their being- buried to sin." — Com., on Eom. vi, 1. Pe. Edwards. — "According to this judgment of charity, the apostle addresses the Komans. He supposes baptized persons to be really baptized into Jesus Christ ; and then, by virtue of thn,t union, they live, they die, they are buried, they are raised again, and walk with Christ in nownc -s of life." — Cand. Eca., p. 114. T. Boston teaches that the conditional covenantas merely offered and not accept- ed, "is inconsistent with what the Scriptures say of the baptized, their being buried with Christ in baptism, baptized into Christ, into one body," &c. — TFor/r.-i.p. 384. Dr. Hawker. — "The apostle" "advanceth yet fiuther, to shew the sanctity of life and conversation among justified believers, from the doctrine of baptism. And the apostle proposeth what he had to offer on this ground, in the form of a question, as a thing perfectly well known and received. Know ye not that co maiiy of vs as ivere baptized into Christ ^l■ere baptized into His death? Therefore (said Paul), we a ro buried loitli Him by baptisyn into death. We are p)'lanted together in the likeness of His death. Ovr old inan is crucified loith Him. The body of sin might be destroyed. And hence he draws conclusions the most just and projier, that a new life in Christ miist be the sure consequence of these things." — Com., on Eom. vi, 1-11. T. Scott. — "The apostle, by his introductory question, most emphatically shews that all who had been baptized into the name and religion of Jesiis, had received the sign and made the profession of communion with Him, and conformity to Him in His death, that by virtue of His dying for their sins, they should die to all sin." " This profession was equivalent to ' being buriod with Christ,' as dead with Him." "The baptism of a converted Jew or Gentile was a professed manifestation of his death to sin," "and it was a professed introduction to his walking ' in newness of life.' " — Com., on Eom. vi, 3, 4. Bengel. — " Knoiu ye not ? The doctrine concerning baptism was known to all." " The mentioning of baptism is extremely well suited to this place." "Ho who is baptized puts on Christ, the second Adam. He is baptized, I say, into a whole Christ, and so also into His death, and it is the same thing as if, at that moment, Christ suf- fered, died, and was buried for such a man, and as if such a man suffered, died, and was buried with Christ." " As Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, so we should also rise ; and as Christ reigns for ever in the glory of the Father, and in that life to which He has risen, so wo also should walk in newness of life.'' Dr. S. Clarke. — " The first of these duties which the b.aptized persons promised, and obliged themselves to perform, was a constant confession of the faith of Christ and profession of His religion. They were admitted by baptism into the church and family of Christ, and they were bound at all times to own themselves His disciples. They were solemnly baptized into His death (Ro. vi, 3)." " The second thing to which baptized persons solemnly obliged themselves by their baptism, was a death unto sin, and a new birth unto righteousness, i.e., they engaged utterly and for ever to forsake all manner of sin" (On Bap., pp. 13-15). Having quoted Eom. vi, 9-12, he says, "The force of which argument is plainly this. When we descended into the water, and arose out of it again, we made public profession that as we hoped for pardon of our past sins through the merits of the death of Christ, so we ourselves would henceforth die unto sin, that is, iitterly cut it off and forsake it, and for the future rise again to walk in newness and holiness of life." E. Wynne. — "'Have been baptized into His death,' i.e., to conform to the great purposes of it, viz., to abolish sin ; our immersion in baptism representing Hia death and burial, and our emerging out of the water His resarrection to new life in His Father's glory" (Neiu Tes., on Eom. vi, 4). On Col. ii, 12, he says, "you were raised with Him by faith in the energy of God who raised Him from the dead, i.e., by a belief in that Divine power which raised Christ from the dead, and by that confirmed His doctrine and animated us by the hopes of a glorious resurrection and immortality, to walk in newness of life." Dr. Macknigiit. — " To be baptized" " into a person, is" "to enter one's self a disciple of him into whose name he is baptized, and to profess that ho submits him- self implicitly to his authority, and receives his doctrines and rules." " Buried with Him in baptism, as persons whose old man hath been crucified with Him (see Eom. vi, 6), in which baptism also, that it might be a complete emblem of yoin- circumcision, ye have been raised with Him out of the water, as persons made spiritually alive, 102 SUBJECTS OF BAPTISM. fhroiigh your belief of tlie strong working of God who raised Him from the dead." — Com., on 1 Cor. i, 13 ; Col. ii, 12. Dr. Doddridge. ^^" Baptized into Jesus Christ, that is, into the profession of the Christian faith." " Baptized into His death," "enafaged to conform to the great pur- poses of it, which we know were to abolish sin." He speaks of the baptized as having '■ listed under the banners of the cross." '"Being buried with Him in baptism, to express your desire of dying to sin, as he died for it ; in which ordinance ye were re- presented as raised with Him, and in consequence thereof animated to all newness of life by the belief you have professed" fCo.n.. on Eom. vi, 3 ; Col. ii, 12). — According to this and others, all the baptized, when Paul wrote, had confessed their faith in baptism. Dr. Cave, having spoken of the baptismal immersion as representing Christ's death, burial, and resurrection, adds, "And in conformity thereto, our dying unto sin, the destruction of its p jwer, and our resurrection to a new course of life. By the person's be'.ng put into water, was lively represented the putting off the body of the sins of the flesh, and being washed from the filth and pollution of them." — Pr. Chr., part i, c. x. D/. Rees. — " The design of this initiation, which was to express faith in Christ on the part of those who are baptized, .and to declare their resoli;tion of opeidy professing His religion, and cultivating;- real .ind universal holiness, appears from iio. vi, 3, 4 ; 1 Po. iii, 21 ; Eph. v, 26, and Tit. iii, 5."— Ci/. Art. Baji. W. BuRKiTT. — " The apostle alludes, no doubt, to the ancient manner and way of baptizing persons in those hot countries, which was by immersion, or putting them under water for a time, and then raising them up again out of the water ; which rite had also a mystical signification, repre -enting the burial of our old man Sin in us, and our resurrection to newness of life." — Com., on Eom. vi, 4. Wesley. — "In baptism we (through faith) are ingrafted into Christ. And we draw new spiritual life from this now root, through His Spirit, who fashions lis like unto Him" (Notes on N. T., on Eom, vi, 3). "We arebirried with Him. — Alluding to the ancient manner of baptizing by immersion ; that as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory — Glorious power, of the Father, so we also by the same power should rise again : and as He lives a new life in heaven, so we should walk in newness of Ufe. This, says the apost'.e, our very baptism represents to us" (On ver. 4). On Col. ii, 12, he says, " The ancient manner of baptizing by immersion, is as manifestly alluded to here, as the other manner of baptizing by sprinkling or pouring of water is in Heb. x, 22. But no stress is laid on the age of the baptized, or the manner of performing it, in one or the other place, but only on our being risen with Christ through the powerful opera- tion of God in the soul." — Can it be other than believers' baptism (wo need say nothing about the age of the candidates), if stress is laid on being risen with Christ through the powerful operation of God in the soul ? That Heb. x, 22 says not a word about eithi r sprinkling or pouring as baptism, we believe any intelligent and unprejudiced reader may easily perceive. ScHLEUsNEE. — "To b(i baptized into the death of Jesus. Eo.vi, 3. To bind himself by the rite of baptism ... to renounce sins and wickedness, to lay aside sins as Christ laid do^vn His life." — Lex., Art. Baptizo. Dr. Stanhope. — "It is plain from this, and sevei-al other places of Scripture, that baptism implies, and requires, an express belief in the death of Christ, as the instru- ment of our salvation." " The apostle urges, that this is what Christians cannot but be sensible of." — Para., &c., vol. iii, p. 259. Dr. Whitby.—" For know ye not that as many (of us) as were baptized into (and by that baptism professed ourselves disciples of ) Jesus Christ, were baptized into (the likeness of) His death, (a,nd so engaged to die unto sin, as He died for sin, 1 Pe. iv, 1, 2, and this must also consequently be an engagement to live to Him that died for us, and rose again. 2 Cor. v, 15.) ver. 4 (For) therefoi-c we are buried with Him by baptism, (plunging- us under the water) into (a conformity to His) death, (which put His body under the earth.) that like as Christ was raised up from the grave by the glory (ous power) of the Father, even so we also (thus dead in baptism) should (rise with Him and) walk in newness of life." — Para., on Eo.vi, 3, 4. Dr. Manton. — " The putting the baptized person into the water denoteth and proclaimoth the burial of Christ, and we, by submitting to it, are baptized (buried) with Him, or proiess to lie dead to sin ; for none but the dead arc buried : so that it signifioth Christ's death foi sin, and onr dying unto sin." — Scr. on Eom. vi, 4. Dr. Wells. — The immersion "did typify the death and burial (of the person bap- tized) to sin ; as his rising up out of the water did typify his resurrection to newness of life." — On Eom. vi, 4. Dr. Babrow.— " The mersion also in water, and the emersion thence, doth figure ON EOMANS VI, 24. 103 our death to tlio former [worldly defilements], and recei\'ing [reviving] to a new life." —In Booth's Pcfd. Ex., vol. i, p. 149. W. DoDWELL. — " Do ye not Icnow that so many of us as have been baptized into Jesus Christ have been baptized into a conformity to His death ? And being dead with Him, we are therpfore bnried with Him," &c. — Para, on Eom, vi, 3, 4. J. Brown, in his Sclf-infcrprefing Bible, edited by the Patersons. says : "Know ye not that oiu* baptism with water, by the authority, and into the iirofession, faith, and obedience of Jesus Christ, signified and sealed our spiritual union to Him, as members of His mystical body ?" — On Eom. vi, 3. Prof. Stuart. — Most commentators, after Vitringa, explain eis as meaning into the acknowledgment of ; with an implication of affiance, subjection, and discipleship," &c. Prof. S. advocates " belonging to." " The word osoi is employed by the Greeks to designate the meaning \t:lioever, &c., i.e., all without any exception." "We have engaged to die unto sin, as He died for, comp. Eo. vi, 6 ; Gal. ii, 19. The being bap- tized into His death, therefore, is an internal, moral, spiritual thing, of which the external rite of baptism is only the symbol." "Although the words uifo ffis deaf/;, are not inserted in Col. ii, 12, yet as the following verso there shews, they are implied. In fact, it is plain that reference is here made to baptism, because, when the rite was performed, the Christian promised to renounce sin, and to mortify all his evil desires, and thus to die unto sin that he mi:;ht live iinto God." — On Eom. vi, 3, 4. Bp. Taylor, in admitting how the Anabaptists may argue, says: "Baptism is never propounded, mentioned, or enjoined, as a means of remission of sins, or of eter- nal life, but something of dixty, choice, and sanctity is joined with it. in order to the production of the end so mentioned. ' Know yc not that as many as are baptized into Christ Jesus, are baptized into His death' (Eo. vi, 3) ? There is the mystery and the symbol together, and declared to be perpetually united, osoi chajiiisfhcmcn. All of us who are baptized into one, were baptized into the other, not only into the name of Christ, but into His death also. But the meaning of this as it is explained in the following words of St. Paul, makes much for our purpose ; for to be baptized into His death signifies, To be bui-ied with Him in baptism, that as Christ rose from the dead, wo also should walk in newness of life (ver. 4). That is the full mystery of baptism ; for being baptized into His death, or which is all one in the next words, ' en omoiomati ton thnnatou ovtou.' ' Into the likeness of His death' (ver. 5). cannot go alone; if we be so planted into Christ, we shall be partakers of the resurrection ; and that is not here instanced in precise reword, but in exact duty, for all this is nothing but cruci- fixion of the old man, a destroying of the body of sin, that we no longer serve sin (ver. 6). This indeed is truly to be baptized, both in the symbol and the mystery : whatsoever is less than this is but the symbol only, a mere ceremony, an opus opieratmn, a dead letter, an empty shadow, an instrument without an agent to manage, or forca to actuate it."- — Lib. of Pro., pp. 344, 345. T. GiSEORNE. — "In baptism . . . joxi pledge yourself to die through grace unto sin, in conformity to the purpose of the death of your Lord." — Expo., on Col. ii, 12. Dr. S. Addtngton. — "Patd is evidently speaking of the Christian's death unto sin, and revival to God and righteousness ; and, representing baptism as a type or token of that, he gives a view of the nature and design of the ordinance, every way consistent with what is elsewhere said of it in the word of God" (On Baj)., p. 45). — Can baptism, therefore, according to every representation of it in God's word, be in- tended for any except believers ? E. BicKERSTETH. — " Baptism is the very token and sign that we are dead to sin. Hoi'J slioAl we, asks St. Paul, that ore dead to sin. live any longer therein? Knoiv ye not that so many of us as tcere hap ri zed into Jesus Christ werehapAizcd into His death ? therefore," &c. "Eom. vi, 2-8. The statement in the Colossians is similar, ii, 11-13; iii, 1-3." " The all-comprehensive blessing thus included in baptism is our being so broiight thereby f/iroT'c/Zi/ai^/z into union with Christ as to share all He did. Hence we should by faith regard all that Christ went through as gone through for us ; and we, believing in Plim, are judicially regarded before God as having passed throiigh all that He did. It does not appear to me that true faith in the apostle's statement can rest in a meaning short of this : So inany of vs (observe here the universality, every individual without exception) as were baptized into Jcsua Christ, v-'ere baptized into His death. A similar universality in a distributive individuality we have. Gal. iii, 27. As many of you," &o. (Ov. Bap., pp. 79. 80). — How the apostle's language will admit the faith of sponsors, is to me as incomprehensible as how it will admit the baptism of infants. T. Paekt. — '• To what were we baptized ? ' To the death of Christ,' that we might 104 SUBJECTS OF BAPTISM. in a spii-itual sense become conformed to our Redeemer's passion, and His subseqiient resurrection by dying tinto sin . . , and rising through Christ as now creatures, regenerated to another and a better life than that to which wo are naturally prone." — Expo, of Rom., on ch. vi. E. BosANQUET, having spoken of " the symbolical death of being plunged or buried in the baptismal water," asks, " Shall we be so inconsistent and false to our baptismal profession as to retvirn again to sin?" — Par., on Eom. vi, 1-3, 15, W. Teollope. — " The outward visible sign of baptism, as a Christian sacrament, is water, by the use of which is represented the spiritual cleansing of the soul ; or, in other words, its decdh unto sin, Sincl ncin hirfh imto righteousness, . . . St. Paul speaks of baptism as emblematic of the death and burial and resurrection of Christ, and in conformity thereto of our dying unto sin, and rising unto righteousness." " The Christian convert could not be ignorant, being of course previously instructed in the typical nature of hajytism, that in that rite the immersion of the body, in imita- tion of Christ's death and burial /or sin, implies an engagement on the pai-t of the baptized to die to sin ; and the rising from the water, in imitation of His resurrection, implies the commencement of a new life, pledged to virtiio and holiness. The expression, to be dead to a tiling denotes an abandoning thereof." Baptism "is em- blematical of the burial of the old man, or corrupt natirre," and of "spiritual resurrec- tion."— Anal. Theol., on Matt, xxviii, 19 ; Eom. vi, 1. Dr. A. Clarke. — " To he baptized into Christ is to receive the doctrine of Christ crucified, and to receive baptism as a proof of the genuineness of that faith, and the obligation to live according to its precepts." — Com., on Eom. vi, 3. E. Watson. — " In that rite we undergo a mystical death unto sin, a mystical sepa- ration from the world, which St. Paul calls being ' buried with Christ in or by baptism.' and a mystical resurrection to newness of life through Christ's resurrection from the dead." " This mystical death to sin he proceeds to attribute to the instrumentality of baptism, taking it to be an act of that faith in Christ, of which it was the external profession." " ' Know ye not that so many of us as were baptized into Jesus Christ were baptized into His death ?' We enter by this means into the experience of its elScacy in effecting a mystical death in us, in other words, we die with Him, or, as it is expressed in ver. 6, ' our old man is crucified with Him.' . . . We also mystically rise with Him, ' that like as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we also should walk in newness of life,' having new connexions, new habits, new em- ployments, and new hopes. We have a similar passage in Col. ii, 12, and it has a similar interpretation." " In baptism," " we make ourselves parties to the covenant, and thus ' set to our seal that God is true.' " " We pledge ourselves to trust wholly in Christ for pardon and salvation, and to obey His laws." " Baptism is the initiatory rite into a covenant which promises pardon and salvation to a true faith, of which it is the outward profession" (Theol. Inst., pp. 413, 414).— If these representations of Christian baptism are Scriptural, it cannot be intended for infants and the ungodly. Annotated Par. Bible, — " ' Baptized into Jesus Christ.' That is, into connexion with Him as the second Adam, the Origin and Head of the new race (comp. ver. 6 ; ch, V, 18, 19 ; 1 Cor. xv, 45-49), being perfected as such by His death ; to the great prin- ciple of which as the manifestation of God's righteousness (see ch. v, 17-19, 21), the baptized ought to be conformed." " The Judaizers insisted on circumcision as still necessary under the gospel. Therefore the apostle assures these Gentile believers that they had been already spiritually circumcised to Christ Himself in their conversion, in token of which they had been baptized. "^ — On Eom. vi, 3-5 ; Col. ii, 11, 12. Dr. Chalmeks, having spoken of immersion as primitive baptism, says, "We advert to this for the purpose of throwing light on the analogy that is instituted in these verses (Eom. vi, 3, 4). Jesus Christ by death underwent this sort of baptism, even immersion under the ground, whence He soon emerged again by His resurrection. We being baptized into His death, are conceived to have made a similar translation ; in the act of descending under the water of baptism to have resigned our old life, and in the act of ascending, to emerge into a second, or new life." — Lee. on Rom., on ch. vi. Many of the precediug and succeeding writers, it is presumed, would have sanctioned the following from the Baptist Dr. G. D. Boardman. — " Wouldst thou symbolize thy death unto sin and thy resurrection unto holiness ? Then be buried by baptism into death ; that like as Christ was raised up from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so thou also juayest walk in newness of life. Wouldst thou symboHze thy total defile- ON EOMANS VI, 2-4. 105 ment and thy desire for total purification ? Then arise and be baptized, and wash away thy sins. Wouidst thou symbolize thy belief in a buried and risen Saviour, and thy participation in His death and resurrection ? Then be buried with Him in baptism, wherein also arise with Him. Wouldst thou symbolize thy confident expectation that thou shalt share in His blissful immortality ? Then submit thyself to baptism, descending into the liquid tomb and emerging ; for if thou art planted together with Him in the likeness of His death, thou shalt be also in the likeness of His resurrection. . . . Not that there is anything in the ordinance which savours of regenerating or sanctifying tendency. For baptism is a symbol, not a power ; a shadow, not the substance. And it shadows forth at the same instant the most momentous truths in the history of Christ and in the history of the Christian ; all that Christ has suflered and done for us ; all that we mean to do and sufi'er for Christ ; all that we are by nature, and all that we are by grace. Verily none but a God infinite in counsel could have devised a rite so simple and yet so dense with meaning and glory !" — In Freeman of August 9th, 1867. Dr. J. MoEisoN. — " If the convert was sincere, his baptism was significant of all the spiritual blessings to which he had become heir ; he was ' buried with Christ by baptism into death, that like as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, he also should walk in newness of life.' If the convert was mistaken or hypo- critical, his baptism made no alteration in his spiritual condition and prospects." " ' Know ye not,' said Paul to the Eomans, ' that so many of us as wore baptized into Jesus Christ,' that is — into the profession of faith in His name — ' were baptized into His death?' "—Homi., pp. 264, 347. Dr. W. Hanna. — " Jesus and the Baptist, Philip and the eunuch, went down into the water and came up out of it — processes of descent and emergence which the apostle employs in two of the passages already quoted as illustrative of the believer's death to sin and life to righteousness, the burial with Christ, the rising again together with Him." " Taking baptism again as the outward sign and seal that the person on whom it was affixed had made the great spiritual transition from death to life, from unbelief to faith, had passed out of the kingdom of darkness into the kingdom of God's dear Son, we but proceed according to the ordinary usages of language in which the sign and the thing signified are often identified, the expressions denoting each interchanged with the other, when we say of every true believer, that he was buried by that baptism into Christ's death, and rose out of that baptism into newness of life." — The Forty, &c., pp. 257, 258, 262. W. Walford. — " 'Are yon ignorant,' &c ? An argument is now employed, drawn from the design of baptism, the symbolical and initiatory rite, by which a profession is made of obedience to the Christian institution, and a fixed purpose of using it, for every purpose to which it is designed to be subservient." The apostle " reminds them of their baptism, and warns them against the shocking inconsistency of contradicting by their conduct the supreme importance of the sacred truths which are involved in that significant ordinance. Occasion is thus ofi:ered for a distinct account of the im- plications that are involved in baptism, and of the momentous truths which are taught by this symbolical service. Baptism is spoken of first in general terms, as an act of adherence to Jesus Christ : 'as many of us as were baptized unto Christ.' . . . As then the rite of baptism was initiatory to a profession of faith in Christ, which involved a concurrence with Him in the purposes for which He died, the baptized are said to be baptized to His death, inasmuch as they were virtually pledged to die unto sin, as Christ died for sin, and would by a continuance in sin act in direct opposition to the intent and obligation of their baptism. In the same way the baptized may be said to be baptized unto the burial and resurrection of Christ, in which they are virtually pledged to depart from all iniquity, and to follow after a conformity to the perfect example of their exalted Redeemer" (Curce Rom., on Eom. vi, 3). — Instead of such expressions as they are virtuoUy pledged, &c., let the candid reader jixdge whether it would not even better represent apostolic reasoning to say they pledged themselves, jilthough Walford's explanation is explicitly condemnatory of infant baptism. 106 SUBJECTS OF BAPTISM. Dr. Wardlaw. — " To be ' baptized into Christ' is to be baptized into the faith of Him as the Messiah ; — into the faith of His Divine mission, character and work. To be baptized into His death is to be baptized into the faith of His death, in the view which the gospel gives of it as the death of a surety or substitute, making an atone- ment for the sins of those for whom He died. Now by being thus ' baptized into Hia death,' says the apostle, we are 'buried with Him.' The simple meaning of this expres- sion evidently is, that by being baptized into the faith of His death, as the death of our surety and substitute, we become partakers with Him in it" (Inf. Bap., pp.136, 137). — Let it not be forgotten that the apostle is here speaking of all the baptized. Dr. Bloompield. — " Oitinrs apethanomen, &c. The full sense is, ' we who have died and are dead,' at least by profession. . . . The rite of immersion in the bap- tismal water, and egress from it, were used as a symbol of breaking off all connexion with the present sinfid life, and giving oneself to a new and pure one" (Or, Tes., on Eom. vi, ii). " Paul enforces this obligation to Christian holiness from the engage- ment which every Christian comes under by baptism, of being conformed to the fellowship of Christ's sufferings, by crucifying the flesh with its affections and lusts" (Gr. Tes., on Rom. vi, 2, 6). '■' Baptize sthai els iina denotes to profess oneself any one's disciple by baptism, which rite was understood to bind the disciple to the ob- eervance of the doctrines enjoined by the teacher" (Rec. Syn., on Kom. vi, 3). In his supplemental volume he says, " The term siinetaphenicn has allusion to baptism, according to that mode in which it was originally administered, T/iz., hj immersion ; — a mode especially intended to represent at once the death, burial, and resurrection of Christ (the body being thus hidden in the water as in a tomb), and so serving to signify the dying unto sin on the part of the baptized, the destruction in them of the power of sin, and their rising from the death of sin unto a life of righteousness." Prof, C. Hodge. — " To be baptized into Jesus Christ, or unto Moses, or Paul, therefore, means to be baptized in order to be united to Christ, or Moses, or Paul, as their followers, the recipients of their doctrines, and expectants of the blessings which they have to bestow ; see Matt, xxviii, 19 ; 1 Cor. x, 2 ; 1 Cor. i, 13. . . . The idea of the whole verse, therefore, is, ' that as many as have been baptized into Jesus Christ have become intimately united with Him, so that they are united with Him in His death, conform to its object, and participate in the blessings for which Ho died. . . . Paul uses the expression, baptized into Christ, not for the mere external or formal profession of the religion of the gospel, but for the cordial reception of it, of which submission to the rite of baptism was the public and appointed expression." — Com. on Rom., on vi, 3. I. CoBBiN. — " Buried with Him. The design of baptism is to represent devoted- nessto God, which is a death to sin : that like, &c. If the sign be realized we die to sin, and are raised to holiness." A. Pridham. — " We are dead to sin. How then shall we live therein ? . ._ . The very outward act by which the new-born believer testified his passage in Christ from death into life, was a type and memorial of this most solemn and most blessed truth." He designates Paul's interrogatory, Know ye not? as a " half reproachful question." — Notes on Bom., on ch. vi. Dr. G. C. K'napp. — " We are, like Christ, biiried as dead persons by baptism, and shall arise, like Him, to a new life. , . . The image is here taken from baptized persons as they were immersed (buried), and as they emerged (rose again)." " Since immersion has been disused, the full significa.nce of this comparison is no longer per- ceived. So then by baptism we profess to receive Christ as our Teacher, Saviour, and Lord." — Theol. Lee, p. 431. Olshausen, — " The baptized person vows himself to the whole Christ" (Com.., on Eom. vi, 3, 4). Speaking of the symbolic character of the ordinance be says (on Ma,tt. iii, 10, 17), " One part of the act (the immersion), represents all that is of a negative characbcr, the removal of all tliat is old (Rom. vi, 4) ; and the other half (the coming up) indicating all that is of a positive character, the coming forth of all that is new." Dr. TvyEEDlE. — " Baptism thus involves in it something like a burial and a resur- rection. It i-n the act by which we declare our purpose to die unto sin and live unto righteousness — to be crucified unto the world and have the world crucified unto us — • to have our lives hid with Christ in God, so that, while we live, we live not unto our- selves, but unto Him who died for our sins, and rose again for our justification." — On Bap., p. 43. Bp. Wilson.—" Through faith of the operation of God who raised Christ from the dead. . . . This is most dili'^ently to bo observed. So in all the passages already cited describing the administration of baptism, the stress is laid on the ' faith,' tho ON ROMANS VI, 2-4. 107 ' repentance,' the ' calling' on the name of the Lord,' ' the word.' In like manner in other tests. . . . Faith is then the grand instrument of receiving the blessings set forth in baptism. This is the key to the controversy." " The word of God received by faith is the chief means of the change represeutod, sealed, and completed in bap- tism."— Expos. Lee, on Col. ii, 12. Dr. E. Valpy. — " So many errors were to be renounced, sins to be abandoned, lusts to be mortified, impurities to be corrected, so many and new duties to be per- formed by the faithful disciples of Christ ; nay, the change in the minds and hearts and conduct of those who received the gospel as the voiver of God unto salvation was so great that in the strong figurative language of Scripture, true believers were said to walk in newness of life, to become neiv creatures," &c. — Gr. Tes., on Bom. vi, 4. J. Saurin. — '■ The ceremony of wholly immersing in water, when we were baptized, signified that we died to sin ; and that of raising us again from our immersion, signi- fied that we would no more retiirn to those disorderly practices in which we lived before our conversion to Christianity." — Ser., vol. iii, p. 171. Rob.'s Trans. W. Thorn. — " The preposition eis ' into' Moses, in the text, is the same as that used in Rom. vi, 3, eis 'unto' Christ. The objects are not one and the same in person, but the baptized were brought into the like relation to their respective heads and leaders — Moses and Christ. The converts to Christianity were consecrated, set apart, or discipled unto Clirist, the Saviour, Law-giver, and Redeemer of the New Testament Church."— J?i/. Ba2}., p. 219. Dr. J. Brown. — " ' Know ye not,' says he, ' are you not aware that it is one of the first principles of the oracles of Christ, that all who are united to Him, are united to Him as having died, been buried, and raised again, and living a new and endless life ? ' The phrase, 'baptized into Jesus Christ,' occurs only here and in Gal. iii, 27, and can- not be understood of the baptism by water, for a plain reason, that baptism into Jesus Christ is uniforml.v represented as connected with what we know most certainly is often dissociated from, and in no case necessarily connected with, water baptism, ' Baptism into Christ' is that of which water baptism is the emblem — that union to Jesus Christ, which is connected with the belief of the truth which baptism emblema- tically represents, and of which when submitted to by a person of mature age, it is a solemn profession. He who is baptized into Jesus Christ is he who is united to Him by faith" (Expo, of Rom., on Rom. vi, 1-13). — That the expression "baptized into Jesus Christ" means more than the word " baptized," I admit. But if Dr. B. ard some others meaai that the words liaptized and baptism do not refer to the ordinance which Christians are enjoined to administer, their inconsistency with themselves, ard the absurdities into which they are plunged, I need not expose. Yet I will say that if the word '" baptized" does not here literally mean " baptized," because " into Jesus Christ" follows, then "baptizing," in Matt, xxviii, 19, does not literally mean "bap- tizing," because it is followed by " into the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost ;" and we may as well at once accept the glaring inconsistencies and perversions of Scripture in which on- feap^isKi the honoured "Friends" are immersed. Dr. D. Brown.—" Were baptized into His death — sealed with the seal of heaven, and as it were formally entered and articled to all the benefits and all the obligofior.s of Christian disciplcship in general, and of His death in particixlar. . . . Whoso, then, has been baptized into Christ's death has formally surrendered the whole stale and life of sin, as in Christ a dead thing. He has sealed himself to bo not only 'tte righteousness of God in Him,' but ' a new creature ;' and as he cannot be in Christie the one effect and not to the other, for they are one thing, he has bidden farewell, by baptism into Christ's death, to his entire connexion with sin. . . . To leave a dead body unburied is represented, alike in heathen authors as in Scripture, as the greatest indignity (Rev. xi. 8,9). It was fitting, therefore, that Christ, after 'dying for onr sins according to the Scriptures,' should ' descend into the lower parts of the earth' (Eph. iv, 9) . . . and we, in being ' buried with Him by our baptism into His death,' have by this public act severed our last link of connection with that whole sin- ful condition and life which Christ brought to an end in His death, that like as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father — i.e., by such a forth-putting of the Father's power as was the eflulgence of His own glory, even so we also (as risen to a new life with Him) shoidd xvalk in newness of life" (Com. oyi Rom., on Rom. \i 2-11). — Without agreeing with the Aberdeen Professor of Theology on baptism as a sealing ordinance, I admit, as in other cases, much of what he advances, andmainta n the utter impossibility of reconciling such an exposition of the oracles of God with either infant or indiscriminate baptism. Dr. T. W. Peile. — "As many of -ws as have been baptized into, i.e., become disciples ^ud followers of Christ Jesus ; compare 1 Cor. x, 2, ;pantes eis ton Mosen eba^tisanto, 108 SUBJECTS OF BAPTISM. — ' Ebapt. eis ton thanaion means , . . to profess an imitation of His death for Bin, by our death to sin.' Terrot." — Anno, on Rom., vi, 3. Dr. R. Wilson. — " When we arc said to be baptized into Jesns Christ, our bap- tism is the publio recognition and seal of relationship to Him." " Baptism into Christ's death, according to Dr. Carson, comprehends baptism into the faith of His death; and, without professing to have exhausted the import of the expression, we may safely maintain that the apostolic commission enjoins baptism into the faith of the Father," &c.—Inf. Bap., pp. 291, 309, 310. Dr. J. P. Smith.—" The object of the apostle is to urge to holiness. For this he adduces many arguments in chapters vi, vii, and viii. This (vi, 3) is one ; that by baptism we have made a solemn professsion of being the disciples and subjects of Christ" (First Lines of Theol., p. G71). — Can this apply to infants ? I am quite aware that the doctor maintains that in the words " buried by baptism" there is no allusion to immersion, but that being buried is introduced "merely to strengthen the idea of death!" Expatiating further on Eom. vi, 3, Dr. S. says, "When, therefore, we, by being baptized, took upon ourselves the solemn profession of being the disciples of Christ, we declared ourselves to be united to Him in His gracious design ; to receive Him as our gracious Redeemer from the guilt and condemnation due on account of sin, and to obey Him as our Lord wlio delivers us from the power and pollution, tho dominion, shame, and misery of sin"(p. 672). "\Yhen, therefore, we, by being baptized, took upon ourselves the solemn profession of being disciples of Christ, we declared ourselves to be united to Him in His gracious design ; to receive Him as our Redeemer , _ . . and to obey Him as our Lord" (p. 684). — What profession of being the dis- ciples of Christ, &c., do infants make in baptism ? Dr. D. Davidson, — " Baptized into Christ, is to be baptized into the faith of Him as the Messiah and Saviour ; comp. 1 Cor. x, 2. Baptized into His deoAh, is to be bap- tized into tho faith of His death as the atonement for sin, as dying in the room of sinners ; see Gal. iii, 27." After enlarging on the import of " buried with Him," he says, " This view of our Lord's chg^racter is received by all believers, and confessed in submitting to the ordinance of baptism." He also speaks of "the persuasion that Christ died and was buried for us, which faith is confessed in baptism." — Pock. Com., on Rom. vi, 3-5. Dr. L. Woods. — " The obvious design of the. apostle is to illustrate the character and obligation of believers from the circumstance that they are, in a sense, conformed to Christ's death." " This is what is signified by baptism. And so believers were baptized into Christ's death." " V/ater iised in baptism is a sign of that moral purifi- cation of believers." " Baptism as an appointed token or symbol, denotes that which is signified by the metaphor" (Works, vol. iii, pp. 453, 454). In his Lcc. on Inf. Bap., he says, on eis in Rom. vi, 3, " Most commentators (after Vitringa, Obs. Sac, iii, 22) explain eis as meaning, into the achiowled cjment of; with an implication of ainance, subjection, discipleship" (p. 215). He prefers this , '^ As many of us as have become devoted to Christ by baptism, or, as have been consecrated to Christ, and laid under peculiar obligations, or have taken up a piccidiar relation to him."- — There needed na backwardness in Dr. W. to paraphrase the words of Paul in sole application to be. lievers. He has before (p. 186) said : " Rom. vi, 3, 4 ; Col. ii, 12. In these texts be- lievers arc said to be buried with Christ in, or by baptism." Also, in speaking of our baptism into his death, as being " an internal, moral, spiritual transaction" (p. 215), he says, "We have engaged to die unto sin, as He died for it." Again, "The obvioiis design of the apostle is to illustrate the character and obligations oi believers" (p. 188). Yea (p. 189), " Water used in baptism is a sign of that moral purification of believers which the apostle moans to express by their being ' crucified,' and ' dead,' and conformed to Christ's death." Dr. J. Forbes speaks of Rom. vi, 1-14 in a manner utterly inconsistent with any other than believers' baptism. He says : " Of those that attach themselves by faith to Christ, the head of renewed humanity, all die with Him to sin, all rise with Him to a new life. By baptism we become incorporated," &c. "The union with Christ, to be genuine, must be svbjectivdy and progressively realized by us. It must be an intelligent, sympathising, co-operating union, that sees in all that Jesus has done, not only tho procuring cause, but the very mode and pattern of our recovery and cure." " ' Kno\v,' as you surely must, that death to sin, as resulting from Christ's death, was that which was especially signified and scaled to us by our incorporating union with Him in baptism, ' tho washing away of the filth of the" flesh,' and burying the old man under the waters of death." — Anal. Com., on Rom. pp. 259-262. Dr. Tholuck teaches that St. Paul is "endeavouring to demonstrate how a spiritual regeneration is necessarily connocted with tho reception of Christianity;" ON ROMANS Yl, 2-4. 109 that " the eis expresses the same as the baptismal formula, Matt, xxviii, 19-20 ;" that to be baptised into Christ's death is to " be baptized into fellowship with His death ;" that " the rite of baptism which takes place at the entrance into Christianity, mani- fests that it is the will of the Cliristian to conform spiritually to the death of Christ ;" and that " the ancients, and Hombergh, Chr. Schmid, and other moderns, construe eis ton thanaton with baptisniatos, aud again understand it to signify the death of Christ, into fellowship with which believers are baptized. "^JE'cc^o. of Eoni., vi, 3, 4. Dr. Thiersch speaks of the visible church " into which we are brought by bap- tism (Eom. vi, 3), having thereby put on Clirist (Gal. iii, 27), being dead with Him, risen with Him to a new life, and called to holiness (Eom. \i, 3)." — History, &c., vol. i, p. 149. Bp. Shuttleworth. — " To the faith of that great and glorious Being recollect that you have been consecrated, not by the rite of a more carnal circumcision, but by the circumcision of the heart, the spiritual circumcision of the Christian covenant ; namely, the putting away of the sinful propensities of the flesh ; and being buried with Christ by baptism, that you might rise again to a new and regenerated nature through your faith and reliance on that Divine power which raised our Redeemer him- self from the grave." — He speaks of the baptized as having " already submitted to receive " the ordinance, and of Paul's commission to preach the gospel, "not to bap- tize the converts," by such expressions ignoring the scriptural baptism of infants, in proper accordance with its non-existence. Neander. — " The usual form of submersion at baptism, practised by the Jews, was transferred to the Gentile Christians. Indeed this form was the most suitable to signify that which Christ intended to render an object of contemplation by such a symbol; the immersion of the whole man in the spirit of anew life" (His. of the Planting, &c., p. 161). — The language of Neander, like that of the apostle, is opposed equally to sprinkling as baptism, and to the baptism of infants and known unbe- lievers. At pp. 494, 495, he says, " The two-fold relation of man to the former stand- ing-point of life which he had renounced, and to that new one which he had embraced, is here signified — entering into the communion of the death of Christ, into a believing appropriation of the work of redemption accomplished by His death, dj'ing with Him in spirit, to the world in which man has hitherto lived ; mortifying self as it hereto- fore existed, and by faith in His resurrection as a pledge of resurrection to an eternal Divine life in a transformed personality, rising to a new life, devoted no longer to the world but to Him alone ; Eom. vi, 4. In accordance with this train of thought, Paul terms baptism, a baptism into the death of Christ, and for the same reason, he could also call it a baptism into the resurrection of Christ." Dr. E. Burton. — Each person, "when he is baptized," " then professes his faith in the death of Christ, and he is said figiaratively to die with Him at baptism." " Each person figuratively at baptism puts off the body which was condemned to death for sin, and rises again with a new body" Gr. Tes.. on Eom. vi, 3 ; Col. ii, 11. The Five Clergymen, Dr. Barrow, Dr. Moberly, Dean Alford, W. G. Humphi-y, aud Bp. Ellicott render Rom. ^-i, 3 " Know ye not that all icc i':ho," &c.; and remark, " ' So many of us ' suggests the idea of a residue, imbaptized, more forcibly than the Greek osoi does" (Rom. revi. hy Five Clcr.). Could apostolic language bo desired to teach more clearly the one baptism of believers? Can Paul speaking of all the baptized be speaking of any others than those who had been baptized as professing believers, to whom an appeal could be made from their personal and voluntary act ? Dean Alfobd. — "No encouragement given hereby (see ch. v, 20) to a life in sin ; for the baptized are dead to sin, and walk in a new (vv. 1-7) life, and one (vv. 8-11 dedicated to God " (Gr. Tes., on Contents of chs. vi-viii). "We who (the original word describes quality, not merely matter of fact) died (not ' are dead,' as in A. V.; the true reference is thus most unfortunately lost, the time referred to being that of our baptism) unto sin." Baptized into " His death. The apostle refers (1) to an ac- knowledged fact, in the signification, and perhaps in the manner (see below) of bap- tism,— -that it puts upon us (Gal. iii, 27) a .state of conformity with, and participation in Christ ;— and (2) that this state involves a death te amartio, even as 'He died te amartia_."_ "The process itself of baptism is regarded as the burial of the former lite : originally perhaps owmg to the practice of immersion, which would most na- turally give rise to the idea."— (7r. Tes., on Eom. vi, 2, 3 ; Col. ii 12. Dr. A. Barnes.— "|The simple argument in this verse and the two following is that by our very profession made m baptism, we have renounced sin. and have pledsed our- selves to hve to God So_ mciyiyofns. &c.' All who were baptized, i.e., all profe«=ing " Were baptized into Hs .death. We were baptized with special reference to His death. Our baptism had a strong resemblance to His death. By that He became 110 SUBJECTS OF BAPTISM. insensible to the things of the world ; by baptism we in like manner became dead to sin." Paul's design "was to show that by the solemn profession made at onr bap- tism, we had become dead to sin, as Christ was dead to the living world around Him when He was buried ; and that as He was raised up to life, so we also should rise to a new life." "Christ rose from death in the sepulchre; and so we are bound by our vows at baptism to rise to a holy life." " By our very baptism, by our very profes- sion, we have become dead to sin, as Chi-ist became dead." — Can any man consistently adopt the above, and practise infant baptism ? ^'Know this. We all know this. All Christians are supposed to know this" (Com. on Eom. vi, 3, 4, 6). " Through the faith of the operation of God. By a firm belief on the agency of God in raising Him up ; that is, a belief of the fact that God has raised Him from the dead. . . . The belief of this is shown by our baptism" (Com., on vol. ii, 12). Connect with these quotations another, " Baptism is the rite by which we are initiated into the Church." —On Heb. vi, 2, Dr. J. Stacey, on the language of Paul, in Rom. vi, 3, 4, and Col. ii, 12, says : " In the first passage, that in Rom. vi, 3, 4, his object is to indicate the doctrine of gratuitous justification from the possible charge of licentiousness, and in both it is to assert the complete identification of the believer with Christ in His redeeming work. The believer is one with Christ in His death, being dead unto sin ; in His burial, being separated from the present evil world; in His resurrection, being quickened with Him, and made to walk with Him in newness of life " (p. 232). " They who were baptized into Christ were ' dead to sin,' ' planted together in the likeness of His death,' ' cruci- fied with Him, that the body of sin might be destroyed, that henceforth they should not serve sin ' " (p. 234). — What indeed can be more obvious than that the baptized in apostolic times professed this ? And that they could be appealed to on the ground of baptismal profession and engagement. And what can be further from infant and indiscriminate baptism ? May we not, on infant and indiscriminate baptism, apply to the inspired declaration the words of Dr. S., that "no critical violence can coerce them into a single utterance in its favour " (p. 236) ? If the apostle is here speaking of "the complete identification of the believer with Christ," and is speaking of all the baptized, can Christian baptism be other than believers' baptism ? F. W. Robertson, on 1 Cor., says, " To whom were ye then baptized ? To whom did ye pledge yourselves in discipleship ? " " From the epistle to the Romans we find that antinomianism had crept into the church, and that there were some who said, that if only men believed, it did viot matter that they sinned. How does St. Paul meet this ? By an appeal to baptism he says, God forbid. How shall we who are dead to sin, live any longer therein ? Know ye not that so many of us as were bap- tized into Jesus Christ were baptized into His death ? Buried with Him by baptism ; in the very form of that sacrament there was a protest against antinomianism." Dr. P. Faiebairn. — ^"The apostle is viewing baptism as the initiatory ordinance that exhibits and confirms the believer's union to Christ, the crucified and risen Re- deemer ; and to give the greater distinction to the representation, he places the be- liever's fellowship with Christ successively in connexion with the several stages of of Christ's redemptive work — His death, burial, and resurrection, reckoning them as so many stages in the believer's personal history."- — Herm. Manu., p. 280. Dr. Barth. — " The expression [buried] appears particularly appropriate when we recollect the custom prevalent at the time of immersing the whole body in baptism." " By baptism into the death of Christ we have been represented as persons spiritually dead, in order that now, conformably to His bodily resurrection, we also may spirita- ally rise." — Bi. Man., on Rom. vi, 3, 4, Dr. Eadie. — Paul " speaks, in his letter to the Romans, of some who are buried with Christ in baptism unto death ; wherein also they are risen with Him unto new- ness of life (Rom. vi, 4). And again in his letter to the Colossians, he speaks of those who were buried with Christ in baptism, and were risen with Him through the faith of the operation of God, who hath raised Him from the dead (Col. ii. 12). From these expressions we may infer that the apostle regarded baptism as the symbol of a present resurrection fx'om the death of trespasses and sins, to a life of holiness" (Bib. Cy., Art. Bap.).- — Assuredly those who will accept a natural interpretation of inspired words hero and elsewhere, must regard baptism as symbolic of a " present " change, and one of all others the most important during our earthly probation. But admitting this, what becomes of infant and indiscriminate baptism ? In the previous volume, on the Act of baptism, may be seen the testi- mony of Drs. Towerson, Edwards, Balguy, and several more, which, ON 1 COE. I, 13-17 ; XVI, 15. Ill though pertinent to the Siihjecls of baptism, is not here reproduced. Let the reader judge whether the apostle in the beginning of this chapter, Rom. vi, is not aUuding to baptism, I say not to the mode, but to the act of baptism, to baptism itself; yea, as certainly as our Saviour speaks of it in Matt, xxviii, 19, or Mark xvi, 16 ; and whether apostolic language does not undeniably teach that all who were baptized were supposed to have experienced or professed repentance of sin and faith in our only Redeemer from its guilt, dominion, and consequences, to whom, and on the ground of their profession in baptism, he could appeal for holiness of life. § 2. On 1 Cor. i, 13-17 ; xvi, 15. Calvin. — " There is nothing holier, or better, or safer, than to be contented with the authority of Christ alone." — Ins., v. 4, ch. xv, sec. 19. R. Watson. — " There are no express examples in the New Testament of Christ and Ilia apostles baptizing infants." — Bib. and Theol. Die. Art. Bap. A. A. Hodge. — " To be baptized in the name of Paul (eis to onoma) 1 Cor. i, 13 . . . is, on the part of the baptized, to be made the believing and obedient disciples of Paul." — Outl. of Theol., p. 486. In 1 Cor. i, 12-17, we read, " Now this I say, that every one of you saith, I am of Paul, and I of Apllos, and I of Cephas, and I of Christ. Is Christ divided ? Was Paul crucified for you ? or were ye baptized in the name of Paul ? I thank God that I baptized none of 3'ou but Crispus and Gains ; lest any should say that I had baptized in mine own name. And I baptized also the household of Stephanas : besides, I know not whether I baptized any other. For Christ sent me not to baptize, but to preach the gospel." It will be admitted that Paul's personally baptizing of certain infants at Corinth could not have led to such results as arc here mentioned, and that those who about four or five years before were in- fants, could not now be a distracted and divided portion of this church. I am aware that our opponents suppose adults to have been baptized along with infants, and that many of them deny infant membership. Do not the apostle's words teach that he had not baptized by his own authority, or into his own name, as if he were their Lord and Saviour ; that he, as well as ApoUos and Cephas, had not baptized into any other name than that of Christ ; and that his gi'eat attention, in accordance with the will of his Divine Master, had been given to the preaching of the gospel, and thus to the production of that faith which is recognized in the bajitismal ordinance, an ordinance which, with few exceptions, by others than Paul, and with his sanction, had been administered at Corinth ? Do not our opponents generally admit that baptizing into the name of Christ is a bap- tism into professed faith in Christ and devotedness to Him ? It is true the apostle mentions that he had baptized Crispus and Gaius, and " also the household of Stephanas." The last expression proves not that he baptized little children, as it proves not that there were any little children in the household of Stephanas. A household may or may not consist partly of little children. And it devolves on those who, from the baptized household of Stephanas, would baptize infants and little children, to prove their existence in this household. We read in this epistle (xvi, 15), "Ye 112 SUBJECTS OF BAPTISM. know tlie house ef Stephanas, that it is the first-fruits of Achaia ; and that they have addicted themselves to the ministry of the saints." Such an expression ought to satisfy every one that infant or indiscriminate baptism has here not the shghtest encouragement. It might be afiirmed that the divided and disorderly state of the Corinthian church encourages the idea that baptism was indiscriminate, but I regard the idea as utterly opposed to apostolic reasoning here and in every other place. Also those advocates of indiscriminate baptism whom especially I am opposing, deny that in- discriminate church membership is Scriptural, admitting that this requires a credible profession of faith. With them, therefore, a disorderly church is no proof of indiscriminate baptism. The following are Pfcdobaptist opinions on different parts of this inspired record. Dr. S. Claeke. — '■' Tliey liad all been instructed in one and the same faith ; they had all been baptized with one and the same baptism ; they had all professed them- selves disciples of one only Lord and Saviour, Jesus Christ ; and yet afterwards falling into partiea," &c. " Wore ye baptized in the name of Paul ? is as much as if he had said, Am I your master P Are ye my disciples ? Do ye profess a religion of mine ? Have I taught you any doctrine of my own P" — Ser. on 1 Cor. i, 13. J. BnowN. — " Were ye baptized by the authority, or into the faith, worship, and obedience of us P" — Self Int. Bi., on 1 Cor. i, 13-16. Dr. Doddridge. — " They have set themselves, &c. This seems to imply that it was the generous care of the whole family to assist their fellow-Christians ; so that there was not a member of it which did not do its part." " For Christ sent me not to baptize ; which was an office that others of a much inferior rank might as well per- form ; but to preach the gospel, and thereby to bring persons to that faith which would entitle them to this appropriate ordinance of Christianity." — Com., on 1 Cor. xvi, 15 ; i, 13. C. Taylok. — " You know the household of Stephanas . . . that they have set themselves to do services of accommodation (to diaconize) to the saints." Dr. Guise. — " It therefore seems that the family of Stephanas were all adult be- lievers, and so were baptized on their own personal profession of faith in Christ." — In Dr. Chaplin's Letters on Bap., p. 70. Dr. B. Grosvenoe. — " The argument," on 1 Cor. i, 10-13, "is this, that He who is oiir Lord, our Head, our Master, whose doctrine we profess, whoso name we were baptized into, His name we should wear ; and not the names of our fellow-Christians, no, not of apostles themselves." — Essay on the Chr. Name, p. 49. J. Conder. — " ' I thank God I baptized none of you, save Crispus and Gains, lest any should say I had baptized in m}-^ own name,' indicates that to baptize in the name of any one, was familiai'ly significant of proselyting to his doctrines and authority as the founder of the sect." — Can a babe be thus proselyted ? Mr. C. speaks also of " the believing acceptation of the doctrine of the apostles, having given birth to a moral change, of which baptism was at that early period not less an evident token than an emblem." — Prot. None., pp. 454, 455, 447, 448. Bp. Taylor. — "As for the conjecture concerning the family of Stephanas, at the best it is but a conjecture ; and besides that, it is not proved that there were children in the family. Tet, if that were granted, it follows not that they wore baptized, be- catiso by whole families, in Scripture, is meant all persons of reason and age within the family ; for it is said Jof the ruler at Capernaum, that he believed and all his house ; now you may also suppose that in his house were little babes, that is likely enough, and you may suppose that they did believe too before they could understand, but that is not so likely, and then the argument from the baptizing of Stephanas's household may be allowed just as probable ; but this is unman-liko to bnild upon such slight airy conjectiu'es" fOn Lib. of Prop /(..). — Take this and some others from Bp. Taylor as what he supposes the Baptist might say. Dr. Hammond. — "I think it imrcasonable that the apostle's bare mention of bap- tizing his household, should be thought competent to conclude that infants were bap- tized by him ; when it is uncertain whether there were any siich at all in his house." — Works, vol. i, p. 494. ON 1 COE. I, 13-17; XVI, 15. 113 Dr. S. Addington speaks of "the first ministers of Clirist" as baptizing "the households of believers, declaring their children, as theirs, holy ; and assuring them that the promise is to them, as such" (On Bap., p. 145). — Assertions based on assvimp- tion instead of fact, are of no value. The above is worthy of the interpretation of Acts svi, oi : "And he rejoiced in (or over) all his house, having (i.e., he having) be- lieved in God." " He now rejoiced in and over all his house, with a new, a devout joy, as having in that solemn ordinance, committed himself and them into the hands of God, hoping for his own salvation and theirs from Him." " The words," says he (p. 173), not only say nothing of his household's faith, but rather imply that they were incapable of it, as they express his act only on their account and his own." He be- lieves household is mentioned in preference to children because " servants were some- times admitted with children" (p. 174). Dr. Macknight. — " The family of Stephanas seem all to have been adults when they were baptized, for they are said, ch. xvi, 15, to have devoted themselves to the ministry of the saints." — Note, on 1 Cor. i, 16. W. J. Shrbwsburt, who on Lydia and her house, has said, " Of what her house- hold consisted, whether of domestics only, or of domestics and children, we have no m.eans of ascertaining," and who, on the jailer and all his, has said, " Here also it is not clear, so as to make the matter certain and indisputable, whether or not there were children ; or if children, any who were infants or veiy young," says on the house of Stephanas, " We have no positive information as to the number or age of the per- sons who composed the house or household of Stephanas." — Inf. Bap., pp. 152, 153, 156. Olshaitsen. — " For infant baptism nothing is to be deduced from the word oi^'os." " The adult members of the family, or the slaves likewise, might be signified by it." — Com., on 1 Cor. i, 1-17. Neandee. — " We cannot infer the existence of infant baptism from the instances of the baptism of whole families, for the passage in 1 Cor. xvi, 15, shews the fallacy of such a conclusion, as from that it appears that the whole family of Stephanas, who were baptized by Paul, consisted of adults." — His. of Flanting, &e., p. 163. J. G. Bevan. — " 1 Cor. i, 13. In the name. Gr, Into the name. Eis properly signifies into. So the French translate it here. The phrase baptisthenai eis, to he baptized into any one's name, or into any one, is solemnly by that ceremony to enter himself a disciple of him into whose name he is baptized, with profession to receive his doctrine and rules, and submit to his authority : a very good argument here why they should be called by no one's name but Christ's. Locke." — Life of Paul, -pp. 95, 96. Blacklet and Hawes. — " Crucified — baptized. — The cross and baptism both claim us belonging to Christ. They are both relative terms, severally implying re- demption and self -dedication." — Coin., on 1 Cor. i, 13. Dr. A. Barnes. — " Were ye baptized in the name of Paul? Or into, or imto the name of Paul. See Note, Matt, xsviii, 19. To be baptized into or unto any one, is to be devoted to him, to receive and acknowledge him as a teacher, professing to receive his rtdes, and to be governed by his authority" (Com., on 1 Cor. i, 13). — If such is the import of baptizing into Christ, which was divinely enjoined, and by the apostles in- variably practised, how absurd the chimera that the apostles baptized " the entire household, whatever might be the age, including domestic slaves, and children;" that thus '• the head of a family gave up the entire household to God !" Dr. J. Jacobi. — "The advocates in former ages, (now hardly any) used to appeal to jMatt. xix, 14 ; but their strongest argument in its favour is the regulation of bap- tizing aU the members of a house and family (1 Cor. svi, 15 ; Acts xvi, 33 ; xviii, 8). In none of these instances has it been proved that there were little children among them. But even supposing that there were, there was no necessity for excluding them from baptism in plain words, since such exclusion was understood as a matter of course" (In Dr. Kitto's Cy. of Bib. Lit. Art. Bap.). — Well may we speak of "the first- fruits of Achaia," as the first converts to the Christian faith in Aehaia. And well might it be %vritten by Dr. Doddridge concerning Stephanas and his house, " He and they being among the first that were converted to Christianity in all your country;" by Dr. Guise, " The first family of converts in all Achaia;" by Wesley, "The first converts in that province ;" and by Barnes, " They were the first converted to the Christian religion in Achaia." Dr. E. Burton. — " Stephanas and his family were the first Corinthian converts." —Or. Tes., on 1 Cor. i, 16. A. C. Barrett. — " It may be expected that those whom the apostle baptized with hisown hands were converts distinguished from the rest by some circumstance of eminence or of connexion with him. Accordingly we find that Crispus," &G.—Compan., &c., p. 202. J 114 SUBJECTS OF BAPTISM. Dr. BivOOMFiELD. — '• ' To be baptized to, or to the name of, any one,' is to be bound, or to bind oneself, by that form, to obey the religious injunctions of such a person, whether of faith or practice. See Matt, xxviii, 19." — Rec. Syn., on 1 Cor. i, 13. Dr. C. Hodge. — " By baptism we arc brought into the number of the disciples and followers of him into whose name, or in reference to whom, we are baptized" (Com., on 1 Cor. i, 13). — I should rather have said, number of the avowed disciples, &c. Dr. W. Hanna. — " True, we have no distinct mention of an infant being baptized, but we are to remember ihat at the first and for some time no instance of the separate baptism of an infant could occur ; and considering the narrow space which the New Testament narrative covers, the omission of any reference to infant baptism is not remark- able. It is rather remarkable, on the other hand, that among the few recorded cases the baptism of as many as four Christian families should have been recorded — those of Lydia, the Phili]ppian jailer, Cornelius, and Stephanas — in which families there may have been some of tender age. We cannot, indeed, prove that there were infants in any of these four households. We cannot by any clear and certain instance prove that infant baptism was an apostolic institute" (The Forty, &c., p. 2G8). — Was more shadowy support of a positive institution ever exhibited ? The New Testament records, .supposed to embrace, subsequent to Christ's ascension, 67 years ; and from Christ's ascension to Peter's mention of baptism in his first epistle, 35 years ; from Christ's ascension to the end of Acts, 33 years ; fro:u Christ's ascension to Paul's first preach- ing of the gospel at Corinth, where he baptized the household of Stephanas, 27 years ; * are sucha "narrow space," that "the omission of any reference to infant baptism is not remarkable !" And though baptism is supposed to enter into the place of circumcision, and circumcision commenced with father and son, servant bought or born, on the self- .same day, yet " at the first and for some time no instance of the separate baptism of an infant could occur !" — While Scripture contains no allusion to the baptism of infants along with their parents or separate from them, can the practice have God's approval ? Dr. Hallet, on the baptized households of Scripture, says : " Whether tliere were or were not children, we are not told ; but we are told that the households were bap- tized, and therefore wc conclude that baptism is something which can be done to households." — We all admit the notable conclusion that the baptism of households is possible, and further, that it is a Scriptural fact. Yet could any man, not warped by prejudice, teach that " as the baptism of households is mentioned in three instances, and as in some of the other instances there were no households, and might not have been in any," there is " an argument of the nature of undesigned coincidence," afford- ing confirmatory evidence "that baptism in the apostolic age was administered to all wlio were brought under the instruction of the church" (vol. xv, p. 132) ! But even this excludes infants. Nor do we deny the Scriptural eligibility to baptism of persons of any age who receive the truth as it is in Jesus. If Dr. H. on these passages had spoken of the apostle as seldom baptizing personally, and as attaching no importance to the person by whom the ordiaance is administered, he would have spoken less deceptively than by speaking of the epistle as wi-itten " many years" after the bap- tism of the house of Stephanas, and as affording present evidence that God had blessed the instruction Paul had previously given to Stephanas and his [infant and other] children whom he had previously baptized in accordance with the apostolic practice of baptizing "the children of every family brought imder Christian instruction." A. M'Lean (Baptist) says : "Who would ever imagine that the saints, Cajsar's household, who sent their salutations to the church at Philippi, were only a nursery of sucklings ? Phil, iv, 22. Yet something like this must be supposed, if your argu- ment have any consistency ; else it will follow that adults as well as infants, infidels as well as believers, servants as well as sons, must every one of them be baptized upon the single profession of the parent or master ; for they are all included in the Scrij)- ture use of the word household." — Works, vol. vii, pp. 13G, 137. Dr. Innes says : " On the principle of infant baptism, would not every household be baptized, where the head of it embraced the gospel ? It seems unnatural, then, to specify three, where the number must have been so great. But take the other supposition, that baptism was only administered in connexion with a profession, and this at once accounts for such a specification. Amidst the numerous conversions of that period, three cases occurred where all the members of the household embraced the gospel at the same time : and this circumstance, as being something out of the usual course of things, is recorded."— T/ie Reign of Heaven, pp. 42, 43. * These dates arc from Bagster's Comprehensive Bible. Webster and Wilkinson place Peter's first epistlo before any of Pauls. I have uot sufficiently examined facts to speak on this de- cisively or strongly. ON 1 COR. I, 13-17 ; XYT, 15. 115 Dr. Stacet very differently and mncli less correctly thus reasons : " Of the several instances of apostolic baptism recorded in the New Testament, three are of whole families." — Thus, without any "repeal of the law," " a Divine enactment is translated from a Jewish into a Christian observance !" The baptism of three whole families is with Dr. S. wonderfully prolific of supposed fact^ aud proofs. But "how weak must that system be which presents to the public mind the history of the baptism of house- holds as one of its most powerful arguments in favour of infant baptism !" The baptism of the household of Stephanas being the hist recorded baptism in the New Testament, I shall quote some of Professor Wilson's remarks on Dr. Halley's opinion that in not one of the New Testament baptisms is there "the slightest intimation of any prerequisite whatever." Dr. W. deems himself on this sentiment " entitled to affirm that one more utterly unfounded we have seldom met. . . . We confidently appeal to every recorded case of apostolic baptism for proof of the fact that repentance and faith professed, were uniformly regarded as requisite quali- fications for the ordinance. A profession may to some extent be implied in merely applying for, or submitting to the ordinance ; but we do not trust to implication. What we contend for is that present sorrow for sin, and looking unto Jesus for salvation, professed by candidates for baptism, and believed by the administrator, in the judgment of charity, to be genuine, form prerequisite qualifications for the ordinance ; and these qualifications, more or less fully developed, we find in all examples of New Testament baptism. ... No man ought to delay baptism for the sake of mere delay ; and again, no reasonable man will deny that a pro- fession of faith 'of a few hours' standing' may, in certain circumstances, be perfectly satisfactory. . . . The scoffing or profanity he must righteously regard as the index of a state of feehng wholly incompatible with the character of the ordinance ; and if the moral state of the candi- date is to bo taken into account at all, we should require some adequate reason for rejecting none hitt those iclio apphj ivUh obtrusive scoffing and profduiti/. We have no idea of the practicability of eliciting or even inferi'ing this singular rule of procedure from the record of apostolic baptisms." There is according to some of our opponents no interpolation of Scrip- ture in maintaining that we are taught to disciple by baptizing, and to baptize all within the range of possibility except scoffing applicants, but a misintei-pretation of Scripture in belie^•mg that we are commanded to baptize disciples ! Prof. W. thus proceeds : " Baptism was administered without delay to the three thousand converts at Jerusalem, and the case is appealed to as furnishing a triumphant defence of the latitudinarian system. But did not these converts, prior to baptism, evince the deepest distress and alarm on account of sin, coupled with the expression of an earnest solicitude to obtain salvation ; and when the gospel message was announced to them in all its appropriate and generous provisions, did they not discover so much of the spirit of faith as justified the sacred historian in stating that ' they gladly received the word ?' They thus stood forward publicly and resolutely to embrace a cause which was covered with scorn and obloquy by the dominant party, and which the rulers of the Jews were 116 SUBJECTS OF BAPTISM. ready to crucify as they had crucified its wonderful Founder. , . , With a similar profession, or one attended with equal evidence of truth- fulness, I should feel abundantly satisfied" (Inf. Bap., pp. 375-379). Yea, *' a full induction of instances warrants the conclusion that the New Testament knows no" " baptism irrespective of a credible profession of faith in Christ." "When the "gospel enters the bosoms of families, and as a cheering result whole families" are converted, then are whole famihes baptized. § 3. On 1 CoR. X, 1, 2. In 1 Cor. X, 1, 2, we read : "Moreover, brethren, I would not that ye should be ignorant, how that all our fathers were under the cloud, and all passed through the sea, and were all baptized unto (into) Moses in the cloud and in the sea." Here the whole nation, under Moses being divinely guided, in their passage through the sea were baptized in the cloud and in the sea ; although it is of the fathers that the apostle speaks, from the in- consistency and apostacy of many of whom the apostle reasons, and solemnly and earnestly warns Christians. The argument from this passage in favour of the baptizing of infants, either proves nothing by pro"\dng too much, or it proves the propriety of baptizing all the unbaptized, irrespec- tive of character as well as age, yea, of being alive or dead (see Num. xiv, 22-29 ; Heb. iii, 16-19 ; Ex. xiii, 19). The inferential admonition from the whole is, "Let him that thinketh he standeth take heed lest he fall" (ver. 12). This was addressed and is appropriate to professed and bap- tized believers, but not to infants and unbelievers. That infants are referred to by the apostle as being in this baptism of the Jewish fathers " consecrated to God," may be deemed a little less dubious than that the goods and cattle of the Jewish fathers were thus consecrated to God. When we speak of being entertained, honoured, or despised by a family or by a nation, our language has reference to those whose age and knowledge enable them to take part in this. I admit that children were encompassed by the cloud and sea equally with the fathers ; but those who remember the facts respecting the embalmed Joseph brought along with them, re- specting their cattle and goods, and respecting uuregenerate adults, unless all were then converted, and who accept the import of " baptized into," which most Ptedobaptists acknowledge, who attend to apostolic inference from the baptism of the Jewish fathers, and who remember apostolic silence in all places respecting the baptism of infants, will shrink from maintaining that the passage aftbrds the least sanction to our baptizing of infants. The following is a portion of Psedobaptist testimony on this Scripture. Dr. D. Davidson. — "Baptized unto Moses, that is, declared their belief in his doc- trine, and entire submission to him as theii* prophet, guide, and ruler, whom God appointed them. , . . Dr. P. Smith thinka that Moses is put metonymieally for the institutes of religion revealed by him, as in 2 Cor. iii. 15. Hence the idea is, that Israel, delivered from the Eg-yptians, were brought imder ol)!i;-^ati()n to obey Moses in all that God enjoined them by him, just as C!hristians, saved by faith, are baptized into Christ, that is, consecrated to His service." — Pod: Com., on 1 Cor. x, 2. ON 1 COR. X, 1, 2. 117 Dr. John Scott. — "Indeed the very phrase baptized into Jesits Christ can import no less than a solemn resignation of ourselves to Christ in baptism. For so the ijhrase baptized into Moses, 1 Cor. x, 2. plainly denotes the Jews giving up themselves to him, to be governed by him, as the minister of God." — Chris. Life, p. ii, eh. vii, § 9. Dr. B. Gf.osvenok. — " To be baptized into any one"s name, is, solemnly, by that ceremony, to enter himself a disciple of him into whose name he is baptized, with pro- fession to receive his doctrine and rides, and submit to his authority." — Essay on tlie Christian Kame,yi. 50. Bengel. — " They were baptized unto Moses as the servant of God, Ex. xiv, 31, be- cause they had begun to believe (in) him, and that they might afterwards believe (in) him." — Gno., on 1 Cor. s, 2. Dr. S. Clarke. — " The action of baptism, or the external signification of this in- ward change, is styled a being baptized in, or into the name of the Teacher, whose disciple, or the follower of whose doc^trine the baptized person hereby prof esses himself to be. Thus the children of Israel professed themselves to be followers of that religion which God taught them by Moses, therefore they are said by the apostle to have been all baptized unto Moses in the cloud and in the sea." — Ser., vol. iv., pp. 82, 83. I CoBBiN. — " Baptized unto Moses. Testified belief in his mission by following him" (Com., on 1 Cor. x, 1). — I do not maintain that comments on this passage, of which many, like this by Ingram Cobbin, could bo produced, convey the whole mean- ing, inasmuch as also the position of the Jewish fathers led to the apostolic designa- tion ; but I maintain that such comments are sufficiently opposed to the baptizing of infants being proved or encouraged by this passage. A. A. LiVERMOBE. — " Baptized into Jesus Christ. So was it said of the Israelites, that they were baptized into Moses in the cloud and in the sea, 1 Cor. x, 2. This mode of expression means that they took upon themselves the profession of a faith or religion by such a rite as baptism, or figuratively by whatever outward sign." — Com. on Rom., on vi, 3. Dr. G. Hill. — '• The Jews are said by the apostle Paul to have been 'baptized unto Moses,' at the time when they followed him through the Red Sea, as the servant of God sent to be their leader." — Lee. in Div., vol. ii, p. 331. Dr. Bloomfield. — " Baptism, it must be remembered, was a .symbolical rite, by wliich any one bound himself to faith and obedience to any teacher of religion, and the baptism itself was a form of initiation and inauguration into tliat religion. Thus the sense is, 'they were by passing under the cloud and through the sea, as it were baptized, or initiated into the religion promulgated by Moses, and thus thoroughly recognized his Divine mission, and bound themselves in future to obey his instructions." — Uee. tized are said to have put on Christ." " All that are duly baptized are baptized into Christ : therefore they are supposed to profess that faith by wliich men are united and engrafted into Christ." Again (p. 112), "All that are baptized have professedly put on Christ." J. Trapp. — " Have put on Christ. To justification and sanctificatiou" (Com., on Gal. iii, 27). — Do baptized infants thus put on Christ ? Dr. Macknight. — " As many of you as have been baptized into Christ, have there- by professed that ye have put on the very temper and virtues of Christ" (Com., on Gal. iii, 27). " To put on Chi-ist, is to foUow His doctrine, precepts, and example." — Com., on Rom. xiii, 14. J. Wesley. — " For as many of you as have testified your faith by being baptized in the name of Christ, have put on Christ — have received Him as your righteousness, and are therefore sons of God through Him." Dr. A. Clarke. — " As many of you as have been haptized into Christ. All of you who have believed in Christ as the promised Messiah, and received baptism as a public proof that ye had received Christ as your Lord and Sa^doiu-, have put on Christ." " To put on or to be clothed with one, is to assume the person and character of that one." " The profession of Christianity is an assumption of the character of Clu-ist" (Com., on Gal. iii, 27). "Putting on, or being clothed with Jesus Christ," says he, " signifies receiving and believing the gospel, and consequently taking its maxims for the goverment of life, having the mind that was in Christ." — Com., on Eom. xiii, 14. J. Benson. — " As many of yon as have been baptized into Christ— in consequence of your believing in Him with your heart unto righteousness, and have thereby testified and professed yoiu- faith in Him, have put on Christ — have received Him as your righteousness and sanctification." M. Henry. — " This faith in Christ whereby they became the children of God, he acquaints us, ver. 27, was what they professed in baptism ; for, ho adds, As many of you as have been baptized into Christ, have put on Christ ; Laving in baptism professed their faith in Him, they were thereby devoted to Him, and had, as it were, put on His livery and declared themselves His servants and disciples." " In our baptism we put on Christ, becaiise we profess our discipleship to Him." — Com., on Gal. iii, 27. Dr. Doddridge. — " For so many of you as have been baptized unto Christ, and so have taken upon you the solemn profession of His religion, may then be said to have put on Christ, to be clothed with His character, and covered with His righteous- ness" (Para., on Gal. iii, 27). — On Eom. xiii, 14, he f-ays, "Put on the Lord Jesus Christ. A strong expression for endeavouring to bo clothed with all the virtues and graces which composed His character." " It is observable that the apostle does not say, ' Put on purity and sobriety, peacefulness and beneroleuce ; but he in eflect says all at once in saying, ' Put on the Lord Jesus Christ.' " T. Scott. — " The connection of the 27th verse with that which precedes, shews that the faith in Christ which was publicly professed in baptism, and not the mere outward administration (whether the baptized person had faith or not) was especially intended" (Com., on Gal. iii, 27). Also, " For as many of them as had been baptized according to Christ's appointment, and thus admitted into His chiu-ch, if indeed they were what their profession implied, had ' put on Christ' as their robe of righteousness." — On Eom. xiii, 14, he says, " Let the mind and example of Christ be reflected in all their tempers and conduct, that all who see their piety, purity, zeal, benevolence, and self-denial, might recognize the image and character of Christ in them." I. CoBBiN. — " Put on Christ, professed Him, and received His righteousness." — Com., on Gal. iii, 27. Anno. Par. Bi., on Eom. xiii, 14. — "Be habitually clothed with the likeness of Christ." On Gal. iii, 27 — " All who put on Christ are brought into a oneness which over-rides all earthly distinctions." 128 SUBJECTS OF BAPTISM. A. Pridham. — " To put on Christ impliea a divesting and denying of ourselves. A daily death to the world and its desires must precede and accompany a living to the Lord." — Com. on Rom., xiii, 14. T. Boston : " Gal. iii, 27. ' For as many of you as have been baptized into Christ, have put on Christ.' Where baptism is made a seal of our union with Christ, which is one of the ends of baptism. This end, says a learned man, none but the faithful do obtain ; for, as the aposle says in the same place, ye are all the children of God by faith in Christ Jesus." — He subsequently, in paraphrasing this passage, says : "As many of you as have been baptized (I speak of you according to the judgment of charity, none of you having been baptized by the ministers of Christ, but such as made a credible profession of saving faith) ; as many of you, I say, as have been bap- tized in token of your ingrafting into Christ, are united to Christ, the Son of God ; of which union your baptism is a seal." — Worls, pp. 385, 431. Dr. Whitby. — " For as many of you as have (believed in Christ, and upon that faith have) been baptized into Christ, have put on Christ." — Com., on Gal. iii, 27. M. Poole. — " They had put on Christ ; they had accepted of, and received Christ for their justification and for their sanctification" (Com., on Gal. iii, 27). — On Eom. xiii, 14, he says, " To put on Christ is to receive and rest upon Him by faith, as also to profess and imitate Him." Dean Stanhope. — "How then can the^ebein any degree excusable in Christianity, who at their baptism engage most solemnly to make the purity of Jesus Christ their constant pattern, and His virtues the garb of their souls, by which they should be as visibly distinguished as men commonly are by the garments they wear ?" — Para., &c., on Rom. xiii, 14. T. Gataker says — " If a person were to ask me to define a Christian, I would give him no definition more readily than this : A Christian is one who has put on Christ." — Com., on Gal. iii, 27. Abp. Tillotson. — " By baptism we profess to be entered into a new state, and to be endued with a new nature , . . and therefore, baptism is caUed the putting on of Christ. As many as have been baptized into Christ, have put on Christ." — Worlis, Ser. vii. E. BrcKEESTETH. — " In baptism we put on the whole Christ, the suffering Christ now, the glorified Christ hereafter : His death in our daily dying to sin ; His resurrec- tion in our daUy living to God, and being raised up, and made to sit together in heavenly places in Christ Jesus." — On Bap., pp. 79, 80. A. PiRiE. — Baptism "is intended to express our putting on the Lord Jesus Christ, the new man, a new character indeed" (On Bap., p. 16). "To be 'baptized into Christ,' and to ' put on Christ,' are synonymous expressions ; and to put on Christ is to piit on His character." — If we say not that those expressions are synonymous, the passage is sufficiently opposed to infant and indiscriminate baptism. R. Watson, ha^'ing spoken of the gospel as " a promise, an engagement, a coven- ant on the part of ("rod to remit sin, and to save all that believe ia Christ," adds, " To the covenant in this new form He also requires a visible and formal act of acceptance ; which act, when expressive of the required faith, makes us parties to the covenant, and entitles us, through the faithfulness of God, to its benefits. ' He that believeth and is baptized shall be saved ;' or, as in the passage before us, ' As many of you as have been baptized into Christ, have put on Christ.' We have the same view of bap- tism as an act of covenant acceptance, and as it relates to God's gracioiis engagement to justify the ungodly by faith in His Son in the oft-quoted passage in 1 Pe. iii, 20, 21," —Theol. Ins., vol. iv, pp. 40.5, 406. ScHLEUSNER. — " To be baptized into or upon the name of Jesus Christ, or into Christ, Acts ii, 38 ; xix, 5 ; Rom. vi, 3 ; Gal. iii, 27, to bind himself (or one's-self) by the baptism received to the observance and profession of the Christian religion" (Lex. Art. Ba2ytizoJ. "As many as are baptized into Christ, are united with Him in the closest bonds." — Lex. Ai't. Enduo. Benoel. — "Ye have put on Christ. Christ is with you the toga virilis." "Among the Romans, when a youth arrived at manhood, he assumed the dress of a full-grown man, which was called toga virilis." " Christ is the Son of God, and ye are in Him the sons of God." Dr. L. Woods. — " In Gal. iii, 27, the apostle says, ' As many of you as have been baptized into Christ, have put on Christ.' Here the metaphor is taken from the putting on of cloth -s. Believers liave put on Christ; have assumed his character; have invested or clothed themselves with His moral exeellence, as one covers himself with a garment. And this is signified by their being baptized into Christ" (Works, vol. iii, p. 452) — Let this comment, and similar ones, be read in remembrance of the comprehensive words, " As many of you as." ON GAL. m, 27. 129 W. Thorn'. — " To put Him on necessarily conveys notlung more than to make a profession of faith, or to assume an obligation to regard Clirist as a pattern, teacher, and Saviour." — Inf. Bap., p. 280. T.Williams. — "All who are baptized put on thereby the profession of Chris- tianity."— Gott. Bi., on Gal. iii, 27. Dr. Bloomfield. — " The passage is thus rendered by Koppe and Borger : ' For as many of you as, having received baptism, profess the Christian doctrine (whether cii'- cumcised or uncircumcised), are united with Christ by the closest bond' " (Crit. Dig.) ; and this is fully adopted by Dr. B. in his Gr. Tes., on Gal. iii, 27. W. Teollope. — " Of th3 phrase endunesthai Christon, see on Rom. xiii, 14. Here it rather moans to receive the privileges of Christianity, as heirs of the promise (ver. 29)."— 4»uiL T/ieoL, on Gal. iii, 27. J, H. Godwin. — " To piit on Christ is a figure denoting the reception of His doc- trines, His principles, and temper by His followers ; so that their character bears a resemblance to His." — Clir. Bap., p. 177. Webstee and Wilkinson. — " " All, I say, for as ye were baptized into one name, so ye assiimed one character ; entered into one and the same fellowship and union with Christ, and relation to God.' Eiiedusasthe. Clothed yourselves with. Such expressions are natural to denote assumption of the whole appearance, form, presentment of the person or character spoken of. So in Lat. ' inducre personam.' . . . The notion here conveyed is that each and all of them had secured a spiritual interest in Christ which amounted to investment with His likeness, conformity to Him, almost identity with Him. See on bajjt. cis, Matt, xxviii, 19. . . . And sec on Eom. xiii, 14 ; Eph. iv, 22-24. It is implied by the form used that they had thus ' clothed themselves with Chfist ' by their o'uti act ; now their own act in liaptism must have been faith. The appeal here made to their baptism is founded on the assumption that they had been baptized upon believing, that their belief had respect to Christ personally," &G.— Gr. Tes., on Gal. iii, 26-29. J. Hewlett. — '■ To put on Christ is to follow His doctrine, precepts, and example' (Com., on Rom. xiii, 14) " Have put on Clirist. The acquiringof moral and rcligioua truth, principles, and habits, is frequently expressed in Scripture by a metaphor de- rived from wearing, or putting on clothes."— On Gal. iii, 27. Dr. E. Robinson.— '• Ji)u?. ion Cliriston, i.e., to be filled, imbiied with Christ's Spirit, to be like Him, Rom. xiii, 14; Gal. iii, 27." — Lex. Ai-t. Endito. Dr. D. Davidson. — " To put on as a garment this or that (juality, is a figure of great energy, often used in Scripture. It signifies to acquire plenty of the thing put on, Ps. Ixv, 13 ; and that the virtue or quality put on adheres closely, like a garment to the body, Ps. cix, 18. — To put on Clu-ist is to adorn and defend ourselves by con- formity to His doctrines, spirit, precepts, and example." — Com., on Rom. xiii, 14. Dr. Earth. — "Among the early Christians, who were not baptized until they be- lieved from the heart, regeneration was no doubt more visibly connected with baptism than is now the case." "To put on Christ, means to enter into, and to be clothed upon with His nature." — Bible Manual, on Gal. iii, 27. Dr. C. Hodge. — "Baptism is throughout this i^assagc (Rom. vi, 4), as in Gal. iii, 27, taken for the reception of Christ, of which it is the appointed acknowledgment." " To put on Christ signifies to be intimately united to Him, so that He, and not we, may appear." — Com. on Rom. ; ch. vi, 4; xiii, 14. Dr. G. C. Knapp. — " ' As many of you as have been baptized into Christ, have put on Christ,' and are therefore obligated to confess Him for your Lord and Master, to obey Him, and follow His example." — Thcol. Lee., p. 430. H.Linton. — " For as many of you as have been baptized into Christ, and tlms taken upon you the profession of His religion, have by that ordinance put on Christ." Para., on Gal. iii, 27. Olshausen. — " All those baptized have put on Christ." "This expression, bor- rowed from passages in the Old Testament (Is. Ixi, IC), denotes the most intimate appropriation of Christ." — Com., on Gal. iii, 2(j, 27. Neandee. — " In baptism entrance into communion with Christ appears to have been the essential point ; thus persons were united to the spiritual body of Christ, and received into the communion of the redeemed, the chiirch of Christ, Gal. iii, 27,- 1 Cor. xii, 18. Hence baptism, according to its characteristic marks, was designated baptism into Christ, into the name of Christ, as the acknowledgment of Jesix.s as the Messiah was the original article of faith in the apostolic church" (His. of Plan., &c., vol. i, p. 161. Bohn's Edi.). " Through faith each one entered for himself into fellowship with the Redeemer" ( p. 489). " Since the church is no other than the outward visible re- presentation of the inward communion of believers with the Redeemer and one an- other, the institution of outward visible rites or signs corresponds to these two K 130 SUBJECTS OF BAPTISM. elements of it (both as visible and invisible) ; these rites, baptism and the supper, are designed to represent the facts which form the basis of this communion. Baptism denotes the confession of dependance on Christ and the entrance into communion with Him, and hence the appropriation of all which Christ promises to those who Btand in such a relation to Him ; it is the putting on Christ, in whose name baptism is administered, an espression which includes in it all we have said. Gal. iii, 27." ^p. 494. Blacklet and Hawes. — " Have put on Christ. — Christ is to you the robe of man- hood. You are no longer judged by that which you were ; you are equally in Christ and belonging to Him ; see the verses which follow. Christ is the Son of God, and in Him you are the sons of God." — Com., on Gal. iii, 27. Dr. E. Valpt here speaks of " every one that is baptized into Christ's profession." —Gr. Tes., on Gal. iii, 26, 27. B. H. CooPEE says that TertuUian, on Gal. iii, 27, rightly speaks of the " baptized in Christ," who " have put on Christ," as " priests unto God." He says that "all Christians, are, as such, priests." — This is intelligible and scriptural. But how in- applicable is all this to infants and unbelievers ! Dr. J. Brown. — " That this high honour of being ' the cliildren of God,' is not peculiar to any class of believers, but common to them all, is the principle which the apostle states and illustrates in the succeeding verses. ' For as many of you as have been baptized into Christ, have put on Christ.' . . , To be baptized into Christ is, I apprehend, just equivalent to being united or intimately related to Christ by that faith of which a profession is made in baptism." " To put on Christ is plainly some- thing parallel, if not equivalent, to being ' a child of Christ,' as being ' baptized into Christ' is parallel to having the faith of Christ" (Expo.^of Gal., pp. 179, 180). In his Anal. Expo, of Rom., he says, " ' To put on Christ' is to clothe ourselves with all the graces which adorn His character — to become His living image." " Christ put on man in nature and condition ; man should put on Christ in disposition and character" (p. 504). — Eeferring to Gal. iii, 27, he says, " The meaning seems to be — ' All of you who are really related to Christ in the way of which baptism is the emblem, have been Bo identified with Him as to be treated by God, not as you deserve, but as He deserves." —-On Rom. xiii, 14. Dr. A. Barnes. — " They were baptized with reference to Him, or receiving Him as the Saviour." " Have put on Christ. That is, they had put on His sentiments, opinions, characteristic traits, Ac, as a man clothes himself." — Com., on Gal. iii, 27. Dean Alfobd. — "As many as wore baptized into Christ, did, in that very act, put on, clothe yourselves with Christ." "We may notice, too, as Meyer remarks, that the very putting on of Christ, which as a matter of standing and profession is done in baptism, forms a subject of exhortation to those already baptized" (Gr. Tes., on Gal. iii, 27). — The apostle, as Dr. A. acknowledges, is speaking of all the baptized. When Buch language was used by an inspired apostle, could there be any knowledge of infant baptism ? The apostle is speaking, as Dr. A. here and on Rom. vi, 2-4 teaches, re- specting the baptized at the time of baptism. Dr. W. Smith. — " For as many as have been baptized into Christ, have put on (clothed yourselves with) Christ." " After the preaching of the faith all who are bap- tized into Christ, clothe themselves with Him." — Bib. Die. Art. Bap. Bp, Ellicott. — " The meaning of eis with baptizo appears twofold ; (a) ' unto,' object, purpose. Matt, iii, 11, Acts ii, 38 ; (b) ' into,' union and communion with, the context always shewing whether it be of the most complete and most mystical nature, as here and Eom. vi, 3, or as in 1 Cor. x, 2, necessarily less comprehensive and signifi- cant." '■ It would appear that endusesthai tina is a strong expression denotmg the complete assumption of the nature, &c., of another" ('Com., on Gal. iii, 27). — Notwith- standing all that is pleaded for as being included in the Greek for baptizing into and putting on, the whole is applicable to infants by means of sponsors ! Dr. J. Stacey. — " The answer of the apostle" to the erring teachers of Galatia "is that salvation is possible only through faith in Christ, and that baptism devoutly received is the formal profession of this faith. It is the outward expression of that inward act by which the blessings of Christian fellowship are .appropriated, and the obligations of Christian discipleship are assumed. ' As many as have been baptized into Christ, have put on Christ' " (pp. 80, 81). — The apostle speaks not of those alone who had devoutly received the ordinance in opposition to others who in unconscious- ness or unregeneracy had been baptized, but according to the interpretation of all such human phraseology, of all the baptized. ON EPH. IV, a, 131 § 7. On Ephesians iv, 6. Dr. KiTTO. — " Although not original as a rite, baptism was original as an institution ; and as Buch — as the sign of a series of meanings, associations, and symbols — it was and is peculiar to Christians, although the simjile rite, with a different scries of meanings and applications, may be, and is, still in use among nations that are not Christians." — Pic. His. of Palestine, vol. i, p. 64. Dr. Halley. — ■'■'■ The true sense of words when spoken is the sense, whether perceived or not which is inherent and indestructible in them forever." — Vol. x, p. 187. Dr. J. Stook. — " Evangelical Poedobaptists, we submit, do virtually practise two baptisms."— Handl)., &c., p. 306. Dr. -J. Stagey.—" Shell we oppose the wish of the Son ol God ? Shall we dispute His authority and slight His words 7"— The Sac, p. 160. The apostle Paul, -when recommending peace and unity to tlae "saints" and "faithful in Christ Jesus" at Ephesus, reminds them that there is " one Lord, one faith, one baptism." I do not insist on faith being here mentioned before baptism as in itself proving that faith must precede bap- tism. What the one baptism was, whether it was that of infants, of the unregenerate, or of believers, we learn from the commission of our Lord, and from apostolic practice, which are in perfect accordance with the order of these words. The apostle's enforcement of his exhortation to unity in the church at Ephesus, gives as much countenance to two or three modes of salvation, as to the idea that the " one baptism" of Christians was the different baptisms of faith, unbelief, and unconsciousness. Of the bap- tism of the Spirit, which was Christ's, and Christ's alone, and has been administered solely by Him, we have here no mention. The " one bap- tism" of the church of Christ, is the ordinance enjoined by Christ, and administered by His followers to these whom they disciple. Baxter. — " The baptismal vow, and covenant, and profession ... is one and the same to ail in the essentials" (Para., on Eph. iv, 5). Elsewhere, "God hath in Scripture instituted but one baptism (to profess one faith)." Dr. Macknight. — " Ye all serve one Lord ; have one and the same objects of faith ; and have professed that faith by one form of baptism." — Com., on Eph. iv, 5. Dr. Whitbt. — " One Lord, one faith (in the Lord), one baptism (by which we do profess our faith)." — Com., on Eph. iv, 5. M. Heniiy. — '■ One baptism, by which we profess our faith, being baptized in tho name of the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, and so the same sacramental covenant whereby we engage ourselves to the Lord Christ." — Com., on Eph. iv, 5. Dr. Eadie. — " One baptism is the result and expression of the one faith in the one Lord." — Com., on Eph. iv, 5. Dr. Doddridge. — " That water baptism . . . was administered to all the Gentile converts, and not confined to the Jews, appears from Matt, xxviii, 19, 20 (com- pare Acts X, 47) ; that the baptism of tho Spirit did not supersede water baptism, appears to have been the judgment of Peter and those that were with him ; so that the one baptism spoken of seems to be that of water, the communication of the Holy Spirit being only called baptism in a figurative sense. As for any objection which could be drawn from 1 Cor. i, 17, it is sufficiently answered by the preceding verses, and all the many texts in which (in epistles written long after this) the apostle speaka of all Christians as baptized, and argues from the obligation of baptism." — Misc. Works, p. 489. Brewin Grant. — " The union of the church is one of general polity, consisting of ' one Lord, one faith, one baptism ;' there is one magna charta, into the faith of wluch all are baptized." — On the Cli. of Chr., p. 39. Olshausen. — " Baptism which supposes and does not make faith." — Com., on Eph. iv, 4-6. Dr. Hodge. — "Under the new dispensation the baptized are 'foederati,' men bound together in covenant with Christ and with each other. There is but one baptism. All the baptized make the same profession, accept the same covenant, and are con- secrated to the same Lord and Eedeemer," — Com., on Eph, iv, 5. 132 SUBJECTS OF BAPTISM. H. Linton. — " We all own one Lord and Saviour, profess one faith, have been partakers of one baptism." — Para, and Notes, on Eph. iv, 5. Dean Alford. — ''One baptism, the objective seal of the subjective faith, by which, as a badge, the members of Christ are outwardly and visibly stamped with His name." — N. T., on Eph. iv, 5. Dr. Stacet. — " There is one baptism, and this is true equally of observance as of essence" (p. 240). — Dr. S. can teach that the Lord's Supper, being " a commemorative solemnity, demands a commemorating intelligence" and "a grateful recognition of the Saviom-'s sufferings," while baptism, which is admitted to be monumental of "the death and resurrection of the Son of God" (p. 5), requires in its reception neither appreciation nor knowledge of the glorious facts ! T. Scott. — " The whole church was ' one body,' of which every believer was a member, and ' Christ the Head.' . . . They had all ' one Lord.' . . . They had all ' one faith.' . . . They had all been admitted into the church by ' one bap- tism' with water, ' into the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit,' as the sign of regeneration and the outward seal of the New Covenant. Thus they were all, whether Jews or Gentiles, become the worshippers of ' one God.' " — Com., on Eph. iv, 1-6. Dr. Bloompield. — "On the meaning oi pistis here recent Commentators too much refine. It seems best to take it in its plain and natural sense, of the simple and funda- mental principles of belief which suffice to fit any one for baptism." — Grit. Bi., on Eph. iv, 5, 6. Bp. Ellicott, and the Episcopalians generally, regard this one baptism as the rite which Christ has ordained to be continued in His church, and performed by us, in opposition to the entirely unfounded hypothesis that the apostle is referring to the baptism of the Spirit, and in accordance with Wesley's words, " one outward baptism." — Notes, on Eph. iv, 5. § 8. On Col. ii, 12. Dr. Wahdlaw. — "It was, strictly speaking, in believing that these converts became partakers with Christ in His death and resurrection ; yet it is not nnusual to speak of things as taking place ■in baptism which properly took place by faith, because baptism was the first public declaration of the faiih of the converts." — Inf. Bap., p. 139. S. T. Coleridge.— "A ceremony duly instituted is a chain of gold around the neck of faith." —Aids to Be/., p. 362. In Col. ii, 12, -u'e read, "Buried with Him in baptism, Avlierein also ye are risen with Him through the faith of the operation of God, who hath raised Him from the dead." It is to me inconceivable that such state- ments as we have here and elsewhere should be found — of which state- ments there is no modification by a single precept or precedent of baptism in any part of the inspired records — if Christian baptism in apostohc times was anything else than believers' baptism. Can infants or unbelievers be said to have risen xvith Christ through the faith of the operation of God ? And is not this spoken — as the apostolic words in Rom. vi, 3, 4, and Gal. iii, 27 — in application to the baptized at large, and not to a part of them '? "According to the ordinary use of language, says Abp. Whateley, "a sign is understood to be a sign, from its being regularl}' accompanied by at least some reasonable presumption of the presence of the thing signified." — On Bap., p. 16. I shall here adduce a number of Psedobaptist writers on " the circum- cision of Christ," as well as on the baptism He has enjoined ; behe^-ing that no unbiassed reader -ndll conclude that the circumcision of the 11th verse is the baptism of the 12th verse, but that the former is divinely intended to precede the latter. Dr. Stacey considers Col. ii, 11, 12, along with other passages, to " establish the principle" that " baptism is spiritual circumcision" (p. 83), — If to spiritual circum- cision he attaches a meaning in accordance with the words, " Circiimcision is that of ON COL. II, 12. 133 the lieart," I am incapable of discovering' countenance to the baptism of babes and of the iinregenerate. He teaches that " by the circumcision of Christ" is meant '' bap- tism introduced by Christ instead of circumcision;" and that the twelfth verse is " the explanation" " of the circumcision of Christ !" Ho speaks of the twelfth verse as " suggesting' the occasion on which the body of the sins of the flesh was put away, and specifying the service, baptism" (p. 82). If in baptism " the renunciation was solemnly professed," was it infant or unbelieving baptism ? Dr. S. teaches that " the Colossians" — yea, and that the apostle so " affirmed — had no need of the rite in the letter as they had received it in the spirit, having by the consecration of themselves to God in baptism put away the accumulated mass of their defilement and sin, and thus become ' complete in Christ' " (pp. 82, 83). Dr. S. is not intending a truism to the effect that having once been baptized as believers in Christ, they needed not again in baptism profess to i5ut away their evil doings, bcUeving in Christ the only and all- sufiScient Purifier from the defilement of sin. Whatever Dr. S. means, " the consecra- tion of themselves to God in baptism," while applicable to believers' baptism, will never accord with the baptism of infants and unbelievers. Equally appropriate only to believers' baptism are Dr. S.'s closing words : " God appears in the rite confirming our faith . . . and man appears in it . . . professing to receive the stipulated blessings according to their appointed method of communication, and engaging, as one consecrated to the Lord's service, ' to observe all things whatsoever He has com- manded' him." — p. 84. Dr. W. Smith. — " As the natural body of Christ was laid in the grave and then raised up again, so His mystical body, the Church, descends in baptism into the waters, in which also it is raised up again with Christ, through faith in the mighty working of God who raised Him from the dead." — He says that the apostle refers to baptism " as the token and pledge of the spiritual death to sin and resurrection to righteousness ; and moreover of the final victory over death in the last day through the power of the resurrection of Christ." — Bib. Die. Art. Bap. Dr. D. Davidson. — " By the circuincision of Cltrist ; that which He requires of all His subjects and performs on them, namely, the circumcision of the heart." — Pock, Com., on Col. ii, 11. Bp. Wilson. — " The meaning is plain. The circumcision of the true convert is made without hands." "It consisted in putting off, spuming, renoiincing, casting away with disgust, the body of the sins of the flesh." " This may well be called the circumcision of Christ." — Lee. on Col., on ii, 11. Dr. Doddridge. — " Col. ii, 11, 12, has also been urged as expressly asserting that baptism is Christian circumcision ; but it may be replied. It only signifies that bap- tism obliges us to that mortification which is the true Chi-istian circumcision." — Mis. Works, p. 492. Beza. — " By the circumcision of Christ ; that is, that which Christ Himself cir- cumciseth within us by His own Spirit." — Com., on Col. ii, 11. Baxter. — " You have the true saving circumcision in Christ, even that of the heart, made without hands by the Spirit of Christ." — Para., on Col. ii, 11. Dr. Whitby.—" In whom also ye are circumcised with the circumcision not made with hands (as that of the Jews is, but consisting) in putting off the body of the sins of the flesh; (which is done) by the spiritual circumcision of Christ." "We being buried with Him in baptism (the outward symbol of our spiritual circumcision)," &c. —Para., on Col. ii, 11, 12. I. CoBBiN. — ^ Circumcision of Christ ; of which He is the Author." — Com., on Col. ii, 11. J. Teapp. — "By the circumcision of Christ. Which circumciseth our hearts, pull- ing off' that wretched foreskin." — Com., on Col. ii, 11. Dr. Macknight. — '^ Brj the circumcision of Christ ; that is, by the circumcision which Christ requires and performs. For in the first clause of the verse, Christ is said to perform this circumcision on believers." — Com., on Col. ii, 11. M. Henkt. — " The work of regeneration in us, which is the spiritual or Christian circumcision." — Com., on Col. ii. 11. J. Wesley. — " By the circumcision of Christ. By that spiritual circumcision which Christ worketh in your heart." — Notes, on Col. ii, 11. Dr. A. Clarke. — " By the circumcision of Christ, the operation of His grace and Spirit may be intended ; the law required the circumcision of the flesh, the gospel of Christ required the circumcision of the heart." — Com., on Col. ii, 11. T. Scott. — " For ' the circumcision of Christ' seems rather to signify His work in the believer's soul, than His own personal circumcision." — Com., on Col. ii, 11, Dr. Bloomfield. — " The circumcision of Christ, that is, that spii-itual circum- cision which He requires." — Gr, Tes., on Col. ii, ii. 131 SUBJECTS OF BAPTISM. Dr. A. Barnes. — " By the circumcision of Christ. Not by the fact tliat Christ wag circumcised, but we have that kind of circumcision which Christ established — to wit, the renouncing of sin." — Com., on Col. ii, 11. CoNTBEARE and HowsoN. — " In whom also you were circumcised with a circum- cision not made by hands, even the off-casting of the whole body of the flesh, the cir- cumcision of Christ." — Trans., ia Life, &c., vol. ii, p. 479. — Subsequent extracts have special reference to verse 12. Dr. Wall. — " Ye are in baptism buried together with Christ, in respect of the mortification of your sins, represented by lying under the water ; and in the same baptism ye rise up mth Him, in newness of life, represented by your rising up out of the water again ; through that faith of yours which is grounded upon the mighty power of God, who raised Him from the dead." — Para, on Hard Texts, on Col. ii, 12. J. Bliss.—" Believers are ' buried with Him in baptism, ' to express their dying to sin as He died for it ; in which ordinance also they are represented as raised Vidth Him to newness of life, by the belief they then profess in that wonderful display of the power of God who raised Him from the dead." — Expo., on Col. ii, 12. Dr. Wardlaw appears to doubt not that the apostle refers to believers' baptism in Eom. vi, 2-4, and in " the parallel passage. Col. ii, 12. Believers are there said to be ' risen, as well as buried, with Christ in baptism.' They were not baptized into the faith of Christ's death alone, as the death of their surety ; they were baijtized also into the faith of His resurrection." — Inf. Bap., p. 138. Dr. Doddridge. — Let us consider our " engagement to a life of exemplary holiness ; especially as we are ourselves circumcised with the circumcision of Christ ; as by bap- tism we are solemnly engaged to mortify all irregular affections, and, being buried with Christ in that solemn rite, to rise to all newness of life, having received the for- giveness of our sins, and being raised with Christ to the hope of eternal glory." — Com., on Col. ii, 11-13. E. Baxter. — •" They that profess to be buried with Christ in baptism, and to rise again, do profess true repentance; but all that are baptized must profess to be buried with Him and rise again." — After quoting Col. ii, 11-13, he says : "Note 1. Thatthia is spoken to all the church of the Colossians, and therefore they are presumed to be what they profess and appear to be. 2. That the putting of the body under water did signify our burial with Christ, and the death or putting off of our sins." The language supposes " their consent to be baptized on these terms" of profession. Hav- ing quoted Rom. vi, 3-5, he says : " 1. That all the members of the visible church are supposed to be baptized into Christ and into His death ; and so to be buried with Him by baptism into death, and planted together into the likeness of His death, 2. And that this is not supposed to be only an engagement for the future, but a present entrance into the state of mortification and vivification, wherein they were to proceed by newness of life." " True repentance and abrenunoiation of the service of sin was to be professed by all that would be baptized." " They sealed their own profession and covenant by the reception of baptism" (Dispu., pp. 58, 59). Again (p. 70), " It is commonly confessed by us to the Anabaptists (as our Commentators declare) that in the apostles' times the baptized were dipped over head in the water, and that this signified their profession, both of believing the burial and resurrection of Christ, and of their own present renouncing the world and the flesh, or dying to sin and living to Christ, or rising again to newness of life, or being buried and risen again with Christ, as the apostle expounded in the fore-cited texts of Col. ii and Rom. vi. And though (as is before said) we have thought it lawful to disuse the manner of dipping, yet we presume not to change the use and signification of it." — He has taught (p. 62) that to be baptized into the name of the Father, &c., is not only to be baptized by the autiiority of the Father, &c., but " to be consecrated to the Father," &c. ; that it " comprehend- eth or pre-supposeth a profession of believing in the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost." Bp. Ellicott's translation of this passage is : " In whom ye were also circumcised with a circumcision not wroright with hand, in the putting oft- of the body of the flesh, in the circumcision of Christ ; having been buried with Him in your baptism, wherein ye were also raised with Him through your faith in the operation of God, who raised Him from the dead." — Corn., on Col. ii, 10-12. I. COBBiN. — " Buried with Him in hapHsni : in baptism wc are buried with Christ. This ia what it represents. When you Colossians were baptized, you signified that you renounced the world, and, like persons dead to the world, you became subject to the power of a Divine resurrection, being 'dead indeed' unto sin, but alive unto God, through Jesus Christ." — Com., on Col. ii, 12. Dr. Bloomfield. — "The apostle illustrates the reformation and purity required of Christians, by a fresh image ; though employed on other occasions, as in Rom. vi, df" &0. — Orit. Di^., on Col. ii, 12, ON HEB. VI, 2; IX, 10. 135 Dr. Macknight. — "Because this spiritual circumcision is to be completed by- Christ's raising our bodies fashioned like to His glorious body, signified in baptism by the raising of the body out of the water, the apostle, in this verso, to finish his description of the spiritual circumcision, adds, ' Being buried with Him in baptism, in which also ye have been raised with Him," &c. — Trans., on Col. ii, 12. Dr. TuRNBtTLL. — " In whom you have not only been circumcised with a circum- cision not done by hand, in the removal of flesh from the body, in the circumcision of Christ ; and have been entombed with Him in His baptism ; but in whom you have also been raised with Him, through the faith operated by God, who raised Him from the dead." — Transla. of Epis. and Rev. Blacklet and Hawes. — " Through the faith of the operation of God. — Better, by yovir faith in the operation of God. So Mey., Alf.," &c. — Com., on Col. ii, 12. Dr. T. W. Peile. — "The apostle, in Col. ii, 11, 12, shews that the spiritual essence of baptism is the indting off the hody of the siris of the flesh ; and in Titus iii, 4, 5, he directly connects the outward sign, the washing of regeneration, wth the inward grace, the receiving of the Holy Ghost ; which in the next verse he speaks of as having been already poured abundantly upon them" (Anno., on Rom. vi, 3). — The immediate recep- tion of baptism on a reception of Christ, early led to an association of the blessings of faith in Christ with the act of baptism. Dr. DoEDES. — "We hear St. Paul speaking (Rom. vi, 3-6 ; Gal. iii, 27) on baptism, and think from what he there says, wo may conclude that he ascribes a magical influ- ence to baptism, as if, ha,ving been baptized, one were eo ipso one with Christ and re- newed by the Holy Ghost. An accurate knowledge of the Pauline ' Lehrbegrifi^ ' shews that Paul preached faith in Jesus (Col. ii, 11, 12, ' through the faith'), and nothing but faith, as the way or means of becoming one with Christ, and of receiving the gift of the Holy Ghost."— Fenw., p. 122. Clarks' Edi. CoNTBEAEE and HowsoN. — "For with Him you were buried in yoiir baptism, wherein also you were made partakers of His resurrection, through the faith wrought in you by God, who raised Him from the dead." — Trans, of Col, ii, 12. § 9. On Heb. VI, 2; is, 10. Dr. Oswald.—" To take advantage of dark surmises, or doubtful reasoning, to elude obliga- tions of any kind, is always looked upon as an indication of a dishonest heart." — App. to Com. Sense, p. 21. Wo read in Heb. vi, 1, 2 : " Therefore leaving the principles of the doctrine of Christ, let us go on unto perfection, not laying again the foundation of repentance from dead works, and of faith toward God, of the doctrine of baptisms, of the laying on of hands, and of resurrection of the dead, and of eternal judgment." The association of "the doctrine of baptisms," with " repentance from dead works" and " faith towards God," with " the laying on of hands" (which was practised in connexion with the communication of the Holy Spirit and the setting apart to office), and with the doctrines of the resurrection of the dead and of eternal judgment, assuredly countenances not infant or indiscriminate baptism. Whether the plural number is used because the " one baptism" in the church of Christ may be compared with and distinguished from the baptism of John and the bathings for purification on account of varied pollutions under the law, or whether it is used for other reasons, it is not necessary for me in this controversy to aflirm. The record of divers baptisms under the law (Heb. ix, 10) has been noticed in the volume on the Action in Bap- tism. I know not that any make this passage on abolished immersions an argument for the baptizing of infants and unbelievers. Pa^dobaptists have written on Heb. vi, 3, as follows. 136 SUBJECTS OF BAPTISM. Baxter. — "Heb. v; vi, 1-3 shew that 'the principles of the doctrine of Christ were first laid as the foundation before baptism" (Prac. Worlcs, vol. iv, li. 2S5). " The preparatory baptism of John, and the baptism of Christ, which constituteth us pro- fessed Christians." — Para, on N. T., on Heb. vi, 2. Dr. Wall. — " The doctrine and use of baptism ; and if they owned a belief in Christ, they baptized them in the name that our Saviour had appointed." — Crit. Noics, on Heb. vi, 3. J. Wesley. — "AVhen they believed, they were to be baptized." — Notes, on Heb, vi, 2. Dr. Doddridge. — '■ I think that illumination, as well as regeneration, in the most important and scriptui-al sense of the words, were regularly to precede the administra- tion of that ordinance." — Expo., on Heb. vi, 4. Abp. TiLLOTSON. — The form of baptism in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost, plainly refers to that short creed, or profession of faith, that was required of those that were to be baptized. This probably is what the apostle called the doctrine of baptism, "sdz., a short summary of the Christian faith, the pro- fession whereof was to be made at baptism, of which the most ancient fathers make so frequent mention." — TFo)'A-.s, vol. vii, y. 291. Dr. TuBNBULL renders " the doctrine of baptisms," "'baptismal instruction." — Trans, of Epis. and Rev. ; of Heb. vi, 2. W. Trollope. — " The articles mentioned in ver. 2, are points in which the con- verts were instructed preparatory to baptism ; viz., the necessity of repentance and faith (Acts xx, 21), the nature of baptism, and the certainty of a resurrection and a future judgment." — Anal. Theol., on Heb. vi, 1. Prof. Stuart. — " The rite itself was an initiatory one for all who professed them- selves to be Christians." — On Heb. vi, 2. Dr. E. Burton. — " The things here mentioned were the points in which all per- sons were instructed when they were admitted to baptism ; they were to repent, to have faith, to believe in a resurrection, and a future state : upon which they were baptized." — Gr. Tcs., on Heb. vi, 2. A. S. Paterson. — " ' The doctrine of baptisms and laying on of hands.' This branch of revelation may appear, and is, in some sort, secondary. But still God chose that they who received His gospel, should avouch themselves believers by the sacra- ment of baptism." — Com., on Heb. vi, 1-3. Abp. Tait. — " ' The doctrine of baptisms' comes next in order- St. Paul does not say baptism, but baptisms, for the Hebrews were acquainted with two, viz., that of St. .Tohn the Baptist, and that of Christ ; and many of them had received both. ' The doctrine' of these baptisms means the thing taught by them, their import, significancy. It is not difficult to ascertain this. St. Paul tells lis that St. John ' baptized with the baptism of repentance, saying unto the people that they should believe on Him who should come after him, that is, on Christ Jesus,' And he enrolled those who received his word, among the expectant disciples of the Sa^aour. But the baptism of Christ, while comprehending this repentance and faith, went a great deal f lu-ther. The Saviour had come, had died, had risen, had ascended, and had poured down the Holy Ghost before it was administered. And those who believed on Him were received by that rite into the membership of the church, ' which is His body,' partaking through union ■with that body of the fatherly love and mercy which rested on it, and of the spirit of love which descended from on high to animate it. ' Kepont and be baptized every one of you,' said St. Peter, ' in the name of Jesus Christ, for the remission of sins, and ye shall receive the gift of the Holy Ghost :' and ' they,' it is added, ' that gladly received his word were baptized.' This, then, is the doctrine of Christian baptism." — 3Iedi. Hehr., on Heb. vi, 1-3. Dr. J. H. A. Ebrard (and Olshau!3en). — " The writer thereof specifies four prin- cipal objects of the didache, baptism and laying on of hands, which belong to the bei'inning of the Christian life, and with which are connected the forgiveness of sins, and bestowment of the gifts of the Holy Ghost, and the resurrection together with the judgment, in which the life of the Christian church finds its consummation, and which form the object of the Christian hope." — Com., on Heb. vi. 2. Dr. A. Barnes. — " To understand the true doctrine concerning baptism was one of the first priiiciples to be learned then, a^ it is now, as baptism is the rite by which we are initiated into the clnu'ch. This was supposed to be so simple, that young converts could understand it as one of the elements of the true reUgion" (Com., on Heb. vi, 2). Did the church then consist of professed converts ? Was baptism then the ordin- ance of initiation into the church ? And was its significance as one of the elements of Christianity then understood by all wlio received this ordinance h Why should not this bo the case now ? The reader may clearly see in this passage its acoordauco witl^ ON 1 PE. Ill, 21. 137 the commission first to ground in the principles of the doctrine of Christ, and then to help forwards unto perfection. The record is as silent aud destitute of evidence as any other in favour of the baptism of infants or the unregenerate. Recollecting none who adduce Heb. ix, 10, a passage on abolished immersions, in advocacy of baptizing infants or the iinregenerate, wc shall proceed to the next and last Scriptural mention of baptism. § 10. On 1 Pe. Ill, 20, 21. .J. Ely. — " The grand office of the Christian preacher is, undoubtedly, to expound the sacred text." — Win. Lee, ij. iv. T. H. Hudson. — " Is religion a mere name ? only an outward fonn ? a bodily exercise ? or an external ceremony, in which no religious emotion, or spiritual exercise is required from the sub- ject ol itr'-Chr. Bap.,i)^.li, ID. The apostle Peter speaks of the long-suffering of God waiting " in the days of Noah, while the ark was a preparing, wherein few, that is, eight souls, were saved by water. The like figure whereunto even baptism doth also now save us (not the putting away of the filth of the flesh, but the answer of a good conscience toward God) by the resurrection of Jesus Christ." This passage, like others, speaks of baptism as if there was but " one baptism." It does not speak of baptism as being of a certain character when the subjects are adults. An allusion to infants is in no record of baptism. Whether the sacred wTiters speak of the baptism of particular individuals, or of baptism in a general and unrestricted manner, their language excludes the idea of infant or indiscriminate baptism. Who believes that the answer of a good conscience belongs to infants and unbe- lievers ? Inspired testimony on baptism ought to fill with shame and confusion of face the opponents of believers' baptism ; and were they free from obscuring and entangling pre-possessions, I should not doubt their speedy conversion from present baptismal errors. In our incapability of searching the heart, the credible profession of a good conscience is all that God does or can require from the administrator. On "the ansv/er of a good conscience," Dr. Gill says : " The Vulgate Latin renders it, 'the interrogation of a good conscience.' . . . The Ethiopic version ren- ders it, ' confession of God,' and to this the Syriac agrees, rendering it, 'confessing God with a pure conscience.' , . . The Arabic version renders the whole verse thus : ' Of which thing baptism is now a type, saving us, not by removing the filth of the flesh only, but by exhilarating a good conscience towards God, by the resurrection of Jesus Christ.' " — • Com., on 1 Pe. iii, 21. Gee. Ewing is thus referred to by Dr. Halley : " He maintains ' that the estab- lishing of God's covenant with Noah was confirmed by a sign, namely, the ordinance of going into the ark' — that ' although Noah (like Lydia) was the only believer in his family, yet the whole family, its connexions 6j/ affinity as well as by descent, were in- cluded in the sign, With thee will I establish My covenant, and thou shalt come into the ark, thou and thy sons, and thy wife, and thy sons' wives with thee' — and that this is connected with ' the New Testament ordinance of baptism' by the words of Peter, ' in the days of Noe,' " &c. — Thus Mr. E. far outstrips those who would simply baptize every applicant. With the valuable hilp of Gen. vi, he has the perspicacity to discern that baptism should be administered to a believing man, and for his sake to his unbelieving wife, unbelieving sons, and unbelieving daughters in law ! Without doubt he might from Gen. vi have inferred much more had he not been so intelligently and conscientiously moderate ! 138 SUBJECTS OF BAPTISM. Bettgel. — " It is the part of tlie godly to ask, to consult, and to address God with confidence." " It is the asking' of a good conscience which saves us." — This asking, in which we address God with a good conscience, says he, " is exercised in all acts of faith, of prayer, and of the Christian life, and God always regards it as worthy of an answer." — Gno., on 1 Pe. iii, 21. Saurin. — " In the primitive church, instruction preceded baptism, agreeably to the order of Jesus Christ ; ' Go, teach all nations, baptizing them.' . . . Thus likewise wo understand St. Peter, when he says that the baptism which saves us is not the putting away of the filth of the flesh, but the answer of a good conscience.' The answer of a good conscience is that account which a catechumen gave of his faith. Whence it came to pass that the ancients usually called a baptized person, one that was illuminated." — Ser., vol. i, pp. 301, 302. EosEKMULLER. — " In baptism the minister used to put the interrogation : to which the candidate answered." " By suneidesis is meant what we are ' conscious of,' our internal perceptions and fealings. The eperotemct suneideseos agathes eis Theon will therefore be the e. s., &c., Theo poiethen, the promise made to God that we will live righteously," &c. " Baptism, and the sincere profession of religion conjoined with it, preserves us from perdition." — In Bloomfield's Biges. •J. Tbapp. — " To that custom of asking the party to be baptized, and taking hia answer, the apostle seemeth hero to allude." — Com., on 1 Pe. iii, 21. R. Baxter.—" Baptism is said to save us (1 Pe. iii, 21), and therefore they that will be baptized must profess the qualifications neossary to be .saved" fPrac. Works, Tol, iv, p. 29S). ''We begin our conformity, when we are raised to holiness by His Spirit, as we rise out of the water in baptism ; but by baptism I mean not that the outward act of washing the body serveth to this salvation ; nor must you think that God layeth it on any outward ceremony, save as it is in the exercise of our obedience and faith : but it is the faithf ml answer to God of a resolved soul in the covenant of baptism, who, when asked, doth profess, and promised to behove in and give up itself to God the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, and to renounce the world, the flesh, and the devil ; baptism is but tho celebration of this saving covenant ; and it is covenanting sincerely that is tho condition of salvation, and washing is but the sign" (Para., on 1 Pe. iii, 21). In his Dispw. (pp. 156, 157) he says : "I thus argae. If baptism be appointed for our solemn admission into a state of salvation, as Noah's ark received men into a state of safety from the deluge, then none should be baptized but those that profess that faith which entereth them into a state of salvation. But the former is true : therefore so is the latter." Also, " If according to tho institution the answer of a good conscience must be joined with baptism for the attaining of its end, then must we admit none that profess not that answer of a good conscience" (p. 159). J. Howe. — " Human adoption has been wont to be completed by a solemnity ; the person to adopt being publicly asked . . . whether he would have this person to be as his own very son ? And again ... he that was to be adopted, whether he was contented it should be so." — WorJis, vol. i. p. 366. E. Leigh. — ^" 1 Pe. iii, 21. The stipulation, or interrogation. It signifieth a stipu- lation or promise conceived in words, whereby he that is baptized covenanteth to believe and do as he is in baptism required." — Grit. Sa., on Eperotema. Sir Norton Knatchbull. — '• We are plunged in the water, which is the true use of water in baptism, thereby to testify our belief in the resurrection of Jesus Christ." — Notes, on 1 Pe. iii, 21. Bp. Burnet. — " Baptism is said by St. Peter to savo ns, not as it is an action that washes us ; not the putting away of the filth of the flesh, but the answer of a good conscience towards God. And therefore baptism without this profession is no bap- tism." Again, " In baptism there is matter, water ; there is a form, the person dipped or washed ; with words, I baptize thee in the name of tho Father, and of the Son, and of tho Holy Ghost ; there is an institution. Go, preach and baptize ; there is a federal sponsion, tho answer of a good conscience." — Expo, o/xxxix Art., pp. 358, 361. Dr. Erskine. — " Poter informs us that baptism is of no avail, unless attended with tho a^nswer of a good conscience, that is, a sincere and cordial acceptation of the offers of tho gospel." — Thcol. Dis., p. 79. Dr. Dwight. — '■ Tho true as well as obvious moaning in this passage is tho follow- ing : ' Baptism, tho antitype of the water of tho deluge, doth now save us by the resurrection of Christ ; not indeed tho cleansing of the sins of the flesh, but that which is signified by it ; the answer of a good conscience towards God." " Tho answer of a good conscicncij towards God, spoken of by St. Peter, cannot be given by him that is not regoncratod." — ■i:>i'.r., ISfitli, on Matt, xxviii, 19. Dr. John Soott. — " In baptism tho party baptized makes a solemn vow and pro- fession, by himself or his sponsor, of fidelity and allegiance to God through Jesua ON 1 PE. Ill, 21. 139 Christ, and hence baptism is calletl the answer or promise of a good conscience, 1 Pe. iii, 21." — Chr. Li., p. ii, ch. vii, § 9. M. Henry. — " Baptism that He has appointed for the initiation or introduction of His disciples, in which Ho si^aally or by that sign, says, ' Except I wash thee, thou hast no part in Me.' Not the putting away the filth of the flesh, but the answer of a good conscience towards God, 1 Pe, iii, 21. Dr. DoDDjaiDGE. — " Baptism, whereby we are received into the Christian church, and numbered among the hcii-s of salvation ; but then it is to be remembered, that it is not merely the putting away the pollution of the flesh by the use of material water, for that would be very insignificant ; but the answer of a good conscience, the reply that it makes when interrogated in the presence of God." " A courageous readiness in the performance of their whole duty, and even in suffering persecution for the sake of truth, was absolutely necessary in order to maintain that good conscience to which in their baptism they professed such a regard, and to the exercise of which they so solemnly engaged themselves" (Com., on 1 Pe. iii, 21). Also, " It is very probable the apostle may refer to that custom of interrogating the person to be baptized, of which we subsequently read more particularly." T. Scott. — ■' Into this ark men enter by faith ; this faith Jews and Gentiles pro- fessed when by baptism they were admitted into the Christian church." — Com., on 1 Pe. iii, 21, 22. M. Poole. — ■' The best translation seems to be either, 1. The petition of a good conscience, and then it notes the effect of baptism, viz., that holy confidence and security wherewith a conscience sprinkled with the blood of Christ addresses itself to God in prayer as a Father. Thus the word is taken Matt, xv, 23 ; xvi, 1 ; and Rem. X, 20. Or rather, 2. The s?ijji(7ah'o?i, which by a metonymy is taken for the answer, promise, or restripulation required ; and this agi-ees with our translation. In bap- tism then is a solemn covenant, or mutual agreement between God and the party baptized." — He designatas the " good conscience," " a conscience purified by faith." — Com., on 1 Pe. iii, 21. Assembly of Divines. — " By the answer of a good conscience we may understand that unfeigned faith whereof they made confession at their baptism." — Anno., on 1 Pe. iii, 21. Dr. Macknioht. — " It does not appear that questions and answers were used in the apostle's days. Allowing however, that by an anallage the word question is here put for the word answer, this ' answer of a good conscience' being made to God, is au inward answer, and means the baptized person's sincere profession of the things which, by submitting to baptism, he professes to believe, namely, that Jesus, in whose name baptism is administered, arose from the dead, and that at the last day He will raise all from the dead to eternal life who sincerely obey Him. This signification of baptism the apostle Paul hath taught, Rom. vi, 4, 5." — Com., on 1 Pe. iii, 21. T. Williams. — " The like figure, or the antitype to which (even) baptism doth now save us : for baptism was unquestionably the ordinance by which the first Chris- tians were separated from the world, even as Noah and his family from their infidel neighbours." — Cot. Bi., on 1 Pe. iii, 21. J.Wesley. — " Through the water of baptism wo are saved from the sin which overwhelms the world as a flood ; not indeed the bare outward sign, but the inward grace : a Divine consciousness, that both our persons and our actions are accepted through Him who died and rose again for us" (Xotes on N. T., on 1 Pe. iii, 21). — Can christian baptism according to these writers be other than believers' baptism ? G. Bliss. — "It saves by the answer of a good conscience towards God, or the sincere persuasion of the things, which, by submitting to baptism the recii^ient pro- fesses to believe." — Expo., on 1 Pe. iii, 21. Schleusnek. — "Baptism is called the ansxver of a good conscience toward God, that is, the promise and obligation of a pure mind to be kept before God," &c. — In Valpy's Gr. Tes., on 1 Pe. iii, 21. Dr. J. Owen. — " The outward administration of this ordinance, considered ma- terially, reacheth no further but to the washing away of ' the filth of the flesh ;' but more is signified thereby. There is denoted in it the restipulation of a ' good con- science toward G.id by the resurrection of Jesus Christ' from the dead, or a ' conscience purged from dead works to serve the living God,' Heb. ix, 14, and quickened by virtue of His resurrection unto holy obediense. See Rom. vi, 3-7." Again, " This baptism, in the first place, expressoth the outward ' putting away of the filth of the flesh' by external washing with water, 1 Pe. iii, 21. And that which answers hereunto can be nothing but the inward purifying of our souls and consciences by the grace of the Spirit of God."— Works, vol. iii, pp. 216, 217, 424. Abp. Leighton. — '■ It saves by the answer of a good conscience." " A good con- science, in its full sense, is a piu-e conscience, and a peaceable conscience," "Eperotema, 140 SUBJECTS OF BAPTISM. The askinw or questioning of conscience, wliicli comprises likewise its answer, for it intends the whole correspondence of the conscience with God, and with itseK, as to- wards God, or in the sight of God." — Com., on 1 Po. iii, 21. Dr. S. Addinqton teaches that amidst general destruction Noah and his family were preserved or saved " by or through water." — They were in and by the ark "carried safe through the waters of the flood." Of the antitype he says, It " does not save as a mere external form of purity, iinless it be accompanied with the sanctification of the Spirit, that may enable us with a good conscience towards God, ' to give an answer to those who ask a reason of the hope that is in us through the resurrection of Christ' ' ' (On Bap., pp. 39-42). — Do not Peter's words clearly imply that baptism is intended only for such characters ? E.. Watson. — "When St. Peter calls baptism the 'figiure,' antitupon, the antitype, of the transaction by which Noah and his family were saved from perishing with the ungodly and unbelieving world, he had doubtless in mind the faith of Noah, and that under the same view as the apostle Paul, in Heb. xi, 7 : 'by faith Noah,' " &c. " His building of the ark, and entering into it with his family, are therefore considered by St. Paul, as the visible expression of his faith in the ancient promises of God respect- ing Messiah ; and for this reason baptism is called by St. Peter, without an allegory at all, but in the sobriety of fact, ' the antitype of this transaction ; the one exactly answering to the other, as an external expression of faith in the same objects and the same promises. But the apostle does not rest in this general representation. He pro- ceeds to express, in a particular and most forcible manner, the nature of Christian baptism — ' not the putting away of the filth of the flesh, but the answer of a good conscience toward God, by the resurrection of Jesus Christ.' Now, whether we take the word eperotema, rendered in our translation ' answer,' for a demand or require- ment ; or for the answer to a question or questions ; or in the sense of stipulation ; the general import of the passage is nearly the same. If the first, then the meaning of the apostle is, that baptism is not the piitting away the filth of the flesh, not a mere external ceremony ; but a rite which requires or demands something of us, in order to the attainment of a good conscience. What that is, we learn from the words of our Lord : it is faith in Christ. — ' He that believeth and is baptized shall be saved ;' which faith is the reliance of a penitent upon the atonement of the Saviour, who thus sub- mits with all gratitude and truth to the terms of the evangelical covenant" (Theol. Ins., vol. iv, p. 407). Again, " St. Peter preserves the correspondence between the act of Noah in preparing the ark as an act of faith by which he was justified, and the act of submitting to Christian baptism, which is also obviously an act of faith" (p. 409). — What Baptist could more explicitly teach the necessity of faith to Christian baptism ? E. BicKERSTETH. — " The promises made at baptism (suneideseos agathes eperotema, eis Theon), the profession of a good conscience toward God, include a solemn renun- ciation of the world, the flesh, and the devil — a confession of faith in the one living and true God, Father, Son, and Holy Spu-it, and a purpose of heart to walk in all God's holy will and ways." "As the flood was to those saved through it, the beginning of a new life and a new world, of which they were the heirs, so is baptism to Chris- tians the introduction by faith and in spirit to a new world, of which they are called to be the heirs." — On Bap., pp.*34, 4. Anno. Para. Bi. — " ' The like figure whereunto,' Properly ' which (i.e. water) as an antitype now saves us also [even] baptism.' As water was the means of saving those who were in the ark, so in baptism the antitype, it is even now the means of saving us ; but only when, instead of trusting in the outward washing, we conscien- tiously seek after God, through faith in our risen and exalted Redeemer : com. Eom. vi, 1," &c. W. Tkollope. — " The verb diasozein here signifies, as in Acta xxii, 26, to condvct in safety, and dia hudatos, not as in E. T. by water. ... In the word eperotema there may be an allusion to the custom of catechising at the time of baptism." — Anal. Theol., on 1 Pe. iii, 19. Dr. G. C. Knapp. — " 1 Pe. iii, 21. It is said concerning baptism, that it delivers or frees us from the punishment of our sins (soxci), not, however, as an external wash- ing, but inasmuch as we pledge ourselves in this rite, and are assisted by it to main- tain a good conscience, and inasmuch as it is the means by which we receive and appropriate to ourselves the gracious promise of the forgiveness of sins through Christ." " The meaning is, 'By baptism we take upon oiu-selves the sacred obliga- tion, in the presence of God, to maintain a good conscience, to be watchful against sin, and to strive after holiness.' The passage, Rom. vi, 3, 4, scq. teaches the same thing. Coll. Col. ii, 12, 13" (Theol Lee., p. 431). — I do not regard this language of Peter, according to the authorized version, as teaching except by implication the pur- ON 1 PE. Ill, 21, 141 pose of the baptized respecting the f ature. It teaches rather the experience (by pro- fession) of the baptized at the time of baptism. In every good conscience t admit there will be the i^urpoae to livo to God for the future. But what lang;ua?e can teach more explicitly than that of many Piedobaptists quoted, that faith in Christ enters into the very nature, is an absolute requirement, of Christian baptism ? Dr. Neander. — " According to the most natural interpretation, 1 Pe. iii, 21 has reference to the question proposed at baptism." — Ch. His., vol. i, p. 421. Clarks' Edi. Dr. Bloomfield. — " By the eperoteni'X here spoken of (which has beennot a little disputed) I am still of opinion is meant ' the engagement by promise whereby we re- turn answer to a question, whether we will do anything proposed." — Gr. Tes., on 1 Pe. iii, 21. J. J. Blunt. — " In the first Epistle of St. Peter it is said, ' the like figure where- nnto even baptism doth also now save us, not the putting away of the filth of the fiesh, but !^the answer of a good conscience toward God ;' the stipulation or promise made at that sacrament is clearly alluded to in the term ' answer,' which conveys the idea, as Hooker himself holds, of the interrogatories put at baptism even then, from the very first ; and a corresponding hint is dropped in the Epistle to the Hebrews, where mention is made in continual sequence of the foundation of Repentance from dead works, and of faith toward God, and of the doctrine of Baptisms ; and the ground is still further narrowed, the very subject of that ' answer ' or stipulation before re- ferred to transpii-ing, namely, an answer given by the party before the administration of the rite, of his Repentance and of his Faith" (His. of Chu., pp. 36, 37). He speaks (at p. 105) of Christians, then, "having taken upon themselves certain vows at their baptism," and that they " were perpetually reminding themselves and each other of the responsibility they had thus incurred." Dr. Chalmers, — " We accordingly read of baptism in St. Peter as being realized in its proper substance and significancy when associated, not with the putting away of the filth of the body, but with the answer of a good conscience to God. , . . So we may be assured that the baptism by water, which is so distinctly personal, symbolised what is just as distinctly personal, the washing of regeneration, the re- newing of the Holy Ghost." — Institutes, vol. ii, p. 491. Edited by Dr. Hanna. Dr. J. I. DoLLiNGER. — " The act of baptism took place by question and answer. The postulant was asked if he renounced Satan, and gave himself to Christ. Thence Peter says that, as of old the believing and the unbelieving were separated by the flood which to the former brought salvation and was a seal of Divine grace, so now is baptism not a cleansing of bodily filth, but the answer of a good conscience toward God, 1 Pe. iii, 21." — The First Age of Cliris., and the Churcli, vol. ii, p. 160. H. J. Gamble. — " The waters of the deluge did not absolutely save Noah, thoiigh there was a sense in which they saved him. So there is a sense, and but a sense, in which baptism saves us." " There must be a good conscience in connexion with it." — Scr. Bax)., p. 65. Dr. J. Brown. — " It is as if the apostle had said, water saved the family of Noah, and it may be said, water also saves us. I refer to baptism which, in this respect, resembles the waters of the deluge, both being connected by the Divine appointment, with salvation or deliverance." " What the apostle's words bring before the mind is this : A man has a good conscience ; he has obtained this good conscience by the resurrection of Christ ; he makes a declaration of this good conscience in baptism ; and it is in this way that the apostle declares that baptism saves." — Why should not baptism now have " a declaration of this good conscience?" This good conscience, says Dr. B., "is obtained by a man's conscience being sprinkled with the atoning blood of Jesus, or in other words by his experiencing the power of Christ's atoning blood to pacify the conscience and purify the heart, through the faith of the truth re- specting it ; and by his being transformed 'through ' the renewing of the mind,' pro- duced by the Holy Ghost shed forth ' abundantly through Jesus Christ our Saviour.' This good conscience is said to be ' by the resurrection of Jesus Christ.' The resur- rection of Christ is the grand proof of the divinity of His mission, and the truth of His doctrine, especially respecting the efiicacy of His atoning sacrifice. It is truth respecting these, apprehended in its meaning and evidence, under the influence of the Holy Spirit, which produces the good conscience toward God. ' I trust in God, seeing he has brought again from the dead our Lord Jesus, I love Him -who gave His Son for my ofi'ences, and who raised Him again for my justification," — Com., on 1 Pe. iii, 21. W. Dalton. — " It is the Spirit, by regeneration, who produces ' the answer of a good conscience toward God.' " " See Abp. Lcighton on the text, to prove that in- ward grace ought to accompany baptism." — Com., on 1 Pe. iii, 21. Dr. E. Burton, having mentioned Noah and his family as " carried safe through the water," adds that Peter " takes occasion to observe that so baptism will save ua 142 SUBJECTS OF BAPTISM. if we listen to the preaching' of Christ, and keep oxir consciences clear, as Noah and his family." — Gr. Tcs., on 1 Pe. iii, 21. Dr. J. MoRisoN teaches that " more is needed than an outTrard rite," to " remove the defilement of the conscience." " The Christian convert who in submitting to the outward and figurative cleansing of baptismal water, was enabled by that faith which is the gift of God, to fix his trust hi Himwhorosetriumpha,ntly from the dead, thereby became the subject of a 'peace which passeth all understanding.' " "No outward rite e-an impart legitimate peace to the conscience ; the great truths which the rite exhibits, contemplated and believed, felt and applied by the Spirit of God, may and do become the instruments of i:>eace."—Homi., p. 346. Dr. A. Barnes, — " No man can bo saved without that regenerated and purified heart of which baptism is the appropriate symbol, and when it would be proper to administer that ordinance." " But the aiiswer of a good conscience toward God. The word here rendered answer feperotemaj, means properly a question, an inquiry. . . . It is spoken of a question put to a convert at baptism, or rather of the vhole process of question and answer . . . and it would seem to imply, (1) that when baptism was performed, there was some question or inquiry in regard to the belief of the can- didate ; (2) that an answer was expected, implying that there was a good conscience ; that is, the candidate had an enlightened conscience, and Was sincere in his profession; and (3) that the real efficacy of baptism, or its power in saving, was not in the mere external rite, but in the state of the heart, indicated by the question and answer, of which that was the emblem." — Com., on 1 Pe. iii, 21. Dr. J. Forbes. — " Like Israel from their baptism in the Red Sea (1 Cor, x, 2), or like Noah, born into a new world — having escaped through the overwhelming waters that buried the pollutions of the old ;(1 Pe. iii, 21). Like them, therefore, we are bound and encouraged to forget all past relations, and thenceforth to ' walk in new- ness of life.' " — A7ia. Com. on Rom., p, 2G2. Dr. P. Fairbairn, after speaking of baptism as administered by the apostles for accrediting and completing a relation already formed between the individual and Christ, adds, "And if baptism also is said to save, and is especially associated with the work of regeneration — as it undoubtedly is — it can only be because baptism is viewed, in the case of the adult believer, as the proper consummation and embodiment of faith's actings in the reception of Christ" (The Ixev. of Law, &c). — True : but when the inspired Peter and Paul thus speak, what say they about the application of their words to " the case of the adult believer ?" These speak nothing about an ideal bap- tism, which undergoes " a certain accommodation" in the case of infants. Dr. J. Stagey. — "The design of the apostle" "was to set forth the spiritual character of the baptismal service, in opposition to that which is only external and sensible, to distinguish the ritual from the moral, by marking the inefiicacyof the one and the value and necessity of the other" (p. 326). — In infants and the unrcgenerate, can there be anything but the external and ritual ? Can the spiritual and moral be present ? Dr. W. Smith, after speaking of Noah's separation through the waters of the flood " from the polluted life of the old world, and the beginning of a new course," says that St. Peter "sees in the waters of the flood by which the ark was borne up, a type of baptism, by which the church is separated from the world." — Stxi.'s 0. T. Mis., pp. 26, 27. Dean Alford. — "This saving power of the water of baptism," says he, after men- tioning as connected with our baptism, " the clearness and purity of our inner con- sciousness toward God" — " in our case is by the resurrection and exaltation of Christ, into whose death and resurrection we are Ijaptizcd. Thiis by oiu* very profession we are united to Him." — Gr, Tes., on 1 Po. iii, 21. ON JOHN III, 5. 143 SECTION VI. supposed sceiptuee kefeeences to baptism, or doctrinal confirmation. § 1. On John hi, 5. Dr. Angus. — The Messiah's " reign was called ' the world ti come,' ' the heavenly Jerusalem,' ' the kingdom of heaven,' or ' o£ God.' To enter that kingdom was to become His disciple." — • Bible H. B., p. 203. Dr. Hallby.— " The true exposition of the gospel is evidently the true exposition of the cor- responding expressions in the epistle." —Cong. Lee, vol. x, p. 188. Count De Gaspaein. — " When the doctrine of regeneration shall be fully established," " bap- tism by which men are received into the church, will cease to be that manifestation of personal faith, that profound symbol of a new birth, of the burial and resurrection of Christ, and will be- come an act of magical transformation, with which the idea of conversion has nothing to do." — Chris, in the Three First Cent., p. 87. In accordance witli the sentiments of Drs. Halley and Stacey on being born of water and the Spirit, I have ah'eady expressed my conviction that the Saviour aUudes to baptism when he speaks of being bom of water, and that we are here taught that being born of water and being born of the Spirit are the ordained quahfications for Christ's kingdom. This law of the kingdom of Christ, instead of obviously transferring "to baptism the law of circumcision," as Dr. S. teaches, is wholly and exclusively accordant with believers' baptism. If baptism is the symbol of experienced regeneration, it belongs no more to infants than to the angels in heaven ; and if it is "a badge or profession of discipleship" to Jesus Christ (Dr, H., vol. X, p. 99), it belongs no more to those known to be the sons of Belial than to the fallen angels. That Nicodemus was ignorant of John's baptism, or that he had refused submission to that ordinance from heaven, I am incapable of believing. That he needed and received explicit and emphatic instruction on the necessity of being born of the Spirit, I firmly believe. I agree, indeed, with most of the following. J. Howe teaclies that the design of Christ was " to represent the gTeater and most indispensable necessity of being born of the Spirit, added to the other, and that with- out this, the other alone would avail nothing." — On The Liv. Tcm., iu Works, vol. i, pp. 311,312. Dr. Doddridge. — "Whosoever would become a regular member of the" kingdom of God, must not only be baptized, but as ever he desires to share in its spiritual and eternal blessings, he must experience the renewing and sanctifying influences of tho Holy Spirit on his soul, to cleanse it from the power of corruption, and to animate it to a Divine and spiritual life." — Para., on John iii, 5. J. SiBREE. — " To be ' born of water,' we apprehend, means to he baptized • and is as necessary to our admission into the visible kingdom of God, as to be born of the Spirit is to our admission into His invisible kingdom : — our admission into the former by baptism, is a symbol of our admission into the latter by regeneration." Lee. on None., p. 124. J. Gltde, in a sermon on Christ and Nicodemus, says, "|T^''hon Jesus'spake of a birth by water it would be very natural for Nicodemus to think of the baptism of John, which was a baptism with water unto repentance." He also adds : " We with the gospel of John in our hands, can have little doubt that if Nicodemus supposed our Lord to refer to the baptism of John, lie was right in so doing ; for of that baptism 144 SUBJECTS OF BAPTISM. you will remember the evangelist has spoken largely in tlie first chapter, and repre- sented it emphatically as a baptism vnih water." — Memoir, &c„ by G. W. Conder, p. 396. Dr. G. C. Knapp. — " Whosoever is not born of water and of the Spirit." " That is, whosoever does not take upon himself the obligation to live in an entirely altered and renewed state of mind, which is effected," &c. — This may not be the most clear and precisely correct exposition of these words. It is, however, decidedly opposed to the baptizing of infants. " When the Israelites spoke of a person changing his religion, they used the phrases, birth, new birth, &c. When a Gentile passed over to Judaism (became a proselyte), he was regarded by the Jews as new-born, a new man, a child just beginning to live. As such he was received into their church, and obtained civil rights. Even in the Old Testament the term yld is used in reference to proselytes, Ps. Ixxxvii, .5, coll. Is. xlix, li, liv. This might be called external regeneration. The term was afterwards used by the Rabbins in a moral sense, since it became the duty of one who had been admitted into the Jewish church to live according to the Jewish laws, and to have a better moral disposition. This is internal, moral regeneration. The term was used in both these senses at the time of Christ and the apostles." " In many passages these two senses are combined, because internal regeneration is the object of external regeneration, exactly as in the case of cinstrephein. Among other texts is John iii, 3, 5. ' Whatsoever is not born of water and the Holy Spirit (i.e., does not consecrate himself by baptism to the profession of My relisrion, and does not be- come, through Divine assistance, a reformed man, a child of God, a friend of God, like Him in moral character), cannot be considered a member of the Messiah's king- dom."— Nor is Dr. K. referring to the baptism of proselytes, which, it might be said, was administered to children as well as to their parents ; since, in reference to its existence at this period, notwithstanding all that has been asserted in favour of such an hypothesis, he says, " that it cannot be relied on v/ith certainty, since it is entirely destitute of cotemporary e-vidence." — Theol. Lee, pp. 388, &c. Dr. J. MoRisoN. — " He only simply declares that two things are required by Him in those who become true members of His church ; first, that they be born of the Spirit, and second, that they submit to that rite which is the token or sign of their discipleship. Both are necessary ; the one as the great spiritual qualification of mem- bership in His kingdom, the other as the distinct pledge of submission to Him as the sole Law-giver of His church." — Homi., p. 340. Dr. J. Stacey. — " It is as if the Redeemer had said — a man can enter the kingdom of God formalhi only as he is initiated by baptism, and really only as he is purified by the Spirit."— T/ie Sac, p. 77. Dr. Halle Y. — " To be born again, in Jewish phraseology, is to become a son of Abraham. To be born again, in Christian phraseology, is to have a new Father in heaven. Of this new birth baptism is the visible sign, regeneration the internal reality." Our Lord's words to Nicodemus imply, that " unless a man became a svib- ject of a change, of which baptism was the symbol, he could not be accredited as a disciple of Christ."— Vol. x, pp. 183, 98. § 2. On Acts xv. J. SiBREE. — " Let it be our ambition to keep close to the word of God, observing everything that it enjoins, and avoiding everything that it condemns." — Lee. on None., p. 272. The fifteenth chapter in Acts, where vre rend of certain persons say- ing, " Except ye he circumcised after the manner of Moses ye cannot he saved," and of the decision of the assemhly at Jerusalem on this heterodoxy, is dwelt upon hy some in favour of the baptism of infants with much eclot. After what I have written on Gal. iii and v, I deem it necessary to say very Uttle. The demand of circumcision is from "certain brethren which came down from Judea." It is "except ye be circumcised ;" not except ye and your children be circumcised. The words have reference to be- lievers, and there is neither evidence nor probabihty that in these words children are in the immediate thought. Paul and Barnabas had given an account of " the conversion of the Gentiles ;" but certain of the Pharisees ON EOMANS XI, 16. 145 said ' that it was needful to circumcise them." The whole is in evident ignorance that Christian baptism is come in the place of circumcision. Peter's reproof, " Why tempt ye God to put a yoke on the neck of the disciples, which neither our fathers nor we were able to bear," instead of proving the fact of infant disciples, militates against the supposition. If baptism had come in the place of circumcision, and infant baptism had then existed, " Could they have forborne to reason thus ? — 'Circumcision was anciently instituted as a seal [sign] of the covenant : baptism is now sub- stituted in the room of it. It is fit, therefore, that circumcision should be laid aside. Nor have you any reason to complain of the change, since this New Testament rite, of which that was a type or shadow, is a less irksome and painful one than that, and is as authentic a seal of the covenant as ever that could possibly be." "Are the inf^mt children of the Jews anywhere styled the disciples of Moses, or are they anywhere said to be discipled or made disciples by circumcision ?" (Dr. S. Stennett's Ans., pp. 127, 128). More on Infant Discipleship hereafter. § 3. On Eom. XI, 16. Calvin.—" A sacrament, unless it rest upon a certain foundation of the word of God, hangeth but by a thread."— Trfa. on the Sac, p. 61. The words of the apostle, " For if the first-fruit be holy, the lump is also holy, and if the root be holy, so are the branches," have been thought by some to teach or corroborate the baptism of infants. For my con- venience I will here quote the reply of Mr. Booth, without giving his preceding corroborative quotations from Venema, Doddridge, Leigh, and others. He says, " Here it may be observed that baptism is not the subject of Paul's discourse ; it ia not mentioned in the whole chapter ; nor for anything that appears, was it so much as thought of by the apostle — much less infant baptism. But the word holy is men- tioned. True : yet, according to those authors, and agreeably to the scope of the place, it is in rcfereuco to the ancient patriarchs, especially Abraham ; in reference to those converted Jews that were the first-fruits of a Christian ministry ; and in refer- ence to the future conversion of Abraham's posterity in the latter day ; so that the passage has no regard to any Christian parent, as a root, nor to his infant offspring, as branches arising from it. Yet in this light some of our brethren seem to under- stand the text, as appears by the following instances. ' The Christian,' says Dr. Addington, ' ia to his or her family as the root of these branches ; and, upon the prin- ciples here laid down, he or she being holy, so are they' fChr. Min.'s Rea., p. 80). ' 'This proves that the seed of believers, as such,' says Mr. Henry, ' are within the palo of the visible chui-ch, and within the verge of the covenant, till they do by their unbelief throw themselves out ; for " if the root be holy, so are the branches." "Though real qualifications be not i^ropagated, yet relative privileges are : though a wise man do not beget a wise man, yet a free man begets a free man : though grace doth not run in the blood, yet external privileges do, till they are forfeited, even to a thousand generations. Look how they will answer it another day, that cut off the entail, by turning the seed of the faithful out of the church, and so not allowing " the blessing of Abraham to come upon the Gentiles." The Jewish branches are reckoned holy, because the root was so' (Com., on Kom. xi, 1(j). Not allowing the blessing of Abraham to come vjion the Gentiles ! Truly, Mr. Henry, this is very severe ! Happily 'for us, though we hear the thunder roar, we are neither much hurt, nor greatly provoked, nor sadly frightened. Not the first ; for our cause is yet safe, except it be proved that every Christian parent is under the same peculiar economy with Abraham — that his children are interested in the same temporal promises and eoclesiaatioal privileges of 146 SUBJECTS OF BAPTISM. that illustrious ancient — that the Sinai covenant is yet in force — and that there is equal certainty of a believer's remote descendants, after a long apostacy, being converted in the latter day, as there is that Abraham's shall be so. Not the. second ; for thoLigh V.-0 do not admire thi.-:! observation of the celebrated commentator, yet we highly respect his character, and are uufeignedly thankful to Providence for his excellent exposition. Not the last ; for though we heard the terrible explosion, it was at a distance ; and wo are still capable of reflecting, that the principles on which our expositor here proceeds, arc more becoming a member of the ancient synagogue, than a pastor in the Christian church ; and more consistent with the creed of a national establishment, than with that of a Protestant Dissenter. " But if the censure of Mr. Henry bo severe, what is that of Mr. Baxter ? who at the end of a long list of dismal charges laid against the Baptists, adds : ' Lastly, they do plainly play the devil's part, in accusing their own children and disputing them out of the church and house of God, and out of His promise and covenant, and the privileges that accompany them ; and most ungi-atcfully denj^ reject, and plead against the mercies that Christ hath purchased for their children, and made over to them' f Plain Sc. Fr., p. 13). Ah, reader, did you ever meet with such a terrible 'lastly' as this, from the pen of a Protestant Nonconformist against that of his Dissenting brethren ! It wants only the anathema of a popish Council to make the censure quite complete, and the prison of the Inquisition, that these abettors of Satan may receive deserved punishment. It is no small comfort, however, that we can say, Tdumque imhelle sine ictu copjecit." — Peed. Ex., vol. ii, pp. 187, 189. Dr. Hallet, through differing in many particulars from Drs. Owen andWardlaw, when siDoaking of "the reasoning of St. Paiil upon this subject in the eleventh chapter of the epistle to the Eomans," says : " The doctrine surely is, that the inserted Gentiles were precisely in the position of the rejected Jews, that is, were partakers of the same relative holiness" (vol. xv, p. 50). Did Paul refer to this identical position of the Gentiles when he said, " Thou standest by faith ?" Fui'ther, says Dr. H., "All Gentiles brought under the sound of the gospel, are put upon the trial of their faith. They are all inserted in the good olive tree, to ascertain if they will bring forth good fruit" (p. 50). Is being " brought under the sound of the gospel" a being "inserted in the good olive tree ?" Are they to whom ministers are the savour of death unto death " inserted in the good olive tree ?" Docs not Pa^^l teach that insertion is " by faith," and severance by "unbelief?" Dr. H. says, "We say that as the natural branches of the stock of Abraham were recognized as holy by the appropriate sign, so the engrafted branches ought to be recognized as holy by their appropriate sign" (p. 53). Were female infants circumcised ? Was circumcision in any but Abraham a recognition of holiness ? Does the apostle here say one word respecting the natural branches of the stock of Abraham? Dr. H. docs not lay stress on the epithet holy, but he learns " from the apostolic writings, that ' all the nations ' have succeeded to the external privileges of the Abrahamic covenant, or that in Abraham all the families of the earth fire blessed" (p. 53). Does all the families of the earth being blessed in Abraham mean their succeeding to " the external privileges of tlio Ahrahnmic covenant. ?" Or are all the families of the earth now enjoying " the external pri^-ileges of the Abrahamic covenant ?" It has been maintained by others besides Dr. H., that insertion in the good olive tree was before Christ the insertion of the Israelites descending from Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and that additions to this were the insertion of tiddiiio-aa.1 families, of families through the head of the family. To this we give a decided negative. The insertion of which the apostle speaks, is that of believers ; the additional ingrafting is that of believers ; the standing and remaining therein is " by faith ;" and it is " unbelief" which caiises any branch to be " broken off." The privileges of being "grafted "in the good " olive tree " were and arc far greater than any external or national privileges, and the enjoyment of them has ever been — as in thecase of Abraham himself — is, and ever will be, through " faith." The privileges of this union, in addition to all that is temporal, are spiritual and eternal. The apostle speaks of believers and unbelievers ; of others there is i!0 mention ; tq others there is no reference. The apostle can say, " Ye in times past have not believed God, yet now have obtained mercy through their unbelief." In the whole there is as much reference to infants as in Christ's commission or in His gracious words, " God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever belicvoth in Him should not perish." The easting off, the ingrafting, the standing or continuing, of which the apostle here speaks, is altogether inapplicable to families, unless they ba individually believing or unbolieving. ^ WeL. does Dr. Wardlaw on this reply to Dr. HaUey. • Dr. Waedlaw. — "If it inly faith that the Gentiles stand, that is, retain their connexion with the root andtheii- covenant blessings, how can it be that it was not by ON 1 COE, VII, 14. 147 tlicir faith that [they were brought into this connexion ?"' " The apostle is speaking not of all tlio Gentiles any more than of all the Jews, but of the converted portions of both, as united by their common faith, and partaking together of the root and fatness of the same tree — the privileges and blessings, and hopes of ' the Israel of God.' "— Appcn., p. 289. § 4. On 1 Cob. vii, 14. Dr. Gale.—" St. P.aul is endeavouring to put better thoughts into the hearts of liis converts, ami persuade them tbut their proseljtisin did not dissolve naliual bonds and consanguinity ; and that it was not only lawful, but advisable, and a duty for the wife to dwell with her husband : for he is still her legitimate true husband, otherwise indeed, says he, your childi-en would be unclean." —On Bap., pp. 413, 414. Dr. Cabson. — " Our opponents have a pojjish pervcrsencss in clinging to arguments that have a thousand and a tliousaml times been shewn to be inefficient, and which they themselves repre- sent, not as bearing the weight of their conclusion, but as having merely some favourable aspect towards it. It is a most "cxatious thing, that, in the dispute about infant baptism, the greatest l)art of the arguments i •"ought to support it, have no concern with baptism at all."— O/i Bap., p. 206. Dr. J. 11. Cramp. — "'he word 'holy' is used in diflFerent senses in Scripture. All the Israelites were called ' ho • ' simply because they were separated from other nations, and undefiled by idolatry."— C.i^t'., p. 69. The Freeman. — "Had le childi'cn or unbelieving party been baptized, the apostle could not have omitted this in she^ ig that the husband and wife ought not to separate." — Mar. 7th, IhGO. In 1 Cor. -sii, 1 :, we have a passage to •which, by Paxlobaptists, much importance is atta* had. An alkision to baptism in this Sci'iptnre is far from being uniA^ert- illy affirmed ; but it is maintained by many of our opponents that it cc itains a valid argument, if not the strongest in all the oracles of God, for ;iie baptism of infants. The apostle says : " For the unbelieving husband is sanctified by the wife, and the unbelieving wife is sanctified by the husband : else were your children unclean ; but now are they holy." He ha^ just said : "If an}' brother hath a wife that believeth not, and she be pleased to dwell with him, let him not put her away. And the woman which hath an husband that believeth not, and if he be pleased to dwell with her, let her not leave him'' (vers. 12, 13). " The declaration of the apostle, that the children of Christian parents are holy," says Dr. Stacej-, " is a further addition to our argument." The apostle is speaking only of children v/ho have one Christian and one unbelieving parent. Of the believing and unbeliewing parent, I deny not that " one party is sanc- tified by or to the other" (although the Greek en literally and most frequently means la, sometimes by, and rarely to), and " that the divorce of the parents v/ould proclaim as a consequence that the children were impure," at least those indebted to their parents for existence after the union had become sinful ; also that "the only sense in which a heathen parent can be sanctified by or to a Christian, is one similar to that in which meat is said to be sanctified by the vrord of God and prayer ; that is, fitted for use, and made a blessing thi'ough a devout spirit." Through the sanctification of the unbelieving partner b}- or to the believing partner the children are not unclean, but holy. "Were Christian partners," say,s Dr. S., " to separate from their heathen partners, merely because of their heathenism, their children would be unclean," but now are they holy. The v.'ord holy is also stated by Dr. S. to be a term " not of variable or uncertain import," but one having "a fixed and definite import ;" so that this " is not one of those cases in which the difficulty of the subject 148 SUBJECTS OF BAPTISM. invites conjecture, or the scantiness of proof gives permission to doubt." Holiness, which is opposed to being unclean, whicli appHes to an uncon- scious child, and Avhich arises from the sanctification of the heathen or unbelieving parent, has here, according to Dr. S., a sense undoubtedly other than illegitimate. The ^Yord sanctified does not mean made holy in the sense of being a saint. It certainly means " fitted for use by Divine permission, and made a blessing through a devout spirit," or something similar to this. As the unbelieving partner is thus sanctified by or to the believing partner, so that a separation is not required, should we greatly err in maintaining that there is a similar sanctification of the children, so that a separation is not requisite, and that a separation in the former case would have required a separation in the latter ? and as the unbelieving partner " by Divine permission " remains set apart and belonging to the helievinij j^a^'tner, so the children remain set apart and belonging to their parents, and all may be " made a blessing through a devout spirit ?" Our estimable and talented brother can clearly see that the sanctification of the parent can be, " not as a man, but as a husband, not personally, but relatively to that mutual connexion by which they become one flesh ;" yet that the holiness or sanctification of the children is of this relative charac- ter appears to be beyond his perception. I know no diflerence between the holiness inherent in It agios and sanctification inherent in hagiazo. But Dr. S. most sternly rejects the idea of legitimate as here attaching to the word holy, although it is certain that if the marriage be not valid the chil- dren cannot be legitimate, and that the validity of the marriage is the theme on which the apostle is speaking-, and from which he makes his deduction respecting the children. Dr. S. asks : " How would separation involve illegitimacy, or the continuance of the marriage association the contrary ?" (p. 154.) I reply that if separation, the thing questioned, had been a duty, the union of the parents, and all progeny from such a union must have been illegitimate. The validity of the marriage tie in the narrated circumstances had been questioned, but by the apostle it is afiirmed. Holiness is said by Dr. S. to be " purity of heart," or " designation to religious privilege and duty." What else is sanctification, an opponent of Dr. S. might ask. In the latter sense, says Dr. S., " the Jews were called ' holy to the Lord ;' " and " they regarded the Gentiles as ' uncircumcised and unclean.' " As to the Jews, Dr. S. says, " the whole nation was denominated ' a holy people to the Lord their God,' and in token of this purity every individual" (male and female it would seem) " received in infancy the sign of circumcision. It is only in a similar sense that the children of Christian parents can be accounted holy." Since the unbe- lieving partner is sanctified by or to the believing one, we are invoked to believe that apostolic words teach as its consequence the holiness, that is, the " consecration" of the children, namely : " By the merciful providence of God, they are separated from the world, and in a certain sense associated with His people ; at least, they are inclosed within the sphere of Christian privilege and obligation." This is the holiness of a child having a believing and an unbelieving parent, given by an iusj)ired apostle with a clearness that rejects " conjecture," and forbids "permission to doubt;" and which ON 1 COE. VII, 14. 14D supplies " a further caddition to " all the previous arguments of Dr. S. in favour of baptizing all infants, whether one or both parents are believing or infidel ! These children being not unclean, but holy — the word holy not having here any unusual sense, but meaning the same perhaps as where we read. Be ye holy, for I am holy, that is, meaning separation, association in a certain sense, and inclosure within the sphere of Christian privilege and obligation, through the sanctification of the unbelie-vdng parent by or to the believing one, for the apostle teaches that:they " are already holy, not made so," from which we are to presume that they must at that time have been baptized ones ; for, having "the qualifj-ing sanctity," who will doubt that "the attesting rite" of baptism had been surely given, or that from these apostolic declarations to the church at Corinth it finally and logically follows respecting baptism, that " the children of Christian, parents have as just a claim to be declared holy by its administration, as the children of Jewish parents had to be pronounced holy by the sign of circumcision" (pp. 151-156)! Instead of the passage teaching that the, childi'en of Christian parents have a claim to be declared Jioly by the administration of baptism, the passage teaches that the children of a' believing and unbelieving parent have a right to be declared hoi}' and not unclean, from the unbelieving partner being sanctified (en, in j in relation to the believing one. On this passage which has reference to children in specified and special circumstances, in which there is not one word nor a hint respecting baptism, some Pajdobaptists, if I do not mistake, have the wisdom to be silent. We have no right to infer how far, had they written on this, we should have been confirmed in present sentiments, or enlightened on inspired language as teaching that the children of which the apostle speaks WEEE baptized, or that either the believing or the unbelieving parent, or somebody else, should see, to their being baptized ; or as teaching that only the children born after the faith of one of the parents, or also that the children previously born, ought to be baptized or now tcere baptized ; or as implying that all children in similar circumstances ought to be baptized, or that such children are all baptized ; or as confirming the sentiment that we are commissioned to baptize all we can, if we but except such as would receive the ordinance with profane scoffing. Gilbert Wakefield, a Paedobaptist whom I am far from ranking with Drs. Halley and Stace}^, has concluded from this passage, that " if one of the parents of any child, and much more if both its parents be in a state of holiness, or in the pro- fession of Christianity, that child is a Christian, or holy in the sight of God, and entitled to all the privileges of the rehgion of Jesus Christ, with- out baptism." Dr. L. Woods, on " now are they holy," says : " now are theij to be considered as belonging to the Christian community. God's people are not to separate from them as heathen children, but to treat them as Christian children" (Wot Is, vol iii, p. 379). By birth from one Christian parent they inherited a Christian position and treatment. Dr. Earth goes further. After teaching that if one partner " be a believer, the other also is sanctified by the mutual union, and participates in the general sanctity of the household : were it not so the ofispving of such marriages would be unclean," he says: "An important reason for Pa;dobaptism. If the 150 SUBJECTS OP BAPTISM. cliildren of believers, even by their connexion with their parents, arc re- ceived into the covenant of grace, why should they be denied that sacra- ment through -which this covenant is made, and through -which the gracious operations of the Holy Spirit are communicated ?"' We did not before know that reception into the covenant of grace was hereditary, nor knew we that the covenant of grace was made through baptism, nor that the gracious operations of the Holy Spirit were given on the condition of bap- tism. We had believed that through the blood of Christ God enters mto covenant with fallen man, and in infinite grace gives His Holy Spirit. Dean Alford — in no way to my astonishment — teaches that ''it is not 2)ersonal holiness which is here predicted of the children, any more than of the unbelieving husband or wife, but holiness of dedication, by strict dependence on one dedicated" (Gr. Tes., on 1 Cor. vii, 14) ! So I infer that the heathen husband had holiness of dedication by stric' dependence on the believing wife, and the children, infants and all others; 1 ad it by dependence on the believing father or mother ! Thus the Dean S( os " nothing incon- sistent with the idea, nor with the practice of in&nt ! iptism !" Indeed, it " would probably, as a matter of course be adminis red !" Dr. Stacey speaks of the holiness Avhich this p ssagc attributes to these children, and maintains that " it involves the ri ;ht " to their being baptized ; although he has taught on baptism as inch ling little children ; "For the same reason that it includes one, it includes all . No discrimination can be made on the ground of peculiar fitness or superior claim." He has taught that " children under the gOspel are not to be baptized on the ground of the faith or piety of their parents, but because of their relation to Him who ' is the Saviour ©f ail men, specially of them that believe ;' " and that this relation is " common to ' all the nations,' " to the children of believing or of unbelieving parents. If in the children mentioned by the apostle there was according to apostolic teaching "the (jualifying sanctity" for baptism, Ave wish to know if the sanctity of which he spoke arose according to his testimony from the relation of these children to Christ, or to their earthly parents ? And, if the grace of an earthly parent produces sanctity in children, does it produce it in those born before the possession of this grace ? or is the sanctity which qualifies for baptism confined to those born after the conversion of one of the parents ? At what age might it be proper in regard to these to act in imitation of John the Baptist's exhorta- tion when he said, "Think not to say within yourselves, We have Abraham to our father ?" If the grace of a believing parent produces sanctity in children born before and after conversion, is it retained equally long by both these '? Do children that are holy and not unclean, through the sanctification of an unbelieving parent by to or in a believing parent, retain this holiness through life, even if spared unto old age, and whate-\er may be their moral character '? And is it a holiness that will assuredly qualify for heaven, as well as for that ordinance which, for its guard, is at the portal of God's kingdom on earth '? If one believing parent will guarantee sanctity in every child, v.ill tv,o believing parents guarantee cither a greater amount or a longer continuance of it '? If one believing parent givos sanctity (qualifying for baptism, can the children of parents not paving faith, by any possibility have qualification for baptism or mtetness ON 1 COE. VII, 14. 151 for glory ? Some of tliese questions, although prompted by " the qualify- ing sanctity" of which Dr. S. speaks, will be seeia'to have special appropriateness to those vrho explicitly teach that the faith of at least one parent is requisite to the lawful baptizing of infants. It is difficult to conceive Avhy those who maintain that we have a commission to baptize everybody, should reason from 1 Cor. vii, 12-14, that in the holiness of children having a Christian parent there is a quahfication for baptism ; nor is it more clear how any one can be pronounced holj by the adminis- tration of baptism, if baptism is an ordinance for all on whom it can be performed, unless all do either before baptism possess this hoUness, this qualifying sanctity, or by baptism come into possession of sanctity, and thus have a claim to be declared holy, and thus obtain a qualification for the ordinance which has already been received ! In reply to Dr. S., who admits that " exceptional uses of terms do sometimes for convenience occur in a language," but who objects so strongly to the ideas legitimate and illegitimate as applj'ing to hagios and akathnrtos, I adduce the following from Baptists and Pccdobaptists, for the consideration of my readers. I may not agree with every word, but I think they sufiiciently prove that the baptism of these children is not taught as having taken place, and that a qualification in any way, of any kind, for baptism is not mentioned, cither expressly or by implication, in this passage. Dr. Inne3, wi'iting on baptism after he Lad become a Baptist, says: "tliere ia certainly no reference to human laws in the apostle's reasoning, in the passage in question ; hence being unclean cannot refer to illegitimacy in the common acceptation of that expression. But I understand the passage thus : The word here rendered nnclean, is applied to meats thr^t could not bo used agreeably to the Divine law. Acts X. 14. Peter, when commanded to IdU and cat, says, I have never eaten anything common or unclean, i.e., that which the law of God did not allow me to eat as food, and which, instead of being received, is to be rejected, or iKit away. Opposed to that which is unclccr.i, is that which is holy, or that which can be used or enjoyed, agi'ccably to the Divine commandment. Thus 1 Tim. iv, 4, ' Every creatiu-e of God is good, and nothing is to be refused (rejected or put away), if it be received with thanksgiving, for it is sanctified (rendered holy, or enjoyed agreeably to the Divine will) by the word of God (authorizing us to partake of it), and prayer.' It deserves notice that it is a word of the same origin that is used by the LXX for putting away the idolatrous wives in the time of Ezra ; that it is employed to denote rejecting or refusing certain kinds of food in this passage in the epistle to Timothy. Now this appears to me clearly the way in which unclean and holy are used in 1 Cor. vii." — On this sense of holiness ho remarks : " It is undeniable that it occurs as frequently as we have in Scripture the distinction marked between what is clean or holy, or to be used agreeably to the Divine will, and what is common or unclean. Nay, we can with confidence go back to the radical meaning of holiness, viz., that which is separated from a common to a sacred use, to be employed agreeably to the will of God, and in His service. The Christian is himself thus sanctified or separated to God ; and whataver he enjoys, he enjoys with the peculiar blessing of God. Whatever he has, whether property or wife, or children, are thus holy to him, as he endeavours to act in regard to all, agreeably to . the will of God, and enjoys a special blessing with all he x^ossesses. ",I understand the passage thus, then, Let not the unbelieving wife and the believing husband separate, for the unbelieving wife is sanctified to the husband by the word of God, i.e., it is agreeable to the word of God they should live together. Hence he enjoys the blessing of God in living with her ; and in like manner the unbelieving husband is sanctified to the believing vnis. Otherwise, if it were not agreeable to the Divine law that they should thus continue together (as, for example, was the case in the days of Ezra, see chap, x, 3), your children would be unclean, liko unclean meats which yon could not use or enjoy, they would need to be rejected. But now, from the propriety of the believing hus'oand continuing to live with the unbelieving wife being recognized hj the Divine law. your children are holy, yo\i can enjoy them. 152 SUBJECTS OF BAPTISM. having the blessing of God witli them, just as you enjoy every kind of food which is rendered holy in the same way, by the word of Ged, being used agreeably to the Divine authority, and by prayer." — Eiige. cmd Epe., pp. 137-140. Dr. Carson teaches the importance of this passage not only in relation to husbands, wives, and children, in families where one partner might become a Christian and the other remain a heathen, but where among the disciples of Christ the law of marrying in the Lord might bo violated. But for this passage it might be concluded that these marriages on repentance demanded separation, and that the children, if legitimate according to the law of man, would not bo so according to the law of God. But in no view of the passage " can it countenance the baptism of infants or unbelievers." — On Bap., p. 203. Dr. Cox, in replying to Dr. Dwight's interpretation of 1 Cor. vii, 14, says: "It denotes, says our author, that the unbelieving parent is so purified by means of his relation to the believing parent, that their mutual offspring are not unclean, but may be offered to God ; or, as he before explains it, may come into His temple. The chil- dren of believing parents may, therefore, be offered to God in baptism. The Doctor has evidently here lost sight of the distinction between the legal and evangelical senses of the term holy. The unbelieving parent is purified by the believing one ! Is this a doctrine to be found in Scripture ? Does it accord with the universal representation throughout its hallowed pages of the personal nature of religion ? How is an unbe- liever purified by a believer ? The apostle, moreover, is not writing upon the subject of baptism, but obviating the scruples of Christians about the continuance of their marriage relation with infidels. The children, he says, would not be holy unless the parents were so ; the holiness mentioned, therefore, must be of the same nature in both cases, and the meaning is, the marriage continued to be lawful, and neither party should be discarded on account of the Christianity of the other, because this would produce endless difiiciUties and litigations with regard to posterity. The argument is, ' You must not put away your unbelieving wives, if they are willing to remain with you, otherwise you must also discard your children, as the law of reparation from the heathen obliged the Israelites to do with regard to the children who were conjoined with the unclean party (Deu. vii, 3 ; Ezra x, 3). Under the gospel dispensation both the unbelieving party and the children are to be retained." — On Bop., pp. 121, 122. Mr. Macallan (a Baptist), after admitting that children were holy and not un- clean, " from the sucking child to the oldest idolater in the family," the idolatrous husband being sanctified by the believing wife, asserts that this '■ cannot furnish a warrant for the baptism of the party to whom tlio term is applied, because it is faith and not relative holiness that is the prescribed term of baptism." So I think if force etill remains in the passages : " Make disciples . . . baptizing them." " He that believeth and is baptized." He teaches that as "the stream cannot arise higher than the fountain," and the holiness of the children must be of the nature of the unbe- lieving partner's sanclification, there is as much encouragement to the baptism of the idolatrous husband from his sanctification, as to the baptism of his children from their relative holiness. Ho admits the illustration of holiness in opposition to uncleanness from meats and marriages among tlie Jews. On the latter he states that the Jewish law of marriage " prohibited all alliance with the i^eople of other nations, who were all held to be unclean. Hence, when the Jews of the captivity were reprehended (Ezra ii, 2) for having 'taken of the dau^liters of the Canaanites, &c., for themselves, and for their sons, so that the holy seed had mingled themselves with the people of those lands,' we are told (chap, x, 1-3) that ' there assembled unto Ezra out of Israel a very great congregation of men, and women, and children ; for the people wept very sore. And Shechaniah answered and said unto Ezra, Vv'^e have trespassed against our God, and have tak'jn strange wives of the pcoiDle of the land ; yet now is there hope in Israel concerning tliis thing. Now therefore let us make a covenant with our God to put away all the wives, and such as are born of them, according to the counsel of my Lord, and of them that tremble at the commandmtnt of onr God ; and let it be done ACCOiiDiNG to the LAW. (See also Nch. xiii, 2, 3, to the end." — On Bap., pp. Qd, G7. Dean Stanley teaches that " the passage, on the one hand, is against the practice of infant baptism in the apostle's time. For (1) he would hardly have founded an argument on the derivation of the children's holiness from their Christian parent or parents, if there had been a distinct act by which the children had themselves been admitted f ormallj' into the Christian society ; and (2) ho would not have spoken of the heathen partner as being ' hoi}' ' in the same sense as the children are regarded as ' holy,' viz., by connexion with a Chri-ttian household, if there had been so obvious a Connexion between the conditions of the two, as that one was, and the other was not baptized." Ho believes, however, that, " on tlie other hand, the passage asserts the principle on which infant baptism is founded." — St. Paul's E^is, to Cor., on 1 Cor. vii. 14, ON 1 COE. VII, 14. 153 J. Burnet, in Leciures on Popular Errors, appropriately introduces haptism. But he teaches that baptism is neither an initiatory, nor a professing ordinance, but a symbolical and teaching institution ; and that the proof of infant baptism is first, "that they xvere to be baptized; and secondly, that they were baptized." That they were to be baptized, he seeks to prove — from what ? — from the commission r — from 1 Cor. vii, 14! And in proof that they tccre bcuMzcd, lie conducts us to Lydia and her house (Acts xvi, 14, 15) ! The first passage, it is ma ntained, sets forth "the eligibility of the children to infant baptism ;" and the latter shews us that they " were baptized." Thus we have "the two great points established by these passages" (pp. 89-94). — What a pity that other equally eminent and learned Pa'dobaptists should explicitly assure us that there is not a single prop for infant bnptism in either of these passages ! Mr. B. reminds us of what Dr. A. Campbell says respecting Prodobaptists, as " inferring a part of an ordinance from one sentence in one passage, and from another sentence in another passage referring to sometliing else ; and then by converting these two inferences into one, make it a positive and explicit authority for a Christian institu- tion ;" " a Divine ordinance founded on two passages of Scripture, and resting on the relevancy of two inferences" (On Bap., pp. 384, 385). But this applies not to those who see in Matt, xxviii, 19 a commission to baptize everybody. Dr. Halley on these words says, " I do not adduce them as a direct argument in favour of infant baptism. To do so would be, I think, to make an unfair use of a very difficult passage. But if some evidence of the connexion of the children of be- lievers with the church of their fathers can bo deduced from other passages, the appropriateness of the allusion to such a state may afford some confirmation of that evidence, and may illustrate the position in which those children were placed in the apostolic age" (vol. xv, p. 133). Dr. H. on these apostolic and inspired words further observes : " (1) "W'hatever may be their obscurity in our eyes, their meaning must have been obvious to the members of the Corinthian church." And "(2) The unity of ideas preserved in the several clauses of the apostle's words by the use of the cognate verb and adjective, is somewhat obscured in the authorized version, in which these ■words are variously rendered ' sanctified ' and ' holy.' Had the translation been as I have given it, ' The unbelieving husband is made liohj by his wife, and the unbelieving ■wife is made holy by her husband ; otherwise your children would be unclean, but now they are holy,' the English reader would have readily perceived that the children were ' holy,' in the same sense as the unbelieving husband or wife was ' made holy.' We cannot admit a diversity of signification, so as to interpret the words as if they denoted two kinds of holiness, one of the parents, the other of the children" (p. 134). — This is candid, and, I believe, correct ; and will require baptism and membership in the church of Christ of the devotees of Yishnoo where one partner is converted, as much as the baptism and membership of the children of such converted parent. But while the good doctor is satisfied ''the apostle could not have intended personal holiness," he is a disbeliever in intended "legitimacy." "Nor is the passage," says he, "to be explained by that covenant relation which some Pffidobaptists assert ; for that could not have been attributed to the unbelieving husband or wife, unless, indeed, Mr. Greville Ewing was ri^'lit in maintaining that all relations of affinity, as well as con- sanguinity, are thus sanctified." — In this I coincide with the doctor. He can, however, add, for our enlightenment, " But if a family, of which either the father or the mother was a believer, -was considered as being brought under the especial watchfulness and instruction of the church, so that the unbelieving (unless they refused its discipline) as well as the young, wore considered as learners or catechumens, we can understand how the unbelieving parent was sanctified by the believing, and the children were not ■unclean, but holy" (p. 135). The solution of this difficult passage which -with many is the grand argument for infant baptism and membership in Christ's church, is with Dr. H. that If, &c., unless, &c., "the f.amily would thus bo dedicated to God in the church by a godly discipline!" And " i/this relation" of the offspring to the church, a relation which one thinks would be the same in the unbelieving partner, who through relationship to the believer was equally holy, " were designated by some external sign, like baptism, the language would bo still more appropriate" (pp. 135, 136). Satis. Dr. S. Adeington says, "The question upon which the apostle then gives his opinion, was this, ' Whether, if a Christian man or woman married an unbeliever, their children were to be considered as Christian offspring' " (On Bap., p. 81). — The question, as I think, is on the believing partners remaining vfith the unbelieving ones. The consequence of its unlawfulness as it would affect the children, is mentioned, but that is not the question. Dr. A. can assert (p. 100) that the "apostles speak" of children " as holy on account of their being devoted to" Christ, or '" ha^dng a right to the distinguishing token of the covenant of grace ; ' but from the Oracles of God no pian can prove that they so speak, 154 SUBJECTS OP BAPTISM. Gre. Ewing. — " Uiilesss we admit that infants, nay, every relation both of affinity and descent, which can be considered as his property, are interested in the privileges of a believer's house, I see not a satisfactory meaning of 1 Cor. vii, 14." — Who will admit to baptism every relation of " affinity and descent " that may form part of a believer's house, on account of this relation ? Dr. Cakson says, " What an awful sentiment has Mr. Ewing avowed ! Baptism into the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost, may — must bo given to a professed worshipper of Jupiter, Neptune, and Apollo, -with the thousands of inferior gods, if the person is the husband, or the wife, or the slave of a believer, and will condescend to submit to this Christian institution ! To refute this, is it not enovigh to state it ?" — On Bap., p. 211. Dr. L. Woods says of husband, ^vife, and children, here mentioned : " He is sanc- tified by hor, and she by him, and in consequence of this i?anctification, whatever it is, the children are holy." She has '• no occasion to put him away, but may as lawfully and properly continue to dwell with him as if he were a Christian. Were it not for this . . . his children would be unclean." — On Inf. Bnp., pp. 8G, 88. Billroth "complains," says Prof. Wilson finf. Ba])., p. 512) on 1 Cor. vii, 14, " that in the interpretation of this verso, commentators have dragged into their explanations a subject of which there are no traces in the text, viz., baptism, and so have impeded themselves with unnecessary difficulties." Prof. Wilson says that " the holiness predicated of the children is plainly federal holiness," entitling to " privileges and blessings which flowed in the channel of religious ordinances" fL^f. Bap., p. 510). And he kindly instructs and comforts those of us who believe the apostle, in teaching the sanctification of the unbelieving husband or wife, as much teaches the baptism of the unbelieving parent, as that of the believing parent's child, by assuring us that if we will "consult the old interpreters, or study the original in the light of such commentators as Billroth and Olshausen" (p. 517), we shall find our mistake ! If Dr. Yi. had referred us to the Scripture recording the covenant into which God has entered with the children of an infidel and believing parent, through the sanctification of the unbelieving partner by or to the believing one, instead of referring to " old interpreters" along with " Billroth and Olshausen," it might have been more efficacious in convincing us that these children cither are or ought to bo baptized members of the Christian church. And if the covena,nt further says that an unbelieving partner is made a saint by the believing partner, and is or ought to be a baptized church member, it settles the matter for or against Dr. Wilson or ourselves, and for or against interpreters, old or new. Dr. W. Cooke, who advocates the baptism of all children, without respect to the piety of a parent, can also teach tha-t the children of " a baptized believer," "being by their relation to a Christian parent saved from the pollution of heathenism, and dedi- cated to God by baptism, are accounted 'holy,' their spiritual relationship to Christ being thus recognized" (Inf. Bap., p. 15)'! — Where does God's word say a syllable on the children of one believing i)arent being saved from the pollution of heathenism, or bsing dedicated to God by baptism, or about the sinritual relationship of suc/i children to Christ, or the recognition of this relationship by baptism ? If our opponents con- clude that we attach an unusal meaning to hcgiastai and hagia, and that we draw illegitimate inferences from this i^assage, the same may assuredly be said of their interpretations and inferences. W. J. Shrewsbury (Wesleyan) advocates from this passage the baptism and church membership of the family that has a believing head. He teaches that Chris- tianity '■ considers the children entitled to privileges and blessings in consequence of their relation to a believing partner." — We maintain that every Christian ought to be a blessing to the family to which he belongs, bitt that the inspired Paul is here speak- ing, first, of what the unconverted partner is, and, secondly, of what tho children are through what the unconverted parent is. A. M'Lean says, "Two things oit'er themselves here to be considered. 1. The sanctification of the unbelieving party. 2. The holiness of the children in consequence thereof." He says, " We cannot understand it of typical ov ccreynonial sancilfication ; for this belonged only to the first covenant." "There remain only two senses in which this sanctification of the unbelieving party can be understood. 1. Instrumental sanctification ; or sanctified as an instrument of proijagating a holy seed. Or 2. Matrimonial sanctification, whereby the one is cnjoj'ed as a chaste yoke-follow by the other without fornication or unclcanness." Tho latter he maintains. Among other things, he says : "In 2 Cor. vii, 1, we find liollnrt^s ovsanclif cation opposed to./ili'/i iufss of the jicsh, as well as of tho spirit ; and when it is said, 1 Cor. vii, 34, that she may be holy in body, must it not be understood of her being clia.'tfr v" In i Thess. iv, 3, sauc- tijication is opposed to foinicatiou : ' For this is the will of God; even yoiu* sauutifiea- ON 1 COE. VII, 14. 155 tion,tliat ye should abstain from fornication.' And in ver.«;. 4, 5, it is contrasted with the lust of concupiscence : " That every one of you should know how to possess his vessel in sanctification and honour. Not in the hast of concupiscence,' &c. This sanctificcdion and Itonour agrees with Heb. xiii, 4, ' Marriage is honourable in all, and the bed undefiled ; but whoremongers and adulterers God will judge.' Now, if the Avords sanctification and honour be opposed tofornicaiion, the lust of concupiscvncc, ■whoredom,, and adultery, they must necessarily signify cliastity. And if marriage bo honourable (lawful, or chaste) in all, we may easily see how the unbelieving wife is sanctified in, by, or to her believing husband, whilst she observes the laws of marriage, and keeps the bed undefiled. For though she be an unbeliever, yet being lawfully joined to a husband, she is matrimonially holy, and sanctified by his use, even as the creatures he eats and drinks are, 1 Tim. iv, 3-5. Therefore as these are not to bo refused so she is not to be put away. The apostle backs the sanctification of the unbeliever with an argument drawn from an absurdity that would follow upon the supposition: Else vjere your children, unclean, hut now are they holy . As if he had said, If the unbelieving party were not a lawful yoke-fellow, then your children, being the issue of an impure junction, would be unclean ; but now are they holy. This leads me to consider, 2. In what sense the children arc said to be holy. What has been already said on the former head, leaves notliing to be done here, but formally to di-aw the conclu- sion. No stream can rise higher than its source, nor can any cause produce an effect disproportionate to its natiu-e. Thu t leh ich is horn of the jlesh, isficsh, and will remain so for anything that fiesh can do. If, therefore, as has been shewn, the unbelieving wife be only sanctified to her husband malrimonially, so as they may lawfully, chastely, and honoiu-ably dwell together without fornication or imcleanness ; then all the holiness that can accrue to the children from this sanctification, is only Icgilimacy, as being lawfidly begotten." " Calvin," saj's he, " on Mai. ii, 15, owneth that holy seed, or seed of God, is an Hebraism for legitimate seed" (Worlcs, vol. vii, pp. 150-153). — How strange that from the holiness of an unbeliever in regard to a partner, and the holiness of their children in consequence of the holiness of the unbelieviug parent, should have been deduced the baptism of children having one believing parent! and that this should by many have been the boasted foundation for administering to infanta a positive institution ! Dr. H.\.WKEB. — "Holy, that is, arc boi'n in holy wedlock." "And this is all that is or can be meant by it, as relating to the circumstances of human life" — Com., on 1 (Jor. vii, 14. M. Poole. — " In this place it soemeth to have a different sense from what it usually hath in holy writ ; for it can neither signify the sanctification of the person by infused habits of gi-ace ; for neither is the unbelieving husband thus sanctified by the believing •mie, neither is the unbelieving v«fe thus sanctified by the believing husband. Nor are cither of them thus set ajtart for the service of God by any legal rites. ... I ra.ther think it signifies bro'.ight into such a state that the believer mthout offence to the law of God may continue in a married state mth such a yoke-fellow." — Com., on 1 Cor., vii, 14. Claude. — "Behold now on what the apostle founds this hoUness, and whence ho derives it. Is it from baptism ? Doubtless it is not. Of that ho says not a word ; and it would be injurious to draw it from thence" (Les Q^nvres posih., torn, v, pp. y4, 95). — Were infant baptism drawn hence, so also woidd be the Lord's Supper. Archi. Hall, in defending infant baptism from this passage, maintains that the offspring of believers "are externally, relatively, and federally holy, as a seed visibly sepa,rated and appropriated to the Lord." Yet on the covenanting Jews he says : '■ Their covenant holiness, as a nation separated to dwell alone, and not to be reckoned among the rest of the nations, was entirely peculiar to them." — Gas. Wor., vol. i, p. 310. LuTZ. — " If Paul had only thought of infant baptism, he could not iiossibly have spoken thus." — In Stier's Words, &c., vol. viii, p. 329. Clarks' Edi. Dr. Stier. — " This much on the one hand is true — if ;infant baptism had been at that time already a universal practice, St. Paul could not have spoken thus para- phrastically concerning it." — Infant baptism from the beginning, but not at the beginning a iiniversal practice ! Fiu'ther, '' The whole matter assumed its proper relations, and obtained its rights, only by degTees ; just as to this day it is not expedi- ent that State churches should legislate absolutely on the question. I'his is the reason why the apostle spoke as he did." Indeed! "He has good reason for not speaking of it directly. On the same principle the Lord did not institute Knto, io relon,t]ie baptizing of children coming to Him in the arms of others, but 'left it to the free development of the Christian spirit' " (Words, &c., vol. viii, p. 329). — Let the reader ponder over the likeness of apostolic expediency to the policy of State chiirchism ! J^ 166 SUBJECTS OF BAPTISM. Christian ordinance, a positive and symbolic rite, obtaining its proper position by deg-rees, and after apostolic times ! Not enjoined by Christ, but left to the free development of Christian parents ! Olshausen. — •" It is moreover clear that St. Paul could not have chosen this line of argument, had infant baptism been at that time practised." — Com., on 1 Cor. vii, 14. Neander, speaking of the distinction between the children hero mentioned and the children of heathens, and of their being " considered in a certain sense as belonging to the church," immediately adds : " But this is not deduced from their having par- taken of baptism, and this mode of connexion with the church is rather evidence against the existence of infant baptism" (His. of Plan., &o., vol. i, p. 165. Bohn's Edi ). — He teaches that this passage "testifies against the existence of infant bap- tism" when Paul wrote; that if infant baptism had then existed, the epithet hagia, which in contrast with alcntharta is applied to these children, "would have been deduced only from the sacred rite." H. J. Gamble, on 1 Cor. vii, 14, says, "I am not prepared to urge it in favour of infant baptism." — Scr. B tp., p. 13(3. Dr. A. Barnes. — "This passage has been of ten interpreted, and is often adduced to prove that children are ' federally holy,' and that they are entitled to Christian baptism on the ground of the faith of one of the parents. But against this interpre- tation there are insuperable objection;!. 1. The phrase, 'federally holy,' is unintelli- gible, and conveys no idea to the great mass of men. It occurs nowhere in the Scriptures ; and what can be meant by it ? 2. It does not accord with the scope and design of the argument. There is not one wcrd about baptism here, not one allusion to it ; nor does tlie argument in the remotest degree bear upon it. The question was not, wliether children should be baptized ; but it was, whether there should be a separation between man and wife, where one was a Christian and the other not. Paul states that if such a separation should take place, it would imply that the marriage Avas improper, and of course, the children must be regarded as unclean. The supposition that this means that the children could be regarded as illegitimate, if such a separation should take place, is the one that accords with the whole scope and design of the argument. ' When one party is a Christian, and the other not, shall there he a separation ?' ' No,' says Paul ; ' if there bo such a separation it must be because the marriage is improper, because it would be wrong to live together under such circumstances.' What would follow from this ? Why, that all the children that have been born since the one party became a Christian, must be regarded as having been born while a connexion existed that was improper, unchristian, and unlawful, and of course they must be regarded as illegitimate. . . . This accords with the meaning of the word iinclean, akatharta. It properly denotes that which is impure, defiled, idolatrous, unclean (a) in a Levitieal sense, Lev. v, 2 ; (b) in a moral sense, Acts X, 28 ; 2 Cor. vi, 17 ; Eph. v, 5. The word will appropriately express the sense of illegitimacy, and the argument, I think, evidently requires this." On the sanctifi- cation of the unbelieving husband. Dr. B. teaches that the usual meaning of hagiazo is "to make holy, to set apart to a sacred use, to consecrate, &c. ;" but that "the expression cannot mean here (1), that the unbelieving husband would become holy, or be a Christian, fey f7ic mere /ac< of a connexion wi^/i a Christian . . . nor (2), that the unbelieving husband had been sanctified by the wife . . . nor (3), that the unbelieving husband would gradually become more favourably inclined to Christianity, by observing its efi'ects on the wife . . . nor (4), that the imbelieving husband might more easily be sanctified, or become a Christian, by being connected with a Christian wife. . . . But it is a good rule of interpretation, that the words which are used in any place are to be limited in their signification by the connexion ; and all that we are required to understand here is, that the unbelieving husband was sancti- fied in regard to the subject ^mder discussion, that is, in regard to the question whether it were proper for them to live together, or whether they should be separated or not." — Com., on 1 Cor. vii, 14. Dr. KiTTo's Cyclopwdia says on Infant Baptism, that a pretty sure testimony of its non-existence in the apostolic age may be inferred from 1 Cor. vii, 14, since Paul would certainly have referred to the baptism of children for their holiness." Dr. A. Morton Brown, of whom greater intelligence might have been expected, says, "_ Nor is there any meaning that can be attached to the passage . . . unless it is this, that one parent must be a believer so that their children may enjoy cere- monial administration" (Chr. 17(7., p. 123. 18(iS). He thus proceeds : " This uucleanncss is not moral, but ceremonial, and so the children of jiarents, one of whom is a believer, are not morally 'holy' on that account, but ceremonially so ; in other words, are fit subjects for baptism." — Are ceremonial holiness and fitness for baptism synonymous ?. ON 1 COE. VII, 14. 157 When one come to years of discvetiou repents and believes the gospel, does he then become ceremonially holy, and thus a fit subject for baptism ? The following opinions of continental divines are taken from A. Bootli''s Peed. Ex., vol. ii, pp. 189-196. Camerarius. — " The unhelieving Imshand hath been sa'nctijied^thtd, is, sanctified in the lawful use of marriage. For without this, the apostle says, the childi'cn would be unclean ; that is, infamous, not being legitimate. Thus they are holy ; that is, during the marriage, they are free from every spot of ignominy." — Vatablus : " ' The unbelieving husband is sanctified.' That is, the husband, though unclean, shall be accounted pure in reference to matrimonial commerce ; otherwise the children would not be legitimate, who nevertheless are legitimate." — Velthuysius : " Some think by that holiness mentioned in 1 Cor. vii, 14, is to be understood such an external holiness as was that of tiie Israelites, and of the circumcised ; which was possessed by an Israelite and a Jew, even though his life made it appear that he was not a true Israelite, ' whose praise is not of men, but of God.' Now those who are of this opinion suppose, that there is a kind of external covenant under the gospel ; on account of which covenant some are called lioly, though nothing appears in their lives to prove them real saints. But I see no intimation of this external covenant in the whole gos- pel ; and this opinion is akin to an error of the Papists, who suppose that a congregation may be a true church, though destitute of holiness." — Justinianus : "The apostle does not mean that sanctification of a married person, by which he becomes truly righteous and holy; but that by which the use of marriage may be honourably enjoyed." — Salmero : '" The sanctification intended relates to marriage." — Snares and Vasques : " The children are called holy in a ci\'il sense ; that is, legitimate, and not spurious." — Dietericus : " Hath been sanctijicd ; that is, legitimated, so that their marriage ia lawful. This the apostle proves from the natural eifect." — Hackspanius : " The opinion of Piscator in his note on this x^assage, is very agreeable to me. He thinks that ' the unbelieving husband is said to be sanctified by the believing wife,' and the unbelieving wife to be 'sanctified by the believing husband,' because the use of marriage was granted as holy; that is, it does not injure the conscience of the wife or of the husband ; because the wife with a good conscience may cohabit with an unbelieving husband. Thus different kinds of food are said to be sanctified (1 Tim. iv, 5), which a person may use without hurting his conscience : which parallel passage is here urged, after Austin, by Flacius, and by Ames."- — Melancthon : " Paul answers, that the marriages are not to be pulled asunder for their unlike opinions of God, if tho impious person do not cast away the other ; and for comfort, he adds as a reason, ' The unbelieving husband is sanctified by the believing wife.' Of which speech divers interpretations are made ; but the true and natural is this, as elsewhere he saith, ' Meat is sanctified ' for that which is holy in use, that is, granted to believers from God, So here he speaks the use of marriage to bo holy, and to be granted of God. . . . The connection of the argument is this : If the use of marriage should not please God, your children would bo bastards, and so unclean ; but your children are not bastards, therefore the use of marriage pleasethGod. How bastards were unclean in a peculiar manner the law shows, Deu. xxiii." — Wolfius : " The generality of our Lutheran divines understand the sanctification of the unbelieving partner only in this sense : Paul asserts that a marriage of this kind ought to be esteemed lawful and firm by Christians, though only one of the parties profess the name of Christ."- — Vitringa : " Seeing it is manifest, therefore, that the children of believers are not called holy, because they are all actuated by the Holy Spirit ; the generality of our divines recur to an external holiness, which has its original from an external covenant. So that the children of believers are holy, because, being separated from the world, they live and are educated in the communion of the external church, and are partakers of the symbols of the external church. Like as the Israelites in former times, being chosen out of the other nations of the world, are called a holy nation (Ex. xix, 6), though a very great part of them were impure ; and thcLr children are denominated a holy seed (Ezra ix, 2, compared with Neh. ix, 2). It is undoubtedly true that in Israel, according to the flesh, there was an external and typical holiness, R,rising from an external covenant, which consisted in external precepts (the Scripture calls them carnal, be- cause the fiesh is the exterior part of man) ; and also external promises, which tho Scripture calls worse than the promises of the new covenant. . . . Those learned men seem to conceive of this passage, that it is the external holiness of those who give up themselves to the church, so far as they are separated from the world : in the mtil- 158 SUBJECTS OF BAPTISM. titude of whom seeing' there are infants, hero also they are called holy, aa were infants of the Israelites in former ajies. But this is inconf^istent with the clear doctrine of the Divine word, and absolutely contra,ry to the g-enius of the now covenant. . . . So far from an external holiness of this kind having- any place under the New Testa- ment, that, on the contrary, this is the prerogative of the New Testament, or covenant, that no one belongs to it, except he he truly sanctified; no one is called holy, except ho be truly considered as internally holy; and in this consists the difference bet iveen the old and the new covenant, that th is is entirely spiritual, entirely internal. The precepts and promises of it are internal ; it acknowledges none as covenantees but those that are truly sanctified, or accounted such. But that hath both carnal precepts and carnal promises ; and it also admitted covenantees that were ceremonially clean, though not pure in heart." — Musculus : " The most plain iinderstanding of this place is, first, in that we understand not the word holiness, of that holiness which is by the covenant of God, or the spirit of faith, by which believers are sanctified as a people of God, but of the holiness of the conjugal bed. . . . Nor is any other holiness or cleanness of children meddled with than that which agrees also to unbelieving parents ; for to them no other agrees than that which is by lawful marriage." — Calovius : " The nnbeliever is said to be sanctiSed by marriage with the believer; not as to the person, which is not sanctified, except by faith ; but as to use and conjugal intercourse. . . . Whence it follows, that these things have been rashly applied by Calvin, Bcza, Parreus, and others, to a natural or original holiness of children born of believers." Mr. Booth may well remind Pajdobaptists that there is not a word "in all the chapter concerning baptism, any more than aboat the sacred Supper ;" and that bap- tism is ''a positive institute." He also maintains that ''the term 7(.o?y, as here applied to children, one of whose parents is a believer," " is not confined to the infants of such persons, but belongs to all their offspring, whether younger or older ; whether born before the conversion of cither parent, or after that happy event had taken place ; for the children without any distinction are pronounced holy.* If, therefore, it be lawful to baptize them on the ground of this holiness while infants, it must be equally so when grown up." Mr. B. teaches that the " external, relative holiness of the chosen tribes entirely ceased, when that dispensation to which it belonged became extinct. Consequently, as holiness of this kind has no existence under the new economy, no argument for infant baptism can be derived from it ;" each of the words unclean, sanctified, and holy, " must be understood either in a ceremonial, a moral, or a civil sense," and the two former being inadmissible, the latter alone remains. In opposition to Dr. Doddridge, he says, the apostle's argument runs thus : The children are legitimate, because the converse of the parents is lawful ; and that converse is lawful, bccaiiso they have been sanctified, or mutually set apart for the enjoyment of each other, exclusively of all other persons." Also, after a lucid exposure of numerous Pa;dobaptist concessions and contradictions, he says : " We take the liberty of asking still further. Whether all the children of all believers retain this relative holiness while they live ? And if not, whether it wear out by age, or be liable to forfeiture P If the first, why do not our opposers baiDtizo the adult offspring of believers, if not b.aptized in their infancy, merely on the ground of tluit holiness, without any profes- sion of repentance and faith ? If the second, we may justly demand. At what age does relative holiness begin to decline, and in what period of life is it qiiite extinct F' —Peed. Ex-, vol. ii, pp. 197-221. A. M'liEAN says : "If the children's holiness is derived from the believing parents* covenant, the holiness of the unbeliever must be more immediately so ; because it is the mcdivni tlu'ough which the holiness of the children is derived, and without which they would be unclean ; ' else were your children luiclcan ;' and therefore the children's holiness cannot be a further holiness than that of the unbelieving parent through which it comes, but must of necessity be of the very same kind. . . . I do not say that the holiness of the children is originally derived from the holiness of the unbelieving parent. The holiness of both is originally derived from the ordinance of God, making the one a lawful wife to the believer, and consequently the other a lawful issue, whieh was not the case under that law whereby old Israel was separated from the nations." — Worl-s, vol. vii, pp. 285, 286. How evident that Baptists arc not nlone in their interpretation of this passage, and tliat they have no need of any subteriugc in evading hence the force of any argument ! See also § 10. b . * I would not affivm that tho .■^postle^^ words .apply equally to those cliildrcn horn bcfove tho convevsiou of ono of the parents as to those subsociucntly honi, although a distinction is uot exijrcssly mado ; and if we read sanctified "to," n renderinf,' which some oi' the Icaiued advocate, the sanctificatiou of the unbelieving partner must be the being set apart to his now belicvinff partner. ON EPH. V, 26 ; TITUS HI, 5. 159 § 5. On Eph. V, 26. K. Hall. — " Few things tend more powerfully to enlarge tiic niiuil, than conversing with great objects, and engaging in great pursuits."— Works, vol. i, p. 309. Among tlie "passages that are supposed to allude to the ordinance of baptism," Dr. Williams mentions : " That he might sanctify and cleanse it with the washing of water by the word" (Eph. v, 26). Also 1 Cor. vi, 11 : "But ye are washed;" John v, 25 ; 1 Pe. i, 9 ; and Rev. i, 5, are mentioned. He adds that " perhaps the following texts, and some others, allude to the Christian purification," Titus ii, 14 ; James iv, 8 ; 1 Pe. i, 22 ; 2 Cor. vii, 1 ; 1 John i, 7, 9. And ho says : " May I not add Acts ii, 33, . . . Rom. v, 5, . . . Titus iii, G, Acts x, 45 ?" I deny not an allusion to baptism where we read of " the washing of water," and of being "washed," but I believe that "the Christian purification" maj' be spoken of where there is no allusion to baptism. I am not av^^arc that there is any more allusion to baptism where we read of being cleansed from sin, than where we read of the remission, forgiveness, or blotting out of sins. Nor am I aware that in the pouring out of the Spirit of which we read both in the Old and New Testament, there is any allusion to the divinelj'-enjoined baptism, although its abundance in one instance of pre- diction and realization constituted a baptism. Some of these passages have been noticed in the volume on the Act of baptism. Dr. Hodge and many others regard Eph. v, 2G as containing an allusion to baptism ; but none, so far as I am aware, advocate from this passage the practice of sprinkling, or the baptism of the miconscious. The apostJe is certainly not speaking of infants ; nor are further remarks necessary. § 6. On Titus hi, 5. A. C. Barrett. — " By the washing of regeneration (dki lontron pnUprienesias), rather, by the larer of regeneration." — Camp., &c., p. 254. The words of the apostle in Titus iii, 5, are : " Not by works of righteousness which Ave have done, but according to His mercy He saved us by the washing of regeneration and renewing of the Holy Ghost." And I believe that the term xvashipjj or rather hath of m/eueration is used, because in this ordinance regeneration is represented and professed. Nothing can be more inapplicable to infants and the unregenerate than this verse of holy writ. If the apostle refers to baptism, the expression and the connexion testify that it must be believers' baptism. This pas- sage, like the rest, being irreconcileable with infant or indiscriminate baptism, teaches, along with them, that the apostles knew of "no such custom." The following are a few of Pasdobaptist concessions on this passage. Dr. Erskine. — " Well, thoi-ofor9, doss Paul join tog-etlier the washing' Tvith water and the rcnowini? of the Holy Gho?t, as things which should never be separated " Theol. Bis., p. 79. 160 SUBJECTS OF BAPTISM. J. Brown. — •' He broug-lit us oiit of tliis deplorable condition into a state of sal- vation, through the cleansing' virtue of regenerating grace, represented in baptism, and effected by the iiowerful operation of the Holy Ghost."- — Self-Inter. Bi. (Edited by Eev3. J. B. and A. S. Paterson), on Tit. iii, 5. J. Howe. — " So it [the gospel] is the immediate instrument of their regeneration after that the love and kindness of God to men appears, i.e., so as that they believe it, He saves them ' by the washing of regeneration and the renewing of the Holy- Ghost.' Tit. iii, 4, 5."— Works, vol. i, p. 441. Baxter. — " Of His free mercy He saved us from that state of sin and misery, by regeneration signified and sealed in baptism, and l;>y the renewing work of the Holy Spirit," etc. — Par., on Tit. iii, 4-6. Dr. Doddridge, having opposed the doctrine of baptismal regeneration as being here taught, says : " It can surely signify no more than that they who are regener- ated are to be thus washed" (Note, on Tit. iii, 5). In his Lectures he says : "If loutron loaliggencsias in Titus be rendered of the laver of regeneration, and explained of baptism, it can only signify the laver in which the regenerated are to be washed." —Mis. Works, p. 490. Dr. S. Addington. — " The washing of regeneration. He calls it so, not as effecting that change itself, but only as an external token or memorial of it " (On Bap,, p. 3). Did God or man ever ordain any thing to be a memorial of what exists not, but simply may at some time exist ? Can that which is a token or memorial of regeneration and the washing away of sins belong to the unregencrate and to infants ? Dr. Macknight. — " Through the bath of regeneration — through baptism, called * the bath of regeneration,' not because any change in the nature of the baptized person is produced by baptism, but because it is an emblem of the purification of his soul from sin. . . . The real change in the nature of a believer, which entitles him to bo called a Son of God, is not effected by baptism, but by 'the renewing of the Holy Ghost ' mentioned in the next clause. Hcnco our Lord whom the apostle hath followed here, joined the two together in His discourse to Nicodemus, John iii, 5." — Com., on Tit. iii, 5. J. Wesley. — " The laver of regeneration, tliat is, baptism, the thing signified as well as the outward sign." — Notes, &c., on Tit. iii, 5. Dr. G. C. Knapp.^ — •" Baptism is called, Titus iii, 5, loutron paliggenesias, because we are not only solemnly admitted by this rite into the Christian society, but are likewise thereby obligated, according to the precepts of Christ, to become reformed in character ; and on this condition have all the rights and rewards of God's children granted and assured to us." — Theol. Lee, p. 389. L. Coleman. — "The loutron, ivashing, is used figuratively to denote that purifica- tion or sanctification which is implied in the profession of those who are received by baptism into the church of Christ." — Antiq. p. 115. Dr. Doedes. — " ' Washing of regeneration and renewing of the Holy Ghost,' the genitives (regeneration and renewing) are genitivi appositionis, just as there occur in Eph. vi, li-17, and elsewhere not a few ; in other words, regeneration and renewing by the Holy Ghost are compared with a washing (bath)." — Herm., p. 122. Dean Alford. — " The laver (not ' washing'), as E. V. : see the Lexi. : but always a vessel, or pool in which washing takes place." Laver " of, belonging to, pertaining to, setting forth, regeneration." Two things are spoken of : the laver of regeneration, which is a way of expressing baptism into Christ, and the renewing of the Holy Ghost." — Gr. Tes.. on Tit. iii, 5. § 7. On Heb. X, 22. J. CRiPs.— " The obligation to produce evidence rests on those who need it to establish their case."— !»/. Bap., p. 10. I neither deny nor affirm that there is reference to baptism when we read: "Lot us draw near with a true heart, in full assurance of faith, having our hearts sprinkled from an evil conscience, aiid our bodies uumhed with pare water ;'' but I maintain that if there is a reference to baptism, most certainly the exhortation with which in the preceding words it is associated, and the exhortation which immediately follows, namely, to hold fjist the profession of faith without wavering, are diametrically CHILDEEN AND INFANTS IN THE GOSPELS. 161 opposed to tliG idea of infant or indiscriminate baptism, whilst they per- fectly accord with and would corroborate the baptism of believers. That the sprinkling of the heart from an evil conscience refers to an internal operation and not an outward performance, it is unnecessary for me to attempt to prove. Certain Paedobaptists have written as follows. Abp. TiLLOTSON. — " This refers to that solemn profession of faitli wliicli was made by all believers at tlieir baptism." — Works, vol. iv, p. 865. Dr. Macknight. — "Ami being: 'waslied in body with the clean water of baptism, whereby wo profess our faith in Christ as our High-Priest." — Go)n., on Heb. x, 23. J. Wbsley. — " The profession of our hope. — The hope which we professed at our baptism." — Notes on N. T., on Heb. x, 23. Dr. Doddridge. — •" Our bodies in baptism washed with pure water, intended to represent our being cleansed from sin." — Para., on Heb. x, 22. I. COBBIN, having spioken of the allusion to baptism (ver. 22) in having their " bodies washed mth pure water," says on ver. 23 : "' The continuation of their pro- fession first solemnly made, is here understood, avowing their faith on all just occa- sions," &c. — Evan. Syn., on Heb. x, 22, 23. _ J. Bliss. — "' And our bodies washed with pure water.' It is intimated by thia part of the exhortation that the waters of baptism should be a constant memorial to Christians, that while their hearts are sprinkled from an evil conscience before God, their visible deportment should also bo pure and holy before men." — Expo., on Heb. X, 22. Dr. Bloomfield. — " The full sense, imperfectly developed, is, ' Let us hold fast unflinchingly the faith we confessed [in baptism], and cling to the hope involved in that profession."— Gj-. Tes., Sup. Vol., on Heb. x, 23. § 8. On the Mention or Children and Infants in the Gospels. J. C. Ryle.— "A few plain texts of Scriptiu-e are needed ; and these texts have yet to be found." —Home Truths, p. 77. J. Craps. — " As infant baiitism is opposed to the law of Christ delivered to His apostles, so it is opposed to this plain example of Christ in dismissing these infants -without baptism." — Inf. Bap., p. 29. J. Hervey. — " Let our passions rise and fall ; take this course or that ; as His word determines, as His holy example guides." — Ref. on a Fl. Gar. J. .Tarrjji. — " Goi hi,d so ordered the gospel dispensation, that none but the humble, tho tractable, and wcU-disposcd felt interested in it." — On Rom. ix, p. 278. W. F. Strvenson. — " There is a kingdom into whii^h none can enter but children, in which tho children play with inftnita forces, where the child's little finger becomes stronger than the giant world." — Praying and Working, p. 317. Dr. Carson.^" Had man appointed an ordinance of imi)osition of hands on children, from the authority of this passage, it would not have been so strange ; but to argue that children must be baptized, because they may be blessed by Jesus, has no colour of plausibility." — On Bap., p. 202. There are many portions of holy writ, in addition to those already quoted, which are supposed, without mentioning the ordinance of bap- tism, greatly to encourage the baptizing of infants. Some of these we shall now examine. On one occasion Christ's disciples came to Him, say- ing, " Who is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven ? And Jesus called a little child unto Him, and set him in the midst of them, and said. Verily I say unto you. Except ye be converted and become as little children, ye shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven. Whosoever therefore shall humble himself as this little child, the same is greatest in the kingdom of heaven. And whoso shall receive one such little child in My name re- ceiveth Me. But whoso shall offend one of these little ones which believe in Me, it were better for him that a mill-stone were hanged about his neck, and that he were dro'wned in the depth of the sea" (Matt, xviii, 1-6). We also read in ver. 10 : " Take heed that ye despise not one of these little M 162 SUBJECTS OF BAPTISM. ones ; for I say unto 3'0i;, that in heaven their angels do always behold the face of My Father which is in heaven." Again, in application of the parable on seeking and finding the one straying and lost sheep, and re- joicing more over it than over " the ninety and nine which went not astray," our Saviour said : " Even so it is not the will of your Father which is in heaven, that one of these little ones should perish" (ver. 14). Also, the evangelist Luke thus records Christ's rebuke of strife and ambition among His disciples : " And Jesus, perceiving th» thought of their heart, took a child and set him by Him, and said unto them. Whosoever shall receive this child in My name receiveth Me : and whosoever shall receive Me, receiveth Him that sent Me : for he that is least among you all, the same shall be great" (Lu. ix, 47, 48). Referring to oflences, Luke reports the Saviour as saying to His disciples : " Woe unto him through whom they come. It were better for him that a mill-stone were hanged about his neck, and he cast into the sea, than that he should offend one of these little ones" (Lu. xvii, 1,2). Moreover, when Christ assured His disciples of the recompense attending their reception, and the reception of a prophet or righteous man in the name of a prophet or righteous man. He said : " And whosoever shall give to drink unto one of these little ones a cup of cold water only in the name of a disciple, verily I say unto you, he shall in no wise lose his reward" (Matt, x, 40-42). Dr. Stacey, seeing in the language of Christ (Matt, sviii, 3) that a child is *' set forth as the type, in spirit and temper, of a Christian dis- ciple," sees the discipleship of children, their oneness with Christ, such a union with Him that whosoever receiveth them in His name, receiveth Him likewise. Seeeing children to be "members of His kingdom," one with Him — "incorporated with Him — in the sense in which the church is called His body," he sees a consideration in favour of infant baptism, which is made more determinate by other evangelic records. Thus we read in Mark x, 13-16 : "And they brought j^oung children to Him, that he should touch them : and His disciples rebuked them that brought them. But when Jesus saw it. He was much displeased, and said unto them, Suffer the little children to come unto Me, and forbid them not : for of such is the kingdom of God. Verily I say unto jon, Whosoever shall not receive the kingdom of God as a little child, he shall not enter therein. And He took them up in His arms, put His hands upon them, and blessed them." The language of Matthew is : " Then were brought unto Him little children, that He should put His hands on them and pray : and the disciples rebuked them. But Jesus said, Suffer little children, and forbid them not, to come unto Me : for of such is the kingdom of heaven. And He laid His hands on them, and departed thence" (Matt, xix, 13-15). The interesting fact is also recorded by Luke, who says: "And they brought unto Him also infants, that He would touch them : but when His disciples saw it, they rebuked them. But Jesus called them unto Him, and said, Suffer little children to come unto Me, and forbid them not : for of such is the kingdom of God. Verily I say unto you. Whosoever shall not receive the kingdom of God as a little child shall in no wise enter therein" (Lu. xviii, 15-17). CHILDREN AND INFANTS IN THE GOSPELS. 163 These passages teach plainly that in some things there is a resemblance between little children and disciples of Jesus ; yea, that such a relation- ship exists "between a child-like spirit and the kingdom of God, as makes the possession of one the condition of entrance into the other." But none of these passages, nor any others in holy writ, speak of little children as disciples of Jesus, or eligible for baptism. It is not recorded that after taking up the children in His arms Jesus baptized them. It has been asked — though not by our most intelligent opponents — What did they come to Jesus for, if not for baptism ? And, says Rev. W. Dalton, " No passage can be more encouraging on the subject of infant baptism ; for we per- ceive how by His outward gesture and deed, Christ declared His good will towards them ; for He embraced them in His arms : ' He laid His hands upon them, and blessed them' " (Com., on Mark x, 1-31). It is plainly expressed for what purpose children were brought to Christ, and what Jesus did to them. There is as much evidence that these infants or chil- dren brought to Christ and blessed by Him, were then baptized by Him or His apostles, as that He gave them power on that day to solve a problem in ethics. Without baptizing them, or commanding them to be baptized, Jesus declares them to be of the kingdom of heaven, and blesses them. We may, therefore, acknowledge infants to be of the kingdom of God without baptizing them. We know not how Christ can be better imitated, if little chiluren are brought to us that we " should touch them," or take them up in our arms, or that we should put our hands on- them and pray, than by taking them up in our arms, putting our hands on them, and ask- ing a lolessing from God for them. Will our opponents allow this imita- tion of Christ without charging us with awful profanity by making ourselves in a sense Christ's representatives ? We deny not that little children, whether baptized or unbaptized, are through Christ's atonement, meet for glory ; but if this qualifies them for baptism, it also qualifies them for the Lord's Supper. Nor does it qualify for either unless God's word so teaches. Intelligence, and we believe piety too, is as requisite according to "the Scripture of truth" for one ordinance as for the other. The inference from every scriptural record of precept or precedent on baptism, is that this positive rite has no connexion with little children, with any not come to years of discretion. It is true that nothing unsuitable to the character and condition of children is or " can be required of them." But we believe that baptism "confesses by sign" a death to sin ; that it is a professed consecration to another "as a religious Teacher and Guide ;" that it is a putting on of Christ, and that it requires "the answer of a good conscience toward God." Shall we "oppose the wish of the Son of God? Shall we dispute His authority, and slight His words ?" Whether " of such" refers to "men of child-like temper," or "the very children them- selves," or these and all similar chikken, what right have we to baptize infants in destitution of all evidence that the apostles or our Lord ever baptized one, and in remembrance of our being instructed to baptize dis- ciples, in accordance with the momentous fact : " He that believeth and is baptized shall be saved ?" Instead of their privileges being abridged by our not baptizing them, it is they who in opposition to Christ's will 164 SUBJECTS OP BAPTISM. perform upon infants in their unconsciousness an act which Jesus has taught to he a vohmtarv, solemn, and significant act devolving on every one who helievingly accepts Him as his Redeemer from guilt and perdition, and then teach that this command of baptism by Christ has been obeyed by them — it is the}' who baptize them in infancy — that abridge their privileges, and to whom rather than to the adherents of believers' baptism, Jesus "addresses in mingled tones of caution and menace the warning : 'Take heed that ye despise not one of these little ones.' " Of those add- ing to and altering Christ's institutes we may ask, " Who hath required this at your hands ?" A little child, according to Dr. S., is "in a condi- tion to be accounted a disciple." If disciple means a scholar of Christ, or a believer in Christ, can an infant be such ? And if by tJie kingdom of God " is meant the church on earth or the church in heaven," and if infants are " members of His kingdom," and for this reason are baptized, or ought to receive the ordinance of initiation into the church of Christ, does their baptism take them out of the church in heaven into the church on eai-th ? or out of the church on earth into the church in heaven ? or out of either into the very same ? " The two are so connected that the one must precede the other," says one honoured opponent. Perhaps there is a division of visible and invisible that may explain the initiation of infant learners or infant Christians ! Or does the baptism of infants take them out of the world lying in wickedness into God's kingdom either of grace or glory ? If children were ever brought to Jesus for baptism, of which we have any inspired testimony, our opponents will admit it was these chil- dren who are expressly said to have been brought to CJirist for another purpose. That these children had previously received baptism, or that they ever, being little children, received baptism, our opponents will admit that there is not a particle of evidence. Of little children, says Dr. S., "Their interest in the Christian covenant is irrespective of personal acts, because of such acts they are naturally incapable." Because repentance and faith were known to be scriptural pre-requisitcs for baptism, some Paedobaptists have invented and others are perpetuating a system of depu- ties, by which sponsorial promises conduct to the font, while others will have baptism irrespective of repentance and faith either personal, or by the promise of a substitute. They can look on dear babies and say, " True they have not faith ; true also they do not need it ;" but they can- not look on these loved ones and say. True they have not baptism ; true also they do not need it. It can be seen respecting these little children : " Nothing, therefore, unsuitable to this character can be required of them;" but it is not seen that nothing unsuitable to this character can be required of us in reference to them. Baptism, the profession of "repentance to- ward God and faith toward our Lord Jesus Christ," is as unsuitable to these little children as the partaking of the Lord's Supper, and the manage- ment of church business, all of which, by compulsion and the figment of approved proxies, is conceivable. Many of our opponents admit that baptism "confesses by sign" a death unto sin; that it is a professed conse- cration to another "as a religious teacher and guide ;" that it is a. putting on oj Christ, and the answer of a good conscience toward God. If any in- CHILDEEN AND INFANTS IN THE GOSPELS 165 fants had ever been baptized by Cbrist, or by the apostles on His behalf, we could admit that those brought to Christ might at some time have been baptized, although we are expressly told that on this occasion they were brought for another pm-pose, and that another action was performed upon them. Besides, some of those who teach that because these chil- dren were of the kingdom of God, they were consequently disciples, and as disciples necessarily fit subjects for baptism, teach likewise that we are commanded to make disciples by baptizing. Thus Christ's will, according to those who complain that we make too much of baptism, must be that we baptize the ungodly to bring them into Christ's kingdom, and that we baptize those in the kingdom because they are in it. The Divine record respecting these children is as clear that they were baptized before they were brought to Christ, as that their baptism then took place : it speaks as expressly of their having been introduced by baptism into the kingdom of God, as of their being baptized because they were of the kingdom of God, and as expressly of their baptism before they were born as of their baptism after their birth. If our opponents taught that wo ought to imitate Christ, instead of teaching that because Christ did one thing we ought to do another, their reasoning would be more worthy. The appeal- ing on behalf of baptism to Christ's aliectionate regards to childi-en may bring to remembrance the Ptedobaptist Dr. Goodman, who on the Council of Trent founding auricular confession on John xxi, 22. says, " Now here I appeal to any man that hath eyes in his head or cars to hear, whether in this text there be any one word of auricular confession." — Presar/. Po., Tit. viii, p. 6. We approve of aflection, of strong and practical affection to little children even by all, but especially by parents. That Christ manifested His regard for them we deem matter for thankfulness and rejoicing ; but who can object to the words of Mr. Booth : "How awkwardly it looks thus to argue : — Christ expressed a condescending regard for little children zvitJwut liaptizing them, or saying a word about it ; therefore we should manifest our affectionate care for infants by baptizing them ! He who can fairl}^ prove the point, or make any advance towards it from such premises, must be a wonderful proficient in the art of sjilogising." " Is it not strange, unaccountabl}'. strange, that our Lord's most intimate friends should have been offended with the persons who brought those children, if it had then been customary to baptize infants ? Such a prac- tice could not have commenced, much less have been common among the followers of Jesus Christ, but these disciples must have known it ; for, as Jesus Himself baptized not, they must have been the administrators. Now had that been the case, or had they known and approved the modern gi'ounds of PaDdobaptism ; such as the proselyte plunging, Jewish circum- cision, the Abrahamic covenant, and the relative state of infants whose parents are believers ; there is no reason to imagine they would have acted as they did in this instance." Nor vAW I condemn Mr. B. for that which follows : " Being sometimes requested by the parents of a new-born child to unite with them in addressing the Father of mercies, we comply. On which occasion we frequently read some portion of Scripture, give a word of exhortation to the parents respecting the education of their child, 166 SUBJECTS OF BAPTISM. return thanks to the Giver of all good for the recent blessings bestowed on the family, and recommend the infant to God by earnest prayer. This proceeding is wholly of a moral character, and would have suited a pious Jew before the incarnation. It should be understood that we do not object against the conduct of our Predobaptist brethren because they pray with the parents ; because they exhort them to a diligent performance of parental duty ; nor yet because they give up the child in solemn supplica- tion, and solicit the best of blessings on its behalf : but because they perform an action upon it which is manifestly ceremonial, and claim the highest authority for so doing" (Ptel. Ex., vol. ii, p. 164). Dr. J. M. Cramp, on the children brought to Christ, that " He should put His hands on them and pray," says, "I once saw this done at a Jewish synagogue. When the service was ended, several little boys, eight or ten years of age, went to the presiding rabbi, and stood before him. He did precisely what the evangelist states ; he ' put his hands on them and prayed' " ( Cate., p. 80). Dr. J. Bennett, from the words. Of such is the kingdom of heaven, teaches that children belong to the church of Christ, the kingdom of heaven meaning Christ's reign of grace on earth : therefore "it furnishes an answer conclusive in favour of infant baptism. All those who practice the rite of baptism at all, admit that it is the initiatory, dedicating rite, forming as it were the door of entrance into the visible church, so that none are to be considered as having regularly entered, who have not passed through this door" (Lee. on His. of Christ). — Did Dr. B. know that all embraced in the expression, "Of such is the kingdom of heaven," have received the .initiatory baptism, have "passed through this door?" After a somewhat lengthened remonstrance with Dr. Halley, and a briefer notice of Drs. Brown, Wilson, Foote, &c., some concessions will be adduced. Dr. Hallet does not profess to adduce oiir Lord's conduct to little children and the words He uttered in connexion with their being brought unto Him, "as an inde- pendent arg-ument." Ho pleads " the reasoning usually founded on Christ's words," as a reason ''for not excepting infants from the general terms of the commission." He considers himself to make '' common cause" with his " brethren who baptize only the children of believers," iu all reasons for infant baptism which arc " unaffected by the general or restricted interpretation of the commission." He omits some things adduced by his brethren, because, says he, "these little ones, for aught I can say to the contra:-y, might be received as the children of believers," How they could possibly have been received as the chiMren of believers, and in accordn-nce with the unrestricted character of the commission, I am at a loss to perceive. The command to baptize all indiscriminately, does not, as I think, admit of baptizing some because they are the children of believers. If Dr. H. has a commission to baptize everybody, the plea of unsuitability, or of special suitability, can apply to no one. He may and does reason with those who maintain that disciplcship is requisite to baptism, that the ordinance belongs only to those who through faith arc become the subjects of grace and the heirs of glory. Dr. H. lin.ving maintained — which we deny not — that little children are of the king- dom of heaven, asks : "' How is an infant to be recognized as a member of the king- dom of Christ ? Is not baptism the proper recognition of Christ's kingdom ? and if we refuse to baptize an infant, do we not virtually disown him, as if he did not belong to us or to our kingdom r" He wishes to know if we are not "refusing to allow parents to bring their children to Christ in the only way in which infancy can be brought to Him." "Infants." says lie, "have all the spiritual blessings of the covenant of grace ;" and, " If they cannot have faith, the.y do not neL'd it ; if they cannot have repentance, God does not require it from th«m," Lot us examine these questions, and propose some others. CHILDEEN AND INFANTS IN THE GOSPELS. 167 1. " How is an infant to be recognized as a member of the kingdom of CLrist ?" Of the recognition of them as such by any action of man, God's word says not a syllable in the way of precept or precedent. Why should we add to God's word ? If God had designed an action by man for this recognition, He would undoubtedly have revealed His design. Dr. H., dilfering from many of his Psedobaptist brethren, may think that the commission, to which our attention has already been directed, contains the precept, although, of obedience to such a command God's word furnishes not a solitary example. Ought v.'e to be wise above what is written? Is there a defect in the volume of inspiration, or a deficiency in the arrangements of infinite wisdom ? 2. " Is not baptism the proper recognition of Christ's kingdom ?" Where accord- ing to the New Testament a symbolic and initiatory ceremony is required or was given, it is baptism. Subsequent tests of sincerity, tests of belonging to Christ's kingdom, were love, holiness, and all the fruits worthy of repentance and regeneration. But God's word is silent as the grave on any action by man for the recognition of infanta as the siibjects of Christ's kingdom. We believe baptism Divinely ordained to recog- nize or profess discipleship to Jesus, a disciplcship arising from experienced repent- ance of sin and faith in Christ, a discipleship to be evinced and honoured by every disposition and conduct enjoined and commended in God's word. The Scriptiu-al recognition of any other discipleship or another recognition of discipleship to Christ revealed in the oracles of God, I do not know. And so far as I know, no other dis- cipleship to Jesus does God's word in any way recognize or intimate. 3. " If we refuse to baptize an infant, do we not virtually disown him, as if he did not belong to us or to our kingdom ?" This is a question to us from one who refuses to infants a participation of the Lord's SupjDer, and membership in any of the churches of Christ. We admit as fully and cordially as our opponents, that " where sin abounded, grace did much more abound." We do not disown the infant as a subject of Christ's kingdom, being redeemed by the blood of Jesus, and fitted by grace for the kingdom of glory. We admit the truthfulness of every word of Christ respect- ing little children in its cheering fulness ; and we admit every legitimate inference from His words in favour either of blessings as the present portion of infants, or aa destined to be theirs in heaven if they die in infancy. But we disown them as belong- ing to the professing or acknowledged disciples of Jesus, or to us as such. We deny their membershii) with us in any of our churches, and the possibility of their member- ship in any church Scripturally formed, which, as Dr. H. trulj' teaches, is "composed only of professing Christians" (p. 64). Because baptism was the mode of professing Christianity, and because, as Dr. H. feels assvired, the violent took the kingdom of heaven by force, " being baptized with the baptism of John," therefore Dr. H. is confident that even infants, if recognized in the kingdom of heaven, must be bom of water, and that " we have no right to assert that any unbaptized persons were acknowledged as belonging to the kingdom of God, unless some evidence to that effect can be produced from Scripture" (p. 69). He repeats "a declaration that of the kingdom of God there are the internal grace and the external sign ; the internal grace called the birth of the Spirit ; and the external sign called the birth of water" (p. 66). The evidence that the children brought to Christ were baptized by Him personally or through His disciples, or that they had been previously baptized, I believe, so far aa the assertions of Scripture are concerned, to be on a par with the evidence of their admission to the Lord's Supper, and of their sharing in all the duties and privileges of church membership. If the kingdom of heaven can be entered only by " the internal grace and external sign" of baptism, and if all infants are in this kingdom, it must follow that all infants are born again spiritually and baptized corporeally. Let Dr. H., who advocates the bapti.^m of all infants, produce evidence that John the Baptist, that Christ, or that the apostles, baptized all infants. The baptism of all that pro- fessed repentance of sin and faith in the Messiah is no proof that all or that any infants were baptized. Why confound infants with persons come to years of discretion ? We must conclude from the reasoning of Dr. H. that all these children were baptized before Christ uttered His cheering.words, otherwise He would not have spoken of them as belonging to the kingdom of God ; and as it is believed that He did not speak of those infants specially or exclusively, but of infants generally and without exception, it must necessarily follow that there has never been and that there never will be an unbaptized infant ; and yet all infants being according to Christ's cheering and truthful words already in the kingdom, we have authority to baptize them, to give the sign of recognition to them, as undouhtedly proper subjects ! 4. In adopting the usual argimients from Christ's words concerning little children and His conduct towards them, Dr. H., in addition to miich more, expressly adopts this : '■ If we refuse to acknowledge a relation which a child has to Christ's Idngdom, do we not despise one of these little ones, depreciate its privileges, and act the part 168 SUBJECTS OF BAPTISM, of the disciples in refusing to allow parents to bring tlioir cliilclren to Christ in the only way in which infancy can be brought to Christ?" We say in reply, that we refuse the acknowledgment of no relation which any child sustains to Chi-ist's king- dom. We heartily accept, and we propagate orally and by writing, every Scriptural acknowledgment of relation to Christ's kingdom, which any child ever did or ever will possess. In Christ's testimony on behalf of children we glory with every human, parental or pious feeling that we possess. We thus acknowledge their relation to Christ's kingdom as asserted by Himself. Instead of despising, we love and honour them ; we watch over, protect, and comfort them, with cheerful self-denial seeking the supply of all their need. Wo present our sincere and most fervent prayers to our Father in hoaven on their behalf. Our purpose and aim are, our infants and ourselves being spared, by God's grace to '■' bring them up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord." Our warm affection towards them is so constantly and abundantly flowing, that we would rather pour out our life's blood on their behalf than despise and neglect them. But wo depreciate the privileges of f))/aufs, because we neither sprinkle nor immerse them, nor pour water on them, as significant of their enjoyment of grace, and having a title to glory ! It is true we do not any of these things. And we ask of those who thus act, Who hath required this at your hands ? Does the silence of the inspired historians as to the previous baptism of these little children teach thus to act F Do Christ's taking them up in His arms, putting His hands on them, and blessing them, teach that we are to baptize them ? Ave these actions of Christ, each, or all together synonymous with baptizing ? Since Christ neither baptized these children nor any others, nor enjoined their baptism, so far as from Divine revelation it can be ascer- tained, are we to conclude that Christ despised these little ones, and depreciated their privileges ? Or is the Divine Spirit to be censured for not recording the baptism of these children ? Or is it a lawful act to take iip children in oiir arms, to put our hands on them, and bless them, only on condition of their having previously been baptized ? Is Christ's taking up of the-'^e children in His arms, putting His hands on them, and blessing them, a proof that they were then baptized ? And is this conduct always a proof that chihlren are baptized ? If not, v^hen did it begin, or end, if it has ended ? Or is the iDroof of previous baptism confined to the performance of these acts by Christ ? or to the precise period of Christ's public life on earth ? But we depreciate the privileges of infants " and act the part of the disciples in refusing to allow parents to bring their children to Christ in the only way in which infancy can be brought to Christ !" Our Tractariau and Popish opponents will admit that children are brought to Christ by baptism ; and when wo believe in the Romish Missal or the Anglican Church Catechism and Prayer Book, or with certain Indepen- dents, Wesleyans, and Presbyterians, that we disciple by baptizing, we shall believe that children are verily brought to Christ by baptism. Our opponent docs not hero mean that little children are regenerated or made disciples by baptism, because ho advocates their assured fitness for baptism on the ground of their being disciples. And although he maintains that the Great Commission enjoins to make disciples by baptizing (as well as by baptizing and teaching), he deems it quite consistent on his part to make common cause with his brethren, to adopt their argument that children through being already disciples should be brought to Christ by baptism. Yea bap- tism which he is confident these children had previously received, he believes to be the only way in which infancy can bo brought to Christ. What does he then mean by being brought to Christ ? Were the children of whom wo read in the gospels ever brought to Christ ? If they were, was it before, or after, or at the time of those transactions which the inspired writer.s have recorded ? To be broiight on earth to Christ'. s corporeal presence is not now possible ; and I am not aware that baptism was ever the performance of such an act. And yet whatever Dr. H. means by being brought to Christ, it is to bo effected by baptizing the child, and by nought else. We cannot then by prayer bring little children to Christ, however sincerely, fervently, and believingly we have them in our thoughts, words and affections, when we are asking from the God of all grace blessings suited to their prcicnt need, and blessings to be showered upon them throughout future life, and blessings to bo enjoyed by them for evermore: wo cannot by prayer bring children to Chri.st, becaiise baptism is "tho only way in which infancy can be brought to Christ." Thus we, wicked wretches, imitate the clearly and justly rebuked misconduct of tho disciples "in refusing to allow parents to bring then- children to Christ." " Tell it not in Gath !" It is fui'ther asked of us, after wo have been reminded of the clear and incontest- able title to heaven which little children possess, who, we are tridy told, unable to believe, do not need it, and being incapable of repentance, are not under obligation — *' Cuiii any man forbid water, that these should not be baptized who have received the \ CHILDEEN AND INFANTS IN THE GOSPELS. 169 grace of the gospel as well as we P" We ask, Have not infants from the creation of the world been possessed, as infants, of the same privileges ? Has not one, so far as we know, as miich and as certainly as any other, enjoyed the Divine favour and possessed a title to heaven ? Wlien, before Christ took np these children in His arms, was the baptism of infants Divinely enjoined, and v/hen practised, and where is the record of this injunction or practice ? We believe that God's word contains no precept nor precedent for infant baptism either before or after these condescending and cheering acts and words of our blessed Redeemer. Should any man command water when Christ commands it not ? Should any man thns employ water when God's word authorizes it not by one word of precept, practice, or legitimate inference ? Does not the incapability of repentance and faith intimate the freedom from obliga- tion respecting baptism ? or at least demand the Divine precept or the sanctioned practice, to render it obligatory, and to prevent its adoption from being a human invention ? But, adds our opponent, being assured that " every infant is a recognized subject of the kingdom of heaven, and recognized by no less an authority than the King Him- self : Shall we refuse to recognize any whom Christ acknowledges ? or shall we invent a now ritual of recognition, by which we may, after our own manner, receive an infant in the name of a disciple ?" I would thus reply to the first question: By no means refuse to recognize even all whom Christ recognizes. To the second I would say, without designing offence, "Thou art the man" who inventest or adoptest a new ritual of recognition. This new ritual for infants, humanly invented, was not origin- ally and primarily used to recognize in infants a clear and incontestable title to heaven, but to effectuate this title, to render certain by this regenerating act that the infant should not be damned, if it died in infancy. We invent and we adopt no ritual of infant recognition. For believers' immersion we have the highest and the clearest authority, even according to the admission of Dr. H. and many more. We believe that God's word no more speaks of a ritual of recognition for infants, than it speaks of their repentance and faitli, or authorizes the god-fathers or god-mothers of the Anglican or any other church. What a splinter or " beam " must be in the eyes of Pasdobaptists who in the face of God's word can say : " Shall we invent a new ritual of recognition, by which we maj', after own manner, receive an infant in the name of a disciple P" That infants are in any part of God's word designated disciples, or scholars, or followers of Christ, no man has yet demonstrated. And it will certainly be soon enough to give to infants a sign, when God enjoins it. And then let it be the very sign which God commands. As long as God is silent respecting the sign of infant recognition, we think it honourable neither to invent nor to adopt one, either substitu- tionary or additional to the one now belonging to them that gladly receive words apos- tolic and Divine. All that Christ in these passages says respecting infants, we believe that He says of unbaptized infants, whilst also He gives no command or encouragement to baptism. And yet, as if Piedobaptists were either imitating or obeying Christ, Dr. H. says : " Those blessings being by our Lord declared to belong to them, tl:i^y were to bo permitted to come to Him, that He might by a formal act recognize them as in full possession. If baptism bo such a recognition (what more can it be) in baptizing a child, I do the very thing by water which Christ did by the imposition of hands. The substance is the same, although the form be altered." Dr. H., who advocates indis- criminate baptism, does not maintain that baptism is only a recognition ; but he thus appeals to those who restrict it to the professing believer. We cannot avoid inquiring, Where has Dr. H. learnt that Christ's object, or that the parents' request or wish, in reference to the infants brought to Him, was to have, by a formal act, a recognition of full possession hy these children of every new coi'cnant Ijlcssing? That this was desired by those parents, God's word supplies not a particle of evidence. That this was Christ's aim or Christ's deed, is not intimated by a syllable that is recorded respecting Christ's utterances or actions. Whether these records of inspiration de- scribe one occasion or more, the objects of the parents as divinely recorded are, "that that He should put His hands on them and pray" (Matt, xix, 13) ; " that He should touch them" (Mark x, 13) ; " that He would touch them" (Lukexviii, 15). Theactions performed by Christ are thus recorded : " He laid His hands on them" (Matt, xix, 15); " He took them up in His arms, put His hands upon them and blessed them" (Mark X, 16). The declaration by Christ respecting these children as being of the kingdom of heaven is expressed in rebuke of the opposition of the disciples, but is not the expressed reason for His laying His hands on them, taking them up in His arms, and blessing them. The fact that children are of the kingdom of heaven might bo a suffi- cient reason for the aiDOstles being forbid to hinder their being now brought, when the precise object on the part of Christ or on the part of those who brought them, was m SUBJECTS OF BAPTISM. not to tave tbat privilege recognized by some formal act. The facts recorded unmis- takably point to something else as desired by the parents and accomplished by Christ. But again, if Christ by putting His hands on children recognized them as having " a personal intere.-it" in new covenant blessings, what right have our opponents to perform or to profess a recognition *' by water," instead of " by the imposition of hands?" "Shall we invent a new ritual of kecognition, by which we MAY, AFTER OUR OWN MANNER, RECEIVE AN INFANT IN THE NAME OF A DISCIPLE ?" If Christ recognized by one formal act, why adopt another, and then apologetically say, " The substance is the same, although the form be altered ?" We neither read that Christ formally reoognized children's title to heaven by the imposition of hands, nor that He enjoined upon us, or allowed to us, this or another formal mode of such recognition, wliether in reality or imagination it be the same in substance, although altered in form. Moreover, if the baptism of these children had taken place previously — which Dr. H. appears firmly to believe, and yet to believe that Christ now recognized their being the disciples of Christ and having a title to heaven — the formal act of their recognition was a something subsequent to baptism ; how long after it I do not know, nor how much it resembles confirmation in the Anglican Church in relation to baptism dare I aflSrm. I wish all our Pa3dobaptist brethren who reason in favour of the baptizing of infants from records in the Gospels respecting infants or little children that were brought to Christ, would tell us plainly whether they regard them as baptized before they were brought to Christ, while being brought to Christ, or when they were before Christ ; or whether it was immediately after they had been with Christ, or at some subsequent but more distant period ; and from what Scripture they receive their information. We may, perhaps, then learn when a formal and divinely-appointed recognition of infant grace and heirship to glory should by men be now given to little children, and whether it is baptism or the imposition of hands, or both these, or any thing else than both or either of these, that may be rightly regarded as the same in substance although altered in form. Dr. H. is exceedingly happy in cogitating on our Lord's words respecting infants and little children ; for not only is "the argument generally adduced " from them quite "satisfactory" to him, but also he sees in them an objection to any exceptive clause in the commission as far as children are concerned. That infants are included in the commission he regards as more than probable, because our Lord recognizes "these children as members of the kingdom of God," and because "the language of the gospel teaches that baptized persons and no others are recognized as being in the kingdom of heaven." The Gospels, we say, reveal as to practice only the baptism of John, which is divinely designated the baptism of repentance, and the baptism of Jesus, who is said to have 7na.dc and baptized disciples. Those who rejected the baptism of John, and certainly those also who rejected the baptism of Christ, rejected the counsel of God against themselves. There being in those who refused or neglected to be baptized 'no profession of repentance or of faith in the Messiah as coming or having come, we can believe that baptism, as well as professed repentance and faith characterized all the disciples of John and of Jesus. Baptism in every record of its command or practice in the gospels, is expressly or by the clearest implication associated with that of which infants are incapable. And from the fact that infants are of the kingdom of heaven, to infer that they are baptized, is about as logical as to infer from the same that they are the subjects of repentance and faith. Besides, if it is a fact that infants are baptized because " the language of the gospels teaches that baptized persons, and no others, are recognized as being in the kingdom of heaven," and because the Gospels " recognize these children as members of the kingdom of God," and consequently all children as being such, then tho-5C children were — and all children, or at least those born since the time of the Gospels, are — -baptized before birth, unless there has been a period subsequent to birth when they were not of tho kingdom of heaven. And while the language of the Gospels, which is truly " better than antecedent probabilities," is satisfactory to Dr. H. that these children had been baptized because they were of the kingdom of heaven, such language, he teaches, if wo will bo guided by the Go^psls, belonging only to the baptized, should satisfy us that all our objections to the baptizing of little children ought instanter to vanish, because they are all of the kingdom of heaven. If any, however, sliould yet be so obtuse or obdurate as to retain scepticism on tho duty of baptizing all infants, Dr. H. directs such to two passages in order to its com- plete removal. The first is : " Except a man bo born of water and of the Spirit ho cannot enter iato the kingom of heaven." So said our Lord to a ruler of tlie Jews, to Nicodemus, Here, says Dr, H., " only tho baptized are to bo reoognized as belonging CHILDEEN AND INFANTS IN THE GOSPELS. 171 to the kingdom of heayen;" and so "the children wlioin our Lord recognized as belonging to the kingdom of heaven were not nnbaptized." Our Lord in giving instruction to Nicodemus meant His words to be applied to unconscious babes ! Dr. H., on the words of our Lord, "of such is the kingdom of God," has before taught that they " cannot be restricted to those specific children which were broiight to Him ;" and that " the expression of our Lord intimates they were too young to have been corrupted by the world." He saysthat " ' Of such' clearly means of such children — of children of the same age and condition — is the kingdom of heaven." If children, because they are children, anduncorruptedby the world, are of the kingdom of heaven, are they not so at the time of birth ? Do they not from this period, until they are corrupted, belong to the kingdom of God ? Are they not by the Gospels, as under- stood by Dr. H., thus clearly regarded? But again, does not Dr. H. as plainly teach that " only the baptized are to be recognized as belonging to the kingdom of heaven ?" and that the children whom our Lord acknowledged to be of the kingdom must there- fore necessarily have been baptized ? And yet we are not aware that Dr. H. believes that the soul of every child has before birth inhabited another body in which at some time or other baptism has taken place, and which cur Lord had in view when He said, " Of such is the kingdom of heaven." But our Lord's words to Nicodemus — which Dr. H. has elsewhere expounded to mean " Unless he became a proselyte by ba,ptism, he is not ostensibly and as entitled to its external privileges, a member of that king- dom ; unless he became a convert by the Spirit, he is not, really and as entitled to its everlasting rewards, a member of that kingdom" (vol. x, p. 119) — are now apparently considered, in connexion with our Lord's words respecting children, " Of such is the kingdom of heaven," as proving that all infants and little children are born of water and also of the Spirit. He has rightly supposed that Nicodemus would " understand the words of our Lord as implj-ing, unless a man became a subject of a change of which baptism was the symbol, he could not be accredited as a disciple of Christ" (p. 98). Are we, therefore, to conclude that infants and little children have had a birth of the flesh, which is flesh, and one of the Spirit, which is Spirit ; and that they have at some time or other been baptized, as every born infant and little child in the world has been, because all such are recognized by Jesus as of the kingdom of God ; and therefore finally and clearly that it is our duty to baptize all infants ! The other passage adduced to complete our enlightenment and reformation, is Matt. xi, 12 : " From the days of John the Baptist till now the kingdom of heaven suffereth violence, and the violent take it by force." To the elucidation of this Dr. H. brings the language of Luke (vii, 29), "And all the people that heard Him and the publicans, justified God, being baptized with the baptism of John ;" which, he maintains,, con- firms the import of the former passage to be that the taking of the kingdom of heaven by force was their " being baptized with the baptism of John," Thus, again, only the baptized are of the kingdom of God, because all hearing John and justifying God were baptized with the baptism of John, and so the violent took it hy force ; and " all who were baptized were recognized as in the kingdom of God." Who, then, can " exclude children from the baptismal commission " " on any supposed ground of their iinsuit- ableness ?" On infants justifying God by being baptized, and taking the kingdom of God violently and by force, I will not enlarge. My object has not been to give the import of every word of these passages in tho Gospels, in which there is express reference to little children, or I might have expressed agreement or disagreement with much which we have read. My aim has been to show that they all afford no ground for infant baptism. I may express my dissent from the gloss of Dr. Wardlaw, who writes : " "Whosoever shall not receive the kingdom of God as a little child (i.e., surely as a little child receives it) he shall in no case enter therein." Our Saviour refers not to the mode of children's receiving His kingdom. Hence, "Except ye be converted, and become as little children, ye shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven." The Lord Jesus on other occasions compared His disciples to doves, lambs, and sheep. Who will say that Christ's disciples are literally doves, lambs, and sheep ? Dr. Foote's exhortation that "this fine portion of sacred history be improved," we cordially accept ; but we cannot add, " by dedicating" children to Christ " in the ordinance of baptism," when Christ's words give not a hint, and ground not an infer- ence, that He practised or encouraged this. It is evident that Christ's blessing on infants was then laudably sought, and may now be worthily desired, and effectually sought. The sin of attempting to hinder this, and the willingness of Christ that it should be realized, are very apparent. And as reason and revelation teach that the only way in which we can bring infants to Christ is by prayer, there shordd on the part of all parents for their children be fervent, persevering, comprehensive, and Relieving prayer, The blessing of Christ should be earnestljr desired and sought for 1?2 SUBJECTS OF BAPTISM. our children from their earliest years ; all blessings suited to their condition and capa- bility, from Him in whom there is an infinite and everlasting fulness of blessings. It is our privilege to supplicate from Divine love and infinite fulness blessings personal and relative ; blessings suited to infancy, youth, and riper years ; blessings for all men, but especially for those who are our flesh and bones, and dear to lis as life ; blessings thi-ough the period of jn-obation, and the eternal existence beyond. Let fathers and mothers thus bring their children to Christ, and continue to boar them to Him who has boundless stores of gi-ace ; and let them, if life is spared, as reason dawns, bring them up in the nuture and admonition of the Lord ; thus training them up in the way in which they should go, assured that their labours will not be in vain in the Lord. Dr. D. Brown, the Aberdeen professor, instead of believing that those infants which were brought to Christ, were either baptized or regenerate, or belonged to the kingdom of God in reality or capability, says that Jesus " took them up in His arms, put His hands iipon them, and blessed them, for no conceivable reason birt to show that they ivere thereby made cn/pahle, as infants, of the kingdom of God" (Com., on Lu. xviii, 15). This opinion of capability in infants subsequent to their being brought to Christ, and in consequence of being taken up in His arms, having His hands upon them, and His blessing given, if correct, might be supposed to allow of infant baptism, but only during tha time of our Lord's earthly sojourn. This interpretation by Dr. B. is as consistent with our Lord's words, " Of such is the kingdom of God," as the inter- pretation of Drs. Halley and Stacey that these infants were disciples is consistent with their own definition of a disciple as a learner, or our Lord's definition of a dis- ciple as one that taketh up his cross, &c. If our Lord's words teach that children dying in infancy are received to glory, that the great bulk of the redeemed now before the throne were little ones when they departed from this life, that the regeneration of these must have preceded their admission to heaven, and consequently that infants are capable of regeneration, wo have still no knowledge becaiise we have no revelation respecting the regeneration of any living infants either of wicked or godly parents, respecting the time or the fact of this regeneration ; and no precept, precedent, nor established inference for baptizing any of these whether alive or dead. Secret things belong to God. To us belong the things that are revealed. If only those which dio are regenerated, and if regeneration is the qualification for baptism, only those whose death has taken place, or who will certainly die, are the proper subjects of baptism. If all infants or if some infants are regenerate, when does it take place, and where is the Scripture revealing the fact and time of this experienced qualification for baptism in infants ? Nor does the regeneration, whenever it takes place, qiialify less for the Lord's Supper than for baptism ; while the,exhortation. Suffer little children to come to Me, is as explicit on one as on the other. Dr. R. Wilson, who will " not here raise the question respecting the baptism of these little ones," considers that we are "presented with strong evidence of the federal relation of infants." Christ is considered as teaching that the covenant of which He is " Mediator, makes provision" for infants ; and as teaching with a clear- ness " which perversity itself can hardly misinterpret," that the covenant of which He is Mediator, embraces not merely the little children of whom we read in the gos- pels as being brought to Christ, "l)ut infants generally." "We have, therefore, Clirist's authority for their admission, and that of His ignorant disciples for their exclusion." Did the discij^les of Christ, by opposing the bringing of little children to Him for the purposes specified, countenance the sentiment that little children are given up to God's uncovenanted mercies ? Do the Baptists, in refusing to baptize thorn, evidently wish to make or keep them children of the devil and heirs of wrath ? In opposition to the fancy of our Lord's words teaching that the children brought to Him were baptized ones, or that they or any others ought to be baptized, we might adduce the concessions of many Pa3dobaptists that the baptism of infants was un- known in the times of Christ and of the apostles, that one hint of its practice or one instance of its injunction is not in all Divine revelation. Some of these concessions we shall shortly notice. But there are expressions by Dr. Halley, besides his own exposition of our Lord's conversation with Nicodcmus, which militate strongly against his assumptions on the baptism of infants as being that of John and of Christ in accordance with a supposed commission finally given to baptize all. Eespecting John's disciples and the Jews he says : " That they regarded baptism as a badge or profession of discipleship, is a conclusion to which wo are obvioiisly conducted by the history" (p. !)!)). On Christ's making and baptizing of disciples he says : " Those that Jesns baptized were called His disciples, those that John baptized were his disciples. So closely were the baptism and the new doctrine connected that the one term seems to be employed for the other." "To be baptized was to bo initiated as a disciple, or CHILDREN AND INFANTS IN THE GOSPELS. 173 learner of the new doctrine — the speedy cominj? of Clirist. It is true tliat the baptism of John is called the baptism of repentance, but then the repentance was in every instance founded upon the new doctrine, the uniform exhortation, the incessant cry of the baptizer being, ' Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.' The object of this baptism is stated by St. Paul, ' John verily baptized with the baptism of repent- ance, saying unto the people that they should believe on Him who should come after him, that is, on Christ Jesus.' " Can the baptism of John be a baptism of repentance, of repentance founded on the new doctrine of Christ's coming being at hand, an initia- tion of a disciple, a badge or profession of discipleship to John, and be a baptism for penitents, a generation of vipers, and infants ? Can an infant be a disci2)le, or learner of the new doctrine ? Can a bajjtism of repentance be a baptism for infants ? Are they capable of the profession of discipleship ? Again, " They were baptized confessing thir sins, but whether they uttered an audible confession, as thoy stood in crowds listening to his preaching, or their baptism was itself an act of confession, an acknow- ledgment that they needed repentance, we are not able to ascertain." Could infants either utter an audible confession, or perform an act of confession, an act which was an acknowledgment that they needed repentance ? Again, " The baptism of Jolm was indiscriminately administered to all applicants " (p. 132). This expression may not deny its being administered to others, but certainly infants could not be among applicants. Also Dr. H.'s explanation of his own words is this : " John administered his baptism indiscriminately to all applicants ; and this is but saying in other words, that he admitted all persons indiscriminately to become his disciples, the learners of his doctrine" (pi. 134). In the subsequent volume he speaks of " that recognition of learners, which, as we have contended, baptism expresses" (p. 169). Were infants among the applicants, or those admitted to ha learners of John's doctrine? Again, " John baptized ; the disciples of Jesus baptized during His ministry ; the apostles baptized after His resurrection. Were these baptisms essentially different, or if different in form, were they identical in their design and import ? The several persons are said to have done the same thing. It, therefore, devolves upon those who maintain that their baptisms were different, to show the difference, and upon us to examine the particulars which they adduce" (p. 146). I think like^vise, and would call on Dr. H. and aU Ptedobaptists to disprove it, that no other baptism than the baptism of repent- ance, the baptism of disciples, or learners, yea, believers, respecting a Saviour about to come or ha-^dng come, has a recognition in any part of God's word. Elsewhere Dr. H., on John's baptizing " the young children of such as attended his ministry," says : " In the evangelical narrative, we have no th'reci tji/ornia/io?! upon this sidiject" (p. 160). But he protests against our " assuming from the silence of the evangelists, that he did not." We may subsequently notice the opinion that rabbinical lore or rubbish in its teachings on proselyte baptism throws great light on the Scriptural baptism of infants ! It is sufficient for the i^resent to accept the silence of Scripture, and to learn from baptism being styled that of repentance, from the baptized being disciples, making confession of sin, and believing in a Messiah, whether or not the subjects of baptism were infants. Let the candid or the prejudiced peruse the following. E. DE LissAU, on the Jewish parental Salute and Benediction, says : " The bene- diction given by parents to their children, is that made use of by the patriarch Jacob, as recorded in Gen. xlviii, 20. The names of Sarah, Rebecca, Rachel, and Leah, are substituted for those of Ephraim and Mannasseh for females. Children also go to claim the blessing from their Rabbi, or any person eminent among them. It was in accordance with this custom, most probably, that children were brought to the Saviour by their believing parents." — p. 357. See also p. 139. Milton, whom I should claim as a Baptist, if he had been baptized, teaches that infants are not to be baptized, inasmuch as they are incompetent to receive instruction or to believe, to enter into a covenant or to promise or answer for themselves, or even to hear the word. He also says, '" It is remarkable to what futile arguments those divines have recourse, who maintain the contrary opinion." — Prose Works, vol. iv, p. 405. R. Barclay (a Friend). — "As to the baptism of infants, it is a mere human tradi- tion, for which neither precept nor practice is to be found in all the Scripture" (Apol., Prop. 12), Some of the Friends are sufficiently explicit and faithful in exposing those who say that " the holy Scripture is their only rule of faith and practice," and yet " practise unscriptui-al traditions, both human and poi^ish." — G. Whitehead, in Truth Prevalent, pp. 125, 126. D. Young, having become a Baptist, says, " New Testament ordinances are not for all who are going to heaven in infancy. Our friends in Presbyterian churches admit this. They refuse baptism to an infidel's dying child, although admitting that oil dying in infancy are saved" (Reasons, &c., p. 7). — It lias been argued that hj such 174 SUBJECTS OF BAPTISM. we must understand little children, " but not all such, sinco the persona who brought those infants or little ones to Christ, wore, without doubt His followers, or such as had a high veneration for Him ;" to which it has been replied, " Where do we learn that fton foiouton) of such, has the least reference (tois prospherousin) to those who broug'ht them ?" It has also been asserted that " our Lord expressly declares that we must enter His kingdom even as infants enter it." But this is not expressed in the oracles of God. We grant that some of those now quoted have not given Pmdohaptist testimony ; but let the following candid and explicit acknowledgments have due consideration. Bp. TzVYLOB. — " From the action of Christ's blessing infants, to infer they are to be baptized, proves nothing so much as that there is a want of better argument. The conclusion would be with more probability derived thus : — Christ blessed infants, and so dismissed them, but baptized them not; therefore infants are not to be baptized" (Lib. of Prop., p. 326). — This is at least a forcible argument which Bp. T. thinks the Baptist can adduce. M. Poole. — " We must take heed we do not found infant baptism upon the example of Christ in this text ; for it is certain that He did not baptize these children." — Anno., on Matt, xix, 14. Dr. Macknight says : " Suffer little children to come unto Me, and forbid them not, — for of such is the kingdom of God. The church of God on earth and His kingdom in heaven, is composed of persons who resemble little children." — On Matt, xix, 13. W. BuRKiTT. — " They were brought unto Jesus Christ : but for what end ? Not to baptize them, but to bless them. . . . Christian baptism was not in.stituted. John's baptism was the baptism of repentance, of which infants were incapable." — Com., on Matt, xix, 13-15. Dr. Doddridge. — " I acknowledge these words of themselves will not prove infant baptism to be an institution of Christ." — Note, on Matt, xix, 14. C. Taylor admits that " a precept, or practice, referring to the baptism of children, might naturally be expected in connexion with the mention of children ; or with such particulars as imply the presence of children, and demonstrate their participation." — Sec. Let. in Facts, &c. p. 22. Bp. Hinds. — " The favour shown by Christ to these infants is often made an argu- ment for infant baptism. In so applying it, however, we should carefully consider the value of the argument. It proves directly no more than that Christ considered infants capabJc o/fae/ic/ii from His blessing; and this, although of itself no proof, forms a very important feature in the presumptive body of proof to be gathered from the New Testament. At the same time, the fact that the disciples thought them improper subjects of the Saviour's notice, indicates that, up to this period, no infants could have been baptized" (Oatc.'s Man., p. 138). — It has by another been rightly asked, " Would they have acted thus if they had been in the habit of baptizing children?" Dr. Lange, on "of such is the kingdom of heaven," says : " According to the parallel passages in Mark and Luke, it must also be regarded as a symbol of a child- like spirit, just as baptism itself is the type of personal regeneration" (Com., on Matt, xix, 13-1.5). — And yet Dr. L. sees "the unchild-like spirit of Baptists ;" and that "the chOdren of believers are admitted into the kingdom of heaven;" while "Baptists ignore the possibility of faith as a seed in the heart of infants !" Dr. Tweedie. — -"Others, again, infer the propriety of infant baptism from the words of the Redeemer : ' Suffer little children to come unto Me, and forbid them not ; for of such is the kingdom of heaven.' But this text plainly establishes nothing in the way of proof , either for infant baptism or against it. . . , The text referred to in reality proves nothing about infant baptism. It has no necessary reference to that ordinance." — On Bap., pp. 49, 50. Dr. KiTTo's Oyclopaidia, after referring to, 1 Cor. vii, 14 as favouring the senti- ments of Baptists rather than those of Pajdobaptists, states respecting the latter : " The advocates of former ages (now hardly any) used to appeal to Matt, xix, 14." Dr. L. Woods says : "No one protends that the children spoken of in this passage were brought to Christ for baptism, or that the passage affords direct proof of infant baptism." — On Bap., p. 75. H. W. Beecher, by one who heard him, is thus reported to have preached, in May, 18G1 : " After the sprinkling of some fifteen or sixteen little ones, prayer, and singing, Mr. B. took for his text the thirteenth to the sixteenth verses inclusive of the tenth chapter of Mark ; but unlike most of our Pajdobaptist brethren, he did not make use of the passage as having a bearing on the question of baptism. He treated it much as a Baptist would, discoursing most eloquently on tlie parity and simplicity of child- hood, and the necessity of his hearers receiving the kingdom of God as a little child CHILDEEN, LAIVIBS, AND BABES IN THE EPISTLES. 175 before they could enter therein. Neither did he attempt to produce any Scripture which authorized or instituted the act he had just performed for the army of infanta Burroundinor his pulpit, but on the contrary ho asserted that no man could find such a passage within the lids of the Bible, expressing sorrow that intelligent men would persist in distorting the word of God for such a purpose. The doctrine of substitution for circumcision he pronounced false, without one jot or tittle of Scripture to support it — acknowledging that if he had to furnish a ' Thus saith the Lord' before baptizing an infant, he could never baptize another." § 9. On the Mention of Children, Lambs, and Babes in the Epistles, and elsewhere. A. Booth. — " 'WTienever we meet with such as are denominated by the apostle, fetna pista, faithful or believing children, whoever may be their parents, or whatever may be their age, we have no objection to baptize them ; a credible profession of repentance and faith being all we desire in reference to this affair, either of old or young." — Pad. Ex., vol. iii, p. 442. TheTpleasure Vf'ith whicli some Pasdobaptists meet with childi-en and babes in the Epistles, in supposed corroboration of infant baptism, is only inferior to that with which they meet with children, infants, and lambs, in the Gospels. The children of members of a chm-ch of Christ, says Dr. Halley, " ought to be considered under the general care as the Iambs of the flock" (vol. XV, p. 129). The interesting exhortation of Christ to Peter, iq one of the instructive and important interviews between Christ and the apostles after His resurrection, " Feed My lambs," is used with the utmost compla- cency in application to a child less than eight days old, or a youth of eighteen years, and to all between these ages, as " lambs" of the flock of Christ. There is probably no part of Divine revelation more grossly perverted and misapplied than this important and interesting precept of the Saviour to Peter. Our adorable Redeemer meant not that Peter should go about demanding or requesting or purchasing spoons, bottles, milk, &c., that he might feed the babies, where only nourishment is through the mouth. As certainly as that Christ meant by Hiis sheep. His dhciples, so certainly did Christ mean by His lambs, the new-born or the newly-converted AMONG His disciples. There is but the possibility of a special reference to those who are young in years as well as recently converted. Undoubt- edly "lambs" has a similar import in the cheering prophecy of Isaiah, so often ■v^Tested to favour the sentiments of Pasdobaptists : "He shall feed His flock like a shepherd : He shall gather the lambs with His ann, and carry them in His bosom", and shall gently lead those that are with j'oung" (Is. xl, 11). Yet Mr. Thorn can ask, " When His people are declared to be sheep, are not the little ones called the lambs" (Inf. Bajy., p. 147) ? And he invokes pastors to regard baptized children as "the lambs in their respective folds" (p. G13). In the inspired epistles the baptized are exhorted in allusion to the love of babes to their mothers' milk, and its adaptation to their growth, to desire "as new-born babes," "the sincere milk of the word," that they might grow thereby. ' If the expression "new-born babes" describes the condition or character of the persons addi-essed, it can only refer to those brought to a knowledge of Christ, to cUsciple^ihip to Christ, who have recently become new creatures in Christ Jesua. We admit that none very young in years can very long have been the followers of the 176 SUBJECTS OF BAPTISM. Lamb, and we will not object to "lambs" as especially appropriate to new-born youths. Let ns, however, examine the other passages. It is not every occurrence of "children" in the epistles that is thought to favour infant baptism, but rather such as the follov/ing : "And, ye fathers, provoke not your children to wrath: but bring them up in the nur- ture and admonition of the Lord" (Eph. vi, 4). The former part of this is, for the moment, overlooked or forgotten. It as plainly refers to infants as the exhortation, "Be ye therefore followers 0/ God as dear children" (Eph. V, 1). On the duty of Christian parents I am far from denjang, using "earliest years" as embracing the earliest possible, that " according to apostolic direction the children of believers were from their earliest years to be instructed in the principles of the Christian religion" (Dr. L. Wood's WorliSyYol. iii, p. 386). As the apostle here addresses Chriatiaji parents in the church at Ephesus, he also addresses Christian children when te saj's, "Children, obey your parents in the Lord." Christian fathers have, as such. Christian duties to their childi-en ; and Christian children have, as such, Christian duties to their parents. Yet Mr. Thorn can speak of the latter as "believers in Christ," and "manifest objects of apostolic and pious regard," which we also believe, and as "the children of baptized believers," which we do not know. And evidently He would have us be- lieve that they were little children, "being in the baptismal covenant equally with their parents, as heirs of the same promise, and subjects of the same kingdom of God" (Inf. Bap., p. 404). Also, says he, "They unquestionably Avere not communicants or full members in the inner churches of these places : the children and the general hearers of the gos- pel must have been present in about the same capacity — babes in years and children of a larger growth — to learn the will and waij'S of God from those outward ordinances, intended, by the preaching of the gospel, to prepare them for the true and higher fellowship of the saints" (p. 465). Although it is as clear that the apostle here addresses children as Chris- tians and members of the church, as it is that he addresses parents as such, and we would that in all our churches there were more believing children, nothing can militate against the bai^tizing of infants with such visionary writers as Mr. T. The reader, however, will judge whether infants are meant when Paul, to the churches at Ephesus and Colosse, wi'ote : " Children, obey your parents." Were not infants as certainly meant where* we read, "The children shall rise up against their parents, and cause them to be put to death" (Matt, x, 21)? or where we read, "Then came the mother of Zebedee's children, with her sons, worshipping Him, and saying," &c. (Matt, xx, 20)? The loving John from the use of "children" is thought by others to supply equal or greater encouragement to infant baptism. He writes "unto the elect lady and her children whom" he loved "in the truth," and this " for the truth's sake which dwellethin us ;" and he expressed to her his great joy that he found of her "children walking in truth as v,-e have received a commandment from the Father" (2 John 1-4). Can any of these, who were walldng in truth, according to the Divine command, and to whom the apostle wished grace, mercy, and peace, be supposed to be other than Christians who gave proof I CHILDREN, LAMBS, AND BABES IN THE EPISTLES, &c, 177 of enlightenment and regeneration ? Nor does the salutation from the children of her elect sister more evidently sanction infant baptism ; nor the declaration to Gains : "I have no greater joy than to hear that my children walk in truth" (3 John, 4). But the fii-st epistle is thought to have an eminently benign aspect toward the baptizing of infants. The apostle John, like the apostle Paul, speaks both of fathers and children, and like him speaks of and addresses little children. He says : "My little children, these things write I unto you, that ye sin not." As clearly these were infants, as were those of whom Paul said, "My little children, of whom I travail in birth again until," &c. He also says: "I write unto you little children, because youi' sins are forgiven you for His name's sake. I write unto you, fathers," &c. Here we have words referring to infants as undoubtedly as where we read : " Children, obey your parents in all things : for this is well-pleasing unto the Lord. Fathers, provoke not," &c. And he says further: "I write unto you, little children, because ye have known the Father." " Little children, it is the last time, and as ye have heard," &c. "Little children, abide in Him." "Little children, let no man deceive you." " My little children, let us not love in word," &c. "Ye are of God, little children, and have overcome them." And he says, lastly, "Little children, keep yourselves from idols." These passages as clearly prove that the baptizing of infants is an apostolic practice and a Divine command, as Paul's declaration that Timothy "from a child" had "known the holy Scriptures ;" as our Lord's sapng to His apostles, "Little chil- dren, yet a little while," &c. ; or His saying to them : "Children, have ye any meat ?" W. Thorn can say : " It is certain that Paul directly addresses children as com- ponent parts of the Ecclesise, or congregations to whom he wrote his epistles. Take for example the passages before cited. These are found in his letters directed to the churches at Ephesus and Colosse ; to the saints and faithful in Christ Jesus ; to the persons who constituted the Christian assemblies in those cities" (p. 472). And our brother being an adept in numerical calculations, for our information gives an estimate of the number of children among "the saints and faithful in Christ Jesus," of children to whom the apostle, "in his letters directed to the churches at Ephesus and Colosse," "writes directly" "as he does to husbands and wives, as being integral members of these communions, equally with their fathers" — an estimate of the number ia these churches of these children from twelve down to three years of age. Why he does not come down below three years and go above twelve I will not affirm. He says : " Now, assuming, that at Ephesus and Colosse the congregations amounted to five hundred persons — no very extravagant estimate — the children from twelve years old down to three, would be few less than a hundred between them — directly addressed by the apostle in these epistles" (p. 473) ! When with Mr. T. we see the " Divine right " of children " to religious association with their parents," without a right to church mem- bership, and when we see that " as a child of two or three years old would be capable of comprehending the substance of the admonition [obey your parents, &c.], we have a right to conclude that such were disciples" (p. 473), we may see much in the writings of Paul, John, and many others, to sanction the baptizing of infants, which we do not now observe. Dr. Hallet says, " The epistles were written to Christian churches, and the man- ner in which children were addressed seems to recognize them as sustaining some relation to those churches" (vol. xv, p. 136). — And why not conclude that these children were believing children, as well as that the parents addressed were believing parents ? There is not a word expressing or implying that these exhorted children had a different relation to the church from the exhorted parents. What biit pre-possessions in favour of infant baptism can have invented from the allusion to children in apostolic epistles the hyx^othesis "that the children of Christians were regarded as under the training of the church, preparatory to the enjoyment of the privileges of its full com- munion" (p. 133) ! N 178 SUBJECTS OF BAPTISM. Prof. Wilson rightly regards Paiil in Eph. vi, 1, 4, and Col. iii, 20, as recognizing "children as well as parents within the precincts of the covenant." Epistles to Christians must, irrespective of their age, thus recognize them. Paul's teaching is also analogous to that of Moses, Deu. iv, 9. Moreover, Dr. AV. teaches that as there belonged to "the covenant of grace or everlasting covenant," "earthly blessings which were of an adventitious character," as well as " eternal life and salvation," so to " God's chosen ones " it gave " mercy everlasting," and to " multitudes, of whose Bpiritual state the judgment of charity itself might well despair," it afforded " exter- nal privilege and opportunity vmder circumstances admirably calculated to impress and improve." Dr. W. does not from this plead with Dr. Halley for baptizing indis- criminately those who evidence faith by works and those whom the utmost charity is necessitated to believe to be ungodly ; but as "the election of grace" was in Israel more limited than what Dr. W. is pleased to designate "the covenanted membership of the Jewish church," which included the pious and the wicked, we may now extend the administration of baptism exactly to the infant seed of the church ! " The new covenant, so far as it bodies forth the everlasting covenant, can include none but the heirs of salvation" (p. 452). This is not exemplified, nor can it be in any "religious community, Baptist or Psedobaptist;" therefore the idea " that faith is required for admission to the church," or that " a credible profession " of faith is requisite, we may treat with the utmost contempt ! The extent of baptism is to believers and their seed, to professing believers and their infant children ! " The profession of faith by an adult, attended with various degrees of evidence, has iiniformly secured admission to the church" (p. 454). " A credible profession" of faith has in adults been the rule, " and it must come to this" (p. 454). He proceeds by a lameness of argumentation which " is only matched by the confidence with which it is offered," to treat on " ad- mission to the membership of the Christian church" by "a credible profession," not from " the necessity of an interest in the saving provisions of the covenant ;" — which interest is known with certainty only to the Searcher of hearts — so that "we have evidence of a church membership not composed exclusively of true believers;" and therefore we may baptize and receive into the church the infant seed of helievers! Indeed Paul's exhortations to parents and children in the churches of Ephesus and Colosse, his reference to Timothy from his childhood, and the reference to children by the loving John, give " strong corroboration to these" Paidobaptist sentiments ! not at all to baptizing and receiving into the church of Christ those who make a credible profession of faith, irrespective of age, parents, or children. On the apostle John's reference to children. Dr. W, says : "We witness a sweet painting from the hand of the beloved disciple,! John, i, 14, in-whichfatherS; young men, andlittle chiJdrenioTm. a delightful Christian group, under the vigilant and affectionate eye of apostolic in- spection. All the parties are interested in the ' better covenant.' The little children are not indeed too young to ' know the Father ;' but they are not apparently old enough to rank as adults." Would to God that the connexion of many with Christ and His church had earlier taken place, and that in others it was now having an earlier commencement ! But assuredly there is nothing here on the fact of militant infants, on "the privilege of infant membership," on the existence or the duty of infant baptism. Dr. Wabdlaw sees that " children," in epistles " directed to churches," must have been " in some way connected" with the churches ; but rather than believe that they were, though young, connected through a faith which had been professed in baptism, the only mode of connexion of which God's word gives the slightest intimation, he presumes or preposterously believes, that they were "in some way connected by virtue of their relation to their parents " (Inf. "Bap., pp. 115, 116) ! Paul says, " Children, obey your parents in the Lord," and " the simplest explanation" of this is, " that the children of converts who composed the churches had been baptized with their parents !" It supposes that the children of believers have a connexion with their parents in the covenant of grace ! J. G. Manly, wiser than some of his brethren, says, " Primarily, it is the duty of parents, not of churches, to train up children in the nurture and admonition of the Lord ; and it is the duty of the church, as the vehicle of truth and the eliciter of blessing, to co-operate with parents, by conveying the truth," &c. — Eccl., p. 213. The following, from Baptists, may further enlighten those who are open to conviction. A. M'Lean says, " As to the expression in the Lord, it does not intimate any peculiar spiritual connexion betwixt a parent and his children: Christians nre exhort- ed to marry only in the Lord, 1 Cor. vii, 39, wives to siibmit to their own husbands in the Lord, Col. iii, IS. This phrase signifies, cither that they should obey their believing' parents who are in the Lord, and so it is an additional motive of obedience ; or, that INFANT BAPTISM FEOM MANY SCRIPTUEES. 179 they should obey in the Lord their parents, i.e., in the fear of the Lord, manifesting their subjection to Him in so doincr, and then it a,crrees with the exhortation to servants, Col. iii, 22, 23; Eph. vi, 5-8."— Worls, vol. vii, pp.273, 27-1. J. Craps says : " As baptism is never alluded to when the duties of parents aro mentioned, and as infants are never alluded to when baptism is mentioned, the infer- ence is that infant baptism is not a duty. The baptism of infants cannot be included in ' the admonition of the Lord,' because the Lord has not given any admonition re- specting it." — C'o)i. Vieiv., p. 5. There is not, I believe, a considerable Baptist church in the world in which there are not children find parents, and in which both these might not be addressed as they are addi'essed in the apostolic epistles. In such addresses to children there can, therefore, be nothing in favour of infant baptism, or infant membership in the church of Christ. There is a sense in which " The gospel has nothing to do with infants." We have not this good news or any other to proclaim to them, nor have they to receive this or any other intelligence. We mean not that they are uninterested in Christ's sacrifice for human guilt. They owe to this then* existence and their every blessing, and we doubt not, through this, their meetness for glory. Our not preaching to them, not baptizing them, and not admitting them to membership in the chui'ches of Christ till they can credibly profess their faith in Christ, does not forbid our rejoicing with parents in their spiritual safety ; nor does it diminish, so far as I know, our power and readiness to " bring them up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord," to enforce on parents this momentous obhgation, and to administer comfort to bereaved parents equally with our Pa^dobaptist brethren. • § 10. Ox Infant Baptism from manx Old and New Testament Scripture8. S. Pearcs. — " We never afford nny real service to our Divine Master by contending for Hit eau>ie, if it be not in His spirit." — Scr. on Acts xsviii, 22. Dr. J. FA^ycETT. — "He lias given us a law by which we ought to be governed in all that we think, and speak, and do." — Ser. on Ps. Ivii, 1, p. 6. Dr. B. Evans.—" Partisans of any class are Beldom to be trusted. It is not truth but victory which is sought."— Lee. 07i Ec, Hi^., p. 34. I profess not to have noticed every portion of Scripture which I have met with in the writings of Pa;dobaptists in favour of the baptism of infants. Fanciful and fallacious as the reader will perceive that I regard the adduced reasoning of opponents, he may expect that I should have patience to animadvert on the puerility of one so deservedly eminent as Dr. Ward- law in regarding Old Testament promises respecting gospel times, in which the -word children occurs, as " direct evidence" and "positive proof" in favour of infant baptism. Dr. W. adduces such passages as Jer. xxxii, 39, 40, where we read : " And I will give them one heart and one way, that they may fear Me for ever, for the good of them, and of their children after them ; and I will make an everlasting covenant with them, that I will not turn away from them to do them good." As if "their children" meant not their posterity, but their infant children ! Direct evidence and positive proof that the positive institution of baptism belongs to infants ! Similarly in other passages where seed or children are mentioned, as in Deu. XXX, 6 ; Is. Ixv, 23, &c. Those who through bias can be deluded 180 SUBJECTS OF BAPTISM. by such fancies, I despair of enlightening. It is more than sufficient to recite such Scriptures as the following. "Children are a heritage of the Lord." Ps. cxxvii, 3. " Because He loved thy fathers, therefore He chose their seed after them, and brought them out," &c. Deu. iv, 37. "I estab- lish My covenant with you and with your seed after you." Gen. ix, 9. " Blessed is the man that feareth the Lord ... his seed shall be mighty upon earth ; the generation of the upright shall be blessed." Ps. cxii, 1,2. "I will pour My Spirit upon thy seed, and My blessing upon thine offspring." Is. xliv, 3. "Their children also shall be as aforetime." Jer. XXX, 20. Instead of seeing in the words " seed" and " children," the exclusive idea of "posterity" or "descendants," immediately are un- conscious babes before the mind's eye of those who are blinded by their pre-possessions, and the bewildered imagination confounds infants vsdth posterity. But much more than in God's covenant with Noah and his family and their seed, or God's promises to the children of Israel naturally or spiritually, do some of our opponents hail the joyous assurance in Is. xl, 11. " He shall feed His flock like a shepherd : He shall gather the lambs vsdth His arm, and carry them in His bosom, and shall fgently lead those that are with young." I hope that Baptists are as thankful for this Scripture as Pajdobaptists, although by the lambs of the flock — as in the exhortation to Peter, " Feed My lambs" — those " in the first stage of reli- gion, whatever their age may be in regard of natural life" must certainly be meant. These are passages of Scripture to establish the confidence that the infants of believers always have been and ever will be, through connexion with their parents, in that covenant which includes temporal, spiritual and everlasting blessing ! • Mr. Baxter, with a sagacity and a folly equal to that of Dr. Wardlaw, adduces in proof and corroboration of infant baptism, in his Plain Scrip- ture Proof, Lev. xxv, 41, 42, 55 (pp. 182, 248, 252) ; Deu. xxix, 10-12 (pp. 57, 183, 249); Ps. xxxvii, 26 (p. 66); Mai, ii, 15 (p. 67); Matt, xxiii, 37-39 (p. 51); Kom. iv (p. 58); Eom. v, 14, 15, 20 (p. 55); Eom. xi, 15 (p. 52); Kom. xi, 17 (pp. 43, 44, 50); Rom. xi, 19 (pp. 50, 182); Eom. xi, 24 (pp. 45, 48, 50); Heb. \-ii, 22; viii, 6 (p 55); Eev. xi, 15 (p. 52). His twenty-first argument for the baptism of infants is, that the Baptist idea "maketh all infants to be members of the visible kingdom of the devil" (p. 71). His twenty-third argument is that "if an infant were head of the visible church, then infants may be members." This is a portion of the Plain Scripture Proof that infants ought to be admitted to baptism and membership in the churches of Christ. Though a reply to any part of the above is unnecessary, the words of Dr. Wardlaw are too appropriate to a part to be here omitted. "It certainly does not say much for the validity of a system, when its supporters, instead of directing us, for the ground on which it rests, to the plain and explicit principles and precepts, and facts of the New Testament, have recourse to the pur- posely obscure terms of unfulfilled prophecy — terms from which the system could never be extracted, but which they ingeniously interpret in harmony with the system — ingeniously, and, I believe, in many cases sincerely, though under the influence of a strangely deluding pre-possessiou" (The GOD'S COVENANTS WITH ABEAHAM. 181 Scr. Arg., p. 48). I am far from maintaining that Baxter quotes all the Scriptures to which PaBclobaptists refer for the support of infant baptism. Where there is not a word about babes or baptism, a Jewish church or nation, Abraham's natural seed or proselytes to Judaism, relative or federal holiness, the connexion of children with parents or with a believing parent, our opponents can see wondrous corroboration, if not positive proof, of infant baptism. The holiness of the Jewish nation in its separation from the idolatrous nations of the earth is confounded with holiness by faith. To a supposed relative holiness is attached the Divine favour and meetncss for Divine ordinances. An unintelligible " federal hohuess" is confoundingly added to holiness by faith, faith which alone on sinful man's part admits to the Divine favour, renders him eligible to Divine ordinances, and makes fellowship with God's people his immediate privilege and obliga- tion. Many of the passages (as Jer. xxxii, Kom. xi, &c.), if inference on baptism were admissible, can corroborate only believers' baptism. The following on infant baptism from 1 Cor. vii, 14, was omitted in its proper place. North British Review — in a review wMch lias been ascribed to Prof. Tulloch — after mentioning that there is 7wt a word in Scripture which asserts its existence, says, "Nay, more, it may be urged that 1 Cor. vii, 14, is incompatible with the supposition that infant baptism was then practised at Corinth. The apostle in this passage seeks to remove the scruples of those Christian partners in mixed marriages who believed that a conjugal union with a heathen was a state profane and unholy in God's sight. He re-assures them by an argument founded on arcductio ad ahsurdwn. You admit, says he, that your children are holy, then be persuaded that the marriage from which that sanctity was derived is holy also." "Had the children been baptized, they would have been holy in their own right, as members of Christ ; and a father who had had his children baptized, would have effectually demolished the apostle's reasoning by the simple replj% that the holiness of his children as members of Christ's church, was no reason for his thinking the marriage holy, or his not putting away his unbelieving wife. Many, indeed, have explained the term holy, as meaning ' have been admitted to baptism,' making the verse say that if the faith of the believing parent had not sanctified the marriage, the children could not have been admitted to baptism, whereas they had been baptized. But this is to re-write Scripture, not to interpret it." — 1852, p. 388. SECTION VII. ON INFANT BAPTISM AS JUSTIFIED BY GOD'S COVENANTS WITH ABEAHAM. R. Baxter.—" The single promise of God is oft called a covenant." — Dispu., p. 352. Br. Cakson. — " To place the grounds of infant baptism on the Abrahamic covenant, is to make inteUigent obedience impossible to most Christians. If no believer can know what the Lord re- quiresin this matter till he understands the covenant of Abraham, very many would not act at all. Can any man think that God would leave the grounds of this duty so enveloped in darkness ?" On Bap., p. 235. . Dr. S. Stennett.— " The covenant which God made with Abraham was twofold, and had re- spect to him both in a religious capacity, as the father of the faithful ; and in a civil capacity, as the progenitor of a numerous people separated by providence to the enjoyment of peculiar nation- al blessings." — Answer, p. 93. C. H. Spukgeon. — "According to the terms of the everlasting covenant, and not according to the law, nor according to the tenor of any transient -dispensations, the Old Testament saints were justified by faith, and accepted of God."— Sword, &c.,p. 123, 1867. In most works advocating the baptism of infants the greatest promin- ence and importance are attached to the Old Testament, and especially to 182 SUBJECTS OF BAPTISM. the covenants of God with Abraliam, or the gracious promises made by the Divine Being to this " faithful" patriarch. And in defining symbols and seals, and what is or has been symbolized, sealed, changed, abolished, or perpetuated, none revel more — notwithstanding the laboured argumen- tation of the Independent Dr. Wardlaw — than some of our astute meta- physical Presbyterian brethren. So many are the affirmations respecting the Divine covenants — Adamic, Noahic, Abrahamic, and Mosaic, especially those Abrahamic, and respecting the church of God in all ages, antedilu- vian and postdiluvian, but especially an Abrahamic, and perhaps most of all a Mosaic church of God, the Jewish, the ancient church of God — and BO many are the iterations and re-iterations, with subtractions, additions, modifications, explanations, and alterations, that it v.-ill be wonderful if an opponent does no injustice to any to whom he may refer. No ordinary memory is needed (and to an extraordinary one I make no pretence) to bear in mind the truth and error, the contradictions to themselves, to one another, and to Divine truth, the inferences from false premises, the fallacious inferences from those which are true, and the assumptions con- fidently spoken of as Divine verities, which characterize Pa^dobaptist documents on God's ancient covenants and promises, when infant baptism is advocated. It would require no common folio, or no small number of volumes, to expose all that has been advanced on this essentially hereditary, but supposedly real title to a Divine and New Testament ordinance. With a desire justly to represent the Divine and human, I will adduce some asser- tions of opponents, and append my own and those of some others with whom in the main I agree. To reply fully and separately to each one, would involve repetition and length that must be avoided, although repe- tition to some extent on objections so nearly if not substantially the same, it is impossible in justice to the cause of truth wholly to avoid. And not to take particular notice of a few of the most eminent among those who have advocated infant baptism from God's covenants with Abraham, or promises to him, would be to deviate from the design of this work. Let us read on this the Divine revelation. The first covenant of God with Abraham recorded by Moses, is the one of Gen. xii, 1-3, where we read, "Now the Lord had said imto Abram, Get thee out of thy country, and from thy kindred, and from thy father's house, unto a land that I will shew thee : And I will make of thee a great nation, and I will bless thee, and make thy name great ; and thou shall bo a blessing. And I will bless them that bless thee, and curse him that cursoth thee ; and in thee shall all families of the earth be blessed." As Moses says, " The Lord had said," &c., Stephen may refer to the same covenant when he says, "The God of Glory appeared unto our father Abraham when he was in Mesopotamia, before he dwelt in Charran, and said unto him, Get thee out of thy country, and from thy kindred, into the land which I shall shew thee" (Acts vii, 2, 3). Presuming that Stephen may be referring to the same covenant as that recorded by Moses in Gen. xii, 1-3, although he mentions only the command, I shall, without affirming the identity of the two, speak of this covenant of God with Abraham which Moses has first recorded, as God's first covenant with him. The second recorded covenant of God yfith Abraham was with him in Canaan. "And the Lord appeared unto A1)rara, and said. Unto thy seed will I give this land" (Gen. xii, V). The third is recorded in Gen. xiii, 14-17. "And the Lord said unto Abram, after tliat Lot was separated from him. Lift up now thine eyes, and look from the placo whore thou art, northward, and southward, and eastward, and westward ; tox GOD'S COVENANTS WITH ABRAHAM. 183 all the land wliich thou seest, to thee will I give it, and to thy seed for ever. And I will make thy seed as the dust of the earth ; so that if a man can number the dust of the earth, then shall thy seed also be numbered. Arise, walk through the land, in the length of it, and in the breadth of it : for I will give it unto thee." The fourth is recorded in Gen. xv, 4-7, 13, 16, 18. " And, behold, the word of the Lord came unto him, saying. This shall not bo thine heii', but he that shall come forth out of thine own bowels shall be thine heir. And He brought him forth abroad, and said. Look now towards heaven, and tell the stars, if thou be able to number them. And He said unto him, so shall thy seed be. And ho believed in the Lord ; and He counted it unto him for righteovisness. And Ho said iinto him, I am the Lord that brought thee ou.t of Ur of the Chaldees, to give thee this land to inherit it." "And He said unto Abram, Know of a surety, that thy seed shall be a stranger in a land that is not theirs, and shall sei-vo them, and they shall afflict them four hundred years. And also that nation, whom they shall serve, will I judge ; and afterward shall they come out with great substance. And thou shalt go to thy fathers in peace ; thou shalt be buried in a good old age. But in the fourth generation they shall come hither again ; for the iniquity of the Amorites is not yet full." " In that same day the Lord made a covenant with Abram, saying, Unto thy seed have I given this land, from the river of Egypt unto the great river, the river Euphrates," &c. The fifth recorded covenant is in Gen. xvii, 1-21. This we shall subsequently notice. I will only here observe that if the former part of ch. xvii is the covenant of grace, and is the same as the covenant in ch. xii, only more full, it follows that the covenant of grace was established distinctly from the covenant of circumcision, and twenty-five years previously, even though the covenant of circumcision were subsequently appended to it and united with it. The sixth is in Gen. xviii, 1-14, where we read that "the Lord appeared to him in the plains of Mamre," and He said, " I will certainly return unto thee according to the time of life ; and, lo, Sarah thy wife shall have a son. . . . Is anything too hard for the Lord ? At the time appointed I will return unto thee, according to the time of life, and Sarah shall have a son." The seventh recorded covenant is in Gen. xxii, 15-18, where, after God had proved Abraham in the command to offer up Isaac, we are told that " the angel of the Lord called unto Abraham out of heaven the second time, and said. By Myself have I sworn, saith the Lord ; for be- cause thou hast done this thing, and hast not withheld thy son, thine only son, that in blessing I will bless thee, and in multiplying I will multiply thy seed as the stars of the heaven, and as the sand which is upon the sea shore ; and thy seed shall possess the gate of his enemies ; and in thy seed shall all the nations of the earth be blessed ; because thou hast heard my voice." What a foundation do these promises of God to Abraham lay for the baptism of infants having one or two believing or professedly believing parents, or of all infants that are brought for baptism, or of all that by permission or craft can be baptized ! Yea, what a foundation, even re- membering that in connexion with the fifth of Jehovah's engagements to Abraham, or to him and his seed, God required the circumcision of all the male children and male servants of Abraham and his seed ! These Divine engagements, usually designated covenants, it will be seen, are rather God's promises than a contract or mutual arrangement stipulated between God and Abraham. In some of these covenants with Abraham, or gracious and glorious engagements to him and his seed, there is a repe- tition of some promise previously given. The obedience of Abraham to the commands God gave him, proved his confidence in Divine faithful- ness. Each of these Divine engagements is " a covenant with Abraham" (Gen. XV, 18), as the promise to Noah that the waters should no more become a flood to destroy all flesh, was God's covenant between Him and ourselves and every living creature (Gen. is, 15). "Where is the man whose penetrating vision does not discover that, in the first, second, third, and fourth of God's revealed covenants with Abraham, there is a clear pointing to infant baptism, that the fifth covenant substantially enjoins it, 184 SUBJECTS OF BAPTISM. and that the sixth and seventh look back to and recognize its ordination, at least awaiting only Peter's conditional x^romise of remission of sins and the gift of the Holy Ghost to those who anxiously inquired, "Men and brethren, what shall we do ?" which conditional promise, at least of the gift of the Holy Ghost, he extended to their children and to all afar off, even as many as God should call ! Who does not perceive that infant baptism is clearly and thoroughly interwoven with the Abrahamic covenants ! that they constitute the grand, yea the demonstrative evidence that the baptizing of infants, at least of infants having one professedly or hopefully believing parent is the law of Christian baptism ! And who that has read Dr. Halley on the Sacraments does not see that the venerable and learned doctor has floundered in his endeavours to found infant baptism on the grammar of Christ's words in Matt, xxviii, 19, as well he might, having popped on a Scripture too recent by more than 1800 years ! And who does not see from the Abrahamic covenants that infants and little children were either a part of the three thousand pentecostal converts, or that they constituted an overplus not mentioned by the inspired writer ; that they constituted a part of the believing, or an unmentioned addition to the believing men and women of Samaria whose baptism the Scriptures record ; and that they must have constituted a part of the believing, rejoicing and ministering families, yea of all the families, that God's word mentions as being baptized ! It is difficult to write seriously on this venerated argu- ment for the baptism of infants having at least one parent of professed faith in Christ, while deeming it so flimsy and aerial, notwithstanding the volumes written in its favour by subtle logicians and learned divines. Dr. Stacey says, "Only one covenant is spoken of throughout ; this is uniformly designated the covenant ; and of this covenant thus simple and alone, and, therefore, as including the higher and the lower, the national and the religious, what was peculiar to the Jews and what was designed for the race, circumcision is the appointed seal" (The Sac, pp. 64, 65). This "one covenant" including " what was peculiar to the Jews, and what was designed for the race," is wonderfully " simple !" This "one coven- ant," "simple and alone," "including the higher and the lower, the national and the religious" is God's covenant with the Jews and with ourselves ; with " the race !" God's gracious promises to Abraham may properly give spiritual encouragement to those who possess in some degree like precious fiiith with " faithful Abraham ;" and may quicken to earnestness and fidelity the heads of families in the discharge of their obligations, and as an example of faith worthily placed and abundantly recompensed, may encourage in all the same holy and profitable feeling. They, however, teach nothing on the approved subjects of Christian baptism, or on the existence of a positive rite under the Christian dispensation. By no logic that will not involve the contradiction of reason or revelation can these covenants be construed to mean God's approval of the ungodly even when descended from Abraham, or a distinction between the spiritual condition of one infant and another on account of descending or not descending from Abraham, or to prove the Divine sanction of baptism or any other cere- GOD'S COVENANTS WITH ABEAHAM. 185 monial under the Christian dispensation, for infants or adults, believers or the ungodly. But God's covenant or covenants with Abraham are supposed to give abundant sanction to the baptism of infants having a believing parent, because God made gracious promises not only to the patriarch, but to his seed after him. The first promise, embracing Abra- ham's posterity, is one of transcendent glory. It reads thus : "In thee shall all families of the earth be blessed" (Gen. xii, 3). To this the apostle refers in Rom, and Gal. when pleading for justification wholly through faith in Christ, and not by the law or through circumcision. But this blessed promise is not accepted as the authority for infant baptism. The second promise relating to his posterity is, " Unto thy seed will I give this land" (Gen. xii, 7). This also is rejected as the Di^dne foundation for infant baptism. In the third recorded covenant with Abraham's seed God says, "All the land which thou seest, to thee will I give it, and to thy seed for ever. And I will make thy seed as the dust of the earth ; so that if a man can number the dust of the earth, then shall thy seed also be numbered" (Gen. xiii, 15, 16). This also is not claimed as a Divine sanction to the baptizing of any infants. "We find next a distinct promise to Abraham that he who should come forth out of his own bowels should be his heir, and after God had bid him to look toward heaven, and tell the stars, if he is able to number them. He says, "So shall thy seed be." On this occasion, the Divine record says that Abraham " believed in the Lord, and He counted it to him for righteousness." And God further "said unto Abram, Know of a surety that thy seed shall be a stranger in a land that is not theirs, and shall serve them ; and they shall afllict them four hundred years ; and also that nation whom they shall serve, will I judge : and afterward shall they come out with great substance." "In the same day the Lord made a covenant with Abiam, saying, Unto thy seed have I given this land from the river of Egypt unto the great river, the river Euphrates" (Gen. xv, 4-18). But our opponents admit this passage to say on the decree of infant baptism, "It is not in me." Again the Lord appeared to Abraham, promising him a numerous and honoured posterity, and saying to him, "And I will establish My covenant between Me and thee, and thy seed after thee, in their generations, for an everlasting covenant, to be a God unto thee and to thy seed after thee. And I will give unto thee, and to thy seed after thee, the land wherein thou art a stranger, all the land of Canaan, for an everlasting possession ; and I will be their God" (Gen. xvii, 2-8). This passage, instead of saying respect- ing infant baptism, " It is not -with me," to the great joy of many Pa^do- baptists, ynih distinct and claiion-like voice cries aloud, Here it is ! Glorious promises God had before made to Abraham, and glorious promises God subsequently made (Gen. xxii, 16-18), concerning his posterity, but, excepting the promise of being a God unto Abraham and his seed after him, none gives the distinct and glorious revelation that infant baptism is from heaven. The words of Peter, "The promise is unto you and to your children," according to Prof. Wilson (not to mention others), "echo the great federal promise, 'I will be a God unto thee, and to thy seed ;' " and as among the Jews, according to his reasoning, "their children had been 18t> SUBJECTS OF BAPTISM. associated with themselves in covenant relation to God," so in the gospel covenant "one of its first gracious utterances maintains the connexion between parents and children" (Inf. Bap., p. 505). If the words of Peter have had, in what I have previously written, a right interpretation, he taught that there was, under the gospel, remission of sins, with the gift of the Bph'it, not only for those v/hom Peter on that Pentecostal day addressed, but (in the same manner) for their children or posterity, for succeeding generations to the end of time ; andnot only for those whom Peter then addressed and for their posterity, but also for those spread abroad to any distance, to whom, by the preaching of the gospel, the Divine call should be given. If the words of Peter were limited in his thoughts to Jews near and Jews distant, the blessings and conditions were the same according to every uttered word or implied idea, in regard to children as to parents, in regard to those distant as to those at hand. And it is a fact that "the gospel ol Christ ... is the power of God unto salvation to every one that believeth ; to the Jew first, and also to the Greek." I believe it to be also a fact that all to whom the gospel is preached must become interested in its blessings and become the proper subjects of its ordinances in one way ; and that all children not come to years of accountability, indepen- dently of the piety of parents, or anything that may be performed upon them or done to them by parents or any mortal being, are through Christ in a state of safety. If they then die, I believe that they escape the damnation of hell, and with the blood-bought and blood-washed multitude will for ever ascribe the whole of their salvation "to our God which sitteth upon the throne and unto the Lamb." No "federal promise," "great" or small, teaches " a connexion betv/een parents and children," so that a pious parent begets a pious child, and an ungodly parent begets an ungodly child ; so that each child not "having done any good or evil" is an heir of heaven through relation to at least one professedly believing parent, or an heir of hell through relationship to two unbelieving parents. Scripture teaches as plainly that in the impassable gulf between the saved and the lost there is a middle place to be occupied by those whose relationship to an equal mixture of piety or ungodliness unfits them for cither heaven or hell. Besides, if these covenants or gracious promises of God to Abraham and his seed predict or suppose piety in the posterity of Abraham, to whom the promises belong, or if they teach that God would graciously bless Abraham's posterity for the sake of Abraham, their believing and obeying progenitor, they in themselves teach nothing respecting the spiritual con- dition of any infants as infimts, and nothing respecting an operation now to be performed, either from earthly relationship or independently of it, on infants of either sex, or on older children and servants. All that we learn respecting the duty of circumcision is by a distinct revelation, a dis- tinct command given to Abraham on the fifth recorded occasion of covenanting with him. Nothing could possibly have been known respect- ing the duty of circumcision but by Divine and express revelation ; so that if circumcision is connected with any of these promises, it has no connexion with them till this connexion is divinely made, any more than baptism can be in the place of circumcision until it is divinely placed there — of which a revelation is yet wanting. GOD'S COVENANTS WITH ABEAHAM. 187 These covenants of God witli Abraham in relation to himself and. his seed are not the covenants respecting which we read, "If a man do, he shall live in them;" nor are they the command to love God with all our hearts and our neighbours as ourselves, respecting which Christ said "to a ccrtin lawyer," "This do, and thou shalt live;" nor are they the coven- ant embraced in the words, " God so loved the world that he gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth on Him should not perish but have everlasting life." God's being a God to the seed of Abraham — except when this is specially applied to Christ, as in Gal. iii, 16 — could not include more than God's bomg a reconciled God to the regenerate, who should enjoy the inestimable blessings of justification and adoption, or, along with these, God's conferring of special privileges and providential ■ mercies in addition to a possession of the land of Canaan. Moreover, the land of Canaan, and certain privileges possessed by Abraham's descendants through Isaac and Jacob, were not the portion of all Abraham's posterity. Abraham's seed, besides being divided into the seed through Ishmael and Isaac, and through Jacob and Esau, are scriptm-ally divided into natural and spiritual. Hence we read, " For they are not all Israel which are of Israel : neither because they are the seed of Abraham are they all chikli'en" (Rom. ix, 6). Abraham is "the father of the circumcision to them who are not of the circumcision only, but who also walk in the steps of the faith of our father Abraham" (Rom. iv, 12). "So then they which be of faith are blessed with faithful Abraham" (Gal iii, 9). Abraham's spiritual seed are God's believing people, Jews or Gentiles. The church of Christ is intended to consist of those who walk in the steps of Abraham's faith, who being of faith are blessed with the believing patriarch ; and for these, and these only, if I mistake not, the ordinances of the church of Christ are appointed. The natural seed of Abraham being essentially distinct from his spiritual seed, and an inspired apostle having confined the body of Christ to Abraham's spiritual seed (Eph. i, 22, 23 ; Gal. iii, 29), the infants even of believing parents are shut out from membership in Christian churches, if we attempt to deduce membership from this source. Christian churches are spiritual in their character. Grace is not carnal or hereditary. Yet Dr. Wardlaw, speaking of the Abrahamic covenant, of the ordinance of baptism, and of membership in the churches of Christ, teaches that "the covenant made with Abraham was the gospel covenant, the covenant of grace, under which we live, and which is the basis of the New Testament church" (Inf. Bap., p. 76) ; that " whilst the promises of the covenant with Abraham were made to the patriarch and his spiritual seed, there was in them at the same time a primary respect to his natural ofispring, among whose successive generations that seed was to be raised up" (p. 62) ; that "under that covenant there existed a divinelj'-instituted connexion between children and their parents, the sign and seal of the blessings of the coven- ant was, by Divine appointment, administered to children ; and there can be produced no satisfactory evidence of this connexion having been done away" (p. 20). " It should be recollected," sa^-s the worthy doctor, "that the nation of Israel, springing from Abraham in the line of Isaac 18S SUBJECTS OF BAPTISM. and Jacob, was the churcli of God" (p, 31). It is equally deserving of attention, that he writes, "I must here be permitted again to marvel at the dimness of vision, and the confusion of ideas, which the admission of a false principle, and attachment to an erroneous system, can produce in even the acutest and most discerning minds" (p. 43). Think of a coven- ant, the spirituality of which is maintained, that embraces a portion of this earth called Canaan, and a posterity numerous as the sands on the sea shore, amongst which will be some of the kings of the earth ! Are these spiritual blessings ? That the promises contained in God's covenants with Abraham were wholly temporal, I do not affirm. Nor do I deny that there are unregenerate persons in the churches of Christ ; but if these churches are to be modelled after the Jewish nation descended through Isaac and Jacob, as the supposed church of God in the days of its nationality, they must, imperfect as they are, undergo a transformation that will gi'eatly multiply the inferior element. Some of the above from Dr. Wardlaw will be subsequently noticed. That " the covenant made with Abraham con- stituted the basis of the New Testament church," is an unfounded asser- tion, calculated to darken that which is clear, and pervert that which is Divine. The expression is altogether misleading and unjustifiable, although from the New Testament we learn that the members of the body of Christ are the spiritual children of believing Abraham, a sentiment entirely opposed to infant and indiscriminate membership or baptism. That the gospel of Christ is "the power of God unto salvation to every one that believeth ; to the Jew first, and also to the Greek," I am not aware that any one denies. That circumcision was a carnal, fleshly ordinance, that the blessings of the covenant of circumcision were hereditary among the descendants of Abraham in the line of Isaac and Jacob, is admitted, while we emphatically deny the preposterous inference that the sign of a spiritual grace may be administered on account of carnal descent, or that there is a spiritual connexion between parents and their children. The assertion that the Israelitish nation " was the church of God," is destitute of Divine authority, and the inference from this unfounded hypothesis is as legitimate and strong in favour of national churches as of infant baptism. On " the import of circumcision, and its identity under one '^dispensation with baptism imder the other" (p. 40), I may subsequently speak. A spiritual connexion between parents and children, so that either Di^^ne grace, or a spiritual status, descends by natural birth, is a thing of which " the Scripture of truth" knows nothing. A "church under Abraham," of which Dr. Bushnell speaks (Chris. Nar., p. lOG), is no more proved by God's covenant with Abraham, than is a church under Job, David, or Hezekiah, by God's promises to these worthies, although I will admit that the cases are not in everything parallel. The advocates of error are ever making assumptions, drawing upon fancy. All the application that by possibility we can legitimately make of the promises to Abraham's seed in connexion with the church of Christ and Christian ordinances, must have exclusive reference to Abraham's spiritual seed, believers, Jews or Gentiles. Such an application will accord with the gracious and glorious truth, that "God so loved the world that He GOD'S COVENANTS WITH ABRAHAM. 189 gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever bclievetli in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life ;" that "he that believeth and is baptized, shall be saved. ' ' ' ' Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and thou shalt be saved . ' ' I deny not that temporal blessings were in the portion of Abraham, and are in that of his spiritual seed, or that temporal blessings, and privileges calculated to promote eternal life, do accrue to others not belonging to the spiritual seed ; nor do I deny that temporal blessings are expressly included in God's covenant with Abraham and his natural seed, a covenant which, as has been stated, is rather a promise of God's gracious favours than a compact entered into between God and Abraham, or between God and Abraham's seed. Blessings from God's grace undoubtedly flow to the unconscious and unregenerate everywhere ; and blessings are under God flowing direct to some of the unregenerate through God's believing and adopted ones ; but religion is, ever has been, and ever will be, personal and not hereditary ; and that religious ordinances belong to other than the religious, I believe to be incapable of proof. The reader will perceive that I am not giving a laboured explanation of God's covenants with Abraham or Adam, with Noah or Moses, or with the whole family of man. My object is to shew that /or the baptism of infants there is not in the covenant with Abraham, to which reference is so frequently made, even the shadow of afoitndation. Were it asserted that the covenant of God with Abraham proved that all his posterity are in- cluded in the covenant of grace, so that they must have a portion mth the saved, historic facts would prove the falsehood of such an assertion. Theso promises of God relative to Abraham and his seed do not jrrove that even in infancy Abraham's natural posterity were written in heaven, being heirs of glory. That all infants, or even the infants descending from Abraham, are by God's grace meet for heaven, must be proved from other Scriptures than those which record God's covenant with Abraham and his seed. In the words of Dr. Wardlaw we say, that '"the grace of God is not imparted by fleshly birth." "Mere natural descent from Abraham could not save the Jews, neither can mere natural relationship to godly parents save us." The promises of God to Abraham and his seed can in themselves furnish no legitimate pretext for baptizing male or female infants, children, or adults, servants old or young, male or female, the children of one or two believing parents, or of parents having no faith. I affirm not that every infant descended from Abraham, Noah, or Adam, has not been, that every one previous to the commission of actual sin, is not, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, written in heaven ; but I deny that this is proved from the words now under consideration, and that seed has exclusive or any reference to infants as infants. The covenants of God mth Abraham were certainly gracious in their character ; and what covenant of God with fallen man has not been such ? But if these, or any of them be the covenant of grace, under what economy did Abra- ham's predecessors and contemporaries live ? And was the covenant of grace confined to the Jews until the time of Christ ? Or is it still confined to them ? I admit that cu-cumcision was the token of a gi'acious covenant between God and Abraham and his seed ; but I affirm that the covenant of grace 190 SUBJECTS OF BAPTISM. commenced witli tlie fall of our first parents and tlie promise that the seed of the woman should hruise the serpent's head, -which covenant had a clearer manifestation and more specific application in the promises that in Abraham and his seed all nations and kindreds of the earth should be blessed, and has had its brightest revelation, its most glorious manifestation in the gospel of Jesus Christ. When God on (at least) the fifth occasion covenanted with Abraham, about twenty-five years after the first promise or covenant that in him all the fixmilies of the earth should be blessed, He enjoined circumcision. This covenant, and circumcision as the token of the covenant, we shall more particularly notice, after recording a por- tion of the sentiments of Dr. E. Williams and others, intermingling, it may be, some concessions of opponents, and some replies to their reasoning that have been previously given by others. Dr. E. Williams. — " New Testament saints liavo notliinjj more to do with tlio Abrahamio covenant than the Old Testament believers who lived prior to Abraham." — Notes on Morrice's So. Rel., p. 93. M. Henry. — " Grace doth not run in the blood, nor are saving benefits inseparably annexed to external church privileges ; thoug-h it is common for people thus to stretch the meaning of God's promise, to bolster themselves up in a vain hope." — Com., on Eom. ix, 6, 7. M. TowGOOD, commended by eleven learned aiid eminent Congregationalists, says : "Thus then, stands the argument : — ifvM are Christ's (believers) then are we Abra- ham's seed (Gal. iii, 29) ; but if we are Abraham's seed, we have then a right to the grants and privileges of that covenant which God made with Abraham, and with his seed" (On Baj).,-p. 21/). — It is thus conceived tha,t the baptizing of infants must be divinely approved ! It is quite satisfactory that every believer may circumcise his male children if every believer be a second Abraham, and can read his title clear to a numerous and powerful posterity who shall certainly possess the land of Canaan. Dr. Halley, in Reply to Dr. Wardlaw, says : "Another objection to the reasoning of my friend, which appears to me to nullify his argument, is, that the visible or national chui'ch of Israel was the creation, not of the Abrahamic covenant, but of the Mosaic law." "The national church of Israel was abolished with the Mosaic law." •' If he means by the former dispensation the Mosaic law, with its national church, it is for ever abolished, and its constitution is irrelevant to the argument."- — pp. 144, 145. Dr. Wardlaw, on State Estahlishments of Christianity, says what can truthfully be ai^plied to many advocates of Infant Baptism as justified by God's covenant with Abraham. " Few things are more surprising than the use that has been made of " circumcision and God's covenant with Abraham "to elicit from" them " an indication of the will of God' ' respecting the appointed sulijects of Christian baptism^"the amount of ingenious theorizing that has been expended upon it !" " In my sermon ou Ecligious Establishments I have charged those who would make the national church of Israel a model — even in the general principle of it— for the imitation of Christians, with wilfully going back to the worldly and corrupt state of things, that has ' waxed old and vanished away,' with talcing for their model that which He by whom it was instituted has set aside ; with giving preference to the ' beggarly elements,' and choosing the introductory and carnal condition of the church, rather than the spiritual which it introduced ; with thus inverting God's procedure, and building again the things which He has destroyed. I repeat the charge." — On the Scrip. Argn., pp. 21, 2.5. Dr. E. A. Fyfe (a Baptist) says, " Paul in Gal. iii, 8, calls this preaching the gos- pel unto Abraham, ' saying in thee shall all nations be blessed' " (The Abr. Cov., p. 8). " But neither in the fifteenth nor seventeenth chapters is there any direct allusion to the promise, ' in thoe shall all the families of the earth bo blessed.' Surely if God had me.ant to include this important and significant promise in the covenant Ho was m.aking, He would not have oraittcd all allusion to it when He was so accurately defining the iin]iort a,nd limits of tlie agreement wliich He was making v,'ith His chosen servant" (p. 10). — He maintains a distinction "between the Abrahamic and Sinaitio covenants. The one is not a continuation nor amplification of the other. For we may observe that while the religious element of the Siaaitic covenant is often used in Scrip- GOD'S COVENANTS WITH ABEAHAM. 191 tiu-e as the type or shadow of the Christian religion (Ccl. ii, 17 ; Heb. viii, 5, and x, 1), the religions element of the Abrahamic is never so nsed.' On the contrary, the spiritual life of Abraham is proved (Eom. iv, 3, 9-22) to be identical with that of the Christian — it is spiritual life through faith in Christ." " Circumcision, which was the seal of Abraham's personal faith (but not the seal of the faith of his descendants, for most of them had no real faith in God), received at Mount Sinai a ritual or religions character, in addition to the national character it had iip to this time exclusively retained. In its religious or ritual seiise it was emblematical of the removal of sin — of a virtuous life. ' Circumcise your hearts and be no more stiff-necked,' ' and the Lord God will circumcise thine heart and the heart of thy seed.' . . - ' Circumcise yourselves unto the Lord, lest.' . . . This circumcision in its ritual sense seems to have been used to symbolize the cutting off of sin, or a pure life. In this sense it continued to be used down to the end of the Mosaic dispensation- That dispensation Paul in Heb. viii, 7-13 proves to have passed away, and, of course, circumcision in its ritual sense has passed away with the dispensation of which it formed a part. But though it has been abrogated as a religious rite, it is not so clear that it has been done away in its - original or national signification." The apostle Paul, in Gal. iii, 16, says, "Now to Abraham and his seed were the promises made. He saith not. And to seeds as of many, but as of one. And to thy seed, which is Christ." " As if Paul said," says Dr. F., " observe, brethren, that in this promise God has no reference to the nationality of the Jews, but to Christ who is the Head of all the redeemed. With this circumcision had originally no connexion whatever. We are not made partakers of the spiritual benefits of this rich promise by birth, nor by blood, nor by circumcision, nor by bap- tism, but by faith. ' So then,' says the apostle, ' they that be of faith are blessed with faithful Abraham.' The Jews to the time of Christ had fearfully erred in regard to this doctrine, as multitudes in the same way err at the present day." " The gracious promise given to the patriarchs, which was the declaration of the covenant of grace, was not formally ratified till the death of Christ. He sealed that covenant with His own precious blood." " Taught by the apostle Paul we are compelled to believe that the covenant made with the Jewish patriarch was pcmliar, and that the relations of Christian parents to their children must be differently understood from those which Abraham sustained to his, or not understood at all. The objects or aims of the Chris- tian, and Abrahamic covenant are different, their subjects are different." " No faith- ful father now can sustain the same relation to his family which Abraham did to his. The patriarch was not merely a pious father, but he was the head of a chosen nation." —The Ahr. Cov., pp. 10-23. Dr. A. Claeke. — " They which are the children of the flesh, &c. Y/hence it appears that not the children who descend from Abraham's loins, nor those who were circum- cised as he was, nor even those whom he might expect and desire, are therefore the church and people of God." — Com., on Eom. ix, 8. E.. Baxter. — " All Abraham's true seed are justified, and have a saving faith ; and all his professing seed do profess this faith."— I)ispM., p. 115. J. G. Manly. — " Whatever be the nature of the Christian ministry and the method of Christian worship, we should nob look for their origin and model in the weak and beggarly elements of a siiperseded system, but in the New Testament itseK, which alone is the record and rule of the church of Christ" (Eccl., p.22G). He has said (pp. 218, 219), " The onus prohandi really lies on those who assert the existence of a church before the day of Pentecost. We have shewn what the Christian church is, and when it commenced ; let it be shewn, if possible, that there wa s any earlier similar institute. Those who deny an ante-pentccostal chiu'ch have nothing to prove ; for a negative need not and cannot be proved. It avails nothing to shew that before the day of Pentecost, there were social religion, revealed religion, religious assemblies, religious ordinances and officers, religion in families and in a nation ; and to smj that these constituted or implied a church. The church is distinct and different from both domestic and civil society. What trace or evidence is there of it, or of anything like it, before the day of Pentecost ? There was a covenant before that day, but not a covenant with an actual church. Christ reigned before that day, but not in and through a church. There was a distinct people of God before that day, both as fami- lies and as a nation, whom Paul compares to an olive tree [?] ; but there was no separate local, registered, religious co-partnership, till Christ began to build His church in Jerusalem on the ever-memorable day of Pentecost following His own ascension." A. M'Lean (Baptist), on Dr. Wardlaw's saying, " When He is called their God, we are to view them not as a nation, or civil convmuniiy , but as His church. His profess- ing people,' ' pertinently asks, " But where does the Scripture make such a distinction as this ?" Elsewhere he says, " The Lord indeed says to Abraham, ' In thee shall all nations be blessed,' Gal. "iii, 8. And so the apostle terms it ' the blessing of Abka- 192 SUBJECTS OF BAPTISM. HAM,' ver. 14." This lie maintains refers to the blessings of rGdemptionto those who believe in Him, who according' to the flesh descended from Abraham. " It has been observed," says he, " that the promises made to Abraham had a 2>''"""'f(»*!/ respect to his natural offspring ; and from tins it follows that they can have no such respect to the natural offspring of Gentile believers, for this plain reason, that they cannot have two lyrimary respects. There is no absolute promise made to any believer that he shall have a seed, as was made to Abraham. No Christian parent is instituted the father of the faithful as Abraham was, but is reckoned among his clvililren ; for 'they which are of faith, the same are the CHiLDREisr of Abraham,' Gal. iii, 7." Further, " As you ground the salvation of infants upon their connexion with their believing parents, I ask, what kind of connexion is it ? If it is the fleshly connexion, how can spiritual blessings be derived in this manner ? And if they are, what hinders the children from reaj^ing the benefit of this connexion in their a,dult state, seeing they are still the children of believing parents ? . . . Does a spu-itual connexion, that entails salvation, wear out through length of time ? And at what time does this connexion cease, so that the children can reap no longer any saving benefit from it ?" Subsequently, Mr. M. says : " It is absurd to sui:)pose, that the infant seed of Abra- ham, born of the flesh, did typify the infant seed of believers born likewise of the flesh ; for this would be only one fleshly seed typifying another fleshly seed, and so would not answer to the distinction that must always be held betwixt the type and its anti- type." The fleshly birth is " a thing visible ;" not so the spiritual birth. And "as regeneration is invisible ; so the carnal birth, be it of whom it may, is no proper index to it, nor can they upon that ground receive baptism. Because, 1. That which is common both to the natural and spmtual seed can never distinguish the one from the other. ... 2. That which does not amount to the character of the sons of God, cannot denominate the spiritual seed. ... 3. If the spiritual birth hath no necessary, natural, or federal connexion with the fleshly birth, then from the fleshly birth we cannot infer the spiritual ; but being born again — from above — of the Spirit of God, is neither necessarily, naturally, nor federally connected with the fleshly birth ; therefore it cannot be inferred from it. , . . 4. The natural seed of believers can no more be counted for the spiritual seed, than the natural seed of Abraham. . . . 5. Though some of the children of believers are the spiritual, it will not follow they should all be counted such ; any more than it will follow that because some of the fleshly Israel were also the spiritual Israel, therefore they were all of the spiritual Israel. ... 6. If the Scriptures demonstrate that many of the children of infidels are of the spiritual seed, whilst, on the other hand, many of the seed of the faithful turn out to be infidels, then no rule can be fixed for judging of the state of infants either from the faith or infidelity of their parents. ... To judge of the state of infants by the fleshly birth, or by the faith of their parents, is not a Scriptural rule. Tliese arguments serve to shew that the infants of ;New Testament believers cannot be counted for the spiritual seed, as the infants of old Israel were counted for the fleshly seed ; and that therefore baptism cannot be administered to the former, aa circumcision was to the latter, because it proceeds upon the evidence of the spiritual birth. ... I shall only mention one thing more upon this point of the argument, viz. : That there was a particular, express Divine command for circumcising the fleshly seed at eight days old ; but there is neither command nor example in all the word of God for bajitizing infants, or any but those who appear by the profession of their faith to be the spiritual seed" fTFbr/cs, vol. vii, pp. 162-166). How " can we suppose that professing Gentiles should propagate spiritual children to Abraham by carnal gen- eration, and manifest thorn to be such by professing the faith in their stead, when he who was the father of the faithful could do no such thing ?" To say that " God is able to regenerate infants, therefore they may be baptized," is not better than to say that " aU the human race may be baptized ; for God is able to regenerate them." As God's covenants witli Abraham so clearly included temporal advan- tages to his natural posterity, which certainly belong not to the children of Christians, and included spiritual and eternal blessings to no more of his seed than his believing children,^ it must have been unnecessary in * I am not tlcnyinf; the snlvation of 'Abraham's descendauts wlio fiioil iu infancy. Their aalvation, as that of all other deceased infants, before and since, is traceable to a covenant of grace " before Abraham was." COVENANT OF CIECUMCISION. 193 the case of those open to conviction, to shew at such length that God's covenants with Abraham give no authority or encouragement to a baptiz- ing of the infants either of behevers or unbehevers. The assertion that because a parent is in covenant with God, the chiki should (without express revelation) be regarded as in covenant, is as forcible as to say that because a parent is baptized, the child should be regarded as bap- tized. Divine revelation, old and new, teaches that they with whom God is in covenant are believers, who have God's law written on their hearts ; not they and their little ones. But more in subsequent sections. SECTION VIII. ON INFANT BAPTISM AS EEQUIEED BY THE COVENANT OF CIRCtTMCISION. Dr. Halley. — " Circumcision, we believe with Justin Martjr, was the type of the true circum« cision, by which we ai-e circumcised from error and evil." — Cong. Lee, vol. x, p. 82. A. Booth. — " Seeing baptism is as really and entirely a positive institution, as any that were given to the chosen tribes, we cannot with safety infer cither the mode or the subject of it, from anything short of a precept or a precedent, recorded in Scrijiture and relating to that very ordin- ance."— P(£d. Ex., vol. i, p. 21. D. Young. — " The Jewish practice as to the Passover cannot determine what ought to bo the Christian ijractice as to the Lord's Supper ; nor can the Jewish practice as to the Circumcision show what was to be the Christian practice as to the ordinance of Baptism." — Ileasons, &c., !>. 3. Br. R. A. Fyfe. — " Sujiijose, for argument sake, I should admit that it came in the room of circumcision, it would not then follow that the children of believing jiarents should be baptized unless every [believing] parent could shew that he sustains the same relation to his children that Abraham did to his." — Bap. Sen., p. IG. The Divine Being in connexion with the fifth Divinely-recorded covenant with Abraham commanded him to circumcise himself, his son, and every male servant in his house. "And when Abram was ninety years old and nine, the Lord appeared to Abram, and said unto him, I am the Almighty God ; walk before me, and be thou perfect. And I will make My coven- ant between Me and thee, and will multiply thee exceedingly. And Abram fell on his face : and God talked with him, saying, As for Me, behold. My covenant is with thee, and thou shalt be a father of many nations. Neither shall thy name any more be called Abram, but thy name shall be Abraham, for a father of many nations have I made thee. And I will make thee exceeding fruitful, and I will make nations of thee, and kings shall come out of thee. And I will establish My covenant between Me and thee and thj seed after thee in their generations for an everlasting covenant, to be a God unto thee and to thy seed after thee. And I will give unto thee, and to thy seed after thee, the land wherein thou art a stranger, all the land of Canaan, for an everlasting possession ; and I will be their God. And God said unto Abraham, thou shalt keep My covenant, therefore, thou and thy seed after thee in their generations. This is My covenant, which ye shall keep, between Me and you and thy seed after thee ; Every male child among you shall be circumcised. And ye shall circumcise the flesh of your foreskin ; and it shall be a token of the covenant betwixt Me and you. And he that is eight days old shall be circumcised among you, every man child in your generations, he that is o 194 SUBJECTS OF BAPTISM. born in tbe houge, or bought with money of any stranger, ■which if? not of thy seed. He that is boru in thy house, and he that is bought with thy money must needs be circumcised : and My covenant shall be in ^-our flesh for an everlasting covenant. And the uncircumcised man whose flesh of his foreskin is not circumcised, that soul shall be cut off from his people; he hath broken My covenant." — Gen. xvii, 1-14. It is acknowledged that with few exceptions "the Paedobaptist begins his argument with the analogy of chcumcision under the Old Testament covenant" (Cassell's Bib. Die. J. Hence Dr. L. Woods says: "This position," "that baptism comes in tlie place of cir- cumcision," "is not founded so much on any particular text, as on the general representations of Scripture, and the nature of the case." — Works, vol. iii, p. 416. Dr. Hugh Allen, in reply to Mr. Spm-geon, says : "Baptism as a sacrament in the Christian church clearly takes the place of circumcision as a sacrament in the Jewish chiirch." Dr. J. Stacet says : " The rite of circumcision has given place to the ordinance of baptism" (p. 73). " Baptism is Christian circumcision" (p. 83). " The command to baptize under the gospel is but the transfer, with a change in the rite, of the command to circumcise under the law. Circumcision, we have seen, was the seal of the Abra liamic covenant, and as such was affixed by Divine direction to every individual with whom in the person of its head the covenant was virtually made — that is, to Abraham and his seed after him. Every child, from the first moment of its existence, was as truly comprehended in the covenant as every adult, and hence on the eighth day after its birth the seal was literally impressed, and the covenant formally ratiiied. A profession of faith in the covenant, and of consequent obligation to its engagements, was implied in the act, and, incapable of being made by the child, was rej^resentatively given by the parents" (p. 139). — Every child was literally impressed! The parent was the child's sponsor, in the act of circumcising, representatively giving " a profession of faith." We are thus brought directly and divinely to the baptizing of " every person, young or old," for " nothing of this, save what is purely circumstantial, ' is done away in Christ ! ' " Dr. S. Clarke says that by analogy drawn from the rite of circumcision, it has, for many ages, been the general practice in the Christian church to receive infanta by baptism into the obligations of faith and obedience to the gospel ; and to make pro- fession for them, what they are to believe and obey." J. Farrab (Wesleyan), having spoken of God's covenant with Abraham and hia seed as including " the highest spiritual blessings," says that " of this sj^iritual coven- ant circumcision was the sign and seal," and that " baptism is, in like manner, the initiatory sign and seal of the same covenant in its new and perfect form in Christ Jesus." — Bib. Die. Art. Bap. Dr. J. Gardner says : "Baptism is now substituted in place of circumcision." " Baptism and circumcision are of precisely the same import." " Circumcision was both a sign and a seal." " Baptism, too, is both a sign and a seal. As a sign it ia emblematical of ' the washing of regeneration,' or the baptism of the Holy Ghost. As a seal it assures those who receive it, and whoso characters are conformed to its sacred import, that their faith is imputed to them for righteousness." The Scriptui-es referred to by Dr. G. as proving baptism and circumcision to be alike, are Eom. ii, 29 ; iv, 2 ; Phil, iii, 3 ; and Col. ii, 11, 12. " In all the covenants," says he, "which God has hitherto made with men, children have been connected with their parents. Thus it was in the covenants with Adam, with Noah, with Abraham, and with David." —Ency. Art. Bap, Baptism is said to have the place which circumcision once held, and the Lord's Supper that which the Passover possessed. There is no diffi- culty felt on account of one having its origin centuries before the other ; nor is it felt that to deduce baptism from circumcision and the Lord's Supper from the Passover, in destitution of Scriptural authority, is by appealing to an abrogated Jewish polity to overthrow the Divine orgauiza- COVENANT OF CIRCUMCISION. 195 tion of Christian churclies ; nor is the refusal of the Lord's Supper to so many of the baptized always remembered as a ditticulty and an incon- sistency. The occupying by baptism of the place previously occupied by circum- cision, requires that baptism have a Divine ordination to this position, and that God should have revealed this fact. But the supposition that baptism is in the place of circumcision, or that "baptism is Christian circumcision," is destitute of Scriptural foundation. I deny not that there is in some things a resemblance between the two. Spiritual circumcision was a renewal of the heart, and spiritual baptism, if the expression may be allowed — by which I mean not the baptism of the Spirit of which we read in the New Testament, which was attended with miraculous powders in the recipient — is the heart's renewal and cleansing. There is also a similarity between the Passover which the Jews were enjoined annually to celebrate, and the Lord's Supper. This similarity does not prove that the Lord's Supper occupies in the church of Christ the position which the Passover occupied in the Jewish nation. The only Scripture usually enlarged upon as informing us that baptism occupies the place of circumcision, and the only Scripture that with any plausibiUty can be perverted into a plea for this error, is Col. ii, 11, 12 : ''In whom also ye are circumcised with the circumcision made without hands, in putting off the body of the sins of the flesh by the circumcision of Christ : Buried with Him in baptism, wherein also ye are risen with Him through the faith of the operation of God, who hath raised Him from the dead," "The circumcision made without hands in putting off the body of the sins of the flesh," is not possibly baptism, the one baptism enjoined on our practice by our Divine Redeemer. This spiritual circumcision, according to the instruction of inspiration elsewhere given, ought to precede baptism, before which it is here mentioned. The apostle has just spoken of the completeness of Christians in Christ, and he then names as an evidence or part of their completeness in Him, the fact that in Him or by Him they are circum- cised with the circumcision made without hands in putting off" the body of the sins of the flesh. They were new creatures in Christ Jesus, The putting off the body of the sins of the flesh, is the circumcision made without hands, is the circumcision of Christ, that which He requires. In addition to this change of heart, and on immediate and credible profession thereof, had followed the ordained baptism, so that the apostle can add, " Buried with Him in baptism, wherein also ye are risen with Him through the faith of the operation of God who hath raised Him from the dead." If by the circumcision of Christ baptism is meant, why is baptism again mentioned, immediately added ? Is not baptism here distinct from circumcision ? Does not baptism clearly include a being put beneath and being covered with water, supposing w'ater to be the divinely- approved element, and a rising up from out of this on the part of the belieA^ng subject ? If by the circumcision of Christ is meant the baptism which Christ enjoined, it will follow that in baptism is regeneration, which will confine it to believers, or it will follow that baptism is in itself regenerating, and occupies the place which many of us, the Pope and some others 196 SUBJECTS OF BAPTISM. excepted, have been accustomed to assign to the preaching of the gospel, and the Spirit's operations. If the circumcision of Christ is the spiritual circumcision of which we read in Phil, iii, 3, Rom. ii, 29, Deu. x, 16, and XXX, 6, it will follow that the circumcision which Christ requires is that which is made without hands, consisting in putting off the body of the sins of the flesh, and that this ought to be followed and symbolized by baptism, in which there is a being buried and risen with Christ " through the faith of the operation of God who hath raised Him from the dead ;" and consequently that these passages aftbrd not the slightest sanction to the idea that baptism is a Divine substitute for circumcision, occupying the same position in the church of Christ as circumcision among the descendants of Abraham or in the nation of Israel. Bp. EUicott says on Col. ii, 11 : " En lio — * in whom,' i.e. 'seeing that in Him' — per quern' ' "were circumcised — at your conversion and baptism — not hand-wrought — they were circumcised in a spiritual and antitypical manner." " 'In the circumcision of Christ' — communicated by and appertaining unto Christ," " parallel to ' in the putting oif,' &c." See previousl}', pp. 132-135. Again, if God has revealed to us that baptism is in the place of cir- cumcision, it will follow that we should baptize exactly the class of persons on whom circumcision had been previously enjoined, unless God has particularized the deviations from circumcision in the subjects of baptism which He has designed and demanded. But God is as silent in His word in specifying how far in baptism we must agree with and differ from circumcision in the subjects of baptism as He is in stating that baptism is in the place of circumcision. If God had expressed that baptism was in the place of circumcision, we ought certainly to have believed it, although the alterations as to subjects could only have been ascertained by inference. But not a hint of this being in God's word, no one has a right to assert it. I deny not the right of legitimate inferences in establishing a doctrine or a duty. The substitution maintained requires its revelation previous to its assertion by ourselves. If our opponents maintained simply a resemblance, a resemblance and a difference between baptism and circum- cision, we should so far agree with them ; and should differ from them, if at all, only as to the extent of the likeness or dissimilarity. But in enjoining baptism in Scripture there is no reference in any instance to circumcision. In speaking of the subjects or action of baptism there is no reference to circumcision in any one record, except that one in Colossians, immediately before mentioning baptism, speaks of spiritual circumcision in a way perfectly accordant, and accordant onhj, with believers' baptism. The silence and the assertions of Holy Writ are equally against the h3^pothesis of our Psedobaptist friends. The inspired records, instead of teaching that baptism is an ordinance for male infants, to take place when they are eight days old, and that when a man becomes a disciple of Christ all his male chikken and male servants must be baptized, teach that spiritual circumcision is the divinely-approved precursor of Christian baptism. "Make disciples . . . baptizing them." "He that believeth and is baptized shall be saved." " Repent and be baptized." COVENANT OF CIECUMCISION. 197 "They that gladly received his word were baptized." "When they believed . . . they were baptized." " Circumcised with the circum- cision made without hands . . . buried with Him in baptism, wherein also ye are risen with Him through the faith of the operation of God." "Baptism . . . the answer of a good conscience toward God." On the inventions, inferences, schemes, and contradictions of our opponents relative to this hypothesis on which God's word is silent, I should occupy much space and time if I enlarged on each. The following record and exposure of Ptedobaptist error on the deduction of infant ba]iiism from the covenant of circumcision, followed by a number of Pa^dobaptist concessions, and the opinions of some Baptists, may be profitably read by those whose ardent thirst for truth on this subject is prompting the "patient" investigation. Dr. Wardlaw says — " We state our argument thus : Before the comingf of Christ the covenant of grace had been revealed ; and in that covenant there existed a divinely- instituted connection between children and their parents ; the sign and seal of the blessings of the covenant was, by Divine appointment administered to children ; and there can be produced no satisfactory evidence of this connection having been done a,w&j" (Inf. Bap., j). 20). — Here God's covenant with Abraham and his seed is regarded as the covenant of grace. That God graciously covenanted with Abraham and his seed I firmly believe, and that the glorious promise — which is no part of the covenant with which circumcision is connected — that in Abraham all the families of the earth should be blessed, includes tha glad tidings of a Redeemer, in due time to be born, and in His human nature to descend from Abraham ; and that tliis is the gospel preached to Abraham. I believe also that in connexion with the fifth recorded coven- ant into which God entered with Abraham, or with Abraham and his seed, God commanded the circumcision of Abraham, and of male children and male servants belonging to Abraham and to his seed, and that circumcision was " a token of the covenant betwixt" God and them. That it was a sign and seal of the blessings of the cover ant, or of a divinely-instituted connexion between all children and their parents, or between chiklrim and believing parents, is asserted in no part of Divine revelation. I am willing to admit that in the covenant of circumcision, which embraced Abraham and his descendants in the line of Isaac and Jacob, there was a connexion between children and parents in regard to a promised blessing. The promise of God expressly embraced the seed of Abraham along with Abraham. That this covenant is special, that it is without a parallel, that the blessings of grace — as pardon, salvation, eternal glory — are not the blessings of this covenant, that these in every part of God's word are restricted to certain characters, and in every age and every part of the world have been so restricted ; that these never have been, never will be, never can be hereditary through the connexion between children and parents, is demonstrable, and incapable of refutation. Circumcision, in the seed of Abraham beyond Ishmael and Isaac, indicated and arose from relationship to Abraham rather than to the father or mother of the circumcised child. A connection of some kind, of relationship and privilege, and of obligation on coming to years of understanding, between children and their parents, has existed from the time of the first-born, in all ages and places. Do Dr. Wardlaw and others speak of a sign "administered to children," instead of administered to ma ?(? children, from forgetfulness, or from an inconvenience that would arise from speaking in accordance with the Divine word, "Everyman child among you shall be circumcised?" Also, while circumcision was "a token of the covenant" between God and Abraham and his seed, it is never in Scripture designated a seal of anything, but in the case of Abraham himself. The apostle Paul says that Abraham "received the sign of circumcision, a seal of the righteousness of the faith which he had yet being uncircumcised" (Kom. iv, 11). If this teaches anything respecting the rightful subjects of baptism, it teaches that they are to be possessed of faith previous to their baptism ; but we learn this from another and better, a more direct and a clearer source. If also circumcision were " the sign and seal of tha bless- ings of the covenant" of grace, the male Jews, young and old, godly and ungodly, their male children pious and wicked, this portion too of the families and servants of proselytes, whether worshippers of Jehovah or of idols, had the blessings of the covenant of grace signed and sealed over to them ! These blessings appear also 198 SUBJECTS OF BAPTISM. according to Psedobaptist reasoning, by tlie circnmcision of the males, to have been signed and sealed to the female members of these families with like disregard to moral and religious character ! If baptism be in the place of circumcision, and bo the sign and seal of the New Covenant blessings, do proselytes to Christianity, or believers in Christ, primarily possess a personal right to baptism, and secondarily confer a right to baptism on the part of their male children and male servants, irres- pective of age and character, and have all these in baptism signed and sealed to them the blessings of the covenant of grace ? Then not only the converted, but a greater nunaber unconverted, may be in a state of justification and adoption, members of Christ, children of God, and heirs of the kingdom of glory ! The proselytism and baptism of males, in consistency with baptism being the Christian and scaling circum- cision, effe(fc or should effect this glorious and inestimable result on all the females of all the families. Christ becomes a second Abraham to the first proselyte, and the first proselyte himself becomes a second Abraham to at least his male children and servants, and apparently to the female as well, all of whom, the males being baptized, might be certified of heaven ! Dr. Wardlaw says, " I have endeavoured to prove that the covenant made with Abraham is one, containing the promises of temporal, spiritual, and eternal blessings to one seed, viz., the spiritual. I have endeavoured to prove that circumcision was connected with this covenant in this view of it, as a vjhole : — that this ordinance was the sign and seal of the promises of this covenant, to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and to all their believing seed — signifying or representmg to them all the same things, even the spiritual blessings of justification and sanctification, in connexion with the coming of Messiah from the loins of Abraham." — Dr. W. could not well have jumbled together a greater number of glaring errors in a, smaller compass. He might as cor- rectly have said that the promises are one, as that the covenants are one. He might as correctly have said that the promises in God's covenants with Abraham are all of temporal blessings, or all of spiritual, or all of eternal blessings, as have taught that all the promises of the Abrahamic covenants are to one seed even the spiritual. Also, if circumcision and the promises belonged only to the " believing seed" of "Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob," they belonged not to infants, unless male children, eight days old. were believers. The covenant of circiimcision included not the Gentiles either in infancy or maturity, and has never been transferred to them. " Circumcision was hereditary to old Israel, and, by God's appointment, entailed on their fleshly seed ; not so baptism to the true Israel." And instead of circumcision being superseded by baptism, both at the same time had the same Divine sanction. The baptism of our ''Book of Common Prayer" is gloriously eflBcacious, regenera- ting the infant who repents and believes by proxy, even if repentance, faith, and obedience be in word and not in deed ; but it does not make Christ or the baptized a second Abraham. Those who teach that baptism is Christian circumcision , and that it belongs to all children irrespective of the faith of parents, Jew and Gentile having under the gospel the same relation to C'lu"ist, and that baptism is the sign and seal of the blessings of the New Covenant, and that it ought to be administered to all, carry the sign and seal of New Covenant blessings to the utmost limit, to a glory ineffable ! It may, however, in some cases be partially obscured by the difficulty of determining "whether those now being baptized are baptized from a personal relation to Christ, from relation to a parent or to some more distant progenitor who has occupied the position of a second Abraham, and whether relationship to Christ or some human progenitor secures the blessings which qualify for baptism and are signed and sealed by baptism, or secures a qualification for that baptism which disciples its subjects, and thus secures New Covenant blessings, while at the same time it signs and seals them ! To me it appears that a Pffidobaptist can advocate all these contradictory errors in different parts of one volume, and that those who maintain that baptism occupies the place of circumcision, that it signs and seals New Covenant blessings, and that to all children and adults it ought to be administered indiscriminately, do or ghoidd teach that all mankind are in possession of the favour of God, and consequently are entitled to the sign and seal, and that all mankind may also be brought into the Divine favour bj' baptism, if we are also discipled to Christ by baptism ! If Abraham's faith or circumcision secured to his children a meetness for that ordinance which signed and sealed New Covenant blessings, and if, in like manner, every believing parent brings his children into covenant and favour vnih God, and thus makes them meet for that ordinance which signs and seals the blessings of the New Covenant, the believing parent's faith and baptism niHs/ bo eSicacious to his children's children as much as to his own chilracticc of many emiuent divines, I may suhsenueutly remark, COVENANT OF CIRCUMCISION. 201 baptism is not rendered nugatory by the uncertainty whether Christian or proselyte baptism had the earlier origin, nor by the fact that the latter rests entirely on rabbinical authority, whatever may have been the time of its commencement ! Dr. W. says : "A head of a family was received into the community of Isv&el, ivith his household. When I say with his household, I mean his infant children, and such of the adults as pi'o- /essecJ the same faith with himself" (p. 87). Ho makes "this restriction," not on rabbinical records, but, as he says, because it is " monstrous," " revolting to every principle of justice and. reason," to suppose adult children to be "compelled upon pain of death to go over," with the parent to the new religion. But if the adult members of a family do not become Christians along vrtth the younger branches on the head becoming a Christian, it cannot properly be said that Christianity inducts with the head of a family his household also into the community of Christians. It would appear, however, from proselyte baptism, that all the children, not excepting adults, became interested in the blessings of the covenant — which are maintained by Dr. W. to be spiritual as well as temporal — on the parent's becoming a proselyte. The faith of the parent would thus effect not only the removal of a curse that rested on himself, and a translation into the Divine benediction and sxjiritual blessings, but his faith would simultaneously effect the same blessed change in all his children, and servants too, not excepting those come to years of maturity. The Christian parent's faith, though gloriously efficacious, not for himself only, but for all his infants and younger children, nevertheless fails according to Dr. W. to reach vicariously to adults ! In the former part of the gospel dispensation, i.e., from Abraham to Christ, the con- nexion of children with their parents had an eflacacy and extent which since Christ it has not possessed ! A " connection between parents and children" is the constantly recurring and satisfying reason for the baptism of infants and little children, at least if they have one believing parent, although a connexion of some kind is as true in Mohammedan and Pagan as in Christian lands ; as true in relation to the wicked as the godly ; and has existed not merely " from the institution of the covenant with Abraham" (p. 92), but from the birth of Cain ; and establishes as efficaciously and certainly the damna- tion of one as the salvation of another. Or if the connexion of children with a progenitor had no divinely-appointed sign from Adam to Abraham, who is the pro- genitor through a relation to whom God has now appointed a sign ? In what chapter of God's word, as in Genesis xvii the covenant of circumcision is taught, are we taught the covenant, the relationship, the sign, the sex, and the age at which the sign of induction or seal of possession, or what constitutes both, is to be given ? Or if there is a transfer of circumcision to baptism, where have we the record, with particulars of identity or dissimilarity in relation to age, sex, relationship to Abraham, to Christ, or Satan ? Where are we taught that it seals blessings already enjoyed, or that it makes children of the devil disciples of Christ and heirs of eternal glory ? The command to Abraham to circumcise Ishmael and every male servant, is no proof that Christ has commanded the baptism of all infants and little children ; or of these if they have one believing parent; or that He has commanded the baptism of adult believers or unbelievers. It is admitted by Dr. W. in regard to the kingdom of Christ, that " it is all spiritual, opposed to every worldly principle and earthly expectation" (p. 98). And he does " not say there is such a thing as hereditary |>ftice" (p. 176) ; but, unless I mistake, he maintains the same thing by maintaining an hereditary interest in the covenant of grace. The following, from Dr. Wardlaw, has other than its primary application : "Few things are more sm-prising than the use that has been made of" circumcision, "to elicit from it an indication of the will of God" respecting Christian baptism; — the amount of ingenious theorizing that has been expended upon it !" " The case aiFords no ground of argument at all, and would never have been appealed to but for the scantiness of better material," — Scr. Arg., pp. 21, 17. Dr. Hallet, on the covenant of circumcision, has vrritten more with which I agree than any Pffidobaptist writer whom I have read. He makes pertinent remarks on the misinterpretation by Dr Pusey and others of John's words on his baptizing with water, but that Christ would baptize vrith the Holy Ghost, the baptism with the Holy Ghost not being the Christian baptism with water enjoined by Christ, but a special act of Christ Himself. Admitting that John's baptism had reference to the Messiah about to appear, and Christian baptism to the Messiah as having appeared, he main- tains " that Jesus was baptized vrith the same baptism as His people. The Founder of oiu" faith submitted to the rule of His own religion," and " Christians are baptized vnth the baptism with which Christ was baptized" (Vol. x, p. 160). Yet John's bap- tism is supposed by Dr. H, to be that of children with the parents, and he can ask, 202 SUBJECTS OF BAPTISM. ' Why should John for the first time distinguish parents from children in the religious rites of tho Jews" (p. 161) ? as if till John every ceremonial defilement of parent involved the same defilement of the children, and every purifying; rite which the parent needed and observed, was by a connexion of children with parents needed and observed by the children at the same time, in the same manner, for the same reason, and ynth the same efficacy. It would thiis be as the parent so the child, to an extent of which few have ever dreamed. I should thus conclude that the children of a leper became leprous, used washing-s and other ceremonies, received examinations, and recovered or died with their parent. Wo shall have carried the connexion of children with their parents to its limit when we have concluded that they are born, live, and die, are saved or lost tog'other. The fact that John's baptism was that of repentance, and of those who confessed their sins, seems at times forgotten by some having the acutest minds and most retentive memories. It is possible for an opponent of believers' baptism, who regrets the assumption of most of liis brethren that baptism is in the place of circumcision, in vindicating tho baptism of infants, to ha.ve recourse to fallacies equally glaring. A member of the Anglican Establishment might ask, Why should not Church and State be connected in a manner as nearlj' resembling the Jew- ish theocracy as possible ? We appeal to the New Testament as the law and the testimony regarding the church of Christ, and as against the civil establishment of Christianity equally as against the baptism of the unconscious or those known to be impenitent. We plead from the New Testament the spiritual, personal, and volun- tary character of Christianity, of its profession, and of' membership in Christ's churches. And when it is pleaded by Dr. H. respecting " the beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ," that with " the principles of the Mosaic law," with the " spirit" of Judaism, " every new ceremonial must have been accordant" (p. 161), the thought arises. Who art thou that dictatest to God what amount of Judaism there must be in that baptism which is admitted so greatly to resemble Christian baptism ? Another has equal right to say that if baptism be in the place of circumcision we must administer it regularly to male infants when they are exactly eight days old, and to male children and servants on the head of a family becoming a Christian, even if from certain Scriptures we admit that females on believing may be baptized. If Scripture teaches that baptism in the present dispensation occupies the place of circumcision in the Abrahamic covenant, we are bound to deviate from the law of circumcision only so far as Now Testament precepts and precedents give warrant. While John's baptism and Christian baptism are acknowledged to be in principle the same, must it be demanded that both be accordant with the now abolished Judaism, with " the principles of Mosaic law?" This reasoning might legitimately lead to further queries, as. What right had God when " Judaism was not then abolished," when ''the principles of Mosaic law flourished with unabated vigour" (p. 161), to adopt any new ceremonial? Instead of dictating to the Almighty how much of Judaism must remain when Judaism is acknowledged to be abolished, it is better to ascertain from New Testament precepts and precedents what is the Divine will relative to baptism. It would seem that the baptism of John, and con- sequently Christian baptism, cannot be conceived to be infant without " the perfectly gratuitous assumption" of being Mosaic. Dr. H., in opposing the sentiments of Dr. Pusey and Mr. Faber, admits that many of the fathers represent circumcision " as the type of baptism, or the emblem of the true circumcision in Christ" (pp. 140, 141). If the true circumcision is not being a new creature, and thus distinct from Christian baptism, I am greatly mistaken. Not, it is said, '' that circumcision v/as ever in the first ages, or in any age, considered a channel of regeneration, a means of grace to the Jewish church" (p. 140). "Indeed the difficulties of maintaining that circumcision was a medium of communicating grace, are so obvious and perplexing, implying that the grace was communicated to the Moabites, Ammonites, Ishmaelites, and all the numerous tribes descended from Keturah, to every predatory Arab, every wild man of the desert, and that it was a privilege in Israel imparted only to the males, that we do not wonder tho Anglo- Catholic advocates of baptismal regeneration have discreetly surrendered this most dangerous outvrork" (p. 139). We accept a portion of what we now quote, as a reply to himself on John's distinguishing of " parents from children," as well as a reply to Dr. Wardlaw. In objection to tho sentiments of Dr. Wardlaw and those who think with him, Dr. H. says : " After some anxious consideration, it appears to mo that the argument in favour of the transmission of the sign of tho A.brahaniic covenant through the hereditary line of succession in tho posterity of Abraham, fails in almost evei-y par- ticular. Inilependcntly of the fooblencss of its foundation, tho administration of baptism only to beUeviiig adults, the general opinioH that baptism is substituted fov COVENANT OF CIRCUMCISION. 203 circumcision, as a kind of hereditary seal of tlie covenant of grace, appears to he ill sustained by scriptural evidence, and to be exposed to some very per.ous, if not absolutely fatal, objections. The argument is, I think, stated more clearly and dis- tinctly by Dr. Wardlaw, than by any other writer with whom I am acquainted. Ho proposes it thiis : ' Before the coming of Christ, the covenant of grace had been revealed, and under that covenant there existed a divinely-instituted connexion between children and their parents ; the sign and seal of the blessings of the covenant 'were, by Divine appointment, administered to children ; and there can be produced no sati^tfactory evidence of this connexion having been done away.' I am sorry that there is much in this statement of my revered friend, and still more in his ilhistration of it, with which I cannot bring either the facts or the reasoning of Scripture to coincide." — Vol. xv, pp. 34, 35. After referring to the baptism of believers' children, advocated by our Caledonian brother, ho says, "In all arguments, however, which assume any distinction of privileges among children on account of the faith of their parents, we must disclaim all participation" (p. 36). He admits that "God preached before the gospel unto Abraham, saying, In thee shall all the nations be blessed" (p. 36). In this is the general promise that all nations shall be blessed, and the specific promise, that they shall be blessed in Abraham. " The general promise was the go:-pel previously declared from the fall, the gospel preached before to our first parents, the gospel of Abel, and of Enoch, and of Noah, who before Abraham was, became ' heirs of the righteousness of faith' " (pp. 38, 37). He says, "Agreeing with Dr. Wardlaw in the commencement of his statement, ' before the coming of Christ the covenant of grace had been revealed,' I am compelled to hesitate, and the longer I hesitate the more I demur, on its conclusion, ' and under that covenant there existed a divinely-instituted connexion between children and their parents, according to which the sign and seal of the blessings of the covenant were, by Divine appointment, administered to children ; and there can be produced no satisfactory evidence of its having been done away.' No one is bound to produce ' satisfactory evidence of its having been done away,' until some one produces satisfactory evidence of its having ever existed. The respected writer, indeed, says, ' Under that covenant there existed a divinely-instituted con- nexion between children and their parents ;' but of this connexion, which appears to me to be the hinge of the whole argument, he offers, so far as I can find, no satisfac- tory evidence, nor even any evidence at all" (pp. 38, 39). The sign of the Abrahamic covenant was given to every child, as is maintained by Dr. H., "not on account of his immediate connexion with his parents, but of his remote connexion with the head of the covenant. The covenant was made primarily and directly with Abraham, secondarily and indirectly with all his connexions of every kind, and was to continue through all generations until its accomplishment by the blessing of Abraham coming upon the Gentiles through Christ Jesus" (p. 39). Accord- ing to the terms of the covenant, says Dr. H., " the children of Esau as well as the children of Jacob, received the sign of circumcision, the seal of the righteousness of the faith of their common ancestor. Hanoch, and Phallu, and Hezron, and Carmi, received the sign of the covenant, not as the sons of Reuben, but as the descendants, although in the fourth generation, of him wliom God had so greatly honoured as to engage in covenant with him and with his posterity for his sake. Ahaziah was cir- cumcised, not because he was the son of the wicked Ahab, or the more wicked Jezebel, but because he was of the covenanted lineage of the faithful Abraham. The privilege, then, is resolved into the connexion between Abraham and his posterity, and no other seems to be recognized in the Abrahamic covenant— of no other can I find the slightest trace in all the reasoning upon the analogy of signs and seals in the ancient and the Christian dispensation. A father might by unbelief cut himself off from the people, incur the forfeiture of his pri^dlege, but he could not, by that act, prevent his child from claiming restoration, as a son of Abraham ; but if the forfeiture was not heredit- ary, neither ivas the privilege" (pp. 39, 40). Tlie inference on identity of covenants ought therefore to be "that the posterity of a believer throughout all generations ought to be baptized" (p. 41). Not only does the Abrahamic covenant, if it apply at all, apply to children, but to children's children, " through an infinite series" (p. 41) ; and as the Abrahamic covenant extended to " all persons connected with Abraham," born in his house or bought of any stranger, so the identity of the Christian covenant requu'BS that it embrace to the world's end not only a believer personally, but his whole household and his posterity, and at least those of the male sex by a sign. In opposition to these inferences and their assumed foundation, by which the children of believers are so gloriously distinguished from others. Dr. H. worthily says : " I have, and I ought to confess it candidly, some serious objections to the acknowledgment of baptism as the substitute for circumcision" (p. 46), 204 SUBJECTS OF BAPTISM. M. ToWGOOD, witli the eulogium of eleven eminent ministers, puts it down as "an incontestable fact that the infants of believers were, in former dispensations or ages of the church, taken together with their parents into covenant with God, and had by His express command a sacrament or rite given them" COn Bap., p. 18) ; and therefore these ought now to be baptized. Circumcision, a rite for the children of believing parents, yet commanded to be administered by Abraham on every male of his house, and on every future male descendant, whether the jDarent were pious as Isaac or ungodly as Ahab. I believe not in the existence of what Mr. T. deemed " an incon-* testable fact," nor in the continuance of that, the continuance of which, with a change of the rite, Mr. T. regards as demonstrable and undeniable. I am as far from believing with him that " the covenant which God made with Abraham and with his seed" (p. 21) " is the veiy same which we are now under." When the apostle incon- testably teaches that " we believing Gentiles" (p. 23) are Abraham's seed, he teaches not that infants are a part of " believing Gentiles." Dr. S. Addington, having quoted Gen. xvii, 11, says, " This covenant we have before proved was nothing less than the first edition of the covenant of grace that is published more fully in the New Testament" (On Bcqo., p. 103). I believe it to be not the first edition of this covenant, nor do I believe the covenant of circumcision to be the covenant of grace. And while I would not disparage Moses, or any Old Testament rite, I believe not with Dr. A. (p. 103), that " many of the institutions of the former were typical of the latter." It is unworthy of Dr. A. to say that if infants " were formerly fit to be enrolled among the subjects of Christ by circumcision, why not by baptizing now" (p. 129) ? And, " Let an instance be produced in which the apostles refused to baptize the child of a Christian." So far as precept and precedent on bap- tism go, it is ordained alike for all ; i.e., the same thing in every one is the title to its reception. It devolves on our opponents to prove the baptism of a believer's infant. Nor were infants ever " enrolled among the subjects of Christ by circumcision." I say not that God has never entered into covenant with infants, or with such living creatures as fowls and cattle ; nor do I deny that gifts are made, and by rolls of written and signed parchment ensured to infants ; but I have not yet heard of infants (using this word in its ordinary meaning) signing and sealing these deeds of con- veyance. W. J. Shrewsbury (Wesleyan) sees "all" the Jewish children to have been " cnildren of the covenant by virtue of the sign and seal of circumcision in their flesh ;" that children now are not " shut out of God's covenant ;" that Peter's words, "The promise is unto you and to your children" (referring to remission of sins and the gift of the Holy Ghost on condition of repenting and being baptized iipon the name of Jesus Christ) embrace " all " the children in the families of believers, " every soul in their families, as well the suckling as the child of sufficient age to discern between good and evil ;" that with the believing parent " the promise" entitles these "to be received by that initiatory ordinance which Christ hath ordained as ' the sign and seal' of that promise, into the visible church of the only true and living God" (Inf. Bap., pp. 129-133). — Adopting Mr. S.'s figment of a previous and continued church of God, and his perversion of " the promise" by Peter, what would soon distinguish the church from the world ? Dr. Owen, in his tract on Infant Baptism, says Dr. Halley, " while he defends generally the views of ray respected friend, appends an argument which he thus expresses : — ' They that have the thing signified liave a right unto the sign of it, or those who are partakers of the grace of baptism have a right to the administration of it.' " He also says : " All children in infancy are reckoned unto the covenant of their parents, by virtue of the law of their creation. It is, therefore, contrary to the justice of God and the law of the creation of human kind, wherein many die before they can discern between their right hand and their left, to deal with infants any otlierwiso but in and according to tho covenant of their parents ; and that He doth so, see Eom. v, 14" (Cong. Lee. vol. xv, pp. 46, 47). Dr. Owen does not say that the children of the patriarchs, rising up to maturity, would be siibject to those laws to which their parents were subject, and would be dealt with by the Divine Being according to their faith and obedience or unbelief and disobedience, as would their parents, and that God in this equity and sameness deals with children and their parents under the Christian dispensation : he says much more. On which Dr. Halley remarks : " If it is meant that the children of unbelievers are with their parents, and for their parents' unbelief, excluded from the covenant of grace, and dying in infancy perish inevitably, while the infants of believers are saved, this, I am sure, is nowhere asserted in Scripture, whatever may bo ' tho law of the creation of human kind ;' on which difficult STibject, without tho express testimony of inspiration, I do not feel competent to reason. Pr. Owen's distinction, however, is clear, and consistent with liis whole argument, COVENANT OF CIRCUMCISION. 205 He baptized the infant children of believers, because they are in their parents* covenant of grace ; he did not baptize the children of unbelievers, because they, like their parents, are not in the covenant of grace. To these conclusions his view of the Abrahamic covenant logically conducted him ; and Dr. Owen was not the man to hesitate about a conclusion, however startling, to which he was brought from hia premises by a diie course of logic, however circuitous. But is it the doctrine of the New Testament that there is any such distinction in the spiritual state and condition of mfants ? The passage to which Dr. Owen appeals asserts the death of infants on account of the transgression of Adam, who was the representative of the race in the first covenant. To this we add, in the language of the succeeding verse, ' But not as the offence so also is the free gift ; for if through the offence of one many be dead, much more the grace of God, and the gift by grace, which is by one man, Jesus Christ, hath abounded unto many' " (p. 47). A. M'Lean, a Baptist, has said, " The peculiar connexion between a parent and his child is entirely natural and carnal. If they are Christ's, they are in that respect both equally c/iikZren; and in relation to one another, in this connection, they are not parent and child, but brethren ; in which respect they are as much related to all the household of God as to one another. This connection has nothing to do with the fleshly relation, but is supernatural ; nor is it peculiar to parent and child, but is founded on that common union by which every member of Christ's body is connected with Him as the Head" (Worl. 20, 2\). The reader may inquire. In what part of God's oracles are the hypotheses of Mr. B. contained? If wo endorse Mr. B.'s opinions on the sonship of the children of believers, can we deny hereditary grace ? Can we believe in the cer- tainty of a Christian's perseverance ? None more clearly or more strcnuousl,y than some of our Paxlobaptist brethren, maintain that "that which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that ON THE HEREDITAEY EIGHT. 239 wliicli is bom of the Spirit is Spirit ;" .and, notwithstanding all that they affirm respecting the children of believers, maintain that the sons of God are "born not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God." They nevertheless make great "distinctions on account of birth and blood," in regard to salvation enjoyed, "facilities for salvation" either certainly possessed, or which the believing parent has the privilege and obligation of conferring by baptism. Dr. A. Barnes, ■who in glowing terms can speak of the benefits of infant baptism and privileges belonging to the infants of believers, on Gal. iii, 26-28, says, " that there is neither ' bond nor free' among those who are saved ;" yea, says he, " that they are on a level in regard to salvation we may remark, fui'ther (1), that it is peciiliar to Christianity. All other systems of religion and philosophy make different ranks, and endeavour to promote a distinction of caste among men. They teach that certain men are the favourites of heaven on account of their birth or rank in life, or that tlioy have peculiar facilities for salvation. Thus, in India, the Brahmin is regarded as by his birth a favourite of hea^sen, and all others are supposed to be of a degraded rank. The great effort of men in their systems of religion and philosophy has been to shew that there are favoured ranks and classes, and to make permanent distinctions on account of birth and blood." Is not, therefore, the baptizing of the children of believers heathenish ? Is there no " distinction on account of bii-th and blood" in the advocacy of baptism for the children that have a believing parent ? Is not the great foundation, the grand and ever-recuxringargiiment for infant baptism, " the connexion of children with their parents ?" " If it be necessary," says the great Jonathan Edwards, " that adult persons should make a profession of godliness, iu order to their own admission to haj)Hsm, then, undoubtedly, it is necessary in order to their children being baptized on their account. For parents cannot convey to their children a right to this sacrament by virtue of any qualifications lower than those requisite in order to their own right : children being admitted to baptism only as being, as it were, parts and members of their parents." Dr. Hallet's idea of a Divine commission to baptize everybody, which dis- tinguishes him from most of his brethren, dispenses not only with all conditions of birth and blood, but with all conditions of character. .Accepting this hypothesis, a child of the devil, known to be such, is as proper a subject of baptism as one giving the brightest evidence of having passed from death unto bfe. Baptism is a sign of grace that may now or hereafter or never be possessed. It is a sign of truth which it is necessary for the baptizer to have embraced, but which in order to baptism is necessary to none else. We except him and those who think with him from the con- demned distinction on account of flesh and blood, and desire that they may soon see the profane and unscriptui-al character of that indiscrimiuate baptism which they now recommend. It is to me marvellous how those who with unflinching confidence believe and maintain that no Christian will ever fall away, that Christ's blood and Christ's grace would be dishonoured, should one for whom Christ has died, and who by His grace has been made meet for heaven, subsequently die in sin and be doomed to everlasting punishment, and also believe that the children of believers, or that all children, are undoubtedly holy, undoubtedly of the kingdom of heaven, and yet that those of them who rise up and live and die in sin, as some of these assuredly do, are certainly and eternally damned. Those who embrace this sentiment on perseverance, and on little children or the children of believers being in the covenant of grace, cannot consistently believe in the damnation of any child of a believer, and if Christ's death go backwards as well as forwards, unless it had a different design, and more limited efi"ect on those who lived before the event from what it had on those who lived 240 SUBJECTS OF BAPTISM. subsequently, the children of believers from the beginning have been in no danger or possibility of damnation, and to the end of time, whatever their character having risen to maturity, must undoubtedly be saved. Could it but be proved that our first parents repented and were restored to the Divine favour previous to the birth of Cain, their first-born, or that one of them had then become a new creature, or if this happy event transpired previous to any child's having come to accountability, we might, with the help of the Abrahamic covenant, adopting the reasoning of certain Piedobaptists, legitimately conclude that all the posterity of Adam, unless, unhappily, before Eve's final child-bearing, both she and Adam became unbelievers, are perfectly safe from the damnation of hell. Nor are inferences in favour of the certain salvation of all, or of all descending, however remotely, from a believing parent, or of all the children of a believer, more imbecile, base- less, contemptible, and contradictory to the teaching of Holy Writ, than are those which make baptism saving if the child dies, and which consigns to hell or to God's uncovenanted mercies those who die unbaptized. Although a distinction as to spiritual condition and right to a Divine ordinance between one child and another on the ground of piety or morality in the parentage is undoubtedly hereditary, Dr. Doddridge, in Lectures on Preaching, exhorts students not to baptize the childi'en of the outwardly profane, but not to refuse the children of those who make a credible pro- fession of religion. Also, many of our opponents are accustomed (with us) to regard and acknowledge that the Christian dispensation is spiritual, not worldly, is personal in its application, not sponsorial or relative, and that by individual conquests are ftimilies and nations to come under its sway and enjoy its blessings. But the consistency of this with much that I read, I cannot perceive. The family and hereditary character of bap- tism appears to me to be explicitly and sternly maintained by a considerable and respectable number of Paedobaptists. Mr. Gamble says, •' The Jews were accustomed to a dispensation under which the children of God's people were considered and treated as belonging to their sacred community, and as entitled to inherit its blessings" (Scr. Bap., p. 135). — I believe that children, both of the pious and the ungodly, will inherit all to which they are divinely entitled; but I do not conceive that Eli, hearing of the death of his sons, felt assured they were gone to heaven, or that David had such an assurance respecting Absalom when he so pathetically wished he had died in his stead. Nor do I conclude that Mr. G. so thinks. Mr. Baxter approves of faith being " supposed to be in the parent for himself and his seed, because the condition or qualification of the infant is but this, that he be the seed of a believer." — Dispu., p. 202. Dr. Wilson, the Presbyterian professor, in his work on Infant Baptism, has a chapter on " Infants included in the Abrahamic covenant." And speaking "of the existence of the ancient church," he says, " It is upon the constitution and member- ship of that church, under the immediate superintendence of the Author of the covenant, that the argument for infant baptism is entirely founded" (p. 390). I quite believe that it is not to be met with in any part of the commission of our Saviour, and that it has no countenance from the practice, precepts, or any teaching of His inspired dis- ciples. If it " is entirely founded." as Dr. W. maintains, on the Abrahamic covenant or a supposed ancient church, I should presume that baptism is confined to males, and ought to be administered on the eighth day. Dr. W. says that " the rite of circumcision as the sign of the Abrahamic covenant sustained an intimate relation to the spiritual blessings which wore accessible within the pale of the ancient church" (p. 392) ; but ho dooa not say that the rite of circumcision was by Divine appointment ON THE HEEEDITAET RIGHT. 241 administered to males, old and young, godly or ungodly. He says that "by the same covenant Abraham and his descendants acquired aright to Canaan as their inheritance, and an interest in Jehovah as their God, both privileges being ratified by the common seal of circumcision" (p. 392) ; which assertion might lead to the inquiry. Had all Abraham's circumcised servants, and all his posterity, or even those who through the line of Isaac and Jacob possessed the land of Canaan, "an interest in Jehovah as their God," and in the same sense ? Had the wicked as well as the righteous ? On the ungodly as having a valid right to circumcision. Dr. W. thus seeks shelter : " The Jews had a valid title to the ordinance as Jews, but as unbelievers they had none" (p. 394). We maintain not that the unhelief oi any constituted their right to circum- cision, but that male Jews and their male servants had a Divine right to circumcision, irrespective of moral character, and, consequently, if in a state of glaring ungodliness. Dr. W. speaks of circumcision and baptism as " the appointed symbol of inward purity." The appointment of circumcision without regard to the moral character of its recipient proves the fallacy of this idea, if it is meant that when circumcised inward purity was supposed to be possessed. Nor do I know that " the party undergoing circumcision was thereby brought under a solemn engagement to live in the fear and service of God." — p. 399. I might remark in approval of some things and disapproval of more, advanced by Dr. W. on "the earthly tie" (p. 405); on "the conviction that mere ' flesh and blood' did not constitute a valid title to the blessings of the Abrahamic or Mosaic covenant" (pp. 406, 407) ; on " the peculiar relation between the people of God and their infant children" (p. 412) ; on circumcision as "the sign and seal of the covenant" (p. 412), "the initiatory ordinance of the ancient church" (p. 413), a church consisting of parents and children, the godly and ungodly, the worshippers of Jehovah or of idols ; on the right of the circumcised ungodly to the Passover, which Dr. W. designates " a legal title" (p. 414), as if wo might speak of actions under the Divine law, as under some human laws, that is, as legally right but morally wrong ; on circumcision as "the seal of the covenant," and as introducing "its subjects into a divinely-organized religious community" (p. 421) ; and on many other hypotheses, some of which have already received such notice as awaits some of the rest. Dr. W., however, who firmly opposes the idea that the blessings of the New Cove- nant are in any part of Divine revelation promised on the ground of relative piety, sees in the New Testament as clearly as in the Old an hereditary title to a Christian ordinance which the children of believers enjoy ! The words of Peter, when he had promised the remission of sins and the gift of the Holy Ghost to those who should repent and be baptized upon the name of Jesus Christ — the words of Peter, " The promise is unto you and to your children," says Dr. W., " identify the gospel with the Abrahamic covenant. They echo the great federal promise, ' I will be a God unto thee and to thy seed' " (p. 505). In this gracious utterance of the apostle Peter, he sees the everlasting " connexion between parents and children," instead of seeing that the gospel of God's grace includes for children the same blessings as for parents, on the same conditions ; the same blessings, on the same conditions, for persons near and distant, for succeeding genoi-ations to the end of time, for all whom God by the pro- clamation of the glad tidings shall call. Thus it is God's pleasure to bless men to the utmost bounds of the earth, and to the latest generations of the world. On this bog and basis for infant baptism, "the connexion between parents and children," I should like to know whether, on a parent becoming pious at forty years of age, and having then ten childi-en, all the children are then with him adopted into the Divine family ? or whether only the infants and younger children ? or whether only the infants ? If the younger children are included, unto what age or uilderstanding it extends ? Whether the infants and younger children were, at the time of a parent's conversion, delivered from the power of Satan unto God, or whether these, in anticipation of the event which God had foreseen, had been born in the covenant, so as never to have been children of wrath and heirs of hell ? and whether the covenant relation to God now certainly enjoyed through connexion with a believing parent continues through life, ceases on arri-ving at a certain age or understanding, or becomes void through immorality s 242 SUBJECTS OP BAPTISM. and impiety, or whether the infant, once associated with its believing parent in New Covenant blessings, can ever perish ? Also, does parental profession of religion suffice, or is possession requisite for the bestowment of these inestimable blessings on the children ? And is there the same scriptural guarantee for those born before, as for those born after the parent's profession or possession of religion ? And if the parent makes shipwreck of faith (if this be possible) before the child comes to years of discretion, is the child on this occurrence immediately transferred from membership in the church and the possession of New Covenant blessings, to the kingdom of Satan here, and to God's uncovenanted mercies or cer- tain wrath hereafter ? If the maintained " connexion between parents and children" is possessed by the children of a believer, is there a similar connexion between the ungodly and their children ? Are the children of these the heirs of hell when infants ? Are they throughout life doomed to perdition because of their connexion with unbelieving parents ? Or is the connexion broken on arriving at a certain age ? Or does the conversion of a parent give to adult children the potentiality, and to younger children the certainty, of salvation ? Or if the children of the ungodly ever come into a savable condition, when and by what means is this effected ? And where in God's book is the revelation sanctioning the required hypotheses of Psedobaptists ? On the impossibility of finally falling from real piety, I express no opinion in this volume. I believe tlaat parents and such of then' children as ai'e come to understanding stand in the same relation of responsibility to God, and are treated by their Divine Creator in the same way, the accountability being in accordance with what each possesses, all religion being personal ; and that from infants and all to whom nothing is given, nothing is required ; and that all infants and unaccountable children are in the same relation to God, neither the redemption of little children's souls having been committed to parents, nor their damnation to them or to the devil. My feelings are those of contempt and disgust towards all pretensions of federal holiness in children who have a parent that makes a credible profession of faith in Christ, of a right to the seal of the covenant, the symbol of regeneration and the washing away of sins, enjoyed by these. If infants and little children become federally holy, and possessors of New Covenant blessings through possessing a believing parent, it must be that all the infants and little children of unbeUeving parents are continually exposed to the damnation of hell, unless a purgatory or middle place of uncovenanted mercies, of which God's word gives no revelation, is pre- pared for these. The holiness that is connected with sins forgiven and souls renewed, is in no part of Divine revelation covenanted to the children who have a believing parent. If the intelligence of our opponents were not indisputable, we should believe that they had forgotten the meaning of the word federal when we are reading what they have written on the federal holiness of a believing parent's children. Dr. Wilson asserts respecting childi'cn that have a believing parent, that, " possessed of federal holiness, their claim to the initiatory rite of the New Covenant we hold to be ascertained and established" (p. 517). Aided by Billroth, he ON THE HEEEDITAET EIGHT. 243 will demand, in spite of the apostle Paul, for the children what he refuses to the unbeheving partner. Indeed, in his judgment, it would require the blotting out of Scripture " respecting Divine covenants and economies, and federal relationship to church privileges," before he could "venture upon the step of pronouncing these hohj childi-en, and generally the children of church members, inadmissible to the ordinance of Christian baptism" (p. 617) ! And this, while Scripture says not a syllable about the federal relation of any children, as children, to church membership, or the admissibility of any children of church members, as such, to the ordinance of Christian baptism ! There is one Lord, one faith, and one baptism. There is one way of salvation, there is one change, one character, giving to every one, parent or child, a qualification for Christian ordinances. " Neither give heed to fables and endless genealogies, which minister questions rather than godly edifying." All the pleading for baptism from the supposed federal holiness of certain children is the plea of a filial and hereditary title. G. EwiNG goes further than Dr. Wilson. He declares : " Unless we admit that infants, nay, every relation, both of affinity and descent, which can be considered as his property, are interested in the privileges of a believer's house, I see not a satisfac- tory meaning of 1 Cor. vii, 12-14." " The truth is," says he, " infants and adults are precisely on a footing in regard to the regenerating work of the Holy Spirit, of which baptism is the figure, and in the orii;inal propagation of the gospel, when the head of a family believed, ' salvation is come to his house,' and, consequently, the luliolc house may be, nay, ought to be, baptized along with him (with no exception because some of them may be yoiing, but) except they have g^rown so old, and so rchellious against both their Father in heaven, and their parents on earth, as to refuse the ordinance, and to contradict and blaspheme the truth which it accompanies." * Dr. Halley, who teaches that the commission to baptize is as extensive as the commission to disciple, can on this say, " Mr. Ewing here distinctly advocates a more extensive baptism than I am prepared to defend," because, of adults, says Dr. H., " I could baptize only such as make a personal application." Although I believe in Dr. Halley's readiness to disciple more adults than may make a personal application, I wonder not that he is shocked by that faith which constitutes at once a personal and inestimable blessing, and sponsorially or vicariously confers the same on so many others, and thus entitles them to Christian ordinances whether in a state of piety or ungodliness. But if descent from Abraham was an insufficient qualification for John's baptism, what is the earthly descent that can qualify for Christian baptism ? Mr. Thokn, who incorrectly says, " It is singular, and even amusing, that our opponents are frequently turning back to Moses, and inquiring of the Eabbis," affirms that " whoever fails to refer to the baptism of Moses, the ' divers baptisms' under the law, and the baptism of proselytes to Judaism," " can never properly understand the question of baptism, as spoken of in the New Testament" (On Inf. Bap., -p. 599). Ho believes that infants and children "entered the former religious economy by an act of purification divinely called baptism" (p. 599) ; (he does not say by circumcision) and that it rests with his opponents to evince their present excommiinication ; yea, that " to prove that men were received into the Christian church or congregation, on repentance, confession of faith, and the like, even wore it universally true, would in no degree affect the question of infants." He elsewhere maintains "that what was done paternally, was done domestically ; that what the head did was done by the members and bound them all ;" that " an identity was understood to exist between the root and the branches of the household tree ;" and that religious character and condi- tion arc so certainly hereditary, that "we should never designate the chUdi-en of a Christian parent, in their religious aspect, little Mahometans, Jews, or Heathens, but little Christians. The offspring of a Briton, in their national aspect, are British ; of a Frenchman, French; and of a Spaniard, Spanish" (pp. 431, 432). — What is meant by this but that as the child of a Spaniard or Frenchman is hereditarily a Spaniard or Frenchman, so the child of a Christian is hereditarily a Christian ! * See Ewing's Essay, pp. 143, 146; and Dr. Halley's Beply to Stovel, &c., p. 81. 244 SUBJECTS OF BAPTISM. Dr. MacALLA teaclies that Abraham and his seed were divinely constituted a true, visible church of God ; that the Jewish society before Christ, and the Christian society after Christ are one and the same church in different dispensations ; and that Jewish circumcision before Christ and Christian baptism after Christ, are one and the same Bcal, though in different forms. But if the Christian society after Christ resembles the seed of Abraham before Christ, wo are born into the church of Christ, and to baptism we have, at least males have, an hereditary title, if any title at all. Moreover, if by Abraham's seed is meant his spiritual seed, the church of Christ can consist only of believers, and the ordinances of the church are restricted to believers ; and if by Abraham's seed we understand his natural seed, the New Testament church, instead of being divinely modelled after this pattern, would rather be demolished by such a transformation. I admit failings in the members of Christian churches, and, in some, grievous failings ; but the assembly in the wilderness, the subsequent nation of Israel generally, formed, as any society admitting membership by natural birth, and retaining the same after the Jewish fashion, would form a contrast to " saints," and " faithful brethren," and those " begotten again to alively hope." Of the new kingdom predicted by Daniel, announced by the Baptist as approaching, declared to be distinct from "the law and the prophets," into which men pressed not by natural birth, spoken of as a kingdom in which the apostles would reign on thrones of judgment, as not of this world, as requiring that even Jews be born of water and of the Spirit ia order to enter it, every inspired description is a contrast to the supposed church embracing the natural seed of Abraham in the line of Isaac and Jacob, or in any other line. " The system of comparison which some have instituted" between the nation of Israel, a supposed Old Testament church, and New Testament churches of Christ, "and the train of analogical reasoning they have pursued" as founded on supposed sameness, " have tended to introduce a vast deal of darkness and confusion into the miada of men respecting the nature of Christ's kingdom." — Gibbs' Def., pp. 150, 151. Every Peedobaptist argument is not for an hereditary right to baptism. Those who baptize infants on their supposed right from Christ's commission, and those who baptize infants because through the atoning death of Christ they are believed to be of the kingdom of heaven before in a state of accountability they have committed actual Bin, have a foundation for baptism distinct from that of those who baptize children on the ground of God's covenants with Abraham. Every plea for baptism from the supposed connexion between parents and children, implies an hereditary right to the ordinance, whether the author maintains that baptism introduces into the church, signs and seals the blessings of membenhip enjoyed from birth, registers the child as one intended to be taught, or as with Dr. Williams, that it introduces to memhersMp already enjoyed. Dr. BusHNELL, more distinctly than most, recognizes and defends hereditary right to baptism. On what parental influence ia and ought to be, he says much that ia truthful and important. But the connexion of children with parents he carries to an absurd and monstrous extent, without adducing a single fact that iustijB.es the baptiz- ing of infants. We deny not that the faculties of children ought to be Christianized as they develope themselves, that the faults of the family are often destructive of incipient piety, and that the varied virtues and shining traits of Christians should in the family discountenance all sin, and constitute a family atmosphere favourable to the existence and growth of vital godliness from the very dawn of intelligence and accountability. But we believe not that baptism is either necessary, or necessarily helpful, to the realization of a parent's holiest and most earnest desires. We deny that it can be a duty without a Divine warrant ; and we maintain that it would be sinful knowingly to perform upon the child a ceremony divinely enjoiued on him as the intelligent and voluntary act of his faith and love. In the hereditary transmission of moral and spiritual goodness we do not believe. But Dr. B. teaches that "until the child comes to his will we must regard him stiUas held within the matrix of the parental life" (Chris. Nur., p. 97). If he had taught that parents have, under God, the entire control over little children, moral responsibility attaching to none during the first years of existence, we could have assented. He says that the covenant with Abraham, " was a family covenant, in which God engaged to be the God of the seed as of the father. And the seal of the covenant was a seal of faith, applied to the whole house, as if continuity of faith were somehow to be, or somehow might be maintained, in a line that is parallel with a continuity of sin" (p. 106). The " seal of faith" belongs to infants, and to adults in the family if these are even unbelieving ! As if to indicate the real or possible continuity of faith ! He saya that "the old rite of proselyte baptism, which made families receiving it Jewish citizens and children of Abraham, was applied over directly to the Christian uses" (p. 107). This assertion is without a vestige of authority. Inspired truth, oxir only ON THE HEREDITARY EIGHT. 246 law, says not a word about proselyte baptism. The adding of Eabbinical tradition to God's word is as certainly reprehensible as the popish adding of ecclesiastical tradition. Dr. B. teaches that " the old Jewish law, that one Jewish parent made a Jewish child, is brought into the church" (p. 107). If this is the case, the children of those who have a believing i^arent are born members of the church. Yet thus Dr, B. supposes that he brings about a " solution of the Christian church and of baptism as related to membership" (p. 108) among those belonging to a kingdom and church which is in the world, but is " not of the world." Yea, he says, " The true conceptionis, that baptism is applied to the child on the ground of its organic unity with the parents ; imparting and pledging a grace to sanctify that unity, and make it good in the field of religion." The child " is taken to be regenerate, not historically speaking but presumptively on the ground of his known connexion with the parent character, and the Divine or church life, which is the life of that character" (p. 110). The organic unity of children with their parents imparts and pledges grace ! The child through " connexion with the parent character" has regeneration ! This regeneration is not a matter of fact, but is presiimptive from this "known connexion!" The known connexion of the child "with the parent character" gives to the child, at least presumptively, the parental "Divine or chiirch life!" What next ? It is next added as explanatory , hut which is really another hypothesis, as unfounded as all the preceding : " Perhaps I shall be understood more easily if I say that the child is 2ootentially regenerate, being regarded as existing in connection with powers and causes that contain the fact, before time and separate from time" (p. 110). Now the child by connexion with a believing parent is potentially regenerate ! No man is potentially regenerate but through the atoning death of the Lord Jesus, which secures the bestowment of the Divine Spirit. If in the sacrifice of Christ there is provision of salvation for the whole race of man, the whole world is potentially regenerate and saved. And if there is in all the power of being unbelieving, rebellious, and damned, the whole world, whether having believing or unbelieving parents is potentially disobedient and ruined. Not a believing parent, but the finished work of Christ, gives in every human being the potentiality of regen- eration and salvation. I know nothing of " God's plan by ties of organic unity " and parental training in the nurture of the Lord, permitting us on the " ground of anticipa- tion to apply the seal of our faith to them, as being incipiently in the quickening of our faith, even before they have intelligence to act it, and consciously to choose it ; BO accepting them to be members of the church, as being presumptively in the life of the church." I deny not an organic unity in every man, or every animal, having head, heart, lungs, liver, &c. ; and I deny not a union between Christ and His people BO that He lives in them ; but I deny a union between parents and children that would require, when the parent repents, prays, believes, becomes regenerated and united with the people of God, that the child not come to his will, being " hold within the matrix of the parental life," repents, prays, believes, becomes regenerate and a member of the church of Christ, through this connexion with the parent. Well may the doctor Bay, on what ho thinks should solve " the rather perplexing difBcultios of this difficult subject," that "one difficulty remains, namely, that so few can believe the doctrine" (p. 111). A solvent, but incapable of acceptance, a few cases excepted ! What an evidence that it is assuredly from God ! * W. J. Shrewsbury (Wesleyan) rejoices that the covenant with Abraham is a family covenant ; that Jesus is "the Saviour and Blesser of families;" that "the promises established in and with Him are family promises, and not belonging to the parents only;" that "the covenant promise cannot be dissociated from the sign and seal of the covenant ;" and that " Moses hath settled the same point beyond all contro- versy in the fifth commandment of the law. Honour thy father and thy mother, that," &c., the commandment supposing " that children to whom it is delivered are already members of that church in which it is published" (Inf. Bap., p. 137)! With such depth of wisdom, clearness and force of logic, do our opponents sustain the scriptural title of a whole family to baptism where there is a believing head ! We believe in God's ordination that children be trained up in the way in which they should go. We deny not that the children whom Paul in his epistle to the church at Ephesus com- manded to obey their parents, to honour their father and mother, were members of the church ; but that we have in this an ordination or a corroboration of family baptism through faith in the head and independent of family faith, we do not believe. That God wills that families, and that nations should be blessed as well as individuals, we do not doubt ; and the reception of nations to baptism and into the church of Christ through the faith of the head, we believe to be as explicitly taught in the New Testa- * See Appendix to Watson's Body of Divinity, edited by C. H, Spurgeoa. 246 SUBJECTS OP BAPTISM. ment as the baptism and reception into the church of Christ of families through the faith of the head. In thus believing, we are not disloyal, or lovers of asceticism and celibacy ; nor do we limit the benevolence of the Holy One of Israel. We wish that in every family and every nation, every member capable of believing with the heart on the Lord Jesus experienced this faith, and that every church — unless in any peculiar instance this could not be — consisted of " old men and old women," with " staff " in hand " for very age," and of "boys and girls," and of men and women of every varying age between these inbermodiate periods ; while the remarks of Mr. S. on family membership in the church of Christ, and the baptism of the whole family along with a believing head, instead of being " sound speech that cannot bo condemned," and which I intended further to quote and expose, I regard as exceedingly flimsy and entirely fallacious. Thus do our opponents advance hypotliesis after hypothesis, rejecting this fancy, appropriating that, and altering the other ; mistaking this fact, omitting that inference, and leaping to such a conclusion, adding to and taking from the word of God, not unfrequently holding hoth parts of a contradiction, in their endeavours to support infant baptism. They believe baptism to have " its federal character ;" they believe God's promise to the "seed" of Abraham " in their generations," to bo a promise to Abra- hamic infants ; they believe the promise of which Peter speaks to be a promise to infants, then in Jerusalem or then at any distance, to infants unto the end of time ; they believe, at least many of them, in the " federal holiness" of children having a believing parent, and in the " federal right" of children to this federal ordinance by which federal blessings are signed and sealed. That which is federal has relation to a covenant. If baptism is divinely federal, it belongs to a covenant of God vith man, to one which names and enjoins baptism ; and thus we are brought to the New Testa- ment, where, through Divine love, we read of the sacrificial death of Jesus, and that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, and that believing on Christ and being baptized are the duty of all mankind. If certainly there is a covenant of God with man in baptism, so certainly is this covenant to remit the sins of the believer in Christ, and give him the Holy Spirit, that he may live and die to God, and then reign with Him. And on the part of the baptized, the covenant is, 7iow helleving In Christ, henceforth by Divine grace to glorify Him in body and spirit. But when infant baptism is practised, although the heresy of hereditary piety be rejected, there is a tendency where the advantages to children of pious parents are the theme, of such mist or nonsense as the following from the Rev. W. Roberts : " Conditions that are highly favourable to the reception of the spiritual life by the child from God may be transmissible by generation" ( Addr. at Couff. Union J ; and a tendency to the abominable imputation that Baptists regard Pnedobaptists as "infected with the error that childi-en arc very dear to the Redeemer of the world, and ought to be very dear to His church." — Eng. Indep., May, 1868. Where it is believed according to the popish oi->us operaimn, that baptism makes a c!i;ciple of Christ, makes a child of God, there may also be a belief, in accordance with Dr. Hey, that infant baptism has " some foundation in the nature of man. Parents are anxious that their offspring should be secured from dangers, and put in a way to obtain advantages, as soon as possible. And the tame motives which impel parents to admit their children into the family of a master, in the way of apprenticeship, or into any Jiterary society for the purpose of education, impel them to make their children mem- ON THE HEEEDITARY RIGHT. 247 bers of Clirist, in order that they may be inheritors of the kingdom of heaven" (Lee. in Div., vol. ii, p. 608). Dean Milman, however, in opposition to this and to the hereditary right to baptism, says : "The admission of members in the Jewish synagogue, except in the case of proselytes of righteousness, was a matter of hereditary right : ci]-cumcision was a domestic, not a public ceremony. But baptism, or the initiation into the Cliristian community, was a solemn ceremonial, requiring previous examination and probation" (His. of Chris., vol. ii, p. 77). Christian baptism is an ordinance for intelligence and piety, not for the presumptive and possible believer at some future time, but for the present believer. To speak of infants as presumptively believers is absurd. M. Henry, on hereditary grace, says : " Grace doth not run in the blood, nor are saving benefits inseparably annexed to external church privileges ; though it is common for people thus to stretch the meaning of God's promise to bolster themselves up in a vain hope. The children of the flesh, as such, by virtue of their relationship to Abra- ham, are not, therefore, the children of God." — Com., on Rom. ix, G-13. Dr. E. Williams says, " Our author takes considerable pains to maintain a favourite point, which I shall pronounce a very precarious hypothesis. It is that of hereditary grace, if I may so express the notion, — that all the children of the godly are absolutely interested in all new covenant blessings. . . . But that interpreta- tion of the Abrahamic promise, Gen. xvii, 7, which Mr. M. and some others have adopted, and which considers the words in their literal, absolute, and undistinguished application, is replete with very absurd consequences. Jehovah, surely, was not the God of Abraham and of his unhelieving descendants in the same respects." " We have not the least evidence from the sacred oracles of any child among the thousands of Israel, who was entitled to the righteousness of faith in virtue of the parents' piety," By Christ's " incarnation and atonement all carnal connections were dissolved." — Notes on Mr. Maurice's Soc. Bel. See pp. 312-317. J. G. Manly. — " The nation, the church, and the famUy, which God has created separate, ought to be kept separate. The family ushers man into the world, and pro- vides for him in his immaturity, and prepares him for manhood ; and having accomplish- ed its important initiatory and preparatory task, it transfers him to the nation for the social secularities of maturity, and to the church for the social spiritualities of maturity. Man in his nonage or unripeness, is incapable of discriminating and separately regarding the moral and material, and is, therefore, placed in the family, which combines the two ; but in the maturity of his powers, it is quite otherwise ; and to attempt then to blend or bind, by artificial ligaments, the things that so greatly differ, is to induce confusion, frustration, and mischief." " Church, nation, and family, working separately, work harmoniously and efficiently." — Eccl., pp. 188, 189. J.Cotton. — " The church is a mystical body, whereof Christ is the Head; the members are saints called out of the world, and united together into one congregation by a holy covenant, to worship the Lord, and to edify one another in all His holy ordinances." — Trxie Cons., &c., p. 1. A. Hall. — " The church is a society of believing and holy persons, whom God hath called by the gospel, out of all mankind, to the fellowship of His Son Jesus Christ." — Gas. Ch., p. 15. Dr. C. Mathek. — " A chiirch, as the Greek name for it allows us to think, is to consist of a people called out from the ways of sin, by the powerful and effectual work of God upon their souls. Regeneration is the thing without which a title to the sacraments is not to be pretended." — In Booth's Paid. Ex., vol. ii, p. 52. Heideggee. — " The examples of all ages show that a gi-eat part of those who descend from godly persons are condemned and rejected of God." — Cor. Tlieol., loc. xiv, § 60. Venema. — " Celestial prerogatives cannot be transmitted from parents to children, nor can that idea be rendered consistent either with the economy of grace or the justice of God." " This the Scripture nowhere affirms, nor is it consistent with reason." — Diss. Sa., 1. iii, c. i, § 11. Abp. Leighton. — "Tliat it is the parents' faith gives the child a right to it [baptism], is neither clear from Scripture nor any sound reason." — Sel. Works, p. 548. Dr. Owen. — " Two privileges did God grant unto Abraham, upon his separation to a special interest in the old promise and covenant. First, that according to the flesh he should be the father of the Messiah, the promised seed. . . . Secondly, together with this he had also another privilege granted unto him, namely, that his faith, whereby he was personally interested in the covenant, should be the pattern of the faith of the church in all generations ; and that none should ever come to be a member of it, or a sharer in its blessing, but by the same faith that he had fixed on the Seed that was in the promise, to bo brought forth from him in the world. On the account 248 SUBJECTS OF BAPTISM. of this privilege he became the father of all them that do believe. For they that are of faith, the same are the children of Abraliam" (Epis. to Heb., vol. i, pp. 55, 56). It is true that elsewhere Dr. Owen writes as inconsistently and contradictorily as others of the learned, if, indeed, wo may not say the more learning and the more floundering. He says, " They that have the thing signified have right unto the sign of it." " But the children of believers are all of them capable of the gi-ace signified in baptism, and some of them are certainly partakers of it, namely, such as die in their infancy (which is all than can bo said of professors) : therefore they may and ought to be baptized. For (1). — Infants are made for, and are capable of eternal glory or misery, and must fall, dying infants, into one of these estates for ever. (2). — All infants are born in a state of sin, wherein they arc spiritually dead and under the curse. (3). — Unless they are regenerated or born again, they must all perish inevitably, John iii, 3. Their regeneration is the grace whereof baptism is a sigm or token. Wherever this is, there baptism ought to be administered." " All children in their infancy are reckoned unto the covenant of their parents, by virtue of the law of their creation" (Works, vol. xvi, pp. 259, 260). On this it may be observed, if it be a possession of the grace signified in baptism that gives the right to baptism, more is demanded than being " capable of the grace." Further, how came Dr. O. to know that "the children of believers" were capable of this grace, but not other children ? Again, where do we learn that the children of believers, if they die in infancy, are partalcers of any grace in this life which we know not that the children of believers who die not in infancy, or indeed the children of any, do not then possess ? Moreover, if " all infants are born in a state of sin," " are spiritually dead and under the curse," can the children of believers be "reckoned unto the covenant of their parents ?" Are believers spiritually dead and under the curse ? And if " all children in their infancy are reckoned unto the cove- nant of their parents," are not piety and ungodliness, grace and the curse, salvation and damnation, hereditary and inevitable ? If this is " the law" of the creation of all infants, where is it recorded ? J. Locke. — " Nobody is born a member of any church ; otherwise the religion of parents would descend unto children by the same right of inheritance as their tem- poral estates, and every one would hold his faith by the same tenure he does his land ; than which nothing can be imagined more absurd." — Works, vol. vi, p. 13. Dr. E. DE Pressense. — " Christian baptism does not transmit itself by right of inheritance any more than faith." Mr. W. Bennet, as quoted by Mr. Booth, asks and answers : " What is a particular church of Christ ? It is a distinct society of saints and faithful brethren in Christ, with their infant offspring." Again : " What persons are proper to become members of a Christian chiirch ? Those who are called by the grace of God to the acknowledg- ment pi the truth which is after godliness, who make a credible profession of their faith in Christ, and are unfeignedly disposed to walk in all holy subjection to His authority," Further : " In what light are the children of church members to be con- sidered ? Such children are to be considered as externally holy, separated to the Lord, and subjects of His visible kingdom, with their parents, from their birth ; and they are to be acknowledged as such by baptism in their infancy." Among other things, Mr. Booth inquires why our Congregational brethren who regard such privileges as peculiar to the children of church members, baptize also the infants of others. Also hesays : " If the ' infant offspring of church members' be ' the subjects' of our Lord's ' visible kingdom,' from their birth, they must be so in virtue of carnal descent ; just as the children of Englishmen are born subjects of the British crown : and if so, they are born, they are hy nature Christians, and not children of wrath even as others." — Peed. Ex., vol. ii, pp. 53, 54. A. M'Lean (Baptist) says: "If, then, children are vm&^i/ saved on account of their connexion with their parents, they must also, in our estimation, be really saved on THAT ACCOUNT. This is fine doctrine, indeed ! And if it be not putting the parent in the place of Christ, it looks something like it. It can easily be conceived how chil- dren may obtain temporal deliverance in connexion with, and even on account of their parents, such as the salvation from the deluge, and redemption from Egypt ; but the gospel salvation comes by another connexion, and must be placed to another account." — Works, vol. vii. pp. 252, 253. Dr. S. Stennett (Baptist) teaches that the reasoning of Pajdobaptists in the advocacy of infant baptism, " has a natural tendency to beget in the minds both of parents and children a /a isc hope and an unwarranted dependevce. If parents are told that being themselves believers, their children are included with them in the Christian covenant, and stand entitled in virtue of such relation to the blessings of it ; and that by being baptized they are entered into the covenant, and claim is laid on tboir behalf to the promises of it— if , I say, they aro told this, and do implicitly bcliove ON NECESSITY OF PEOHIBITION. 249 it, who shall blame them for conchiding that their children are upon a different footing from other children, and have a fairer and better prospect of salvation than they ? Nay, fond parents who believe all this, had need of a great command of their passions, and a very liappy talent at distinguishing, to secure them from a full persuasion that their children who grow up, as well as those who die in their infancy, shall most cer- tainly be saved." " To which I must add, that it i^ far from being improbable, that children bred up in the notion that they are included with their parents in the cove- nant, and that something extraordinary was done for them in their infancy, should be tempted to presume upon the safety of their future state, to the neglect of a serious attention to personal religion," Also, says he, " If our author means that it is in the power of parents to initiate their infant children into the kingdom of Christ, that they may do this by baptizing them, and that the solemnities of infant baptism lay them under peculiar obligations to serve the Lord, he must give me leave to demand of him his authorities for these positions" fAns., pp. 171-173). Dr. S. admits the caution and efforts of many Pajdobaptists, to prevent the ruinous consequences to which the bap- tism of infants naturally tends. Wo are far from charging the conscious advocacy of its results on all who have adopted the practice. J. H. HiNTON (Baptist), on the statement of Dr. Bushnell, "that children are in a sense included in the faith of their parents, partakers with them in their covenant, and brought into a peculiar relation to God in virtue of it," inquires : " Which parent? the father ? or the mother ? or either ?" He then inquires :" Which children ? Some may have grown up, some may have died, and some may have lived and died in sin before the parent's belief. Does the parent's faith include these ? Again, does the parent's faith include those already born, or those only to be born ? Query 3. In what sense ? Not in the full sense of salvation by faith, as the Doctor's language admits ; and if there be any other sense in which faith may modify the condition of a human being, it surely requires to be defined and justified. Query 4. What is the case of persons who may (in Dr. B.'s language) have grown up from their infancy ' in love with all goodness,' and so never have exercised faith at all ?" " The benefit of infant baptism, according to Dr. B., really thins itself down to this, that by it God includes the infant age of the children of pious parents within the sphere of spiritual culture, and authorizes an expectation of His blessing on their endeavours. It is the most homoeopathic quantity, we think, to which the benefit of baptism has ever been reduced" (Bap. Mag., pp. 28, 29. 1859). — We believe that children areas much within the sphere of spiritual culture by their parents, and that there is as much authority to expect the Divine blessing on the holy and assiduous endeavours of parents to promote the early spiritual culture of their children, unbaptized as baptized. Many Psedobaptist extracts from eminent and living writers, opposing the idea of an hereditary communication of grace, or spiritual status, and bearing on the figment of an hereditary title to baptism, are recorded in other sections, and especially in the one on Church Membership. SECTION XII. ON INFANT BAPTISM AS CERTAINLY TO BE EXPECTED AND PKACTISED BY THE APOSTLES UNLESS PROHIBITED. Dr. Goodman. -The term institution "implies a setting up de novo, or the appointing that to become a duty which was not knowable, or at least not known to be so, before it became so appointed." — Pres. ag. Po., p. 7. Mr. Steelb.— " Sacraments depend merely upon their institution : hence doth their being result, and upon this their matter and signification do depend. The institution, with the element, makes the sacrament ; and so the only rule and balance for themmust needs be their institution." —Mor. Exer., Ser. xxii. C. Short.—" The advocates of infant baptism go back to Judaism, and are obliged to back up Christian rites with an exploded ceremonialism."— £ap. Mag., 1865. On the apostles as Jews, and consequently requiring a prohibition to the baptizing of infants were it the will of Christ that this ordinance should 250 SUBJECTS OF BAPTISM. be believers' baptism, I migbt repeat much of wliat has ah-eady been advanced on circumcision and the Abrahamic covenant. This is not my purpose. But an entire overlooking of the confident, repeated, and base- less assertions of our opponents on this idea, would be improper. I deny not the propriety of considering what the apostles were by birth, what had been their education, their previous and present circumstances, and, were it possible, all their prepossessions and thoughts, and from these drawing every legitimate coiToboration of the import of Christ's words in the revealed commission, and of apostolic sentiments and practice as recorded in the insphed documents. We maintain that it is not the province of hypothesis to overthrow facts, of things unrevealed to overturn things "known surely" from Divine and the clearest revelation. " The secret things belong unto the Lord our God ; but those things which are revealed, belong unto us and to our children for ever." "To the law and to the testimony : if they speak not according to this word, it is because there is no light in them." The ancient Jews made void God's commands by their own traditions. The Roman Catholic system has subsequently been founded on the Bible and tradition. Psedobaptists by what is not "written in the law," help to "make void the law" of Christ on baptism. We admit that the apostles were Jews, and are willing thoroughly to consider it, and never to forget it. We are willing to read and examine all that Moses wrote, and all that every other Old Testament saint, "moved by the Holy Ghost," has wi'itten ; but we deny the necessity of this for an acquaintance with God's will on Christian baptism. The necessity of an acquaintance with the Mishna and Gemara, with Maimonides or Dr. Light- foot, we despise, and in the strongest terms denounce. We can say with Dr. Halley that "although in determining a dispute about the meaning of words, one of the first and most important inquiries is. How would the parties to whom they were originally addressed be likely to understand them ? yet this commission is best illustrated by the subsequent conduct of the apostles" (Vol. xv, p. 70). If it is plain what was apostolic precept and practice, every opposing hj-pothesis on what they were likely to think is a nullity. Yet multitudes fallaciously thus reason : "As the children of the Jews were members of the church, the children of Christians are to be so likewise, unless it can be shown that this privilege has been taken away, and this is what no person has yet been able to do. And if children are to be members of the Christian church, they must be admitted by baptism, which as a seal of the covenant, is instituted in the room of cir- cumcision." " The Scripture nowhere declares the children of believing parents to be deprived of the right," &c. Thus writes the Rev. A. Scott concerning that ordinance, of which he says, " thai it is a j^lain and positive command of Christ, and is, therefore, a duty which cannot be neglected with impunity." — On Bap., pp. 10, 16. Dr. E. Williams, as says Dr. J, Ividd, teaches that "it is evident that for the space of four thousand years it was a rule nniversalhj incumbent on parents, to treat their children as entitled to religious privileges equally with themselves, according to their capacities" (Cand. Rea., &c., p. 146). "Infants did actually make a part of God's church," and have "been held ON NECESSITY OF PEOHIBITION. 251 in that relation from tlie beginning of the world" (p, 151) ; so to baptism, church membership, the Lord's Supper, the discipline, and all the privileges and operations of church members they should be admitted without a decisive and Divine prohibition ! Dr. A. Morton Bro-mi says, "We require to have pointed out to us a law in the New Testament turning children out, ere we cease to receive them" (Chr. Wit., p. 122. 1868). Abp. Whateley is as confident as a host of others, that because children were admitted into the Mosaic (national) covenant, there must be adherence to this in "the Cluistian church, unless expressly forbidden." — On the Sac, pp. 33, 34. The assumption of our opponents on a required prohibition to baptize infants, arises in gi'eat part from a supposition that the posterity of Abra- ham in the line of Isaac and Jacob, in their succeeding generations and in their national existence, constituted a church of Grod, the ancient, the Jewish church. From this hypothesis they leap to the conclusion that it was requisite for Christ to declare His will negatively as well as positively ; overlooking apostolic instruction and training from the Baptist and from Jesus ; overlooking what in connexion with this is of more importance than anything else, namely, what the apostles had personally witnessed and practised, had practised during the years of their fellowship with the great Teacher ; and rejecting the natural import of inspired phraseology describing the commission of Jesus and the conduct of the apostles. All this from an unfounded opinion that the apostles, being Jews, would think so-and-so, and require so much. Thus get we to a twisting and perverting of the plainest records of inspiration. We know that the word ecclesia, from which we have " church," signi- fies assembly, is used in reference to the gathering of all Israel in the wilderness ; subsequent congregations (for worship) out of the nation of Israel; the divers societies of Christians, each meeting together for worship, edification, and the advancement of the Saviour's kingdom and glory; the whole company of the redeemed and saved ; and any gathering of any characters and for any pm'pose. The meaning of this word in the New Testament in its application to Christians, except in its application to the whole company on earth, in heaven, or in both, is invariably "a congrega- tion oi faithful men," a congregation of Christians, or of professed believers in the Lord Jesus. The phrases, Jev.ish church, national church of Israel, Abrahamic church, patriarchal church, and the church before the flood, I discard as unscriptural and denounce as deceptive. It is hypotheses about a church that has had no existence, like unto which they demand that the church of Christ must be, without express prohibition, which with many form the chief bulwark of infant baptism. To Dr. Hugh Allen thousands would assent, when he says : "Infant member- ship, then, was the rule of the Old Testament church ; and hence children are alluded to through all the Old Testament as a portion of the church ; and we ask you to shew us in the New Testament a repeal of that law." If children through aU the Old Testament are alluded to as a portion of the church, there has been a church at least from the birth of Cain, who was the first infant member. If the Jewish nation from its existence until 252 SUBJECTS OF BAPTISM. the coming of Christ constituted the church of God, it is very evident that the church of Christ was intended to be vastly different, to be a people chosen out of the world, a company of believers, of persons born again, cleansed from the defilement and delivered from the dominion and con- sequences of transgression. The spiritual seed of Abraham, believing Jews or Gentiles, are these. The church of Christ was to be, and is, without a parallel in the world's history. "The Jewish church," says Dr. Wardlaw, "was national: when the new dispensation was introduced it was no longer to be so. The wicked were to be shaken out of it. It was not to consist of nations, but of individuals of all nations, separated from the world by the grace of God." Again, " If we proceed at all according to the Jewish principle of connexion, let us give to it its full extent of application, and have national churches at once." Yes; and let us confine baptism to males, and administer it on the eighth day. "But if we cannot admit of these, let ns not apply the old principle of communion in a partial and inconsistent way." Yet the same writer, when advocating the baptism of infants, says that " if under that covenant," the covenant of circumcision, " children were connected with their parents in the application of the sign and seal ; then we must insist upon it, that the burden of proof rests with our opponents. They demand of us express precept for our practice. "We are better entitled to demand of them express precept for theirs." " When were children excluded, and bij what law ? Let an express repealing statute be shewn us, and we will immediately relinquish our practice" (Inf. Bap., p. 36). The repeal- ing statute is in the law of this dispensation to make and baptize disciples. The idea of sameness in the church of Christ and the nation of Israel was preposterous in the estimation of Dr. Wardlaw, when his thoughts had no reference to the baptism of infants. But in view of infant baptism the Christian church becomes the continuation, somewhat modified and improved, of a Jewish church. In the advocacy of infant baptism, our opponent can be oblivious of the individuality that characterized the preaching of John, of Jesus, and of the apostles : and he can say, "Is it likely," yea, he can demand, "is it at all conceivable, on the supposition of the new system entirely excluding children from its appropriate rites, that not a hint should appear of any one having being startled by the change — that not a symptom should have discovered itself of any disposi- tion to objecVor complain" (p. 110)? We Baptists are nowise discomposed to know that the law of believers' baptism was perfectly understood, and was obediently and uncomplainingly regarded, so far as evidence exists, till near the close of the second, yea, till the former part of the third century. From the beginning, and for ages after apostolic times, it seems to have been understood what is meant by a disciple of Chj^st, and of what professed characters the churches of Christ were to be composed. If Baptist sentiments excluded children from heaven, or from any earthly privilege, or were in regard to children any deviation from Christ's instruc- tions and apostolic practice, there would bo some gi'ound for the awful anxiety and earnestness about the withholding of a rite from children. Yet, while our opponents seem to think that primitive Christians would ON NECESSITY OF PROHIBITION. 253 have moved heaven and earth to prevent children being excluded from the " appropriate rites" of Christianity, they quietly refuse to them the Lord's Supper, an ordinance which, we think, according to every word of Holy Writ, belongs to all those to whom baptism belongs, and is as certainly advantageous. Let the reader who has been taught that the Jewish church (nation) so merged into the church of Christ that express precepts respecting the con- stitution of this church are insufficient without express prohibitions, read the following from the lips of Christ and His apostles. "They answered and said unto Him, Abraham is om' father. Jesus saith unto them, If yo were Abraham's children ye would do the works of Abraham." "Ye are of your father the devil" (John viii, 39, 44). " Jesus answered and said unto him. Verily, verily, I say unto you, except a man be born again he cannot see the kingdom of God." " That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit. Marvel not that I said unto you. Ye must be born again" (John iii, 3, 6). "He is not a Jew which is one outwardly, neither is that circumcision which is outward in the flesh" (Rom. ii, 29). "Peter said unto them. Ye know how that it is an unlawful thing for a man that is a Jew to keep company or to come unto one of another nation" — this according to the Jewish law was the case — "but God hath shewed me that I should not call any man common or unclean" (Acts x, 28). The Jewish law was abolished. "Circumcision is nothing, and uncircumcision is nothing, but the keeping of the com- mandments of God" (1 Cor. vii, 19). "For in Christ Jesus neither circumcision availeth anything, nor uncircumcision, but faith which work- eth by love" (Gal. v, 6). These passages accord with the Baptist's words, "Think not to say within yourselves. We have Abraham to our father;" and while they are directly and forcibly levelled against Jewish confidence in circumcision and hereditary descent, they also oppose the idea of same- ness between the Jewish church (nation) and the church of Christ, the latter being so clearly a continuation of the identical former — at least in the connexion of children with parents, or a more distant progenitor through whom the rite of circumcision descended to males — that express prohibition is required to authorize any deviation. Professor Wilson candidly says : "The character of the argument for Paedobaptism, drawn from the Abrahamic covenant, we are solicitous to free from all obscurity. We do not contend for the necessity of admitting the child of a Christian by baptism to the membership of God's church now, simply because the child of a Jew was admitted of old to analogous privileges by circumcision.* On the contrary, we have stated our convic- tion that it was perfectly competent to the Head of Zion to alter the terms of admission, and change the subjects of the initiatory rite under difi'erent dispensations. Still further, we grant that the express repeal of the former law was not indispensable in order to introduce and sanction an ecclesiastical procedure at variance with its accredited requirements. Had God, for example, contemplated the exclusion of children from the Chris- * I dispute any previous admission by cii-cumcision to privileges analogous to those of mem- bership in Christian churches. 254 . SUBJECTS OF BAPTISM. tian economy, in opposition to the former law, patriarchal and Mosaic, the design could have been, doubtless, accomplished by a formal repealing enactment. The same object, however, might have been attained by dis- tinctly requiring of all intrants into the Christian church such qualifications as do not and cannot belong to infancy. So far as man is concerned, the only condition we deem morally essential to the supposed alteration, is that the new law of church membership, by which the old is to be displaced, be couched in terms of obvious plainness — distinct, intelligible, free from ambiguity. Its nature as a law, and the peculiar circumstances in which it is to come into operation, concur in imposing this condition as at once reasonable and imperative" (pp. 434, 435). — On supposition that a previous Jewish national church of God had had an existence, we believe that Christ's commission to baptize is a commission to baptize disciples, and that nothing more is included in it or can be inferred from it, whether we simply notice the import of all its terms, or whether we also consider John's previous baptism of repentance, Christ's making and through the apostles His baptizing of disciples, and subsequent apostolic practice and teaching on baptism as confirmatory of Christ's meaning in His commission. Dr. Wilson believes that in the commission there are "both the substance and the symbol," water symbolizing renewal and remission, and the thing symbolized. Wonderfully applicable to infants who have never committed actual sin, whom the baptism does not regenerate, and of the time or fact of whose regeneration Scripture records not a syllable ! The hypothesis that infant baptism required a prohibition on account of Jewish jyroselyte baptism, allows rabbinical traditions to make void Divine teaching, from which we should otherwise learn only believers' baptism. If the Christian church must admit infants by baptism because the so- called Jewish chm'ch consisted partly of circumcised infants — "If Judaism and its successor are both churches, and consequently essentially alike but circumstantially different, why does Paul so strikingly and thoroughly contrast them in his epistle to the Hebrews ? *Ye are not come,' " &c. — Manly's EccL, p. 218. I admit that I might speak of having converse with a family in which there were infants, and that I intend not, and am not supposed to have, converse vvdth the infants. Consequently I admit that addresses unsuitable to infonts might be given to churches, and yet infants be members of those churches, if by necessity they belonged to those churches, or if their membership were demonstrable. But every attempt to prove the baptism of infants, or their membership in the churches of Christ, from any part of God's word. Old or New, is in mj judgment a signal failure. The commission of our Saviour to make disciples of all nations, bap- tizing them . . . teaching them, &c., is not in itself believed by many of our opponents to give any definite instriiction on the subjects of baptism. Some maintain the necessity of a thorough knowledge of Abra- hamic, and some of Abrahamic and Mosaic revelations, aud some of rabbinical arrangements of which the Divine Spirit has given us no revela- tion. The understanding of this commission is so entirely dependent on previous practice — revealed somewhere or unrevealed — whilst God's woi*d ON NECESSITY OF PEOHIBITION. 255 is admitted as yet to contain no record on the baptizing of infants — that Dr. Hey teaches that if a Baptist were thus commanded to go and baptize Gentoos, &c., he would pervert his commission by baptizing children, but that a church of England minister having such a command would pervert his commission if he did not baptize children ! What a blessing that the deficiences of inspiration were at length supplied by rabbinical learning and piety ; and that some of our learned and kind-hearted brethren are able from this source to tell us what previous to the commission had been apostolic practice, and what must consequently at the very time have been revolving in apostolic minds! Would that our opponents, perceiving the legitimacy of corroborating the import of Christ's words from pre^aous practice, would cease to exalt tradition above revelation, and practically declare the sufficiency of God's word for the knowledge and practice of His will ! Not only do I conceive that our interpretation of the commission is strongly, is incontrovertibly corroborated by Christ's previous baptism through His disciples, by the character of John's baj)tism, and by sub- sequent apostolic practice and teaching in relation to baptism ; but I regard Old Testament and New Testament predictions and records of the Messiah's reign, as adapted, without destroying their Jewish prepossessions, to excite in apostoUc minds the expectation of a state of things vastly and gloriously dift'erent from aught previously existing. For the baptizing of those who credibly professed a change of mind relative to their sins and their Saviour, it is evident that they must have been fully prepared. Of the baptism of no others do the Scriptures contain a single hint. That these sentiments are those of kindness to children, whom we love to embrace, on whom with pleasure, earnestness, and constancy, we invoke the Divine benediction, and whom we would train up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord, we will again and again aver, in opposition to all who assert or insinuate the contrary. After further remonstrance with error, some Peedobaptist concessions will be adduced. Dr. W. Hanna says, " True, there is no express command, but neither is there any express proliibition ; and, taking the whole circumstances of the case into account, it seems to us that a positive prohibition would have been far more needed to prevent the practice of infant baptism than a positive injunction to originate it" CThc Forty, &c., p. 268). This our esteemed brother can believe, although he admits that in Scrip- ture "we have no distinct mention of an infant being baptized" (p. 268). — The supposition that prohibition was needed, rests withhim on the gratuitous and unfounded assumption that baptism has taken the place of circumcision. Dr. J. Owen, and any equal or inferior to him in learning, may write in defence of infant baptism by taking for gi-anted the question disputed, and calling on opi^onents to prove a negative ; and not a few of the errors of popery may be similarly defended. Dr. Owen says, " It is weak beneath consideration to suppose that the requiring of the baptism of believers is inconsistent with that of their seed. But this is to be requu-ed of those who oppose infant baptism, that they produce such a testimony," — Works, vol. xvi, p. 258. Some, without allusion to the Jewish nation as the siipposed church of God, are very ready to ask, "If children may enter heaven, as you all believe, why may they not be baptized ?" The answer is, that faith in Christ is divinely annexed to baptism, and infants are incapable of believing. Ask not why we may not baptize infants, or where we are forbidden to baptize them, but whom are we commanded to baptize ? H. J. Gamble says, "The first disciples of Christ, as native Jews, knew no other way than for children to be introduced into the Israelitish church by circumcision" 256 SUBJECTS OF BAPTISM. (Scr. Bap,, p. 83). — Were femalea circumciaed ? or did one half of the laraelitisli nation not belong to the nation or the so-called Jewish church? The fact of an laraelitish chvirch is unproved. If wo suppose its existence, the introduction of any into it by circumcision, except males, is impossible. Nor can it be proved that these males were not born members of this so-called church, although on being eight days old their circumcision was required. Dr. Stagey says that "had it been intended to exclude children from the initiatory ordinance, positive instruction to this effect would have been required by the apostles and first teachers of Christianity. A sharply defined individualism was foreign to the conception and habit of the Jew. He was little accustomed to consider himself alone, either in position or privilege. A social economy of peculiar structure bound him inseparably to others, as part of a whole, and left him to cement, not to say identify his own welfare with theirs. The names oi family, tribe, a,ni people, had to him a special significance ; and each suggested relationships which rendered the idea of personal independence, whether of action or interest, all but impossible. As a Jew, he was the member of a commonwealth, and so much a part of it that he felt himself in a kind of organic connexion with it ; as a parent, he was the centre of a circle, and so inclosed by it, yet united to it, that he seemed to Uve throughout its whole circumference. His children had only, as it were, a relative existence. They were included in him, as parts of himself ; partaking of his Ufe, and inheriting his privileges. By a divinely-instituted arrangement, he carried their religious position in his own, as by a law, founded in nature, but repeated with the solemn formality of a special promulgation, he accumulated for their future possession a patrimony of good or evil in the very character he became. Now the apostles were Jews, both in sentiment and habit" (pp. 141, 142). Here is the connexion of chUdron with parents so ably advocated by Dr. Wardlaw, and the organic unity of Dr. Bushnell. Children are one with parents in position and privilege! The "personal independence" of infants I believe to be not almost but altogether "impossible." The individual accountability of all come to years, I believe to have existed at all times, and in the whole world. No Divine arrangement ever gave to children a "religious position" corresponding with the religion or irreligion of parents, although the children of the pious have ever and necessarily had advantages over the children of the ungodly. Are we to suppose a Jew so little accustomed to think of himself " in the light of a simple personality," that we are not to believe in the entirely personal and voluntary character of Christianity without direct prohibition ? Two new ordinances characterize a new dispensation, and we are told who are to be and who were the subjects of these ordinances, but we are not to believe that it was these of whom alone in the inspired records we read, who were the subjects of one of the ordinances, although without any positive prohibitory instruction it is amply safRcient in regard to the other ! We are to believe that the apostles being Jews would without an express prohibition receive believers only, or those who credibly professed their faith in Christ, to the Lord's Supper, but to the other rite, baptism, would without an express prohibition receive the children of believers, yea, all children, along with all adults, believers or infidels, the reception of children being certain from national prepossessions in favour of special significance attaching to "the name of family, tribe, and people!" The words " family, tribe, and people," occur not in the commission, but they, or such ideas, are supposed to be undoubtedly in the thoughts of the apostles, being Jews ! The children of a Jew having " only, as it were, a relative existence," and "a kind of organic connexion" with the commonvrealth, were so well known to be "holy to the Lord," and to form part of a holy people, that the first teachers of Christianity, rooted in this theology, "would require the authority of an imquestionablo revelation" of prohibition, not simply of command, in order to their baptizing in any other way than by families — except also by tribes and nations — although by positive without pro- hibitory instruction they would well understand that the Lord's Supper belonged only to individual disciples or believers ! I desire not to do injustice to opponents, but so learned and abstruse are some of their arguments that I must believe in the possibility of occasional misapprehension on my part. I do not, however, forget the saying of Locke, " Ho that believes without having any reason for believing, may be in love with his own fancies, but neither seeks truth as he ought, nor pays the obedience due to his Maker." A writer deservedly honoured by Dr. Halley, after speaking of laws, commissions, warrants, &c., says : " It is accounted criminal, and a high contempt of the superior authority, to exceed the bounds of a commission, barely in doing what it does not mention. From all this, I think it is more than sufficiently plain, that the silence of a law-giver, &c., in any case, is understood to be a prohibition against the said things he is silent in, ospocially if some other things bo expressed, and that omitted ; for ON NECESSITY OF PROHIBITION. 257 then it looks as if it were designed, and has, therefore, something more negative in it" (Gale, 0)1 Bcq]., p. 194). Another writer has supposed that " a loyal vrarrior leaves a property to his descendants, expressly specifying that this property is to be inherited by those who enlist into the army of his sovereign. Would any one imagine that his children should be put in possession of this property before they had reached such an age that they.' could understand their ancestor's directions, and comply with the specified terms ? Or would any one plead that the will contained no intimation that those who refused to enlist shoiild be denied the property bequeathed" (Pike, on Bap., p. 33) ? Jesus Christ has commauded His disciples to preach the gospel, and by this means to make disciples of all nations, baptizing them, and con- tinuing to instruct them. Who, therefore, has a right to administer bap- tism where instruction cannot be communicated, or where the credible profession of discipleship has not taken place ? The commission of Christ does not expressly prohibit a baptizing of the dead, a pilgrimage to Pooree or to Mecca. But these are irrelevant, because they would not be in the mind of a Jew. Why, however, should the apostles, being Jews, and commanded to preach repentance and the remission of sins among all nations, beginning at Jerusalem, believe that repentance was to be not a change of mind indiAidually, but a change by families, tribes, or nations, as much as believe that they were to baptize by families, tribes, or nations ? Discipling by families, tribes, or nations appears to me as certainly taught as baptizing in this manner. And why not believe that the thoughts of the apostles, in bemg enjoined to disciple and baptize, would revert to John's baptism of those who repented, confessed their sins, and believed in the coming Messiah, and to their own baptizing on the behalf of Christ of those already made the disciples of Christ, rather than that their thoughts should revert to Abraham's circumcising of his son Ishmael and all his male servants ? According to one supposition there is agreement in the enjoined baptism. According to the other, it seems necessary to have been said that baptism was in the place of circumcision, but that it was intended for females, for all children, or for a certain class of children, and whether on the eighth day, &c., unless we can suppose that the apostles, being Jews, would intuitively know that baptism sup- planted a former institution, and intuitively Imow the extent of sameness and diversity between the two institutions. We demand a Divine revelation before we know, or admit our opponents to know, that apostolic thoughts on receiving the Saviour's commission, immediately reverted to Gen. xvii, or to rabbinical appointments, of the existence of which at that time we have no evidence, that these apostolic thoughts required the express prohibition of baptism to infants, and that a correct interpretation of the commission requires the knowledge of such apostolic thoughts. Some of our opponents seem to teach that individual "personality" has in Christianity been swallowed up by "domestic relationships ;" and thus the latter, being never absent from the mind of a Jew, required in the commission an express prohibition, if all children were not to be baptized. They do not say : "A command from undoubted authority to perform an action in such a manner and on such a subject, must be con- sidered as prohibiting a different manner and a different subject. So, for instance, when God commanded Abraham to circumcise his male posterity 258 SUBJECTS OF BAPTISM. on the eighth day, there was no necessity that a prohibition should be annexed, relating to any similar ceremony which might have been per- formed on females; nor to expressly forbid the circumcision of a finger instead of the foreskin ; nor to say in so many words. It shall not be performed on the seventh : those positive precepts, ' Ye shall circumcise the flesh of your foreskin — He that is eight days old shall bo circumcised,' plainly imply the forementioned prohibitions. So when Jehovah com- manded the Israelites to take a lamb, a inale of ihejirst year, for the paschal feast, there was no need to forbid the choice of a ewe lamb, nor yet a ram of the second or third year. So, likewise, when Paul, speaking of the sacred supper, says, 'Let a man examine himself, and so let him eat,' there was no necessity of adding, Those who cannot examine them- selves ought not to eat. Thus in regard to the ordinance before us." — Booth's Pad. Ex., vol. i, pp. 348, 349. Mr. Booth, having quoted Mr. Eoeves as saying, " Circumcision being changed into baptism without any change of time, that must continiie upon the old foot, ■with- out some express command to the contrary," and having quoted Dr. Taylor as saying on the baptism of infants, that the apostles " were not forbidden to do it ; there is no law against it ; therefore it may be done ;" and Do Courcy as saying : " Since I find infant baptism not forbidden by any express prohibition, I rather think it virtually enjoined by the very silence of Scripture," adds : " Reflecting on these doughty argu- ments in defence of infant baptism, I am reminded of one that is quite similar, which is used to prove the Divine right of tithes ; or to ' establish,' as Mr. Adair expressed it, 'the most delicious part of the Jewish law.' 'We need,' says the author of The Snake in the Grass, ' no new commandment for [tithes] in the gospel, if they are not forbidden and abrogated by Christ.' To which friend Wyeth replies : 'If they are not expressly commanded to be continued under the gospel, they are not of force ; that law being temporary, by which they were commanded, and now expired. It was adapted to the economy of the Jews ; made to answer that dispensation. ... So that an express abrogation of tithes, in the gospel, was no more necessary than an express repeal of an act of ijarliament which was but temporary, and would expire of course at the end of that term for which it was appointed. The intelligent reader will easily perceive that this reasoning applies with all its force to the case before us" CP(i:d. Ex., vol. i, pp. 331-333). Also, says Mr. B. (p. 357), " Supposing it shoiild be objected, ' There was no occasion for children to be mentioned in the Divine command, because it was then common for them to partake of the proselyte baptism.' It would be easy to answer. There is abundantly more ground to conclude, that it was custom- ary among the ancient Jews, in their convivial entertainments to mix the vmie with water, than any one has to assert that the proselyte baptism was of so early a date." Bp. Stillingfleet says : " Though the negative of a fact holds not, yet tho negative of a law doth, else no superstition." Mr. Alsop says : "He that acts by commission must have his powers authorized by his commission. Suppose a prince should issue out a commission to certain delegates to hear and determine all diffcrenees relating to tho forest, and they shall intermeddle with affairs out of the purlieus ; will it be thought enough to say, these places are not excluded their commission ?" Dr. Williams says: "JPositive duties as far as, or in the respect that they are positive, imply their negatives." More plainly, as stated by Dr. Kidd : " Positive laws exclude their negative ; nor should we, in any part of a positive institute, venture beyond tho appointed rule." Bp. Sherlock says : ''Wlien a law-giver has declared his will and pleasure by a law, it is not fit that subjects should be allowed to guess at his mind, and dispute away an express law by some surmises -and consequences, how probable soever they may appear ; for at this rate a law signifies nothing, if we may guess at the will of our law-giver, without and against an express law. . . . And if this may be allowed, I Imow of no law of God so plain and express but a witty man may find way to escape the obligation of it." If it was morally impossible for the apostles, being Jews, to consider '*tlio individual" in a Divine command, " in the light of a simple person- ON NECESSITY OF PROHIBITION. 259 ality," are not the records of their own commands and conduct, being the writings and sayings of Jews, and written for the world with the same Spirit of inspiration, cquallj' deficient in perspicuity to any but Jews, meaning much more — if not also less — than they say, and what is very different from what they state, and what is only intelligible for our guidance when we are told by some one to whom God has graciously given the revelation, that when moulded b}^ additions and alterations in partial accordance with a certain chapter in Genesis, or some other inspired or apocryphal writings, it means such and such things ? Although despising the idea that express prohibition was necessary to the exclusion of infants from baptism, I am far from believing that Scripture may not be better understood by comparing it with Scripture, and by a correct knowledge of ancient institutions and usages. I reject the human conjectures which alter and add to that which is divinely written. I reject the mode of interpreting Divine laws and mstitutions in a way which would sanction the superstitions of popery, or involve in mj'stery and inexplicable perplexity the whole of Divine revelation. The principle of interpretation requisite to demand a prohibition for one Christian ordinance, and not for the other, to admit to baptism and refuse to the Lord's Supper those of whose con- nexion with either ordinance God's word contains not a single record of precept or precedent, would make Divine revelation unintelligible to more than nine hundred and ninety-nine out of every thousand accountable and immortal beings. If the exclusion of infants from one of the New Testa- ment ordinances required express prohibition, might not express prohibition be requisite for tithes, sacerdotal garments, and some of the priestly pre- tensions of present ritualists '? Our opponents may say, in the attempts to justify themselves, that we are taught in God's word that Christian baptism is "the circumcision of Christ ;" but by so saying they incur a responsibility which "there is no sufficient authority to justify." How much to be preferred would have been the stand-point of our opponents, could they have pleaded Scriptural precept or precedent ! Dr. Hallet in some assertions admiralily defenils, and in others decidedly opposeg our position, that " a sharply defined individualism" was the clearest characteristic of the first and most prominent utterances of the .Jewish Baptist, our Lord's fore-runner, of Jesus, and His ajjostles. They a.11 appear to have first preached the duty of individual repentance, and of evincing: the reality of a, changed mind by correspondent fruits, in direct opposition to a supposed hereditary enjoyment of God's favour. Whatever Jewish prepossessions any of these ever manifested, there is not a particle of evidence that they ever considered an enjoyment or profession of Christianity, or the perform- ance of any Christian ceremonial, in any other light than as being personal, accordant with individual consciousness and willinghood. Dr. H. admits the silence of the evan- gelical narratives on John's baptizing of young children. But he thinks this silence ecpially good for tho positive or negative side. He says : " Why should John for the first time distinguish parents from children in the religious rites of the Jews" (Vol. x, p. 161) ? He might have asked, as " Judaism was not then abolished," and as, says he, "with its spirit, every new ceremonial must have been accordant," why was bap- tism enjoined before circumcision was abolished ? And if John's bai^tism was from heaven, and " must have been" accordant with " tho religious rites of the Jews," may we not conclude that it was conSned to males, and "must have been" administered to them in infancy ? It is this '" must have been," this " assuming," this dictating to the volume of inspiration what it must teach, however iinconsciously this may be done, that is continually perverting the Divine testimony, sometimes in one way or one thing, and sometimes in another ; sometimes, it may be, by ourselves, and some- 260 * SUBJECTS OF BAPTISM. times hy others. God's word never tancrlit that in religious rites all that devolved on the parents devolved on their infant children, either iDccause of the inseparable, or notwithstanding the separable connexion between parents and their infant offspring. It is not so clear as some imagine that circumcision ought to be designated a religioua rite, although every good man, which all men ought to bo, would attend to it in a religious spuit ; nor for circumcision as an exclusively civil act, although having a spiritual meaning, need I plead. It must in the Jewish nation have borne a resem- blance to the passover for which it qualified. But a distinction between the kingdom of heaven which John announced and inaugurated, and the preceding dispensation, is sufficiently great and manifest to render it unworthy in any to teach that children must not in John's time bo distinguished from their parents ; that baptism is a "preparatory ablution," and must correspond with a previous "Jewish purification" or " Jewish ceremonial" which was not restricted to age or character if they were uncircumcised males, just so far as to admit all infants to its reception, or all that have one believing or professedly believing parent, while the Lord's Supper, the other Christian ordinance, and membership in the church of Christ, instead of belonging to all or any infants, or to any known to be ungodly, is restricted to those who make a credible profession of faith in Christ. When what is divinely recorded becomes suffi- cient for the regulation of faith and practice, the hypotheses now opposed, along with the baptizing of infants, will soon pass away. The prohibition demanded by our opponents requires the previous existence of the baptizing of infants, or of some other operation on infants respecting which God's word must teach that infant baptism now occupies its place. Biit they who can believe infant baptism to be founded on that upon which God's word is silent, and of the existence of which at the beginning of Christian baptism wo have no evidence, create in us no surprise by their belief in a previous church of infants, children of believers, and the ungodly, after which the Christian church must with various altera- tions be so far modelled as to include the baptism of little children. I deny not that much truth and force are in the following : J. G. Manly : " The Christian church is not the successor of a Jewish church, but absolutely the first and only church." "There never was any church in the world before the day of Pentecost. There was religion in the world before, there was revealed religion, there was religion socially developed and subserved, in the family and the nation, there were religious ordinances, officers, and assemblies ; but there was no church. To confound the church with the forms of religion generally, or with any other form particularly, is to obscure the ways of God, and perplex and mislead the biblical student. From the mere occiu'ronce of the term ecclesia nothing definite and conclusive can be argued. 'The church fecclesiaj in the wilderness' [Acts vii, 38] is simply ' the assembly in the wilderness,' the Jewish national assembly ; and we have seen that the chxirch is not a nation, or a simple assembly, or even a mere religious assembly. The passage just referred to is the only one, in the New Testament, in which the terra ecclesia is applied to any pre-pcntocostal institute, and it denotes nothing more than a national gathering. To denominate the whole body of the Israelites, or any part of them, a church, because they are often deuominated the congregation of the Lord, is to betray ignorance of the real nature and charac- teristics of a church, and to confound an organized, registered partnership with an assembly. The tumultuous concourse (systrox>lic) of the Epliesians is called an assembly (ecclesia) ; but neither the Ephesian nor the Jewish assembly was a church. The first mention of the church in the New Testament, is predictive, not descriptive : ' I will build My church.' V/hat can more clearly and incontestably indicate the non- existence of a building than the avowal of an intention to construct it ? The second mention of the church is in a passage that has been shewn to be prospectively legisla- tive [Matt, xviii, 17]. The third mention of the church, which is the first mention of it as an existing institute, occurs on its Pentecostal formation. Describing the Pente- costal events, the historian says — ' the same day, there were added three thousand souls,' not added ' to the church,' because till then there was no church at all ; and ho closes his narrative with the first mention of the church as an extant operative institute : ' And the Lord added the saved daily to the church' " (Eccl., pp. 21G, 217). Dr. Stoughton, without denying the existence of the Pentecostal church, says that " according to the true reading in Acts ii, 47, the words should be, ' the Lord added to their number' " (Eccl., p. 10). Ho seems to regard the technical use of the term ecclesia as beginning (at least in Acts, of which he is speaking), with Acts xiv, 21. Mr. West, on the Popish purgatory, says : " It seems absurd to provoke to positive express Scripture against every chimera that may come into men's heads a thousand years after the Scriptures were writ ; for so, if any man should assort, especially if many should agree to it, that Mahomet is a true prophet, or that the moon was a mill-stone, or whatever else can bo supposed more unlikely, I am bound to siibscribe ON NECESSITY OF PROHIBITION. 261 to it, except I can bring- particular, positive, express Scriptiu-c against it." — Mor. Ex, ag. Fo., p. 830. V. Alsoi' says : " Amongst aU the crafty devices of the devil to induce our gi-and- motlicr Eve to eat of the tree of knowledge, and of all the weak excuses of Eve for eating of that tree, I wonder this was not thought on : That it was not contrary to any express law of God. For (Gen. ii, IG, 17) ' God commanded the man, saying,' " &c. At this "back door," the want of an express prohibition, "came in all the superstitious fopperies of Rome. And ■with this passport we may travel all over the world ; from Rome to the Porte, from thence among the Tartars and Chinese, and conform to all ; for perhaps we shall not meet with one constitution that contradicts an express law of Scriptiire." — So. Enq., pp. 345, 346. Heineccius. — " Since office or duty means an action conformable to law, it is plain that duty cannot bo conceived without a law ; that he does not perform a duty who imposes on himself what no law commands." — Sys. of Uni. Law, b. i, ch. v, § 121. A. M'Lean (Baptist), on the application of the Abrahamic covenant, or that of circumcision, to the baptism of infants, in reply to the query of Dr. Wardlaw, " When were children excluded, and by what law?" says: -"He should have mentioned expressly from what it is that the Baptists hold them as excluded. Is it from an interest in the original promise made to Abraham of blessing all nations in his seed ? This is far from being their sentiment." He supposes that Dr. W. " meant to ask, ' When were infants excluded from baptism, and by what law ?' To this it might be sufficient to answer, that it is time enough, in all reason, to shew when they were excluded from it, when it has first been proved from Scripture that they were ever admitted to it, or that it was ever commanded to be administered to them. Yet it may further be observed, that if infants are not mentioned in the institution of bap- tism, or in the commission to baptize — if the characters by which its subjects are expressly described will not apply to infants — and if, in the whole Scripture account of its administration, we find not a single instance of any infant being admitted to baptism ; this amounts to a sufficient exclusion of them from that positive institution. To this I may add, that they are excluded by the law, which forbids adding to, or diminishing from, the word of God, and teaching for doctrines the commandments of men." — -Works, vol. vii, pp. 87-89. The necessity of a Divine revelation for positive institutions, and the sufficiency of that which God has given, will be referred to subsequently, and, perhaps, repeatedly. We allow that in some things there is a similarity, or even sameness, between the present and the previous dispensation, and that the points of ditFerenco and sameness are to be ascertained by comparing the records of the Old and New Testaments. Wo deprecate the frittering away, or the altering, of any covenant made yvith Abraham, with his natural or with his spiritual seed. By taking this, leaving that, changing the other, and maintaining at pleasure the necessity of a prohibition, God's truth can be mangled, and His will subverted. The promise of Peter, Acts ii, 39, refers not to God's covenant with Abraham, and cannot, therefore corroborate the hypothesis that " baptism now occupies the same relation to the covenant and the church that circum- cision did," and that a consequent prohibition is needed if the baptism of infants is not in force. The Pkesident of Eawdon College, in editing professor Hackett's Commentary on Acts (vol. i, pp. 297, 29S), in special reference to Acts ii, 89, pertinently says : " So far, then, from discerning in the above-quoted passage, and in the reasonings connected with it, an authorization of infant baptism, we see in the words the clear announcement of the principle which at once and indisputably must have set infant baptism aside. The difficulty and the controversy which Abp. V/hatcley thinks must all along have accompanied the change, were from the outset rendered impossible. The only ciuestiou was between the Old Covenant and the New. Every Jew who understood the claims of the latter, would see from the very first that in accepting it he exchanged tlie hereditary privilege for the call of God. In place, therefore, of regarding his children as in the kingdom by virti^e of their descent, he would seek for them, as truly as for those who were afar off, that sacred influence by which he had himself obtained a name and a place in the spiritual Israel, the true people of God." • — Prof. Green thus sees no authority for the demand of express prohibition, while he denies not all analogy between circumcision and believers' baptism. Dr. Harris let us conceive of as maintaining that infant baptism and membership in the church of Christ must exist withoiit express prohibition, when he maintains that "the primary design of a church," among other things is, that "each might feel his weakness supported and his courage animated by the presence of the whole — feel that although he is 'the least of all saints,' he is a vital member of an organized body, allied to Clu-ist, the living Head, and, through Him, identified with all the excellence qI the vmivcrse," — The Gr, Com., pp, 35, 30, 262 SUBJECTS OF BAPTISM. Notwitlistanding' all concessions respecting' the distinction between the Cliristian and every preceding dispensation, it is continnally being maintained tliat tlie circum- cision of Jewish (male) infants demands, witlioxit a formal prohibition, the baptism of all little children, or of all having one professedly believing parent. It is apparently forgotten that during the whole period embraced in the Acts of the Apostles circum- cision and bajitism existed togctlier. Indeed, Dr. W. Cooke says, " Circumcision gave place to baptism only by the substitution of one ordinance for another, biit having the same spiritual import, securing the same privileges, recognizing the same relation to Christ and His people, and, therefore, the ordinance of recognition was performed on the same subjects — adult believers and their children" (Inf. Bap., p. IG). He had said (p. 10), that ''all infant children are in a state of salvation," and " all have a right to the sign and seal of God's covenant ordinance." Must we say, therefore, that without an express prohibition we must baptize " adult believers and their seed P" I will not enlarge on sameness of privilege, relationship, subjects, between male descend- ants of Abraham, with their male servants, and all infants, or the seed of believers. Every scriptural idea of discipleship to Christ, and of requisites to membership in the churches of Chi-ist — on which more may subsequently bo said — opposes the idea of infant baptism and membership. SECTION XIII. ON INFANT' BAPTISM DEMANDED AS A SEAL OF THE COVENANT. H. Allon.— " Sometimes controversy m.ay be the first and most pressing of her [the church's] duties." " Ours is not yut the cuviablo condition iu which v.c can worli without fighting." — Cono. Uiii. Add)-., 1864. B. IvEACH. — "I own no seal, or nothing to be a seal in the covenant of grace, save the Holy Spirit."— 0» Bnp.,}). xvi. Dr. R. A. Pype. — " In scriptural language covenant means an arrangement or an institution according to which special favours arc gi-antcd to those designated therein. God announces the terms of the covenant, and man, in some significant manner, indicates his acceptance of them." — The Abr. Cov., p- 4. It is maintained by our opponents tliat baptism is in tlio place of cir- cumcision, that circumcision was the sign and seal of New Covenant, of spiritual blessings, and that in baptism these blessings are sealed to every recipient, or every worthy recipient. These New Covenant blessings are supposed to be on God's part solemnly assured to cveiy recipient or worthy recipient of baptism. If parents can have these blessings sealed to children by having thorn baptized, none can doubt the desirability and importance of infant baptism. In infants having a believing parent, or in the infants of all mankind, we are assured there is nothing of inward resistance to the inward operations which God by His Spirit is supposed to be graciously CiUTying forwards, or to have graciously accomplished. Many PfBdobaptists feel the dilliculty and avoid the practice of making a distinction between children having a believing parent and other children. Also the word seal, from diiHculties associated with it, is used by some in a qualihed, non-natural, deceptive, unscriptural sense. Its only use in Scrijiture in connexion \vith circumcision is where circumcision is designated a seal of the righteousness of Abraham's faith when he was uncircumcised. It was an attestation or confirmation of this righteousness, God entering into covenant with him as a righteous man, as one justified by faith, and BAPTISM AS A SEAL. 263 as a token of covenanting with the righteous Abraham appointed cir- cumcision, by which he and his seed became separate from those around them. A seal is that vrhich stamps, or makes an impression or inscription. This, in hiter times, has been connected with the closing of letters and with the prevention or detection of their being opened, so that the word is used for that which closes or secures, and also for that which is impressed or inscribed. It is used, says Dr. Eadie, "to denote the act, token, or process of confirmation, distinction (2 Tim. ii, 19) and security (Rev, vii, 3 ; Rom. iv, 11 ; Eph. iv, 30)." To seal, according to Dr. Richardson, is " to set a sign or mark (sc.) in token of assent, affirmance, assurance ; to affirm or confirm, to assure, to secure ; and also (from the effect of sealing) to fasten, to fix, to fasten together, closely, to close, to shut." Sir W. Blackstone says that "the use of seals as a mark of authenticity to letters and other instruments, is very ancient. We read of it among the Jews and Persians, and most sacred records of history." Dr. W. Smith's Biblical Dictionary has this note on the import of the original: "Hhotham; sphragis, aposphraijisma ; annulus (Gen. xsxviii, 25). Hhothemeth f. fZrtci»/jos, annulus; from hhatham, 'close,' or 'seal.' Ch. HHATHAM, sphvagizomai ; si/jnum imprimere, sir/nare. 2. ring or signet ring mannaath. 3. izlcah, dactulios ; annulus. b. phathil ; ormisJcos, armilla; A. V. bracelet" (H. W. P.). The sealing of a covenant with God by man is, by some approved ceremony to signify an acceptance of God's arrangement and promised blessings. Subsequent quotations and remarks, it is believed, will demonstrate how unadvisedly our opponents speak of baptism as a seal of God's covenant with man, or the seal of "all spiritual blessings" in Christ Jesus. Dr. E. Williams, as says Dr. J. Kidd, tlius teaches: "It has been the will of Christ, from the beginning' of time, and it ever will continue to be so, that all who have been, are, and shall be, capable of receiving the benefits of His dying love, should be admitted to the seals of these benefits" (Can. Roa. [App.], p. 138). Ho also main- tains that infants arc capable of spiritual benefits, "of receiving the Holy Ghost," " of enjoying the blessings exhibited to their iiarents," " of the remission of sins, of salva- tion through Christ," &c. He does not say what was the seal of these blessings from Adam to Abraham ! Thankful for the subsequent revelation, we would not sinfully pry into the secrets of the past ! After writing thus I road that " not only the insti- tution of sacrifices, but also the coats of skins (Gen. iii, 21), were emblematic of cove- nant blessings, and wore, likewise, types and seals of the covenant." Sacrifices and skins, it would appcpa-, v/ere the seals from Adam to Noah ; and since, when God's " people enter into a new state, one of the seals of the covenant is changed" (p. 141). "When they entered upon the now state of floating upon a shoreless ocean," the coats of sMns gave way to the ark. When tho deluge had subsided, the ark gave way to the hoiu in the cloud. This continued till Abraham. And Drs. Kidd and Williams are not explicit about tho bow in the cloud ceasing to bo a seal of tho covenant. If sacri- fices, the bow in the cloud, and circumcision were seals till Moses, we have three seals during this period, and when Moses has added the passover, we have tho still moro heterodox number of seals, viz., four ! Dr. J. Kidd, in epitomizing Dr. Williams' Antix). Ex., says : " Circumcision was a seal of the righteousness of faith to Abraham, to Ishmael, and to all the male servants born in Abraham's house, and bought with his money" (In Cand. Rea., p. 129)! — V/hy ho has not expressly mentioned also all circumcised infants descending from Abraham, I will not say. Dr. Wall, like many others, applies to baptism the apostle Paul's testimony respecting the circumcision of AjBUAHAiri. He thus writes : " Tertullian says. Bap- tism is a seal of faith, &c. Does not Mr, Gale remember that St, Paul says just thg 264 SUBJECTS OF BAPTISM. same of circumcision? A seal of tlic righteousness of faith" Clnf. Bap., vol. iv, p. 363). — If baptism were the seal of faith, or of the righteousness of faith, which Scrip- ture nowhere teaches, it is clearly inapplicable to infants. The Shorter Prt's?/yfcria;i Caft'c7n's»i says that "baptism is a sacrament wherein the washing with water doth signify and seal our engrafting into Christ, our partaking of the benefits of the covenant of grace, and our engagement to be the Lord's." On this, Mr. [Macallan says : " Suppose the question were put to every minister of the Church of Scotland individually, whether he really believed, that the ' washing with water,' in baptism ' seals' the ' grafting of the infant into Christ,' ' seals' its ' partak- ing of the benefits of the covenant of grace,' &c., there is not one of them, from ' John O'Groat's' to the Border, who would return the simple answer, 'Yes,' but would reply in some such circumlocutive form as would amount to an evasion. If put into another shape, thus — Do you believe that all the men and women in Scotland who were bap- tized in their infancy, were then ' ingrafted into Christ' — were then ' made partakers of the benefits of the covenant of grace' — or even had then these blessings ' scaled' to them as theirs, to be enjoyed by them as soon as they arrived at an age in which they should be capable of enjoying them ? Every one of them would unhesitatingly answer, ' No.' "What then do they mean when they declare their belief that the act of baptism * seals (to the baptized) their ingrafting into Christ?' Do they mean, for instance, that in most cases, this ingrafting is a mere temporary affair ? — that infants, duriug their infancy, are 'ingrafted into Christ,' and as soon as they begin to show that their hearts are unchanged — that they are in ' the gall of bitterness and the bond of iniquity,' the ingraftment ceases ? Such an ingrafting as this, not one of them will avow. But, again, is it the mere ' washing of water' that produces this ingrafting ? — or has the profession of the faith of the parent anything to do with it ? The answer to another question in the catechism supplies a negative to both forms of the question : for it is there declared that the blessing of the sacraments is confined to those who ' by faith receive them.' But infants are incapable of faith. Is it the faith of tho parent, then, in connexion with ' the washing,' that produces the temporary ingraft- ing ?■ — that 'sea (S to the baptized the benefits of the covenant' during the period of infancy ? If so, what are those benefits ? Evidently, during that period they arc incapable of enjoying any, unless they die and go to heaven. But where do thoy find in Scripture the doctrine of a proxy faith, specially securing eternal life to the off- spring of believers when they die in infancy ? Nowhere — but even granting it, what becomes of those whose parents have no faith ? — what of those whose parents, having faith, do not feel it to be their duty to baptize their infants ? These are only some of the many difficulties that surround the subject of infant baptism as set forth and expounded in the Standards of the Scottish Church. Yet, to these standards every office-bearer must signify his assent and consent lieforo admission to ofiice ; and to these standards, containing other dogmas, also, which have long since been discarded in practice, every member is presumed to adhere" (On Chris. Bcp., pp. 102. 133). — If baptism seals such blessings, how is it that so many of tho baptized live and die with- out an interest in them ? Has God not fulfilled the engagement to which He has set His seal ? Dr. Doddridge saj's : "Those rites of the Clmstian institution, which were intended to be solemn tokens of our accepting the gospel covenant, peculiar to those who did so accept it, and to be considered by them as tokens of the Divine acceptance, on that supposition may properly be called seals of the covenaiit" (Misc. Works, p. 448). Demurring to his inference, I maintain that his representation of baptism and the Lords Supper forbid the participation of infants and unbelievers in these ordinances. Dr. Dick speaks of "baptism, the present seal of the covenant." Dr. Harris, in his Great Teacher, says : " Tho Christian clim-ch is a region, and the only region on earth, replenished with the vital influence of the Holy Spirit : and, by making baptism the initiatory ordinance, the Saviom* has significantly taught, that, while all ■within inhale an element of life, all without are breathing an element of destruction. By appointing the rite to bo administered " in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost,' He has sealed lis unto the day of redemption — Ho has burnt in and made indelible, the awful signatures of Christian discipleship ; reminding us that as those who have been ' born again of water and of the Spirit,' He has given into our keeping a new life — a life supernatm-al and Divine : and charging it on us, as we hope to see the glorious day which is longed for by all creation, that we preserve that Hfe im-iolate and iingrieved" (pp. 168, 169).— On some of these expressions it wero easy to animadvert. He could not intend that we have access to tho heart, but that such was the character as a whole of those within and those witliout the chiu'ch ; or, that those wthin the church are by profession and obligation such as he describes, BAPTISM AS A SEAL. 265 His lan^agc is, however, decisive against any baptism as being Christian baptism except believers', as well as against any being the disciples of Christ but those who are followers of the Lamb. Dr. Stagey teaches that baptism and the Lord's Supper are " Seals of the Covenant of Grace." "They confirm and assure to our hearts the truth and grace which as signs they present to our view ; while, on our part, they imply, to the extent of actual capability, both the faith which discerns and appropriates the blessings they symbolise, and the formal presentation of our bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God, as our reasonable service" (The Sac., p. 53). I am not aware that Luke, Peter, Paul, or any inspired writer, as if to provide a loop-hole for the baptizing of infants, speaks of faith in baptism (Acts ii ; Rom. vi ; 1 Pe. iii ; or elsewhere) being required to the extent of capalility . Nor am I aware that there is any faith in infants, or any consistency in this representation of baptism with baptizing indiscriminately. Can baptism and the Lord's Supper belong to infants and the unconverted, if they arc also "covenant engagements," "federal rites," "stipulations between God and man, pledging the faithfulness of the one to fulfil the promise of eternal life made in Jesus Christ, and the willingness of the other to receive the grace offered according to the appointed method of its dispensation, and in grateful aclmowledgment of it, to live not unto himself, but unto Him who died for him and rose again" (p. 53) ? Yet Dr. S. says of baptism and the Lord's Supper, that they "are seals on the part of God confirming His mercy to us in Jesus Christ ; and, in the fact of their observance are seals on the part of man binding him to the fulfilment of all the obligations which the offer of that mercy involves and requires" (p. 62). This is as inconsistent with infant and indiscriminate baptism as the statement that the two Christian ordinances arc " professions, repeatedly and solemnly given, that the partakers in them are a chosen generation, a roj-al priesthood, a holy nation, a peculiar people" (p. G2). Tet such a baptism is "the very seal of the covenant which circumcision had been under the administration of Moses ! Having the same meaning it serves the same end ! It is ' a seal of the righteousness of faith' — which promise the apostle Peter declares is unto US, and to our children, and to all that are afar off" (p. 83) 1 Can children, to whom " the promise of the Spirit through faith" is given, mean infants ? And can that bo the baptism of infants in which " God appears in the rite, confirming onr faith by a formal pledge to bestow all the blessings which the covenant provides, and the ordin- ance symbolically represents ; and man appears in it, as comprehended within the design of tho covenant, professing to eeceive the stipulated blessings according to the appointed method of communication, and engaging as one consecrated to the Lord's scr^dce, 'to observe all things whatsoever He has commanded him' " (p. 84) ? Allowing to sealing the import chosen by any Pasdobaptist quoted. Dr. Stacey has no authority for his affirmation — " that circumcision was the seal of the covenant made with Abraham, is placed beyond the limits of controversy by the express language of Scriptm-e." In proof of this, he quotes Eom. iv, 11, which, as is true of every other Scripture, expressly says no such thing. Equally destitute of Dirino sanction are his assertions that the covenant of redemption by Christ "is substantially the same throughout" as the covenant with Al^raham, and that baptism and the Lord's Sujjpcr are " seals of the covenant of grace." Dr. S. says : "When the work of redemption had received the crowning act, our Lord thus commissioned His apostles : ' Go ye, and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them into the name of the Father, and of tho Son, and of the Holy Ghost.' " " Since the Gentiles were to be fellow-heirs with the Jews, and of the same body, and partakers of the promise in Christ by the gospel, what was to be the sign of their admission to this fellowship, and what the seal of their fidelity to its obligations ? Baptism, our Lord distinctly teaches" (p. 75). Bap- tism, the seal of fidelity to obligations, and yet to be administered to the unconscious, and indiscriminately to the godly or ungodly ! If baptism were a seal as circumcision was, it would only, according to Scripture, be a seal of the righteousness of the sin- ner's faith previous to being baptized. Were it not that I remember my own fallibility and the blinding influence of pre-possessions, I should conclude that our intelligent opponents, who advocate infant and indiscriminate baptism, had forgotten the import or application of words when they are writing of baptism as a seal of the covenant, a federal rite in which God and the baptized make solemn and comprehensive engage- ments. Dr. S. teaches that "to the Lord's Supper belongs generally the same federal character" as bax)tism. Yet with him the Lord's Supper belongs only to believers, but baptism to every human being, irrespective of age or character ! In both these rites there is "a virtual attestation on the part of God," " and a prof essed recognition on the part of man, of the engagement to believe and obey." " These arc the seals of the covenant." " From the earliest times" the inherent force of covenants " has been expressed by some outward act, and personal fidelity to their stipulations has been 266 SUBJECTS OF BAPTISM. pleclgocl by tlio consenting parties ' setting to their seal.' To tins custom the Divine Being has condescended in the ordinance of baptism and the Lord's Supper. These in the fact of their institution, arc seals on the part of God confirming His mercy to tis in Jesus Christ ; and, in the fact of their observance, arc seals on the part of man binding him to the fulfilment of all the obligations v?hich the offer of that mercy involves and requires" (pp. Gl, 62). In speaking of the Lord's Supper, to which, says ho, "belongs generally the same federal character," he says that " a covenant demands two parties, and contains reciprocal terms. Hence the Lord's Supper is the assertion of claims, as well as the seal of promises. It is not only the declaration of love on the part of God, but also the profession of faith on the part of man" (p. 89). On sub- sequently teaching that baptism under the gospel is the transference of circumcision, which " was the seal of the Abrahamic covenant," ho teaches that " a profession of faith in the covenant, and of consequent obligation to its engagements, was implied in the act, and, incapable of being made by the child, was representatively given by the parents" (p. 139). This " seal,'' implying the profession of faith, can be rightly given to any idolater or unbeliever ! This " seal," implying the profession of faith, which in infants is " representatively given by the parents," belongs equally to the children of the ungodly and the pious ! Nor do I know by what authority " a pro- fession of faith" can bo " representatively given by tho parents," or by any other sponsors, or sureties. Dr. Halley, having mentioned that " the doctrine of the Church of Rome is, that the sacraments by their due administration, the ojms o'peratum, confer grace upon all who receive them, unless they arc resisted by mortal sin;" and that " the doctrine of the Church of England as well as of tho Lutheran churches is, that the sacraments are means of communicating grace," adds — " Tho doctrine, as we have seen, of tho Puritans, the Scotch Presbyterians, and many foreign Protestants of the Calvinistic churches, is that the sacraments are federal rites, ratifications of the evangelical cove- nant, made to those who profess to receive it, upon the supposition that their profession is sincere, and so insuring to them all the blessings which are promised to believers" (Vol. X, pp. 77, 78). He then says : " It would seem to follow that the adherents of the latter opinion ought to administer the sacraments, or seals, only to those who have previously received the grace which they attest ; whereas the adherents of the former ought to administer them only to such as are destitute of that grace :" one as as the seal, and the other as tho means of regeneration. These necessary dilemmas of a departure from truth Dr. H. conceives that he escapes by regarding baptism as a sign, not an attestation. He sometimes speaks of it a? a sign of truth or doctrino (p. 78), and sometimes as a sign of purification of the heart, an emblem " of the grace intended" (p. 80). I maintain that no moral or spiritual change was effected or divinely attested by circumcision, and that none is now effected or so attested by baptism, whilst I believe that "the grace intended," and represented in baptism, is professed by the recipient of scriptural baptism, and ought to bo possessed. That circumcision did not seal spiritual blessings is evident from Eom. ii, 28, 29 ; and iii, 1, 2. On Abraham's circumcision as a sea,l of the righteousness of the faith which ho had being uncircumciscd. Dr. H. says, "Astonishing are the iiiles of argumentation that have been raised upon this passage, and by which, I venture to say, my Pcedo- baptist brethren have encumbered, rather than sustained their cause" (p. 82). Having spoken of circumcision as a seal of tho righteousness of faith, and this only to believ- ing Abraham, he says, " Although not so glaringly, yet covertly and perniciously tho notion of the sacraments as seals of grace in the sense of personal attestation is opposed to the doctrine of justification by faith. If they are represented as seals or ratifications of saving blessings conferred upon the recipients, we have to inquire, In what sense is this representation to be understood ? They are assuredly not seals of spiritual blessings to those who do not worthily receive them." With holy earnestness, becoming tho defence of important truth. Dr. H. asserts : " A sacrament in itself is no seal of pardon or salvation, because it may be unworthily received. To call the worthy reception of it the seal of pardon or of salvation, is to Gxalt a good work to the high place of the witness of Christ's fidelity, or of His suffi- ciency, in saving believers, and so to reverence it not only as tho arbiter of our own justification, but as tho authentic verifier of the truth of Christ. Invited, every day and every hotir of my life, to confide entirely on Christ, as able and willing to save me, what have I to do but to accept the generous invitation in the full assurance of faith ? Burdened with a sense of guilt, the message of tho gospel is to me the good news of great joy : and in tho assurance of tho truth of God, which I cordially bolievo, I can admit no seals or verifications other than His own testimony. A sacrament offers no assurance, no word of cncoiu-agcment to me in my iinbclief ; and in my belief tho verbal and express assm-ance of God is tho objoct of my faith ; and that assiu-auce ij} BAPTISM AS A SEAL. 267 tliat in Christ Jesus, my only Saviour, I have everlasting life. ' This is the record, that God hath given to us eternal life, a,nd this life is in His Son.' That record' believed is its own demonstration, and no symbolic service can bo either an attestation of its g-eneral truth, or a seal of its specific application to individuals. ' He that bolieveth hath the witness in himself.' Besides, this doctrine of sealing God's grace to individuals by a sacrament can amount to no more than a hypothetical sealing — a sealing of God's grace upon the supposition that the person is already possessed of that grace ; a seal which, to be of any worth, must be itself accredited or attested by the grace which yet it i:i said to seal or ratify. But what seals are these ? The sacraments worthily received are said to be the seals of an inward and spiritual grace, or of spiritual blessings consequent upon it ; but that inward and spiritual grace is to us the only assurance of the worthy reception of the sacraments" (pp. 86, 87). To this absurdity he brings the supposed sealing in baptism by those who " cloud and obscure the only Object of faith in the justification of the ungodly." He supposes it may be objected by some, that " the sacraments are the seals which we append to the covenant, the federal rites by which we attest our reception of it." To this he replies, " that faith itself is the reception of the covenant, to which every believer, as such, is a party. To believe is to set to our seal that God is true. It is to perform our act of the covenant, to make the stipulation which it proposes. Im- mediately on our belief the covenant is sealed and certain, without the possibility of a failure. If the covenant remain unsealed until a sacrament be performed, we arc justified, or our justification is completed, by that sacrament, and not by faith alone. Besides, in the sacrament, before whom do we seal or attest our previous reception of the covenant ? Before God, who has witnessed the act of faith itself, and can need no attestation of the deed, or before ine?i, who cannot know the sincerity of the act, which we call the seal or federal rite P" He supposes the further objection — "that we depreciate the sacraments by , representing them only as signs, which have no Divine energy in quickening and sustaining the spiritual life," and replies — "We do not, indeed, ascribe to them the power of God in quickening the dead. They are to us the earthly signs of heavenly things ; and can anything on earth, any deed that man can do, occupy a more important or exalted iiosition ? The symbolic representa- tives of Divine truth, performed by God's command before the church and the world, they are hallowed by their intimate and indissoluble association with the most sacred and Divine realities. They are earthly vestments which the majesty of Christian truth has assumed on her descent to our world, through which the celestial radiance is clearly emitted so long as they are not tinged with the gaudy colours of human device. Depreciate the sacraments ! We place them by the side of the Holy Scrip- tures, associate them with the same great imperishable truths, and say, if those speak to the ear of man, these appeal to his sight ; if those are more distinct, these are more impressive ; v.'hile both are equally the messengers from God. It is true our elements are earthly, and in themselves common ; we have only water, which has issued from an earthly spring, we have only bread grown from an earthly soil, and vvdne pressed from an earthly vintage ; but these earthly things arc hallowed by the glorious truths with which they are associated." " By a devout observance we hallow these earthly elements, not on account of any sanctity or value which they have in themselves, but on account of the sanctity and value of the Divine truth, of v.-hich they are before our eyes the significant and authorized representatives" (pp. 89-91). — How admirably he confounds his opponents on baptism as a sealing ordinance, and how inconsistent is all that we have just read •with either infant or indiscriminate baptism, with ought but believers' baptism ! I heartily subscribe to Dr. H.'s testimony, that " the general opinion that baptism is substituted for circumcision as a kind of hereditary seal of the covenant of grace, appears to be ill sustained, and to be exposed to some very serious, if not absolutely fatal objections" (Vol. xv, pp. oi, 35). I regard Dr. H., however, as demonstrably incorrect, when speaking of God's covenant wdth Abraham that in him " all nations of the earth should be blessed," and immediately adding, that, " of this covenant . . . circumcision was the divinely-axspointed seal" (p. 38). Circumcision, according to all the revelation from God which I possess, has been the divinely-appointed seal of nothing but of the righteousness of the faith of Abraham which he had being uncir- cumcised. I agree with Dr. H. that " the sacraments are not seals of the evangelical covenant, nor sealing ordinances, attesting the personal interest of those who worthily receive them in the blessings of that covenant." And as in oppofiing " the formularies and creeds of most churches," he is happy to find that "many of the ablest di^dnes of those churches" oppose (with him on this) their own formularies, i am happy similarly to quote from himself and other able divines in opposition to the erroneous baptizing of infants and persons known to be unconverted, and shall now record his quotationis 268 SUBJECTS OF BAPTISM. from Ecv. E. Bickorstoth and Dr. Chalmers, believing in the adaptation of what they affirm to baptism as well as the Lord's Supper. Mr. BicKERSTETH, on the Lord's Supper, says : " It is sometimes called the seal of the covenant ; but this is not a scriptural, and it does not appear to the author that it is a proper name. The idea is taken from Abraham's circumcision being a seal of the righteousness of the faith which ho had being uncircumcised ; but this by no means implies that the Lord's Supper may justly be called a seal of the covenant. In fact, an imsealod covenant is of no validity. The new covenant was ratified and confirmed by the blood of Christ. Dr. Chalmers says : " I am more inclined to regard the sacrament of tho Lord's Supper as a memorial than as a pledge ; that is to say, a pledge on the part of God that Ho will bestow spiritual blessings. If it be viewed as a pledge, I woiild regard it rather as a pledge on behalf of man, that ho will render spii-itual services. It is by his voluntary act that tho commemoration is performed, and the public profession is made. This I hold tantamount to a promise on his part that he will bo the Lord's. It is an act of dedication by which he stands pledged to give up his future life to tho will of Him who is the great Master of tho ordinance." Hence, says Dr. Halley, " these two honom-ed men," " cordially attached to tho great doctrines of tho Calvin- istic theology," " saw clearly that the evangelical covenant was sealed and siu-e to every man immediately on his believing in Christ for salvation" (pp. 288-290). Dr. W. H. Stow^ell, in opposing the sealing error, also undesignedly teaches that Christian sacraments are for believers. " Because tho sign of circumcision," says he, " is spoken of cursorily by the apostle Paul, as ' a seal of the righteousness of the faith which Abraham had before his circumcision,' certain outward observances of the Christian church are, in like manner, regarded as seals of the covenant. Without now staying to question, or to affirm, the analogy by which this transfer of ideas from the old covenant to the new covenant is thought to be sustained, wc must not forget that the grand characteristic of the new covenant is its spirituality. It is a cove- nant -with believing men, bestowing on them spiritual blessings, through the mediation of Cludst, and by the power of the Spirit. To them, tho oiitward acts by which they express their faith, are of such a nature as to remind them with peculiar emphasis of the Divine promise ; and they are also the occasions on which they receive from Him in whom they believe a large supply of grace. : for these reasons it is natural for them to prize such special outward acts of worship, and to make this estimation by singu- lar terms, such as ordinances, sacraments, signs, seals of the covenant. But all this has been borrowed from descriptions appropriate to the spiritually regenerate, who are known to God, and applied to the outward organizations which are visible to man." — Cong. Lcc, vol. xiv, pp. 159, IGO. R. W. Dale maintains that baptism and the Lord's Supper have a scaling as well as exhibiting signification. Ho opposes the idea that they are only symbolical, and says expressly of the Lord's Supper that it is the seal "of the covenant of grace" (Eccl.,]). '3SS). The idea that baptism is only a profession of faith is too iiarrow ; yea, "that faith in Christ may be a condition of baptism is quite possible, but that baptism is in itself a profession of faith is inconceivable" (p. 374). "The 'didactic' theory, or the ' impressive' theory," if I mistake not, seems to him to " strip the sac- raments of their essential character, as ads originating ivith God, not v\dth man" (p. 375). Is there more than " the personal trust of a believer in the Lord Jesus" in the subject of an infant baptism ? If the bread and wine, the eating and drinking, in the Lord's Supper, a.nd the water and immersion in baptism, are, beyond the respective and literal actions, more than symbolical, I should like to know what and how much more. Venema came nearer to truth than many Pasdobaptists, when he said, " Circum- cision was a seal of the righteousness of faith, as the apostle affirms ; but this only in respect of such Israelites as were believers." T. Scott, the deservedly celebrated commentator, says : " Circumcision sealed spiriti;al blessings to Abraham personally" — Com., onEom. iv, 9-12. Dr. ScHAFF, in defence of Infant Baptism, argues, that Christianity, as an economy of grace, embraces all ages and conditions, and, conscquentlj^ gives the seal of salva- tion to infants. But if baptism relates to tho appropriation of salvation, it cannot be suitable to infants, with whom tho personal ratification of salvation whether before baptism they be in a state of justification or condemnation, is an impossibility. Let disciples bo made, let faith be prodiiccd, then baptism is appropriate and scriptural. Chaknock. — " God seals no moi'o than Ho promises. He promises onl.y to faith, and, tlicrcfore, seals only to faith. Covenant graces, therefore, must be possessed and acted, before covenant blessings be ratified to lis." — Tl''or7i>', vol. i, p. 4S3. Dr. J, ExiSKiNE. — " Scripture KuIUcicutly proves, that the sacraments of the Kow BAPTISM AS A SEAL. 2G9 Testament are signs ancT seals of no other covenant than that covenant of grace which secures eternal happiness to all interested in it. And the partaking of them mani- festly implies a partaking of covenant blessings on the one hand, and the exercise of faith on the other."— T/icoZ. Diss., The Char, and Priv., &c. A. Ceuden.— " The grace of sauctification wi-ought in the soul by the Holy Spirit, is the seal and assurance of our redemption to come, of a joyful resiu-rection."— Co?ic. Art. Seal. T. Bradbuet. — " We call these two institutions of the New Testament the seals of the covenant ; biit they never seal what you have not, nor can they seal anything you did not." — On Uap., p. 13. v. Alsop.— " The Spirit unites us to Christ ; then comes baptism, which looks backward as a seal of what we have received, and forward to cm- visible state in the church." — Antisozzo, p. 382. Warden.—" Wo think that baptism supposethmen Christians ; else they have no right to baptism, the seal of Christianity ; all seals in their natiu'e supposing the thing that is sealed." — In Booth's Pwd. Ex., vol. ii, p. 95. Calvin. — " Baptism is, as it were, the appendix of faith, and, therefore, posterior in order ; and then, if it be administered without faith, of which it is a seal, it is both an impious and a gross profanation" (Com., on Acts viii, 36). — His censiu'o on those who from this oppose Pa3dobaptism, weighs little. ViTKiNGA. — " The sacraments of the new covenant are of such a nature as to seal ' nothing but what is spiritual, nor bo of any advantage, except in regard to those who really believe in Jesus Christ." — In Booth's Peed. Ex., vol. ii, p. 96. Mr. ToMBES, on the different views of Pajdobaptists, says : " Mr. Baxter's Plain Scripture Proof (p. 223), wUl have baptism seal only the conditional 2^^'omise. — Mr. Philip's Yind. (p, 37) expresseth the sealing by offering. — Mr. Davenport's Covfession of faith (p. 39) maketh the benefits of the covenant to be offered in the sacraments, biit to be exMhited only to true believers. — Mr. Cotton's Grounds of Ba'ptism (p. 70) : The covenant of grace doth not give them saving grace at all, but only offercth it, and seals what it offercth. — Dr. Homes, that the administration of the covenant of gTaco belongs to believers' children, though not the efficacy. — Dr. Twisse, that infants are in the covenant of grace in the judgment of charity, and that baptism seals regenera- tion, and so on, not conferred, but to be confen-ed. — Dr. Thomas Goodwin, that they are to be judged in the covenant of grace hy iiarccls, though not in the lump." To these Mr. Booth adds others, and remarks that " as the most learned and sensible Pa3dobaptists dift'or very widely from one another in reference to this affair, so it is not uncommon for the same author to be manifestly inconsistent with himself." Having evidenced this, he leaves " the reader to judge whether wo may not safely conclude that a consistent and plausible defence of infant baptism is no easy task." — Peed. Ex., vol. ii, pp. 46-49. Mr. Booth also says : " The reasoning of our opponents on this branch of the subject is very remarkable. First they labour to prove that the infants of godly per- sons are in the covenant of grace, together with their parents. An exalted privilege this, it must be allowed. Many of them, notwithstanding, when they explain their meaning fully, declare it is only the external administration of that covenant which they intend. This very much sinks the former idea. For that is like proclaiming those infants heirs of the kingdom and ascertaining their enjoyment of it ; while this exhibits the glorious object, but leaves it quite uncertain whether they shall ever have a heart so much as to seek it. The former is like the sun in his meridian blaze ; the latter is like a glow-worm just visible at mid-night. One secures their final salvation ; the other may be an innocent occasion of their aggravated sin. Our brethren tell us, however, that this external administration has two seals annexed to it by our Sove- reign Lord. Surelj', then, as the gi-and privilege of being in the covenant is already reduced to an interest in the external administration of it, this administration itself will bo left entire for the use of these distingiiished infants. But even this cannot be granted. For though these two sui:>x)osed seals most certainly belong to that external administration of which they speak, yet the highly-favoured infants must not, at any rate, have more than one of them. After all, therefore, their prerogative above the children of heathens amounts only to this : They are interested in an external admin- istration of the covenant — an administration, too, that is but half confirmed, as having but one of its two seals appended to it. They may, indeed, if they die in their infancy, be completely saved ; yet not in virtue of the fore-mentioned interest, for that ascer- tains no spiritual blessing, but by Divine grace, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus; and so may the dying children of heathens. They may, also, when grown to years of understanding, have the covenant internally administered to them, by the Divine Spirit producing repentance, faith, and holy obedience in their hearts 270 SUBJECTS OF BAPTISM. and lives ; but neitlier is this peculiar to them, for whoever believes in Jesus Christ shall be saved."— PtptL Ex., vol. ii, jip. 03, 64. Dr. S. Stennett says : '• The practice of affixing' seals to covenants is of very early date. The use and intent of it is, to bind the parties contracting to the fulfilment of the conditions agreed on between them ; and to preserve, to that end, an authentic proof of the transaction. In ancient times, and when writing was not so generally used as it is now, covenants were only sealed, and not subscribed. And the persons who sealed were of three denominations, the contracting pa,rties, the witnesses of the transaction, and the magistrate or presiding cfiicer in the coxu't where a copy of the instrument was lodged. Now, if this be the practice alluded to, there is an impropriety in the phrase itself, of persons having a right to the seals of the covenant; for if seal- ing be, as you have seen, a matter rather of duty than of right, to use this kind of language is much the same as to say that persons have a right to do their duty. But what I have principally to observe is, that it follows from this account of sealing, that interest in a covenant does not in all instances give persons a right to the seal of it, or, in other words, make it their duty to affix their seal to it. A person may be in- eluded in a covenant or benefitted, who is no way a party to it, and whose signatiire, therefore, is not at all requisite. Children, for instance, freqixently derive advantages from covenants which, with all the authentic forms of them, existed long before they were born" (Ans., pp. 105, 106). — This is written in remembrance of the command once given to circumcise certain male children, and in remembrance of the lacking precept to baptize any infants. In confirmation of some of the preceding from Tombes, &c., let the reader medi- tate on the following from Baxter. — " 1. — Baptism was never instituted by God to be a seal of the absolute promise of the first special grace ; but to be the seal of the covenant properly so called, wherein the Lord engagcth Himself conditionally to be our God, to jiardon, justify, adopt, and glorify us ; and we engage ourselves to bo His people, and so to perform the said condition." "2. — As baptism was not instituted to be the seal of the absolute covenant, so neither to be an instrument to confer the grace in that covenant pro- mised." " 3. — Baptism is both a seal of the proper conditional covenant of grace, and a, means of conveying the good therein promised, according to the capacity of the sub- ject." "4. — Baptism is instituted to seal, even to infants, the promise of pardon, justification, adoption, and glory, and liereby to bo a means of making over or con- ferring these benefits upon them." "5. — Baptism is such a sea! and means of conveyance in probability to all the infants of true believers, their church membership and visible Christianity being certain. And if any will add that it certainly conveyeth these relative benefits to them all, I will not contradict." "6. — Besides these relative benefits, baptism is a means of increasing inward grace, and so making a real change upon the souls of those that have faith and the use of reason." " 7. — Baptism woi-k- eth all this only as a moral instrument, by signifying and so working on the soul, and by sealing and so conveying a legal right to the benefits of that covenant, but not as physical instruments, hj proper real efficiency on the soul." " 8. — Baptism is nottho first principal instrument of the aforesaid conveyance ; but only it complcteth by solemnization and obligation that conveyance which was before effectually, currently, and certainly made by the covenant." "9.— Baptism doth convey and seal the afore- said benefits to none but the children of true believers, and not to the children of hypocrites." " 10. — Though baptism thus seal and convoy the relative benefits of the covenant to infants, and a right to some real benefits, yet was it never instituted to bo an instrument for the working of the first real gracious change upon the soul, or for the infusing the first habit or seed of special grace into the soul ; no, nor for the effecting of any real mutation on the so'als of infants at all, either hy infusing the first or subsequent grace." — These tnn positions have, among other things, the following confirmation. "Infants have that faith which is the condition of the covenant in their parents. The parent's faith is the condition for himself, and his children till they come to the use of reason themselves." " It is utterly unknown to any man oji earth, and unrevea,leil in the word, whether God give infants usually any inherent special grace or not." " But if He do, it is far more likely that He gives it before baptism by virtue of tliat covenant which saith, TJic seed of thcrightcoiis isllesscdarnl holy; than tliat baptism should be institntcd to confer it." "The aged being, 1, the most fully capable sul)jectH ; 2, and the greater part of the world when baptism was instituted, v/ho were to be partakers of it ; 3, and the most excellent and eminent subjects ; 4, and of v/hoin Scriptxiro fully speaks, aiul but darkly of infants ; there- fore it is most evident, that the full .and proper ends why God instituted the ordinance, is rather to be fetched from the aged than from infants" (I'l. h'cr. Pr., pp. 294-301). — When men reason in a circle, iu evident contradiction of themselves, or in acknow- JEWISH PEOSELYTE BAPTISM. 271 ledged obscurity, you may infer from ono sentence that tliey are evangelical as Paul, from a second that thoy are heretical as the Pope of Rome, and from a third, that you know not -what their sentiments are. The words of Baxter next to the preceding quo- tation are: " If the very baptism of infants itself bo so dark in the Scripture, that the controversy is thereby become so hard as wo find it," &c. He is opposing a high church Psedobaptist when thixs speaking of infant baptism ; and, while confessing tho obscurity of infant baptism in God's word, ho is writing a book which he entitles "Plain Scripture Proof of Infants' CJmrch-memhershix) and baptism." SECTION XIV. ON INFANT BAPTISM AS COREOBOEATED BY JEWISH PEOSELYTE BAPTISM. Bp. Sherlock.—" What is matter of institution depends wholly upon the Divine will and pleasure." — Pres. ag. Po., p. 419. P. Martyr. — " It is necessary that we should have a clear testimony from the holy Scriptures coucerniug sacraments." — In Booth's Pml. Ex., vol. i, p. 19. A. Hall.—" The appointments of the Deity concerning His worship are not to be gathered from the uncertain tradition of tho elders."— Gos. Wor., vol. i, p. 80. If from Scripture or any other source it could be proved that proselj-to baptism existed among tho Jews previous to the Divine ordination of bap- tism as recorded in tho New Testament, I will admit that it might bo supposed, that God would adopt it in toto, that along with the proselyte's immersion of himself there would be also the immersion of his children. But whether or not this was the case, would havo to bo determined from the character of the Divine baptism as proved from tho precepts and precedents recorded in Divine revelation. Entertaining the supposition of God's adoption of a previously-existing baptism, it might appear singu- lar, when first thinking of it, that the surname of Baptist should havo been given to our Lord's fore-runner, as if to distinguish him in the matter of tho immersion, while he was but performing what had a previous existence and was a common practice, except that the previous one was self- immersion. It might also appear very perplexing that the Jews should, under such circumstances, demand John's authority to baptize if he were "not that Christ, nor Elias, neither that prophet." Nor would tho be- wilderment cease on being told that John baptized Jews, while previously the Jews had baptized only Gentile proselytes, the cognomen having sole reference to the action. The perplexity would attain its completeness on reading and reflecting on the facts that John baptized in Jordan those that confessed their sins ; that his baptism was that of repentance, he also *' sajdng unto the people that they should believe on Him who should come after him ;" that Jesus commanded His apostles to go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them ; to go "into all the world and preach the gospel to every creature," adding, "He that believeth and is baptized shall be saved;" and that persons were baptized by the apos- tles when they "received the word," "when they believed" the glad tidings concerning Christ, there being in apostolic times a death to sin, a 272 SUBJECTS OF BAPTISM. putting on of Christ, raid the Ptnswcr of fi good conscience, in baptism. Regarding the records of Scripture as facts respecting John's baptism and Christian baptism, one is disposed to ask. Why darken and pervert Divine precept and instruction by speaking of proselyte baptism, about which the oracles of God and all previous and contemporaneous uninspired writings say not a word, of the existence of which at this period we have not a par- ticle of evidence. Wo may, indeed, refer to Christian fathers, to Jemsh rabbis, or the idolatrous heathen for the import of a word, but not for the sanction of a theological tenet or a Divine ceremony. The intelligent searcher of Scripture will believe with Dr. Fairbairn, that, "as the name of a religious ordinance, baptism belongs to New Testament times," although "under the Old Testament there was a varied use of water" as sj'mbolic of cleansing. Dr. F. refers to several washings, maintaining that there is implied in these a physical operation beyond that of simple immersion, until we come to the time of John the Baptist. His words are: "In certain cases of corporeal defilement, it is possible that the immersion of the body in a bath might have satisfied the demands of the law-giver ; but it could not have done so in the great mass of cases ; the more active form of washing was required in order to symbolize with greater distinctness the idea of religious purification." He also says, " So far, therefore, as regards the institutions of the Old Covenant and the Scriptures of that covenant, a small approach only is made toward that state of things which meets us at the gospel era, when the fore-runner of our Lord comes forth with a specific ordinance of bfiptism." — Imjh Bib. Die. Art. Ecijk The reasoning of very many Prcdobaptists on Jewish proselyte baptism and the baptism of infants has been in accordance with the following from Ecv. A, Scott : " Supposing the Church Missionary Society at London, should send out a minister to some heathen nation, with a command to preach the gospel, and to baptize all the converts he might make, would ho not have reason to conclude that his orders to baptize included children as well as their parents ? Should some person there object, that chikken were not mentioned in his instructions, ho might very properly reply, that children were undoubtedly included in the command he had received to baptize, because such was the practice of the church to which he belonged, and he had no orders to deviate from it. And must not every reasonable man allow that such a minister would be commanded to baptize infants, though infants were not expressly mentioned in his instructions ? The same argument applies to the command which the apostles received from Christ, because it was the custom of the church to which they belonged to baptize infants" fOii Bap., pp. 8, 9). — I shall not dwell on the implied acknowledgment in this extract, that our commission from Christ is to baptize converts ; nor dwell on the inferring of a positive rite from silence, but proceed (at least shortly) to the consideration of a Christian rite being divinely-instituted, though not mentioned, because a similar rite is sup- posed to have had a previous, but, I must say, unrevealcd existence. Dr. Hammond deemed the foundation for infant baptism as "being far more fitly laid" in Jewish proselyte baptism, which was "common to both sexes," than in circumcision, which "belonged only to one." Dr. Light- JEWISH PROSELYTE BAPTISM. ^73 foot, on tlie ground of Jewish proselyte baptism, deems it "enough to mention that Christ estabhshed ba2:»tism for an ordinance under the gospel, and then it was well enough known who should be baptized" through that baptism, of which not a syllable is anywhere recorded till ages after Christ=> (In Stennett's Ans., p. 187). Matthew Henry says that " it was custom- ary among the Jews to admit proselytes into their church by baptism," and that John, " in conformity to this sacred custom," "admitted persons his disciples by the same rite" (Tren. on Bap., p. 2). Is this in happy harmony with the words of Jesus : "The baptism of John, whence was it ? from heaven, or of men ?" While proselyte baptism had its origin no one knows when or where, of Christian baptism and the Lord's Supper we can say with Dr. Stacey, " Singularly precise and definite in their origin, they are also pre-eminently peculiar in their character and use. ' They are symbols and not truth' — strictly positive institutions, depending for their existence on mere authority — not essential to the simple conception of the gospel, but instrumental to its main design." They "were established by the Divine Founder of our faith towards the close of His earthly ministry ; the one the evening preceding His death, the other shortly before His ascension" (p. 3). Thus coming to the law and the testimony, and if illustration, or confu-mation on any point is needed, seeking and finding it in apostolic practice and subsequent inspired records, we reject the idea of Dr. Stacey that in the positive institution, baptism, there needed no express mention of children, and that express prohibition was required if they are not rightful subjects. When our brother departs from 2)recepts and precedents on this positive institution, and draws his conclusions on the proper subjects of baptism from a "kind of organic connexion" of Jewish children with the commonwealth, from their being " holy to the Lord," and forming part of a holy nation, among a people attaching special significance to "the names of family, tribe, and people," he concludes that all children are rightful subjects of baptism, and that "their initiation into the Divine covenant" was " a matter of course," that did not " require a special reference ;" as from other ratiocination he concludes that all adults of every character that in the whole world are unbaptized, are enjoined subjects of baptism. If John's baptism from heaven were simj^ly an adoption of the prose- lyte baptism previously invented by men, why did not the Jews, when asked whether John's baptism was from heaven or of men, say that John * Dr. Lightfoot, speaking of the mistake of tliose who thinit the Old Testament was pointed by the wise men of Tiberias, thus speaks of the rabbiunical Talmudists : " I do not wonder at the impudence of the Jews who invented the story ; but I wonder at the credulity of Christians who applaud it. Recollect, I beseech you, the names of the rabbis of Tiberias, from the first situation of the university there to the time that it expired ; and what, at length, do you find, but a kind of men mad with Pharisaism, bewitching with traditions, and bewitched, blind, guileful, doting, they must pardon me if I say magical and monstrous ? Men, how unfit, how unable, how foolish for the undertaking so divine ! Read over the Jerusalem Talmud, and see there how R. Judah, R. Chaninah, &c., and the rest of the grand doctors among the rabbis of Tiberias behave them- selves ; how earnestly they do nothing; how childishly they handle serious matters; how much of sopliistry, froth, poison, smoke, nothing at all, there is in their disputes 1 And if you can believe the Bible was pointed in such a school, believe also all that the Talmudists write" (In Dr. Stennett's Ans., &c., pp. 188, 189). Also Dr. Stennett, on the authority of passages cited by Dr. Gale, says : " Some of the Jewish rabbis plainly intimate they neither knew nor allowed of such an initiatory rite, ridiculing Christian baptism as a novel ceremony, not founded in reason, but mere fancy." — Ans., p. 194. T 274 SUBJECTS OF BAPTISM. had taken it from the Fathers, by whom m their wisdom it had been invented, and through whom it had been adopted without authority from God, from Moses, or the prophets ? It may also be said, Why did the Pharisees, notoriously attached to traditions, refuse the baptism by John which had such an origin ? It might further be asked, Is such an origin of John's baptism worthy of him who insisted on a change of mind and life, who "in the spirit and power of Elias," came " to bear witness of the Light, that all men through him might believe," who made " straight the way of the Lord, as said the prophet Esaias," worthy of him who heralded the Redeemer of men, and led the way to His final, spiritual, and perfect dispensation ? Does it commend itself to our judgment that a knowledge of Christ's will on baptism must be ascertained from pharisaic, rabbinnical, and condemned traditions, and not from Divine revelation ? Jewish proselyte baptism, according to the testimony of Home (Intro., vol. iii, p. 280), was administered to children born before the parent be- came a proselyte, but not to those born afterwards. Why our Predobap- tist friends difier in sentiment and practice from the Jews who deemed further baptism to be unnecessary after the baptisms on receiving the proselyte, I will not say. Erskine and Fisher, in explaining the Westmin- ster Assembly's Shorter Catechism, teach that the Jews long before Christ's time received their proselytes by baptism, " but not by any Divine institu- tion." Baptism, they say, had "a Divine warrant and institution, when God sent John to baptize" (p. 288). Dr. Lange, however (Com., vol. i, p. 112), believes that pi-oseljiie baptism " originated after the destruction of the temple" by the Romans. "Before that," says he, " proselytes were admitted by circumcision and the offering of a sacrifice ; which latter, like every other sacrifice, was preceded by a Levitical purification with water, which the proselyte administered to himself." Baptism "began," he teaches, " on the desert banks of Jordan," with " special Divine appoint- ment," and was really a new ordinance." The language of a Baptist is : *' If the Jews did baptize proselytes, the question as to the extent to which their baptism resembled that of our Lord, must depend upon the question what our Lord's baptism really was : which can be determined only by the commands and practice of John the Baptist, of Himself, and His apostles, as distinguished from all Jewish observances whatever" (Prim. Ch. Marf., p. 56G. 1844). — After exposing what two or three eminent writers have advanced on this foundation for the baptism of infants, from which the abhorred exalting of tradition and degrading of Divine revelation is inseparable, some concessions will be adduced. Dr. BusHNELL teaches that baptism was "a re-application of proselyte baptism" (Chris. Nur., p. 143). He quotes from Dr. Lightfoot, that " since the baptism of infants was f amilarly practised in the admission of proselytes, there was no need that it should be confirmed by express precept, when baptism came to be an cvang-elieal sacrament. For Christ took baptism as He found it, and the whole nation knew per- fectly well that little childi-en had always been baptized" (p. 144). Because baptism appears to be familiar to Nicodemus from our Lord's conversation with him, it is pre- sumed— in forgetfulness of John's baptism as then a well-known ordinance from heaven — that Nicodemus must then have been well acquainted with Jewish proselyte baptism ! The Rev. C. Short thus replies to Dr. Bushnell : " 1. — The two cases are so entirely distinct that they cannot be compared. The ceremony of proselytes was a JEWISH PPvOSELYTE BAPTISM. 275 ceremony of naturalization, a rite of an outward cleansing, denoting that those who had been heathens now became members of the Jewish nation ; and which could he applied to infants with as much propriety as to adults. But the baptism of Christ was to be the sign of an inward change, that they were born again of the Spirit, and had become members of the kingdom of heaven, and, therefore, could not be applied to infants without assuming their spu-itual regeneration — an assumption which none but high churchmen dare to make. 2. — The baptism of proselytes and their children is without scriptural authority. The Old Testament has no command for it, but pre- scribes circumcision as the only rite for the admission of proselytes. To make this rite of human invention the foundation for infant baptism is to rest their cause upon ground that will surely sink from imder them. 3. — Biit the conclusive answer to all their argiiments from the baptism of proselytes is, there is no proof of any such custom existing till after the time of our Lord. Prof. Plumptvee, a Ptedobaptist, in an elaborate article on the subject in Dr. Smith's Bible Dictionary, sums up his conclu- sions in the following words : — ' There is no distinct evidence of the practice being in use before the destruction of Jerusalem. The statements of the Talmud as to its having come from the fathers are destitute of authority.' 2. — ' It is, however, not improbable that there may have been a reflex influence in the matter from the Christian upon the Jewish church.' It is, at all events, more probable that proselyte baptism was derived from Christian baptism than that Christian baptisn was derived from proselyte baptism."— J5oj). 3Iag., pp. 222, 22.3. 1865. Dr. Stagey asserts that "baptism, the substitute of circumcision, was_ not unknown" to the apostles ; that baptism •' was only the adoption and higher designa- tion of a ceremony already in existence ;" that one of the " divers baptisms"iamong tlie Jews " was an ablution with water, by which proselytes from heathenism were admitted to the profession and privileges of Judaism ;" that " the direct evidence for this" is " derived chiefly from Jewish ecclesiastical literature;" that Maimonides, a Jewish rabbi of the twelfth century, teaches that this proselyte baptism has been the custom " in all ages ;" that though he " may possibly exceed the truth in affirming this," '■ that proselyte baptism was known in the early part of the third century, the Jewish Talmud sufficiently demonstrates;" that "Dr. Lightfoot and others have extracted the clearest testimonies in support of the existence" of proselyte baptism " within the seventh century ;" and that the Mishna, being a collection of traditions, " the rite, it may fairly be presumed, was not unknown at the commencement of the Christian era !" This is also corroborated by '"the obvious familiarity of the Jewa with baptism." Instead of reasoning that great multitudes going to John to be baptized proves their satisfying con\'iction that the rite was of Divine oricjin, he reasons that this proves his baptism to be well known through a 'previous existence of the ceremony ! The question of the Jews to John, ' Why baptizest thou then if thou be not that Christ, nor Elias, neither that prophet?" instead of confounding those who plead for baptism as a common and well-kno^vn i^revious practice, is actually supposed to corroborate such an idea ! Nicodemus, who must have known well the baptism of John, and who in all probability had received his baptism, because of his supposed knowledge of baptism is supposed to supply fiu-ther corroboration of the previous existence of proselyte baptism (The Sac., pp. 143-146) I — By an oblivion of facts recorded in God's word, and by inferences from unfounded hypotheses accepted as facts, strong assertions in favour of infant baptism, as of many other eiTors, can be made. Dr. Halley on Jewish proselyte baptism I applaud and condemn. He frankly states that the highest Predobaptist testimony in disbelief of its existence in apostolic times can be adduced. He admits on the support of infant baptism from Jewish proselyte baptism, that " whatever weight it may have, it rests ultimately not upon Scripture, but upon a custom of the Jews." He therefore exalts not arguments from this " to the rank of scriptural evidences," but considers "them on the lower ground of human probability" (vol. xv, p. 70). He nevertheless can say, " I think the theory of proselyte baptism quite sufficient to explain the allusions of the New .Testament" (vol. X, p. 127). "We have seen," says he (vol. xv, p. 90), "that the unrestricted commission was given to the Jews, whose religious rites of discipling were uniformly administered to the children of proselytes, together with their parents." His own great argument for the baptism of infants is not the supposition of a previously existing baptism that embraced infants, but the supposed commission of Christ to baptize every one, exceptions that are deemed accordant with reason and the spirit of revelation being allowed, but none believed to be mentioned in God's word. Dr. H., however, believes that " both baptism and the Lord's Slipper were founded upon Jew- ish practices" (vol. x, p. 70), while " the notion of a concession to Jewish prejudice i3 wholly gratuitous or rather absolutely false." Dr. H, believes that " our Lord adopted 276 SUBJECTS OP BAPTISM. the rites of the Jews, and what is remarkable, rites unauthorised by the law of Moses, and consecrated them to be the symbolic services of His church ; yet in their new form they must have been directly opposed to every Jewish prejudice" (p. 70). He cannot believe with his brethren that baptism is in the place of circumcision. The more this is examined and the less satisfactory the hypothesis becomes. Dr. H. ' believes "that the Mishna was arranged in the second century," "theGemaraof Jerusalem and the Babylonish Talmud" "in the next two or three centuries," that the authors of the Mishna and Talmud " may have been weak and foolish men," that their " writings may be filled with idle tales and old wives' fables" (p. 122) ; but their testimony to a matter of fact, as their practising or not practising this proselyte baptism (which no one denies, so far as I know), he will accept. He also maintains that the Jewish law on eating and touching things unclean would in reality require baptism on behalf of every proselj'te. Dr. Halley also believes that according to " the analogy between Jewish and Christian baptism," "the household, comprising the children and servants of the family, were baptized in the apostolic age, when the head of that family offered himself a proselyte for baptism" (p. 121). Whether the baptism of a family means the bap- tism of applicants in the family, as Dr. Halley' s baptizing of all nations is the baptizing of all applicants, or whether there is a certainty that on the baptism of the head aU the members will — and not irreverently — solicit the same, or whether to a definite or an indefinite age compulsion was adopted, the rest being left to their own judgment and will, and this means the baptism of the household, I will not affirm. It might by some be maintained that through the organic unity of a family the application for baptism by the head, was an application also by the children and servants, from which I conceive it would be easy to infer that the baptism of the head was the baptism of the entire household ; but Dr. H. does not belong to this class of persons. He pleads, however, in favour of infant baptism, that no " Jewish purification," no " Jewish ceremony of any kind, was restricted to the pious, or restricted to adults ;" that "Judaism was in the most extensive sense national, and every part of its ritual belonged equally and indiscriminately to all the children of Israel" (p. 127). This reasoning from what he calls " the visible church or kingdom of Israel" (p. 124) would favour the sentiments of Broad Churchmen, and encourage national establishments of Christianity, and the entire commingling of the church and the world, equally with the baptism of infants. In circumcision, one Jewish rite, there was a distinction of sex, although not of character or age. It is maintained by Dr. H. that "the Jews were accustomed to baptize the infanta of proselytes together with their parents, and so to incorporate them into the kingdom of Israel" (p. 129) ; but he advocates from this their baptism, at the same time refusing their admission into the church. He maintains that according to Jewish rule, from which he pleads for the baptism of infants, " as was the parent, so was the child," but while ho will baptize parent and child who will without irreverence be baptized, he will receive to membership each one only on his own credible profession of faith in Christ. He admits that " we have no right to assume" " without historical evidence," and yet he gives us a lecture, the chief part of which maintains " that previously to the time of our Lord, the baptism of proselytes was customary among the Jews," an hypothesis resting entirely on assumption. He admits tlie silence of " Scripture" on Jewish proselyte baptism, and considers that nothing beyond a "probability" can be affirmed (vol. xv, p. 70) ; Ijut he asserts on ablutions by the Mosaic law and by tradi- tion that " the question of importance is, Was the baptism of proselytes practised by the Jews in the time of our Lord ? and if it was, how far may the practice assist us in interpreting the commission to baptize all the nations" (vol. x, p. 95) ? " The question of imjiortancc," and associated with ascertaining the import of the commission, is one to which God's revelation gives no reply ! If such had been " the question of import- ance," or of considerable aid " in interpreting the commission," our loving Saviour would not have sent us or left us to the searching of rabbinnical traditions. How much more worthy does Dr. H. appear when reasoning with the Friends, and teaching them that baptism and the Lord's Supper " did not belong to ' the command- ment going before,' but to ' the better hope,' which was brought in with baptism and commemorated in the Supper" (p. 63); that " John's baptism was from heaven and not of men;" and that to this baptism Jesus submitted, not in condescension to Jewish prejudices, but that He might fulfil all righteousness. Nor are some of the words of Dr. H. in reference to baptismal regeneration inapplicable here. He says : " Believing that the doctrine in question has no apostolical authority, wo are iinder no obhgation to admit for it an antiquity higher than that which can be clearly x^roved from existing records" (p. 194). The origin of Jewish proselyte baptism previous to apostolic times, as I maintain, " is not to be assumed without evidence, and no evidence JEWISH PEOSELYTE BAPTISM. 277 can be adduced that will connect it with the apostolic age" (p. 194). Dr. H. teaches that if Dr. Lig-htfoot's assertion is correct, that "the Jews were as familiar with the baptism of infants as with their circumcision, the commission to baptize the nations could have been understood in no other sense than as including' their children.'' But he says, " On this reasoning let me observe, whatever weight it may have, it rests xiltimately not upon Scriptiire, but upon a custom of the Jews." Yea, he says,"! decline the aid of the rabbi, who comes to me with his rolls of venerable parchments, to toll me that his fathers always baptized the children of their proselytes." " I am not disposed to endorse the gospels with a superscription of Chaldaic authorities." " This commission [of our Lord] is best illustrated by the subsequent conduct of the apostles. Their sense of the words is to be ascertained from their own practice." Yet he has a whole lecture to shew " that it is exceedingly probable, if not morally certain, that the infant children of proselytes to Judaism were baptized with their parents ! ' ' Dr. P. Fairbairn, already quoted, refen-ing to the idea of Jewish proselyte bap- tism as existing before the times of Christ, an idea generally entertained in Dr, Wall's time, says ; "Later and more discriminating investigations, however, have shewn this view to be untenable." He says that " there is no evidence of a Jewish proselyte baptism till about the fourth century of the Christian era." " So far, therefore," says he, "as regards the institutions of the Old Covenant, and the Scriptures of that cove- nant, a small approach only is made toward that state of things which meets us at the gospel era, when the fore-runner of oiu* Lord came forth with a specific ordinance of baptism, as an initiatory rite to bo administered to all who listened to his word ; and at a later period the apostles received through such an ordinance all believers into the church of Christ" (Imp. Bib. Die. Art. Bap.), In his Hermeneutical Blmiual, he says, " So far as the direct evidence goes, the very utmost that can be said is, that indications appear of Jemsh proselyte baptism as an ejdsting practice during the fourth century of the Christian era. And as there is no historical ground for supposing it to have been then originated, it may, with some probability, be held to have been commonly in operation for a certain time previously. But if we inquire wlien, or ?iott', we can find no satisfactory answer, all is involved in uncertainty." — p. 275. Dr. E. DE Pressense thus writes : " Considered from an apostolic point of view, baptism would be allied neither to circumcision, nor to the baptism which was admin- istered to proselytes under Judaism. There is between it and circumcision aU the difference which exists between the theocracy into which one enters by birth, and the chiu'ch into which one enters by conversion. It is in direct connexion with faith ; that is to say, with the most free and the most individual act of the human soul. As to the baptism administered to Jewish proselytes, it accompanied circumcision, and had the same signification. It washed the neophyte and his family from the filth of paganism, and indicated his incorporation and that of his children into the Jewish theocracy : its character was essentially national and theocratic. Christian baptism does not tra,nsmit itself by right of inheritance any more than faith. This is the grand reason that makes us believe that in the apostolic age it was not administered to infants. We cannot quote any positive fact in the New Testament that proves infant baptism : the historic proofs that have been alleged are insufficient. There is only one doubtful case : and those who attach more importance to the general spirit of the New Testament than to an isolated text, do not hesitate to contest all its worth. Besides, if we must confess that the baptism of infants began to invade the church in the second century, the principal idea of baptism still clings to it in all its essential elements. The rule is to require a living faith of those who demand it ; it is surrounded with solemn guarantees ; it is prefaced by three years of instruction ; and it is admin- istered only after multiplied and vigorous proofs." " The baptism of infants, far from being traced back to the apostles, is an innovation which coincides with the prevalence of Episcopal notions." A. Booth might well say, " The demand of Nonconformists upon their Episcopalian brethren is : Produce yo\{,r warrant (for this, that, and the other) from our only rule of faith and practice — a Bivinc precept or an apostolic exampile, relating to the point in dispute. So important is this principle, respecting everything of a positive nature in Christianity, that I can hardly imagine any sensible Protestant would ever think of writing against the Popish system ; or any conscientious Dissenter of justifying his Nonconformity, withoiit availing himself of it in many cases. Nay, so obvious and so important is this principle, so congenial to that grand maxim, the Bible only is THE RELIGION OF PROTESTANTS ; that WO might Well wonder if a judicious author omitted it, when handling the doctrine of positive rites, except it appeared that he laboured to establish some hypothesis to which this principle is inimical" (Peed. Ex., yol. i, p. 20). — If we derive baptism from rabbinnical invention and ordination, mus^ 278 SUBJECTS OF BAPTISM. not rabl^inical writings be consulted, even if along with inspired documents, that we may be certified " how far and to what age, the child of a proselyte could be along with him ?" Basnage, on the Jewish baptizing of proselytes, says, •' This custom is not so old as is generally believed." Dr. Laednee. — " As for the baptism of Jewish proselytes, I take it to be a mero fiction of the rabbis." " A Jewish rite," says Mr. Booth, " respecting which the Bible is profoiindly silent, becomes the pedestal for a Christian ceremony ; and one presump- tion is erected upon another." J. Burnet rightly says: "Shall we adopt every custom of the Jews, without a Divine sanction, that prevailed at the time of John the Baptist ? If we do, we must adopt those ' traditions of the elders' by which ' the law of God was made void ;' for they all prevailed at that time as religious authorities among the Jews. We are bound, therefore, to reject everything that is brought before us, in connexion with Jewish usages at the time of our Lord Jesus Christ, that is not enjoined by the law of Moses, or sanctioned by the Kedeemer Himself. We have no other course to adopt if we would avoid the obligation to receive ' all the traditions of the elders.' We must receive them all, or take ground upon which we can discriminate between those we are to receive and those we are to reject ; and what g-roiind can we take, but the ground to which I have referred F" — Tivea. Lee, pp. GG, 67. Dr. R. Hawker. — " Baptizing was altogether a new rite in the church, and prob- ably John was called the Baptist on that account, for he was the first who used it." — Com., on Matt, iii, 1-4. T. Bradbury. — " I know it is said that the Jews had a method of baptizing among them, and that oiu- Saviour only fixed it with His disciples as He found it with His countrymen : — but the Bible itself will not allow me to think as these men do, whatever their learning is." " Nothing can be more apparent than that the Jews expected that the person who brought baptism among them must be either the Messiah Himself, or one of His fore-runners. This was the question of the priests and Levites who camo from Jerusalem to ask John whether he was the Christ, or Elias, or that prophet. And they that were sent were of the Pharisees, a people diligent to know the law, and zealous to advance it. Therefore they ask him further, ' Why baptizest thou then, if thou be not the Christ, nor Elias, nor that prophet ?' And Johu in his answer shews us, that though the Jews mistook in a circumstance, yet they were right in their notion. I knew Him not, says he, but that He should be manifest to Israel, ' there- fore am I come' baptizing with water. . . . The apostle in his sermon at Antioch (though he abounded in Jewish learning) seems to say, that they never heard of any baptizing before John (Acts xiii, 24, 25). John first preached before Christ the bap- tism of repentance to all the people of Israel ; and as he fulfilled his course, he said, ' Whom think ye that I am ? I am not He.' . . . From which things I conclude that the first time that ever the church heard of baptism, was in reference to a person who was actually then among them, and after a few weeks was to be declared and shewn forth to Israel. . . . To fetch it from the Jews, and especially from those traditional services that obtained in their church, is a wild imagination, and no better than seeking the living among the dead. They had divers washings and carnal ordinances, but our baptism was not one of them ; for these were only imposed on the people till the time of reformation. And, therefore, as they were all to be abolished, we cannot suppose that any of those worldly elements shoiild be transplanted into our religion, to leave any remains of bondage upon the glorious liberty of the sons of God. . . . Both these solemnities [baptism and the holy Supper] are represented as no more than fragments of Judaism. As if there was any propriety in our Lord's telling the disciples that ' all power was given to Him both in heaven and in earth,' only to recommend a scrap of an old religion ; or as if the apostle had any need to say he had received that of the Lord, which he received hjthe tradition of his fathers." •—In Booth's Pee. Ex., vol. ii, pp. 1, 2. Deylingius. — " The baptism of proselytes, in our opinion, seems to have been received by the Jews after the time of John the Baptist ; they being very much influenced by his authority, and greatly admiring him. Certainly it cannot be proved by any substantial testimony, that it was in use among the Jews before the time of John." — Ohs. Sa., ois. xxvi, p. 197. More on the Jewish Proselyte Baptism may bo seen in Hand-book, vol. i, pp. 80-86, and Booth's Vtid. Ex., vol. ii, pp. 1-33, from the latter of which I extract the following : " ' The baptism of John,' says our Lord, ' was it from heaven, or of men ? answer me.' Now, had it been, as many of our brethrsn suppose, a well-known custom before our Saviour's time to baptize proselytes, it would have been easy for those priests, and gcribes, aad elders, to have replied, ' It was/rofn men. It originated among our fathers JEWISH PEOSELYTE BAPTISM. 279 before John was born.' . . . Baptism is called tlie counsel of God. But had it been practised iu the admission of proselytes before the ministry of John com- menced, it could not have been so denominated, because it would have been the device of men ; for none of our brethren, so far as I have observed, pretend to demonstrate the Divine institution of this Je-ndsh initiatory bathing." Fm-ther, "Can it be imagined that our Lord should appoint baptism for all His disciples ; that He should give them a body of doctrine and a code of law in His New Testament ; and, after all, merely refer them to the writings of His enemies — those writings which are the regis- ters of their own pride, and madness, and shame — vrritings, too, of which, perhaps, a great majority of Christians never heard, nor had it in theii- power to read — in order to leani whom He intended to be baptized ? . . . Further : admitting this rabbinical rite was practised in the time of our Lord, it is, notwithstanding, highly unreasonable to consider it as a rule of administering Christian baptism. For if a rule, it must be cither partial or complete. That it is the latter, Pffidobaptists in general do not pre- tend. Thus, for instance, Dr. Doddridge : ' If we were to allow it to be such as tho rabbles in after ages describe it [and who knows anything about it by any other means ?] , then it can never be imagined that our Lord would direct His apostles in all respects to conform themselves to it ; and if not in all, who can say exactly in how many?' Aye, who indeed ! It must be treated, therefore, as a partial rule ; a nUo with certain limitations. How far, then, and in what respects must it be applied ? To the mode, or the subjects, or the circumstances, or the effects of the ordinance ? If to the mode ; not pouring or sprinkUng, but immersion (terrifying as it is to many, and that nahcd, too, as Danzius assiu'cs us) must be constantly used : it being notorious, and allowed on all hands, that the proselyte baptism was not anything short of plunging in water. If to the subjects; then it will follow that no native Jew must be baptized — that no uncircumcised male is qualified for baptism — that it must not be administered to a child, with which the mother was pregnant at the time of her ovni baptism — that when a parent is baptized, not only his infant offspring, but his children that are more adva,uced in age, have a claim to the ordinance — that the converts from Judaism, Mohammedanism, and Paganism, but none of their future offspring, while professing Christianity, should be baptized — and that it is not necessary for any candidate to make a credible profession of that faith which is connected ■v^ith salvation ; foritdoe.-i not appear from anything I have observed in writers upon the subject, that such a profession was necessary to the proselyte baptism. If to the cbxumskuiccs of admin- istration ; then it will follow that baptism, to render it lawful, must be x^ei-formed in the presence of three witnesses, who are men of eminence — -that persons may baptize themselves — and that it must not be administered on the Sabbath, on a supposed holy day, or in the night. If to the effects of the ordinance ; then, as represented by tho Jews, the party baptized is like a new-born infant ; he receives a new soul, all his former connections are dissolved, and the obligations arising from them are annihilated ; so that, without the least imputation of a criminal kind, he may contract matrimony with his own sister, his daughter, or his mother. Now to which of these particulars will Christian baptism apply ? Or how far is the rule suggested by this Jewish cus- tom, to be regarded in administering our Lord's appointment ? That it should have some regard, the generality of our brethren maintain ; insisting upon it that our Divine Legislator was less explicit in what He said concerning baptism, because it was frequently practised in those times. . . . Who shall take upon him to say, Thus far the Jewish example operates ; hither the rale suggested by it extends and is binding — but no farther r With what appearance of reason or authority, do any select one particular, in preference to m.any others ; and then argixe from the Jewish to the Christian baptism with reference to that single point ? . . . Whoever believes that our Lord expressed His mind more concisely in relation to baptism, than He would have done, had not the Jewish rite then existed, should certainly pay a more impartial regard to what the rabbles have said concerning their initiatory ceremony ; for the conduct of our opposers in this respect, seems calculated merely to serve a purpose, and proves nothing so much as their want of argument from Divine revelation," — Peed. Ex., vol. ii, pp. 19-29. Dr. S. Stennett says : " Mr. Addington, a Dissenting Pasdobaptist minister, will tcU us (if he may be supposed to have made the opinions of authors he has quoted, pp. 169, 170, his own), I say he will tell us : ' It is true there is no express mention iu the New Testament of baptizing infants ; but, as that was a common thing among the Jews, when oiu* Lord instituted baptism. He no doubt meant that infants should be baptized.' Mr. Wall, a divine of the Church of England, will say, ' Mr. A., you reason weU. But why stop here ?■ The practice of admitting sponsors, as well as- baptizing infants, was in use amon^ the Jews, why then shoiild you object to this laudable cus- tom amongst us i' A diviiie of the Chwcli of Kome will step in and say, ' Gentlemen, 280 SUBJECTS OF BAPTISM. you are both right as far as you go. But why should you object to chrism, and those other ceremonies in use amongst us, since they have also antiquity, as well as the authority of our chui-ch, to recommend them ?' How the matter would be settled among these disputants I will not pretend to say," says he, but he teaches that " the Bible is our religion. If infant baptism is to be found there, practice it ; if not, reject it" (An Alt sv:., &c.,Y)-p. 12, 13). Dr. S. elsewhere says: ''If no such ceremony did prevail in that ago [our Saviour's time], or there is not sufficient evidence of the fact, all the reasoning from it in favoiu' of Christian Pasdobaptism of course fails" (Ans., p. 196). If it then existed, ho teaches that it was not of Divine authority, but belonged to the bold and condemned innovations in religion. And, after speaking of the contradictory statements, that infant baptism owes its origin and authority to circumcision, and to Jewish pi'oselyte baptism, and of certain consequences involved in maintaining that it is traceable to the latter, he says, " If there was no occasion to mention infants, that matter being to be understood of course ; what occasion to give a particular commission about baptizing at all ? might not that have been understood of course likewise " (p. 199) ? Also, says he, " If it was thought fit formally to insti- tute baptism, was it not natural to expect that the proper subjects of it should be described with the same precision that the ordinance itself is described ? Or, that if some prior custom was sufficient to direct in the question concerning the proper sub- jects, was it not more natural to suppose the apostles would take John's baptism for their guide, than that of the Jews ? And it is clear, I think, beyond a doubt, that John did not baptize infants." — Ans., pp. 199, 200. Prof. M. Stuart. — " We are destitute of any early testimony to the practice of proselyte baptism, antecedently to the Christian era. The original institution of admittmg Jews to the covenant, and strangers to the same, prescribed no other rite than that of cii-cumcision. No account of any other is found in the Old Testament ; none in the Apocrypha, New Testament, Targums of Onkelos, Jonathan, Joseph the Blind, or in the work of any other Targumist, excepting Pseudo-Jonathan, whose work belongs to the seventh or eighth century. No evidence is found in Philo, Josephus, or any of the earlier Christian writers. How coiild an allusion to such a rite have escaped them all, if it were as common, and as much required by usage as circumcision ? That we cannot point out the exact time when proselyte baptism began among the Jews, is little to the purpose of those who hold to its great antiquity ; for where are the monu- ments which show how and when many a rite began, which came into general reception in the third, fourth, and fifth centuries ? Nor can I think, with many writers, that there is anything mysterious in respect to the adoption of such a rite by the Jewish churches. How obvious the idea, that a heathen man who came over to the Jewish churches, was unclean in his heathen state ! And what could be more natural than to require ablution of him, especially when the days of Pharisaic superstition were fully come ? The rabbins tell us that circumcision, baiDtism, and oblation were all necessary to his initiation. How, then, could the baptism of John, or of Jesus, which was the sole initiatory rite, be derived from the proselyte baptism of the Jews ? Be- sides all this, when a proselyte was once baptized and received, this rite was at an end. His children, born after his reception, were no more required to be baptized than those of the native Jews. What parallel, then, can be drawn between Christian and proselyte baptism ? Be the origin of proselyte baptism as it may, I cannot see that there is any adequate evidence for believing that it existed contemporarily with the baptism of John and Jesus."- -In Bap. Mag., p. 208. 1847. Dr. J. Bennett says : " The Talmud is so replete with folly and filth, that a Jew- ish ediication enfeebles, distorts, and pollutes the mind" {Cong. Lee, vol. viii, p. 238). — Yet from a knowledge of such " folly and filth" we are to learn what is Christian baptism ! Dr. KiTTO, on proselyte baptism as existing before John's, and John's being derived from it, says : " This opinion is not at all tenable ; for as an act which strictly gives validity to the admission of a proselyte, and is no mere accompaiument to his admission, baptism certainly is not alluded to in the New Testament ; while, as to tho passages quoted in proof from the classical (profane) writers of that period, they arc all open to tho most fundamental objections. Nor is tho utter silence of Josephus and Philo on the subject a less weighty argument against this view. It is true that men- tion is made in tho Talmud of that regulation as already existing in the first century A.D. ; but such statements belong only to tlie traditions of the Gemara, and requiro careful investigation before they can servo as proper authority" fCy. Art. Ba}).). "It cannot be questioned," says ho, after stating that there is no distinct e^•idenco that the Jewish proselyte baptism had a higher antiquity than that of John, " that the perpetual similitude and connexion between the cleanness of the body and tho soul, which ran through tho Mosaic law, and had completely interwoven with tho coinmoa ON BAPTISM THEOUGH SPONSORS. 281 language and sentiment, together with the formal enactment of ablution in many cases, which either required the cleansing of some unhealthy taint, or more than usual piu'ity, must have familiarized the mind of the Jewish people witli the ideas on which the higher and more solemn baptismal rite is founded, whether this or something of the kind, had or had not been previously known to them as a distinct and formal observance. The absence of any surprise on the part of the people, or of any charge of innovation against John in respect of his baptism, does not, therefore, as some have urged, prove that the rite was already in use among them." — Dai. Bi. III., vol. iii, pp. 194, 195. SECTION XV. ON INFANT BAPTISM AS JUSTIFIED BY SPONSORS. Arch. Hall. — " We might well say, Woe to the earth ! if it wove in the power of a selfish and peevish order of men, to dispose of happiness and damnation according to their humour." — Got. JFor.jVol. i, p. 288. F. Johnstone. — " Infants cannot obey the command to be baptized, and none is required to obey for them." — The Ori., &c., p 2. L. Coleman. — " The common tradition is, that sponsors were first appointed by Hyginus, or Iginus, a Roman bishop, about the year 154." — Antiq., p. 126. It is frankly admitted by mau}' Episcopalians — and consistency demands this acknowledgment from all who have sworn assent or have promised adherence to the Prayer-book of the Anglican Establishment — that Scrip- ture requires repentance of sin and faith in Christ as the qualification for baptism. The Catechism of this church asks, " What is required of per- sons to be baptized ?" and answers, " Repentance, whereby they forsake sin, and faith, whereby they stedfastly believe the promises of God made to them in that sacrament." It then asks, " Why, then, are infants baptized, when by reason of their tender age they cannot perform them ?" and answers, " Because they promise them both by their sureties : which promise when they come to age, themselves are bound to perform." From the very nature of sin, from the provision of God's grace for its forgiveness, and from God's commanding all men everywhere to repent, there is surely an obligation to repent of sin, independently of anything that may have been done to us or for us when in a state of unconsciousness. And promises then made on our behalf must be approved or condemned as they are rational or irrational, and as they possess or lack Divine authority. J. Stennett (a Baptist), on sponsorial repentance and faith appropriately remarks : " Many Pasdobaptists yet retain this custom, without any authority for it from the holy Scriptiu'es ; and others of them reject it as a human tradition, because it has no foundation in the word of God. The former who continue this usage, thereby declare that repentance and faith are required of persons to be baptized, as is plain from the express words of the Catechism of the Church of England, The latter, who refuse it, thereby declare that no human inventions are to be added to the ordinances of God. Those dare not baptize without sureties, because they dare not baptize without a previous profession of f a,ith and repentance ; these dare not baptize with them, because there is no institution of it in the word of God. The arguments formed on each of these principles are valid, and those that use them press one another hard with them 282 SUBJECTS OF BAPTISM. by turns. But they oppose each other much more successfully than they defend them- selves. For these two principles, if duly attended to, would entirely subvert infant baptism. For if, on the one hand, no person is to be baptized without a previous profession of repentance and faith ; and if, on the other hand, there is no institution of sureties in the word of God, to make such a profession in the name of any person to be baptized ; it will evidently follow, that no person ought to be baptized but he who first makes a profession of faith and repentance in his own person, wliich it is impossible for an infant to do. I must own I cannot but agree with those Pasdobap- tists who are against the use of sponsors in baptism, because there is no Scripture to support that practice ; and I as heartily concur with those others that are against the administration of baptism without a profession of faith and repentance, because such a profession is necessarily pre-recpiired in the primitive institution of the ordinance." Ans., pp. 76, 77. For infants and cliiklrcn, if not for adults, there is this promising of repentance and faith on behalf of another, or this actual repenting and believing by proxy ; for when the questions and answers in the Book of Common Prayer are thoughtfully read, it is difficult, if not impossible, to know the precise meaning of such declarations as, I do in the name of this child renounce the devil and all his works. ... I believe in God the Father Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth, and in Jesus Christ His Son . . . and in the Holy Ghost. ... In this faith I desire to be baptized, and I will obediently keep God's holy will and command- ments, and walk in the same all the days of my life. A¥e do something in the name of another when we do it by his authority ; but sponsors derive not their authority from infants. If what is done in the name of the child at baptism is done on his behalf and as his substitute, then sponsors pro- fessedly repent and believe, renounce the devil, and promise universal and incessant obedience to God in lieu of the child. If the uttering of these sponsorial words in the name of the child means a promise from sponsors that the child shall at a future period repent, believe, and obey, a promise more rash, wicked, and obscurely expressed, it is difficult to conceive. That the words are a promise that the sponsor will prayerfully, constantly, and earnestly put forth his best endeavours in order to the child's enlighten- ment, regeneration, and holiness, it may be asserted ; but no Jesuit on earth can prove that these ideas are expressed b.y the words. A declara- tion of the child's obligation to take upon himself when come to years of discretion the vows of his sponsors, docs not relieve the sponsorial vow from obscurity. Nor does the twenty- seventh Article, which says that ** Baptism is not only a sign of profession, and mark of dift'erence whereby Christian men are discerned from others that be not christened, but it is also a sign of regeneration or new birth." Nor do the words of Mr. Bickersteth release from this perplexity when he says: "The baptized adult must have faith in God's word, or baptism will be to him unprofitable. The parent of the baptized child must have faith in God's promises respecting his children, and must bring them up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord, or he cannot expect benefit : without faith it is impossible to please God" (Chris. Stu., p. 484). If our Episcopalian brethren would consistently adhere to the scriptural requirement of repent- ance and faith in those that arc to be ba])tizcd, they would at once expunge much crudity and error, much absurdity, and much soul- destroying heresy. On these sponsorial declarations and promises, whether made by parents ON BAPTISM THROUGH SPONSOES. 28^ or others, whether referiing to the present experience and future conduct of the baptized, or of the god-fathers and god-mothers, much might be said. The most a'W'ful sight which the writer ever witnessed, or expects on earth ever to ■fitness, was a christening at which he was present immediately after retu-ing one Lord's-day from the tomb of Mr. Mogridge, the justly celebrated Old Humphrey. Around the font were gathered a number of infants and children, and persons intending to be god-fathers and god-mothers for them. Shortly comes a priest in the habiliments such as I suppose to be approved by our legislators for such an official. He ascertains the number of sponsors, whether they make the approved tale for each child. Of the character of these sponsors he appears to know nothing. That there be a sufficient member that each infant and child can truly or legally be christened, appears to be the only inquiry and concern. This ascertained, lessons, prayers, questions, and answers follow — ques- tions of most ambiguous application, but of most comprehensive and momentous import ; after which, and sprinkling of the face, along with words fi'om the priest, and crossing, along with other words, the infants and childi-en are solemnly declared to be "regenerate" and "grafted into the body of Christ's church,'' for which "hearty thanks" are presented to our "most merciful Father." The children are supposed to have promised by their sureties "to renounce the devil and all his works, to believe in God and to serve Him ;" which might encourage the idea that the sureties' words, "I renounce," or I in the name of this child renounce, believe, and will obey, is phraseology absurdly constructed to convey the monstrous promise that these children shall assuredly or now and hence- forward do renounce the devil and all his works, steadfastly believe in the Triune God, and obediently observe all God's commands all the days of their life. The solemn and a\N^ul farce is concluded by the priest's bidding all to take care that these children " be brought to the bishop to be con- firmed by him, as soon as they can say the Lord's Praj-er and the ten commandments in the vulgar tongue, and be fiu'ther instructed in the Church Catechism set forth for that purpose!" Instead of sponsorship being confined to the Roman Catholic, the Greek, and Anglican churches, it is evidently admitted by Pajdobaptist Nonconformists, although they make the real fathers and mothers to bo the sureties, instead of having god-fathers and god-mothers. Dr. Stacet, advocating tlie baptism of infants from the assumption that baptism is in the place of circumcision, says that "a profession of faith in the covenant" ia " representatively given by the parents" ^T/ie iS'oc, p. 139). Faith or its profession representatively given ! His premise and inference I would here reject together. A portion of Nonconformists, unable to gulp the promises of sureties in the Established Chm'ch, are nevertheless by parental faith professedly bringing children into the cove- nant, and thus siimmarily and conveniently ra,ising them to privilege and dignity not out-done by the Chuxcli of England or that of Eome. The one accomplishes the glorious result in the child by his own faith, and makes baptism the sign of its accom- plishment; the other accomplishes it by and in baptism. The consistency of Nonconformists, who reject baptismal regeneration and maintain that bap'tism introduces into the blessings of the New Covenant and membership in the church of Christ, as circumcision (say they) introduced into the Jewish chiu'ch, may be qiiestioned equally with their consistency, or the consistency of others, in maintaining baptismal discipleship and denying baptismal regeneration. If baptism occupies the place divinely given to ciixumcision, if the circumcised Jew, " j'owng or old" (p. 148^; 284 SUBJECTS OF BAPTISM. became by a reception of the rite a member of the Jewish commonwealth, possessing its privileges and responsibilities, then every one by baptism becomes amember of the king-dom or church of Christ. Tliis reasoning is worthy of those who confidently assert that we have a Divine commission to disciple everybody by baptism, and can consequently by baptism make those to be disciples of Christ who remain strangers to godliness, a doctrine which of all others "is not only destitute of foundation, but is a mockery, a delusion, a snare." Dr. T. W. Peile, in his Annotations on 1 Cor. xv, 29, quotes Wells as teaching that ba^ytizcd for the dead means baptized for those Christians (Catechiimens) who have happened to die before they could be baptized ; and as appending to his paraphrase the remark, "that there seems to be no great difference between being thus baptized in the stead of a deceased person, and making the baptismal sponsion in the stead of an infant ; but the one may be allowed as well as the other." Dr. BuNSEN, having taught that in the early church the children of Christians were admitted to baptism in the same way as the children of others, except that their term of probation was shorter, says that " pajdobaptism in the more modern sense, meaning thereby baptism of new-born infants, with the vicarious promises of parents or other sponsors, was utterly unknown to the early church, not only down to the end of the second, but indeed to the middle of the third century." — Hip., vol. ii, p. 106. Dr. Wall, speaking of primitive and present practice, says that "the most material thing by far that was done at baptism was the professions, the sincerity whereof is more to be regarded than the external baptism itself, as St. Peter testifies, 1 Pe. iii, 21. They were constantly and universally required, in the case of grown persons, to be made with their own mouth in the most serious manner ; and, in the case of infants, by their sponsors in their name. That a man may justly wonder at the spirit of con- tradiction in these people" (the Independents and Presbyterians) " that pretend baptism does better without them, and do practise accordingly." He says, " There is no time or age of the church in which there is any appearance that infants were ordinarily baptized without sponsors or god-fathers." Mr. Gibbs admits that " this vicarious profession is one of the original," but also " one of the most absiu-d features of Paedobai^tism ;" and adds, " What can be more opposed to the dictates of reason, and the solemnities of religion, than the baptismal service of ecclesiastical establish- ments ?" • " Remember it is the unconscious babe who is about to be baptized, and by the law of the Church of England it is he that is required to profess faith in the Lord Jesus ; but because of his entire incapacity to fulfil this requirement, she provides sponsors who present themselves as sureties to CTod for the faith and obedience of the child. Who that was a stranger to this mysterious plan of substitution, would not conclude that the si^onsors were the persons about to be baptized in the faith they had so solemnly professed ? Is not this lying in the presence of God ? Is it not trifling with His ordinance ? Is it not offering insult to the dignity of the Christian religion ? Yet this is called holy baptism, and is professedly grounded upon the words of our Lord, ' Go ye, teach all nations, baptizing them :' but do these words indeed countenance the practice of sprinkling babes on the faith of sponsors or of parents ? We would appeal to men of common sense : let them decide this matter." — Def., pp. 163-165. Mr. Gibbs also thus refers to and quotes an eminent Episcopalian divine, who on this has taught how Baptists " may argue." — " Dr. Jeremy Taylor, Bishop of Down, has decided this point against the custom of the Church of England, with a force of reasoning which his brethren of the episcopacy have never been able to answer. Speaking of the council of Nco-cassarea, in which a controversy took place respecting the propriety of baptizing a woman with child, he says : ' The canon speaks reason, and it intimates a practice which was absolutely universal in the church, of interro- gating the catechumens respecting the articles of creed, which is one argument that either they did not admit infants to baptism, or that they did prevaricate egregionsly in asking questions of them, who themselves knew were not capable of giving answer. And to supply their incapacity by the answer of a god-father, is but the samo unreasonableness acted with a worse circumstance : and there is no sensible account can be given of it ; for that which some imperfectly murmur concerning stipulations civil performed by tutors in the name of their pupils, is an absolute vanity : for what, if by positive constitution of the Romans, such solemnities of law are required in all stipulations, and by indulgence arc permitted in the case of a notable benefit accruing to minors, must God be tried, and Christian religion transact her mysteries by propor- tion and compliance with the law of the Romans ! I know God might, if he would, have appointed god-fathers to give answer in behalf of the cliildrcn, and to be fide- jussors for them; but we cannot find any authority or ground that Ho hath, and ON BAPTISM THROUGH SPONSORS. 285 if He had, then it is to be supposed He would have given them commission to ha.ve transacted the solemnity with better circumstances, and given answers with more truth. For the question is asked of believing in the present. And if the god-fathers answer in the name of the child, I do believe, it is notorious they speak false and ridiculously ; for the infant is not capable of believing, and if he were, he were also capable of dissenting, and how then do they know his mind ? And, therefore, Tertullian gives advice that the baptism of infants should be deferred till they conid give an account of their faith ; and the same also is the counsel of Gregory, Bishop of Nazianzen, although he allows them to hasten it in case of necessity ; for though his reason taught him what was fit, yet he was overborne by the practice and opinion of his age, which began to bear too violently upon him ; and yet in another place he makes mention of some to whom baptism was not administered dia nepiotefa, by reason of infancy ; to which, if we add, that the parents of St. Austin, St. Jerome, and St. Ambrose, although they were Christians, yet did not baptize their children before they were thirty years of age, it will be very considerable in the example, and of great eflBcacy for destroying the supposed necessity, or derivation from the apostles.' See Dr. J. Taylor, the Liberty of Prophesying, pp. 340, 341."— De/., pp. 1G5, 166. While one mistakes the meaning of Christ's commission, and pleads from it for authority to baptize every one, such exceptions being also pleaded for as in his judg- ment are rational and accordant with the spirit of revelation, while another baptizes infants on a supposed connexion of cliildren with their parents, and another on supposed organic unity in all the members of a family, transcendent in absui'dity are the senti- ments and practice sanctioned by British senators. J. A. Baxter's Church History of Britain (p. 625) informs us that it was objected at the Savoy Conference, that " we cannot in faith say that every child that is baptized is regenerated by God's Holy Spirit ;" but it was replied that, " Seeing that God'a sacraments have their effects where the receiver doth not ' ponere obicem' put any bar against them (which children cannot do), wo may say in faith of every child that ia baptized, that it is regenerated by God's Holy Spirit." It was further said that St. Paul in Gal. iii, 26, 27, " proves them all to bo children of God, because they were baptized, and in their baptism had put on Christ." Further, "the effect of children's baptism depends neither on their own actual faith and repentance, nor upon the faith and repentance of their natural parents or sponsors, but upon the ordination and institution of Christ ; a position fortified by St. Augustine, who says that ' the infant is answered to have faith, on account of the sacrament of faith, although it has not yet the effect of faith,' that this effect must follow when they come to age, for which also their sponsors charitably undertook on their behalf, and what they do the infant is said to do." Mr. B. also refers to Cranmer (A.D. 1550) as teaching, in accordance with the Eeformed Anglican Church, that " the analogy of the two sacraments is complete ; and that as our regeneration in Christ is spiritual, so our eating and drinking is a spiritual feeding," &c. I admit the opposition of this to popish transubstantia- tion, but also maintain its opposition to infant and indiscriminate baptism. In "The History of Nonconformity as it was argued and stated by Commissioners on both sides in 1661," I find that on the questions, " Dost thou forsake ? &c. ; Dost thou believe ? &c. ; Wilt thou be baptized ?" &c. ; there is this (Presbyterian) objec- tion, " We know not by what right sureties do promise and answer in the name of the infant :" " and we desire that the two first interrogatories may be put to the parents, to be answered in their own names ; and the last propounded to the parents, or pro- parents, thus: Will you have this child baptized into this faith?" It must be admitted, however lacking in scriptural authority the Presbyterian recommendations may be, and however objectionable it may be to talk of baptizing an infantinto any faith, that, unlike what they oppose, they involve in their phraseology no other breach of common sense. The majority of Pfedobaptists throughout the world advocate sponsors in connexion with the baptism of infants ; yet those who believe that this existed in apostolic times are admitted to believe in iitter destitution of evidence. Dr. F. Spanheim, among the "remarkable events" of the second century, has this : "Sponsors admitted to stand for infants in baptism." But I doubt whether the word describing the youth baptized about the close of the second century, is synonymous with infant as generally used among ourselves. It is asserted also by Landon, in his Ecclesiastical Dictionary , that "in the early church," by which expression he appears not to refer to apostolic times, sponsors " were required in all cases," that is, both for adults and infants. — Vol. ii, pp. 12, 13. Dr. Hallet, speaking of faith and baptism as " distinct in their nature," imagines that neither a Tractarian nor a Romanist will " maintain that an infant, when bap- tized, believes on Him of whom it has never heard. Should it be said the infant believes by its sponsors, we reply, witii ag mucli couutenance from Scripture ii may be 286 SUBJECTS OF BAPTISM. said, it is regrenerated in its sponsors" (vol. x, p. 182). Indeed Scripture is as express that the faith of angels, holy or fallen, is a qualification for baptism, as that the faith of parents, or one believing; parent, or of any god-fathers or god-mothers, or of all united, is the qualification for baptism. The faith and repentance of parents, or of one believing parent, pleaded for by Dr. Wardlaw as a qualification for the baptism of infants, is as surely vicarious faith and repentance as these are in the Anglican church, unless the connexion of the child with the parent is such that the child actually believes or is an unbeliever along with the parent. Vicarious faith, whether in parents or in others, is a thing on which Scripture is as silent as it is on the faith of infants. The faith and repentance of parents and sponsors, to appropriate the words of another, are " supplementary conditions" of baptism, " superfluous" when added to personal faith, and " pernicious" when its substitute. I believe that sponsors on behaK of little children who were baptized, had an existence in the church of Christ prior to the baptizing of infants. If Neander had said the baptism of little childi-en instead of saying "infant baptism," I should more nearly have agreed with him when he says : " Infant baptism also furnished probably the first occasion for the appointment of sponsors or god-fathers ; for as this was a case in which the i:)ersons baptized could not themselves declare their confession of faith and the required renunciation, it became necessary for others to do it in their name, and these at the same time engaged to take care that the children should be rightly instri\eted in Christianity, and trained up in a life corresponding to the vows : hence they were called sponsors (sponsoresj. Tertullian adds it to his other arguments against infant baptism, that these sponsors were obliged to assume an obligation ■ which tliey might be prevented from fulfilling, either by their own death, or by the untoward conduct of the child." — Ch. His., vol. i, p. 429. Clarks' Edi. SECTION XVI. ON TTTE BAPTIRM OF TNFANTS FROM THFIR SUPrOSED FAITH. J. Rutherford.—" All religions practices are either the nppointraents of God, or the traditions of men."— On Bel. Bap., p. 17. a- x- • • i- •■ ■ H. J. Gamble.—" Wliatever may become of our confljcting opimous, or respective deuommn- lions', tho truth must eventually prevail."— -So/-. Bap., p. iv. It is difficult for me to say precisely to what extent it is believed that infants have faith. Being so deficient in metaphysical acumen, I might mistake if I excepted many \\'ho deduce the baptism of infants from some wonderful connexion of children with a believing parent, which has existed from the days of Abraham, if not fr.om those of Adam ; or if I excepted Dr. Bushneil, whose ideas of organic unity in famiUes have been previously noticed ; or possibly Dr. Stacey, who advocates an administration of the seal of faith to infants, and speaks of baptism and the Lord's Supper as implying " to the extent of actual capability both the faith which discerns and appropriates the blessings they symbolize, and the formal presentation of our bodies a hving sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God as our reason- able service," and who with other learned doctors can speak of infants as discipled to Christ by baptism, and of disciples as scholars, learners, &c. I had concluded that the Roman Catholics and Episcopalians of this country, who admit sponsors for infants, might be excepted from those who believe in the faith of infants ; but the Rev. W. Dibdiu, of some note and praise in the Anglican Establishment, thus proceeds : ON FAITH IN INFANTS. 287 "The Church of England teaches the baptism of believers, in that respect agreeing with the Baptists. The point in which the Chiirch of England differs from the Bap- tists is this : Baptists deny the doctrine of infant baptism, and require that the candidate should be an adult before receiving the ordinance. . . . The Church of England is more scriptural in taking infants to be baptized, under the conditions laid down in the service. Scripture always requires repentance and faith first : ' He that believeth and is baptized shall be saved.' Before baptism there must be a fitness for baptism. Now, we notice further, whilst some think that it may be right to require repentance and faith from adults, they say it is altogether inconsistent to require them from infants : therefore Presbyterians and Independents admit infants to baptism, but not in the same way in which they receive adiilts. Infants, they say, are to bo received by virtue of some supposed covenant made with believers for their seed, and they endeavour to strengthen this by reference to circumcision, which has nothing to do with it. Clirist did not make two baptisms, one for adults and the other for infants, who may or may not be converted. There is but one baptism, and that is the baptism of believers : so that the Church of England is consistent with itself ;and Scripture, and, what is also important, it is consistent with the early church. . . . Now if any say infants cannot have faith, I reply that a person may have faith whether he exercise it or not : it is not necessary to have the exercise of a thing to shew that wo possess the tiling itself. Faith is not in the intellect, but in the heart. An infant may have faith just in the same way that an infant may be a sinner, though he does not know what sin is. Some cannot understand that ; they will say, ' An infant can- not have faith.' Then the answer is, ' It cannot have baptism.' If any really tloink infants cannot have faith, they should join the Baptists, or act as the Baptists do. . . , They bring a child to be baptized ; the minister prays God to give it Hia Holy Spirit ; then he turns to the sponsors and says. Are you ready to affirm that it has the Holy Spirit ? Do you say that this child is converted ; that it repents ; that it has faith ; that, if it could express its meaning, it would be baptized ; that it pur- poses to live a holy life ? To all which they answer. Yes — then the minister hath nothing more to say. — He cannot read the child's heart. The sponsors say he is con- verted : he knows nothing more, unless it has pleased God to reveal it to him. The sponsors say it is converted. He must baptize it; he does so. Then mark the language after that : ' Seeing now, dearly beloved, that this child is regenerate and grafted into the body of Christ's chiirch, let us give thanks.' Of course it is not to be baptized unless regenerate. They have said that it is so ; he believes them, and baptizes it just as he would an adult person. The minister takes the word of the sponsors that the child is regenerate, and therefore he says in the next prayer, ' Wo yield Thee hearty thanks, most merciful Father, that it hath pleased Thee to regenerate this infant with Thy Holy Spirit.' That is the doctrine of the Church of England. It is of no use denying it ; these are the words. Every baptized infant is said to bo saved, and justly so ; for if the child is regenerate, it is justified and saved ; ' if a child, then an heir.' If all that is to be said is truly said, it cannot be otherwise." Thus writes Mr. Dibdin on, " Ought the Prayer Book to be Eevised ?" Not many, I think, can read Mr. Dibdin witliout regarding him as confirming previous remarks on the obscure character of the sponsorial department in the baptizing of infants in the Anglican Estabhshment. I believe that thousands of priests might be consulted who would emphati- cally affirm, that they baptize no infant on the ground of a supposed sponsorial declaration that it has repentance and faith, and tens of thousands of sponsors who would affirm that they had no idea of declaring that the infant I'epented and believed. I am not aware that they, any more than the priests, have access to the heart, or that the priests believe this. How then can a priest, on the supposed declaration of such sponsors, be justified in saying, " Seeing now, dearl}^ beloved, that this child is regenerate," &c. ; " We yield Thee hearty thanks, most merciful Father, that it hath pleased Thee to regenerate this child with Thy Holy Spirit." Are these idle or insignificant words '? Do they refer dubiously to a most momen- tous and glorious circumstance ? And this is regarded as scriptural ; the Prayer Book, by thofse who swear or assert approval of it and promise to 288 SUBJECTS OF BAPTISM. adhere to it, being regarded as in entire accordance with the word of God ! Whether our Nonconformist Pasdobaptist brethren pray for the children whom they baptize to be then regenerated, or to be at some future time regenerated, I will not affirm. Practice may vary, some embracing present and some future regeneration. Er. Watson's veracity I deny not, wlien he says tliat "the Lutheran church also places the efficacy of sacraments in regeneration, by which faith is actually conveyed to the soul of an infant." "We assort," says Luther, "that little children should not be baptized at all, if it be true tliat in baptism tliey do not believe." Also, in Luther's Table Talk we read : " The Anabaptists pretend that childi-en not as yet having reason, ought not to receive baptism. I answer, That reason in no way con- tributes to faith. Nay, in that children are destitute of reason, they are all the more fit and proper recipients of baptism. For reason is the greatest enemy that faith has ; it never comes to the aid of spiritual things, but — more frequently than not — struggles against the Divine word, treating with contempt all that emanates from God. If God can communicate the Holy Ghost to grown persons. He can, a fortiori, communicate it to young children. Faith comes of the word of God, when this is heard ; little children hear that word when they receive baptism, and therewith they receive also faith" p. 164). I had previously regarded the fact that faith cometh by hearing as directly opposed to the idea of faith in infants ; but either some things advanced by the learned in favour of infant baptism are preposterous in the extreme, or an entire revolution is needed in some of my views. What can be more worthy of rejection than that children have faith, a germ of faith, a germ of " the belief of Christian truth, the conviction that Christ came from God to be the Lord and Saviour of men," as faith is described by Prof. J. H. Godwin. Calvin is quoted as giving this reason for the baptism of infants : " It is certain that those who are grown up are incorporated by faith, so I say that the children of believers are likewise the children of the church, and are accounted members of Christ from the womb" (See Dr. Lange, on Acts viii, 26-40). Hence it has been written: " Luther held that infants have infant faith ; Calvin, that they have imputative faith; and others, that they have a relative faith. And so (in the words of Chevalier Bunsen) ' the church of the Reformation swallowed the camel of Paedobaptism.' " — Tes. of Em, Peed. p. 58. D. EussEN says that the subjects " of baptism are believers. To such, and none but such, is this sacrament to be administered. Believers are either adult persons or infants." — True Pic, &c., p. 4. Thos. Boston is not only assured that infants are believers, but that this is clearly taught in Scripture. " The infants of visible believers," says he, " are no less visible believers than they themselves are, seeing the Lord declares Himself not only the believer's God, but the God of his seed." The word "seed" here, as in most other instances, means 'posterity, as is admitted by Dr. Halley, and some others equally eminent, and equally destitute of bias in favour of such an interpretation. The apply- ing and confining of " seed" to "infants," would imply that God ceased to be the God of Abraham's posterity on their advance beyond infancy. Thus also "children," mentioned by Peter, in connexion with a promise expressed on condition of repenting and being baptized upon the name of Jesus Clirist. But T. Boston, who can adduce Zanchius and Ursin as agreeing with him respecting the regeneration of the infants of believers, can also say : " ' We do not tie,' say the professors of Leyden, ' the efficacy of baptism to that moment when the body is washed ; but we do, with the Scripture, pre-require faith and repentance in all that are to be baptized, at least according to the judgment of charity, and that as well in infants that are within the covenant." '* The words " seed" and " children" are of wonderful efficacy in proving that God is the God of infants, and that some of them are undoubtedly lelievsrs ! * When the Roocl Thos. Boston was not contcmplatinfr Infant Baptism, but man's Four-fold State, ho could write : " Every i^crson that is born acrordiii;,' to the course of nature is born unclean. If the root be corruiit, so must the branches be. Neither is the matter mended though the iiarents be sanctified ones." " Tlie holiest jiareuls beget unholy children, and cannot com- municate their grace to them as they do their nature" (State ii. Head i).— The infants of bax)tized parents living in open sin he could not baptize, because the parents thus living could not be coa- Bidered in the covenant. ON FAITH IN INFANTS. 289 Dr. DwiGHT asserts that "the infant John the Baptist had faith;" and that " therefore, other infants can have it." If there is anything on which good men have written more that is really contemptible, that is contradictory to one another, and that is clearly absurd, than what they have written on infant baptism, I know not what it is. If assumptions taken up and discarded, advocated as weighty and denounced a3 ' worthless — and all this among themselves — gives any intimation of something radically unsound which good and learned men are seeking to defend, there is presumptive evidence that of all things advocated by Christians the baptism of infants is most unsound, most destitute of scriptural authority. Witness the rejection of each other's arguments by Drs. Halley and Wardlaw and Prof. J. H. Godwin ; by Dr. Pusey, Mr, Bickersteth, and F. W. Robertson ; by Wesleyans, Presbyterians, and others, as compared with Episcopalians, Roman Catholics, and Reformed ChiU'ches. All try to sustain infant baptism ; and nearly every argument of every man is denounced or discarded by another. Truth alone is consistent. I am not demanding, in our present liability to error, a universal and an undeviating sameness. I affirm not unexceptional sameness in every advocate of believers' baptism ; but we have here a sufficient approach to consistency and sameness, to justify strong expressions of contempt for the inconsistency and even absurdity of arguments adduced to support the baptizing of infants. If by the advocates of infant baptism the word infant had been used in the sense of minor as it has been and is now used in application to persons who have not attained their legal majority, I should not have urged every objection that has been advanced. R. Baxter, than whom, perhaps, none has written more powerfully in favour of evangelical holiness, has also copied from the Treatise of Perkins, Hoiu to live ivell : " 3. — That children have faith after a sort, because the parents according to the tenor of the covenant, I will be thy God and the God of thy seed, beUeve for themselves and their children, and therefore their faith is not only theirs, but the faith of their chil- dren"— adds, " To this third opinion I most incline, because we are to judge that infants of believing parents in their infancy dying, are justified : and I find no justifi- cation in Scripture without faith" fPl. Scr. Pr., pp. 336, 337). — Wliy did not Baxter, who but presumed that "all children of believing parents are children of God," " leaving secret judgments to God" — why did he not presume that when justification by faith is mentioned in Scripture, there is no reference to infants ? Dr. E. Williams wrote : " I believe it will never be in the power of Antipasdo- baptists, with all their inferences against infants, to make them otherwise than subjects of moral obligation" CAnti]). Ex., vol. ii, p. 399). — The unconscious under moral obligation ! Leibnitz. — "To attribute faith, as some do, to those who cannot yet use their reason, is far too arbitrary and delusive, and quite destitiite of probability" (Sys. of Theol.). — But is it less proper to speak of believing infants than to speak of infants aa " called to be saints," as " saints," as " faithful brethren," and " holy brethren ?" Dr. J. Jacobi. — " The fides infantium is an absurd assumption, of which the Scrip- tui'es know nothing." — In Dr. Kitto's Cy. Ai-t. Bap. The North British Review, tesuching that "the language of Scripture regarding baptism implies the spiritual act of faith in the recipients," and demands moch^af ton if it is applied to infants, refers to Luther as being led by an application of Scripture on baptism to those of whose baptism the Scriptures know nothing, to believe " that God who bestowed regeneration, bestowed also by a direct miraculous act, that intelligent faith which the spiritual nature of Christianity demanded." Well may the reviewer add, on this imagined Divine communication to infants, " Our age is not likely to acquiesce in such a solution ; but it bears witness to the just perception which Luther had of the impossibility of applying to infants, without a modification some- where, the scriptural language respecting baptism" (Aug., 1852). — The learned re- viewer, also elsewhere quoted, approves of the continuance of infant baptism, but concedes every thing which I deem necessary to its abandonment and reprobation. 290 SUBJECTS OF BAPTISM. SECTION XVII. ON THE BAPTISM OP INFANTS FROM THE PLEA THAT INFANT SERVANTS AND DISCIPLES ARE RECOGNIZED IN SCRIPTURE. J. G. Manfa'.— " We foolishly and impiously seek to inend God's work, and we mar it ; and then, instead of relinquishing our foliy, we institute a second absurdity to counteract the first, we com- plicate our clumsiness to coi'rect its confusion." — EccL, p. 189. Dr. Cakson. — " No inference can bring anything into the word disciple, that is not already in it."- On Bap., p. 25G, J. Glas. — Baptism " cannot be administered to any but upon a confession, by which the baptized can be called disciples according to the Scripture."— In M'Lean's Worku, vol. vii, p. 268. It is seriously maintained in defence of Infant Baptism, that infants are acknowledged in Scripture to be God's servants and Christ's disciples. The passages referred to are Lev. xxv, 42, and Acts xv, 10, AVe read in the former passage : " For they are My servants, which I brought forth out of the land of Egypt : thej^ shall not be sold as bondsmen." The preceding sentence is : " And if thy brother that dwelleth by thee be waxen poor, and be sold unto thee, thou shalt not compel him to serve as a bond- servant : but as an hh'ed servant, and as a sojourner, he shall be with thee, and shall servo thee unto the year of jubilee : and then shall he depart from thee, both he and his children with him, and shall return unto his own family, and unto the possession of his fathers shall he return" (vers. 39-41). Then follow the words, "For they are My servants, which I brought forth," &c. In the latter part of the chapter it is supposed that an Israelite, having become poor, may sell himself to "a sojourner or stranger," but it must be as a hired, not a bondservant, and mth the capability of redemption, or if not redeemed, of going out from his master at the time of jubilee, the Divine Lawgiver saying, "If he be not redeemed in these years, then he shall go out in the year of jubilee, both he and his children with him. For unto Me the children of Israel are servants ; they are My servants whom I brought forth out of the land of Egypt : I am the Lord your God." To the idea of our opponents from this chapter that infants are God's servants, I reply, 1. — That the children of Israel from generation to generation were under obligation from their privileges, not to mention other obligations, to serve the Lord. 2. — That from the words, " they are My servants," admitting them to refer to the poor hired serv- vant "and his children with him," going out of service in the year of jubilee, which God enforces by saying, "For unto Me the children of Israel are servants : they are My servants whom I brought forth," &c. — it does not follow that infants as Infants are here spoken of as God's ser- vants. The doings, feelings, and condition of a house, family, or nation, may be spoken of, when it would be contrary to all usage, and even absurd, to consider infants as being embraced in the doings, feelings, or condition described. We have no more authority from this passage to speak of infants as such being God's servants, than we have to say that infants as ON INTANT SERVANTS AND DISCIPLES. 291 sueb were among the hived servants in Israel, and that a command to preach the gospel to every creature is a command to preach it to infants. 3. — The plural number may be here used because if the parent remained in servitude, his older children would be in servitude with him, and his infant children would rise up to be in servitude. Such bondage God in Israel forbade. Parents and children belonged to God. As the children rose up, they rose to certain special privileges as the descendants of Abra- ham in the line of Isaac and Jacob, according to God's covenant with Abraham and his seed, and all were bound to serve God. The present enactment was in kind consideration not of the father only, but of the children also, whose bondage would follow from the continuance of the fiither's ser\atude. The passage, thei'efore, proves not that every child and infant as such, is called a servant of God. 4. — Not only does this record fail to prove that infants are recognized as the infixnt servants of God, but if the word servants were here used in application to infants and the little ones along with the parent, it would be used so loosely and unusually, that to deduce a doctrine (as that of infant baptism) from such a usage (and without precept or precedent in Scripture for such a sentiment or practice), would be most unwai'rantable. The passage, therefore, proves nothing but the extremity to which the advocates of Pfedobaptism are reduced. The other Scripture, to which still more Psedobaptists refer in justifi- cation of infant baptism, is Acts xv, 10 ; where it is maintained that the word " disciples" includes infants along with parents, or with believing parents. " Infants," says T. Boston, "may be no less disciples of Christ than adults, as is clear from that Acts xv, 10" (Works, p. 383). Dr. S. Addington thinks (On Bap., p. Ill) they are "at least included, if not principally referred to in the term in Acts xv, 10." This passage thus reads : "Now, therefore, why tempt ye God, to put a yoke upon the neck of the disciples, w^hich neither our fathers nor we were able to bear'?"' These are the words of Peter in rebuke of those who said " that it was needful to circumcise them, and to command them to keep the law of Moses." Certain Je\visli Christians having maintained at Antioch the necessity to salvation of circumcision among Gentile Christians, it had been arranged by Paul and Barnabas, after disputations with these Judaizing teachers, that, accompanied by others, Paul and Barnabas " should go up to Jerusalem, unto the apostles and elders about this question." "And the apostles and elders came together for to consider of this matter." In this assembly Peter rose up, and reminded them of God's choice that by his mouth the Gentiles " should hear the word of the gospel and believe;" that God had borne "them witness, giving them the Holy Ghost," says Peter, " even as He did unto us ; and put no difference between us and them, purifying their hearts by faith." And he then asks, " Now, there- fore, why tempt ye God, to put a yoke upon the neck of the disciples, which neither our fathers nor we were able to bear ? But we believe that through the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ we shall be saved, even as they." It is evident that the apostle is speaking exclusively of believers, of Jewish believers, some of whom had had the baptism of the Spirit, and of Gentile 292 SUBJECTS OP BAPTISM. believers, whose hearts were purified by faith, and who had had the baptism of the Sph'it. His whole speech bore on the right treatment of Gentile proselytes or converts. These are included in the persons who in the first verse are designated " brethren," to whom certain men which came down from Judea taught the necessity of circumcision after the manner of Moses, in order to salvation. From what God had already directed, performed, and sanctioned in connexion with the preaching of the gospel unto the Gentiles, their baptism, and reception into the church of Christ, the apostle deduces God's will respecting the future, respecting a reception in the same way into the church of Christ of all persons, Jew or Gentile. Thus God's will was clearly opposed to the necessity of circumcising Gen- tile converts. We all know that by the command of God infants were circumcised ; but that here there is the least reference to infants, I main- tain it to be incapable of proof, and wholly destitute of probability. If it had been necessary that men renouncing heathenism and embracing Chris- tianity should be circumcised and keep the law of Moses, I will not afiirm that many other things besides the circumcising of male infants would not have been required in the intolerable yoke thus put on the neck of the dis- ciples ; but I affirm that even this would not necessarily have involved the baptizing of infants, and that the whole record afibrds not a shadow of the evidence of its existence. The error of circumcising Gentile believers was resisted and overcome. The teaching of Peter was that he and his Jewish Christian brethren would through the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ "be saved even as they." The necessity of circumcision to salvation was a yoke intolerable, and never borne. The necessity of observing the Mosaic law by the Jews scattered abroad and in perpetuity, was intolerable. The boasted passage affords encouragement neither to the baptizing of infants nor to their being called "disciples." There is no mention of infants, nor a hint respecting them in the entire record. If anything is here taught on discipleship to Jesus, it is the necessity of a heart purified by faith in order to being His disciple. An anonymous Baptist on this passage has written : " None of the ' disciples ' at Antioch, on whom some would have put the yoke of circumcision, were babies. They were adult Greeks, who had listened to the gospel preached unto them, had believed the gospel, and been united together in church fellowship ; as Dr. Cunningham says, 'formally admitted into the society which Christ had founded.' 'And some of them were men of Cyprus and Cyrene, which, when they were come to Antioch, spake unto the Grecians, preaching the Lord Jesus. And the hand of the Lord was with them : and a great many believed and turned unto the Lord.' ' And thence Paul and Barna- bas sailed to Antioch, from whence they had been recommended to the grace of God for the work which they fulfilled. And when they were come and had gathered the church together, they rehearsed all that God had done with them, and how He had opened the door of faith unto the Gentiles. And there they abode long time with the disciples. And certain men which came down from Judea taught the brethren, Except ye be circumcised after the manner of Moses, ye cannot be saved' (Acts xi, 20, 21 ; xiv, 26-28 ; xv, 1). The circumcised children of Jews, whether their parents had embraced Christianity or had not done so, were never reckoned ' disciples of Christ,' or ' believers,' which are ' reciprocal terms,' till they had individually exercised ' repentance toward God and faith toward our Lord Jesus Christ.' ' Disciples' are thus described by our Lord — ' If any man come to Me and hate not his father, and mother, and brethren, and sisters, yea, and his own life also, lie cannot be My dis- ciple. So likewise whosoever he be of you that forsaketh not all that he hath, he cannot be My disciiyle' (Lu. xiv, 26, 27, 33). ' Then said Jesus to those Jews who ON INFANT SEEVANTS AND DISCIPLES. 293 believed on Him, If ye continue in My word, then are ye My disciples indeed' (John viii, 31). ' By this shall all men know that ye are My disciples if ye have love one to another' (John xiii, 35). ' Herein is My Father glorified, that ye bear nmchfndt; so shall ye be My rfi'sci'jj/es' (John xv, 8)." The writer proceeds to mention the agree- ment of Boston with Dibdin in regarding infants as " disciples or believers," and the contradiction of this by Boston when he says, "We must judge of people's discipleship by their fruit." In another note, having quoted the words of Boston, " Let it bo remembered that we do acknowledge infants to be disciples of Christ," the Baptist writes, " Here Boston again tells us the reason why he baptized infants. They are ' disciples,' and he has already told us that ' to be a disciple of Christ and a believer are reciprocal terms.' . . . Does not Dr. Cunningham deny the doctrine, that infants have faith ? It is plain, however, that Boston could not have baptized infants if he had not wrought himself up to a persuasion that they ' are disciples of Christ,' ' believers' in Him. But do infants, baptized infants, as their faculties are developed, manifest that they are ' disciples of Christ i'' If not, how does the doctrine of their discipleship consist with the doctrine of the perseverance of the saints, which the good man held and taught i* How does it agree with the way in which he addresses his congregation, consisting of people baptized in infancy, in his sermons upon man's natural state being a state of sin and misery, which he afterwards published in his Four-fold State of Human Na- ture, State ii 'f And how does this doctrine of infant belief and discipleship consist with the description of believers here given by himself? Have babies 'learned of the Father ?' Have they ' come to Christ ? ' Do we know them ' by their fruit ? ' Do they ' bring forth much fruit ?' Do they ' bear their' cross, and come after Christ? It is wonderful how good men can fall into inconsistencies and absurdities ; but in all matters of religion the wisest men do so when, in place of taking the word of God in its plain meaning, as ' a lamp to their feet, and a light to their path,' they follow their own imaginations." Prof. Wilson justly and earnestly condemns the idea of Dr. HaUey that adults were baptized on account of instruction subsequently to be received, and conversion subsequently to take place. But he says, " In applying mathetes to an infant we do not take into account its present capabilities, neither do we disconnect discipleship from instruction, but we hold the instruction to be futitre" CInf. Bap., p. 480). If I understand Scripture, a person is a disciple of Christ after he has received instruction, and the instruction through grace has become efficacious, and never otherwise. Dr. W. has said : " If the idea expressed by mathetes were borrowed from the schools of Grecian philosophy, the term, we admit, would be inapplicable to an infant" (p. 469). It is admissible from condemned rabbinical lore ! " Discipleship, in the simplest view of it, does not necessarily imply knowledge." Indeed ! Is the " entrance" or regfister of either adult or infant sufficient ? I believe that " knowledge does not necessarily imply discipleship." Further, " We cheerfully admit that Christian discipleship, in our view of it, implies instruction ; but we deny that any discipleship necessarily implies the present instruction of the mathetes. For the distinction we claim universal acceptation, whatever may become of its importance to the cause of infant baptism" (p. 470). To reconcile ^Miii'ersa^y this /wfure instruction with the interpretation of the commission by Dr. W., and his scriptural demand in the case of adults, is beyond my power. Our opponents are probably more contradictory and glaringly erroneous on the import of discip)lc, than on baptizo, or perhaps any other word. Dr. Eadie's import of " disciple," or that of almost any Pgedobaptist not having at the time infant baptism before his mind's eye, explicitly and emphatically condemns regarding of infants as disciples. No man, so far as I know, ever dreamed of infant discipleship to Christ except in connexion with infant baptism. Of a disciple of Christ I hesitate not to say, as the Eev. W. Anderson of a Christian : " A Christian is one who believes the Holy Scriptures to be a Divine authority — who conforms to the requirements God has enjoined in the Bible, and enjoys the blessings which God has provided in the gospel" (Self-Made Men, p. 25). Thus the Eev. J. BaiHie, in his Mempir of Hervitson, says: "By a Christian, he meant, thus early, not professing religion, but being a converted man, a new creature in Christ Jesus" (p. 7). Where is the Pffidobaptist who, if not thinking of infant baptism, would reprobate a sermon by Eev. A. D. Philps on Heb. vi, 9, entitled, " Signs of Biscii^leship," in which he thus enumerates the signs. " 1. — There is the desire to serve Christ with the whole heart." "2. — There is tenderness of conscience." "3. — There is anxiety lest after all we should come short." "4. — There is desire after God's house, and a love for His word." " 5. — There is a sense of the supreme importance of heavenly as compared with earthly things." " 6. — There is a sense of our short-comings." " 7. — There is love to the brethren." " 8.— There is a desire for the salvatiou of others." He sijcak:i 294 SUBJECTS OF BAPTISM. of what " our Lord said to His disciples ;" and says that " Christ's disciples arc said indeed to have ' passed from darkness to light.' " E. BiCKEESTETH says that "a disciple is simply a learner. And the infants of pious and believing parents are, from their very birth learners of Christ." — New-born infants are learners ! — are learners if they have pious parents ! — From their very birth they are learners of Christ ! New-bom infants can be learners neither of Christ nor of Krishnoo. An inspired apostle has left it on record : " His servants ye are to whom ye obey." The whole host of Pasdobaptists, when not writing of infant baptism can mention " Christians, disciples, saints," as describing the same character. D. RussEN says that " Infants are either Christ's disciples and servants, or the devil's pupils and slaves," and the Baptists he regards as worse than the woman in the siege of Jerusalem who " killed her child and ate it," because the Baptists " kill the soul in a time of plenty." — True Pie., &c., pp. 18-20. M. Henry says T '^ T^]xq 'professors of ilie Christian religion were first called dis- ciples, till at Antioch the name was changed, and they were called Christians." — Trc. on Bap., p. 2.5. Dr. E. Williams truly teaches that disciples and Christians are convertible "terms, and used synonymously, Acts xi, 26" (Gond. Rea., &c., p. 163). But Dr. Halley and some others, by very learned argumentation, would have us believe that to make disciples, is not to make Christians, believers in Christ, converts to the Christian religion. Unliappily for these brethren, St. Luke used the word in this very .sense, and speaks of the disciples being " called Christians first in Antioch," and of the disciples of Troas coming " together to break bread" "upon the first day of the week." E. Baxter on the Life of Faith, teaches that " in the Scripture phrase, to boa disciple, a believer, and a Christian, is all one. — Acts xi, 26; v, 14; 1 Tim. iv, 12 ; Matt, x, 42 ; xxvii, 57 ; Luke xiv, 26, 27, 33 ; Acts xxi, 16 ; John ix, 28." Also, " No one is truly a Christian tliat is not truly a disciple of Christ. That is plain, Acts xi, 26" (Dispu. of Ei., &c.). Yet in his Plain Scrijytnre Proof he teaches from Acts xv, 10, " That infants are Christ's disciples :" andhe thus syllogizes : "All that are Christ's disciples, ordinarily ought to be baptized; but some infant.s are Christ's disciples ; therefore some infants ought ordinarily to be baptized" (p. 15). The inference being from a false premise, it woiild have been of no worth had it reached much further than to soyne, ordinarily. Mr. B.'s grand argument for infant liaptism is from infant church membership (before the church had an existence), whicli has not, he is confident, Ijeen repealed. In tlie same way he appeals to '" the Old Testament for magistrates in the church," and calls on his opponent " to prove the repeal of magistrates in the church if he can" (p. 27). He admits on Matt, xxviii, 10, that discipling should precede baptizing; "but," says he, "if they mean that by heart covenant or God's acceptance and promise they are disciples before, but not so completely till the covenant be sealed and solemnized, as a soldier is not so signally a soldier till ho be listed, nor a king tiU he be crowned so fully a king, or a man or woman so fully married till it be solemnized in the congregation ; in this sense they say the same that I am proving." And yet in the same page he teaches that " the professors of saving faith and their infants are disciples" (Dispu., p. 91). When we have a revelation from heaven that none are the disciples of Christ but those described in Lu. xiv, 26, 27, 33, " and the infants of such," the unscriptiu'alness of infant dis- cipleship will cease. And we may then speak of baptized infants as "believers and disciples," as "saints," and as "accounted to be dead and risen with Christ, even dead to sin and risen to newness of life." We do not as yet so think ; although many of our Ptedobaptist brethren seem to regard all infants as veritably disciples, others regard such as have one believing or professedly believing parent as such, while others believe that discipleship is divinely-enjoined to be accomplished by baptizing ; and, if I do not mistake, some believe them to be thus made disciples becaiise of Matt, xxviii, 19, and to be also born disciples because our Saviour says respecting those who it is believed were unbaptized, " Of such is the kingdom of heaven." Nor am I sure that others do not believe in both these hypotheses and in that of infants becoming disciples of Christ by sponsorial faith and repentance, or by its profession along with a baptizing of the infant. How many more hypotheses can be maintained in different parts of the same book, I will not saJ^ Blake says respecting the followers of Christ : " They are styled in the New Tes- tament Scriptures, believers, from their faith that they profess; saiii/s, from the holiness to which they stand engaged ; disciples, from the doctrine which they profess to learn ; and Christians from Him whose they are, whom they serve, and from whom they expect salvation." — In Tombes' And p., p. 143. iUr. Jj. UiiOfiiYENOB.— " Dincipks. They who learn of Ohrisit and follow Him ; who ON INl^ANT SERVANTS AND DISCIPLES. 295 take their lesson and their example from Him : they only are His disciples. And sucli disciples only are true Christians." "The name Disciples, a name proper enough to those who own Christ their Master, learn His doctrine, and follow His rules. They were sometimes called believers, a name taken from their faith in Christ . . . sometimes saints, a name taken from the holiness of their lives and characters . . . sometimes brethren, a name taken from their mutual relation in Christ Jesus, and mutual affection to one another." — Essay, pp. 18, 19. T. Boston. — " We are very plainly instructed what it is without which none can be Christ's disciples, Lu. xiv, 2(3, 27. ' If any man — hate not his father and mother — and whosoever doth not bear his cross and come after Me, cannot be My disciple.' Will Christ acknowledge men as His disciples on no other terms P Then without the appearance of these things we ought not to reckon persons His disciples. Neither are ever any called disciples of Christ in the Scriptures, but such as were visible believers. We read, indeed, John vi, 66, that ' many of His disciples went back, and walked no more with Him ;' and so some visible believers apostatize; not that they are visible disciples of Christ when they fall into a total and final apostacy ; but they that now are apostates were visible disciples of Christ before." — ^irorAs, p. 386. Dr. W. L. Alexander explains the commission to mean that "men are to become disciples by the correspondent acts of being baptized and believing what they are taught ;" so that baptism and fmth are necessary to our becoming disciples of Christ. Yet almost every Pajdobaptist would apparently see nothing silly in Mr. Thorn's words : " When His people are declared to be sheep, are not the little ones called the lambs" (^/»/. Brtp., p. 147) ? — If "sheep" indicates a spiritual nature, regeneration ; then "lambs" indicates the .same, recently obtained. L. CoLEM'AN. — "The titles hretlircn, saints, elect, beloved, sons of God, &e., have ever been applied as the special prerogative of believers, or professing Christians," — Antiq., p. 30. G. B. Johnson, in recording Congregational Principles, says, " The early dis- ciples gave themselves unto the Lord, and then unto each other. Hence sprang the church in Jerusalem, the church in Corinth, &c. And these communities continued steadfastly in the apostles' doctrine," &c. fOur Prin., p. 66). Were there infant dis- ciples among them P Again, "We believe that none but godly men should be united into a church ; men whoso character is presented in the current designations, ' disciples,' 'believers,' 'saints,' 'brethren,' ' the children of God,' ' sanctified in Christ Jesus,' ' faithful in Christ Jesus,' to whom ' the gospel has come, not in word only, but also in power and in the Holy Ghost' " (p. 36). Who can admit infants into these designa- tions, or deny that " disciples" has among them a rightful association ? If disciples of Christ are of such a character, what but heterodoxy is there in speaking of '"baptism a discipling rite" (p. 18) ? Does baptism make such characters, except according to Roman Missals, Anglican Prayer-Books, atid such publications ? Again, Mr. J. says, '•We regard baptism as initiatory to Christian instruction" (p. 1.5). "We consider the rite as expressive of God's grace, rather than of the recipient's faith ; as an emblem of the mercy of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, in the provisions of the gospel offered unto all men ; and into which if any man desire to bo indoctrinated baptism is for him and his family the discipling rite" (p. 16). — Is this the fulfilment of Christ's commission, Make disciples of all nations ? Let the idea that baptism is the discipling rite be abhorred. Dr. Causon, speaking of Mr. Bickerstelh, says, " If I allow him to bring in infants as disciples, ho will very willingly allow mo to exclude adult unbelievers. ' The only limitation,' says he, ' to be learned by inference is previous discipleship.' Now this expressly grants that there is such a limitation." "Who were the disciples of John the Baptist? ^Yero thej^ not persons who believed in him as a teacher sent from God, and submitted to his doctrine ? Who were called the disciples of Christ when He was on earth ". Were they not the persons who believed in Him, and who followed Him as their Teacher ?" " Is it as disciples that newly-born infants are generally baptized ? Are they baptized because they know Christ, have believed in His salvation and character, and have submitted themselves to His authority P . . . Do they who practise infant baptism believe that the children of Christians know more of Christ when they are born, than do the children of unbelievers, or even heathens ?" — On Bap., pp. 256, 257, 259. Dr. J. Morison, in accordance with thousands of others, says, " Those who are Christ's disciples must take up their cross and follow Him ; and then only are ' His commandments not grievous,' when obedience is animated by love to Himself ' (Horn., p. 268). Yet even Dr. Wardlaw can say : " I am strongly inclined to agree with those who regard the children of believers in the light of disciples. If their parents do thei^ duty they certainly are such,"— Ih/, Bap., p, 159, 296 SUBJECTS OF BAPTISM. Basil H. Cooper, speaking of Peter and the meeting recorded in Acts xv, says : ' We cannot but admire the tender consideration shown upon this trying occasion, to the consciences of weaklings in the faith, those lambs of Christ's flock, which the son of Jonas had been so solemnly charged to feed" (Free Ch., &c., p. 95). He has before mentioned Jesus as teaching that " His followers were the living, as distinguished from the world— dead in trespasses and sins."— pp. 74, 75. W. H. Hewitson also designates these lambs "young believers." — Sel. Let., &c., vol. ii, p. 83. H. J. Gamble teaches that " Chm-ch membership" among the Jews " proved nothing as to their character; they might be pious as HezeMah, or reprobate as Manasseh." And he asks, " If infants are capable of being discipled at all (and Pffidobaptists universally admit that they are), what is there to exclude any child, whether of believing or unbelieving parents, from being baptized" (p. 120) ?— Let infants be but discipled to Christ, and even Baptists will admit their qualification for the ordinance. A. M'Lean. — "Though it be granted that the infants of believing Gentiles would nave been circumcised with their parents according to the law of circumcision, yet it is by no means evident that Peter comprehended these infants in the designation disciples ; for what other manner of expression is it natural to think the apostle would use upon this occasion, though infants had been excepted in that designation ? If we look into the context, we shall find that those whom he terms disciples, are charac- terized in such a manner as will not apply to infants : ' And certain men which came down from Judea, taught the brethren,' &c.. Acts xv, 1: so'they were brethren capable of being taught. ' God which knoweth the hearts, bare them witness, giving them the Holy Ghost, as He did unto us ; and put no difference between us and them, purifying their hearts by faith. Now, therefore, why tempt ye God, to put a yoke upon the neck of the disciples,' &c., vers. 8-10. Now, can anything be more plain than that the apostle's argument against cu-cumcising the Gentile disciples, tiirns upon the evidence of their having received the Holy Ghost, and of having their hearts purified by faith ? The apostle James calls them, ' those which from among the GentUes have turned to God.' If such, then, be the account given of those whom the apostle terms disciples, it is plain that he did not intend infants in that designation, though (accord- ing to the law of cu-cumcision) they might be circumcised with their parents" (Works, vol. vii, pp. 123, 124). — It was the doctrine of the necessity of circumcision unto sal- vation in opposition to the doctrine of "salvation by the gi-ace of the Lord Jesus Christ," not laid on the neck of infants, but of those come to years, and having professed repentance and faith, that was the demanded and intolerable yoke. J. MuESELL, on the disciples being first called Christians at Antioch, and on the acceptance of this name by the chm-ch of Christ, says : " No name could better express her faith in Him, her union with Him, and her desire after likeness to Him." Although we thus maintain the import of disciple, believer, and Christian, as taught by God's word, we would nevertheless admit infant church membership and infant baptism, if inspired precept or precedent for either of these could be adduced. J. J. Blunt.— "We have the followers of Christ gi-adually designated by more and more distinctive titled ; ' the disciples,' or ' believers,' giving place to the more familiar phrase, ' they of this way ;' that again narrowed by degrees into Christians." — His. of Ch., &c. Dr. J._ Habbis. — " Let those of my readers that belong to the disciples of Jesus, Toe ambitious to exemplify the spiritual nature and dignity of their Christian vocation." —Gr. Tea., p. 300. Dr. Wall. — " St. Paul, soon after he turned Christian himself, essayed to join himself to the disciples at Jerusalem ; but they were afraid of him, and believed not that he was a disciple. And at Ephesus, he finding certain disciples, &c. In allwhicli places we should have said. Christian, or Christians. And what puts it out of doubt that they used these words as synonymous, is that St. Luke tells us, that those who had been hitherto called disciples, began at Antioch to be called Christians." — His., vol. iv, p. 184. J. Faerar, late Classical Tutor in the Wesleyan Theological Institute, Eichmond, teaches that a disciple of Christ is " one who believes His doctrine, rests upon Hia sacrifice, imbibes His Spirit, and imitates His example."— jBt6. Die. Art. Disciple. Dr. Wabdlaw. — " The question here is not whether, according to its etymology, the word may mean simply one that learns. This is not denied. But throughout the New Testament, the designation is used for one who professes to have received the distinguishing tenets of the teacher whose disciple he is. I am not in the recollection of a single instance to the contrary. And this, as all are aware, is in harmony with universal usage." He rightly adds, " It was those who wore made disciples who were INFANT CITIZENSHIP AND MEMBEESHIP. ^97 baptized. They were initiated by baptism as the professed adherents, or followers, of John or of Jesus" ('^ppen., pp. 295, 296). Dr. W., whose Appendix to another edition of his work on Infant Baptism I had not seen till this was partially through the press, contends neither for ethne nor mathetas as the antecedent to autous in Matt, xxviii, 19, but says that other Scriptures " prove faith — profession of faith — repentance — discipling — to precede, and to be a requisite to — the administration of baptism." Disciple, in the New Testament, says he (p. 331), " invariably denotes" "one who has heard and who professes to receive, the lessons, and becomes an avowed adherent of the master from whom he has learned them." On the record that " Jesus made and baptized more disciples than John," he says, (p. 332) : " Terms, according to which they were not made by baptism, but made and then haptizcd; made disciples by their acceptance of the doctrine, and initiated by baptism into their new position, as the followers of the Master whose doctrines they had embraced." E. E. CoNDER inqiiires, "What makes any one a true Christian ?" and answers, " Personal obedience to Christ ; the obedience, not of fear, or expediency, but of faith working by love." — Eccl., p. 229. D. E. FoKD, in his work called Damascus, mentions meeting M-itli an apparently intelligent young woman, to whom he said, " Are you a Cliristian F' to which she said, "Yes, sir." He next said, "How long have you been?" She said, " Ever since I was christened, sir" (p. 14). — Our Nonconformist brethren justly deplore this. But if the logomachy advocated by some comes into vogue, the questions and answers may be : Q. — Are you a disciple of Christ ? A. — Yes, su-. Q. — How long have you been ? A. — Ever since I was baptized. — How could wo read James's Pastoral addresses, Scott's Essays, and thousands of similar publications, regarding infants and learners of the lowest degree as disciples of Christ ? Out of the church of Christ infant dis- ciples and servants would meet with its deserved contempt. Among the disciples of Pythagoras, Aristotle, Newton, or any other, a suckling was never found ; and " no distinction whatever can be traced in the Acts of the Apostles of two classes of dis- ciples ; of disciples not chiu-ch-members and not communicants, and of disciples who were both." — Church, p. 76. 1850. Dean Alford describes the man born, again, who sees the kingdom of God, as one "become a disciple of Christ." — (?r, Tcs., on John iii, 3. SECTION XVIII. ON THE BAPTIZING OF INFANTS FROM THE PLEA THAT INFANT CITIZENSHIP IN THE KINGDOM OF HEAVEN AND INFANT MEMBERSHIP IN THE CHURCH OF CHRIST ARE SCRIPTURAL. Dr. J. M. Cramp.—" In the Acts and the Epistles . . . there is not a word which indicates infant church-membership. There is 'not the slightest notice of two sorts of baptized members, one class out of the church and the other class in it." — Cat. on Bap., p. 88. C. Stovel.— " From its very constitution and aim, therefore, having all its life in Christ, and all its hope in heaven, this body [the church of Christ] could have no place or affinity for men who did not believe, or infants who could not understand the things of Christ and of eternity." — Dis., pp. 259, 260. W. GooDE. — " Men are not born Christians." — Ser., on 2 Cor. iv, 7, p. 15. Dr. W. Brock.—" The church of God is the united body of believers in Chvist."— Speech, April 28th, 1869. Infant citizenship in the kingdom of heaven, sometimes spoken of as synonymous with membership in the church of Christ, and sometimes distinguished from it, is a frequent plea for infant baptism. Our Saviour has said, " Except ye be converted, and become as httle children, ye sholl »ot enter into the kingdom of heaven : WhosoeYer therefore shall humble 298 SUBJECTS OF BAPTISM. himself as this Uttle child, the same is greatest in the kingdom of heaven" (Matt, xviii, 3, 4). "Suffer little children, and forbid them not, to come unto Me : for of such is the kingdom of heaven" (xix, 14). " Suffer the little children to come unto Me, and forbid them not ; for of such is the kingdom of Clod" (Mark x, 14). " Whosoever shall not first receive the kingdom of God as a little child, he shall not enter therein" (ver. 15). Similar words are in Luke xviii, 16, 17. Whether " of such" embraces little children, or only those like unto them, is a matter of dispute, on which both sides speak very confidently. It is, however, admitted by the great bulk on both sides that infants are themselves in the kingdom of heaven in the sense of enjoying the Divine favour in the present life, and, if dying in infancy, being admitted to the realms of unfading glory. They are, nevertheless, not believers : and the duty of baptizing them must depend on our having a Divine command, or clear evidence that apostolic practice included their baptism. If God had taught us that none went from earth to heaven but baptized ones, I should believe that children dying in infancy being unbaptized, were shut out of heaven, or that the soul was baptized on its way from eartli to heaven, perhaps just before entering, as baptism has been recommended previous to entering an earthly sanctuary to give a canonical right to an enjoyment of its privileges. If God had taught that all the inhabitants of glory are baptized, I should believe in baptized angels. And if He had commanded the baptism of infants, I should regard it as a duty whether connected with advantages or disadvantages, and whether these were lucidly .apparent or wholly undiscernible. But we wlio advocate believers' baptism as that which alone is sanc- tioned in God's word by precept or example, are asked, Do you not believe that infant children inherit human depravity ? Do they while living in infancy enjoy the Divine favour without repentance, faith, or regeneration ? Do they who die enter heaven without being born again ? Or are all dying in infancy sent to hell '? Would it be just in God to allow an immortal being to come into the W'orld without the possibility of escaping the damnation of hell '? Does human depravity belong only to our physical or corporeal nature ? On supposition that I answered these questions, and many more, in perfect accordance (as I judge) with the oracles of God, neither the questions nor the answers, nor both united, would con- stitute authority for the baptism of infants. And were I to acknowledge all the questions as having baffled my weak intellect and limited knowledge, this would not give validity to infant baptism. Whether infants are like a blank or blotted leaf, whether if dying in infancy some or none or all of them are saved, or whether some, none, or all are lost, affects not the baptism of infants. The commission of Christ in its natural, and, as I think, in its correct import, excludes them ; and apostolic practice, according to my view of the inspired records, demands that baptism be deferred till it can follow the reception of Divine truth, a believing on the Lord Jesus, a discipleship to the Son of God. And, according to the testimony of all learned and reliable ecclesiastical historians, of infent baptism during the first century of the Christian era there exists no evidence, INFANT CITIZENSHIP AND MEMBEKSHIP. 29J) The Divine act of saving, or of regenerating and saving, is not authority •for us in God's name to baptize. If God had willed our baptizing of infants, or the practice of any symbolic service on their behalf, He would, as in the case of circumcision for male infants and adults, children and servants, and as in the case of the Passover for all Israelites and proselytes, have enjoined it. The fact of meetness for heaven proves not in itself the Divine approval of infant baptism, or of infant membership in the organized churches of Christ. Those are, in my judgment, most consistent with themselves who baptize not infants, or who baptize them, receive them to membership, and admit them to the Lord's Supper. The infant baptizers of this country and this age, with few exceptions, deny the right of infants to the Lord's Supper. Many deny their right to membership in Christian churches. Many maintain that they have a clearer right to baptism, and greater meetness for this ordinance than any adults. All admit that the young children of a believing parent, whilst many maintain that all infants and little ones, are undoubtedly fit subjects of baptism, being meet for the kingdom of glory. Some of our opponents are as confident as ourselves that discipleship to Christ is an undoubted qualification for baptism ; and yet they maintain that baptism itself disciples, and that the commission enjoins our discipling by baptism. Some of these are also stern and eloquent opponents of baptismal regeneration, while at the same time they are earnest advocates of baptismal discipleship. They maintain that in infants there is the inward grace which in the outward ordinance is represented, there being in infants, as some tell us, nothing to hinder the gracious operations of God's Spirit. The language of some implies that infants come into the world regenerate. How long before birth this work of God was effected, none say. The language of some implies that infants who have one or two parents of a certain character, are from the womb God's children, and are born in the church of God on earth. These maintain that the blessings of the covenant of grace are not granted in and through baptism, but are scaled in baptism. Others maintain that believing prayer is effectual to regeneration, but their language and con- duct imply that also baptism is requisite, or that British Establishment- arian Christian parents cannot at home offer the inwrought and effectual prayer for this blessing, but that the priest, in connexion with sponsors and the font, the enigmatical questioning and answering, and the so-called baptizing, can prevail with God to make those who were dead in sin and heirs of wrath, to be there and then members of Christ, children of God, and inheritors of the kingdom of heaven. The fitness of little children for heaven, Avhether born of Christian or unbelieving parents, I have no disposition to deny. Of the transgression of God's law they cannot be 'guilty. Since grace has abounded beyond the abounding of sin, we can believe in the salvation of children without a revelation respecting the time, nature, or mode of God's operations by which they are fitted to unite in the employments and share in the enjoy- ments of heaven. But their fitness for heaven, or admission to heaven if they die, is no proof of their meetness for baptism, or admission into a church of Christ on earth. The idea of meetness for the fellowship of 300 SUBJECTS OF BAPTISM. God's people on earth, for receiving or promoting edification, for uniting in the worship of God, and in endeavours to extend the Divine kingdom and glory, the great objects of church fellowship, is deemed absurd by* both Baptists and Piedobaptists. Yet by many they are deemed to be fit for baptism if fit for heaven ! Why do we not say that Enoch, Noah, Moses, and Isaiah were baptized, or that they ought to have been ? But God did not enjoin baptism on antediluvian saints, nor on any before the time of John the Baptist. True ; but Divine precept or precedent is equally lacking for the baptism of any infants as for the baptism of Abel, or Shem, while the very nature of baptism as a practical and personal avowal on the part of those who received the word, who believed, who experienced a good conscience, contradicts the hypothesis of infant meet- ness for baptism. Dr. Halley teaches that " our Lord in laying His hands upon little children, recognized them as belonging to His kingdom" (vol. xv, p. 130) ; but, as if it were impossible for us, by putting our hands upon them, to do likewise, he says that "bap- tism is the only rite by which little childi-en can be recognized as belonging to the kingdom of heaven, or as having any connexion with the church of Christ" (p. 129). We dispute the authority to use any rite of recognition without the sanction of Divine precept or apostolic practice ; and we maintain that the connexion of children with the church of Christ is neither completed nor promoted by a rite that still leaves them without the pale of the church. The connexion of little children with the church appears, according to some, to consist in having Christian parents, guardians, and other kindred and friends, whose pious love prompts to benevolent efforts on their behalf, and in the sympathy of the church at large with young children, and affection to them, through which they become objects of the church's solicitude, watchful, holy, loving, and persevering endeavo\u-s. But is not this sympathy and solicitude of the church as much a fact with those holding Baptist as with those holding Pffidobaptist sentiments ? And though our kindred and neighbours, especially those most nearly related to us, claim oiu- first regards, does not our affectionate, sympathetic, and earnest solicitiide embrace the whole world, leading, when the heart is right, to the frequent and consistent utterance of the prayer, "Thy will be done, as in heaven, so in earth ?" I deny not that little children belong to the kingdom of heaven ; but if the commission embraces infants because it embraces all nations, and infants must be baptized because they are of the kingdom of heaven, may we also conclude that ungodly adults, a part of all the nations, are of the kingdom of heaven ? Did Christ, who " made and baptized" disciples, forget, when putting His hands on little children, that baptism is the only rite of which little children are capable by which their con- nexion with the kingdom and church of God can be evinced ? Or is it a mistake that He put His hands upon them ? Or did He also baptize, although the sacred writers record one action and are all silent respecting the other ? Dr. H., in Aberdare Addresses (pp. 58, 59), says, "By a chiirch I mean a voluntary society of Christians." Also he says on the baptized child's subsequent right : "I readily concede his right to confirm his parent's act by his own profession, or to connect himself, if he prefer so doing, with any other religious society." Also, in these Addresses Dr. H. says : " The common principle of Dr. Wardlaw and myself, with which I believe all Psedobaptists of the Congregational order agree, is, that baptized children are, by the consent of their parents or guardians, to bo regarded as under preparatory training and education for the fellowship of the church." He immediately adduces three reasons for the clause, " by the consent of their parents," and then infers "two things: 1. — That baptized children stand in no other relation to the church than that in which their parents have voluntarily placed them. 2. — That they stand in no other relation to the church, than that to which the church has voluntarily received them" (pp. 57,58). If the relation of baptized children to the church Ije no other " than that in which the parents have voluntarily placed them," will any man upon earth state what this relation is, if baptism is administered aa indiscriminately and extensivclj' as Dr. H. teaches that by Christ's command it ought to be administered ? The relationship to the church of one baptized child may be as different from that of another aa the east in distant from the west. Or will any one state the relation of baptized children ty INFANT CITIZENSHIP AND MEMBERSHIP. 301 the church when it is no other " than that to which the church has voluntarily received them," and when the minister of the gospel, in his authority under Christ to baptize as well as to preach to the extent of ability, has baptized irrespective of the consent or knowledge of any church, and the minister's record — though not always this — and the non-requirement of subsequent baptism, constitute the whole difference between these and unbaptized ones ? Dr. MORISON says that the chiu-ch of Christ " is a kingdom indeed ; but it is one of which its Divine Lord has emphatically said, that ' it is not of this world.' The true members of this spiritual community can all say, with Paul to the PhUippians, ' Our citizenship is in heaven ; from whence also we look for the Saviour, the Lord Jesus Christ' " (Horn., pp. 250, 251). He maintains (pp. 248, 249) that " the church of Christ" is " a community of persons ' called, chosen, and faithful,' " of those having " actual repentance and faith ; as indicated not by mere vague profession, or formal submission to the external rites of the gospel, but by such renovation of character as enabled the servants of Christ to say of them, ' Ye were sometimes darkness, but now are ye light in the Lord.' " Elsewhere (p. 246) he speaks of New Testament churches as " all formed of persons who professed to exercise ' repentance towards God and faith towards our Lord Jesus Christ,' " &c. Let any man think of infants while reading the inspired description of the operations and enlargement of Christ's kingdom : "The weapons of our warfare are not carnal, but mighty through God to the pulling down of strongholds : casting down imaginations and every high thing that exalteth itself against the knowledge of God, and bringing into captivity every thought to the obedience of Christ." This is in accordance with every other part of Scripture referring to this subject. Dr. Stacey, who teaches that our commission is to disciple by baptizing, teaches that little children, because they have the attributes of a disciple of Christ, ought to be baptized. Each little one " is in a condition to be accounted a disciple" (The Sac, p. 157). " That which is essential to the discipleship of adults must, a fortiori, be suflBcient for the discipleship of children" (p. 157) ; ergo, who can forbid to disciple (by baptism) these disciples ? That little children are meet for baptism, has the undoubted conviction of Dr. S., because "our Lord identifies children with Himself," and " the identification is manifestly that of intimate connexion with Him as mem- bers of His kingdom. They are one with Christ — incorporated with Him — in the sense in which the church is called His body, the fulness of Him that filleth all in all" (p. 157). These honoured and privileged members of Christ's church have an undoubted right to the ordinance which disciples, and I suppose to be received by baptism into the church ; but the glorious membership, proved from an imdoubted possession of the most invaluable blessings, which gives the clearest right to baptism, affords not the slightest encouragement to their admission to the Lord's Supper ! If our Lord was silent on the Supper because it was not then instituted, how do we account for the putting on of hands and the silence as to baptism ? Our Saviour having received little children, having taken them iip in His arms and blessed them, having put His hands on them and prayed for them, having taught that of such is the kingdom of heaven, and having said to His disciples, " Suffer little children, and forbid them not, to come unto Me ;" to those who refuse to baptize them, it can be said, " Shall we, then, oppose the wish of the Son of God P" Shall "the sign which recognizes and attests" that these little ones belong to the kingdom of God be withheld ? "True they have not faith ; true also they do not need it." But " shall the benediction of Jesus be virtually given, and the visible acknowledgment of the gift be denied ? Is it not to disown whom Christ has received, by refusing the recognition which He has ordained" (p. 161) ? We inquire, what recognition of an infant's membership in the body of Christ, and inheritance in the kingdom of God, has Christ ordained F And what is the recognition of which we have a precedent in Christ or His apostles ? Dr. J. P. Smith, among other things equally wise, says : "This membership of the children of Christ's disciples is recognized by their baptism, and is the ground of their right to that ordinance" CFirst Lines, &c., pp. 630, 631). — If this is true respect- ing " the children of Christ's disciples," are they not born members of the church ? Prof. A. A. Hodge is more explicit on the regeneration of infants than the honoured Nonconformists we have just noticed. He says that baptism and circumcision " re- present the same spiritual grace, namely, regeneration," that both " are the appointed forms, in successive eras, of initiation into the church." " Children of believers were members" before Christ. " They ought to be recognized as members now, and receive the initiatory rite." This on the apostles' part was "self-evident." " Christ declares of little children (Matt, paidia, Luke brephe, infants) that ' of such is the kingdom of heaven.' Matt, xix, 14; Luke xviii, 16. The phrase, 'kingdom of God,' and 'of heaven,' signifies the visible church under the new dispensation." " The blessings S02 SUBJECTS OF BAPTISM. symbolized in baptism are promised and gi'anted to infants. Baptism represents regeneration in union with Christ. Infants are born children of wi-athevenas others. They cannot be saved, therefore, unless they are born again, and have part in the benefits of Christ's death. They are evidently, from the nature of the case, in the same sense capable of being subjects of regeneration as adults are" (Ov.il. of Theol., pp. 502, 503, 504). He has pre\dously taught that " the design of baptism" is, " 1. — Primarily to signify, seal, and convey to those to whom they belong, the benefits of the covenant of grace. Thus (1.) It symbolizes ' the washing of regeneration,' 'the renewing of the Holy Ghost,' which unites the believer to Christ, and so makes him a participant in Christ's life, and all other benefits, 1 Cor. xii, 13; Gal. iii, 27; Titus iii, 5. (2.) Christ herein visibly seals His promises to those who receive it with faith, and invests them with the grace promised. 2. — Its design -was secondarily, an spring- ing from the former. (1.) To be a visible sign of our covenant to be the Lord's ; i.e., to accept His .salvation, and to consecrate ourselves to His service. (2.) And hence to be a badge of our public profession, our separation from the world, and our initiation into the visible church. As a badge, it marks us as belonging to the Lord ; and, con- sequently, fl, distinguishes us from the world; h, symbolizes our union with our fellow-Christians" (pp. 486, 487). These quotations suggest several inquiries. Can baptism be the recognition of membership and the rite of initiation into the church ? Can baptism be " the initiatory rite" to those who are already of "the Iringdom of God," that is, of "the visible church?" Can any by baptism be recognized as members, if membership has not before baptism taken place ? Is the application of Christ's words to be confined to the children of believers when He says, " Of such is the kingdom of heaven ?" Must we confine the application of Christ's words to baptized children ? If either of these hypotheses is maintained, I would then ask, According to what laws of translation or interpretation ? If " Christ declares of little children," that " of such is the kingdom of heaven," can He mean the children of believers in opposition cither to all children, or to those persons who are child-like ? Granting for argument's .sake the restriction of Chi'ist's words to the children of believers, we iiKjuire of Prof. H., who teaches that " infants are born children of wrath," At what time do Christ's words, " of such is the kingdom of heaven," become applicable to the children of believers? And I would ask others who explicitly teach mth Prof. H. that " infants are born children of wrath," and who advocate the baptism of all infants, and the meetiiess of all infants for baptism, from the cheering words of Christ, that " of such is the kingdom of heaven," At what time between birth and baptism does the translation of infants from the kingdom of darkness and spiritual death to the kingdom of light and life take place ? Is it when the infant has attained a certain age ? Is it at the same age in all, being unaffected by threatening illness or any other circumstances ? Where is the revelation respecting this ? Is it unwritten, but in every case assuredly given to parents and guardians, or to priests, pastors, and every one canonically officiating at baptism, or to all these persons and all concerned ? Will those who deny baptismal regeneration maintain that the regeneration takes i^lace at the time of baptism, that God patiently defers the bcstowment of this blessing till the parents or other person or persons are good enough to bring the child to some one who is good enough to bap- tize it ? And is the blessing then certainly conveyed to the child independently of the motives, the prayers, the sincerity of piety in parents and others concerned in this ceremony ? If baptism is designed " primarily to signify, seal, and convey to those to whom they belong, the. benefits of the covenant of grace," is it designed, first, as a sign of these blessings which are enjoyed, or which are believed or professed to be enjoyed ? secondly, to give assurance from God that these are possessed, or assm-ance (also) that they will continue to bo enjoyed, these blessings being sealed to the proper recipients of baptism ? and, thirdly, lo convey these inestimable blessings now possessed ? i.e., apart from the heresy of baptismal regeneration to bring into possession by the baptized " the benefits of the covenant of grace ;" in other words, the blessings included in being " of the kingdom of heaven ?" Such miracles the dis- believers in legerdemain will regard as associated with baptism, that they will forgive the additional queries. Can infants be at the same time " children of wrath" and " of the kingdom of heaven ?" Can we convey to any person that which has been conveyed, unless by some means it be taken away from him after the first conveyance ? Can we eat that which has been eaten, unless wo imitate the dog that returns to its vomit ? I believe in baptism as signifjdng or representing the washing of regeneration and renewing of the Holy Ghost, but I believe not tliat it seals promises " to those who receive it witli faith," nor that it " inv^csts them witli the grace promised," any more than I believe that infants have faith, or that ))aptism regenerates. I read nothing in Ciod's word about the regeneration or baptism of infants, anfl believe it as much my INFANT CITIZENSHIP AND MEMBERSHIP. 303 duty to attempt their regeneration as to perform their baptism. Whatever difficulty I may have when thinking of them as belonging to the kingdom of heaven, as having a nature which in all who are spared requires regeneration, and as certainly entering heaven if they die in infancy, I can only act when and as God reveals it to be His will for me to act. There is not the shadow of evidence that the children brought to Christ had been baptized, or were then baptized by Him or His disciples, or that any of all the children included or referred to in His memorable and interesting words, " Of such is the kingdom of heaven," are referred to as baptized ones, or as to be made baptized children because they were " of the kiugdom of heaven." I am not aware of a hint in Divine revelation that baptism certifies? or secm-es the regeneration and salvation of either child or adult. On behalf of the souls of infants, as infants, we have no duty to discharge. We can be thankful to God, and we ought to praise Him, for every corporeal faculty, and for every indication of mental power which it is hoped will have subsequent manifestation, while we pray to the Giver of all good for continued life and health, and for the future development of our heart's desire respecting mental vigour and spiritual health from the earliest possible period, for holiness, usefulness, and happiness, to a wide extent, till, as a shock of corn fully ripe the beloved one is gathered into the gar- ner of the Lord. We are sufficiently encouraged by Divine revelation to train up from the earliest possible period in the nurture and admonition of the Lord, and prayerfully, earnestly, unweariedly, and believingly to persevere. I believe that any one, reading God's word and having no system of theology to defend, would joyfully admit the meetness of infants for glory, although of their conversion or regeneration we have not a hint in Scripture. Able or unable to reconcile this with a tendency to sin, I am bound to oppose the unwarrantable, contradictory, and absurd infer- ences, that the blessings of the New Covenant are signed, sealed, and conveyed to infants by baptism. " It is sad to notice what shifts men are driven to in maintaining foregone conclusions." — The Freeman, March, 1867. It is not necessary for me to admit or deny that " the kingdom of God" in its historical development, embraces, first, the Old Testament theocracy, and, second, the kingdom of heaven, or of the Messiah. I have no authority to baptize infants, whether claimed for the present or any other dispensation, whether because they belong to the kingdom, or to introduce them into the kingdom of heaven. The remainder of this section is a further exposure of error and defence of truth, to which are added important concessions. Baxter challenged his opponent to name " one particular church since Adam, either of Jews or Gentiles, where infants were not chm-ch-members (if they had any infants) till 200 years ago." Two pages fiu'ther he says, " Do you not know that to be visihhj in or out of the church, is all one as visibly (or to our judgment) to belong or not belong to Christ and heaven" (Plain Scr. Pr. In Dedica., pp. 5, 7). _ And he solemnly asks, " Can ypu prove that Christ will save those that are no Christians ? no disciples" (p. 7) ? He subsequently (p. 12) teaches that " no parent in the world can say that his child" is one of the elect. In his Dispu. (pp. 192, 193) he says, "They have feigned also a new kind of church ; for the church of Christ's constitixtion is but one, which is called visible from men's profession, and invisible from the faith professed. But they have made a church which consisteth of a third sort of members, that is, of men that neither have saving faith nor profess it." They make " two sorts of Chris- tianity and Christians differing tota specie." But Mr. B. also makes a third sort of 304 SUBJECTS OP BAPTISM. churcli members, viz., infants and little children having a believing parent or pro- parent. The possession of such a parent makes infants and little children into disciples of Christ, believers, Christians ! Can these fulfil " the duty of each member of the mystical body of Christ to love the saints, and assist them as fellow.membera" (p. 193) ? E. R. CoNDEE, in his Commentary on the New Testament, designates the " 'little child' whom Jesus ' called and set in the midst,' the little disciple," who is supposed to have "obeyed the call, not through fear, but trustfvxlly and lovingly;" and on the the import of entering into "the kingdom of heaven," he refers us to Matt, vii, 21, where he teaches us that the phrase in some passages " refers to becoming a subject of Christ's kingdom, or (in other woi'ds) a member of His church, John iii, 5 ; Matt, xviii, 3, 4 ; Mark x, 15, 25 ; Col. i, 13 ;" and that in other places, as in Matt, vii, 21, it refers to "our final entrance into the future glory of the kingdom." Mr. C. adopt3 Dr. Stier's definition and description of the church of Christ : " The church is a society, called together in unity of faith and love, of those who believe on Christ, who are united in His name" (On ch. xviii). On Matt, xix, 14, "Of such is the kingdom of heaven," he says, "belongs to such — to childi-en like them, and to those who have become as little children." Again, " As the last chapter showed us that children of tender years may be disciples by their o^vn faith in Christ and love to Him, so this chapter (vers. 13-15) shows how even infants may be brought in faith and prayer to Him, and receive His grace. ' To the objection that we can be reconciled to God, and become heirs of adoption, in no other way than by faith, we reply that this is true of adults ; but as regards infants, this passage disproves it. Surely the laying on of Christ's hands was not done in sport, or as an empty sign ; nor did He vainly pour His prayers into the air ; but what He solemnly offered to God, He must needs endow •with purity. What could His prayer for them be, but that they should be received among the sons of God ? Whence it follows that they were born anew of the Spirit, unto the hope of salvation. That very embrace bore witness that they were reckoned by Christin Hisflock' (Calvin)." (ch. xix). It almost appears that Mr. Conder believes, with Calvin, that infants can possess faith and hope, that the "little children" " brought unto" Christ were not of the kingdom of heaven, were not heirs of glory when they were brought to Christ, but, unless there be a middle place, were heirs of wrath ; because it is supposed that by Christ and in connexion with the putting on' of His hands, and in answer to His prayer, they were " received among the sons of God," were "born anew of the Spirit." They seem to regard it as self-evident that these little children, though they might be infants and unconscious, were now begotten again unto the hope of salvation, it being either an absurdity or an impossibility for Christ to have prayed for their future holiness and usefulness. It seems that our esteemed brother would have explained his views more fully but that he is writing for Baptists as well as Paedobaptists. He, however, deems it prudent to record that " Calvin, Bengel, M. Henry, Stier, and others argue for Infant Baptism — that those who are capable of the Reality, should also receive the sign ;" from which I should conclude that as all the ungodly, who have not committed the sin against the Holy Ghost, are capable of regeneration, they are all fit siibjects of baptism ! Infants I should, on such ground for baptism, decline to baptize till God shall give some revela- tion respecting their capability of regeneration. The reader will, however, clearly perceive that while with some Christ's embrace, putting on of hands, and prayer, prove these little ones to be, when brought to Him, the members of Christ, regenerate, and heirs of glory, with others Christ's embrace, putting on of hands, and prayer, effected their immediate regeneration and all its concomitant blessings. Nor wiU I affirm that the expressions of some do not favour their previoiis and present regeneration, if not their previous, present, and subsequent regeneration, at least its partial accomplish- ment now, that is, to the extent of capability, and its subsequent and certain com- pletion ! It is, however, earnestly maintained that infants should be baptized because they are of the kingdom of heaven, and as earnestly that by and in baptism they are received into this kingdom ; while it is admitted by some, and denied by others, that subsequent ungodliness proves them to be unregenerate ; and consequently it is maintained by some, and denied by others, that these ungodly regenerated ones require to be regenerated. Of the testimony of one writer on baptismal connexion with the kingdom of heaven, as compared with that of others, we may often say, as of the "false witness against Christ," "Neither so did their witness agree together." Dr. BusHNEiiL is not ashamed of "the Church membership of baptized chil- dren." He boldly defends " this infant membership." He teaches that as " the colt is potentially a horse, the lamb a sheep, even from the first," "just so children are all men and women ; and if there is any law of futurition in them to justify it, may INFANT CITIZENSHIP AND MEMBERSHIP. 806 bo fitly classed as believing men and women." " The propriety of tliis membership does not lie in what those infants can or cannot believe, or do or do not believe at some given time, as, for example, on the day of their baptism ; but it lies in the cove- nant of promise, which makes their parents, parents in the Lord ; their nurture, a nurture of the Lord ; and so constitutes a force of futurition by which they are to grow up imperceptibly into ' faithfuls among the faithfuls,' in Christ Jesus. Perhaps no one can tell when they become such, and it may be that some initiating touch of grace began to work inductively in them, by a process too delicate for human observa- tion, even from their earliest infancy, or from their baptismal day" (Chris. Nur., pp. 156, 159). It is to be wondered that Dr. Bushnell, with all his knowledge of organic unity, at least in the family wherein one head makes a credible profession of faith in Christ, does not know whether the first "touch of grace" was on "their baptismal day" or "|from their earliest infancy." Must we conclude from this that they were not bom in the church, or if born in the church that they might possibly be graceless members till " their baptismal day P" Their baptism is good for something if it but makes sure "some initiating touch of grace," and its hasty performance under threatening illness is thus to be applauded, if it should cruelly have been neglected till this occurs. Dr. B. adds : " The conception, then, of this membership is, that it is a potentially real one ; that it stands, for the present, in the faith of the parents and the promise which is to them and to their children, and that, on this ground, they may well enough be accounted believers, just as they are accounted potentially men and women" (p. 159). The membership of infants is "a potentially real one!" Their faith ia apparently a potentially real faith, so that they may well enough be accounted believers ! Is their baptism also a potential baptism, or a potentially real baptism, or a baptism that needs no addition, the touch of grace being granted on the day of administration, if not before ? I was thinking, Is not the touch of grace possibly a potential touch, or a potentially real touch ? but on reading further, I find that I am forbid to believe that there is ought unreal in this. " In a strongly related sense it is, that the baptized child is a beHever and a member of the church. There is no unreality in the position assigned him ; for the futurition of God's promise is in him, and by a kind of sublime anticipation, he is accepted in God's supernatural economy as a believer" (p. 160). But how comes Dr. B. to know that this touch of grace is granted on the baptismal day, if not before ? Where is the chapter and verse in Divine revela- tion respecting this ? We want not such a reply as, " It is to be assumed that they will come forward into faith, being grown in the nurture of faith, and will claim for themselves the membership" [or the grace] "into which they were before inserted." Dr. B. seems incapable of believing that the conditional promise to us and to our children, given by Peter on the day of Pentecost, teaches along with Peter's other words, that in Christ there is a Saviour for sinful men, that the duty of all is to repent, and having exi3erienced a change of mind relative to their sins and their Saviour, to be baptized as believers in Christ, that thus the forgiveness of sins and the gift of the Holy Ghost God will impart, and that this arrangement embraces not only them but their posterity, and not only those present but to the world's end those whom God by His gospel and servants shall call. Instead of this Dr. B. teaches that " God's effectual calling" " will never call the parents away from the children" (p. 163). If such is the case, the touch of grace is possessed by the new-born infant of every believing parent, without the possibility of delay unto the baptismal day. Christ's words, " Suffer little children to come unto Me, and forbid them not, for of such is the kingdom of heaven," are believed by Dr. B. to be as much as could have been said, "if Christ had been calling His disciples themselves into fraternity with Him" (p. 106). Does it not then follow, that the touch of grace, the discipleship, the membership, and the baptism, must have preceded His words, " Suffer," &c., " for of such is the kingdom of heaven ;" and that consequently, when the expression. Of such is the kingdom of heaven, is used as a plea for infant baptism and membership, it is used in a manner altogether apart from its original application ! If " the observance of infant baptism go to establish also the fact of infant membership in the church" (p. 168) ; or if infant membership go to establish the fact of infant baptism, both are void from their equal lack of Divine authority. We need not follow Dr. B. in the supposed corroboration of his assumption from circumcision, from addresses to children in inspired epistles to members of churches, from facts and assumptions elsewhere noticed, or ecclesiastical testimony to be here- after examined. Mr. Thorn, on a Christian, a disciple and follower of Christ, on the Church and congregation, with his or this and or that, whilst I doubt not thoroughly conscientious, reminds me of the slippery eel, of the tortuous serpent, of the uncertain weather-cock, X 806 SUBJECTS OF BAPTISM. and of the confident pope. In the matter of confidence possibly I am not mucli Lis inferior. He approves of "introducing these dear little innocents to the general church or congregation of professed believers in the Messiah," "observing that in many cases babies, thus introduced, form by far the holier part of the congregation" (Inf. Bap., p. 147). Yet he receives not these innocent babies to " our spiritual com- munions," not into our " select societies or communions." "They are not inducted to the table of the Lord, nor reckoned with the faithful adults, nor possess any admitted claim to vote, in person or by proxy, in the affairs of our spiritual fellow- ships, any more than the children of the Baptists, consecrated to God without the application of water. Or, in other words, they are not introduced to our select and particular churches" (p. 147). It seems to me ihat Mr. T., with his inner and outer church, his general, his particular and select congregation, his school or church, congregational and general, may plead for baptized babies as belonging either to the church or to the world, to both or to neither. He sees a Patriarchal church and a Mosaic church as once existing, and now a Christian church or dispensation. Tho baptism of infant pupils introduces them to something somewhere, on which Baptists have no right to speak scornfully, while they have as little authority to deny the right and privilege of " consecrating innocent children to Christ, or initiating them into tho congregational school or general churches of Christ by water baptism" (p. 148). Mr. T. teaches that some Baptists " formally and ofiicially dedicate their infants to God, and thereby place them in the visible church of Christ, as much as we do our chUdren by baptism" (p. 148). He baptizes "little children, recognizing them as young dis- ciples, and granting them the initiatory privileges of tho Christian dispensation" (pp. 149, 150). Mr. T. maintains that " the distinguished titles" given in Scripture to the baptized do not affect his conclusions ; that an erroneous sense is often in controversy " attached to the words. Believer, Disciple, Convert, Christian, &c. ;" and " that there are, at least, two classes of people bearing the same appellation — the one truly genuine, and the other merely nominal followers of Christ" (pp. 283, 284). I affirm not that every professed child of God is sincere, that every one nominally is really a Christian ; but this alters not the real and legitimate import of Christian, any more than the fact of there being counterfeit silver alters the import of silver. I deny not that words aro sometimes used in a lower than their ordinary sense, that believer is used where it includes no personal trust in Jesus as the Surety and Redeemer of a ruined and help- less sinner, inasmuch as wo read that Simon (Magus) believed, and that the devils believe _ and tremble, but these expressions and facts justify not our altering, mistifying, making doubtful or of double meaning, the words "believer, disciple, convert. Christian, &c." The import of " God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth on Him should not perish ;" " believers' were the more added to the Lord ;" " when they believed Philip preaching," &c. ; " be thou an example of the believers ;" is neither altered nor made uncertain by any partial or counterfeit believing. Were we to follow some of Mr. Thorn's windings, we might speak of Christians as followers of Christ or of the devil ; or of believers as in a state of justification or condemnation, and of Christian churches as the congrega- tions of saints or the synagogues of Satan. It is by such reasoning that Mr. T. arrives at the conclusion that infant children belonged to the primitive churches or congregations of Christ, that as scholars, pupils, disciples, believers or Christians, they received the ordinance of initiation to the privileges of the Christian dispensa- tion. With " or" this and " or" that at pleasure, we may persuade ourselves that all infants ought to be baptized, or that all are baptized, or that all aro or will be, in this world or the next. I admit with Mr. T. that "there are nominal disciples and nominal Christians" (p. 301), that there is " a true and a false friend," and that " there are genuine believers, Christians, converts, and disciples, and mere imitations of them" (p. 301). This does not alter the import of disciple, Christian, friend, believer, convert. Let us follow out Mr. T.'s ratiocination, and we know not what is meant by " everlasting punish- ment," or "life eternal," whether all the world may be called Christians, or whether the word is inapplicable to any on the face of the earth, or whether it embraces equally with these the saved in heaven and the lost in hell. Mr. T., quoting 1 Cor. xiv, 23, " If, therefore, the whole church be come together," &c., says that ccclcsia hero signifies " a congregation similar to our own," consisting of the instructed and converted and " the ignorant and ungodly," and that any present formed " a part of the ecclesioe or congregations. That while present they formed a part of the assembly, I cannot deny ; but by churches of Clu-ist which Christ intended to be and which wore formed, by churches of Christ met together to break bread, I have been accustomed to tmderstand other congregations than those into which the ungodly entered at pleasure, and wero immediately acknowledged as belonging to their fellowship. If tho word INFANT CITIZENSHIP AND MEMBERSHIP. 307 ecdesia simply signifies an assembly witliout respect to its character as godly or ungodly, when the words " of Christ" follow it, or when it is used in certain application to the professed followers of Christ, it is limited by such designation or application to persons of a supposed, of a Christian character. It is not necessary that the word eccZesia should, irrespective of its connexion, include the idea of a Christian assembly. It is by false inferences that Mr. T. can speak of infants as disciples and Christians, and can also say, "When we speak of disciples, of course we mean scholars, pupils, students in the schools of Christianity" (p. 107). I cannot unite with Mr. T. in con- temning " Mr. Noel's horror at hearing people called Christians, when living in known sin" (p. 319) ; although I could inquire of Mr. T. whether the persons who casually entered the assemblies of Christians in apostolic times were baptized persons, or if unbaptized, whether they entered canonically and legitimately, and if entering unbaptized, whether their baptism immediately took place, without a single utterance of instruction to them. I understand by a church of Christ, not a company of cer- tainly regenerated persons, but a society of persons professedly regenerate, of persona " that profess faith in Christ and obedience to Him" (p. 329). Mr. T. apprehends that "the formation of churches within churches was enjoined by inspired apostles, for the good of the saints — though wo have no definite account of its being done" (p. 332). The record of churches within churches by apostolic precept, is in the same category with the baptizing of infants because they are of the kingdom of heaven, and to introduce them into this kingdom. We may see reasons for infant baptism of Bufiiciont number and weight when wo can see that Scripture sanctions " the idea of an outer and inner congregation of believers in the gospel of Christ" (p. 414) ; and we may then believe that in apostolic times, "the ecclesia, in its wider sense, embraced the assemblies of the converted and the unconverted, who wore baptized unto the profession of Christianity," that "children," yea, infant children, "formed a part, and, probably, a considerable part, of the Christian or beUoving congregations" (p. 501) ; and " that there were two classes of people, in the first times of the Christian church, recognized as disciples and followers of Christ" (p. 501), &c, I believe not that the Saviour enjoined, or that there existed in apostolic times. Christian and believing churches of Christ, and also unchristian and unbolio\nng churches of Christ, one being " the general church," and the other "the particular;" but I believe that the " great spiritual change" called regeneration, must take place before wo " can be- come Christ's disciples indeed" (p. G14) ; and that this discipleship is credibly professed before any can scripturally be baptized into Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, or can scripturally be received into any church of Christ, An outer and inner church of Christ, a church -ndthin a church, instead of a church of Christ in the world but not of the world, I believe to be an idea begotten in our brother, not by Divine truth, but by the bewildering love of Paedobaptism. J. Beazley, in a paper read at the Aut. Cong. Union Meeting (1868), gives, among other things, this requisite for membership, "that each applicant should be received on the ground of deliberate, intelligent, and expressed desire, when sincerity of such desire was sustained by pure moral conduct." I can understand and approve of this, although according to others it would appear that baptism was the ordinance of initiation into the church, and a subsequent reception from the (outer) church to the (inner) church. And I can hope from a paper more recently read by Eev. E. MeUor, and from what Revs. Stoughton, Thomson, Rogers, Brown, and Conder, have contri- buted to the Ecclesia, edited by Dr. Reynolds, that notwithstanding the crudities from Mr. Thorn and some others, Congregationalists will take the lead in an abandonment of contradiction, mist, and error on church-membership. Wliatever weight of condemnation or praise may justly rest on the author of Ecce Homo for many of his sentiments, to the following I can more easily subscribe than to some of the quotations recently given. " It has been shown," says he, "that the fi.rst of all requirements made from the earliest Christians was faith, a loyal and free confidence in Christ. This was what made the difference between them and the care- less crowd or the hostile pharisee — that to them Christ was a beloved Master and Friend" (p. 79). Primitive followers of Christ "did in the first place contract an obligation of personal loyalty to Him" (p. 80). " They had been gathered out of the nation: they form the elect part of it," "All look up to Christ, trust in Him" (p. 83). He is far from maintaining the perfection of each accepted member in doctrine or life. Baptism was desig^ned, says he, "to test the loyalty of the new recruit and his readiness to be known by his Master's name" (p. 85). Two solemn ordinances Christ ordained — "the one expressing the distinctness of the church from the world, and the other the unity of the church within itself " (p. 172). "The kingdom He wa3 founding was to be everywhere imperium in imperio" (p. 172). The Christian church " is a commonwealth," " it is a society of men who meet together for common objects," 308 SUBJECTS OP BAPTISM. "it claims unlimited self-sacrifice on the part of its members, and demands that the interest and safety of the whole should be set by each member above his own interest and above all private interests whatever." " It is, therefore, open to all human beings who choose to become members of it" (p. 315). " It is demanded of every member of a Christian commonwealth that he bo introduced into it with a prescribed form and in a public manner, that he be instructed in the objects for which it exists, and that he testify his membership from time to time by a common meal taken in conjunction with other members also according to a prescribed form" (p. 316). The accordance of most of this with holy writ, with the writings of Drs. Wardlaw, King, Young, and others when luriting on a scriptural church in ox>position to one estahlishecl hy civil laws, is as apparent as is its disagreement with infant baptism and infant chiirch membership. W. J. Sheewsbuet, however, believes Adam and Eve to have constituted the first "church," and that Gen. iv, 4 " shews" that Cain was "in the visible church from infancy !" Otherwise his wicked character would have prevented his subsequent " initiation into the church. But instead of this God recognized his right to approach the altar, though He refused to accept his offering" (On Bap., p. 88) ! It_ does not appear that " the first member of God's church, after the original pair," derived great benefit from his infant membership, although if Adam had not received him into God's church, it would have been an act of " reprobation, casting away his own offspring !" If infants are not members of the church of Christ, Mr. S. can ask, " Was there ever such a sweeping sentence of excommunication as this pronounced against mankind, in the very worst days of papal Rome" (p. 121) ? Without baptism and church mem- bership, poor infants are "heathens" (p. 129), and " shut out of God's covenant !" Mr. Gamble has a singular note on church membership. He says, " I was much g^ratified in meeting with the following remark by Mr. Morison, of Kilmarnock, in the Notes to the English edition of Dr. Wood's work on Infant Baptism. It so clearly expresses the sentiments which I have long entertained and often advocated, that I cannot refrain from quoting it. ' I have never yet been able to see that the Christian church and the kingdom of heaven upon earth, are precisely identical phrases. I think they differ in this respect, that the kingdom of heaven, like all other kingdoms, includes the children of the subjects, while the church is the society of the subjects themselves' " fScr. Bap., pp. 126, 127). " Children of the subjects!" I regard children as well as parents, as the subjects of all earthly kingdoms. The rightful subjects of Christ's church are those who are born again ; or, as we cannot search the heart, those who make a credible profession of repentance and faith are the acknowledged subjects of that kingdom which in the world is not of the world. The conclusion of this highly approved quotation is : " Hence I do not regard baptism as introducing the baptized person into the church ;" from which I conclude that he regards none as born in the church, or received into it by baptism, but by a credible profession of faith. And why not after apostolic example so receive to baptism ? But if the king- dom of heaven mean the Christian dispensation, all children for the last eighteen hundred years have been, and to the end of time will be, born in the kingdom of heaven, and must assuredly participate " in the external blessings of this kingdom," although while infants they can neither make a " right use" or a wrong use of them. We are not taught in Scripture to give baptism to all ages and all characters that live under this dispensation, nor to give it to believers and their children, nor to give it to any as a sign of the dispensation under which they live. Dr. J. Morison says, " The church can only be planted where the truth has taken root in the hearts of men ; and it is seriously to deviate from the apostolic rule, when nations or individuals are treated as Christians, before they have given evidence of that submission to Christ, which is requu'cd in all the subjects of His spiritual king- dom" (Horn., p. 255). If the church is what Dr. Morison and many others scripturally maintain, it is impossible for baptism to be for infants and yet to be " the door of the church, the rite of ecclesiastical initiation." Dr. M., after speaking of "the Catholic, or imiversal church," says, "The second view of the Christian church, which is familiarized to our contemplation in the writings of the New Testament, is that which exhibits it in the aspect of a single congregation of professing Christians, meeting together in one place, maintaining ' the faith once delivered imto the saints,' observing Christ's ordinances, displaying the holy virtues of the gospel, cemented together by the bond of Christian love, and cultivating fraternal intercourse and sympathy with all other Christian churches. It is not ventiiring too much to affirm that this is the prevailing idea of a Christian church in the New Testament" (Horn., pp. 261, 262). Elsewhere (p. 253), he teaches that " every church member has a right, and is in duty bound, to take part in the judgment, or discipline, of the chui'ch." B. H. Cooper quotes with approval Ncauder'a definition of a church of Christ : INFANT CITIZENSHIP AND MEMBEESHIP. 309 "A union of men arising' from tlie fellowship of religious life; a union essentially independent of, and different from, all otlier forms of human association" (Free Ch., &c., p. 55). He also says, it " is a habitation of God through the Spirit" (p. 53) ; and with Neander, that " the fundamental principle of the Christian community is, that there shall be no other subordination than that of its members to God and Christ, and that this shall be absolute" (p. 5(3). Thus are " absolute subordination of all its mem- bers to Himself, and co-ordination to one another, its fundamental principle" (p. vii). J. G. Manly. — "Ecclesiastical society is formed by belief and baptism ;" consists of professed believers, called 'the household of faith.'" — Eccl., pp. 186, 185. Dr. W. Hanna teaches that baptism marks out the church '' age after ago as a spiritual society separate from the world, having principles of life, bonds of union, objects of pirrsuit which are all her own — a kingdom among this world's kingdoms, yet owning a higher birth, and aiming at a higher destiny" (The Forty, &c., p. 263). Apply this owning, aiming, &c., to infants. How different from Dr. H. was the decision of a New England Synod, thus expressed : " What have infants more than mere membership to give them right unto baptism ? We know no stronger argument for infant baptism than this, that church-members, ov fcBderati, are to be baptized." —Mather's His. of N. E., p. 79. Dr. Wilson advocates the membership of infants in the church of Christ, from Num. iii, 28, where we read of the numbering of the Levites after their families by Divine command, and where we read that the number of the males among the " Kohathites, from a month old and upward were eight thousand sis hundred, keeping the charge of the sanctuary ;" where it is not mentioned when they began to do ser- vice, but where it is clearly meant that to the Kohathites belonged the keeping of the charge of the sanctuary. Dr. W., however, sees in this the association of infant children with their parents, and their being " thua formally entitled to the benefit of early training" (Inf. Bap., p. 462). "Thus formally entitled," &c. ! He also sees in the record, " All Judah stood before the Lord, with their little ones, their wives, and their children" 2 Chron. xx, 13), corroboration of the reception of infants — of course, by baptism — into the church of Christ ! I believe that infants were present as a part of the nation, and it may bo as an appeal to Divine pity, because they would share with the rest in subsequent disadvantage and misery, if the enemies of Israel should prevail and triumph over them. Further confirmation of infant baptism and mem- bership is in the record " Out of the mouth of babes and sucklings hast Thou ordained strength, because of Thine enemies, that Thou might still the enemy and the avenger. Ps. viii, 2" (pp. 462, 463). Yea, " infants wore admitted into the ancient church and their membership recognized in connexion with that of their parents." " The admission of an infant proselyte into the Jewish church, and the admission of an infant disciple into the Christian, stand upon precisely the same level" (pp. 466, 467). They do in having the perfect silence of holy writ. Of the discipleship of infants to Christ, I know nothing but in the exigencies and vagaries of Pasdobaptists. But Dr. W. believes infants to be included with the rest when, " with one hearty response the assembled tribes exclaimed, Ex. xxiv, 7, ' All that the Lord hath said will we do, and be obedient' " (p. 440) ; as well as in other national covenants with the Lord. I believe that a nation, whether designated the house of Israel, the house of Judah, or aught else, consists in part of infants ; and yet that when a nation is praised or cen- sured, infants are no more meant than in the weeping or rejoicing of a family ; indeed that "when a people are invited to believe or charged with unbelief" (p. 486), or arc commanded to keep the law, or when any words or deeds are mentioned in which infants could not share, it is preposterous to suppose that the " infant seed" are intended in such expressions. Pros. Edwards says : " The question is not whether Christ has made converting grace, or piety itself, the condition or rule of His people's admitting any to the privi- lege of members in full communion with Him. There is no one qualification of mind whatsoever, that Christ has properly made the term of this : no, not so much as a common belief that Jesus is the Messiah, or a belief of the being of a God. It is tho credible profession and visibility of these things, that is the church's rule in this case." — Cov. Sea., ch. vii, sec. ix. Dr. H. Grey. — " Wo may remark, in reference to the members of Christ's mystical body, the church — their harmony of pur2)ose, with, diversity in respect of office and operation ; their dependence on one another ; their mutual sympathy ; and lastly, their co-operation in the production of the happiest effects." — Christ's Kingdom, pp. 277, 278. Dr. F. Sleiermacher. — " Every individual is in the church-community to which he belongs, only by virtue of his conviction of the verity of that faith which is suc- cessively propagated therein." — Outlines, &o., p. 106. 810 SUBJECTS OF BAPTISM. J. Locke. — "A church, then, I take to be a volvmtary society of men joining themselves together of their own accord, in order to the public worshipping of God in Buch a manner as they judge acceptable to Him," &c. — Worhs, vol. vi, p. 13. Dr. S. Davidson, giving the views of Congregationalists, teaches that the church is in the New Testament used for " the whole body of believers," and for " a number of believers habitually assembling for the worship of God in one place" (Cong. Lee, vol. xiii, pp. 58-60). — It is baptizing of children that brings the Congregationalists into their dilemmas and contradictions on church membership. A fit place for the baptized child they can find neither in the church nor in the world. Hence W. Roberts interprets Christ's charge " Feed My lamhs," Feed the children of church members, or Feed these and other children ; and he recommends what another as wisely rejects, that " every child of believing parents be accounted from its birth as a member of the church — a member of the church, i.e., in its minority." — Cong. Un. Add. 1S68. T. Hughes (Wesleyan) says : " To mo it appears that the condition of membership in a Christian church is nothing more nor less than a believing acceptation of the code of Christianity, and a life accordingly." — On Ch. Memh. Dr. Arnold. — " The true idea of a Christian church, i.e., a society for the purpose of making men like Christ, earth like heaven, the kingdoms of the world the kingdom of Christ." — Life and Cor., p. 358. Dr, Hoffman. — The first church " consisted of those who acknowledged Jesus of Nazareth as the Messiah, and the only rightful King of Israel, and were willing to devote their lives to His service." — Chr. in First. Cen., pp. 95, 96. Dr. Miller, approving of the church member.ship of children, is consistent in maintaining "that they ought to be treated in every respect as church members." "If this be not admitted," says ho, "we must give up the very first principles of ecclesiastical order and duty." — In Hinton's His., p. 349. J. Howe speaks of the " church united in love, in judgment, in heart, in knowledge, in order." Dr. J. Stoughton. — " The first Christian Ecclesia was gathered on the day of Pentecost. The word literally signifies ' called from,' or ' out of.' The persons who on that day gladly received the word, and were baptized, came out of their former state and from amidst the ungodly and unbelieving, to serve Christ as their Lord and Master." " In the ecclesia they formed a spiritual family bound by ties not of nature's weaving. They were of one heart and one mind, filled with a love to God and to one another, such as they had never been conscious of before. Their simplicity was great, . their intelligence limited; but strong was their faith in Jesus as the true Messiah" (Ages of Ch.'j). 29). " The word {_ecclesia'] indicated simply a gathering of earnest souls under the power of a new faith" (p. 30). " A church, in the technical sense of the term, signifies a select community, whose bond of union is faith in Christ, and mutual love" (p. 35). Could infants be a part of these members? The following is from Ecclesia, a volume of Essays edited by Dr. Reynolds : " The first Ecclesia — or Church — consisted of the believers in Jerusalem, including the apostles of Jesus Christ, the disciples who associated with them after the ascension, and the persons who on the day of pentecost embraced the faith" (p. 3). " The word church, at first popular and vague, assumes a technical precision — and the sympathetic gathering, on the first pentecost at Jerusalem, re-appears in the seven organized societies of Asia Minor. The earliest idea of a Christian church is that of a brotherhood for the maintenance and diffusion of religious convictions. Associations for religious and benevolent pur- poses, apart from a distinct recognition of particular opkiions, have been common enough in all ages ; but such associations are plainly distinguishable from the EcclesicB of the Acts. For the disciples in Jerusalem were emplatically believers ; the pupils of a Divine Teacher, the earnest and devout recipients and advocates of truth unknown to, or opposed by, the world around them. The new converts continued steadfastly in 'the apostles' docfrine.' . . . No merely vague religious feeling constituted the nexus of fellowship, but faith in a Eivine name, the name of the world's Redeemer ; faith in Him as a Divine person, the ground of penitential trust, and the foundation of saintly hope ; faith in the doctrines taught by men who spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost. . . . The church comes before us at the beginning as a sympathetic consociation for maintaining and teaching the doctrines, as well as for cherishing and diffusing the spirit of the gospel" (pp. 4, 5). Much more might be quoted from him (pp. 42, 49) in defence "of a church resting on faith in dis- tinctive truths, and exorcising discipline amongst its members" (p. 17). He also speaks of " the initiatory rite of baptism" as " included in the ceremonial service of Christianity;" and he roaches "a throe-fold result. — Faith, including theology; fellowship, including discipline j and worship, including prayer, praise, baptism, an4 INFANT CITIZENSHIP AND MEMBEESHIP. 311 the Lord's Supper — these were fundamental elements in the original polity" (p. 9). Could, baptism, then, be dissevered from the Lord's Supper and membership in the church ? Could it be other than believers' baptism ? If this is " fundamental,'' adopt it, defend it, and adhere to it. Not to speak more strongly (p. 19), " The evidence, prima facie, the proof presumptive is, that these principles having been adopted by divinely-commissioned apostles, are an authority for ecclesiastical institutes and proceedings to the end of the world." Dr. GuERicKE. — " The members of the Christian church are characteristically distinguished by the very names they originally bore. Among themselves they were cnUed mathetai, pistoi, adclphoi" (Chr. Ant., p. 15). He says (p. 22) that "the intrinsic communion of all Christians, the fellowship of all such individuals as pro- fessed a common faith in Jesus Christ, naturally and necessarily found its external manifestation in the several churches which the Holy Ghost collected together and constituted by the preaching of the gospel." Dr. Knapp.— " Holiness gives the only right of citizenship in the moral kingdom of God, basileia Theou." — Theol. Lee, p. 282. Dr. Wahdlaw. — " A Christian church is a church of Christians ; and a Christian is a follower of Christ — a believer, a disciple, a saint" (Let. to McNeils, p. 42). He says on " scripturally constituted churches (p. 52). The associations of his people were instituted by the Lord for three ends : — their own mutual edification in godliness ; — the manifestation of His glory in the social as well as personal efficacy of His truth ; and the moral and spiritual benefit of the surrounding world." In the same letter (p. 82) he teaches that being "a Christian" is rightly regarded as identical with "being ' a converted man.' " And, says he, at p. 89, "What I plead for now, as necessary to constitute a C^risitaji c7iurc7i, is, that it boa church of Christians; in principle such, and as far as human discernment, exercised in faithfulness and charity, can distinguish, in practice such." At p. 100, he saya, " The kingdom of heaven ia the New Testament church." Dr. D. TouNQ beseeches his readers to " remember that spirituality and by con- sequence free volition — voHtion under law to none but God — is uniformly spoken of in the New Testament, not as a mere accident of the church, but as the very thing in which she has her being." — Law of Chr., &c. E. S. Pbyce. — Churches of Christ "are societies of His professed servants, avow- edly associating themselves together according to His will for miitual religious aid and obedience to the Saviour's commands." " Churches of Christ are, it will scarcely bo disputed, congregations of believers in the Lord Jesus," &c. — On State Ch., p, 144,. Dr. DwiGHT says : " If baptized infants are members of the Christian church, I think we are bound to determine and declare the nature and extent of their member- ship, as it exists in our view. That they are members of the Christian church, if lawfully baptized, I fully believe" fSer. 157). In the same page ho teaches that the baptized " are called godly. Christians, spiritual, sons and daughters of God, and children of God, throughout the Scriptures." Dr. J. Harris, speaking of the Church of Christ, says, " It is obviously implied that all its members have such habits of piety and devotion to maintain and such holy offices to fill as the representatives of Christ, and duties to discharge requiring His seal and fiat to give them validity — all of so spiritual and distinctive a character, that they necessarily pre-supposo the possession of nothing less than vital godliness" (Gr. Tea., p. 182). " Here he is training up a number of those who were children of wrath, and preparing them to take part in the business and pleasures of heaven" (pp. 188, 189). " To be the subjects of this kingdom does not depend on birth-place or human relationship. Their great distinction is, that they are born again" (p. 287). Much more equally to the point might be quoted. Dr. L. Woods says, " The relation of children to the church is generally represented by the most respectable authors as infant membership. In a very important, thoiigh in a qualified sense, baptized children are to be considered as members of the Chris- tian church" (Works, vol, iii, p. 437). He teaches also that baptized children have such a relation to the chiuxh " as they are capable of sustaining. At first they are merely children of the church, that is, children of those who are members of the church" (p. 438). How greatly above the children of Baptists are the children of Paedobaptists privileged ! He says, too, " The views I have advanced are in accord- ance with the belief of the Puritan churches of New England from the beginning" (p. 439). J. A. James, on membership in a church of Clirist, teaches, among many excellent things, that '■ fellowship is the instituted way of making a public profession of thg faith and hope of the gospel." — Chr. Fel., p. 23. 312 SUBJECTS OF BAPTISM, J. Btjrnet. — " Wlien we come to look at many of the productions on infant bap- tism by Paedobaptiats, and find that throughout most of these productions an idea runs that children are in some way or other members of the church — members not of any particular church, but members of the visible church of Christ, to a certain extent, and in a certain sense — we feel just as we feel when we are reading any of the scholastic questions of the old school divinity of the dark ages of Catholic times ; we feel that we are listening to words, or that we are reading words, with which we can associate no meaning. We feel that we are taking up a ground, upon which the Scriptures are never adduced. We feel that we are placed in a connection where we are compelled to say to our brethren — Speak so as to be understood, for we know not what you mean. When the children that you baptize grow up, will you admit them to the church, merely because they arc baptized ? You know you will not. You do not do it ; it is not the practice of any Paedobaptist church. Then why do you say they are members by baptism, if you will not acknowledge them to be members in fact, when they grow up, after you have admitted their baptismal membership ? We have never seen any clear distinction, any intelligible distinction, between baptismal membership and actual membership, and actual communion with the church in the membership of the Lord's Supper, and the general fellowship of the body. Nay, we do not believe that any man understands this distinction. We have not the least idea that the men that make it understand it. We have never met with one of them, that we have any idea understood his own statements, when he made them in the form in which we have now presented them." " I think their sentiments must be allowed to amount to an unintelligible absurdity." " Where is the church of Christ ever represented as con- sisting of individuals incapable of understanding its doctrines ? Where are the mem- bers of the body of Christ ever exhibited without the faith and the knowledge of Christ? Where does the New Testament speak of any whose minds have not been sufficiently developed to perceive 'the light of the knowledge of the glory of God' as it shines 'in the face of Jesus Christ,' and still, notwithstanding this, hold them up as members of the fellowship of Jesus ? There is no such passage. Away, then, with all the pretence of considering them ceremonially as members, and entitled on that account to cere- monial administration." — Ticen. Lee, pp. 68-70. T. BiNNET assures us that " the unity of the church" has its foundation "in an agreement as to the reception and profession of fundamental truth" (Ser. on John xvii, 21, p. 17. " We lay the basis, then, of the unity of the church, in the unity of the faith ; and that faith we find in the reception of the atoning sacrifice and the sanctifying Spii-it" (p. 21). I have perused with pleasure, from the Christianas Penny Magazine, the concluding part of a paper on " the Church and the Congregation," read at the Congregational Union Meeting, October, 1869, by Rev. E. E. Conder : " I am deeply persuaded that to merge the church in the congregation, whether by blending seat-holders with church members in what should be church action, by standing committees of seat-holders, such as I believe were common in the dead and barren times of the last century ; by making church meetings public meetings instead of family meetings of the church ; by throwing open the Lord's table to all comers, forgetting that just because it is His table, not ours, we have no more right to invite those whom He has not invited than to repel those whom He has received, or by reducing the admission to the church to a mere form, accorded as matter of course to any one who applies ; is a policy alike suicidal and unscriptural, hurtful to the congregation and fatal to the church : — on the other hand, I am no less firmly convinced that the estrangement of the church from the congregation, in cold separation and distance, is an evil only second to this in magnitude." The Magazine adds : " A good and extended discussion followed, in Avhich the preponderance of opinion concurred with the sentiments of the paper. It was recognized that church duties and privileges should go together, and that there would be no advantage in encouraging the formation of a class who desire the advan- tages without fulfilling the duties, and that Scripture would not justify such a coiirse." — Let him that heareth say, that church privileges and duties shoiild go together, and infant membership, with all its fancied and inestimable privileges, will speedily be obsolete. E. E. CoNDEK, also, in Ecclesia, says : " This word, ' Church' is perhaps the most remarkable word in the New Testament. Btymologically, indeed, ' Church' fkirk, IcircheJ, is supposed to mean simply 'the Lord's house,' and to have been transferred from the building, to the assembly convened in it. But the meaning of words depends not on etymology but on usage. Usage has made ' Church' the authorized representa- tive in our language of the Greek word ' Ecclesia' (oglise) ; and in discussing its meaning, it is of the meaning of this Greek word that wo are really speaking. What renders this word so extremely remarkable, as used in the Now Testament, is ita double ON INFANT CITIZENSHIP AND MEMBERSHIP. 313 parentage. By birth it is heathen ; by adoption it is Jewish. The same thing (it may be said) is true of other Jewish-Greek words — ' synagogue' for example. But no other instance, I think, can be found in which heathen and Jewish usage have so remark- ably combined, along wholly different lines of thought, to train and educate a word for Christian use. To the ear of the Greek, Ecclcsia was a classic and noble word, calling up the image of those popular assemblies of citizens (as distinguished from aliens, sojourners, and slaves) which in the old days of republican liberty wielded sovereign power, and were to the body politic what the heart is to the human frame. Noble though this meaning was, had the word borne merely this heathen political sense, and carried to Jewish ears no sacred associations, it is incredible that it could have been employed, as wo find it, without comment or explanation, in the early chapters of the Acts of the Apostles, or have been accepted at once and for ever, not simjily as one name among others, but as the appropriate and distinctive name of the brotherhood of Christian believers" (Eccl., pp. 19G, 197). With pleasure I could extract much more from Mr. C. on the chm'ch as " the body of Christian believers" (p. 202) ; "into which all who believe in Christ are baptized by one Spirit" (p. 200). We only need the distinct enunciation that, scripturally, in the possession of, and xmder the guidance of "one Spirit, are we all baptized into one body," and an accordant prac- tice, to accomplish the desired amalgamation of Baptist and Pajdobaptist Congrega- tional churches. I also agree with him, when teaching that " the primitive and formative idea of a local Christian church was, that it consisted of and contained true Christians, or members of the body of Christ, dwelling in that locality. There might be — perhaps in every case were — false brethren unawares brought in ; inconsistent members, denying in deeds the faith which they professed and intellectually held, and secret believers, who, from timidity and other caiises, had not openly joined the church. No idea is practically worked out in this world without failure or imperfection. But these drawbacks did not alter the fact that the design and model-idea of ' the church of God' in any one place — Corinth, for example — was, that it should be com- posed of those who, in that place, were ' sanctified in Christ Jesus, called to be saints :' of all such, and of none else" (pp. 204, 20.5), These distinct and scriptural utterances give hope for " Congregationalism of the Future," J. G. Rogers. — " To us it is abundantly clear that the first churches were composed of men who had been taught to trust in Christ as their Savioiir, to accept Him as their Teacher and to obey Him as their Lord" (Eccl., p. 485). This he teaches that they were " professedly;" and, says he, "such ought chiu'ches to bo still" (p. 486). The following is also consistent with himself, while it is a sufficient vindication of believers' baptism from the base insinuation that it requires a discerning of spirits : " The pre- sent writer holds that it is possible to maintain the necessity of a new spiritual life, and to insist that conversion is a reality, and that those only over whom this change has passed are proper subjects for membership in the church, and yet to confess that the church has no gift of discerning the spirits, enabling it to decide in each case whether such a change has been wrought, and that the responsibility must, therefore, be left with the individual alone" (p. 488). J. Radford Thomson. — " The church, as a Divine society, originated in the des- cent of the Holy Spirit upon Christ's disciples on the day of Pentecost. As a human institution, it shaped itself, under the guidance of the inspired apostles, according to the circumstances in which it arose and grew." " Our Lord and His apostles use the word {^ecclesia] to designate the whole fellowship of the faithful and holy throughout all places and ages. This is emphatically the Church, called by Protestant theologians, ' Catholic' and ' invisible,' as comprising all spiritual Christians, but as known in all its extent to the Omniscient eye alone. The word is also employed in the New Testa- ment as the common name of Christian societies, formed in certain places and associated for worship, edification, and mission work" (Eccl., p. 59). " Luther started from the broad principle that Christian people, as such, are the church, and that the condition of membership is faith and spiritual communion with the Lord ; but, perhaps influenced by the exercises of the Anabaptists, ho came to supplement this popular principle" (p. 108). Does infant baptism now present consistency with the fact (p. 127) that " Scriptural churches are societies of men holding Christian truth, leading Christian lives, observing Christian ordinances, striving as societies to realize the Divine ideal, regarding one another with confidence and affection, regulating their own affairs, and co-operating for common purposes ?" J. Baldwin Brown applies the name Christian society " to ' the congregation of faithful men' over which" he has " the honour to preside" (Eccl., p. 137) ; and speaks of what was "from the first the distinctly Evangelical element in the Church" (p. 169) ; adding, " I call that Evangelical in religion, in the true sense, which lives bjr yital personal fellowship with the living Christ." 314 SUBJECTS OF BAPTISM. Dr. Pressense, in The Early Tears of Christianity, says, " Each of the churches is a small republic, a society of believers, an association of Christians. " The idea of a mere school into which the unconverted were free to enter, is excluded." Thus may the reader see the sensible utterances of some on church membership, and may contrast these with others that have been given, or with such as that of Mr. Cleaveland, who of Baptists says, "It belongs to them to produce an express and posi- tive precept, or command, for the exclusion of infant membership under the New Testament administration of the covenant ; and till they can produce such a precept, they act without any warrant or authority from the word of God in refusing to baptize the children of covenanting parents." — Inf. Bap., &c., p. 39. They who maintain that the final, perfect, and lasting economy must bo modelled after one that was temporary and less perfect ; and .who call the Jewish nation a church of God, are required by consistency not only to introduce infants, but those known to be ungodly into the church of Christ. However forgetful some may bo that the " priesthood being changed, there is made of necessity a change also of the the law," let us hope that the more scriptural acknowledgments quoted will have speedy prevalence. The extent of present quotations is justified only by the necessary connexion of church membership with the initiating ordinance. SECTION XIX. ON BAPTISM AS INFANT AND MONUMENTAL. Dr. STAOEf.—" Whence originated baptism Into the name of the Trinity, if there was no risen Saviour to appoint ?" — The Sac, p. 24. Dr. W. Hanna. — " Truths treated in this way exist, not only in a more expressive, bnt in a more enduring form than if left to bo transmitted either by written record, or by oral tradition. They are better protected from the influence of time and change. They have greater tenacity of life, as is witnessed in the descent of many a picturesque old custom or habit from times as to which history and even tradition is silent." " These two sacraments of the church have stood bearing their silent testimony to the double object of Messiah's death — that our guilt should be washed away, and that afterwards there should bo sustained, advanced, invigorated, and perfected the life of faith, and love, and dutiful obedience." — The Forty, &c., pp. 245, 251. Baptism and the Lord's Supper, says Mr. Bickersteth, " are standing monuments of the truth of Christianity, against Atheists, Jews, Turks, Pagans, and all kinds of infidels, bearing date and continuing in visible and open observance from the days of our Lord, being abiding memorials of the great facts of our religion" (On Bap., pp. xii, xiii), Mr. Thorn deprecates " confounding the baptism with water {\nd the baptism with the Holy Ghost, the type with the antitype, the sign with the thing signi- fied, and the general church with the particular" (Inf. Bap., p. 510). Baptism with water is believed by him to be typical and monumental of the baptism of the Spirit, whilst it both preceded and succeeded this event. The baptism of the Spirit was a supernatural occurrence graciously vouchsafed to those who were regenerated. They had the symbolic and monumental sign when they had the baptism of water from John (at least those of them who had been John's disciples), and on the day of Pentecost BAPTISM MONUMENTAL. 315 they possessed the reality I This baptism, of which baptism with water is the supposed symbol and monument, was also administered by Christ to the heathen Cornelius and them that were with him, Peter then remembering "the word of the Lord, how that He said, John indeed bap- tized with water ; but ye shall be baptized with the Holy Ghost," God also giving them, says Peter, "the like gift as He did unto us who believed on the Lord Jesus Christ." And after the administration by Christ at Cesarea of that baptism, of which Christian baptism is the sup- posed symbol and monument — but only of its administration at Jerusalem on the day of Pentecost — Peter enjoins on these so baptized the baptism of water commanded by Christ, sajdng, "Can any man forbid water, that these should not be baptized?" In them the historic fact first transpired: only it was at Cesarea, and years after the baptism of the Spirit on the day of Pentecost. That Scripture records no other baptism of the Spirit than this at Cesarea and that on the first Pentecost after our Lord's ascension, is undeniable. Nor do I doubt that Peter's words, " Then remembered I the word of the Lord, how that He said, John indeed bap- tized with water, but ye shall bo baptized with the Holy Ghost," which speak not of their prayer after threatenings from Jewish "rulers, and elders, and scribes," when " the place was shaken where they were assembled together ; and they wero all filled with the Holy Ghost, and they spake the word of God with boldness," but of another time and event, are — along with tho exclusive application in holy writ of the baptism of the Spirit to theso two occasions — confirmatory of tho sentiment that God's word afi'ords not a shadow of countenance to the idea that tho bap- tism of the Spirit ever took place but in the upper room on the first Pentecost after Christ's finished work on earth, and at tho time when Peter at Cesarea was addressing Cornelius and his friends. These last had tho veritable fact with all the blessedness thereof, and then the symbolic and monumental act! Dr. Stagey teaclioa " that Baptism and tlie Lord's Supper are gonerally, ai3 to their historical import, Monuments of important Facts ; but specifically as to their evangelical intention Symbols of saving Truth, and Seals of the everlasting Covenant" (p. 19). In illustrating their monumental and historic character, he refers to Jacob's calling the name of a place Peniel, to the setting iip of twelve stones taken from the bed of the Jordan, to the stone set up between Mizpeh and Shen, to the rainbow, a token and pledge of the covenant with Noah, to circumcision, the token of a covenant with Abraham, and the passover ; the last two being monumental and typical. It might be expected that Baptists would agree with Dr. S. and other PEedobaptists on the monumental character of baptism, as our thoughts — we believe, under the guidance of inspiration — are accustomed to revert, in connexion with baptism, to the death, burial, and resurrection of our Lord ; but what is our surprise on reading from Dr. S., who in this sentiment is not alone, that " baptism, though not professedly enjoined in celebration of any particular event, yet being tho outward sign of that Divine bap- tism which was promised as tho distinguishing privilege of the New Dispenation, and its final administration under the command to baptize all nations, taking place immediately after the Holy Spirit was a,ctually poured out, it became, as if by design, the fitting memorial of that extraordinary visitation" (p. 23). The baptism of about three thousand almost immediately followed the baptism of the Spirit, therefore the latter is a memorial of tho former 1 We have about as much authority to regard Christ's ascension as the memorial of His resurrection, and His resurrection which took place on the third day after His death as the memorial of His death. A more baseless assumption I do not know. It reminds mo of the fervent prayer, " Give ug 316 SUBJECTS OF BAPTISM. a fresh baptism," presented by a Methodist minister after preaching from the words, " Ho that believeth and is baptized shall be saved," and explaining baptism as a pro- fession of faith and way of reception into the church. Also Dr. S. when speaking of being baptized into Christ's death, teaches that "not until the Saviour's sacrifice was the baptism complete in its whole design" (p. 5). Yet when the death of Christ — and His resurrection too — has taken place, completing, one would suppose, the design of baptism, instead of baptism being a memorial and monument of these facts, as the church's belief and confession from that time to this, it is a monument of the first miraculous baptism of the Spirit ! Where has any inspired writer given the slightest intimation of this ? In the fact that the baptism of water by the apostles succeeded the baptism of the Spirit by Christ, what shadow of evidence is there, that one is a memorial of the other ? This we might ask even if the apostle of the Gentiles had not in Eom. vi, 2-4 taiight so differently respecting the monumental and symbolic character of Christian baptism. Instead of deducing from the Pentecostal baptism of about three thousand, the inferences of Dr. S. and others, I deem it more natural, legitimate, and commendable, to infer that there should never be unnecessary delay in baptizing those who, so far as we can judge, have received the Lord Jesus as their Saviour and Sovereign. The apostles of Christ, endued with power from on high, ia a manner worthy of imitation, promptly obeyed their Master's behest to disciple, to baptize, and teach all things whatsoever He had enjoined. If because one baptism took place on the same day on which another baptism took place, we may conclude that one is a memorial of the other, what in connexion with baptism may we not imagine ? " This is surely a slender foundation on which to establish" such an hypo- thesis. Of what may we not suppose baptism to be symbolical and monumental, if we admit this and that not taught in God's word, and ignore this and that which God's word teaches to be signified in this ordinance ? If our opponents had not, in the sprinkling of babes and those known to be unbelievers, mistakenly departed from the primitive and divinely-ordained practice of believers' immersion as Christian baptism, they would on the monumental character of Christian baptism, have a mor6 prompt and vivid remembrance of the death, burial, and resurrection of our Lord, as spoken of in Rom. vi, 2-4. The incongriaity of PaBdobaptist practice with the instruction of this part of the oracles of God, may have originated or greatly promoted the ground- less assumption of the miraculous baptism of the Spirit as being the antitype and monument of Christian baptism. But from God's word let no conscious deviation be allowed, even if prepossession, as well as unbelief, " has a deeper seat than the intellect, and therefore requires for its destruction a greater power than logic." I am aware that Dr. S. also speaks of the baptism of the Spirit as " the dis- - tinguishing privilege of the New Dispensation :" but, without derogating from its value, I believe not that we are warranted in thus designating the " Divine baptism" granted to the disciples at the memorable Pentecost, and subsequently to Cornelius and them that were with him. We bless God for this miraculous baptism, but wo regard rather the more extensive, the enlightening, renewing, and sanctifying opera- tions of the Divine Spirit from age to age, as " the distinguishing blessing of the New Dispensation." Dr. W. Cooke teaches that "baptism is a perpetual monument of a great and fundamental truth — the Trinity." " Baptism is associated by our Lord with a formal declaration of God's great iiame ;" " baptizing them in the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost ;" " the one Jehovah whom we profess to worship and adore" (Inf. Bap., p. 5). Do infants i)rofess this in baptism ? After speaking, at p. 9, of baptism as " a monument or sign of great and fundamental truths," that it is " God's own seal or pledge of His fidelity," ho says, " it is our seal solemnly affixed to God's truth — our public declaration of belief in God's veracity in maintaining His holy covenant." How appropriate, then, to [infants ! Nor is baptism proved to bo momimental or symbolical of the Trinity, or the Pentecostal baptism of the Spirit, by the administrator's use of the words, into the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, notwithstanding the faith which, on the part of the baptized, this utterance supposes. I deny not that baptism as a monumental act might bo aclmmistered to infants and unbelievers, the faith professed in the facts of which bap- tism is monumental, being possessed and professed by the administrator, or by the person requesting on behalf of the child the monumental action to bo performed, or, in certain cases by both administrator and applicant. BAPTISM SYMBOLICAL. 317 But where in holy writ is given the slightest intimation that the baptized received the ordinance through the faith possessed by any substitute ? The instruction from precept and practice, from the practice of baptizing households, has been already noticed. But if baptism were typical of the Pentecostal and miraculous baptism of the Spirit, it would belong not to infants or unbelievers ; and the working of miracles might possibly bo looked for as a sign of God's acceptance of the ceremony. I have not, however, a stronger objection to baptism with or in water being a sign and monument of baptism with or in the Spirit, than I have to baptism being the sign of a conversion that is not supposed then to have taken place, and that can by none be certified to take place at any future period. Our opponents will have baptism to be the sign of a Divine baptism promised, the monument of a Divine baptism that took place eighteen hundred years ago, or the sign of a cleansing that may possibly take place before death, but they cannot restrict it to a sign of cleansing which the baptized is supposed through faith in Christ to have experienced, nor regard the death, or burial and resurrection of Christ, of which it is monumental, to be facts and verities in which the baptized himself is supposed to believe. The confirmation of correct sentiment on this and some following sec- tions, may be seen in the section on the Nature or Essence of baptism. SECTION XX. ON BAPTISM AS INFANT AND SYMBOLICAL. Dr. J. MoRisoN. — " As an outward sign of inward cleansing by the grace and Spirit of Clirist, baptism is a most significant and instructive ordinance. "^ — Ilomi., p. 343. J. Best. — " What we especially object to, is baptism administered when there is and can be no profession of iait'h."—Bap., p. 9. That baptism is sj^mbolical is the sentiment both of Baptists and Pasdobaptists. Dr. Stacey says that baptism and the Lord's Supper are " signs of evangelical doctrine," and that " they present the same points of resemblance, and have substantially the same determinate character" (p. 92). This I believe to be admitted by evangelical Predobaptists gener- ally : and yet they for the most part maintain the necessity of personal faith in Christ who died, was buried, and rose again, for a reception of the Lord's Supper, whilst they will administer baptism to those that are destitute and incapable of faith ; yea, it is by some strenuously maintained that baptism belongs to believers, to infants, and to those known to be unregenerate. The reception of the Lord's Supper is admitted to imply a personally professed faith in Christ. Its repeated observance is a virtual repetition of the declaration that Christ is in us the hope of glory, that by faith we are feeding on Him as the bread of God that cometh down from heaven and giveth life unto the world, that wc have continued trust in Him as our only Surety and Redeemer, and supreme love to Him 818 SUBJECTS OF BAPTISM. as our infinite Benefactor. How is it that baptism and tlie Lord's Supper have according to almost every Paedobaptist in this country "the same determinate character," and jet one belongs only to those who make a credible profession of faith in Christ, and the other belongs to these and to their children ; and, as some say, to these and all children ; and, as others say, to these and all children, and those v/ho for their wickedness may be designated a generation of vipers ? We believe and emphatically maintain, with Pjsdobaptists generally, that baptism is symbolical, and, with Dr. Halley, that it is symbolical only, that is, that it neither seals nor conveys the blessings that are symbolized. It symbolizes the washing away of sin, or a cleansing from its defilement and guilt. It symbolizes in its action a burial and resurrection, as I think notwithstanding the resemblance there may be in some bap- tisteries to a coffin, and notwithstanding scornful and unjust remarks that have been made on this, while, when scripturally administered, it teaches that the subject of baptism has professedly died to sin. The baptized, by the scriptural act of baptism, professes his belief that Christ has died, has been buried, and has risen again. The immersion, which may be called a burial, supposes death to have taken place, and the emersion sj'mbolizes the rising again to newness of life, which newness of life is the precursor of a resurrection to eternal life when the risen Lord and Saviour shall return in the clouds of heaven and in His Father's glory. Our opponents distinctly and emphatically maintain that baptism symbolizes truths and blessings. Cleansing and regenerating are by many admitted to be represented and implied in baptism. But of regeneration and the cleansing away of sin in infants, Scripture says not a word. If cleansing and regeneration are signified in baptism, the probability commends itself to reason — and the fact thereof must bo determined by holy writ — that baptism belongs only to those who are at least hopefully cleansed and regenerated. I forget not that they are "the circumcision which worship God in the Spirit," &c. ; and that the cor- poreal act of circumcision was to be performed among others to male infants ; and I deny not that baptism, while symbolic of the washing away of sin, might by the Divine Being have been enjoined to be performed on infants. I maintain the necessity of such a command in order to the validity of infant baptism, and that baptism in no instance of command or record of performance, by no single utterance respecting it, nor by all combined, is authorized to any other than professing believers. We admit with many that baptism is " the sign of an inward and spiritual grace ;" and that this grace is "a death unto sin and a new birth unto righteousness ;" but wo aflirm the incompatibility of this with the baptism of infants and of all known to bo unregenerato. We admit with Dr. Stacey that the requirements of human guilt and depravity "are fully met in the economy of the Gospel, the one in the death of the Son of God as man's llepresentativo and Substitute, and the other in the life- giving influences of the Holy Ghost as the Spirit of grace and truth" (pp. 26, 27) ; and we are not necessitated to deny that of Christ's atoning death and the Holy Spirit's sanctifying influences, "baptism and the BAPTISM SYMBOLICAL. 819 eucharist are" "the outward and visible signs." But we deny the additional and distinct idea that baptism " was specially adopted as the sign of that very spiritual baptism by Jesus Christ which John had pro- phetically announced" (p. 48). The miraculous baptism of the Holy Ghost and fire predicted by John concerning Christ, is not the "regenera- tion by the Spirit," of which Dr. S. (p. 50) maintains baptism to bo the *' sign." "Wo admit that a mighty and blessed change was effected in the apostles on the day of Pentecost by the baptism of the Spiiit, but deny all evidence of its being " regeneration-by the Spirit." E. BiCKEESTETH truly says, " Tho baptism with the Holy Ghost seems to be a degree of privilege and blessing [beyond that of regeneration and. conversion. The apostles were truly converted to God, when the Lord said to them, Behold I send the promise of My Father upon you, hut tarry ye in the city of Jerusalem, until ye be endued with power from, on high (Lu. xxiv, 49) ; and again, Wait for the promise of the Father which ye have heard of Me. For John truly baptized with water, but ye shall be baptized with the Holy Ghost not many days hence (Acts i, 4, 5). Accordingly they received from our Lord a fuller blessing at the appointed time." — Trea. on Bap., p. 321. Dr. Stacet says, " Baptism by water, then, is, with manifest propriety, the sign of regeneration by the Spirit. It is at once the rite by which a personal interest in the economy of redemption is formally acknowledged, even where its benefits cannot be reflectively enjoyed, and the outward symbol of that inward operation by which the privileges of Christian fellowship pass from a mere covenant right to a deep and blissful experience. It thus answers a double purpose, its appropriateness to the one being the ground of its selection for the other. It serves as an ordinance to initiate into the visible church, giving its subject a claim to the external advantages of pro- perly accredited membership ; and also as a sign to set forth that higher ablution which introduces into the spiritual kingdom of God, and entitles to all the blessedness of a true adoption" (The Sac, pp. 50, 51). To me it appears " an exploit of fancy" to regard baptism as a sign of the Pentecostal baptism of the Spirit, or a sign of this and also of regeneration by the Spirit. There is certainly no evidence that the dis- ciples of Christ in the upper room on the Pentecost after our Lord's ascension experienced the new birth, passing from death unto life. Of what baptism is not a sign, and how much more than " a double purpose" it answers, I am as indisposed as unable to say. Whether the formal acknowledgment of a personal interest in the economy of redemption means a formal acknowledgment by the person being baptized, whether infant or adult, believer or unbeliever, or by the administrator, parent, guardian, or some other person, or whether at pleasure wo may shift this formal acknowledgment from one to another, and whether the formal acknowledgment of a personal interest in the economy of redemption be that of being personally interested in that redemption which is by Christ Jesus, or merely of belonging to a race for whom redemption is provided, I am unable to say. I am in consequent uncertainty whether the reflective enjoyment of benefits, which with some is regarded as impossible, is a reflective enjoyment of the benefits arising from a personal interest in the Divine favour, or a reflective enjoyment of the advantages arising from the Divine economy of a gracious provision for the human family. Where in holy writ are we taught that baptism symbolizes one thing for one person and another thing for another person ? Can baptism symbolize in infants and known unbelievers, in any who are refused membership and communion with the church, " that inward operation by which tho privileges of Christian fellowship pass from a mere covenant rite to a deep and bliss- ful experience ?" Are infants capable of "a deep and blissful experience?" If the thing is possible, where are we taught that appropriateness to one is with the Divine Being the ground of selection for another ? Not to speak now of initiation into privi- leges that are withheld, how can baptism with any propriety be the sign of an ablution that introduces into the kingdom of God, to those who have no sins to be washed away, or with what propriety can baptism be the sign of an ablution which introduces into the kingdom of God, and entitles to all the benefits of a true adoption, to those who are known to be unregenerate ? When our opponents speak of baptism as symbolic of a blessed change which in the sinner is believed to have taken place, they speak in accordance with the oracles of God ; but when they speak of it as symbolic of a future and uncertain ablution 320 SUBJECTS OP BAPTISM. and benediction, they depart from Divine revelation and oppose human reason. A Baptist, maintaining the absurdity of a sign, while conscious that the thing signified is wanting, has said, " What should we think of the father, who wishing his new-born son to be a druggist, put up over his door the mortar and pestle, and when asked for drugs answered that his son had only got the sign, ' exhibiting in a visible emblem' the profession ho wished him to follow, but he hoped one day to see him have the thing signified ?" Instead of baptism being significant of the desires of parents guardians, and administrators, or sponsors, he who was not a whit behind the very chiefest apostle could write to the chui-ch at Eome, " Know ye not that so tnany of of us as were haiytizecl iyito Jesus Christ, were baptized into His death ? Therefore we are bui'ied with Him by baptism into death : that like as Christ was raised up from the dead by the glory of the F^her, even so wo also should walk in newness of life." And another apostle speaks of baptism as " the answer of a good conscience towards God." God's word teaches as clearly that baptism is the means of regeneration aa that it is the sign of a cleansing that may possibly in this world at some time bo experienced ? Dr. Owen says that " regeneration is the grace whereof baptism is the sign or token. Wherever this is, there baptism ought to be administered" (Works, vol. xvi, p. 260). He also says, " They that have the thing signified have right unto the sign of it, or those who are partakers of the gi-ace of baptism have a right to the adminis- tration of it" (p. 259). Further, " All infants are born in a state of sin, wherein they are spiritually dead and under the curse. Unless they are regenerated or bom again, they must all perish inevitably" (p. 260). And in proof that the children of believers, and their children only, are proper subjects of baptism, he says, "The children of believers are all of them capable of the grace signified in baptism, and some of them are certainly partakers of it, namely, such as die in their infancy (which is all that can be said of professors) : therefore they may and ought to be baptized" (p. 259). Let the reader judge if the worthy doctor is not for once floundering in the mud. Where does God's word teach anything respecting the earthly and spiritual condition of the children of believers who die in infancy different from what it teaches respect- ing the children of believers who are living through infancy ? "iVhere indeed does it teach a difi'erence in capability or possession between the infants of believers and unbelievers P Is one class capable and the other class incapable of regeneration ? If all infants are born children of wrath, how soon can it be ascertained that the regen- eration of infants having believing parents has taken place ? Does God's word reveal the day and hour on which this blessed change, this qualification for baptism in those who are born spiritually dead, takes place ? Is there always evidence of this regen- eration ? Is there equal evidence in all ? Does it sometimes start up suddenly when the child is threatened with death ? Or does this hurry arise only from previous parental negligence, a plain revelation having been given that infants having a believing parent are regenerated as soon as they be born ? If there is doubt as to the regeneration of any of the children of believers who die not in infancy, inasmuch as all are " capable" of it, while it can be said that " some of them are certainly partakers of it," can we tell how to address these when rising to maturity, whether as children of Satan or of God ? Can we know whether their delinquencies are the failings of the regenerate, or the sins of the unregenerate P If the only test is. By their fruits ye shall know them, what becomes of the boasted advantages in infancy of a descent from pious parents ? Praise is however due, and shall be given, to Dr. Owen, for hia explicitness in sending certainly to hell all children dying ia infancy excepting those who die, or have come into the world, having a believing parent ; " God having appointed baptism as the sign and seal of regeneration, unto whom He denies, He denies the grace signified by it" (p. 2G0). Dr. Halley wisely exhorts to our " being content with scriptural authority in receiving baptism as a symbol" (Vol. x, p. 216). We shall thus avoid "the most extravagant and incredible dogmas" of the fathers on this subject ; and, as I think, much of what Dr. H. has written on baptism as the designation ef Catechumens, if we regard it as the symbol of that which is professed, and which in the judgment of charity is supposed, to have taken place. Baptism may bo regarded as " a sign of the blessings of the evangelical covenant, in which the parties baptized are supposed to be interested" (Vol. xv, p. 65). But to define the required "interest in the cove- nant" by what " is implied in its general adaptation" to us and our necessities, ia unworthy of any enlightened Christian. Suppose wo say, with Dr. H. on John iii, 5, that baptism represents the new birth, that to be born of water is " the external sign," and "to be born of the Spirit the inward and spiritual ablution" (Vol. x, p. 120), that infants are capable of this, and, if they Uvo, may experience this ; therefore they ought to be baptized ! Who does not see folly instead of force in thus representing BAPTISM SYMBOLICAL. 821 "the badge of a disciple" (p. 120) " the initiatory rite" " of the Christian church" (p. 6) ! Our brother seeks unwisely to draw baptism into a symbol of truth or doctrine, rather than of a fact or facts, and into a sj'mbol of what may be, rather than of what is. Contrast this with Paul to the Romans already quoted, or to the Galatians, "Ye are all the children of God by faith in Christ Jesus, for as many of you as have been baptized into Christ have put on Christ." Thus Col. ii, 12 ; Tit. iii, 5 ; 1 Pe. iii, 21 ; and every part of the New Testament. Mr. Thorn teaches us to regard baptism as typical " of mental purification," "of consecration to the cause of God," and " of the influence of the Spirit" (Inf. Bap., p. 59). He speaks of " baptism with water, the sign and symbol of this great internal renovation," the regeneration by Divine grace, of which children, says he, " are capable"^ (pp. 97, 98). And because this is "possible, and far from improbable" with infants, in the judgment of Mr. T., it is a weighty reason for infant baptism. And suppose we conceive also with Mr. T., that " sinful or Satanic influences should there take up an unrighteous residence" (p. 98) ; we perhaps need only conclude, that it may be as well to baptize them as a generation of known vipers. He teaches also that " baptism with water is confessedly a symbol" of " baptism with the Holy Ghost" (p. 206). " Water-baptism was a type of the baptism of the Spirit in the days of Moses, as much as in the time of Paul." " Water-baptism under the former economy" was, and under the present is, " typical of the baptism of the Holy Spirit" (p. 358). It would seem as if our opponents deemed baptism typical of pardon and acceptance with God. Hence they speak of children as enjoying the Divine favour, and loudly com- plain that we do not on this ground accept them for baptism. Mr. Thorn quotes from Dr. Halley : " If they cannot have faith, they do not need it ; if they cannot have repentance, God requires it not from them." " Shall we deny the sign of water, when Christ has declared the party to be in possession of all our water signifies" (p. 375) ? This is deemed very triumphant in opposition to our sentiments. But if there is in God's word neither example nor command of infant baptism ; and if, as we maintain is the case, God's word unites repentance and faith to baptism, how improbable that God approves of an act which implies an impossible profession ! The idea of infant profession is absurd. The acknowledged necessity of professed repentance and faith in baptism is the pleaded justification of a monstrous sponsorial profession. The baptized are spoken of by Mr. Thorn as " symbolically cleansed from the pollution of their previous natural condition" (p. 380). Does baptism effect this in infants, or have infants before baptism experienced this ? How is it with persons known to be unregenerate ? Baptism, says Mr. T., " is the sign or symbol of that sanctifica- tion which is required of all who enter even the humblest school-room of the Christian commonwealth" (p. 380). Is the congregation of believers and unbelievers a " Chris- tian commonwealth ?" If baptism is a symbol of required sanctification, is it equally appropriate to infants, to the unregenerate, and to believers ? With Mr. T. baptism is or was the removal of ceremonial uncleanness : " Every person or thing was regarded as unclean and unfit for the service of God, till sanctified by some purifying element; or, in other words, till baptized" (p. 382). "In truth," says he, "baptism is of a double import, comprehending both purification and initiation" (p. 386). He adds, "And this will hold true in reference to all the baptisms mentioned in Scripture." Consequently baptism, symbolic of baptism with the Holy Ghost (p. 510), &c., was to the three thousand, to the believing eiinuch, and probably to Christ Himself, a purifi- cation and initiation ! "It may be worth noticing," says Mr. T., " that all baptizings were introductory, and that the parties baptized were always regarded as being previously without the circle, the system, or the society, into which this rite inducted them" (p. 561). It would gratify my cm-iosity to know out of what the Israelites from Moses to Christ, during which time Mr. B. says that baptism existed, were baptized, and into what circle, system, or society, these and those who received John's baptism were inducted. Also Mr. T. can properly designate " baptism the sign of their moral purification and consecration to Christ" (p. 562). And baptism is a purification and the purifying ordinance ! See pp. 565, &c. It is also appointed as a symbol of doc- trine (p. 591), and " was intended to be a standing memorial of the out-pouring of the Spirit, an ordinance teaching the necessity of Divine influence, and the purity of heart and life" (p. 592). This ordinance is " designed openly to symbolize the gracious out-pouring of the Holy Spirit" (p. 612), whilst it is also " an induction of persons, adult or infant, to the public teachings and congregational privileges of Christianity" (p. 612). Thus clearly is baptism symbolic and infant ! A. M'Lean (Baptist) says : " To make baptism a sign or token of our being visible subjects of the kingdom, or a figure of our being viMMy saved, is not only a style unknown in the Scriptures, but a sentiment in every respect absurd, as it makes it a sign of what is as visible aa itself, and so a useless thxag."— Works, vol. vii, p. 220. V S22 SUBJECTS OP BAPTISM. Dr. Chalmers has already been quoted as teaching that " baptism by water, which is so distinctly personal, symbolized what is just as distinctly personal, the washing of regeneration and the renewing of the Holy Ghost." Again he says, " Of what is it the symbol P Expressing it generally, it is the symbol of purification from sin, especially from the pollution of sin." — Ins., vol. ii, p. 491. Dr. L. Woods says, " The outward rite of baptism is designed to indicate that inward purification which is necessary to eternal life, and to shew that the blessings of the gospel truly belong to all who receive it in the spirit of faith." " Through the want of godliness in those who are baptized there is a separation between the sign and the thing signified.' ' On account of our inability to search the heart we may admin- ister the ordinance to professed but not real believers, the fault being not in the administrator but in the subject of baptism. This is no reason for its administration to infants or those known to be unregenerate. The same learned writer says, " In all ordinary circumstances, believers will be baptized, so that in them the outward sign and the thing signified, according to the manifest design of the rite, be joined together" (Works, vol. iii, pp. 313, 314). When will our Ptedobaptist brethren in-acticcdhj regard " THE MANIFEST DESIGN OF THE KITE P" Abp. Whateley says much that is equally excellent and opposed to infant baptism while speaking on the ritual significance of this ordinance. On the interpretation of God's word, he lays down this principle : " We must not be satisfied with any sense whatever that the words can be brought to bear, but seek for that in which they were originally designed and believed to be understood. This will not always be what might appear to us, in a distant age and country, the most obvious sense ; but what- ever sense the words conveyed to the hearers, we may fairly presume to be the true one, unless some correction was furnished of any mistake into which they might have fallen." Having referred to the sentiments of Baptists that the blessing typified should be enjoyed by the baptized, he says, "It certainly must be admitted, that, according, at least, to the ordinary use of language, a sign of anything is understood to be such, from its being regularly accompanied by the thing of which it is a sign, or at least by some reasonable presumption of its presence" (On Inf. Ba})., p. 15). He admits that " baptism is an outward and visible sign of an inward and spiritual grace," that according to the ordinary use of language there should be "at least some reason- able presumption of the presence of the thing signified," that as " the dress or badge of a regiment is the sign or badge of a man belonging to that regiment," so, "if a dress or badge were worn indifferently by any indefinite number of persons, some belonging to this regiment or order, and some not, wo should consider that it had ceased to be a sign at all." He admits that an infant " cannot afford any indication of the inward spiritual grace" symbolized in baptism, and acknowledges that Scripture represents the baptized as regenerate ; and yet in remembrance of this, even pleading this in conjunction with the early sentiment respecting " baptism as conveying regeneration," he defends the prayer " before baptism, that the infant ' may be born again, and made an heir of everlasting life,' " and the "thanks after baptism, that ' it hath pleased God to regenerate the infant,' " believing that the infant will sub- sequently profit by his privileges, " if he use them aright" (p. 39) ! At the same time " the very reason assigned in the Catechism for its being allowable to administer baptism to infants is, that as there are certain indispensable conditions of the benefits promised to them, so the fulfilment of these conditions is promised by them through their sureties" (p. 43). The sign of grace enjoyed maybe imparted to infants on promises of repentance, faith, and obedience by their sponsors ! The blessings of regeneration will prove advantageous to the infant, " if he use them aright !" Does " our church" consider " baptism as conveying to the babe regeneration," the thing signified in baptism, the required qualification for baptism ? Does baptism convey that which is already possessed ? Does it produce the substance which it represents ? Does the shadow create the man and then the man accurately project the shadow (Macallan, on Bap., p. 108) ? We may as scripturally have sponsors for the incorruptible inheritance, as for repentance, faith, and oberomiscuoiisly, none can deny. Wherefore, it remains, they are indeed ftppoiuted for confirmation, which doth necessarily suppose tho pro-oxistenec of {jraco ON INDISCEIMINATE BAPTISM. 347 in the soul." " Baptism is appointed of God to be a seal of the righteousness of faith." " None have right to the seal but such as have interest in the thing sealed. The being of a thing is pre-supposed to the sealing of it ; the contract must be made before it be sealed. No wise man will seal a blank — far less must God's seal be given to him that hath no interest in that which it is appointed to seal." " Let us view those Scriptures that directly hold forth the nature, ends, and uses of baptism : Matt, iii, 11 — ' I indeed ba^jtize you with water unto repentance, cis metanoian.' So it is called 'the baptism of repentance.' Acts xix — ' John verily baptized with the bap- tism of repentance,' not in respect of repentance to come after, but going before, for John baptized none but those that confessed their sins — Matt, iii, 6 ; and he required of them a profession of their faith in Him who was to come. Acts xix, 4. It is called 'the baptism of repentance for the remission of sins' — Mark i, 4." He also refers to apostolic baptisms, and to Christ's commission ; and concludes that " none but visible believers, or such as appear to have a saving interest in Christ, have right to baptism before the church." "None ought to be baptized but visible disciples of Christ ; for in baptism there is an open acknowledgment of the party for a disciple of Christ. He ought not to be looked upon as a servant of the great Master before he get on His badge and wear His livery." " AU the examples of baptism recorded in the Scripture hold forth none to have been baptized but those that, before baptism, appeared to have a saving interest in Christ." And after alluding again to apostolic baptisms, he says, " Neither can any instance be adduced wherein the matter appears to have been handled otherwise." Indiscriminate baptism would " be a profaning of the holy ordinance." Baptism " is appointed of God to seal" the regenerate. It " is a testifying sign that the party baptized is such a one." To baptize those who make not a credible profession of this, " were to proclaim an agreement betwixt Christ and Belial, and to set up for concord betwixt light and darkness, and seal the same with a witness — which cannot be but an abuse of God's holy ordinance. It was a heavy charge against the priests — Eze. xxii, 26 — that they ' had violated God's law, and profaned His holy things ; and put no difference between the holy and profane, nor showed difference between the clean and unclean.' " He asks : " While they continued impenitent mockers of religion, enemies of Christ, neither sorrowing for their sins nor appearing so to do, might the apostles have baptized them ? or could they lawfully have received baptism ? Whoso will say, they might, would pour contempt on Christ's holy ordinance. Sure I am, had they baptized them in such a case, they had gone beyond the bounds of their commission, obliging tliem first to disciple, then to bap- tize" (p. 385). " It is horrid indeed to think on sealing them with the seal of the covenant that in their works deny God." He can therefore quote with approval the words of Zanchy : "To admit unto the sacrament of baptism the impenitent and unbelievers, what else is it but to trample under-foot the blood of Christ and expose it to mockery ?" In all this he denies any exclusion of infants, because he believes that " the infants of visible believers are no less visible believers than they themselves are." He thus agrees with Zanchy, that " Wo must believe that an infant of faithful parents is already baptized with the baptism of the Spirit, seeing it is in the covenant ;" and believing he is consistent with himself and the Scriptures, he also agrees with " the professors of Leyden" in demanding " pre-requisite faith and repentance in all that are to be baptized ;" and vsdth Ursin, who says, " All, and only, the regenerate law- fully receive baptism. The church administereth baptism lawfully to all and only those whom she ought to account in the number of the regenerate." Although Bos- ton demands that piety is the right to baptism, ho admits that " if an apparently serious profession did not warrant the chiu'ch of God to give the seals to such persons as have it, they would administer them to none without a revelation from God as to the person's state before the Lord." — Works, pp. 386, &c. A. F. Douglas teaches that it is " a horrid profanation of sacred things," to baptize the children of the impenitent. — The Pastor, &c. Dr. Hawker says : " God the Holy Ghost hath caused to be recorded many instances of an act of grace producing an immediate change of heart, from death to life, and from the power of Satan to the living God. Matthew, the publican, yea all the apostles at once followed Jesus at His call. Lydia's heart was instantly opened by the Lord, and we hear of no delay nor pangs of the new birth. Even the jailor at PhiUppi, though convulsed at midnight, was made joyful in Christ before the morn- ing."— Com., on Acts ix, 9. J. CoNDER, speaking of the character of apostolic times, says, " The very profession of belief, under those circumstances, formed a presumptive evidence of sincerity." — • On None, p. 96. R. Baxter. — " 1. When Christ saith, Malce Me disciples of all nations, baptizing them, He means sincere disciples, though we cannot ever know them to be sincere, u^ SUBJECTS OF BAPTISM. 2. When He saitli, He that hclieveth and is baptized shall he saved, here faith goes before baptism, and that not a common, but a saving faith ; for here is but one faith spoken of, and that before baptism" fPl. Sc. Pr., p. 327). The following is from Baxter's Bispu. of Right to Sac. : " The use of it is to be the sign of our entrance into the church of Christ ; not only solemnizing our covenant ■ndth God, in which upon our consent we were before secretly entered, but also investing us in our church honours and privileges" (pp. 1, 2). "If John's baptism required a profession of repentance, then much more Christ's." " They were baptized of him in Jordan confessing their sins." " This confession was the profession of the repentance that John required" (pp. 54, 55). On John's baptizing unto repentance he says, the plain meaning is, " I do by baptism initiate into the state of repentance, or of penitents." " Jesus Christ Himself did by preaching repentance prepare men for baptism." Baptism " according to the appointed order comes after repentance" (p. 56). "We must expect and require true evangelical repentance to be professed before baptism." Our work is " a discipling of nations, which goeth before baptizing them." " It is apparent that they took the profession or appearance of both faith and repentance as pre-requisito to baptism" (p. 57). H. J. Gamble nevertheless says, "We do not presume to require a good conscience before we baptize, because it is not our prerogative to search the heart" f&cr. Bap)., p. 66). Do they " presume" to require a good conscience before admission to the Lord's Supper ? The solemn twaddle about inability to search the heart is most inconsistent and preposterous. That baptism was administered by the apostles with- ont any regard to previous piety has not a particle of evidence. Dr. Watts believed " that a great number of the conversions of the primitive Christians were so sudden and surprising by the extraordinary effusion of the Holy Spirit, that the very miracle of their conversion did sufficiently answer the end of a large and particular confession. The work of God on the souls of men was sometimes in an instant, and they were made believers out of unbelievers, at once ; the Spirit fell on them while they heard the word ; and when they who just before professed Judaism or heathenism, and neither knew nor loved Jesus Christ, confessed His name and religion at once, the wonderful change was evident to all." — Works, vol. iii, p. 248. Dr. KiTTO. — "When those (the Pharisees) who in their self -righteousness aclcnow- ledged no need of repentance, came to him for simple baptism, he repelled them with stern indignation and reproof, until they should repent, and evince their repentance by their conduct." — Dai. Bi. Illus., vol. viii, p. 19C. How accordant is this testimony from Psedobaptists witli that of a Baptist, who writes : *' There could, one would think, be no room for mistake in the apostolic age, as to the subjects of baptism. Now, unless some error had sprung up on this point — unless there had been teachers who maintained that baptism was to precede repentance — all that we should look for, would be its being uniformly mentioned after, not before, that change of heart which is intimated in the single term ' repentance,' or 'faith.' If any had thought otherwise, we might have had an apostolic injunction that none but believers were to be baptized ; but if the practice were uniform, as we have every reason to believe it was, we have all the evidence we could reasonably expect ; and therefore all wo ought to require." — Bap. Rcc, p. 70. 1844. Dr. LANaE, on a brood of vipers, says : " By the terms ' serpents,' ' generation of vipers,' the diabolical nature of hypocrisy is pointed out" (Com.., on Lu. iii, 6). On Matt, iii, 10, he has written respecting these characters : " The Baptist regards them as unfit and improper candidates, who presented themselves only to strengthen their self-conceit." Dean Alford thinks that these Sadducecs " were probably deterred by his rebuke from undergoing baptism at his hands." — Gr. Tes., on Matt, iii, 7. The Paidobaptists who believe not in sudden conversions after the Pentecostal out-pouring of the Spirit, and who believe that the baptized " continued steadfastly in the apostles' doctrine and fellowship," remind me of Matt, xxiii, 24, which accord- ON INDISCRIMINATE BAPTISM. 349 ing to the authorized version reads, " Ye blind guides, which strain at a gnat and swallow a camel." The Kev. W. G. Blaikie but speaks as hundreds more of P^do- baptists, when he says, " The conversion and baptism, in one day, of three thousand of this vast and varied multitude, furnished the first counterpart in the spiritual world to the miraculous draught of fishes in the natural" fBi. His., p. 387). So Dr. Kitto : " Moved by the Spirit, hundreds — thousands — received his words into their hearts, and that day there were added unto the church by baptism no fewer than three thousand souls." — Dai. Bi. Illus., on Acts ii, 41. Dr. J. MoRisoN. — " The faithful were baptized, indeed, ' in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost ;' but their baptism was not their Christianity ; it was only the visible sign of it. They had heard, they had felt, they had embraced the truth."— iJow., p. 267. Dr. S. I. Peime records John Livingstone as saying, " I never preached ane ser- mon which I would be earnest to see again in wi-yte but two : the one was on ane Munday after the communion at Shotts, and the other on ane Munday after the com- munion at Holywood;" and John Brown, of Haddington, as saying "that five hundred souls were converted under that ane sermon at Shotts" (Pow. of Prayer, pp, 295, 296). Do any believe that the apostles, who had been baptized in the Holy Ghost, had less unction and power in preaching than Livingstone, Whitefield, Wesley, and some others ? Or is it and has it over been impossible for the new convert to make an immediate and credible profession of faith ? J. Burnet, speaking of adults, says, " It would be absurd to administer a Chris- tian ordinance to a man who made no profession of Christianity." " I never heard of any who would baptize an individual till he had made a profession first." — Txoen. Lee, p. 70. J. A. James, having taught that the first thing recorded after the Pentecostal baptism of the Spirit, is the preaching of the gospel by Peter, next the conversion of sinners, then the baptism of those that gladly received the apostle's word, and next, the fellowship of these with previous believers in Christ, adds in the subsequent page, " We perceive not only that souls were converted, but that immediately on their con- version, they were drawn to each other by the force of mutual love, and formed a voluntary and blessed fellowship. No one that believed the gospel remained separate and apart from the rest, but gave himself up to be one with the church" (Father's Pres., p. 245). Why do we not all now recommend this order of conversion, baptism, and union with the chirrch ? "This was always the case in primitive times." Dr. Halley so widely differs from the venerated J. Angell James in regard to invariable primitive practice, as not only to denounce all supposed instruction from order, but also to teach that the instruction from order is the very opposite of that which Mr. James supposed. " The process," says Dr. H., " seems to have been : — They were first baptized, and then taught, and then admitted to the fellowship of the church, and the Lord's Supper, and daily prayers." The presentation "for baptism was the only evidence that could have been afforded or required," in regard to those of whom the Spirit of inspiration records, "Then they that (gladly) received his word were baptized." It is admitted that they "proved the sincerity of their application for baptism by their subsequent conduct" (p. 115). On their being first baptized and then taught, it appears to me that their subsequent steadfastness is, like the atheist's muscles, bones, joints, eyes, ears, air he breathes, and globe on which he dwells, as to all glorious adaptation and evidence of design — that it happened so to be. Or we might thus animadvert. Three thousand, who being " regarded as not having repented, were exhorted without delay to be ' baptized every one in the name of Jesus Christ' " (p. 21) ; and they " proved the sincerity" — of what ? of their ungodliness ? of their piety, when not regarded as having repented ? or of their subsequent piety ? Nay, they " proved the sincerity of their application for baptism by theik sub- sequent CONDUCT !" If the piety of subsequent conduct proves any kind of previous sincerity, it proves the sincerity of piety in the application for baptism. Sincerity of application for baptism would surely be proved by submitting to be baptized. Dr. H. and Dr. Wardlaw teach that according to the New Testament baptism is not " a social or church ordinance. It did not, when administered to adults, introduce the persons baptized to connexion with any particular church, or society of Christians. They were simply baptized into the faith of Christ, and the general fellowship of the gospel" (Reply, &c., p. 124). " Baptized into the faith of Christ" by a,n indiscriminate baptism ! Also " their baptism was administered to them simply on a profession of their faith," says Dr. Wardlaw, to which Dr. H. adds, " or desire to receive instruc- tion" (p. 124). Dr. H., who looked on Peter's Pentecostal hearers as being " assured that on their repentance and baptism they should receive the gift of the Holy Ghost" (p. 22), afterwards, in advocacy of Peter's baptizing not on the ground of supposed 350 SUBJECTS OP BAPTISM. repentance and faith, writes, "Wliy, then, were they baptized? Because, as the apostle says, ' the promise' was to them and to their children" (p. Gl). The promise of the Holy Ghost was on condition of repenting and being baptized upon the name of Jesus Christ, and yet the baptism, the indiscriminate baptism, took place because of the promise ! If this is not a worthy finale in arguments for the profanation of a Divine ordinance, I will only insert from Dr. Halley the following : " The sacraments worthily received are said to be seals of an inward and spiritual grace, or of spiritual blessings consequent upon it ; but that inward and spiritual grace is to us the only assurance of the worthy reception of the sacraments" (Vol. x, p. 87). Can the ungodly by Divine command be baptized, but not know that in this obedience they have done right until they have a consciousness of conversion ? Dr. Wardlaw says : " On both sides of the Tweed, whatever may be said in occasional mitigation of the well-known and fearful laxity of parochial communion in the Lord's Supper, there is, in regard to the ordinance of baptism, a most melancholy and mischievous approximation to national universality. We are a haptized nation ; and by this means — the natural result of an established form of worship — we are an extensively and miserably deluded nation, systematically and guiltily deluded" (Bcr. Arcju., pp. 27, 28). In his Appendix on Infant Baptism (p. 300), he says, " I have frequently thought that missionaries have gone to an extreme in the opposite direction from Dr. Halley, when they have kept professed converts for a length of time in the T^osiiion oi candidates for baptism." "The true and only question is — whether the apostles ever baptized, or ordered to be baptized, any who did not thus profess to have received their doctrine ; and whether they ever baptized but on the assumption of the truth of such profession. Let a solitary instance be produced of anyone being baptized without such profession." After quoting from Dr. Halley on conscientious obedience to Christ, he says (p. 344), "What are we to think of pleading for the administration of this sacrament to those who, making no profession of faith, can be rendering in their submission to it, no such ' conscientious obedience,' seeing all acceptable obedience to Christ must be the obedience of faith P" Bp. Harvey Goodv?in, like many previously quoted on John's baptism, says : " John had a baptism, and Jesus had a baptism ; both were with water, and both required repentance." — Com. on Matt., iii, 8. Dr. Pbessense clearly regards conversion as the precursor of baptism and member- ship, and sometimes "the gift of the Holy Spirit" in His miraculous influences, in " The Early Years of Christianity ." He says : " The conditions of entrance into the church are extremely simple. No guarantee of preparation, of instruction and ex- amination, is required, becaiise conversion has at this period an exceptionally sudden and supernatural character. The sign of initiation into the new society is baptism." Prof. H. J. Ripley (Baptist), whose Notes on the Gospels I have obtained while this was in the press, I have pleasure in quoting : " Unto repentance ; as if he had said. The baptism which I administer, implies a profession of repentance, an acknow- ledgment of your being sinners, and of your obligation and determination to reform your hearts and lives. ... A proper view of John's ofBce must at once have shown these impenitent Pharisees and Sadducees, that they were not fit subjects for his baptism. The language of John, J baptize you, does not imply that he had bap- tized the Pharisees, and all others whom he was addressing. Indeed, his remarks clearly imply the contrary : this also appears from Luke xi, 30. His use of the word " you" must be explained by referring to the language of ordinary life. In addressing a collection of people, such an expression would be understood as meaning, those of you whom I baptize, &c. Unto repentance ; that is, in reference to repentance, as pro- fessing the obligation to repentance and the exercise of it." — Notes, on Matt, iii, 11. Dr. A. Barnes, instead of believing that because about three thousand were bap- tized on the day of hearing the gospel from Peter, baptism was then indiscriminately administered, can say : " Though so many received his word and were baptized, yet it is implied that there were others who did not. It is jirobable that there were multitudes assembled who were alarmed, but who did not receive the word with joy." He further speaks of those who received Peter's words. " Their conversion was instantaneous. The demand on them was to yield themselves at once to God. And their profession was made, and the ordinance which sealed their profession adminis- tered without delay" (Com., on Acts ii, 41). That they gave credible evidence of conversion, and that the reality of conversion was corroborated by subsequent steadfastness, fidelity to the inspired record obliges us to believe. Instead of giving a hundred quotations from Pasdobaptists, some of whom are of the greatest eminenco for learning and piety, whose opiniona are most decided on the credible profession of faith in Christ made by the three tliousand, by the Samaritans, by the households, and by all others of whoso character at baptism we can from the inspired record form any opinion, I refer the reader to sixch quotations aa have already been given. SPIRITUAL BAPTISM, 351 With all the esteem whicii I feel for Christian gentlemen who advocate the baptism of those -who are known to be without God and without Chi-ist, in undoubting assurance that thej' intend nothing opposed to the wiU of God and the honour of Christ, in remembrance that they intend in every instance the future instruction according to opportunity and ability of those whom they baptize, I cannot but regard it as a profanation of an ordinance intended for those who have embraced the Saviour and should thus at once profess the fact. What justification of it, or apology for it, can there be in the fact that future instruction is intended ? Do not Christians intend, and are they not bound, to give instruction to all, to the extent of capability ? Does not Christianity necessarily inspire with such generosity that this is felt to be a privilege as well as an obligation, with a \ievf to repentance and recovered allegiance to Him who is worthy of homage and honour fi'om all in heaven or on earth, and to increased holiness and excellence in every one of His loyal subjects ? It would, in my judgment, have done honour to the Congregational Union of England and Wales, if, while approving of infant baptism, they had risen en masse to protest against any appearance of countenance from them for indiscrim- inate baptism by the publication of Dr. Halley's Lectures among those of the Congregational Union. The sentiment is, however, but the legitimate and necessary sequence of what is maintained to be the grammatical and necessary requii-ement of Christ's commission. As Dr. Owen did not shrink from maintaining the exclusion from heaven of the children of unbelievers when dying in infancy, the conclusions to which his premises legitimately conducted, so Dr. H. has not shrunk from the goal to which his interpretation of the commission consistently and directly conducted. SECTION xxrv. ON BAPTISM AS INFANT AND SPIRITUAL. P. Phescott.— " Good works strengthen, develop, and perfect the principle of holiness from which they spring."— iec. on Good Works, p. 22. Baptism, like many words, may be used figuratively as well as literally, and thus it is apphcable to the mind as well as the body, it being possible to speak as correctly of a person being immersed in thought, sorrow, or joy, as of a person being immersed in water, or some other liquid. The baptism divinely-enjoined on man, and apostolically practised and enforced, appears to me to be so clearly and necessarily water baptism, that, as I think, some of the following extracts need but be read by any intelligent and candid student of Scripture, in order to being condemned. Yet I am far fi'om maintaining bewilderment and lack of candour in the gentlemen I shall quote, except on this theme. 352 SUBJECTS OF BAPTISM. Prof. J. H. Godwin maintains the figurative or spiritual import of the word where I maintain its literal import. He speaks of baptizo as expressing " the effect and not the mode of action" fClir. Bap., -p. I2d). On Heb. vi, 1, he speaks of '^ba2itismos being an action, a purifying. The effect of the rite — the state into which the person who received it was brought — is a purification, baptisma" (p. 121). _ " Our Lord said, ' I have a purification wherewith to be purified, and how am I straitened until it be completed.' " " He was by His sufferings to be officially purified" (p. 145). When we read, " He that believeth and is baptized shall be saved," Prof. G. tells us "The baptism spoken of is that of the mind, not of the body" (p. 148). The command in Matt, xxviii, 19, according to him, is, " Make disciples of all nations" (p. 151), purify, ing them for the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit" (p. 154). The thing spoken of is " a moral purification of their souls by the gospel of Christ" (p. 154). Yet he thus refers to " Peter's words, ' Eepent and be baptized each one of you in the name of Jesus Christ.' They who had been ignorant of Him, or opposed to Him, were to trust to Him as their Lord and Savioiu-. Thus their minds were to be changed, and they were to acknowledge Him as He was acknowledged by all who became Hia disciples — being baptized by water in His name" (p. 158). There is no reference to water baptism in Matt, xxviii, 19 or Mark xvi, IG ! And, of course, the apostles would understand Christ as not referring to any external rite, but to the purification of the soul ! Yet " in extending Christianity to all nations, they would bo sure to extend its initiatory ordinance." " Their first direction to baptize by water is not mentioned in the Scriptures" (p. 158). "The apostles would continue to observe both" baptism and the Lord's Supper, " and teach their observance, because they had been appointed by Christ ; and the permanent obligation of both rites would rest on precisely the same foundation" (p. 159). " In no other place" than in Matt, xxviii, 19, "are the apostles said to baptize the minds of men" (p. 159). I have regarded Matt, xxviii, 19, as a command to baptizo, not a record of baptizing either mind or body. And "the verbal parallelisms to this passage," says Prof. G., " do not furnish much evidence in respect to its right application" (p. 159). Yet " the subject of which the apostle speaks" in Eom. vi, 2-4, " is the purification of the soul" (p. 103) ; and baptism for the dead (1 Cor. xv, 29) is " the spiritual pui'ification of the Christian life" (p. 173), " being purified for the dead" (p. 176). " As many of you as have been baptized into Christ" (Gal. iii, 27), should be rendered, " such as are baptized for Christ" (p. 177), meaning "those who receive the spiritual baptism of Christianity" (p. 178). The " one baptism" of Christians (Eph. iv, 5) is "the purification of the soul" (p. 178). This appears to Prof. G. to bo the meaning of baptism in all commands to baptize, excepting those of Peter, obeyed by about three thousand on the day of Pentecost, and by Cornelius and them that were with him, and in all references to baptism, excepting all the places where a baptism is recorded as taking place ! Into the same or similar absurdity runs every writer whom I have perused, who maintains that baptism is purification ; an hypothesis which, of all others, Prof. Wilson acknowledges to have the least foundation. Without now dwelling on Prof. G.'s assiimptions and fallacies on various Scriptures to which he refers, I am utterly iinable to reconcile the only command to baptize as enjoining spiritual baptism, and the " one baptism" of Christianity as being spiritual baptism, with the conduct of any Pasdobaptist, and with the acknowledgments by Prof. G. of water baptism by our Lord's forerunner and His apostles. Dr. Stacey teaches that being baptized into Christ (Eom. vi, 3, 4) meansnot "exter- nal baptism" (The Sac, p. 233). "By this baptism they were spiritually conformed to Christ" (p. 234). He subsequently teaches that the language "considers the the ordinance if at all, in its purely spiritual import," and that as to immersion being referred to in these words, "no critical violence can coerce them into a single utter- ance in its favom-" (pp. 235, 2.30). Yet it "beautifully chimes in with the general voice of Scripture, that the means of salvation are not works of human righteousness, but the outward profession of Christ by baptism, and the inward sauctification of the heart by the Spirit" (p. 323). And when Dr. S. is referring to expressions in Col. ii, 12, which are similar to those in Eomans, he admits their reference to the rite of Christian baptism, in which the renunciation of the body of the sins of the flesh " was solemnly professed" (p. 82), the Colossians "having by the consecration of themselves to God in baptism put away the accumulated mass of their defilement, and thus become complete in Christ" (p. 83). On Gal. iii, 27, he says, " ' As many as have been bap- tized into Christ, have put on Christ,' that is, all who have submitted to the ordinance with a full recognition of its meaning, have entered into covenant relation with Christ" (p. 81). Without admitting that this is a thoroughly correct interpretation of inspired truth, the language clearly implies that baptism in these places refers to an external ordinance in which a solemn profession is implied. In the words of Dr. SPIRITUAL BAPTISM, 353 S., "There is ' one baptism,' and this is true equally of observance as of essence." I firmly believe that there is but " one baptism" in the church of Christ, enjoined on man, to be practised by man. If according to Divine teaching there is " one baptism," this baptism is either external or internal, or both. That it was external, is, I think, undeniably evident, when the eunuch said, " See here is water, what doth hinder me to be baptized ?" and when he and Philip " went down both into the water;" and when Peter said in relation to Cornelius and them that were with him, " Can any man forbid water, that these should not be baptized, which have received the Holy Ghost as well as we ?" So I undoubtingly believe it to have been in every instance on record referring to baptism in the Acts or Epistles of the Apostles, excepting the two instances in which baptism was administered by our Divine Saviour Himself. When baptism is mentioned by Peter as saving, but not the piitting away, &c., I believe that, in accordance with Hebrew and common phraseologjs the idea conveyed is that the external ordinance alone saves not, the answer of a good conscience, the accom- paniment of baptism, being requisite to this result. The will of Jesus is the speedy discipling of every man to Himself, and the baptism He has enjoined on us is an external ordinance. We admit that " neither circumcision availeth anything, nor uncircumcision ; but faith which worketh by love :" and, as adds R. Watson, " faith, by virtue of which the Gentiles came into the church of Christ on the same terms aa Jews themselves" f Inst., vol. iv, p. 398). For Jew and Gentile there is "one Lord, one faith, one baptism." How strange that this one baptism should be maintained to bo spiritual baptism, by those who practice sprinkling, advocate pouring, and allow of immersion, as Christian baptism, and who enforce the baptizing (?) of believers and infants by the application of water to some pai-t of the body. If, like the Friends, they repudiated the external act, there might bo some consistency in their error. If our opponents spoke of two external and symbolic ordinances, one to be observed on becoming a disciple of Christ, implying faith in Jesus the Redeemer from sin and ruin, and devotedness to Him, the other to bo observed repeatedly in commemoration of that sacrificial death by which Christ becomes the Bread of life, the Author of eternal salvation, to them that believe on Him, they might tlien say with Dr. Cox : " A spiritual kingdom cannot admit of other than spiritual subjects ; the idea would be incongruous and absurd, as well as manifestly unscriptural ; for when the subjects of this kingdom are described, they are represented not only as rational beings and moral agents, not only as intellectual and immortal, but as regenerate and holy — 'born of God' — ' born of the Spirit' — ' believers' — 'disciples' — ' saints,' and constituting the ' body of Christ' " fOn Bap., pp. G, 7). How pleasingly also does the following from Dr. Stacey contrast with some previous quotations if we except the unscriptural idea of making disciples of Christ by baptism : " The only baptism by which men can make disciples of one another, and the church of all nations, is the baptism of the body, and not of the mind. The sense in which the apostles really did understand the com- mission to baptize, is happily closed against dispute by their subsequent practice. Their conduct plainly interprets their coneoption. They fulfilled the command literally, by baptizing with water ; if seldom themselves yet commonly by evangelists and others, to whom for the most part they entrusted the duty. They thus adminis- tered the rite to the thousands who were pricked in their hearts at the Pentecost ; to the Samaritans ; to Cornelius and his kinsmen ; and to all others who, exercising repentance towards God, and faith in our Lord Jesus Christ, desired a recognized connexion with His people." — Tlie Sac, pp. 284, 28.5. AA 854 SUBJECTS OF BAPTISM. SECTION XXV. ON THE ESSENCE OF BAPTISM AND ITS APPLICABILITY TO INFANTS. Jerome. — " They first teach all the nations, then when they are taught they baptize them with water ; for it cannot be that the body should receive the sacrament of baptism unless the soul has before received the true faith." — In Wallace's Chris. Bap., p. 52. J. C. Means. — " We are but disciples ; nor is it for us to alter what we cannot iiiiprove." — Rel. of Bap ,-p.n. E. Baxter. — "I cannot blame them" for being very solicitous about ba2ytism ; "it being not only about a matter of Divine appointment ; but a practical of such concernment to the church." — Dispu., &c., p. 41. Much has been written on the essence or real nature and character of baptism. Dr. Thomas, in his Genius of the Gospel, says that baptism is not regenerating, not professional, and not initiational ; but that it is teach- ing. It says, Cleanse your hands, ye sinners, and purify your hearts, (p. 17). I believe that baptism cannot be symbolical without being teaching ; that truth is conveyed through the senses by every symbolical and Divine institution. But I believe not that baptism is "a mere symbol of the necessity of cleansing" (p, 19). Both baptism and the Lord's Supper I believe to imply a significant and important confession of truths be- lieved, and a solemn and significant profession of feelings experienced and pui"poses formed, in perfect consistency with all teaching from their symbolic character, and to some extent in necessary association with such symbolism. And we who cannot search the heart, are bound to act according to credible profession. Of this, infants and those known to be ungodly, unless the latter profess their ii-religion, are incapable. The late Kev. F. W. Robertson says of baptism : "It is a desire to wash away that which is past and evil. We would fain go to another country, and begin life afresh" (Ser. First Se., p. 137). On 1 Cor. x, he says, " Baptism is the solemn profession of our Christianity." Baptism " is discipleship, a sacrament or oath of obedience, the force of which is kept up and revealed by an outward sign." On 1 Cor. i, 14-22, he saj's, speaking of " what Christian baptism is. It contains two things ; some- thing on the part of God, and something on the part of man. On God's part it is an authoritative revelation of His paternity ; on man's part it is an acceptance of God's covenant." See more in Robertson and others quoted on different Scriptures. The concessions and mistakes of opponents I purpose to mingle with my own praise and censure through much of this section. Prof. A. A. Hodqe's doctrine on baptism, and I believe that of Presbyteriana generally, is, that it is designed, 1, to " signify, seal, and exhibit to those within the covenant of grace, the benefits of Christ's redemption ; and thus, as a principal means of grace, edify the church;" and, 2, to be a visible badge "of membership in tho church, to put a visible differenca betvreen the professed followers of Christ, and tho world" (Outl. of TheoL, pp. 479, 480). As the infants of believers are maintained to be " within the covenant of gi-ace," it might be supposed that baptism exhibits to these infants " the benefits of Christ's redemption." Our Presbyterian brethren, and ESSENCE OF BAPTISM, 355 with few exceptions all other Pfedobaptists, can consistently make no complaint against Baptists for advocating believers' baptism, and acting according to profession made. They adopt this in regard to adults ; and respecting infants, in whom a moral difference between one and another is indiscernible by any mortal being, except certain Ps«dobaptists, they often seem to regard themselves as having the unique faculty of determining, with Divine assistance, which are, and which are not, within the secret decree of salvation. Baptism is a sign of grace, and also, say they, a seal of the covenant. In this God " binds Himself to the fulfilment of His promises" (p. 482). The sacraments being " seals attached to the covenant, it follows that they actually convey the grace signified, as a legal form of investiture, to those to whom according to the terms of the covenant it belongs" (p. 482). This seal of the covenant, which like "a deed" that, " when signed and sealed, is said to convey the property it repre- sents," our opponents give to such as are come to years, and give credible evidence of a gracious work having been begun, and to the infants of these, along with the infants of all having one parent who is a believer, or member, or with some a creditable member of the church. They thus administer an ordinance which, like a lawyer's deed for the conveyance of property, conveys the blessings of the covenant ; and con- veys them to those who are already within the covenant, many of them born in it, born the members of the church ; and to others who have been brought from con- demnation to justification at the very moment of parental faith, and by means of it, through the connexion, organic or other, existing between childi-on and parents, or certainly between children and a believing parent ! This deed of confirmation and conveyance, designed " primarily to signify, seal, and convey, to those to whom they belong, tho blessings of the covenant of grace" (pp. 486, 487), is to be carefully with- held from those not chosen from eternity to a place at God's right hand, although they consider not the grace of God to be inseparably tied to the sacrament (p. 484). Our brethren deny the dogma that baptism in itself regenerates, but they adopt, if not even the one which also they deny, at least other dogmas, equally unsanctioned, yea contradicted, by the records of inspiration. Did Philip do wrong in baptizing Simon the magician ? We have not the least hint or the most shadowy evidence of this. Indeed our opponents admit that in adults we must be guided by credibility of evidence. Can baptism be designed primarily or secondarily to convey to the elect the grace or the blessings they possess before baptism ? Can it seal New Cove- nant blessings to its recipients, and yet in some instances seal nothing but con- demnation ? The design of baptism, says Prof. Hodge, is " to be a visible sign of our covenant to be the Lord's ; i.e., to accept His salvation, and to consecrate ourselves to His service ;" " to be a badge of our public profession, our separation from the world, and our initiation into the visible church" (p. 487). Does the infant accept salvation, consecrate itself to God's service, &c. ? Explanations in jiastification of the baptism of believers, and of infants and young children that have one believing or professing parent, render confusion but worse confounded ! Prof. H. says, " The sacraments have not the power of conveying grace to all, whether they are included within the covenant of grace or not, or whether they possess faith or not" (p. 480). If they con- vey grace to some, who wiU deny that they do weU ? And if they are seals, that is, not deeds of conveyance, but ratifications of the agreement between God and men, who can deny their solemnity and importance ? But what are we to think of infants blessed with at least one believing or professing parent, when we read further, that " knowledge and faith are requii-ed as the pre-requisite conditions necessary to be found in all applicants, as the essential qualifications for receiving the sacraments" (p. 480) ; that "faith is essential to render the sacraments efficacious" (p. 480), and that the recipient of baptism '" recognizes and pledges his allegiance to God in that character and in those relations in which He has revealed Himself to us in the Scrip- tures" (p. 486). Erskine and Fishee, in accordance with the Westminsfer Assembly's Shorter Catism ? Dr. S. (p. 94), in opposition to those who say, " We have been baptized with the Holy Gliost, what good will water baptism do to ua ?" has admitted that " the existence of the internal reality is in itself a reason for the application of tbe external sign." ESSENCE OF BAPTISM. 357 Dr. Halley says : " I consider baptism to be the initiatory rite, and the Lord's Supper the commemorative institution of the Christian church, and both of them symbolic representations of Divine truth" (Vol. x, p. G). He also speaks of baptism as "the badge of a disciple" (p. 120) ; and teaches that " to be born again, in Chris- tian phraseology, is to become a son of God, to have a new Father in heaven. Of thia new birth baptism is the visible sign" (p. 183). Again: "In speaking of Christian baptism I contend that to be baptized is to be initiated as a disciple or learner of the Christian doctrine" (Vol. xv, p. 105). Can the initiatory ordinance of the Christian church, the badge of a disciple of Christ, the sign of the new bu-th, be for every man, woman, child, and infant, just as wo find them ? Can the badge of discipleship to Christ, of free-masonry, or ought else, be consistently worn by one who cares and knows nothing whatever about discipleship to Christ, free-masonry, or ought else ? Does rational man, on any subject save infant baptism, speak of the visible sign of a nonentity ? Can the sign of the new birth belong to those known to be ungodly, in whom grace must have no existence, or to those who are incapable of giving a fraction, of evidence respecting its experience ? LuTHEB, says Baxter, " shews that baptism contains the profession of saving faith : ' In baptism is the promise of the offering God ; and it is ours to vow no other thing than to accept Christ who is offered to us.' " — Dispu., p. 218. The Catechism issued by the authority of Eilvmrd the Sixth for all school-masters, teaches the scholar to say respecting the Sacraments : " They are certain customable reverent doings and ceremonies ordained by Christ ; that by them He might put us in remembrance of His benefits, and wo might declare our profession, that we be of the number of them which are partakers of the same benefits, and which fasten all their aflBance in Him ; that we are not ashamed of the name of Christ, or to be termed Christ's scholars." — Lit. of Edw. Gfh, p. 516. Dr. WiLLET. — " The sacraments, then, arc not instituted for those that are to be justified, but are for them which are already justified." — In Baxter's Bigpu., p. 219. Assembly's Larger Catechism. — " 'Wliat is baptism ? A. Baptism is a sacrament of the Now Testament wherein Christ hath ordained the washing with water in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost, to be a sign and a seal of ingrafting into Himself ; of remission of sins by His blood, and regeneration by His Spirit ; of adoption and resurrection unto everlasting life ; and wlicrcby the parties baptized arc solemnly admitted into the visible church, and enter into an open and professed engagement to be wholly and only the Lord's." The Shorter Catechism says that "a sacrament is a holy ordinance instituted by Christ, wherein by sensible signs Christ and the benefits of the New Covenant are represented, sealed, and applied to believers." Assembly's Confession of Faith. — " Baptism is ... a sign and seal of the covenant of grace, of his ingrafting into Christ, of regeneration, of remission of sins, and of his giving up unto God through Jesus Christ, to walk in newness of life." — Ch. xxviii. Sec. i. Anglican Church. — "Baptism doth represent to us our profession, which is to follow the example of our Saviour Christ, and to be made like unto Him, that as He died and rose again for us, so shoiild we, who are baptized, die from sin, and rise again unto righteousness, continually sanctifying all our evil and corrupt affections, and daily proceeding in all virtue and godliness of living." Baptism, say our Episco- palian brethren, is "a sign of profession," and not this only, " it is also a sign of regeneration." Were they consistent mth Scripture, and with some portions of their own profession, they would reject as unscriptural all proxies in connexion with this ordinance, and demand faith in the baptized, in accordance with the following in the Catechism: " What is required of persons to be baptized ? A. Repentance, whereby they forsake sin, and faith, whereby they steadfastly believe the promises of God made to them in that sacrament." The adoption of sponsors without Divine authority brings our Episcopalian brethren under the condemnation of the Jews who by human traditions made void Divine ordinances. English Reformers (by T. Russell). — " The sign in baptism is the plunging down in the material water, and lifting up again, in the which, as by an outward badge, we arc known to be of the number of them which profess Christ to be their Redeemer and Saviour." "Now have we expounded the signification of baptism, which signification we may obtain only by faith ; for if thou be baptized a thousand times with water, and hast no faith, it availeth thee no more toward God, than it doth a goose when she ducketh herself under the water. Therefore if thou wilt obtain the profit of baptism, thou must have faith."— Vol. iii, pp. 284, 290. Ttndale. — " The plunging into water significth that we die, and are buried with Christ, as concerning the old life of sin which is in Adam : and the pulling out agaii^ 358 SUBJECTS OF BAPTISM. signifietli that we rise again with Christ in a new life, full of the Holy Ghost, who shall teach us and guide us, and work the will of God in us, as thou seest Rom. vi." — Works ofEng. Ref., by Russell, vol. i, p. 287. CocCEius. — " Sacraments, properly speaking, were instituted for believers, and given to them." — Sum. Doc. de Feed., c. vi, § 209. Calvin. — " From the sacrament of baptism, as from all other;*, we obtain nothing except so far as we receive it in faith" (Inst., 1. iv, c. xv, § 15). Neander teaches that Calvin " protested against the notion of a magical influence" in baptism. He taught that the sacraments " are outward symbols by which God seals the promises of His grace to our consciences : they attest the weakness of our faith, and at the same time our love to Him." They are " efficacious only to the predestinated." Why adminis- ter baptism to those in whom no fruits evidence love, faith, predestination to life, or even consciousness ? In his Tre. on Bap., Calvin teaches that baptism is " a token of our cleansing, and, therefore, not a mark of recognizance and a sign of profession only, as some would have it. Baptism is a sign of entering, whereby we are received into the fellowship of the church ; that being grafted into Christ, we may be reckoned among the children of God. Now it was given us by God for this end (which I have taught to be common to all the mysteries), first, that it should serve to our faith with Him, and to our confession before men" (p. 36). This he repeats and amplifies in § 13 and elsewhere, teaching that those baptized into Christ's name, " avowed them- selves unto Him, swore in His name, and bound their faith to Him before men" (p, 49). Yet when speaking of objections to the baptism of infants he deems it a sufficient reply to say, " They are baptized unto rexjentance and faith to come, which although they be not formed in them, yet by secret working of the Spirit, the seed of both Be dormant in them" (p. 86). There is known to be the secret working of the Spirit in those infants which are elected to salvation, therefore the seed of believers should have this sacrament of faith ! Venema. — " ' Go,' says our Lord to the apostles, ' teach all nations, baptizing them,' &c. This explains the whole nature of baptism. Before persons were bap- tized, it was necessary for them to believe the preaching of the apostles, which faith they were to profess in baptism." — Bis. Sac, 1. ii, c. xiv, § 6. From Pajdobaptist writers on John's baptism, Christ's commission, and apostoHc precept and practice, hundreds of extracts might be selected in confirmation of Christian baptism as being in its very nature a profession — a profession of faith in Christ and devotedness to Him. All who speak of baptism as being in its very nature a profession, although they may be speaking of the baptism of adults, give a concession against infant and indiscriminate, and in favour of believers' baptism. Bp. Browne. — " Baptism is confessedly an embracing of the ser^ace of God. an enlisting into the army of Christ, to tight under His banner, the cross" (Expo, of the 39 Art., p. 613). Less correctly. Dr. J. C. Vauohan, in the second of his Three Sermons preached before the University of Cambridge, in 186.5, says. Redemption " is world-wide, and the appro- priation of redemption is co-extensive with the baptized. He who is born into the world is born into a redeemed world : he who is dedicated to Christ in baptism has His call, has His promise, has His consecration and His sonship." '■ Baptism," says he, " is the badge of a redeemed race." Should he not rather have said that it is the badge of an appropriated redemption ; and, to justify its administration to infants in opposition to those who maintain that it is " the symbol of individual consecration," should he not have shown that parents or sponsors are divinely authorized to under- take an appropriation and consecration on behalf of infants and little children, and are thus enabled consistentlj' to assert that " the Bible, and the Bible only, is the religion of Protestants ?" Dr. J. R. Beard, on baptism, more correctly says : " The rite was so understood and so expounded by the apostles, as to encourage the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace, being in itself a token and a pledge of fellowship in that one church, whose head is Christ, whose spirit is love, and whoso work and duty is the salvation of the world." — Bi. Cij. Art. Bap. Dr. Dick. — " That ordinance which represents our participation of its blessings ;" the blessings of God'a covouant. — i'.'c. on Acts, p. 31. ESSENCE OP BAPTISM. 369 W. M. PuNSHON SO far encourages the idea of consecration in baptism, as to say that the Saviour was "baptized into consecration by His reluctant fore-runner ;" and that He entered "iipon its sacred work with the seal of its baptism upon Him." — Lecture. Dr. J. I. DoLLiNGER. — " There was no longer preparation for baptism ; only the universal condition of faith in the kingdom of God and its Founder was required." — The First age of Chris, and the Church, vol. ii, p. 160. Clark. Dr. Goodwin. — " Baptism suppcseth regeneration sure in itself first. Sacraments are never administered for to begin or work grace : you suppose children to believe before you baptize them." — Works, vol. i, part i, p. 200. Dr. Erskine. — " I have fully shown that the seals of the covenant are, under the New Testament, peculiar to the inwardly pious" (Thcol. Diss., p. 82). — I deny not that these authors plead for the baptism of infants on one groiind or another, but let the reader judge whether these sentiments respecting New Testament teaching are not condemnatory of their practice. RiGALTius. — " Men are not born Christians, but made such. No man is accounted a believer till he knows Christ ; therefore he must first hear what belongs to the Christian faith ; and when he has heard and embraced it from his belief, he may be called a believer ; and that the things which have entered his mind through his cars, may by an (external) sign be subjected to his eyes, and may strike his mind the more powerfully, he is immersed in water, in a river, fountain, pool, or laver. And as he had received these things : — for first he received faith, and then by faith obtained the pardon of all his past sias ; and, moreover, had the pledge of a resurrection to eternal life : so these things are signified by baptism." — In Facts opp. to Fie, p. 54. Dr. J. Parker. — " Preacliing calls to the truth ; baptizing symbolizes its accept- ance or preparation for its acceptance." — Pul. Ana., vol. i, p. 75. K. G. Bretschneider. — "Baptism is the symbolical rite by which, according to- the injunction of Christ, consecration to Christianity is accomplished, by the dipping of the person to be baptized into water, by means of which not only he becomes entitled to all the privileges, but also takes on himself all the liabilities of the Chris- tian."— Maiiu. of Rel., p. 215. Dr. E. DE Pressense. — " Faith was also required of every one who received ■ baptism. The idea was never conceived by St. Paul that any could imagine baptii^m without faith — the sign without the thing signified ; and he hesitates not in the bold simplicity of his language, to identify the spiritual fact of conversion with that which symbolized it. ' We are buried,' says he, ' with Christ by baptism into death' (Rom. vi, 4). It is necessary to impute to him, in spite of all his writings, the gross doctrine of baptismal regeneration, or to acknowledge that faith is with him so intimately connected with baptism, that in speaking of the latter he believes that in it he includes the former, without which it is only a vain form. AU the New Testament writers attribute the same sense to baptism. It .supposes according to them a manifestation of religious life, varying, perhaps, in degree, but constantly demanded. ' Baptism which saves us,' says the apostle Peter, ' is not a putting away of the filth of the flesh, but the answer of a good conscience toward God, by the resurrection of Jesus Christ' (1 Pe. iii, 21). In these times, when ecclesiastical organization was in many respects unsettled, baptism was equivalent to a profession of faith. Administered in the name of Jesus Christ (for there is no example in the New Testament of the use of the com- plete formula of baptism) as a solemn sign of conversion, it has all the force of a direct confession of the Christian faith ; especially at a period when to receive it, it was necessary to expose oneself to contempt and persecution." Pres. Edvs^ards. — "There are some duties of worship that imply a profession of God's covenant; whose very nature and design is an exhibition of those vital active principles and inward exercises, wherein the condition of the covenant of grace [consists]. Such are the Christian sacraments, whose very nature and design is to make and confirm a profession of compliance with that covenant, and whose very nature is to exhibit or express those uniting acts of the soul." — Enq. into Qual., &c., p. 115. T. Boston. — " The sacraments are not converting, but confirming ordinances ; they are appointed for the use and benefit of God's children, not of others ; they are given to believers as believers, as Rutherford expresseth it, so that none other are capable of the same before the Lord. . . . Ursin, upon that question, Who ought to come to the Supper ? tells us, the sacraments are appointed for the faithful and converted only, to seal the x^romise of the gospel to them, and confirm their faith." " They must first be discipled ; and then, and not till then, have they a right to bap- tism. To be a disciple of Christ and a believer are reciprocal terms, as Christ teacbetb us, comparing this [Matt, xxviii, 19J with Mark svi, 16, ' He that believetlj 360 SUBJECTS OF BAPTISM. and is baptized,' " &c. " Baptism is appointed of God to be a seal of the righteous- ness of faith." " The right to that ordinance turned on the hinge of personal qualifications." Also : " None ought to bo baptized but visible disciples of Christ ; for in baptism there is an open acknowledging of the party for a disciple of Christ. He ought to be looked on as a servant of the Great Master, before he get on His badge or wear His livery. The commission for baptizing runs so, first to malce disciples, then to haptize. Matt, xxviii, 19. And this is the very native order of these things." —Works, pp. 383-386. Dr. Du Veil, a Baptist, thus quotes from the Sacred Observations of Paulus Columesius, of Rochelle : " You may not undeservedly observe that only the adult are capable of baptism. That the ancients were of this judgment, Walefridus, Strabo, Ludovicus Vives, Erasmus in a certain epistle, which Paulus Merula published with others in the year 1607 ; Grotius in his epistle to several Frenchmen ; Salmasius in his book of Transubstantiation ; and Joannes Baptist Thiers, in his most useful book concerning the diminishing of festival days, do plainly confess. With these ancients Berengarius, that great man, may be reckoned, whom George Cassander, who was most skilful in those things, in the preface to his book concerning Psedo- baptism, and the most worthy professor and doctor-in-law of the Royal University of Anglers, Francis de Roy, in Berengarius's life, report to have opposed Pffido- baptism." — Com. on Acts, on xviii, 8. Bengel. — " Confession was taken up at baptism." — Gno., on Heb. x, 23. Dr. DwiGHT, speaking of the washing of regeneration (Titus iii, 5) says, "Baptism is denoted by these words ; it is called the waslaing of regeneration because it is sym- bolical of that change in the heart, and because Christ has established it as such a symbol in His visible church." — Sermon 156. Dr. Stebbing speaks of "the doctrines of Christ, into which baptism with water was the sign of initiation." — Diamond N. T., on John iii, 10. Dr. D. Davidson, on the baptism of Saul, speaks of baptism as " the first public act of the confession of the faith with which pardon is inseparable." — Com.y on Acts xxii, 16. E. BiCKERSTETH, on the baptism of Saul, says, " There is in baptism the confirma- tion of faith, the assurance of pardon, and the admission into the privileges of the church of God" (On Bap., p. 71). "The baptized adult must have faith in God's word, or baptism will be to him unprofitable. The parent of the baptized child must exercise faith in God's promises respecting his children, and must bring them up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord, or he cannot expect benefit : without faith it is impossible to please God" (Chris. Stu., p. 484). In his Trco.tise on Baptism, he Bays: "The obligation to obsoi've it only with faith is most clear" (p. 26). "We express our faith by that ordinance" (p. 80). "Baptism is a confession of Christ before men" (p. 87). " The requisites for Christian baptism are clearly set before us ; repentance towards God, and faith towards the Lord Jesus." " The connexion of the ministry of the word and baptism should not escape our attention. First the word preached, then faith, then baptism" (p. 98). Why not thus now? If this Divine appointment had been uniformly regarded, where would infant baptism have been now ? Baptism, says Mr. B., " is an enlistment under the banners of the Captain of our salvation ; and, ever after, we have to fight the good fight of faith" (p. 263). I. CoBBiN. — " The design of baptism is to represent devotedness to God, which is a death to sin." R.Baxter. — In baptism "you are put under the water, to signify and profess that your old man, or fleshly lust, is dead and buried with Him, and you rise thence, to signify and profess that you rise to newness of life and heavenly hopes, through the belief of God's works that raised Christ from the dead" (Para, on N. T., on Col. ii, 12). " Baptism is the mutual covenant between God and man, what the solemnization of marriage is to them that do before consent ; or what the listing a soldier, by giving him colours, and writing his name, is to one that consenteth before to be a soldier" (Prac. Works, vol. i, p. 561). "Baptism is taken for the ordinance as performed in all its essential parts, according to the true intent of Christ in His institution (that is in the first and proper meaning of the word) ; so the internal covenanting of a penitent, sincere believer is necessary to the being of it. . . . In this proper sense baptism is the mutual covenant between God the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, and a penitent believing sinner, solemnized by the washing of water, in which, as a sacra- ment of His own appointment, God doth engage Himself to be the God and reconciled Father and the Sanctifier of the believer" (p. 561). He has before said, "They were to be ' baptized into the name of Father, Son, and Holy Ghost.' Yea, the very receiving of baptism was an actual profession." " Christ in His commission directeth JiJ9 apostles to make disciple's" (p. 294). " A disciple and a Christian wore words o( ESSENCE OF BAPTISM. 361 the same importance" (p. 157). Again, " If as many as arc baptized into Christ, arc baptized into His death, and are buried with Him by baptism into His death, that like as Christ was raised from the dead, so we also should walk in newness of life (Rom. "vi, 4, 5) ; then no doubt but such as were to be baptized, did first profess [this mortification, and a consent to be buried and revived with Christ, and to live to Him in newness of life" (p. 295). "Baptism is that peculiar act of profession which God hath chosen to this iise, when a person is absolutely devoted, resigned, and engaged to God in a solemn sacrament ; this is our regular initiatory profession." In his Disputations (p. 59), he teaches that it is '' the very nature and use of bap- tism to signify and seal both the present piitting off the body of sin, and present putting on Christ." He understands 2 Pe. i, 9, as referring to " the baptismal wash- ing" " wherein all profess to put off the old man, and to be washed from their former filthincss," " which sheweth what was their own profession, and what was the stated end and use of the ordinance." "The very sign itself, which is the washing of the body by water, doth plainly shew that the washing of the soul by the blood of Christ is the thing signified. So that I conclude that there is no baptism to be administered without a profession of saving faith and repentance fore-going" (pp. 86, 87). These quotations being on the very essence of baptism and the import of Scripture, we justly make, although the authors were speaking of adults and in condemnation of indis- criminate baptism. Mr. B. further says, '' I grant that it oft falls out that baptism being misapplied sealeth not regeneration at present, and that the same person may afterwards be regenerate, and his remembered baptism may then be of use to him for the confirmation of his faith. But this is not the Institutor's commanded use of it" (p. 118). Again: "It is the common Protestant doctrine, that sacraments do solemnize and publicly own and confirm the mutual covenant already entered in heart." " The soul is .supposed to consent to have Christ as offered first" (p. 124). "They must be signs and professions of those internal acts which correspond with them" (p. 125). He says, " All the examples of baptism in Scripture do mention only the administration of it to the professors of saving faith" (p. 156). And in the next page he forcibly says, " We shall never be able to understand the use of it or any ordinance from Scripture, if we shall take the liberty to say, It is this to one, but not to another, when the Scripture saith no such thing, but speaks of the nature and use of it without distinction." Very true : and Scripture speaks as much of the difference between the baptism of men and that of angels, as of the difference between the bap- tism of believers and that of infants. The Scriptures record as much of baptism through the godliness of Gabriel, as of baptism through the faith of parents or any other proxies. " Christian baptism," says Mr. B., " is essentially a covenanting and sealing of our covenant with God the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost" (p. 322). " It is only those that have antecedent title to these benefits (Christ and pardon) that can receive the investing sign to that end ; and to no other separate uses is it instituted by God" (p. 365). " God commandeth people first to repent and believe, and then to profess it by words and sacramental actions" (p. 408). Again, from much more that might have been quoted, Baptism " is not to engage us to begin to be Christians here- after, but it is the solemnization of the Christian contract of marriage between Christ and the soul, which is supposed to be made in heart before" (p. 498). In his Life of Faith, he says, " There is no nearer way to know what true faith is, than truly to understand what your baptismal covenant did contain." " The Christian faith which is required at baptism, and then professed, and hath the promise of justification and glorification, is a true belief of the gospel, and an acceptance of, and consent unto, the covenant of grace." Dr. Eadie. — "Baptism (Matt, iii, 7). An ordinance, or religious rite, which was in use before our Saviour's ministry commenced (see John's baptism) ; but which Ho recognized and made obligatory on His disciples." " In the due administration of this rite, the washing with water becomes the sign or emblem of inward purification from sin and uncleanness." — Cy. Art. Bap. F. D. Maurice speaks of baptism as " a sacrament which was to be received by the poor and ignorant no less than the wise, as a testimony of what God was, and of what He had done for them." — Lcc. on the Eccl. His. of the First and Sec. Cent., p. 285. Dean Stanley is reported by the Christian Register, as recently teaching in a sermon on scriptural baptism : " First, it stood for purity — perfect cleanness of body, mind, heart, soul — that is, the desire after all that. Secondly, it stood for a radical change, putting off the old, and putting on the new. Thirdly, it meant the loyal, faithful following of Jesus." Dr. A. Barnes. — " It is the good conscience, the renovated heart, the purified soul, of which baptism is the emblem, that furnishes evidence of the Divine acceptance an4 362 SUBJECTS OF BAPTISM. favour." " Baptism, including all that is properly meant by baptism as a religious rite, that is, baptism administered in connexion with true repentance and true faith in the Lord Jesus, and when it is properly a symbol of putting away of sin, and of the renewing influences of the Holy Spirit, and an act of unreserved dedication to Grod, now saves us" (Com., on 1 Pe. iii, 21). Also, on Acts xix, 4, he says, " TJnto what? Unto what faith or doctrine ? What did you profess to believe when you were bap- tized ?" Hence, on Eom. vi, 4, he speaks of "that religion whose profession is expressed by baptism;" and says also, "by our very baptism, by our very pro- fesssion," &c. The attentive reader will perceive that many of the eminent Psedo- baptists quoted in this section not only speak of baptism as being in its very nature and essence a profession, and a profession of faith in Christ, but they also explicity acknowledge that the New Testament knows nothing of any other baptism. J. A. James says : " The first thing we read of, after the miraculous effusion of the Holy Ghost, is the preaching of the gospel ; the next, the conversion of sinners, and then we find that ' they that gladly received the word were baptized, and the same day there were added to them about three thousand souls'" (Ch. Fa. Pr., p. 244). Why is this order approvingly broken by the baptism of infants ? ScHLEiERMACHER is thus quotcd by E. Wallace : " Baptism is only complete and right when it is performed under the same conditions, with the same sjpiritual pre- requisites, and the same influences as were found in those who were baptized in primitive times from religious communities not Christian." Meter, — " None have a right to baptism but such as profess faith and the true religion" CBih. Bre., class iv, p. 169). " If the children were still unable to believe, they did not partake of the rite, since they were wanting in what the act pre-supposed." — In Green's Hackett's Com. on Acts, p. 20. DouTBiN. — " To whom ought baptism to be administered ? Only to believers, or those who may be considered as such." — Scheme, &c., p. 260. TuBRETiNE. — " Faith, devotion, and an internal exercise of the mind, are required to the efficacy of a sacrament." — Inst., loc. xix, q. viii, § 12. Prof. Kurtz. — " Impossible is it strictly to demonstrate that infant baptism had been practised by the apostles." — Ch. His., p. 72. WiTSius. — "There are these two things in baptism. God stipulates, or requires a good conscience towards Himself ; and the conscience answers and promises to God." They who are baptized in the name of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, " not only profess their faith in the mystery of a Trinity," "but also bind themselves to filial obedience to God the Father, give up themselves to Christ," &c. — Worlds, vol. iii, pp. 375, 378. Milton, whom I should hesitate to call a Pa3dobaptist, although he was not united in membership with the Baptists, says : — " He to them shall leave this charge, To teach all nations what of Him they learn'd, And His salvation ; them who shall believe, Baptizing in the profluent stream, sign Of washing them from guilt of sin, to life Pure, and in mind prepared, if so befal. For death, like that which the Eedeemer died." C. Taylor. — "To die to former connections and self, and to begin a new life, marked by new functions ; — which is the very acceptation and import of baptism." — Facts and Evi., p. 8. Bp. Burnet. — " Eoceiving a sacrament is on our part our faith plighted to God in the use of some material substance." " The pretending that sacraments have their effect any other way [than the worthy receiving of them] is the bringing in the doc- trine and practice of charms into the Christian religion." " The person baptized takes on him, by a solemn profession and vow, to observe and adhere to the whole of the Christian religion." " We look on all sacramental actions as acceptable to God only with regard to the temper and inward acts of the persons to whom they ai-e applied." —On the 39 Article.'!, pp. 360, 396, 397, 410. Abp. Wake. — " What repentance is required to prepare any person for baptism ? ^. The same which is required to qualify him for God's forgiveness after baptism. ESSENCE OF BAPTISM. 863 ... No one can worthily come to it who does not heartily repent of all his sins, and firmly resolve never more to return to the commission of any." Does not Bp. Burnet say truly in regard to his own church, " The ofiBce for baptizing infants is in the same words with that for baptizing persons of a riper age ?" He adds, and with what reason let the reader judge : " because infants being then in the power of their parents, who are of age, are considered as in them, and as binding themselves by the TOWS they make in their name" COn the 27th Article). Abp. TiLLOTsoN. — " By baptism we have solemnly taken upon us the profession of Christianity, and engaged ourselves to renounce the devil and all his works, and obediently to keep God's commandments. . . . As we did solemnly covenant with God to this purpose in baptism, so we solemnly renew this obligation so often as we receive the blessed sacrament of Christ's body and blood" H'Tor^'s, Ser. vii). — Is this consistent with truth except where believers' baptism is practised ? How dare Anglicans or other Pfedobaptists speak of " that solemn profession of faith and repent- ance which all Christians make in baptism ?" Dr. E. Calamt. — " Baptism was instituted by our blessed Lord as a sacred rite, whereby persons were to be first initiated into the Christian covenant. And be it sooner or later administered, it carries in it an obligation to all the duties of that covenant on which its blessings are suspended. In baptism there is always either exprest or implied a vow of hearty compliance with all the demands of our holy religion." — On Vows, p. 24. Dr. I. Watts. — " Christian baptism implies a humble acknowledgment of some defilement. . . . Whosoever, therefore, is baptized, doth profess and declare that he is a defiled creature, a sinner. . . . Baptism implies a belief of the blessed provision which God hath made in His gospel for the purification of our souls from sin, and all its defilements. . . . ImpUed in Christian baptism is a humble accept- ance of these blessings in the method of God's own appointment, that is, by repent- ance from sin in the sight of God, by faith in Jesus Christ His Son, and by seeking the influences of His Holy Spirit and obeying them. When wc come under this ordinance we do, as it were, by way of action and emblem consent to accept of this purification both from the giiilt and principles of sin, we repent and are ashamed of our past iniquities ; we trust in Jesus Christ and His atonement for pardon ; we declare our desire to become new and holy creatures by the cleansing and purifying power of the Spirit of God in the gospel, and therefore when persons professed their belief in Christ, and repentance of their sins, they were baptized. . . . Faith and repentance were the great things required of those who were admitted to baptism. . . . Baptism implies also by necessary consequence a profession of our obligation to God the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, and our engagement to act con- sistently with this solemnity, that is, to live agreeably to these favours wc rcceivo from God, viz., the pardon of our sins, and the sanctification of our souls. Baptism being significant of all these blessings and these duties, it becomes the appointed ceremony and sign of professing the whole Christian religion, and the rite or form of entering into the church of Christ" (Worlis, vol. i, pp. .598-GOO). — This language teaches not that believers are " the first and most proper," but that they are the only proper subjects of Christian baptism. Notwithstanding |thc length of time that " it hath been the custom also to baptize the infant children of professed Christians," it is as inconsistent with the above, and all that is scriptural in relation to baptism, as the idea of baptism being " the rite or form of entering into thcA-isiblo church of Christ," which "consists of all those persons in the world that make a visible and credible profession of the Christian religion," is inconsistent ^vith infant baptism. Compare Dr. W. in vol. i, on Infant Baptism, with the same Dr. W. in vol. iii, on Christian Communion, and think of his accordance with other estimable Pfedo- baptists in the most evident self-contradiction on this subject. Dr. Rees. — Baptism " is the appointed mode by which a person assumes the pro- fession of Christianity, or is admitted to a participation of the privileges belonging to the disciples of Christ." — Cy. Art. Baj). Dr. Von Coellin. — " Baptism can be fulfilled on those only who are capable of instruction." — Bib. Theol., vol. ii, p. 145. J. Glas. — " This is the nature of the ordinances of Divine service in the New Testament, that they are not complete in the outward and visible action, which is no more but the mean of engaging us in, or of expressing outwardly, the nature of the ordinance, which is spiritual and invisible. Thus baptism is not complete in the washing of the body with water, without the sprinkling of the heart from an evil conscience, which is the substance of that ordinance, as we may see from Peter's words, 1 Pe. iii, 21."— Works, vol. iv, pp. 174, 175. Dr. Doddridge speaks of baptism and the Lord's Supper as "rites of the Chrig. 364 SUBJECTS OF BAPTISM. tian institution, which were intended to be solemn tokens of our accepting the gospel covenant, peculiar to those who did so accept it, and to be considered by them as tokens of the Divine acceptance." — Misc. Works, p. 488. Dr. J. Owen. — " Answerable unto these promises and precepts, and in confirmation of them, wo have the institution of the ordinance of baptism, the oiitward way and means of our initiation into the Lord Christ and the profession of the gospel, the great representation of the inward washing of regeneration." — Works, vol. iii, p. 424. K. Hooker. — " Sacraments are marks of distinction to separate God's own from strangers." " They serve as bonds of obedience to God, strict obligations to the mutual exorcise of Christian charity, provocations to godliness, preservations from sin, memorials of the principal benefits of Christ." " And unto infants, which are not capable of instruction, who would not think it a mere superfluity that any sacra- ment is administered, if to administer the sacraments be but to teach receivers what God doth for them" (Works, vol. ii, pp. 204, 203) ? And if sacraments are designed to teach this and more, so much more evident is it that infants are not their rightful subjects. Dr. Barkow. — "As this holy rite signifioth and sealeth God's collation of so many great benefits on us, so it also implieth, and on our part ratifieth, our obligation then in an especial manner commencing, to several most important duties towards Him. It implieth that wc are in mind fully persuaded concerning the truth of that doctrine, which God the Father revealed concerning His beloved Son, and confirmed by the miraculous operations of the Holy Ghost ; we therein profess our humble and thankful embracing the overtures of mercy and grace, purchased for us by our Saviour's meritorious undertaking and perfoi-mances, the which are then exhibited and tendered to us ; we therein declare our hearty resolution to forsake all wicked courses of life, repugnant to the doctrine and law of Christ ; fully to conform our lives to His wUl, living hereafter in all piety, righteousness, and sobriety, as loyal subjects, faithful servants, and dutiful children to God ; in brief, we therein are found renouncing all erroneous principles, all vicious inclinations, and all other engagements whatsoever, entirely to devote ourselves to the faith and obedience of God the Father, our glorious and good Maker, of God the Son, our gracious Eodeemer, of God the Holy Ghost, our blessed Guide, Assistant, Advocate and. Comforter. These are the duties antecedent to and concomitant of our baptism." — In Ser. by P. Hall, pp. Ixviii, Ixix. Dr. John Scott. — " It is evident that in this solemnity of baptism we put our- selves under Christ as our Head, and covenant with Him to be ruled by Him in our faith and manners" (Chris. Life, partii, c. vii, § 9). How beautifully consistent with the baptizing of infants ! And how admirably accordant with the initiation of infants by baptism into the church of Christ is the following description or definition of the church : " First, it is one universal society consisting of all Christian people. Secondly, it consists of aU Christian people incorporated by the New Covenant. Thirdly, these Christian people are incorporated by the New Covenant in baptism. Fourthly, they are incorporated under Jesus Christ their supreme Head. Fifthly, this one universal society thus incorporated is distributed into particular churches. Sixthly, these par- ticular churches are distributed under lawful governors and pastors. Seventhly, these particular churches thus distributed hold communion with each other. Eighthly, the communion which these particular churches hold, is, fii-st, in all the essentials of Christian faith ; secondly, in all the essentials of Christian worship ; thirdly, in all the essentials of Christian regiment and discipline." — Contents of ch. vi, § 0. Dr. S. Clarke. — " The sacrament of baptism is emphatically significant of our duty, and most aptly fitted to remind us of it perpetually, in the three following respects. 1st, as being in general a solemn initiation into the profession of that religion, the great end of which is holiness of life. 2nd, as typifying in a particular manner the necessity of moral purity and righteousness of life, by the similitude of washing the body -with water. And 3rd (which is what the apostle peculiarly insists upon in the text), baptism as being an emblem or representation of men's dying with Christ, and rising with Him again, is a continual memorial of our obligation to put off the body of sin, and to put on the new man (that is, a virtuous course of life), which, after God (that is, according to the example and commandments of God) is created in righteousness and true holiness." Again, "baptism, by an expressive emblem, or figure, of washing the body with water, signifies .and represents a change in the mind of the baptized person, from one sort of profession or practice to another" (Ser. on Rom. vi, 3, 4, in vol. iv, pp. 72, 73, 81). In accordance with this, in his Essay on Baptism, he says (p. 1), " Baptism is the rite whereby those who believe in Christ are solemnly admitted to be members of the Christian church ;" "a rite whereby converts at their admission into His church do solemnly oblige themselves to live Buitably to the jjrofcssion they then cuter into." Also (p. 10), " They who before ESSENCE OF BAPTISM. 365 were aliens from the commonwealth of Israel and strangers from the covenants of promise, having no hope and without God in the world, did by baptism enter into that covenant wherein God assured the promise of eternal life to all those who should believe and repent." E. Watson teaches that baptism is " the door of admission into the church," and that " the church is a society founded upon faith, and united by mutual love ;" that " the church of Christ in its largest sense consists of all who have been baptized in the name of Christ, and who thereby make a profession of faith in His Divine mission, and in all the doctrines taught by Him and His inspired apostles." " Baptism is the initiatory rite into a covenant which promises pardon and salvation to a true faith, of which it is the outward profession" (Theol. Ins., vol. iv, pp. 327-329, 412). "John baptized into a belief of the speedy appearing of the Messiah ; the disciples, in the name of Jesus, which was a profession of faith in Him as the Messiah; but the rite as instituted by our Lord was baptism in the name, into the name, of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit — into the belief and worship of the Triune God, as above stated, including faith in the incarnation and offices of the Son, and the offices and operations of the Holy Spirit. All these are the objects of distinct profession, and where these are not acknowledged there can be no triily Christian baptism" (Expo., on Matt, xxviii, 19). If this is the veiy nature and undoubted essence of Christian baptism, all infants, and all known to be the children of the devil, have a certain exclusion. " The sacraments," says this learned Wesleyan, " are badges of profession ; they are the appointed means of declaring our faith in Christ." Ho can quote approvingly from the 25th Article of the Church of England, that " Sacraments ordained of Christ be not only badges or tokens of Christian men's profession," &c. ; and from the Larger Catechism of the Church of Scotland, as previously given. Indeed in the gospel covenant God " re- quires a visible and formal act of acceptance, which act when expressive of the required faith, makes us parties to the covenant, and entitles us through the faithful- ness of God to its benefits. ' He that believeth and is baptized shall be saved ;' or, as in the passage before us, ' As many of you as have been baptized into Christ have put on Christ, and if ye be Christ's then are ye Abraham's seed according to the promise.' We have the same view of baptism as an act of covenant acceptance, and as it relates to God's gracious engagement to justify the ungodly by faith in His Son, in the oft- quoted passage 1 Pe. iii, 20, 21." On the last passage he speaks of " the act of submitting to Christian baptism which is obviously an act of faith" fInst.,\o\. iv, pp. 388, 405, 406, 409). Baptism is " a rational ordinance to be submitted to on knowledge and conviction, and not that to which it has often been debased, something little better than a superstitious charm or ceremony." Baptism " is designed as a public profession of faith in the Trinity." If this is the teaching of Matt, xxviii, 19, and other Scriptures, by what authority are infants baptized ? " Baptism has an end, an intent, not the putting away the filth of the flesh, but obtaining ' a good conscience toward God,' and it requires, claims this good conscience, through that faith in Christ whereof Cometh remission of sins." If this is the teaching of Scripture, no man ia authorized to baptize the unconscious either with or without sponsors. What Baptist ever spoke more explicitly in favour of believers' baptism, and in implied condemna- tion of the baptism of infants and unbelievers ! Dr. E. PovAH. — " Persons professed by that ceremony to renounce, and by that baptism to be cleansed from all the vanities and idolatries of heathen superstition." —His. of the Ch., p. 348. Dr. EiDQELEY. — " The sacraments are God's'seals as they ai'O ordinarily given by Him for the confirming of our faith that He would be our covenant God ; and they are seals, or we set our seal thereunto, when we visibly profess that we give up ourselves to Him to be His people, and, in the exercise of a true faith, look to be partakers of the benefit which Christ hath purchased according to the terms of the covenant." Dr. E. is quoted by Eev. E. Watson, who also quotes the following from the Heidel- berg Catechism : " What are the sacraments ? They are holy and visible signs and seals ordained by God for this end, that He may more fully declare by them the promise of His gospel unto us ; to wit, that not only imto all believers in general, but unto each of them in particular, He freely giveth remission of sins and life eternal, upon the account of that only sacrifice of Christ which He accomplished on the cross." Also, says E. W., "God has added these ordinances to the promises of His word, not only to bring His merciful purposes toward us in Christ to mind, but constantly to assure us that those who believe in Him shall be and are made partakers of His grace. These ordinances are a pledge to them that Christ and His benefits are theirs, whilst they are required at the same time by faith, as well as by the visible sign, to signify their compliance with the covenant, which may be called putting to their seal" (Theol. Ins., vol, iv, pp. 387 390). Does not this language plainly teach that 366 SUBJECTS OP BAPTISM. baptism and the Lord's Supper are divinely intended for believers, and that they ara totally inappropriate to infants and unbelievers ? And with what grace do our opponents, whose language we are quoting, complain that we Baptists make too much of baptism, we who confine baptism to those that make a credible profession of faith in Christ, and regard it as simply symbolical, a sign of regeneration, forgiveness, and some of the fundamental facts of Christianity ? W. BuRKiTT. — " Baptism is not to be administered to any that are out of the visible church, tUl they profess their faith in Christ and obedience to Him." " There is a necessity of faith to render man a meet partaker of the holy sacraments. If we come to any of the sacraments without faith, we are sure to depart without faith." — Com., on Acts viii, 12, 36-40. M. Henry. — "By baptism we have in profession put on Christ" (Com., on Rom. xiii, 14). In his Trea. on Bap., he says that, in baptism " the washing of regenera- tion" is " not only signified, but sealed and applied conditionally" (p. 16) ; " that God doth in and by that ordinance engage us to bo to Him a people ;" " and because our cleansing is a necessary qualification for this relation, we are tlnis taken to be to God a people, by washing" (p. 37). "We are baptized (els onomaj into the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost, i.e., in token of our believing in God the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost" (pp. 39, 40). This dedication to Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, this entering into covenant with the Trinity " implies two things. 1st. — A renunciation of everything that is contrary to God." " It implies a renouncing of all subjection to Satan's rule ;" " of all consent to fleshly lusts," for in baptism " we engage to abstain from, and fight against, those fleshly lusts that war against the soul ;" and " of all conformity to this present world ;" and 2ud. — " A resignation of our whole selves to the Lord" (pp. 40-43). "To be baptized into the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost, is to be baptized into a solemn pro- fession of these two things, our assent to the gospel revelation concerning the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, and our consent to a covenant relation to these Divine persons" (p. 40). To be " baptized ill (or inioj the Father," includes "professing to believe that there is a God, and to consent to take Him for our God" (p. 48). " Our being baptized into the name of Jesus, doth ratify and seal two things. 1. — Our assent to the truth of all Divine revelation concerning Him. Baptism is the badge of our profession of the truth as it is in Jesus." "2. — Our consent to Him in all His appointed offices" (pp. 52-55). Baptism into the name of the Holy Ghost implies a similar assent and consent (pp. 61, 62). Mr. H. is not here speaking of the Subjects, but of the very Nature of Baptism. And when on the Subjects of baptism he speaks of the baptism of about three thousand, he says, " Whether every individual of the three thousand baptized. Acts ii, 41, did make a particular confession of his faith, or whether their cheerful submission to the ordinance, upon a public declaration of the nature and obligations of it, sufficed as an implicit consent, is uncertain" (p. 68). When he essays the application of baptism to infants, he may well acknowledge "with Mr. Flavel, that there are difficulties in this controversy which may puzzle the minds of well-meaning Christians" (p. 70). He subsequently endeavours to relieve our perplexity and squeeze infants into Christ's commission by teaching us that we are enjoined to disciple them hy haptism, to admit them disciples hy baptism, to enlist these soldiers, giving them Christ's colours, and to recognize their title, and complete that church-memhershi}} which before ivas imperfect" (pp. 114, 115) ! This is the teaching of Matt, xxviii, 19, when freed from the puzzling obscurity in which Clu'ist left it! Again, and more correctly, " By our baptism we assume the Christian name" (p. 157). " Baptism is an oath," " an oath of allegiance to be true and faithful to the Lord Jesus" (p. 162). " By and in baptism we profess to believe the death of Christ as a fact" (p. 169). That infants in baptism assent and consent, profess and swear by their parents or any proxies what they think, feel, and will do, is as consonant with reason as with revelation. Dr. W. HuBD. — " As a person who enters into military life swears to be obedient to his general, so the Christian at baptism swears to serve faithfully the Captain of his salvation, the Lord Jesus Christ." — His. of all Rel., p. 141. T. Scott. — " Baptism is the outward sign of regeneration, and it is also that pro- fession of faith in Christ, which is required of all who embrace Christianity — Matt, xxviii, 19, 20 ; Acts ii, 37-40 ; Rom. x, 5-11 ; 1 Pe. iii, 21, 22" (Com., on Mark xvi, 14- 16). Thus he can speak of "that 'now birth of the Spirit,' of which the laver of baptism was the sacramental sign, but nothing more" (On Ti. iii, 5). But if baptism is a sign of regeneration and a profession of faith, who should dare to baptize infants, with or without sponsors ? Has the following no application hero ? " All additions to the law.s of God are an infringement of His legislative authority, and a presump- tuous imputation ou iiia wisdom, as if Ho had omitted something necessary which ESSENCE OF BAPTISM, 367 toan could supply : and, in one way or another, they always clash with Divine precepts ; eo that an attachment to human traditions necessarily leads men, in some circumstances, or in some respects, to disobey God." — Com., on Matt, xv, 3-6. Dr. S. Addington describes baptism as " an ordinance intended to signify the separation of the disciples of Christ from an unbelieving and sinful world, to be a peculiar people to the Lord," &c. ; and having quoted the commission of Christ, he says, " This ordinance they accordingly administered and recommended, not for the putting away of the filth of the flesh, but the answer of a good conscience towards God."— On Bap., pp. 2, 1. Dr. A. Clarke. — "Baptism is only a sign, and therefore should never be separated from the thing signified" (Com., on Ti. iii, 4). This accords with his definition of churches, to which baptism is usually said to introduce, as " congregations of people professing Christianity" (Pref. to Acts), with similar definitions of churches by R. Watson, by Congregationalists, and Pa3dobaptists generally ; but not with infant baptism, or strict adherence to the word of God. Ency. Metr. — " Baptism, first, is the symbol of a covenant between two parties — between the Christian and his Lord." — Art. Bap. W. Dalton. — "We are denominated Christians, from our professing, in baptism, to become the followers of Christ." — Com., on Lu. iii. W. DoDWELL. — " Whosoever . . . shall solemnly profess his faith in Me by being baptized," &c. (Para, on Mark xvi, 16). Also on John's baptism, his paraphrase records John as saying : " I do indeed baptize you with water to engage you to the exercise of repentance, which by that rite you solemnly profess." — On Lu. iii, 15-17. Dr. W. C. Taylor. — " Baptism, which was the outward sign of that ' death unto sin and new birth unto righteousness,' with which the Christian life must commence." —His. of Ghr., pp. 118, 119. Bp. Heber speaks of baptism as " that form by which he publicly enters into the fellowship of Christ's religion, and solemnly lays claim, according to the solemn promise of his Lord, to all the privileges of Christ's new covenant of grace and par- don."— Ser. prea. in Eng., p. 360. Dr. Knapp, having spoken of Christ's commission, says, " Whoever, therefore, ia baptized, declares by this rite that he acknowledges Father, Son, and Spirit for hia God, that he will obey His laws, and that ho expects protection and blessing from Him." " By baptism we profess to receive Christ as our Teacher, Saviour, Lord, i.e., we thus bind ourselves to embrace and obey His doctrine, confidently to trust Hia promises, to expect from Him all our spiritual blessedness, and to render Him a dutiful obedience. This ia what is meant in the New Testament by being baptized in the name of Christ." — Chr. Ant., pp. 426, 431. Aug. Hahn, as quoted by Stier, says of baptism, "According to its original character and design, it could be administered only to adults, who alone were capable of the knowledge of sin, and repentance, and faith" (Words, &c., vol. viii, p. 312). To the use of "adults" by Hahn and others, if we adhere to its strictest import, I should object. But if in opposition to " infants," it be understood exclusively of those who " are capable of the knowledge of sin," and capable "of repentance and faith," it has my cordial adoption. Olshausen, having taught that Pasdobaptism belongs not to the age of apostles, says, " Nor can the necessity of it be adduced from the nature of baptism" (Com., on Acts, xvi, 14, 15). On Eom. iv, 11, he says : " Baptism does not beget faith, but pre- supposes it." Dr. Stiek. — " The matheteuthentes [Matt, xxviii, 19] were to be called and con- secrated— and this the general and sure meaning, without any reference to the special meaning of eis to onoma — to the knowledge and confession of the one living God." He also quotes and confirms Bindseil : — " According to its origin and natxural force, he says that ' to baptize into the name of any one, is, through baptism, to influence a person to name himself after another.' " — Words, &c., vol. viii, pp. 29'7, 299. J. Glyde. — "It is said, ' Then they that gladly received his word were baptized, and the same day were added unto them about three thousand souls.' Is it not evident from these words that baptism was regarded as ' adding' those who received it to the apostles, and introducing them into that fellowship in which the next verse represents them as ' steadfastly continuing ?' " On John ui, 5, he says, "What a beautiful light does the expression, ' born of water,' throw around baptism ! It becomes in our eyes a birth, an entrance on a new existence, an entrance into a new relationship, an introduction into a new world, that world of grace and mercy which has originated in the death and the resurrection of the Lord Jesus. Thus it was regarded by the apostle Paul, who in a passage similar to this, speaks of it as ' the washing of regeneration' and ' the renewing of the Holy Ghost.' " " The reception of 368 SUBJECTS OF BAPTISM. baptism," he has said, "is an act of acknowledgment of the supreme dominion of Christ, and submission to Him" C^e'>noirs, pi>. 406, 101). — How lamentable that any should evade legitimate inferences, and shirk responsibility and profession from the Subjects of baptism to the parents of the baptized ! Abp. Sumner. — " To be baptized is the act of faith, the sign on man's part of hia acceptance of that offer, his entrance into that covenant of grace to which God has invited him." " Our Lord appointed as the entrance into His religion, a rite which should be an emblem of the change" [regeneration], — Expo., Acts xxii, 16 , John iii, 1-5. Dr. Neander. — " Christian baptism" "implies an appropriation of the fruit of His sufferings, a fellowship in His resurrection, and a participation of that life, in communion with Him, which is above the world and death" (Life of Chr., p. 133. Bohn's Edi.) Again, in his Church History, he says that Christ "instituted two out- ward signs, as symbols of the invisible fellowship between Him, the Head of the spiritual body, and its members, the believers, as well as of the union of these members not only with Himself, but with one another. They were to be visible means of repre- senting the invisible heavenly benefits communicated by Him to the members of thia body. And with the believing use of these signs, furnished to the outward sense, was to be connected the enjoyment in the inward man of that fellowship and of those heavenly benefits. As in the whole of Christianity and the whole Christian life there is nothing which stands separate and by itself, but all, radiating from a common centre, forms one whole, so, in the present case, what is represented by these outward signs was to be something which should permeate the whole inward life of the Chris- tian, something from which one single moment of that life should diffuse itself over the whole of it, and again be specially awakened by other single moments, and carried still farther onward by them. Such was baptism, the sign of the first admission into communion with the Redeemer and with His church, the first appropriation of the benefits which He has bestowed on mankind — the forgiveness, viz., of sins and the inward union of life thence resulting, and the participation in a Divine sanctifying Spirit" (Vol. i, p. 421). Again, "The idea of a deliverance from the dominion of the evil spirit, in a moral and spiritual respect, of a separation from the kingdom of evil, and of a communication by the new birth of a Divine life which should triumph over the principle of evil, belongs to the original and essential ideas of Christianity. But in fact the whole rite of baptism was nothing less than a sensible representation of this idea" (p. 428). Further (p. 430), "Baptism at first was administered only to adults, as men were accustomed to conceive baptism and faith as strictly connected. There does not appear to be any reason for deriving infant baptism from an apostolical institution." J. CoNDER. — " The being baptized in the name of Christ was an act which involved the confession of that name before men. It was an enlisting into the church, a putting on of Christ ; it was to assume the badge of profession, to take the oath of warfare." " Baptism is the symbol of discipleship." "In the primitive age" "it implied the reception of Christ." " The privileges of religious commvmion followed his avowing himself a disciple, as a matter of course." Baptism is " an ordained expression of becoming a disciple of Christ" (Prot. None., pp. 459, 403-466). Mr. C, who describes baptism as a confession and profession, teaches that " a profession that is not spon- taneous and voluntary, is justly liable to suspicion ;" and that " to make an outward profession of the religion of Jesus is, in every age, and under all circumstances, not less than, in the apostles' days, tlio boundeu duty of His disciples ; but this implies the antecedent obligation to embrace that which is to be thus professed. Profession dissociated from sincere belief, is no better than hypocrisy" (pp. 93, 86, 87). I never- theless acquit Mr. C. of any desire — to use his own words — "to promote the spread of the Antipaidobaptist opinions." Nor do I believe in the consistency of the above with the assertion : " By baptism, then, we are discipled to Christ"(p. 469). J. SiBKBE. — " Baptism was a sign of a public profession of Christianity." " Except he be baptized — except he confess Christ before men." — Eccl. Lee., p. 124. Dr. KiTTO. — " Baptism essentially denotes the regenerating of him who receives it, his participation both in the Divine life of Christ, and the promises rested on it, aa well as his reception as a member of the Christian community." He says that Paul " expresses a spiritual import by saying that it intimates, on the part of those who received it, their being united with Christ in His death, and raised with Him in His resurrection." — Cy. Art. Bap. Dr. Ebraru teaches that baptism is not " washing," but " immersion ;" and that this immersion indicated the acknowledged " utter unworthiness and condemnation." Gos. His., p. 194. Dr. Belfeage. — " In them [the sacraments] we yield ourselves to the Lord, to ESSENCE OP BAPTISM. 360. serve Him in holiness and righteousness before Him all the days of our life." " By these signs Christ and the blessings of the new covenant are represented to believers." —Expo. ofSh. Cat., pp. 410, 411. Dr. Wardlaw. — " Those who received the baptism of John did, in the very act of such reception, profess faith in his Divine commission and in the truth of what ho was commissioned to proclaim ; and those who submitted to the baptism of Jesus made the same profession in regard to His commission, and the doctrine taught by Him." On Mark xvi, 1.5, he comments on " the glad tidings, of which the faith waa then to be professed by submission to baptism." Subsequently, speaking of Simon, who " like the rest, professed faith, and like the rest, was baptized on the credit of that profession," he says that in Philip "there was no hasty and reprehensible credulity." The very relinquishment of magic, with all its credit, and all its profit, and all its influence, for the profession of the gospel, might appear in his eyes one of the most signal triumphs the truth had won." And he adds : " Is baptism a Christian rite — an institute of the spiritual kingdom of Christ ? Eegarding it as such, I see in it propriety, congruity, sense, and beauty, when administered as the form of initiation into the profession of the gospel, and the new life of purity and separation from tho world, and subjection to Christ." But "a Christian rite that indicates nothing distinctly Christian — no knowledge and faith of Christian truth, or profession founded upon them — no transition from the world to the Christian church — no incipient Chris- tianity— no adoption of Christian principles or commencement of a Christian course ; this is a thing I cannot undsrstand." Having spoken of the words of Ananias, " Be baptized, and wash away thy sins," as "referring to the same thing, in the emblem and in the reality," he speaks of " the baptism, in truth, being the form of incipient confession, the emblematical avowal of having embraced Christ's cause" (A'p'pen., pp. 249, 260, 303, 305, 308). We might fill pages with quotations from Dr. Wardlaw, teaching that scriptural baptism requires faith and implies its profession. For instance, he says on Mark xvi, 16 : " It is not said, ' He that believeth not and is not baptized' — but, simply ' He that believeth not — shall be damned.' The consistency and propriety of the omission are instantly apparent on the principle of interpretation for which we contend. Understanding ' He that believeth and is baptized' as signify- ing (what it naturally does signify) — he that believeth and by submission to the initiatory rite, avows his faith," &c. "Baptism being the profession of faith — 'He that believeth not and is not haTptized,' would have been tautological and superfluous" (p. 312). On Peter's words, "Repent and be baptized," &c., he says, " Surely from the form of address, it is very natural to consider their repentance as in order to their baptism, and their baptism as the declaration or profession of their repentance or change of mind" (p. 313). "Change your minds. Relinquish your opposition, and acknowledge in Jesus the true Messiah and Saviour. In testimony of this change of mind, and of this penitent acknowledgment, submit to the initiatory rite of baptism in His name" (p. 316). Thus he speaks of baptism in Christ's commission, in apos- tolic practice, and in every reference to the ordinance in the New Testament. He can say (p. 340), " If it [baptism] is to be regarded in the light of a ' sign or symbol of our receiving the covenant by faith,' i\\\s is all that I am desirous to establish." While remembering that he is opposing the indiscriminate baptism advocated by Dr. Halley, let his words have their due weight. Webster and Wilkinson. — ^" In Christian baptism faith is the prominent qualifi- cation" (Qr. Tes., on Lu. iii, 3). Yet these gentlemen, so explicit on faith as the ordained qualification in Christ's commission, are so enamoured by the baptizing of infants that they can see a decided argument for the practice in the record, Acts xxi, 15, " brought us on our way, with wives and children !" Dr. J. Brown. — " It is an emblematical representation of what saves us, the expiatory, justifying blood of Christ ; the regenerating, sanctifying influence of the Spirit, and a corresponding confession of the truth thus represented" (On 1 Pe., vol. ii, p. 217). — Can there be in infants a confession of anything? Dr. J. Stoughton speaks of " the enormous gulf between paganism and Chris- tianity being at once crossed through a faith, of which baptism was the visible symbol and uplifted standard." — Ages of Chr., p. 98. Dr. Brewer. — " The baptism of Christians is a baptism of faith in Jesus, and typifies that the person is dead to the Adamic covenant, and henceforth belongs to the New Covenant."— Gwide to Sc. His., N. T., p. 71. J. G. Manly. — " Baptism and the eucharist are ordinances of spiritual import. The three thousand added to the apostles on the day of Pentecost, are described as they that gladly received Peter's word, and were baptized." " It appears, then, that addition to the one hundred and twenty, that is, entrance or admission into the church, took place by baptiam, and that the condition or pre-requisite of baptism was pro« 870 SUBJECTS OF BAPTISM. fessed belief of the truth" (Ecd., pp. 16, 41). And why not now ? He also speaks of " baptism, the ceremony of transference from Judaism and from heathenism, the ordinance of ecclesiastical initiation." — Eccl., p. 153. Basil H. Cooper. — " He had also Himself instituted those symbolical pledges of imparted and sustained life, the outward signs of fellowship with Himself and His people, baptism and the eucharist." — Free Ch., &c., p. 83. Dr. BuNSEN speaks of "the believer's earliest vow in baptism," and teaches that " the outward sign and seal added to the vow would be unscriptural and unreasonable "without the previous voluntary and conscious promise." M. TowGOOD says : " The general nature or design of the emblem or figure is — by the application of water, to signify or betoken a person to be holy or clean ; appro- priated to and fit for the Divine service" (On Baj)., p. 78). Baptism indicates what a person is, or is supposed to be, not what he may possibly at some time become. W. J. Shrewsbury, who teaches that the subjects of John's baptism " were in all probability adults only"; teaches also that the apostles of Christ "baptized into nothing less than His death, faith in His death;" " that baptism was designed" to lead "all believers to real holiness, deadness to the world, and a new, spiritual and heavenly life and conversation, through the death and burial of Jesus Christ, and His resurrection from the dead ;" and that " baptized persons are not free to live as they list, but bound with holy bonds to learn all that Christ teaches and to do all that Christ commands."— /«/. Ba-p., pp. 212, 227, 228, 250. Dr. W. Cooke. — " The baptism of the Spirit, as both a privilege and a duty, ia involved in the ceremony of our baptism by water" (The Shech., p. 183). — The bap- tism of the Spirit is used, I presume, for regeneration by the Spirit. Dean Alford. — "We baptize into the name (i.e., into the fulness of the con- sequence of the objective covenant, and the subjective confession) of Father, Son, and Holy Ghost" (Gr. Tes., on Matt, xxviii, 19). " Subjective confession" in infant baptism ! Moreover, " Baptism is the contract of espousal (Eph. v, 26) between Christ and His church." — On Matt, xxviii, 19. Bp. Hinds. — " Baptism under the symbol of washing with water, represents our purification" (Rise, &c., p. 45). There is no " charm in the waters of baptism." The baptized "has performed a specific act of obedience to Christ." — Cat. Man., p. 12. Dr. Bloomfield. — " He who is baptized binds himself to the observance of Christ's doctrine, approves it," &c. — Rec. Syn., on John iii, 5. Dr. J. J. Owen. — " Baptism is the seal of the covenant obligation of the believer, to love and serve the Lord Jesus Christ, and to walk in all His ordinances and com- mands." " After our Lord's ascension a profession of faith in Him was a pre-requisite to Christian baptism." — Com., on Mark xvi, 16; Matt, iii, 3, Dr. W. Lindsay. — " Faith and a change of heart, then, ought to go before baptism. They are the proper preparation for it." — In Olsh., on Acts x, 44-48. Clark's Edi. Dr. D. Young. — " Baptism is ordained to continue so long as the work of regenera- tion continues." " But is it true that the ordinance of man siipersedes the Christian ordinance" (On the Law of Christ for main. His Ch.) ? Is there greater authority for changing believers into infants than for changing willinghood into coercion ! Dr. Hodge. — " Faith and repentance are . . . required as conditions of baptism." He is speaking of "the scriptural doctrine concerning baptism according to the Reformed churches" (On Eph. v, 26). " Baptism includes a profession of the religion taught by him in whose name we are baptized and an obligation to obey hia laws." — On Eom. vi, 1-11. Dr. J. Campbell. — " Sacraments are holy signs and seals of the covenant of grace, immediately instituted by God, to represent Christ and His benefits, and to confirm our interest in Him, as also to put a visible difference between those that belong to Christ and the rest of the world, and solemnly to engage them to the service of God in Christ, according to His word." " Baptism is a sacrament of the New Testament, ordained by Jesus Christ, not only for the solemn admission of the party baptized into the visible church, but also to be unto him a sign and seal of the covenant of grrace, of his ingrafting into Christ, of regeneration, of remission of sins, and his giving up to God through Jesus Christ, to walk in newness of life" (M'Phun's Fam. Bible, pp. liv, xv). Again, "There is, in such ordinances, a spiritual relation, or sacra- mental union, between the sign and the thing signified." Also, " Christian ordinances are designed for Christian people — for persons who are already saved by grace." — Jethro, p. 235. Dr. J. P. Smith. — " A sacrament is a Divine institution, of universal obligation, for conveying to the mind and feelings of men, by some sensible substance and symbolical a.ction, an impressive idea of the most essential blessings of redemption by the Messiah." " Sacramental institutions" " are signs confirmatory of Divine truths and ESSENCE OF BAPTISM. 371 promises : — and instructive, especially to men of inferior cultivation." " The design of baptism is to be a symbolical representation of Divine truth ; particularly — the reality of revealed religion — the corruption of human nature — union of Christ — the work of the Spirit — the promises of the Covenant of Grace. 2. Its design is alsoto be initiatory of a Christian profession." The revoi-end professor also gravely main- tains its application " to the infants of believers in the gospel church!" But "an actual and full profession of faith in one or both of the parents," he maintains to be "necessary to warrant the baptism of the infant" (First Lines, &c., pp. 666, 667, 676, 679). — When tradition and church authority can sanction transubstantiation, they may make Dr. Smith and others consistent with themselves and with Divine revelation. CoNYBEARE and HowsoN make not the explicit acknowledgments of some. _ Like many with similarly strong and obscuring predilections, they " cannot but think it probable that infant baptism was" the apostles' practice; because there are sub- sequently no traces of the introduction of infant baptism satisfactory to them ; be- cause Christ said, " Suffer little children to come unto Me, and forbid, them not, for of such is the kingdom of heaven ;" and because, say they, " St. Paul expressly saya that the children of a Christian parent were to be looked upon as consecrated to God (hagioij by virtue of their very birth !" Yet they say on St. Paul's baptism, "The sacrament of baptism was regarded as the door of entrance into the Christian church, and was held to be so indispensable that it could not be omitted even in the case of St. Paul." Also, " In ordinary cases the sole condition required for baptism was, that the person to be baptized shoiild acknowledge Jesus as the Messiah ' declared to be the Son of God with power by His resurrection from the dead" (Life and Epis., &c., vol. i, pp. 516, 517). — I know of no exception in Scripture to this, and of no reason why the whole church should not make it their practice. The pitiful reference to such passages as C. and H., with other Paedobaptists, refer to as making infant bap- tism, as they think, a lirohahle practice of apostolic times, is a virtual acknowledgment that the Oracles of God furnish neither precept nor precedent on its behalf. Abp. Whateley. — " They (Predestinarians), of course, deny the term ' regenerate' to be applicable to those baptized Christians whom they consider as excluded, by the decree of Omnipotence, from all spiritual benefit whatever of baptism. And the visible chui-ch into which members are through this rite admitted, they regard as a community not possessing any spiritual endowments whatever ; these being, by Divine decree, reserved for certain individuals arbitrarily selected from the rest.* Of those who maintain the Predestinarian views now alluded to, a considerable proportion belong to the sect which altogether rejects infant baptism. And I cannot but admit that in this they are perfectly consistent. Regarding the rite of baptism as ' an out- ward and visible sign of an inward and spiritual grace,' they deem it necessary, I apprehend, not to ' put asunder what God has joined together,' and therefore confine the administration of this sign to those respecting whom there is some presumption, at least, of their being admitted to a participation in the thing signified — the Divine grace ; which grace, they hold, is, by an eternal and absolute decree, bestowed on one portion of mankind, and denied to the rest. And to which of the two classes any individual infant belongs, there cannot possibly be any ground for even the slightest conjecture. "In the case of adults, they can have, they suppose (just as in the case of the Lord's Supper), if not a complete and certain knowledge whether he belongs to the class of the elect or of the non-elect, at least some indications from his professions and his conduct, indications which an infant, of course, cannot afford at all. And they consider, I apprehend, that this being the case, baptism administered to infanta cannot be a sign of regeneration, since it cannot furnish even any presumption of being accompanied or followed by it. And certainly we must admit that, according at least to the original use of language, a si'^ji. of anything is understood to be such from its being regularly accompanied by that thing of which it is a sign, or at least by some reasonable presumption of its existence. When, for instance, we speak of a certain dress or badge being a sign of a man's belonging to a certain regiment or order of knighthood, or the like, we understand that it is to be something peculiar to them, and serving to distinguish them from others. If the dress or badge were worn * Whether recording the deductions of one or another from what is technically called Calvin- ism or Arminianism, no opinion is intended to be expressed by myself, any more than in the previous volume in the remarks on Open and Strict Commuiiion ; but as on Communion I advocated Charity, so on the baptizing of infants, of all or a part, I advocate consistency with sentiments held and maintained. 372 SUBJECTS OF BAPTISM. indifferently by an indefinite number of persons, some belonging to this regiment or order, and some not, we should consider that it had ceased to be a sign at all, having no longer any signification. It is on these grounds, I conceive, that many of those who hold the doctrine of absolute decrees I have been alluding to, adhered to, or have joined the communion of those calling themselves, and commonly called Baptists," — Inf. Bap. Consid., in a Charge, pp. 15-17. Again, "At the time when that sect [the Friends] arose, a very large proportion of Christian ministers, while they were administering to infants a rite, which they spoke of as a sign of regeneration (or new birth), at the same time taught — at least were understood as teaching — that there is no intelligible connection whatever between the sign and the thing signified, nor any real benefit attached to the rite — the new birth they taught their people to hope for at some future indefinite time. And they taught them to believe, as a part of Christian revelation, that, of infants brought to baptism, an uncertain, indefinite number of individuals — undistinguishable at that time from the rest — are by the Divine decree, totally and finally excluded from all share in the benefits of Christ's redemption. Now, men accustomed to see and hear all this, would be not unlikely to listen with favour to those who declared — professedly by Divine inspiration — that water-baptism, as they call it, is an empty and superstitious cere- mony, originating in a misapprehension of our Lord's meaning" (Appen. to Charge, p. 53). Does not the Archbishop teach that the common designation of baptism aa an outward sign of an inward and spiritual grace is a perversion of language and an absurdity when applied to infants, or teach that the baptism of infants is " an empty and superstitious ceremony," unless either the infant is regenerated by baptism, or there is evidence of the infant's previous regeneration ? The nature of baptism as a sig^ of regeneration precludes its rightful application to infants. RlEQER speaks of " immersion" as having become " an aspersion," and that " the external mode may change," but still there must be retained the depth of idea in " Rom. vi, 4, baptized into the death of Christ and to a new life." — Lange's Co7)i., on Matt, xxviii, 19. Dr. P. Faibbaibn. — " Men are not baptized in order to believe, but they believe in order to be baptized ; so that, ideally or doctrinally considered, baptism presup- poses faith, and sets the Divine seal on its blessings and prospects. And so we never find the evangelists and apostles thrusting baptism into the foreground, as if through Buch ministrations, they expected the vital change to be produced, but first preaching the gospel, and then, when this had come with power to the heart, recognizing and confirming the result by the administration of the ordinance" (Rev. of Law in Scr.) Again, the worthy Doctor says, " Baptism was administered by the apostles, not for the purpose of creating a relation between the individual and Christ, but of accre- diting and completing a relation already formed." He rightly speaks of baptism aa " the proper consummation and embodiment of faith's actings in the reception of Christ ;" and till God's word speaks of infant believers or of infant baptism, his restriction of this to the case of the adult believer, will be unnecessary. Dr. Jamieson speaks of "the ordinance of baptism" in which they "make that public profession" by which they " declare themselves His servants" (Eas. Man., N. T., p. 475). I am aware that many of our opponents may say, We admit this most freely in regard to the baptism of adults ; it is therefore on our part no concession whatever. Let them explicitly teach when they thus speak that they mean only the ordinance of baptism in very exceptional cases, and in a way the extinction of which they are endeavouring to promote, and which the prevalence of their views would eftectually accomplish ; and let them prove from Holy Writ that there are two baptisms intended to be continued till the prevalence of Pajdo-baptism shall have annihilated one. Some of the succeeding extracts will unite with concessions an appeal to the supremacy of God's revealed will. Also some of the concessions in the section on Indiscriminate Baptism apply here. A sign in the sense of a badge requires the existence, or from our inability to search the heart the supposed existence of the thing signified. A sign in the sense of a symbol may refer to a fact or event ESSENCE OF BAPTISM. 373 that is either future or past. Christ's death was signified or symbolized in the death of innocent victims for four thousand years ; but the sign of that which has no existence, and never may have one, appears to me an absurdity. I might have added the testimony of " Friends" who on this subject have spoken expHcitly and strongly, whose judgment here I regard as un- biassed and correct, although it is not Paedobaptist. I will quote only Barclay's words, with which, so far as I know, every writer among the Friends agrees : "As to the baptism of infants, it is a mere human tra- dition, for which neither precept nor practice is to be found in all the Scripture." — ApoL, p. 409. Nor do I deem the language of the Rev. T. Powell on modern Bishops inappUcable to infant baptism. It is "an ecclesiastical arrangement, and not of Divine right" (On Apos. Sue, p. 16). Our opponents, whether "unwittingly" or not, prove "the same thing for us." I might remind those who teach in God's name, of an apostolic charge to "teach no other doctrine" than that of " God our Saviour ;" that not a word of command from God has been "dropped" about infant baptism, and that its advo- cacy by Protestants leads to "severe shifts," yea that the most "able men" are "driven" to contradiction and absurdity in its support. I will not say that our opponents are "resolved at all hazards to say something to support a sinking cause ;" but I beheve that infant baptism, " as to scRiPTUKAL AUTHORITY, is built ou a saudy foundation, and is buttressed up by violent assiunj^tions, strained or false analogies, forced inter j)retation, and ultimately comes to be placed, by concessions of their o^vn, upon mere human and ecclesiastical authority" (p. 24). Since I regard infant bap- tism to have "been shown to be a lawless fabric," I "pity many good men who are entangled with" it, and desire " every Protestant" to be enlightened and emboldened to "protest against" this corruption of Christianity. The silence of Scripture is similarly pleaded by a host of our Pffido- baptist dissenting brethren, against those who advocate a civil establish- ment of Christianity. The Rev. A. J. Morris teaches, that it was not likely that such a subject " would be left without appeal to the book which contains its history and laws as given by God. It would have been strange if religious men were found advocating principles on this point, which they did not at least imagine could be detected in the Bible." " But the gospel is altogether silent as to this." T. Toller says : " Before we can listen to the proposal to unite ourselves to the Established Church, it must be satisfactorily proved, that man may justly claim that to which he has no right — that God will accept as obedience to His will what that will has never enjoined." — None, p. 21. Dr. Waedlaw says — "To the observation just alluded to, that no divinely inti- mated sanction is given to any anticipated change, I must now add, that the only great change anticipated in the constitution of the church is accompanied, in the announcement of its future introduction, with the very reverse of sanction, — with the severest censure and condemnation" (On the Scr. Argu., p. 36). He says, " We have said, and we repeat it, that on its silence, we might rest were there nothing further to support us ; that is, on the absence of every thing in principle, precept, or fact" (p. 53). And he thus solemnly appeals to and beseeches his opponents, "Are the people of Christ to bo considered as entitled, at their pleasure to exonerate themselves 374 SUBJECTS OF BAPTISM. of the obligations which their Lord and King has laid upon them ? — Are they war- ranted to say, It is no matter, provided the thing be done, whether it be done by our- selves or by others for us, — whether it be done in our Master's way or in our own ? They have not — they cannot have a riglrt to act thus. And while there is presump- tion in such a procedure, there is something more" (p. 66). Is not infant sprinkling a something done by force on us instead of being a voluntary and believing action, and also an action other than what Christ has enjoined ? He says, " I beseech them, at the risk of being rebiaked for my presumption, perhaps for my impertinence, to lay it to their consciences, whether such a state of things be in harmony with the rep- resentations of the New Testament, and to honour the Divine Head of the church by a return to the ' simplicity that is in Chi-ist,' and a fearless submission to the mani- fest and peremptory dictates of His will" (p. 71). " It is silence, indeed, on the one side — dead silence — but it is not silence on the other. It is a case in which facts in- volve principles. How can we regard the actual procedure of the apostles of Christ in constituting the New Testament church, in any other light than as the acting out of principles ? And who will venture to say that human discretion is at liberty to innovate upon the institutions of Divine wisdom ? Who and where are the authorities, whether ecclesiastical or civil, that are warranted to alter the laws of Heaven, and to substitute their own devices for the enactments of the King of Zion" (p. 54) ? " When there is such silence, we may surely, without presumption, say to them, with regard to an innovation of such magnitude and extensive influence, — Who hath required this at your hands ? . . . There are occasions, too, when silence is more than or- dinarily conclusive as an interdict on human interference. The present is one of these" (p. 53). Dr. W. admits that there is something else than silence on the Bap- tist side of the question, for, says he, " Baptism was the first public declaration of faith of the converts, and of their belonging to the body of Christ," — On Inf. Bap., p. 139. T. BiNNEY, discoursing on Dissent as not Schism, a discourse published at the request of " the ministers of the London Congregational Union," inquires, "What then saith the Scripture upon the matter in debate" (p. 7) ? He adduces as " the fun- damental principle of Protestantism," " the well-known aphorism of Chillingworth — 'the Bible, and the Bible only, is the religion of Protestants' " (p. 56). But in the Bible we have dead silence regarding infant baptism. He adds, " The principle still recurs — ' The Bible, and the Bible alone, is the religion of Protestants' — to the law and to the testimony' — ' what saith the Scriptiu'c ?' by this ' prove all things,' and then ' hold fast that which is good' " (p. 59). Must we not then immediately and for ever let go infant baptism ? " If not, then the Bible alone is not our religion, the Protestant maxim must be altered, — it must be not ' the Bible alone,' but ' the Bible and antiquity,' — not God alone, but 'Godandman,' or ' God and tradition' "(pp. 60, 61), Prof. J. H. Godwin deems it argumentative to be able to say, " Lastly, the omis' sions as well as the statements of the word of God, support this conclusion." — Lee, on Baj). North British Review. — "The language of Scriptm-e regarding baptism implies the spiritual act of faith in the recipients." " Baptism appears in the New Testament avowedly as the rite whereby converts wore incorporated into the Christian society." Dr. J. MORISON. — " Baptism, for instance, whose material element is water, was administered to the new converts to Christianity ' in the name of the Father, of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost.' Observe the condition of the new converts. They had heard the gospel message ; they had been stirred up to repentance ; they had embraced the apostolic doctrine concerning Christ's death, resurrection, and glory ; they had fled to His cross for refuge from threatened and impending -ivrath. Such was the case with the three thousand on the day of Pentecost, with Saul of Tarsus, with Cor- nelius and his friends, with Lydia and her house, with the Philippian jailor, and others. To them baptism could neither be necessary for regeneration nor for justifi- cation ; for Divine grace had quickened them, and they had believed in Christ. This is fact not spcrwioiioii. Yet were they to be baptized, and on no plea whatsoever to neglect this Divine appointment. What then was baptism to persons in their condi- tion ? A most significant^a most profitable — as well as a Divine ordinance. It was, first of all, a test of their submission to Christ, by whom it was instituted : it was an impressive memorial of their entrance upon a Christian profession ; it was a signifi- cant sign of the benefits they had received from Christ, in the gift of His Spirit, and in the wasliing away of their sins in the blood of atonement ; it was a pledge of their willingness to i-eceivo and hold fast all those truths contained in, or dependent upon, the doctrine of the ever-blessed Trinity, in whose name they had been baptized ; it ,was a soli'iun undertaking to submit to all the laws and ordinances of Christ, and to yield to Him as the sole Law-giver and Head of His ohmxh j — in short, it was tanta. ESSENCE OF BAPTISM. 375, at mount to an engagement, ratified in the name of the Holy Trinity, that those who submitted to it would renounce the world, the flesh, and the devil, and that they would henceforward walk as the children of the light and of the day. All this baptism was" CHomi., pp. 337, 338). Dr. M. nevertheless approves of baptizing the children of believers, but his acknowledged defence " is one of inference." He does not see infant baptism in the " expressed facts" of Christianity. We prefer adherence to what " baptism was" in apostolic times. Dr. Cunningham, in reply to a charge against the Shorter Presbjdierian Catechism as "teaching baptismal regeneration," says, "that the first and fundamental position taught in the Shorter Catechism concerning baptism is this, that it (as well as the Lord's Supper) ' is an holy ordinance instituted by Christ, wherein by sensible signs, Christ and the benefits of the New Covenant are represented, sealed, and applied to believers.' It is of fundamental importance to remember, that the catechism does apply this whole description of a sacrament to baptism, and to realize what this involves. In addition to this general description of baptism as a sacrament, common to it with the Lord's Supper, the catechism proceeds to give a more specific description of baptism as distinguished from the other sacrament. It is this, ' Baptism is a sacra- ment, wherein the washing with water, in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost, doth signify and seal our ingrafting into Christ, our partaking of the benefits of the covenant of grace, and our engagement to be the Lord's.' Now the only ground for alleging that this teaches baptismal regeneration must be the notion that it applies in point of fact to all who have been baptized, and that all who have received the outward ordinance of baptism are warranted to adopt this language, and to apply it to themselves. But the true principle of interpretation is this, that this description of baptism applies fully and in all its extent only to those who ought to be baptized, those who are possessed of the necessary qualifications or 'preparations for baptism, and who are able to ascertain this ; and the question as to who these are, must be determined by a careful consideration of all that is taught upon this sub- ject." Speaking of the meaning of " our " and "we" in the catechism, he teaches that the "we" are not "all who have been baptized," but " only those who ought to have been baptized, who, moreover, are capable of ascertaining that they have been legitimately baptized, and xvlio, being satisfied on this point, are in consequence able to adopt the language of the catechism intelligently and truly." Thus writes Dr. C, endeavouring to vindicate the catechism from " confusion, absurdity, and incon- sistency." There would be less of confusion, inconsistency, and absurdity in what Dr. C. says, if he maintained the correctness of what the Presbjrterian Standards affirm when they teach that baptism in its very nature as a profession of faith in Christ is inapplicable to any but believers, if he maintained the required modification of some of the expressions respecting the efi'ects of baptism, and an utter expunging of the teaching that the infants of one or two believing parents are proper subjects. Dr, C. strangely teaches that only believers are contemplated, though infants also are expressly mentioned, and thus "the statement that ' baptism signifies and seals our engrafting into Christ,' &c., must mean, that it signifies and seals the engrafting into Christ of those of us who have been engrafted into Christ by faith." I maka not Dr. C. responsible for my emphasizing. I wonder not that the good doctor says, " This mode of contemplating the ordinance of baptism is so different from what we are accustomed to, that we are apt to be startled when it is presented to us, and find it somewhat difficult to enter into it. It tends greatly to introduce obscurity and confusion into our whole conceptions on the subject of baptism, that we see it ordin- arily administered to infants, and vei-y seldom to adults. This leads us insensibly to form very defective and erroneous conceptions of its design and effects, or rather to live with our minds very much in the condition of blanks, so far as concerns any dis- tinct and definite views upon this subject. There is a great difficulty felt, a difficulty which Scripture does not afford us adequate materials for removing, in laying down any distinct and definite doctrine as to the bearing and efficacy of baptism in the case of infants, to whom alone ordinarily we see it administered." ^Vhat confessions these 1 God's word is not made for the baptism of infants. Paedobaptism is, and, as long as it continues, it ever will be involved in obscurity and difficulty, yea " in con- fusion, absurdity, and inconsistency." How much better — until we get another " Scripture of truth" — it would be to abandon it, instead of bemoaningly to cling to it, and attempt the impossible in attempting its justification. Our author, as yet unwilling wholly to quit the mist and the bog, thus proceeds : "A sense of this difficulty is very apt to tempt us to remain contentedly in great ignorance of the whole subject, without any serious attempt to understand distinctly what baptism is and means, and how it is connected with ihe general doctrine of saQ> 376 SUBJECTS OF BAPTISM. ramenta. And yet it is quite plain to any one who is capable of reflecting upon the subject, that it is adult baptism alone which embodies and brings out the full idea of the ordinance." " When baptism is contemplated in this light there is no more diffi- culty in forming a distinct and definite conception regarding it than regarding the Lord's Supper. Of adult baptism we can say, just as we do of the Lord's Supper, that it is in every instance, according to the general doctrine of Protestants, either a Bign and seal of a faith and a regeneration previously existiag, already effected by God's grace, or else a hypocritical profession of a state of mind and feeling which has no existence. It is impossible to deny, that the general description which the Shorter Catechism gives of a sacrament teaches, by plain implication, that the sacraments are intended only for believers, while no Protestants, except some of the Lutherans, have ever held that infants are capable of exercising faith." Again, " The Shorter Catechism teaches, by plain implication, that the sacraments were intended for, and actually benefit, believers only. The Confession of Faith (ch. xxvii) lays it down as the first and principal end or object of the sacraments, of BOTH equally and alike, ' to represent Christ and His benefits, and to confirm our interest in Him ;' this last clause implying, that those for whom the sacraments were intended have already and previously acquired a personal interest in Christ, which could be only by their union to Him through faith." " We believe that the notion of Bacramental justification and regeneration, more or less distinctly developed, has always been, and still is, one of the most successful delusions which Satan employs for ruining men's souls, and that there is nothing of greater practical importance than to root out this notion from men's minds, and to guard them against its ruinous influence. This can be done only by impressing on them right views of the sacra- mental principle, or the general doctrine of the sacraments, and applying it fully both to baptism and the Lord's Supper; and especially by bringing out the gi-eat truths, that the sacraments are intended for believers, that they can be lawfully and beneficially received only when faith has been already produced" (Brit, and For. Evan. Rev. Oct., 1860). Such clearness of conception in Dr. C, both on the proper sub- jects of baptism and the Lord's Supper, and on the " only" means of overthrowing the ruinous doctrine of baptismal regeneration, it is pleasing to notice. But why not in consistency with his recorded sentiments, and with God's word, demand the cessation of infant baptism, instead of labelling it " a peculiar, subordinate, supplemental, and exceptional thing ?" Since the very nature of baptism, and the clearest utterances of inspiration, oppose its application to infants, let its advocates be reminded of the sin of adding to or taking from God's word. Dr. W. Smith, on Christ's baptism, thus teaches the nature of Christian baptism: " He felt it to be as much His part to ' condemn sin in the flesh,' by renouncing it through the water of baptism, as by expiating it by His blood upon the cross ; and so He set the example of entrance into His kingdom by the path of meek repentance and of solemn obligation to a holy life."* "As He stepped past the water's edge, He knelt down to pray, devoting His whole being to the work to which He had been con- secrated by His baptism" (Stu.'s N. T. His., p. 170). Baptism " was to be the formal taking up of the yoke of Christ, the accepting of the promises of Christ." — Bib. Die. Art. Bap. Dr. W. Hanna. — " Closest, loftiest, most blessed of all fellowships, that to which in Jesus Christ we are elevated, and of which om* participation in the two sacraments of the church is the external sign" CThe Forty, &c., p. 176). " Baptism and the Lord's Supper are the two corporate seals by which the church signifies and authenticates entrance into and continued membership in her communion. It is mainly by the use of these that she preserves an outward and definite form as a distinct and separate Bociety. They have served age after age to mark her oft' as a chartered corporation, having rules of her own, bends of union of her own, objects of pursuit of her own," &c. (p. 241). " You apply water to a human body to wash it ; and when in admitting a new member to the outward and visible communion of the church, you apply water to his bodjf and so baptize him, this surely typifies not any or every washing away of inward spiritual defilement, but that particular cleansing of the human spirit from the guilt of sin which takes effect when true entrance is made into the spiritual king- dom of our Lord — the baptismal passage into the visible society, being made to shadow out that great change effected, or rather that great privilege bestowed, when, on pass- ing into the invisible society, the true church of God, we have redemption through the blood of Christ, even the remission of sins, and rise to the new life of the redeemed, * The preceding sentence in; '"He was made sin for us,' though in Himself He 'kne\y ESSENCE OF BAPTISM. forgiven, accepted iu the Lord" (p. 247). He further teaches that baptism is " meant to DB significant of the Divine life within the soul at its commencement," that it points to Christ's " blood as then made available for the removal of bygone guilt" (p. 250) ; and consequently, we may add, that believers' baptism is alone Scriptural bap- tism. Indeed, speaking of the new birth of the soul, he expressly declares that, " in every case in which the baptism was rightly administered, that change had been effected before tliis baptism took place. Repentance toward God and faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, in the realizing of which within the soul its regeneration takes place — these were to precede the baptism" (p. 260). Speaking of " He that believeth and is baptized" as equivalent to " He that believeth and professeth openly his faith," he says that "the being baptized is but a more striking, more solemn, more formal way of making that profession" (p. 261). At p. 263, he says, " Baptism is an entrance within an hallowed circle of new influences, new relationships, new companionships, into a region where a clearer light shineth, and a purer, heavenlier air is breathed." — Can baptism, then, belong to infants ? Dr. W. B. CoLLTER. — " Baptism doth represent unto us our profession ; which is to follow the example of our Saviour Christ, and to be made like unto Him ; that as He died and rose again for us, should we who are baptized rise again to righteousness ; continually mortifying all our evil and corrupt affections, and daily proceeding in all virtue and godliness of living."— Gamble's Scr. £a^)., p. 212. Dr. A. Morton Brown speaks of " baptism as the divinely-appointed initiatory ordinance of the church Luto its instruction and oversight — its beUeving prayer and holy help."— C?M-. Wit., p. 124. 1868. Dr. W. L. Alexander speaks of baptism " as an outward index or symbol of the faith within which it stands associated." And while he believes that apostolic bap- tisms were confined to " such as they had previously taught," he believes that the commission " to baptize into the name of God," impfies that we " introduce by means of baptism to the profession of God's service and worship." Dr. P. ScHAFF, like many others, advocates the baptism of infants, and yet speaks of the nature of baptism in a way wholly inconsistent with infant or indiscriminate baptism. He speaks of baptism and the Lord's Supper " related to one another in general as regeneration and sanctification, as the rise and the growth of the Christian life." " It is the solemn ceremony of reception and incorporation into the communion of the visible church and of Jesus Christ, its Head. Hence Paul calls it a putting on of Christ (Gal. iii, 27), a union into one body by one Spirit (1 Cor xii, 13), a washing of regeneration and renewing of the Holy Ghost (Tit. iii, 5 ; comp. John iii, 5), a being buried with Christ and rising again with Him to a new and holy life (Rom. vi, 4). In its idea, therefore, and Di'V'ine intent, baptism coincides with regeneration. It marks the beginning of the renewing work of the Holy Ghost." He holds high sentiments on baptism and the supper as '' efficacious signs, pledges, and means of grace;" on baptism as "the sacrament of regeneration," "as the church-founding sacrament and the outward medium of the forgiveness of sins and the communication of the Holy Ghost," but yet that the communication of grace in baptism is dependent on " repent- ance and faith on the part of the recipient," for if this " condition is wanting, the blessing turns into a curse." Dr. S. says that he accepts " the principle, that bap- tism— of course not without faith — is in general necessary to salvation ;" that " baptism in general, as the sacrament of regeneration, demands of every candidate the renunciation of his former sinful life in repentance, and the beginning of a new, holy life in faith." Thus I maintain that Dr. S. — along with many eminent P£edo- baptists, I believe, with Psedobaptists in general — on passages where baptism is mentioned in God's word, substantially admits that the scriptural representation of baptism, as to its symbolic nature, its very essence and evident Divine intent, requires in every recipient a credible profession of " repentance toward God and faith toward our Lord Jesus Christ." With such admissions, we are permitted, yea necessitated, to despise the Utopian encouragement to infant baptism from a former ordination to circnmcise every male child and servant of Abraham and his posterity ; from the non-prohibition of infant baptism iu God's word ; from the supposition that in children there is an " organic union with a believing mother or father," an " organic connection between Christian parents and their children, by virtue of which the latter are included in the covenant obligations and privileges of the former," "the organic relation, spiritual and bodily, of believing parents to their offspring;" from Christ's taking of little children in His arms, putting His hands on them, praying for them, blessing them, and saying that of such is the kingdom of heaven ; from the addresses to children in the Epistles ; from the baptism of some households ; from the promise to children of the remission of sins and the gift of the Holy Ghost on condition of yepenting and being baptized upon the name of Jesus Christ ; and from perverteij 378 SUBJECTS OF BAPTISM. interpretations of certain expressions in some of the fathers subsequent to Justin, and false inferences respecting the baptism of little children first mentioned by Tertullian, and of infants first mentioned by Cyprian.— ifis. of the Ap. Ch., pp. 565-581. While there are some that regard baptism as representing that which is experienced by parent, guardian, sponsor, administrator, or spectator, or that may be, or will be, or ought to be, at some time experienced by the candidate, or as simply representing some truth or fact of holy writ, it is matter for thankfulness in Baptists, that so many speak of it as repre- senting what ought at the time of its administration to be experienced by the baptized. But while thankful that so many expHcitly teach that scriptural baptism in its very nature and essence involves a profession of faith in Christ and loving devotedness to Him, we should be more thank- ful if practice accorded with these acknowledgments and those respecting the supreme, exclusive, and unchanging authority of the oracles of God. SECTION XXVI. on diffeking qualifications fok baptism, membeeship, and the lord's supper. Dr. Wardlaw. — " I ask for an instance, subsequently to the commencement of apostolic preaching, and the first formation of a church, of a person making a profession of faith, which ■was BUfflcient for his admission to baptism, and yet not sufficient for his reception to other Christ- ian ordinances. I know of none. The genuineness of the ijrofession made at baptism was tried in the church, not in an intervening period between baptism and admission to the church." — Inf. Bap., p. 168. B. Keach. — " If they were in the covenant of grace, why must they have baptism adminis- tered to them from this foot of account, and not the Lord's Supper, and all other privileges of the church 7"— On Bap., p. 12. Dr. Cramp. — " You are the exclnsionists, after all, for you shut them out of the church to which, as you aver, they belong. You claim them as members of the family, but refuse them a place at the family table." — Catc, p. 58. • Our opponents on admitting infants into the church of Christ, into the kingdom of God, and to the Lord's Supper, hold very differing and contradictory sentiments. Many baptize infants in order to make them disciples or Christians, believing all infants before baptism to be children of wrath, and strongly maintaining the regenerating efficacy of Christian baptism rightly administered. Some maintain that baptized infants are made disciples or learners, but not Christians, baptism having a discipling but not a regenerating power. Some would baptize infants and little children, because they have no doubt that unbaptized they are all of the kingdom of God ; and others would baptize no infants and little children, but those having at least one believing or professing parent, because they have evidence very satisfactory to themselves that this portion of infants and little children belong to the elect of God, and that the secret decree of the Almighty embraces among infants and little children no more. Some maintain that the initiatory rite introduces into the church of Christ, BAPTISM AND THE LORD'S SUPPEE. 37§ and others deny to baptized infants the fact and right of membership in the church of Christ, while Mr. Thorn has invented or adopted an inner and an outer church, into one or other of which he can put all the bap- tized, young or old, good or bad, but the door of which will not can- onically open for the least or the best of the unbaptized. Some of our Caledonian and other brethren maintain that the infants which have one believing or professing parent, are born in the church, and are therefore undoubtedly meet to receive the ordinance of initiation, which it would be profane to administer to any infant not believed to be within the covenant, and thus as some teach, foreordained to life eternal. Yet our opponents, of almost every class, — whatever their sentiments on the baptized one as being a child of God, a member of Christ, and an inheritor of the king- dom of heaven, on its being born in the church, or brought into the church by the initiatory rite, or being both bom in it, and brought into it by bap- tism, or as having received a rite to gi'atify the superstitious feeling of the parent, the standing of the child being as before, in no respect better or worse, or a rite by which the child has become a disciple of Christ — are opposed to baptism as introducing to the privileges of the Lord's Supper. The noblest powers of oratory can be called into requisition to describe the importance and advantages of the baptism of infants, whilst not a syllable is allowed to escape the lips of most Pfedobaptists (the Greek and Eastern churches excepted) in favour of admitting the dear innocents, these lambs of the flock, these holiest and loveliest disciples of Jesus, these members of Christ and of the kingdom of God, these heirs and in- heritors of glory, to the Supper of the Lord, instituted by Christ for His disciples. Between these doubly blessed ones and the Lord's Supper, there is, when they are duly baptized, a great and impassable gulf, although they be undoubtedly of the kingdom of heaven, whether they be introduced into the church by baptism, or were previously boriT, or were both born in it, and brought into it by baptism, for the understanding of some, un- like that of John Howe, is not shocked by two beginnings, or by some other absurdities in the advocacy of infant baptism. We might here quote from the Book of Common Prayer, from the Assembly's Confession of Faith and Catechisms, and from the writings of many Congregationalists, Wesleyans, and others, on the most blessed results and ineffable advantages of baptism to infants, all of which never- theless fall short of qualifying them to receive the holy ordinance of the Supper ; but as a subsequent section speaks of the proposed advantages of infant baptism, many of these quotations will now be omitted. W. MuDGE, notwitlistanding the words of the Prayer Book, of which the Anglican priest expresses approval, and to which he promises adherence, says : " We do not doubt but some may be regenerated or born anew in baptism, but we much doubt whether many be so." While Mr. Mudge can doubt respecting the regeneration of many in their baptism, Mr. Neal can say, " Of no other church under the sun could it be affirmed with such plenitude of certainty, that it asserts the doctrine of baptismal regeneration as our own." G. Clayton. — " Such full assurance of hope have I in the efficacy of the sacrament that I doubt not but it will appear in that day, when the secrets of Divine operation 380 SUBJECTS OF BAPTISM. shall be disclosed, the seeds and principles of the better life were, in some instances, infused into the mind at the very hour when baptismal water was externally applied in the name of the Father, &c." But he excludes infants, though thus privileged by baptism, from partaking of the Lord's Supper. Dr. J. FooTE teaches that Lu. xviii, 15-17, implies, that " children, even mere babes, may be regenerated, and truly holy;" that "infants may become members of the visible church ;" that children are very early capable of receiving benefit from religious instruction ;" and " that the true church on earth actually consists, in a great measure, of those who have been called in early life, or at least have been very early instructed in the way of salvation" (Lcc. on Luke, vol. iii, pp. 61, 62). How satisfactory this for administering baptism .to infants; but not the Lord's Supper! And while remembering the Divine command to Abraham to circumcise all the male members of his house, young or old, how reasonable that " this fine portion of sacred history be improved" (?) by all godly parents to the "dedicating" of their children to God "in hearty and entire mental surrender, in fervent prayer, and in the ordinance of baptism" (p. 67) ! Not a syllable escapes the lips of Jesus in favour of the baptism or church membership of infants according to the records of this or any other passage. Dr. Miller. — " The children of professing Christians are already in the church. They were born members. They were baptized because they were members." — In Testi. of Em. Pm., -p- 58. T. G. HoRTON. — " On another occasion Jesus took a child, and set Him in the midst of His disciples, and said, ' Whosoever shall receive one of such children in My name receiveth Me.' That child was probably the son of one of His own disciples ; but certainly he was a circumcised descendant of Abraham. Christ accordingly recognizes him as pertaining to His people, and speaks of him in terms as strong as lif he had been a baptized adult. He was to be received by the apostles in Christ's name, as if he himself were a little Christ ; and who would have refused to such an infant as Jesus, baptism and admission into the visible church of Christ?" God's word is as silent on baptizing or recognizing "a little Christ" "as pertaining to His people," His churches on earth, as on baptizing or thus recognizing any other infant. Dr. Hook, speaking of the third century, says : " To prove that infanta were admitted to the sacrament of baptism, we need only use this argument — none were admitted to the eucharist till they had received the sacrament of baptism ; but in the primitive church [that] children received the sacrament of the Lord's Supper ia obvious from what Cyprian relates concerning a sucking child, who so violently refused to take the sacramental wine, that the deacon was obliged forcibly to open her lips and pour it down her throat." Bp. Taylor says that the reason for laying aside infant communion in the Latin Church was "lest by puking up the holy symbols the sacraments should be dis- honoured ;" while the Baptist Craps says : " To baptize infants, because infants were circumcised, and then refuse them the Lord's Supper, because the gospel requires personal piety, is to mix Judaism and Christianity." Yet the Ijaptized infant has no meetness for the Lord's Supper, although, according to Matthew Henry, " baptism wrests the keys of the heart out of the hands of the strong man armed, that the possession may be surrendered to Him whose right it is." " In baptism our names are engraved upon the breastplate of this High Priest." " This, then, is the efficacy of baptism ; it is putting the child's name into the gospel grant." " There is never- theless with Mr. H. no meetness in baptized infants for the Lord's Supper ! Whether if Chrysostom were living in the light of the nineteenth century, he would disapprove of receiving baptized infants to the Lord's Supper, and yet say. " Baptism is a ransom to the captive, remission of every debt, the death to sin, the regeneration of the soul, a robe of light, a seal not to be violated, a chariot to heaven." I cannot say. The Rev. E. Bickersteth could say : " The infants of pious and believing parents are from their very birth learners of Christ," but, approving the Book of Common Prayer, he can see no right to the Lord's Supper till after the farce of Confirmation. Wesley approximates to the Anglican church, saying, " If infants are guilty of original sin, in the ordinary way they cannot be saved, unless this be washed away in baptism." " In an ordinary way there is no other means of entering into the church, or even into heaven." He might not remember, or might not agree with Clement and Hermas, who are said to have believed that " the apostles performed in Hades the rite of baptism on the pious souls of the Old Testament saints who had not been baptized." Richard Watson says : " Infant children are declared by Christ to be members pt' His church. That they wore made members of God's church in tho family of BAPTISM AND THE LOED'S SUPPER. 881 Abraham, and among the Jewa, cannot be denied. They were made so by circum- cision." As the male Jews became members of God's church by circumcision, I presume that they were not members before. Whether female infant Jews became members of God's church when eight days old, or earlier or later, or whether it depended on the parents being sufficiently obedient to God to circumcise male infanta at the appointed time, I cannot say. But as God's ancient promise to " be a God imto thee and to thy seed after thee," proves that infants on being circumcised then became members of God's church, so baptism now effects for male and female infants an equally blessed and glorious translation ! " To the infant, baptism is a visible reception into the covenant of grace and the church of Christ. It conveys the present blessing of Christ, which blessing cannot be merely nominal, but must be substantial and efficacious. It secui-es, too, the gift of the Holy Spirit in those secret spiritual influences by which the actual regeneration of those children who die in infancy is effected ; and which are a seed of life in those who are spared," Dr. Halley, on receiving to baptism believers, unbelievers, and infants, and con- fining the Lord's Supper to those who make a credible profession of faith, says, that "to assume that the qualifications for two distinct ordinances are the same, ia absolutely gratuitous. The parties suitable for each ordinance must be determined on reference to Scripture alone" (Cong. Lee, vol. xv, p. 73). He pleads in opposition to baptism as being a reception into the church of Christ, that it is scripturally lawful for the preachers of the gospel to administer baptism, but that " in separate and voluntary churches the members have a right to determine who do, or do not belong to them" (Rep., p. 3). I deny not that preachers of the gospel have authority from scriptural precedent to administer baptism to those who make a credible profession of faith, and that every separate and voluntary church must have had, and must have, the right to determine who shall be received and who shall be retained. But I main- tain that, following God's word, the same rule as to required character exists for baptism as for the Lord's Supper. The three thousand who received Peter's word on the day of Pentecost, were as evidently added unto the previously existing disciples at Jerusalem on " the same day" as baptized on the same day. Nor is there any record of a conflict of opinion between baptizers and the church, when the existence of a church rendered this possible, or of any difference in any part of God's word between the test for baptism and the Lord's Supper. Granting that the records of baptism where the gospel was being first proclaimed, could not supply the possibility of this conflict, not only is this not universally the case, but every mention of baptism and the Lord's Supper, from which their nature and design can be inferred, and every record of their administration, is in corroboration of sameness of qualification. That we do not read, Repent and receive the Lord's Supper, as we read, Repent and be baptized, and that such a reading would be very strange, is perfectly true. Our main- tai»ing that the same character is required for the Lord's Supper as for baptism ia not a denial that baptism is the initiatory rite. Dr. Halley may truly say, "We recognize a Christian brother by sitting down with him as a member of Christ's family at the Lord's table;" but when he adds, " And we say this ordinance, as an act of recog^nition, has an obvious advantage because it can be discontinued whenever the person is found to be unworthy of the distinction" (Rep., p. 4); we reply, that God in His wisdom may have seen " an obvious advantage" in receiving to baptism as well as to the Lord's Supper on s credible profession of faith, allowing for the present that the administrator may act on his own judgment in one case, and the church on its judgment in the other ; and that " the parties suitable for each ordinance must be determined on reference to Scripture alone ;" also, in the words of Mr. Stovel, that " the foolishness of God has been found iviser than men, and the lueakness of God stronger than men. Moreover, if God has graciously placed two sacramental rites in His church, which, like watch towers, guard its purity — though Dr. Halley may think that one of them is best, it is no good reason why the other should be taken down. It may be that two are better than one. But after all, unless Dr. Halley plead a Divine inspiration in judging which of these sacraments ' has an obvious advantage,' an appeal must be made to the sacred records" (Bap. Rec. , -p. 69). This appeal Dr. H. admits. Instead, there- fore, of the Lord's Supper being a solitary " act of recognition," I may recognize a man as a Christian brother in a hundred ways, if I violate not the spirit and pervert not the ordinances of God's word, if I add not to, take not from, and alter not the oracles of God. Dr. H. pleads that little children should certainly be baptized, because they undoubtedly have the grace of the gospel, are certainly of the kingdom of God ; and he pleads that " all who were baptized were recognized as in the kingdom of God" (vol. XV, p. 69) ; that baptism is the initiatory rite, and the Lord's Supper the com- 382 SUBJECTS OP BAPTISM. memorative institution of the church ; and he has also taught that there is no entrance into the kingdom of heaven but by that change of which baptism is a sign and profession. And yet he pleads for the baptism of the ungodly and the godly, and for a reception to the Lord's Supper of those only who make a credible profession of faith in Christ ; so that to be completely a memijer of Christ's kingdom, both acknow- ledged by the church and approved of God, a person must be both baptized and converted. There are five reasons adduced by Dr. H. to prove that eligibility to bap- tism is not eligibility to the Lord's Supper, each of which in my judgment proves nothing to the point. 1. — It is maintained that baptism was an initiatory ordinance, and the Lord's Supper was not. This distinction we admit, and we object not to the words of J. A. James, that it is " Christian character that entitles to membership ;" that " upon the portals of our spiritual edifice is written in legible characters, 'In Christ Jesus neither circumcision availeth anything, nor uncircumcision, but a new creature' " C^ddr. on Dis., p. 39). Nor do we object to T. Toller's saying that the Independents " readily admit to their communion all who making a credible profession of faith in Christ, shall desire to join their society" (None, p. 27). 2. — We admit different phraseology in the New Testament respecting baptism and the Lord's Supper, which are two differing institutions, answering different purposes ; but we deny that any different phraseology teaches that different characters are eligible to these ordin- ances. 3. — We deny that " the extent of the administration of baptism during the ministry of our Lord upon earth," as contrasted " with the select company of disciples among whom He instituted the commemoration of His death," is anymore proof that different qualifications are required for the Lord's Supper than that it is intended solely for pastors or priests. 4. — The administration of baptism " on the sole authority of the administrator" is no proof that other qualifications than those which were required for baptism, were required for the Lord's Supper. 5. — " If the observance of the Lord's Supper be the social communion of a church," requiring church member- ship " to participate in it" (p. 160), there is no evidence in this that moral qualifications were not the same for each ordinance. The position of the baptized, as maintained by some Paedobaptists, has as veritable an existence in Scripture as the purgatory of the papist. The indiscriminating theory of baptism, and the refusing of the Lord's Supper to the baptized, excepting those under discipline, as advocated by Drs. HaUey and Stacey, I believe to be mentioned by no writer, inspired or uninspired, during the first millenium of Christianity, and to be diametrically opposed to the practice of more than all this period. If Dr. H. had maintained that the commission to make disciples is certainly a commission to make believers or Christians, that subsequent teaching is enjoined with a view to the consistency, steadfastness, and advancement of the new convert, that those who received the apostles' word at the time of Peter's pentecostal preach- ing, and being baptized were "the same day" added to the disciples at Jerusalem, were undoubtedly then accepted to the table of the Lord, or they could not from thence have " continued steadfastly . . . in breaking of bread," he might have appealed to every Scripture on the subject as — tested by gi-ammar, learning and com- mon sense — corroboratory of the fact that eligibility in character to baptism is eligi- bility to the Lord's Supper, that for baptism and for the eucharist maturity of Christian character is not requisite, that babes in Christ are admissible to both ordinances, to whom the latter, along with the sincere milk of the word, is to be administered in repetition, so that the babe in Christ may increase in strength, knowledge, and gi'ace, " may grow up into Him in all things, which is the Head, even Christ." Dr. Ward LAW, speaking of adults, says, "I am not aware, from any facts or principles in the New Testament, of any profession of faith being sufficient for admission to baptism that is not sufficient for admission to the Lord's Supper and the full fellowship of the church of Christ. Nor am I aware of the existence, in apostolic times, of any such anomalous description of persons as those who were baptized but were not admitted to church fellowship" (Inf. Baj)., p. 192). Let any man from Scrip- ture prove an exception to this in any case where a Christian church existed. "Let an instance be pointed out," says Dr. W., "of a person or persons being baptized without a profession of faith, and being afterwards tqwii a profession of faith, admitted to church membership and to the Lord's table." "When he [Dr. Halley] insists on baptism unrestrictedly for ' all the nations' as such, indeiJendently of faith or the profession of it, and yet equally insists on the necessity of a restriction in regard to church membership and the Lord's table, and on the indispensableness of faith to these, he institutes a distinction which the New Testament does not seem to me anywhere to recognize." — Ax>p., pp. 286, 287. BAPTISM AND THE LOED'S SUPPEE. 383 Dr. Innes (a Baptist), with his usual discretion, thus writes : "Did it never occur to you, that there is at least the appearance of inconsistency in the conduct of Paedobaptists, in reasoning so keenly from the Old Tes- tament institution of circumcision in behalf of infant baptism, and not applying the same argument from inference to the relation that subsists between the passover and the Lord's Supper ? It appears clear to me, that in Scripture there is at least as close an analogy stated between these two latter institutions as between the two former." He then quotes 1 Cor. V, 7, and Col. ii, 11, 12; and adds, "If from the one of these passages then it be argued that baptism came in the room of circumcision ; the evidence is to me, I confess, fally as strong for asserting from the other, that the Lord's Supper came in the room of the passover. And if I were asked, with what consistency I apply the laws of the Old Testament in- stitution to the New in the one case and not in the other, where the analogy in both cases is equally strong, I should be a good deal at a loss for an answer." He quotes Dr. Wardlaw as saying on Rom. iv, 9-25 (Lee, p. 15), that "the import of circumcision must have been a matter of after instruction to those who received it in infancy, just as the import of the passover was." On which he says, "Now it certainly is at least very different from our practice, and would be thought a gross prostitu- tion of the Lord's Supper to administer it to children before they knew the design of the institution ; and to make the very import of the symbols a matter of instruction, either during the time they were partaking of them or afterwards." " Suppose I should say that when I read such an ex- pression as this, ' He that believeth and is baptized shall be saved,' it conveys to me the idea, that faith is necessary to baptism. You would probably answer, it is true this refers to adults who are capable of believ- ing, but this does not exclude infants who are not so. Now, I appeal to yourself, if the same answer could not be equally applicable to the other case. If it is said, Let a man examine himself; may it not with equal propriety be alleged, this is only applicable to those who are capable of examining themselves, but does not exclude such as are incapable of this exercise. The one of these cases appears as clearly to imply the necessity of believing to the proper participation of baptism, as the other does the necessity of self-examination to the proper ' observance of the Lord's Supper!' " Dr. I., in concluding, says on "the whole arguments founded on the analogy between circumcision and baptism," that " the application of the rules respecting the former to the latter would carry us too far, would prove too much, and hence, that the argument from inference here is not a sound one" {Euge. &c., pp. 20-36). I admit that inconsistency in our opponents in not receiving to the Lord's Supper, those whom they baptize is no proof of error in baptizing. If Scripture requires no higher, no lower, no other moral qualification for one than for the other, our opponents are wrong. If for both the Scriptural requisite be faith in Christ, or a credible profession of this faith, in one instance given it may be to an individual, and in another to a chui-ch, the latter being, at least usually, a church ordinance, our opponents are wrong. Our appeal is *' to the law and to the testimony." That young children partook of the Passover when God's word, " Seven days shall there be no leaven found in your houses," was regarded, no one doubts. 384 SUBJECTS OP BAPTISM. John Brown's Self-Interpreting Bible, edited by J. B. and S. Paterson, says, "Baptism solemnly admits them into His church" (On Acts xxii). Yet it is believed by Dr. J. Pye Smith, that the Lord's Supper, to the exclusion of infants, is for those who " glory in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, and look for His mercy unto eternal life" CSer. on Phil, iii, 15, 16). I believe that the apostles baptized only pro- fessing believers in Christ, and that in apostolic writings " baptism and the spiritual life are supposed to co-exist in the same person until tha.t baptized person was proved to be a hypocrite" (Sto.'s Rec, p. 102). The baptized in apostolic times would be addressed and treated as children of God " until by some overt sin, the sincerity of their repentance and faith was impugned." I believe, too, that Justin " describes the exclusive participation of these believers, so baptized, in the Eucharist, or Supper of the Lord. This Supper of the Lord was not only used exclusively by persons baptized unto Christ ; but it also required them to be living as Clirist had appointed." — Sto.'a Dis., p. 315. Prof. A. A. Hodge, on receiving the baptized to the Lord's Supper, thus teaches : " 1. — Baptism recognizes and seals church membership, while the Lord's Supper is a commemorative act. 2. — In the action of baptism the subject is passive, and in that of the Lord's Supper active. 3. — Infants were never admitted to the passover until they were capable of comprehending the nature of the service. 4. — The apostles bap- tized households, but never admitted households as such to the Supper" (Outl. of Theol,, -p. 505). I have no knowledge from Scripture or any authentic source that baptism recognizes or seals church membership, that the apostles refused to any when baptized an admission to the Lord's Supper, unless the profession in baptism had been subsequently belied. It is as evident that they received " households as siich" to the Lord's Supper, as that they baptized " households as such. Either is a purely gratuitous assumption. So is the passivity of the subjects of baptism. A. Booth (Baptist), among other things in reply to Dr. E. Williams on the bap- tism of infants and refusing to them the Lord's Supper, has the following : " Mr. Williams indeed suggests, that though, in respect of legal right, infant baptism and infant communion cannot be separated, yet prudential reasons forbid the latter." " Now Dr. Owen assures us that ' what men have a right to do in the church by God's institution, that they have a commaiici to do:' and Mr. Charnock has told us, that 'they must be evasions past understanding, that can hold water against a Divine order.' Infants have a legal right to the holy shipper, but it is not expedient for them to partake of it. . . . A legal right to the Lord's table, but prudential reasons for- bid their approach." " It is clear to liim that they have a legal right of participation, that is, a right by Divine law. Surely, then, in his view their title must be thoroughly good ; and in his practice their place at the holy table must be inviolably secured. So it might seem to one who considers Divine law as the highest authority, and a Divine grant as supremely authentic ; but Mr. Williams has I know not how many prudential reasons, which rise up in opposition to legal right, and guard the sacred supper against the approach of infants." " If it be a fact that infants have a legal right to the Lord's Supper, and if his prudential reasons for withholding it from them be valid, it may be justly presumed, that the hegislaJ^or did not think of those reasons, when He enacted the law of that solemnity. While, however, I entirely acquit Mr. Williams of intending any reflection upon positive Divine law, in either of these cases, I may venture to ask. What he would say of us, were we to allow the legal right of infants to baptism, though we never administer that ordinance to them?" "Near one half the posterity of Abraham were members of the Jewish church without being circumcised, or havingany similar ceremony performed upon them ; and this, considering circumcision as a painful rite, was a greater privilege than that of the male children. Why, then, on the ground of ancient privilege, do not our opponents infer, that females are to be honoured with complete membership in the gospel church, without being baptized ? Again, might not one who approves of infant communion make the same complaint against our opposers in general, for ^vithholding the sacred supper from little children ? for Mr. Pierce has proved, beyond all reasonable doubt, that they were partakers of the paschal feast. To which I may add the following words of Mr. Baxter : ' They are the same benefits that are conferred in baptism and the Lord's Supper, to the worthy receiver ; therefore the same qualification, for kind, is necessary for the reception.'"— PcBfL Ex., vol. ii, pp. 272-277. Dr. E. Williams had written : " If infants have a right to baptism, what assign- able reason is there why they have not a consequential right to church membership ? And if they are entitled to the latter, why should they not be treated as other mem- bers are, especially as a considerable benefit might attend it ? As to the objection, That the counterpart of this, is to admit them to the Lord's table, if they do nothing to deserve censiire, — I ask, what is there unreasonable or unscriptural in such an BAPTISM AND THE LOED'S SUPPER. 385 objection ? Nay, farther, in point of right, how can the two ordinances be separated ? Are not the same reasons which are brought for infant iaptistn, in like manner applicable to infant commimion ? And will not the objections against the latter, admit of the same answer as those against the former ? See Mr. James Pierce's Essay in favour of the Ancient Practice of giving the Eucharist to Children. Nor do I see how this reasoning can be evaded by a consistent Paedobaptist, while we alone attend to the legal right of infants to that ordinance ; but such advocates for the practice must allow that many things are lawful which are not expedient. And should it be granted that a Christian minister cannot justly deny the eucharist to any church member (who does not lie under its censure) when demanded, yet there are prudential reasons why a parent should not desire it for infants and young children ; especially when we reflect that, though the ground of right is the same, the nature and design of the two ordinances are different" (Note on Mr. Mornce's Social Relig., pp. 78, 79). On this, among many other pungent remarks, Mr. Booth says: "Who, then, shall dare to separate what God has joined ? Our author, however, though at the expense of consistency, will not admit the practical consequence ; for he pleads that things may be lawful which are not expedient ; and that prudeniial reasons forbid a parent's desiring the Lord's Supper for infants. But as the whole of any one's title to a posi- tive ordinance must originate in the law of that ordinance, if our Lord have invested any description of infants with a right to the holy supper, he must have made it the duty of thoir parents or of their guardians to denumd it for them. Strange to think that our Lord should have indulged infants with a legal right to the sacred supper, and that, without any forfeiture or any fault, they should be absolutely denied the ordinance on a prudential ground !" " He places in contrast, and in contest, Divine right and human prudence; yet so as to give an example, which he approves, of prudential reasons gaining the ascendancy over Divine authority." — Paid. Ex., vol. iii, pp. 329-332. fe. Baxter, on infants being denied the holy supper, says, " That is for want of natural capacity to use the ordinance, and not for want of a right, if they had such capacity" (Dispu. of Right to Sac, p. 294). He has before taught on baptism and the Lord's Supper, that " the same faith that qualifies for the one, doth sufficiently qualify for the other. For the same covenant hath the same condition" (p. 119). He also proceeds, pleading for faith in the baptized or in the parent, " They are the same benefits that are conferred in baptism and the Lord's Supper to the worthy receiver ; therefore the same qualification (for kind) is necessary for the i-eception." Dr. John Edwards. — " Infant communicating was a catholic doctrine." "Herein all the fathers agreed." — Disc. cone. Tr. and Er., p. 232. Salmasius. — " Because the eucharist was given to adult catechumens when they were washed with holy baptism, without any space of time intervening, this also was done to infants, after Psedobaptism was introduced." — In Dalenem, Disser. de Paedob. SuicERUs. — "It is notorious from antiquity, that the eucharist was given to infants." " This custom, anciently received, afterward prevailed to such a degree, especially in the time of Charles the Great, that the holy supper was given to infants, not only in the public assembly after baptism, or at other times when the church used to assemble for the holy communion ; but some of the bread of the sacred supper was reserved, to bo given to such infants as were sick, as well as to adults." — Thesau. Eccle. Art. Sunaxis. Chillingworth. — " St. Augustine, I am sure, held the communicating of infants as much apostolic tradition, as the baptizing of them." — Rel. of Prot., ch. iii, § 14. BuDDEUs, whom Dr. Cunningham designates " one of the best of the Lutheran divines, a man whose works exhibit a very fine combination of ability and good sense, learning and evangelical unction." — " It is manifest that in the ancient church it was usual to give the eucharist to infants ; which custom arose about the third century, and continued in the Western chiirch to the beginning of the twelfth century, as Quenstedius shows. This custom seems to have prevailed first in the African church, and to have been propagated thence to other churches of the West. Cer- tainly we nowhere find it more frequently mentioned than in the writings of Cyprian, of Austin, and of Paulinus. The error seems to have arisen from a false opinion con- cerning the absolute necessity of the eucharist ; and it has been observed by learned men, that this arose from the words of Christ (John vi, 53), not being well understood." —Theol. Dogm., 1. v, c. i, § 19. Venema. — " From the things before narrated, it plainly appears what is to be concluded concerning the admission of infants to the Lord's Supper in the second century. For seeing access to the holy table was granted only to baptized persons, it is manifest that the eucharist was not commonly given to infants, if Psedobaptisw CO 386 SUBJECTS OF BAPTISM. was not then in common use. It may be added that no sign of admitting infants to the holy supper appears before the time of Cyprian, in the third century ; who is the first that mentions it, as will appear in its proper place. From which, what has been said about Pajdobaptism acquires additional force, seeing, in the ancient church, these two sacraments, in respect of the subjects, were never separated the one from the other." " Infants, in the third century, were generally admitted to baptism and the Lord's Supper. That Pajdobaptism was now the received practice in the churches, manifestly appears from Cyprian ; by whose wi-itings it is evident that baptized infants were partakers of the eucharist, which custom was continued through many ages." — His. Ecc, secul. ii, § 100 ; secul. iii, § 57. J. Pierce. — " It is well known that the practice of giving the eucharist to children, is at this day, and has been for many ages past, used in the Greek churches, which are not of the Roman communion." " This custom continued in the West, among the Bohemian churches, which kept themselves pure from the Roman superstition and idolatry till very near the Reformation." " The Lord's Supper was for several ages together given to infants in the Western churches, and was not laid aside in them till the eleventh or twelfth century, when the grossest corruption and abuses came in amongst them. ... As the ancients could never have fixed upon the interpreta- tion of John iii, 5, which is so general among them, and makes baptism absolutely necessary to salvation, unless they had admitted infants to baptism, so they could never have received such an explanation on John vi, 53, as made the eucharist absolutely necessary to salvation, unless they had used to give the eucharist to infants. And to speak my mind freely, I am persuaded they equally missed the true sense in both texts. . . . The baptism and communion of infants stand upon the same foot ; and, therefore, they who admit the one ought to admit the other also. For the con- firming of this argument, I will shew, first, That the same reasons which are brought for infant baptism, are in like manner applicable to infant communion. Secondly, That the objections against infant communion, will admit of the same answers as those against infant baptism," &c, — Essay in favour of the Ancient Practice of giving the Eucharist to Children. Dr. Priestley. — " It is remarkable, that in aU Christian antiquity we always find, that communion in the Lord's Supper immediately followed baptism : and no such thing occurs, as that of any person having a right to one of these ordinances, and not to the other. . . . No objection can be made to this custom, but what may with equal force be made to the custom of baptizing infants." — Address on giving the Lord's Swpfer to Children. Bp. Taylor. — " Whether the holy communion may be given to infants, has been a great question in the church of God ; which, in this instance, has not been, as in others, divided by parties and single persons, but by whole ages ; for some of the earliest ages of the church, down to the time of Charles the Great, that is, for above six hundred years, the church of God did give the holy communion to newly baptized infants." " It is certain that in Scripture there is nothing which directly forbids the giving the holy communion to infants. For though we are commanded to examine, and so eat, yet this precept is not of itself necessary, but by reason of an introduced cause ; just as they are commanded to believe and repent, who are to be baptized, that is, persons that need it and can do it, they must : and infants without examina- tion can as well receive the effect of the eucharist, as without repentance they can have the effect of baptism." " The primitive church had all this," says the Anglican bishop, "to justify ther practice, that the sacraments of grace are the great channels of the grace of God ; that this grace always descends upon them that do not hinder it, and therefore certainly to infants ; and some do expressly affirm it, and none can with certainty deny, but that infants, if they did receive the communion, should also in so doing receive the fruits of it ; that, to baptism there are many acts of pre- disposition required as well as to the communion ; and yet the church, who very well understands the obligation of those precepts, supposes no children to be obliged to those pre-dispositions to either sacrament, but fits every commandment to a capable subject; that there is something done on God's part, and something on ours; that what belongs to us, obliges us then when we can hear and understand, but not before ; but that which is on God's part is always ready to them that can receive it; that infants, though they cannot alone come to Christ, yet the church, their mother, can bring them in her arms ; that they who are capable of the grace of the sacrament, may also receive the sign ; and therefore the same grace, being conveyed to them in one sacrament, may also bo imparted to them in the other ; that as they can be born again without their own consent, so they can be fed by the hands of others ; and what begins without their own actual choice, may be renewed without their own actual desire; and that, therefore, it may be feared lest, if upon pretence of figurative. BAPTISM AND THE LORD'S SUPPER. 387 speeches, allegories, and allusions, in the injunction of certain dispositions, the holy communion be denied them, a gap be opened upon equal pretences to deny them bap- tism ; that since the Jewish infants being circumcised is used as an argument that they might be baptized, their eating of the paschal lamb may also be a competent •warrant to eat of that sacrament, in which also, as in the other, the sacrificed lamb ia represented as offered and slain for them. Now the church having such fair proba- bilities and prudential motives, and no prohibition, if she shall use her power to the purposes of kindness and charity, she is not easily to be reproved, lest without necessity we condemn all the primitive Catholic church, and all the modern churches in the East and South to this day. Especially, since without all dispositions infanta are baptized, there is less reason why they may not be communicated, having received some real dispositions towards this, even all the grace of the sacrament of baptism, which is certainly something towards the other ; and after all, refusing to communi- cate infants, entered into the church, upon an unwarrantable ground. For though it was confessed that the communion would do them benefit, yet it was denied to them then, upon pretence lest, by pufcin.qr ^y) the holy symbols, the sacraments should be dishonoured." — Worthy Commu., ch. iii, sec. ii. MosHEiM says that in the ancient church catechumens " were such as had not yet been dedicated to God and Christ by baptism, and were therefore admitted neither to the public prayers, nor to the holy communion, nor to the ecclesiastical assemblies" (Ec. His., cent, i, c. ii, § 7). He teaches that in the earliest times they without delay baptized those who professed faith in Christ and devotion to His service, but that subsequently arose delay and the order of catechumens which included the children of believers, who, in the schools erected for the purpose, received instruction in the doc- trines of Christianity, admission to the Lord's table never preceding baptism ; while the baptized were deemed immediately eligible to the supper of our Lord, " It is," says Bingham, respecting the church, "beyond dispute that as she baptized infants, so she immediately admitted them to a participation of the eucharist as soon as they were baptized." Buck, in his Tlieol. Die, edited by Dr. Henderson, says : " Catechumens, the lowest order of Christians in the ancient church. . . . They had some title to the common name of Christians, being a degree above pagans and heretics, though not consummated by baptism. They were admitted to the state of catechumens by imposition of hands, and the sign of the cross. The children of believing parents were admitted catechumens as soon as ever they were capable of instruction ; but at what age those born of heathen parents might be admitted, is not so clear. As to the time of their continuance in this state, there was no general rule about it ; but the practice varied according to the difl^ercnce of times and places, and the readiness and proficiency of the catechumens themselves. ... In case of sickness or imminent death, the catechumens were immediately baptized with what they called clinic bap- tism. There were four orders or degi'ees of catechumens." The fourth order was " the immediate candidates of baptism, or such as were appointed to be baptized the next approaching festival, before which strict examination was made into their pro- ficiency under the several stages of catechetical exercises." — Art. Catechu. Dr. Wall says, " It is a question in the present Christian church, whether giving the communion to infants be an error or duty." He also says : " That which I con- ceive most probable on the whole matter (referring myself to such as have minded this piece of history more) is, 1. — That in Cyprian's time, the people of the church of Carthage did oftentimes bring their children younger than ordinary, to the communion. 2. — That in St. Austin's and Innocent's time, it was in the West parts given to mere infants. And that this continued from that time for about 600 years. That some time during this space of 600 years, the Greek church, which was then low in the world, took this custom from the Latin church, which was more flourishing. 4. — That the Roman church about the year 1000, entertaining the doctrine of transubstantia- tion, let fall the custom of giving the holy elements to infants. And the other Western churches, mostly following their example, did the like upon the same account. But that the Greeks, not having the said doctrine, continued, and do still continue the custom of communicating infants. They think that command of St. Paul, Let a man examine himself, and so let him eat, &c., so to be understood as not to exclude such as are by their age incapable of examining themselves ; but only to oblige all that are capable. As that like command of his. If any one will not ivorh, let him have nothing given him to eat, must be so limited to such as are able to work ; as that infants, and such as are not capable to work, must have victuals given them, though they do not work." — Def., &c., p. 384. Inf. Baj^., vol. ii, pp. 446, 447, 388 SUBJECTS OF BAFl'ISM. We believe that " up to the period when we read of the communion of infants," which none, so far as I know, deny to have been the practice in Africa in the time of Cyprian, we have no record of the baptizing of infants. Ecclesiastical records do first explicitly testify to the existence of infant baptism and infant communion in the same country and in the same age. And Mr. Gamble, speaking of infant communion, says respect- ing this period: "It began to be practised at a time when corruptions were gradually creeping into the primitive church, and when the sacra- ments were considered as essential to salvation. For a long period the church retained the simplicity which characterized it in the apostolic age ; but two centuries had scarcely elapsed, when, had the apostle Paul been permitted to re-visit the earth, he might have addressed to the church the language which he employed when preaching on Mars' Hill to the people of Athens — ' I perceive that in all things ye are too superstitious.* Infant communion was introduced when baptism began to be regarded as a mysterious rite ; when, as we have seen, the baptized were anointed with oil ; were clothed in white apparel ; wore wreaths of flowers ; held lighted tapers in their hands ; and were taught to regard the baptismal water as the mystic bath of regeneration" (Scr. Bap., p. 174). Our Pciedobaptist brethren demand that the baptizing of infants, if new when we Baptists maintain that it was, would have occasioned comailsive opposition that would certainly have been recorded, but thej^ admit infant communion to have been new at this very time without any record of such opposition, and to have been commenced and to have prevailed in the same way as we maintain respecting infant baptism. One, however, for prudential reasons was after some hundreds of years abandoned by the church of Rome : the other remains, as I think, in opposition to human reason and every record of the Divine mind. S. T. Coleridge. — " Surely the wafer and the teaspoonful of wine might be swallowed by an infant, as well as water be sprinkled on him. But if the former ia not the eucharist without faith and repentance, so cannot the latter, it would seem, be baptism. For they ai-e declared equal adjiincts of both sacraments. The argument is therefore a mere petitlo princi^yii sub lite" (Liter. Rem.., vol. iii, p. 287). Also, in his Aids to Reflection (p. 319), he says : " Now it is notorious that during the first two centui'ies, the catechumens generally were not baptized, and that their baptism was immediately followed by their admission to the eucharist. And such was the force of custom, that when the baptism of infants became the rule of the church, the eucharist was administered to them." Dean Stanley. — " The baptism of infants no doubt prevailed (a.d. 337) just as the communion of infants prevailed also." — Lee. on the Eas. Ch., p. 254. Neandee. — " As the church of North Africa was the first to bring prominently into notice the necessity of infant baptism, they introduced the communion of infants." ~-Ch, His., vol. i, p. 461. Bohu's edi. I need not and do not affirm that ecclesiastical history proves infant com- munion to have commenced exactly when infant baptism began. It is evident that the two began almost or exactly together, that no man can prove that one succeeded the other, and that apostolic tradition and misinter- preted Scripture are the early plea for both these observances. Macallan, on the continuance of infant communion by the Greek church, and ita abandonment by the Latin, and by Protestant churches, thus writes : " "Well, then, BAPTISM AND THE LOED'S StJPPEfi. 389 might Dr. Judson ask, ' why thoso in the West who advocate infant baptism do not become advocates of infant communion also.' For, thoixfrh for neither is there any authority in Scripture ; for both there is an cqualitij of sanction from fradition ; and there cannot be a doubt, that, if the Catholic church had continued both down to the Reformation, both would have come down to us from C'ranmer and his ecclesiastical associates, as portions of tlie authorized ritual of the established church — the one being, in that case, held to be as much based on the Jewish Passover, as the other now is, though with far less analogy, on Jewish circumcision — both, in fact, as far as argument is concerned, must stand or fall together." — On Bajit., p. 132. L. Coleman. — " Agreeably to all the laws and customs of the church, baptism constituted membership with the church. All baptized persons were legitimately numbered among the communicants as members of the church." " After the general introduction of infant baptism, the sacraments continued to be administered to all who had been baptized, whether infants or adults." "The custom of infant com- munion contimied for several centuries." — Antiq., p. 138. Dr. Mellor, President of the West Riding Congregational Union in 1869, men- tioned three theories involving a distinction between communicants and members of churches, and said that " he had searched the New Testament in vain for any trace of evidence in favour of either of these three theories," and subsequently he "re-affirmed the principle laid down in his opening address, that there was no distinction between communicants and churches in the apostolic age. Neither was there any such dis- tinction until the system of catechumens arose, and there was not one lino in the history of the church which went against that statement." — In Br. Ohs., Ap. 7, 1869. A. M'Lean says : " Baptism is the sign of the new birth, and the Lord's Supper of feeding upon Christ the true bread ; and so the connection between these two ordin- ances, and the things signified by them, is as immediate and necessary, as that between a person's having life and his talcing food to preserve it. If, therefore, persons appear to be born of the Spirit, and have the sign thereof in baptism, how come they to be denied the sign of their spiritual nourishment in the Sujiper ? What can this repre- senfbut children in a starving condition ?" — Works, vol. vii, p. 230. Dr. Ceamp says : " In the Roman Catholic church children receive their first communion at the age of seven. In the Church of England they mu.st be ' of com- petent age,' or ' come to years of discretion.' In the Presbyterian churches there is a preparatory examination, and persons seldom commune till they are of age or nearly so" (Cate., p. 87). — Where is the Divine authority for any of these arrangements? " Dr. Mullens gives the following numbers as the results of Protestant missions in India : — Baptized 153,816 ; Commxinicants 31,249." Let any man read Acts ii, 41, and believe, if he can, that this is following apostolic practice. " If the children of believers," writes one, " are 'born in the church,' are * Christians' and 'federally holy,' and that even before baptism, then how strangely inconsistent it is to address them afterwards" [unless they have evidently fallen from grace] "as children of wrath, servants of sin, and as those who must be born again in order to be saved !" The latter mode of address is, however, consistent with refusing them the Lord's Supper. 390 SUBJECTS OF BAPTISM. SECTION XXVII. ON NO MOEE COMMAND TO RECEIVE WOMEN TO THE LOED'S SUPPEB THAN TO BAPTIZE INFANTS. A. M'Lean. — " The Scripture expressly tells us, That there is no distinction of male and female among those who are one in Christ Jesus, Gal. iii, 28." — Woi-ks, vol. vii, p. 120. Dr. Owen. — " It is merely from a spii-it of contention that some call on us, or others, to produce express testimony or institution for every circumstance in the practice of religious duties in the church ; and, on a supposed failure herein, to conclude, that they have power themselves to institute and ordain such ceremonies as they think meet, under pretence of their being circum- stances of v/oishiTp."— Enquiry, &c., pp. 125, 126. It is said by Dr. Hanna, " There is no express command to baptize infants as well as adults, but neither is there any express command to admit females as well as males to the table of the Lord ; if it be the absence of such specification in the words of instruction that is gone upon, •women might be debarred from the one sacrament as rightfully as infants from the other" ('The Fort;/, &c,, p. 267). It would be about as reason- able as the above, to say that we have no express command to preach the gospel to women, to disciple women. Women are not expressly mentioned in the command to preach the gospel to every creature ; but that the phraseology embraces women as well as men, is beyond question. Women are not mentioned, nor is there an express command to baptize either men or women, in the words : "He that believeth and is baptized shall be saved ;" but the duty of baptism, and a duty devolving on believing man or woman, is in these words clearly taught. In the com- mand to disciple all nations women are not mentioned — and according to the Saviour's definition of a disciple, and every instance of the subsequent use of the word, infants cannot be meant — but that women are included and meant equally with men in all the nations, is indubitable ; and cer- tain it is also that the commands to baptize, and to teach to observe all things commanded by Christ, apply equally to men and women. The discipling, baptizing, and further teaching of women, are not what cii'cum- stantially may be performed, but they are an integral find essential part of the obligation God has enjoined on His people. And is not the Lord's Supper one of those things commanded by Christ ? Are not women along with men expressly mentioned in Paul's first Epistle to the Corinthians, xi ch., in which Paul adduces the command of Christ to " take, eat," and in reference to eating the bread and drinking the wine, to do each "in remembrance of" Christ? Should Dr. Hanna to this say. True, but my words are, "If it be the absence of such specification in the words of instruction that is gone upon ;" we may reply. It is not only the absence of such specification in the words, but the absence of the idea of infant baptism in every precept of baptism, practice of it, or reference to it, in every part of God's word, that causes our condemnation of it as an unauthorized innovation, tending to make void the Divine ordinance, and to substitute a human invention, WOMEN'S EIGHT TO THE LOED'S SUPPEE. 391 Much is said by many Pasdobaptists respecting the remembering of Chi'ist as required by the Lord's Supper, of which remembrance infants are incapable. But it is said again and again that infants are capable of baptism. Yet baptism in holy wi'it is as clearly associated with repent- ance, faith, death to sin, and walking in newness of life, as the Supper is with a remembrance of the death of Christ. Yet infants are as incapable of repentance, faith, the renunciation of sin, and the practice of holiness as they are of remembering Christ. " To eat the Lord's Supper," also says Dr. Williams, " requu-es the performance of a rehgious duty ;" and to be baptized, we respond, requires the same, " of which," we add with Dr. W., "an infant is incapable." " That a parent should instruct, direct, and encourage his child to do his duty, or embrace his privilege, when it appears that the eucharistic" — and when it appears that the baptismal — "ordinance would be really such to him, is both reasonable and right." " Christ is neither pleased nor willing that pai'ents should attempt what is properly impracticable.'' Om* opponents with but piartial correctness say that we " do not pretend that the want of faith and repentance is a just reason for excluding infants from baptism." We believe that without clear exemption for little children the association of ftiith and repent- ance with baptism justly excludes them from the ordinance. — Can. Rea., pp. 198-200. While our opponents say "there is neither injuiy nor harshness implied in our refusing to give them" the Lord's Supper, we say the same in regard to our refusing to them that baptism, of the lack of which some of them speak as a most fearful, even damning privation and injustice ; and we also profess to be shielded from the inconsistency with which wo charge them. A. Booth (Baptist) says, " As to the Lord's day, oiu- opponents themselves allow, that we have not only apostolical examples of assembling on the first day of the week for the solemnities of public devotion, but plain intimations that this was the common practice of the primitive churches ; and, therefore, the objector himself being- judge, there is no force in what is alleged. ... In regard to the sui^posed want of an explicit warrant for admitting women to the holy table, we reply by demanding, Does not Paul, when he says, ' Let a man examine himself, and so let him eat,' enjoin a reception of the sacred supper ? Does not the term cuithropos, there used, often stand as a name of our species, without regard to sex ? Have we not the authority of lexicographers, and which is incomparably more, the sanction of common sense, for Tinderstanding it thus in that passage ? When the sexes are distinguished and opposed, the word for a man is not anthro^jos, but aner. This distinction is very strongly marked in that celebrated saying of Thales, as given in his Life by Diogenes Laertius. The Grecian sage is thankful to Fortune, ' that he was anthro2)os, one of the human species, and not a beast ; that he was o:ncr, a man, and not a woman ; that he was born a Greek, and not a barbarian.' Besides, when the apostle delivered to the church at Corinth what he received of the Lord, did he not deliver a command — a command to the whole church, consisting of ivomeii as well as men ? When he further says, ' We, being many, are one bread, and one body ; for we are aU partakers of that one bread ;' does he not speak of v)omen, as well as of men (1 Cor. s, 17 ; xi, 28. Comp. Acts i, 13, 14, with Acts ii, 42, 47) ? Again : Are there any prerequisites for the holy supper, of which women are not equally capable as men ? And are not male and female one in Christ ? When wo oppose the baptism of infants, it is not because of their tender age, but because they neither do nor can profess faith in the Son of God. Whenever we meet with such as are denominated by the apostle, tehia pista, faithful, or believing c/u?(?n')!, whoever may be their parents, or whatever may be their ftge, we have no objection to baptize them ; a credible profession of repentance and. 392 SUBJECTS OF BAPTISM. faith being all we desire in reference to this affair, either of old or young" (Ptul. Ex., vol. i, pp. 365-367). I omit the quotations given by Mr. B., in a note, on anthropos, from Parkhurst, Mintert, Schwarzius, Schaubius, and Blackwall, and the references to Beza and Stockiua. In vol. iii, p. 401, Mr. B. teaches, " that the characteristical term, c7iscij|)les, applies, in its utmost propriety, and with all its force, to women as well as to men. Of this, none who understand the meaning of the word can doubt. If, then, believing females be equally disciples as believing males, they must be under an equally express com- mand respecting the holy supper. To this I perceive only two objections. One is, that the characteristical expression, tois mathetais, the disciples, is in the mascuhnc gender. The other, that no female disciples were present when our Lord enacted the law. To the first I answer : So in the baptismal statute, ho pistenas kai haptistheis, he that helieveth and is baptized, are words in the masculine gender. Besides, had the Greek language been like the English, with regard to genders, neither the article nor the noun would have indicated the least distinction of that kind. To the second objection, it may be replied : Though none but male disciples, the apiostles, were pre- sent at the memorable time when our Lord said, ' Take, eat,' yet Paul, when recording what he received from his Divine Master concerning the holy supper, applies, in the most direct manner, the law of institution to the members in general of the church at Corinth ; and that there were females among them, we are expressly informed. Now this is not arguing, as Pajdobaptists do, from remote premises, either moral or analogical ; but from the law of the ordinance, and from the only term in the Divine statue, which characterizes the subjects obliged by that law." W. Arthur, on the Pentecostal baptism of the Spirit, says : " The tongue of fire rested on each disciple, and all spoke with a superhuman utterance. Not the twelve only, the Lord's chosen apostles ; not the seventy only. His commissioned evangelists, but also the ordinary believers, and even the women." — Tongue of Fire, p. 84. It being now customary in epistles to churches to say, " Dear Brethren," we do not deduce from this that there are in these churches no females, nor that the females are not as certainly addressed as the males. We maintain that the distinction of male and female in the spiritual privileges and obligations of Christianity is denied, where •we read that " there is neither male nor female, for ye are all one in Christ Jesus." Our opponents would more effectually servo their cause by bringing express testi- mony to the baptism of infants similar to that which the inspired volume affords for the baptism of believers, " men and women." SECTION XXVIIL 6N fifiliiEVEES' BAPtlSM AS ALONE SCRIPTURAL; AND ON BABY BAPTISM AS surnciNG. H. Craik.— " The smallest measure of superior enlightenment brings along with it a corres« ponding measure ol additional responsibility." " And never let us forget that the rejection of error is ol little avail, except it be connected with the embracing, and the maintaining, and the diffusing ol the truth."— Bi&. Exp., &c., pp. 49, 50. J. A. Haldane.— " The observance or omission ol any ol Christ's ordinances is not optional." —So. Wor., p. 320. W. G. Lehmann. — " Truth is indeed something so exceedingly precious, that it deserves to be universally promulgated ; and he who knows it in nny respect, may not hide it, or keep silent concerning it."— His. of Bap. Ch., p. 8. ,,,,,., ■ , „ , B. Baxter.—" All Christ's commands must be obeyed, both great and small, so far as we know them."— jPI. Scr. Pr., p. 11. Those among the Baptists who re-immei'sc such as thoy believe have not with right sentiments or in a right state of mind been previously immersed, constitute a very small exception. Although some erroneous sentiments, or such as are subsequently deemed erroneous, might be held, HISTORIC TESTIMONY. 393 or even conviction of sin and a desire to bo saved might be experienced without being justified by faith in the Lord Jesus, the profession in bap- tism is not usually repeated. That our Saviour intended baptism for believers, and did not intend its repetition, we firmly believe ; but whether on its reception with desires after spiritual blessings, and changing hopes that they are possessed, followed by a conscious possession of these at the time of a conscious trust in the redeeming and finished work of the Son of God, baptism should be repeated, I know of no law but, " Let every man be fully persuaded in his own mind." The usual course is to proceed without again being baptized, lamenting that subsequent experience was not the experience at baptism. But baptism in the circumstances just supposed, and in various other circumstances, dift'ering from the above and from one another in this or that particular on which we need not now dwell, is not the same as that in which we have taken no part, which has been performed upon us in a state of perfect ignorance as to its nature or design. Whatever may be said for or against the repetition of baptism in the cases first supposed, we are convinced that the baptism of coercion and unconsciousness ought to be treated as a nullity. SECTION XXIX. historic testimony. § 1.— Inspired Historic Testimony. TERTtJLtlAN.— " Whatever was first, is true : whatever was introduced afterwards, is a cor- ruption." Abp. Whateley.— " Our safest and most humbly pious course, however, is, in any practical course, to endeavour to ascertain, in the first instance, what was the practice of the apostles ; and to adhere to it, whenever we think that the rules or customs they sanctioned were not of a merely local or temporary character."— J?«jn;/s, 2nd Series, p. 281. J. Fletcher.—" In these first days of the church" " there was more of simplicity than has characterized the church of Christ since, and that simplicity arose from the general prevalence of apostolic, that is, divinely appointed institutions." — His.of IiuL, p. 163. Dr. Ball.—" Large numbers who have been educated in the belief that the Scriptures enjoin infant baptism, are astonished, on searching for themselves, to find that they do not even refer to it at all."— i¥or. Star, p. 209. 1869. Historic testimony on the subjects of baptism may be divided into inspired and uninspired testimony. We have already noticed inspired testimony in noticing every example of baptism recorded in God's word, and every explicit, if not also every implied allusion to this ordinance in the oracles of God. But the objections, inuendoes, and admissions of our opponents on historic scriptural testimony, demand a lengthened notice. Infant baptism is presented in one of its gravest aspects in the concessions and objections of its advocates on inspired historic testimony. It is admitted by some of the most eminent Pasdobaptists that the inspired volume supplies not a single precept to baptize infants, nor a single pre- cedent of the baptism of an infant. Nor is it uncharitable to believe 394 SUBJECTS OF BAPTISM. respecting some Paedobaptists, that they would never have interpreted the commission of Christ and other portions of the inspired volume in the way they have, if they had not felt the desire and importance of scriptural authority for their practice. The desire either to have a Divine warrant for the practice or to relinquish it, along with the desire not to relinquish it, has, I believe, helped the conviction in some that certain portions of holy writ imply the existence and Divine approval of such a practice in apostolic times. Prepossessions, unless this is prevented by a prayerful, self-consecrating, thorough, earnest, and watchful desire and resolution to know and do God's pleasure, will necessarily throw a veil over what is clear, as was the case with the apostles in connexion with Christ's pre- dictions of His own sufieriDgs, death, and resurrection, and will lead to misinterpretation of Scripture by fallacious inferences from true premises, or by reasoning from premises and hypotheses which are the creation of the imagination and in some instances opposed equally to reason and revelation. Some of our opponents — as Dr. Maccalla in the Debate with Dr. A. Campbell — maintain that there is an implied command in the Old Testa- ment to baptize children, at least, "the infants of believers," in the ordinance of circumcision and its attendant facts. Thus they can "affirm that although there is no express command for baptism, though it is not mentioned in the Old Testament, yet we can find a Divine command for it there" (p. 53). I believe that in Scripture as much is said of infant baptism as of Archbishops, Archdeacons, Deans, Prebends, and Canons, or of the church's " power to decree rites or ceremonies ;" and that the want of scriptural authority is a sufficient condemnation of the practice, although Prof. Jowett, who on Christ's words, "My kingdom is not of this world," can say, "It does not come into collision with politics, it has nothing to do with the Eoman government or Jewish priesthood, or with corresponding institutions of the present day," can also teach on infant baptism and the Episcopalian form of church government, that they "have sufficient gi'ounds ; the weakness is the attempt to derive them from Scripture." — Essays and Eev., p. 361. Mr. Thorn boldly assures us that "whoever assumes that infant bap- tism is not true, because it is not so expressed in explicit and unmistakable terms, has yet to learn the laws which govern all holy and intelligent interpretations of the Scriptures of God" (Inf. Bap., pp. 191, 192). Strictly adhering to " holy and intelligent interpretations of the Scriptures of God," he is able to teach that on the Baptist controversy " the prime point at issue is not whether there be any positive command to baptize infants, or any indisputable instance of infant baptism recorded in the New Testament" (p. 28) ; and to state his "conviction that Paul himself, and all the other apostles, baptized infants, is based, not on any literally expressed statement of the fiict, but, ou the probabilities and reasonable- ness of it" (p. 93) ! Mr. T. admits respecting infant baptism, that "many years passed away before we hear of its being done" (p. 136). He admits " the silence of the Scriptures," " and the equal silence of the earliest Christian writers, as to asserting the fact of its observance HISTORIC TESTIMONY. 395 immediately subsequent to the apostolic age" (p/^136) ; but he can quote with approval Mr. Jackson, who wishes us to " conclude that infant church-membership was continued by the apostles, and that consequently infant baptism was practised" (p. 137). Believers' baptism, which would require from the children of Christians what would be required from the children of heathens, namely, a credible profession of faith in Christ, he deems very improbable, from the fact that the Acts of the Apostles, embracing a period of thirty-throe years, does not mention in regard to any baptized believers, that they had pious parents ; but he can conceive " that the little ones were baptized with their parents, or while they were young, though the circumstances would not be deemed sufficiently import- ant or novel among the Jews, fully conversant with proselyte baptism, to demand or obtain a distinct record in the annals of the churches" (p. 272). Those sufficiently acquainted with the Talmuds and traditions of Jewish rabbis which speak of Jewish proseljrte baptism may know God's will ! In regard to John's baptism of children, " the sacred historian, from the commonness of the act, did not deem it requisite to give us any specific information on the subject" (p. 409) ! The inquiry can scarcely be avoided. Was not the baptism of adults a very common occurrence when by this rite John was purifying the multitudes, confessing their sins ? Why do the sacred writers mention one and omit the other ? Pursuing his " holy and intelligent interpretation of the Scriptures of God," Mr. T. can admit that " no specific directions nor express commands are given by the writers of the New Testament respecting the purification or baptism of children" (p. 561), and yet can be assured that "numerous hints and intimations are given us in both the Old and New Testaments ; that such a ceremony had been common in the congregations of God for full sixteen hundred years" (p. 454) ! It is, I think, much more accordant with Scripture, to say on Christian baptism, after the example of Dr. W. Smith's Bib. Die. — " Whosoever believed the preaching of the evangelists was to be baptized." *' On this command the apostles acted, for the first converts after the ascension were enjoined to repent and be baptized (Acts ii, 38). The Samaritans who believed the preaching of Philip, were baptized, men and women (Acts viii, 12). The Ethiopian eunuch, as soon as he professed his faith in Christ, was baptized." *' Every one who was convinced by the teaching of the fii'st preachers of the gospel, and was willing to enrol himself in the company of the disciples, appears to have been admitted to baptism on a confession of his faith." After mentioning what is deemed to favour the baptism of infants, the writer saj'S, " The silence of the New Testament respecting the baptism of infants, the constant mention of faith as a prerequisite or condition of baptism, the great spiritual blessings which seem attached to a right reception of it, and the responsibility entailed on those who have taken its obligations on themselves, seem the chief objections urged against Psedobaptism." It is generally, if not universally, and most explicitly admitted by the Roman Catholics, that infant baptism is not to be met with in God's word. Bellarmine, according to Robinson, ranks infant baptism with 396 SUBJECTS OF BAPTISM. " the doctrine of ecclesiastical orders, the worshipping of images, the keeping of Lent, &c,," the authority for which is " unwritten tradition" (Claudes Es., by R,, vol. i, p. 115). Hence Dr. Wall reports Col. Danvers as saying that a papist lately in London going to a dispute about Infant Baptism, told his friends, "He was going to hear a miracle, namely, infant baptism proved by Scripture" (In Testi., &c., p. 10). I do not choose to reason with those who like Dr. Hofl'man, would say of infant baptism, " It was unknown to the apostles, but is an important improvement upon the apostohc practice." AVhat can be more contradic- tory to the principles of Protestants ? But the silence of the inspired history respecting the baptism of infants being admitted, it is actually sought, by the ingenuity of the highest Pfedobaptist criticism, to convert silence on the genealogy of Jewish converts and Gentile proselytes into a weapon to destroy the theory of believers' baptism. Dr. Wardlaw says: "Let it be further considered, that we have no recorded instance of the baptism of any person, grown to manhood, that has been born of Jewish converts, or of Gentile proselytes to the faith of Christ ; nor have we, in any of the apostolic epistles to the churches, the remotest allusion, in the form of direction or of warning, to the reception of such children by baptism into the Christian church, upon their professing the faith in which they had been brought up" (On Inf. Bap., p. 112). And in Dr. W.'s estimation, " to every mind that duly considers the case, this must appear a very remarkable circumstance" (p. 112). It is " a very remarkable circum- stance" in connexion with this ordinance, that if faith in Christ was the divinely- appointed prerequisite, there should nothing be said about aught else ! To suppose that faith in Christ is the Divine and only requisite for baptism, and yet that the Scriptures say nothing about the genealogy and previous history of the baptized, is " a very remarkable circumstance !" Mr. Walker, quoted with approval by Dr. W., thinks that the Baptist sentiment requires that the Scriptures do "not be silent about it!" Instead of oiir adducing instances of believers' baptism, the Baptists would, in the estimation of Dr. W., " do something more to their pur- pose" (p. 113), if they would produce one or two examples of children baptized at maturit}^ and born of Christian parents ! But in this supposed dilemma of the Baptists, " the simplest explanation" according to Dr. W., is to suppose from this genealogical and educational silence, " that the children of the converts had been baptized with their parents on these parents entering as disciples into the fellowship of the New Testament church" (p. 114) ! The command to baptize disciples, which Dr. W. admits to be the import of the commission, requires to be supplemented by such records, if we believe that infants were not baptized ! But with a commission to baptize disciples, believers, Christians, no record of the baptism of infants is needed to give to infant baptism Divine authority I With such a commission we may believe, without any record of the fact, and especially from the book of Genesis, that the children of believera were baptized along with their believing parents I Objections, attempted refutations, concessions, and appeals for obedient adherence to God's only and auflicigut rovolatiou, will make up the remaiudcr of this sectiou. HISTORIC TESTIMONY. 397 Dr. Halley saya, " Although the apostolic history extends to about the sixty- second year of our Lord, we have no reference to the baptism of any member of a Christian family, except at the time of the conversion of its head ; no allusion to the existence of unbaptized persons in connexion with Christian families ; no exhortation upon the importance of preparing such for baptism ; no advice in any of the epistles, as to the proper mode of encouraging such to be baptized, if they hesitated ; or of restraining them, if they were too forward. Of unbaptized persons in Christian families the apostles seem to take no notice. The baptisms specified are all of new converts or of their families" (vol. xv, p. 75). So far as can be ascertained from the inspired records, apostolic baptisms were wholly of believers, or professed believers, whether being isolated individuals or families. " The absence of all allusion to the ixnbaptized" in the apostolic age, we allow to be in contrast with " the continual reference to them" at a subsequent period. None in the apostolic age could be spoken of as baptized but believers, and none could be spoken of as believers but the baptized, because then baptism was administered without delay to those who made a credible profession of faith in Christ. The delay of a subsequent age in regard to the baptism of believers, brought into existence a class of persons that had no existence under the promulgation of the gospel in apostolic times. Dr. H. being a disbeliever in sudden conversion in apostolic times, or in any evidence of conversion at all satisfactory being capable of manifestation on the first day of hearing God's glorious gospel, by this foregone conclusion appears to me as clearly to pervert the testimony of Scripture and the right ways of the Lord, as was ever done by pope or infidel. " The inquiry arises," says ho, " When in the apostolic churches were persons baptized ? The reply is, in every instance in which it can be ascertained. On the very first opportunity after they heard the gospel" (pp. 76, 77). Why does not Dr. H., in accordance with God's word, say. On the very first opportunity after they keceived the gospel (Acta ii, 41), or after they believed the gospel (Acts viii, 12) ? I agree with Dr. H. when he says : " That there was some contrariety in the administration of baptism, between the apostolic practice and the discipline of the ancient church at the earliest subsequent time in which it can be ascertained, is undeniable ; and, therefore, much caution is necessary in tracing the true doctrine aa it floats down the stream of time, gathering its earthly accretions from various sources, through every century ; now from the calabistio Jew, now from the Oriental mystic, now from the Platonic school, and now fi'om the lonely monastery" (p. 77). I believe that church history teaches us that not long after apostolic times, " instead of bap- tizing straightway" the believer in Christ, " years were expended in a laborious pre- paration and severe novitiate" (p. 77) ; and yet that Justin knew nothing of that delay which characterized a subsequent period ; and that, though he speaks of fasting in connexion with baptism, and of the rite being called illumination, he knew of no other than believers' baptism. Dr. H.'s hypothesis on an indiscriminate bap- tism in apostolic times vitiates almost every comparison he makes. He glaringly confounds baptizing believers straightway with baptizing everybody that would allow it, whether in professed faith or in known ungodliness. He says that " those baptized by the apostbs were in a situation analogous to that of the children of believers" among present P^edobaptists (Reply, p. 180) ! They had " become the subjects of spiritual instruction ;" " they were in training for the full fellowship of the people of God ;" and, after the proper years of probation, I suppose the apostles would receive them to the table of the Lord, and membership in the church of Christ ! Our opponents talk about no record in the Acts of the Apostles of persons born when their parents were believers, but not baptized tUl they themselves became of age, as if when all were received on a credible profession of faith, there could reason- ably be expected a record of the paternity of the baptized, and of the character of their fathers ! Yet these persons thus talk of infants as well as of elder children : " They have been baptized ; they have become the subjects of spiritual instruction ; of the nurture and amonition of the Lord ; and they are in training for the full fellow- ship of the people of God in all the ordinances of his house" (Reply, pp. 180, 181). We might ask. Do we read in the Acts of the Apostles of aught analogous to the position of the baptized ones in connexion with present Pffidobaptists ? Instead of inspired records in the Acts or the Epistles of the apostles being in favour of infant baptism because it is not mentioned that the children of members were baptized, and because some portions of the Acts, and some, if not all, of the Letters embrace a date sufficiently late for Christians that were early converted to have children now come to years of discretion and accountability — instead of this telling in favour of infant baptism, it tells against it ; for even at this time in every inspired record respecting the baptized, the language used is inapplicable to baptized infants. Whether we peruse the earliest or latest records of baptism in the Acts, and whether 398 SUBJECTS OF BAPTISM. we peruse the earliest or latest epistle in wliicli there is reference to baptism, every expression respecting the baptized opposes their being infants, or persona known to be ungodly. " The Acts of the Apostles" is to a great extent a record of travels ; it is not the history of any particular church, or of any special locality. There is not the record of a second baptism in connexion with a second or subsequent visit to any place, if we except the baptism of about twelve men that had previously received John's bap- tism (Acts xix, 1-7). In the only inspired history of the church of Christ there is no mention of the progress of the church at Jerusalem beyond the time of Saul's conver- sion. The subsequent history in this book is little more than a record of apostolic and evangelistic visits to different places where the word spoken in demonstration of the Spirit led to the formation of churches of baptized believers, concerning most of which the history supplies no facts respecting those subsequently added ; and in no instance is the length of time between apostolic visits sufficient to allow of what is so vauntingly demanded. Subsequent baptisms, without evidence to the contrary, we have a right to conclude, were in accordance with the first baptisms. The historical and the epistolary parts of Divine revelation equally teach the baptism of believers, and no other baptism. If the commission of Jesus was to make disciples of all nations, baptizing them and teaching them to observe all things enjoined by Him, what necessity could exist for " allusion to the existence of unbaptized persons in connexion with Christian families," and for "exhortations upon the importance of preparing such for baptism P" Members of Christian families, as all others, would either belong to the disciples of Christ, on whom the commission of Christ would enjoin baptism and further instruction, or when the command to baptize had been obeyed, would enjoin still further instruction, or they would belong to the world whom the commission enjoined to disciple. Every record of apostolic practice is in accordance with this view of the commission. Is not this sufficient ? Yet Dr. H. demands some record of genealogies from those who maintain that Christian baptism in every inspired precept and precedent is believers' baptism. He appeals to the Baptists to find a " clear and certain instance of any child of parents, who were professedly Christian at his birth, being baptized in adult age, or of any such child being among the catechumens, or, in short, of any such child being unbaptized in the time of his youth during the first half of the Christian era" (pp. 78, 79). The post- apostolic period I hope subsequently to notice. But if indiscriminate baptism was the apostolic practice, and baptized persons, after giving evidence that they were become believers, were then received into the church, is it not remarkable that the Scriptures record neither a single example of this, nor a single command for it ? Further instruction than was contained in the commission, which was for the whole world and for every age, was surely not needed ; Christ having previously and explicitly taught who are His disciples, and having baptized by His apostles. In the apostolic age the professing believer was baptized and united with the church ; the unbaptized belonged to the world ; and to one class or the other all belonged ; making only such exceptions as every rule may demand. I admit that in an early, though I will not say immediately subsequent age, we find a class of persons called catechumens. These were unbaptized persons, principally youths, willingly receiving instruction in Christianity, and by this instruction were being prepared for baptism as believers approved by the church, and for membership in the church. I shall subsequently adduce the most eminent Pfedobaptist admissions that there is not the slightest trace of this in the first century of the Christian era. There is evidence in the second century, of the departure from baptizing immediately on a credible profession of faith, and in the latter part of this century, of the existence of catechumens preparing for baptism, and of catechumenical classes, which in the third century are sufficiently marked and prominent. What abundant evidence in this that infant and indiscrimi- nate baptism was the apostolic practice ! We read of these unbaptized catechumens before we read of the baptism of infants and little children. And no more apostolio is this catechumenical arrangement than is the baptizing only at certain seasons. A desire of further evidence of sincere faith in Christ, along with continued interest in the welfare of the young, might co-operate with other causes in bringing into existence the classes of catecbumens, the delay of baptism, and its fixed times. It would also be of some advantage to our opponents, if they could adduce any evidence that these catechumens, acknowledged to be unbaptized, included not the children of professing Christians. Piiedobaptist concessions on this are at hand. Dr. H. appeals to us from the absence of unbaptized catechumens in the apostolic age, but with no advantage to the practice he advocates, unless we give him the right to demand that we adhere to or depart from God's word at pleasure. He says, " Where was the catechumen of the apostolic age — the unbaptized youth under religioua HISTORIC TESTIMONY. 399 instruction? No one can tell; not a shadow of the institute 'appears. From the apostolic documents we have no reason to suppose that any such persons existed. What was a catechumen of the succeeding centuries ? With no person is the reader of church history more familiar. We know his position, his character, his studies, his school, his instruction, his teacher" (p. 76). He maintains that " on the hypothesis which postpones baptism until there be satisfactory evidence of conversion, the unbaptized catechumens must have been more numerous in the apostolic age than in succeeding centvu'ies ; for in addition to persons from the world, in their noviciate, preparing for baptism, there must have been the numerous children of believers , and yet to any of them either in the historical records, or the affectionate letters of Scrip- ture, there is not the slightest allusion" (p. 76). To these "children of believers" for whose baptism many plead from the Epistles and Acts of the Apostles, Dr. H. teaches that " there is not the slightest allusion" in any of these inspired records. I admit that baptism at an early period after that which was apostolic was not adminis- tered immediately on a profession of faith supposed to be sincere ; that in the latter part of the second century there is evidence of unbaptized catechumens, waiting and preparing for baptism ; but I maintain that neither the apostolic nor the immediately subsequent age gives a shadow of encouragement to indiscriminate or infant baptism ; and that the doctrine of believers' baptism demands not the existence of catechu- menical classes, baptized or unbaptized. Dr. Stacey regards the want of recorded parentage as hostile to believer's bap- tism ; and, demanding genealogies, he accepts and iterates the assertion that for the first ten centuries of the Christian era, " not a single instance is recorded of an individual whose parents were professedly Christian at his birth, receiving baptism in mature life, or failing to receive it while he was yet a child." — The Sac, p. 170. The Rev. E. W. Dale, in recently meeting with the Baptists, said : " He had never yet been able to find a single apostolic precedent and sanction of the custom of the Baptists ; so that the Congregationalists were on stronger ground a great deal. When the Baptists could show them in the New Testament an instance of the child of a Christian parent being baptized on coming to years of discretion, then they could stand better ; but as they had not a single instance of the kind to shew, they were in a bad case." Does " The Acts of the Apostles" record the reception into the church or to baptism of any infant either at the time of the parent's conversion or at any other time ? There is as much Scripture for their not being received into the church as for their not being baptized. Let our respected brethren. Dale and Stacey, peruse what has been written in reply to some others on this subject. Prof. R. Wilson as valiantly and confidently as some of his predecessors uses scriptviral silence respecting the paternity of the baptized as an argument for bap- tizing the infants and little children of believers. In his own words, " We are not, however, to be dismayed by such forces ; nor shall we permit either our opponents or our own imaginations to invest a neutral power with the attributes of hostility" (p. 500). Although Dr. W. sees "not a solitary example" in the New Testament of one that was baptized as a believer, and who had Christian parents, he needs not " defy" the Baptists to find such an instance, and assure his readers that " it forms the very species of evidence which is indispensable to the scriptural validity of their system" (p. 501). I distinctly and emphatically assert that Baptist sentiments and practice require no such genealogical records as our opponents demand. If Dr. W., when speaking of the Baptists, would refer to their holding believers' baptism, instead of adult baptism, he would often be more just to his opponents. While our opponents conjure up a supposed requisite to Baptist consistency, and then teach " that in so far as their system is impugned by the PEedobaptist, they cannot defend it by a solitary example" (p. 502), we shall continue to assert "that the New Testament supplies no instance of infant baptism," whether the parents of infants were pious or godless, and that believers' baptism requires no record beyond that of faith in Christ. To Dr. W.'s query, " Does the Baptist complain that the period of Scriptui-e history is too short to produce instances of the adult baptism which alone can uphold his theory" (p. 502) ? our reply is, that we are perfectly satisfied with the length and the shortness, and every characteristic of the Scripture history, that we deem the command and example of believers' baptism, and of that alone, which it records, an ample vin- dication of our practice. We neither require nor desu-e more. We emphatically deny that our theory stands in need of being upheld by any record of paternity concerning the baptized in apostolic or any subsequent times. Our complaint is, that men like Dr. W., in advocating the baptism of infants (be their parents pious or wicked), should confound sUence on such a practice with silence on the paternity of the baptized, when the command of God is clearly and exclusively yerso7iat. It is a libel on the senti- ments of the Baptist, that he " can show no better foundation for the leading tenet of 400 SUBJECTS OF BAPTISM. his system," than " the mere silence" of Scripture. The leading tenet of our system, distinguishing us from other evangelical Christians is, that Scriptural baptism is believers' baptism, and, in our inability to search the heart, the baptism of those who make a credible profession of faith in Christ. He is a real Baptist who maintains that faith in Christ (not the fact of being an adult J is the Scriptural requirement for baptism. Whatever fiu-ther proof against the baptizing of infants would have existed, if wo had been told in holy writ respecting any baptized believer that the parent was a Christian at the time of his birth, it is, however imintentional, throwing dust into men's eyes, to teach them that this is necessary to the exclusive practice of believers' baptism. It would have been additional proof against a popish pui'gatory, if it had been expressly stated in holy writ that prayers, and money given to the priests for prayers, on behalf of the dead, are perfectly useless, because there is no such place for souls as a popish purgatory ; but the necessity for such express declarations in order to invalidate popish reasoning, is equal to the necessity of the genealogical records which Paedobaptists demand for the justification of Baptist sentiments. The Baptist system requires that we have knowledge respecting those whom we baptize, but not respecting their pedigree, or the character of their forefathers. No one ought to be accepted for baptism, or to be denied the ordinance, because his parent is a Jew or a Christian, a Turk or a heathen. All men are sinners ; all are to be saved by grace through faith. When they received the gospel, whether at Jerusalem or elsewhere, when they believed on Christ, whether in Samaria or any other place, they were bap- tized. The baptized were professedly dead to sin, having been bui-ied with Christ, and raised to newness of life. They had put on Christ. Theii- baptism was regarded as including the answer of a good conscience towards God. The glorying of our opponents is as unwise as their demands are unjust. Our ground we hold, and shall continue to hold, whatever Dr. W. may say of " the grasping spirit of Anti-pssdobaptist monopoly" (p. 500). Dr. W. speaks of " agi'eeing with the Baptist in admitting to the ordinance adult converts to Christianity" — if he here had omitted the word "adult," he would in this more nearly have agreed with us — and of differing " from him with regard to the children of such converts ;" but such passages as Acts ii, 37-42 ; viii, 12 ; Bom. vi, 2-4 ; Gal. iii, 27 ; Col. ii, 12, and 1 Pe. iii, 21, in accordance with the commission, demand from Dr. W. further agreement with the Baptist. The records of Pasdobap- tists are records of the baptism of believers, and of their infant and somewhat older children. Believing households we accept, and wish they were multiplied ten thousand- fold. The silence of Scripture on the baptizing of infants and on the parentage of baptized believers does not place Baptist and Pasdobaptist on neutral or equal ground. For our practice we have the authority of scriptural precept and precedent. For the practice of our opponents, there is neither scriptural precept nor precedent, nor any legitimate inference. And we are thankful that Dr. W. interprets the commission of Christ so as to enjoin only believers' baptism. If Divine precept and apostolic practice and injunction give exclusive sanction to believers' baptism, of what moment can it be whether we are told or not told respect- ing the piety or impiety of the parents of any that were baptized ? If nothing is said in holy writ in special reference to the childi-en of believers, and their reception into the church of Christ after they had grown to years of discretion, what follows as to their being received cither into the Divine favour or into the church of Christ, but that they were received as all others ; accepted of God through faith in Christ Jesus, and through a credible profession of this accepted to baptism and membership in the church of Christ ? Whether Ptedobaptists who regard their figment as a strong foundation for the baptism of infants, have received no reply, the following will testify. Dr. Carson, on Dr. Wardlaw's request for consideration, "that we have no recorded instance of the baptism of any person, grown to manhood, that had been born of Jewish converts, or of Gentile proselytes to the faith of Christ," says : " This would try the patience of Job. Is there any need of such an example, in order to shew that the children of such persons should be baptized when they believe ? What difference is there between such and others ? Is not the law of the commission suffi- cient to reach them ? Is it not sufficiently clear ? ' He that believeth and is baptized.' ' Nor have we,' continues Dr. Wardlaw, ' in any of the apostolic epistles to the churches, the remotest allusion, in the form of direction, or of warning, to the recep- tion of such children by baptism into the Christian church, upon their professing the faith in which they had been brought up.' A very good reason for this. The same law applies to all. There is not the smallest difference between the ground of receiving the child of a heathen, and the child of the most devoted saint. When they beUevo, they are received equally to everything." — On Bap., pp. 186, 187. J. TouLMiN (Baptist), in a.d. 178G, thus writes : " But it is urged that in no part of the New Testament do we meet with any examples of the baptism of children born HISTORIC TESTIMONY. 4ai of Christian or believing parents. This argument is supposed to derive strength from considering the period of time which the history of the Acts comprehends, a period of thirty years. Much weight would this argument carry along with it, did that history, in any other instances, give us a detail of the progress of Christianity after its first reception in any place, or by any person. It is not the history of the continuance of the gospel, but of its planting. It relates nothing of what was done by the children of those whose conversion to the gospel it records. From anything it says of them, we should not know but that the Christian faith died with such as first embraced it. The Acts doth not particularly inform us that their posterity took it up and per- petuated it : it says nothing of their children being believers, or forming churches, or observing the Lord's day, or celebrating the Lord's Supper." — On £ap., pp. 10, 11. D. Macallan (Baptist) has recently thus written : " Dr. Wardlaw states tho objection thus — ' We have no recorded instance of the baptism of any person grown to manhood that had been born of Jewish or of Gentile proselytes to the faith' [Query, have we an instance of the conversion of any that were not baptized on a profession of their faith ?] ; ' nor have we in any of the apostolic epistles, the remotest allusion, in the form of direction or of warning, to the reception of such children by baptism' [Query, have we a single allusion to the reception of any without baptism ?J ' into tho Christian church, upon their professing the faith in which they had been brought up.' The reply to this is obvious. We have no recorded instance of the admission to church fellmv ship ' of any person grown to manhood that had been born of Jewish or Gentile proselytes.' Does it, therefore, follow that there were none ? The truth is, that no distinctions arising from natural relationship were recognized in the primitive churches as constituting any claim to gospel ordinances ; and, therefore, no such directions or warnings as those referred to by Dr. Wardlaw were in the least degree necessary. 'Think not to say within yourselves, ice have Abraham to our father,' conveys the spirit of all the ' warnings' that were necessary on this head, and all that were given. And Dr. Wardlaw knows very well that, for several ages, there have been many Baptist churches in England and America, but how many 'recorded instances' in church history will he find of the baptism of persons grown to manhood that had been born of Bajttists ? We question if he will find one of whom there is not also an account of his conversion ; but these must not be taken into account in draw- ing a parallel between the history of the Baptists and the history of the primitive church ; because in the latter we have no account of the conversion of adults who had been born of Christian parents. Now, vn\\ Dr. Wardlaw say that a stranger to Bap- tist principles would be justified in conchiding that the reason why the baptism of the posterity of Baptists is not recorded in church-history, is, that they were baptized in infancy ? Yet this is the very argument used by himself in reference to the primitive Christians !" — On Bap., pp. 63, 64. Dr. Wardlaw, like some other Psedobaptists, is himself the best reply to himself. He himself teaches that every baptism recorded in Scripture expresses or implies faith in the recipient. Speaking of those baptized by John, he says : " Their sub- mission to baptism involved, along with confession of sin and profession of repentance, an avowal of faith in," &c. f/ii/. Bap>. App., p. 333). He speaks of the Pharisees and lawyers who were not baptized, as rejecting God's counsel, and proceeding on those baptized by John he says : " Let the numbers have been as great as you may choose to make them ; let the profession have been made in what way soever you may con- ceive most likely ; and let it in as many instances as facts can prove or fancy may please to imagme, have proved insincere and abortive : — that which we plead for is, that the profession was made, and that, on the footing of it baptism was administered." He is equally explicit and emphatic that Christ's baptism by His disciples, and all recorded apostolic baptisms, were baptisms of professing believers, as quotations elsewhere given sufficiently prove, baptism being " enjoined on every proselyte," and a proselyte being (p. 336) " a professed recipient of the new doctrine, a professed con- vert to the new faith," the law of Christ being (p. 340) "that baptism was not the ' symbol' only, but the ' profession' of that spiritual change by which a man became an accredited disciple of Christ." " The reality of the thing signified," says he (pp. 342, 343), "must have been pre-supposed in every case of the administration of the sign." The advocates for baptizing infants, after, on the part of many, an acknowledged commission to baptize disciples, or believers, are not satis- fied that the records state and imply nothing more than faith in Christ respecting those baptized in apostolic times. They will allow one class 402 SUBJECTS OF BAPTISM. of persons to have been thus baptized, but they demand that another class of persons shall have been baptized through an hereditary title, or through a title on which Scripture is as silent as respecting the baptism itself. It is not satisfactory that God should sanction no respecting of persons ; that all by faith should become the children of God ; that all by being baptized into Christ should put on Christ, whether before they have been heathens or Jews, the children of idolaters or Christians ; that there should be " one Lord, one faith, one baptism ;" one way of reconciliation with God, and one way of reception into the church of Christ. Granted that when some of the inspired records were written, many of the children of the three thousand pentecostal Christians, and of others who were early baptized, had grown to maturity, there is not a single record respect- ing these, or any others, nor the absence of a record, that affords a shadow of countenance to the baptizing of any infants or any known unbelievers. It is to me astonishing that certain Predobaptists, whose writings admit that there is in God's word no recorded precept or example of infant bap- tism, should yet dare to draw a strong inference in its favour from the fact that the Acts of the Apostles, embracing a period of about thirty 5'ears, mentions not in regard to any who were baptized that they were the children of parents who were Christians when they were born. If the baptism then administered was believers', and if it was a personal pro- fession of faith in the Lord Jesus, as is maintained by Baptists, and all by Divine authority were received on this ground, and on this only, it is preposterous to maintain that some reference to descent from parents, pious or not, at the time of the children's birth, must have been expected, and that the absence of this is a strong argument in favour of infant baptism. I admit that some of our opponents speak Avith some degree of caution, but I hold all arguments from this source in favour of the baptizing of infants in unmixed contempt. In the words of Dr. Wardlaw I could say, " I am only ashamed of being obliged to treat it so seriously. It is not worth the ammunition." Let the following Pa^dobaptist testi- mony to the absence of all authority for infant baptism from the precepts and precedents of God's word, have the consideration it deserves. LuTHEE. — " It cannot be proved by the sacred Scripture that infant baptism wa3 instituted by Christ."— In A. R.'s Vanity of Inf. Bap., part ii, p. 8. Eeasmus. — " Paul does not seem in Eom. vi, 4 to treat about infants. ... It was not yet the custom for infants to be baptized." — Anno, on Rom. v, 14. Calvin. — "Because Christ requires teaching before baptizing, and will have believers only admitted to baptism, baptism does not seem to be rightly administered, except faith precede."— In Wallace on Chr. Bap., p. 52. LiMBORCH. — " There is no express command for it in Scripture ; nay, all those passages wherein baptism is commanded, do immediately relate to adult persons, since they are ordered to be instructed, and faith is pre-requisite as a necessary quali- fication. . . . There is no instance that can be produced, from whence it may indisputably be inferred, that any child was baptized by the apostles." — Com. Sys. of J}iv., b. V, c. xxii, § 2. Bp. Burnet. — " There is no express precept, or rule, given in the New Testament for the baptism of infant8."—i^a;2)o. o/ 39 ^r<. Art. xxvii. De la Roque. — "As to the baptism of infants, I confess there is nothing formal and express in the gospel, to justify the necessity of it." — In Steanett's Ans. to Russen, p. 188. ViTBiNQJi.— " That some in the ancient church long ago doubted, and that others HISTORIC TESTIMONY. 403 now doubt, whether infants ought to be baptized, proceeds principally, I think, from hence : It is not related as a fact in the gospels, and in the Acts of the primitive church, that infants were baptized by Christ, or by the apostles." — Obs. Sac, 1, ii, c. vii, § 2. Stapferus. — "There is not any express command in the holy Scripture concern- ing the baptism of infants." — Tlieol. Polem., cap. iii, § 1647. Baxteb. — " If there can be no example given in Scripture, of any one that was baptized without the profession of a saving faith, nor any precept for so doing, then must we not baptize any without it. But the antecedent is true ; therefore is the con- sequent. . . . In a word, I know of no word in Scripture that giveth us the least intimation that ever man was baptized without the prof ession of a saving faith, or that giveth the least encouragement to baptize any upon another's faith." "I conclude that all examples for baptism in Scripture do mention only the administration of it to the professors of saving faith ; and the precepts give us no other direction. And I provoke Mr. Blake, so far as is seemly for me to do, to name one precept or example for baptizing any other, and make it good if he can" (Dispu., &c., pp. 149, 151, 156). Let any reader decide whether these words do not condemn the baptism of infanta, as well as of unbelievers, against whose baptism they were intended. " The baptism of the adult, being the most complete, because of the maturity of the receivers, is made the standing pattern in Scripture" (Cases of Cons. Q. 51). Where is our authority to deviate from "the standing pattern in Scripture F" Will Protestants say with Dupin, that the apostles did not give themselves the trouble of regulating what related to the ceremonies of Christian worship, but that their successors in the minis- try settled those affairs ? Or shall we out-spokenly say with Booth, that infant baptism "was invented in a succeeding period, •with a number of other things that were equally foreign to the language of the New Testament, and to the practice of apostolic churches r" — Pcpcl. Ex., vol i, p. 326. E. Leigh. — " The baptism of infants may be named a tradition, because it is not expressly delivered in Scripture that the apostles did baptize infants, nor any express precept there found that they should do so." — Body of Div., h. i, c. viii. Marshall. — "I grant that in so many words it is not found in the New Testa- ment, that they should be baptized ; no express example where children were baptized." He believes that the apostles were commanded to " teach the heathen and the Jews, and make them disciples, and then baptize them," and that they acted thus, we having no express mention of any other way, and that "both John and Christ's disciples and apostles did teach before they baptized." — In Tombes' Examen, &c. T. Fuller. — "We do freely confess that there is neither express precept nor precedent in the New Testament, for the baptizing of infants." — Infant's Advo. p. 71. Cawdeet. — " The Scriptures are not clear, that infant baptism was an apostolic practice." " We have not in Scripture either precept or example of children bap- tized."—In Booth's Po'd. Ex., vol. i, p. 306. Dr. Field. — " The baptism of infants is therefore named a tradition, because it is not expressly delivered in Scripture that the apostles did baptize infants ; nor any express precept there found that they should do so." — On the Clmrch, p. 375. 0. Wills. — " Christ did many things that are not recorded, and so did the apostles ; whereof this was one, for aught we know, the baptizing infants. Calvin, in his fourth book of Institutes, ch. xvi, confesseth that it is nowhere expressly mentioned by the evangelists that any one child was by the apostles baptized." Booth adds, "To the same purpose are Staphilus, Melancthon, and Zuinglius quoted.' ' — In Booth's Peed. Ex., vol. i, p. 304. S. Palmer. — " There is nothing in the words of the institution, nor in any after accounts of the administration of this rite, respecting the baptism of infants ; there is not a single precept for, nor example of the practice through the whole New Testa- ment."— Ans. to Br. P.'s Add. on the Lord's Sup., p. 7. Magdeburg Centuriatobs. — "Examples prove that adults, both Jews and Gentiles, were baptized. Concerning the baptism of infants, there are indeed no examples of which we read." — Cent, i, 1. ii, c. vi. Dr. Wall. — " The commission given by our Saviour to His disciples during the time of His mortal life to baptize in the country of Judea, is not at all set down in Scripture ; only it is said that they baptized a great many ; and the enlargement of that commission given them afterwards (Matt, xxviii, 19) to perform the same office among all the heathen nations, is set down in such brief words, that there is no par- ticular direction given them what they were to do in reference to the children of those who received the faith ; and among all the persons that are recorded as baptized by the apostles, there is no express mention of any infant." — His. of Inf. Bap., vol. i, pp. V, vi. 404 SUBJECTS OP BAPTISM. WiTSlTTS. — "We do not indeed deny that there is no express and special command of God, or of Christ, concerning infant baptism." — (Econ., 1. iv, ch. xvi, § 41. Dr. Freeman. — " The traditions of the whole catholic church confirm us in many of our doctrines ; which, though they may be gathered out of Scripture, yet are not laid down there in so many words ; such as infant baptism, and of episcopal authority above presbyters." — Pres. against Po., p. 19. Heideqgerus. — " There be neither express precept nor example for infant bap- tism."— Corp. Theol., 1. xxv, § 55. Bp. Tatloe. — " It is against the perpetual analogy of Christ's doctrine to baptize infants : for besides that Christ never gave any precept to baptize them, nor ever HimseK nor His apostles (that appears) did baptize any of them ; all that either He or His apostles said concerning it, requires such previous dispositions to baptism, of which infants are not capable, and these are faith and repentance" CLib. of Pro., -p. 340). — This is a part of the Bishop's confession that " thus far the Anabaptists may argue." Archd. Palet. — " At the time the Scriptures were written, none were baptized but converts." — Ser. on 2 Pe. iii, 15, 16. Bp. Sanderson. — " The baptism of infants, and the sprinkling of water in baptism, instead of immersing the whole body, must be exterminated from the church — according to their principle, i.e., that nothing can be lawfully performed, much less required, in the affairs of religion, which is not either commanded by God in the Scriptures, or at least recommended- by a laudable example." — In Booth's Paido. Ex., vol. i, pp. 306, 307. Walker. — " Where authority from the Scripture fails, then the custom of the church is to be held as a law. ... It doth not follow that our Saviour gave no precept for the baptizing of infants, because no such precept is particularly expressed in Scripture ; for our Saviour spoke many things to His disciples concerning the kingdom of God, both before His passion and also after His resurrection, which are not written in the Scriptures ; and who can say but that among those many unwritten sayings of His, there might be an express precept for infant baptism" (Modest Plea for Inf. Bap., 221, 368) ? — Just thus can the Papist reason on behalf of Popish tradi- tions and superstitions. We might ask, in the language of Dr. Wardlaw, " Have we any right to suppose for a moment anything in the will of Christ, especially anything of such magnitude about which He has given no instructions and no intimations of its being His will" (Scrip. Arg., pp. 23, 24) ? There can be no sin in neglecting that which lacks the Divine command, and of the existence of which the inspii-ed records afford not the slightest trace. Dare we say thus respecting observance ? Bp. Stillingfleet. — " Whether baptism shall be administered to infants, or no, is not set down in express words, but left to be gathered by analogy and consequences." Irenieum, p. ii, c. iv, p. 178. (EcOLAMPADius. — "No passage in the holy Scripture has occurred to ourobserva- tion as yet which as far as the slenderness of our capacity can discern, should persuade us to profess Psedobaptism." — In Booth's Pcedo. Ex., vol. i, p. 308. Dr. TowERSON. — " That which seems to stick much with the adversaries of infant baptism, and is accordingly urged at all times against the friends or asserters of it, is, the want of an express command, or direction for the administering of baptism to them. Which objection seems to be the more reasonable, because baptism, as well as other Bacraments, receiving all its force from institution, they may seem to have no right to, or benefit by it, who appear not by the institution of that sacrament to be entitled to it ; but rather, by the qualifications it requires, to be excluded from it." — Of the Sac. of Bap., Tpp, 349, 350. Cellaritjs. — " Infant baptism is neither commanded in the sacred Scripture, nor is it confirmed by apostolic examples." — In Booth's Peed. Ex., p. 309. Dr. DwiGHT. — " In the Scriptures" " there is no instance in which it is declared, in so many terms, that infants were baptized." — Sermon 157th. Staphilus. — " It is not expressed in holy Scripture that young children should be baptized." — In T. Lawson's Baptismologia, p. 115. Dr. Goodwin. — " Baptism signifieth regeneration sure in itself first. Sacraments are never administered to begin, or work grace. Read all the Acts, still it is said, they believed, and were baptized." — Worhs, vol. i, p. 200. Bp. Barlow. — " I do believe and know that there is neither precept nor example in Scripture for Psedobaptism." — In Dr. Wallace's Chr. Bap., p. 59. J. Newton (Rector of St. Mary Woolnoth) thus writes to an Independent min- ister : " I own, sir, that if I had seen it my duty to accede to the church order of the Independents, I know not but their principles would have led me from them again, to join with the Baptists. How they, who maintaining infant baptism, press Scripture HISTORIC TESTIMONY. 405 precedent so strongly upon me, answer the Baptists, who in this point press it as strongly upon themselves, is not my concern." — Apologia, p. 108. Dr. Doddridge. — " We do not meet with any instance in the earliest primitive antiquity in which the baptism of any child of Christian parents, whether infant or adult, is expressly mentioned" (Misc. Worlcs, p. 489). — Since the paternity of none is given, if this were requisite, we should be under the necessity of concluding that baptizing was relinquished altogether during the latter period of the apostolic ministry ! M. Maktindale. — " There are no express examples in the New Testament of Christ and His apostles baptizing infanta." — Bib. Die. Art. Bap. P. Edwards. — " There is neither express precept nor example for infant baptism in the New Testament." — Can. Rea., p. 9. M. Poole. — " I cannot be of their mind who think that persona may be baptized before they be taught : we want precedents of any such baptisms in Scripture." — Anno., on Matt, xxviii, 19. Bp. BossuET. — " As touching infants the pretended reformed say that their bap- tism is grounded on the authority of the Scripture ; but they bring us no place out of it, expressly affirming it, and what consequences they draw out of the same, they are very far-fetched, not to say very doubtful, and too deceitful" (On the Holy Sup., p. 127). Also, "Jesus Christ has said, ' Teach and baptize,' and again, ' He that believeth and is baptized shall be saved.' But the church, solely by the authority of tradition and custom, has so interpreted these words, that the instruction and faith which Christ had joined with baptism might be separated from it in the case of infants." Thus can the Eom. Cath. bishop proceed to taunt Protestants : " These words. Teach and baptize, have a long time perplexed our Reformed Gentlemen, and till the year 1614, obliged them to say, that it was not lawful to administer baptism without pro- fessing either before or immediately after it. This is what was determined in the synod of Tonneins conformably to all the precedent synods. But in the synod ef Castres in 1626, they began to be more lax as to this point, and resolved not to press the observation of the regulation of Tonneins. At last in the synod of Charenton in 1631 (the same that admitted the Lutherans to Communion) it was declared, that preaching before or after baptism, but appertained to order, of which the church might dispose ; so that, that which was believed and practised so long, as prescribed by Jesus Christ Himself, was changed ; and without any testimony of the Scripture, was declared to be a thing which the church might order as she pleased" (Dis., ch. xi, art. 6). — The fact that infant baptism is not taught in the Bible affords a handle to be used against all who profess adherence to the written word and yet practice the bap- tism of infants. Hence Mr. French, the Eom. Cath. barrister, in his discussion with Dr. Cumming, asks, " Unless tradition come to the rescue of my learned friend, by what refining ingemuty will he call upon the Bible to protect him in baptizing infants?" He says, "My antagonist in argument, is in practice in actual hostility with the very book which he holds up as the fountain of all his tenets, as the rule of all his actions." — Prot. Disc., p. 443. Sauein, — " In the primitive church instruction preceded baptism, agreeably to the order of Jesus Christ, Go, teach all nations, baptizing them" (tier., vol. i, p. 301). To the declaration by Daille, " The apostles administered baptism to all believers," by Superville, "The apostles baptized those who embraced Christianity," and to similar expressions by others, our opponents might say, We admit this fact. These expressions, however, may mean, and sometimes do mean, that the apostlea baptized not either the tmconscious or those known to be ungodly, but those only who professed their faith in Christ. Stoer and Flatt have a paragraph entitled, " The silence of the New Testament concerning the baptism of children accounted for" (Bib. Theol., p. 222). This silence of Scripture respecting the supposed subjects of a positive rite, as others of the learned, they account for by gross assumptions and glaring fallacies, on a previous and Jewish church membership, &c., to all which the reader of this volume will find reference. Dr. Leland, in reply to the deistical author of Christianity not Founded onArgU' ment, who had spoken of its being inconsistent with reason for babes to "accept the terms of salvation by deputy," and to be " entitled to all the privileges of the most extensive faith by another's act," says : " At the first founding of the Christian church, the first work was to bring persons over to the faith of the gospel, by setting before them the evidence whereby it was confirmed ; and then, when they were once converted to the faith, they were, according to the Divine appointment, to be baptized." An Oxford divine says to the same deist : " You lay it down peremptorily that it is the pleasure and ordinance of God, that infants should bo baptized j because, I suppose, 406 SUBJECTS OF BAPTISM. it best suited your purpose. For you know very well that all Christians are not of a mind in this matter ; and it shows you are hard put to it for arguments against Christianity, to lay hold of a disputed practice, and build upon it as a plain express law of Christ. ... I do not remember any passage in the New Testament, which says expressly that infants should be baptized ; and, as I am informed by better judges, the evidences for this practice from antiquity, though very early, do not fully come up to the times of the apostles." — In Booth's Foicl. Ex., vol. ii, pp. 333, 334. Dr. BuNSEN. — " The Reformation accepted Pifidobaptism, although its leaders were more or less aware that it was neither Scriptural nor apostolic." Of things believed to be destitute of Divine authority Dr. B. speaks as "no more scriptural than infant baptism is. The gospel is silent upon the subject of the sprinkling of infants." — Hippol., vol. ii, pp. 105, 226; vol. iii, p. 205. Dr. Stark. — " There is not a single example to bo found in the New Testament where infants were baptized. In household baptisms there was always reference to the gospel's having been received. The New Testament presents just as good ground for infant communion. Therefore learned men (such as Salmatius, Arnold, Louis de Vives, Suicer, and W. Strabo) have regarded both infant baptism and infant com- munion as innovations introduced since tlio apostles' times." — Hi's, of Bap., p. 10. Dr. HoFLiNG. — " Truly an historical proof of infant baptism cannot be cited from the holy Scriptures" (Sac. of Bap., vol. i, p. 99). May not Mr. Gibbs well say, " If the apostles did baptize infants, how utterly unaccountable is this silence, in a history 80 minute, definite, and important ; and in which the administration of this ordinance is recorded no less than nine times !" — Def., p. 168. Dr. Jacobi. — "Infant baptism was established neither by Christ nor His apostles." — Kitto's Cy. Art. Bap. Dr. F. ScHLEiERMACHER. — " All traces of infant baptism which one will find in the New Testament, must first be put into it." — Chris. Theol., p. 383. Kheinard, Morus, and Doderlein, says Bretschneider, "affirm that infant baptism is not to be found in the Bible." — Theol., vol. ii, p. 578. Kaiser declares : " Infant baptism was not an original institution of Christianity." Bib. Theol, vol. i, p. 178. Dr. G. C. Knapp. — "The Christian baptism, repentance and faith in Jesus, are likewise the principal things that are required on the part of the subjects of this rite." "We find, therefore, even in the writings of the New Testament, that the candidates for baptism were previously instructed." " There is, therefore, no express command for infant baptism found in the New Testament, as Morus, p. 215, sec. xii, justly concedes." " There is no decisive example of this practice in the New Testament." — TJieol. Lee, p. 435. Prof. Hahn. — " Baptism, according to its original design, can be given only to adults, who are capable of true knowledge, repentance and faith. There is not in the Scripture a sure example of infant baptism to be found, and we must concede that the numerous opposers of it cannot be contradicted on gospel grounds." — Thesl., p. 556. Spangenbkrg. — " Infant baptism is neither expressly commanded, nor expressly forbidden in Scripture." — In Stier's Words, &c., vol. viii, p. 315. Hagenbach, after maintaining that infant baptism had no existence in the earliest apostolic church, says, " The passages from Scripture which are thought to intimate that infant baptism had come into use in the primitive church, are doubtful and good for nothing, viz., Mark x, 14 ; Matt, xviii, 4, 6 ; Acts ii, 38, 39, 41 ; Acts x, 46 ; 1 Cor. i, 16; Col. ii, 11, 12."— Hi's, of Doc, p. 210. Mr. Thorn, on Now Testament baptisms, truly speaks of " every instance on record being simply that of a proselyte from the ranks of the Gentiles or the Jews — baptized immediately after his belief of Christianity" finf. Bap,, p. 595). — This is a concession respecting every New Testament baptism on record. Let those who beUevo with Mr. T. reprove all others by the practice and advocacy of what alone has Divine authority. Let the foUowiug be applied to testimony already recorded, and that which will be adduced. — Dr. Keith : " The words of the living God are not to be perverted. The Scriptures must be fulfilled ; they cannot be broken, and ought not to be wrested. No imagination of man's heart is like the thoughts of the heart of the Lord ; nor any conceit of his like the (jpuusel uf the Lord ; cveu as the dream of a night is uot like His word HISTOEIC TESTIMONY. 407 that abideth for ever" (Tntro. to Com. on ha., p. xx). J. C. Eyie: "One point has to be ascertained, and only one — * What saith the Scripture of truth ' " (Home Truths, p. 68) ? Dr. J. Foote : " It is an admirable princij)le, to admit nothing into Christian worship, but what has express scriptural authority in reference to the Christian dispensation" (Lee. on Lnl(e,\o\.n, p. 314). Dr. J. Brown: "No religious service can be acceptable to Grod if He has not enjoined it" (Disc, and Sayings, &c., vol. i, p. 495). Dr. W. L. Alexander : " The Bible claims to be not only a full but a 2}erfect revelation of God's will to man" ( Anglo-Cath., p. 128). J.Wesley: "Let our Lord's submitting to baptism teach us a holy exactness in the observance of those institutions which owe their obliga- tion merely to a Divine command." " God owned His ordinance so as to make it the season of pouring forth the Holy Ghost upon Him [Christ]. And where can we expect this sacred efi'usion but in our humble attend- ance on Divine appointments" (Notes, on Matt, iii, 16) ? W. Chilling- worth : " The Bible, I say, the Bible only, is the religion of Protestants." Also, along with Pfedobaptist concessions on the want of precept or precedent in Holy Writ for the sanction of infant baptism now being adduced, the following from a " Declaration of the Faith, Church Order, and Discipline of the Congregational or Independent Dissenters," is worthy of meditation : — " The}' believe that Jesus Christ directed His followers to live together in Christian fellowship, and to maintain the communion of saints ; and that for this purpose, they are jointly to observe all Diyine' ordinances, and maintain that church order and discipline, which is either expressh'^ enjoined by inspired institution, or sanctioned by the undoubted example of the apostles and of apostolic churches." " They beUeve that the New Testament contains, either in the form of express statute, or in the example and practice of apostles and apostolic churches, all the articles of faith necessary to be believed, and all the principles of order and discipline requisite for constituting and governing Christian societies; and that human traditions, fathers and councils, canons and creeds, possess no authority over the faith and practice of Christians." — Cong. Year Booh, p. .xix. ' 1870. North Brit. Hcview. — '•' Scripture knoWn nothing of the baptism of infants. There is absolutely not a single trace of it to be found in the New Testament. There are passages which may be reconciled with it, if the practice can only be found to hare existed; but there is not one word which asserts its existence" (Aug., 1852, p. 388). Very true ; and consequently we make another application of Mr. Manly's words : " If Christ had intended or approved' of infant baptism, " He would, at least, have prospectively legislated for it; but He has not done so." "The New Testament contains no enactment, express or constructive, immediate or prospective, in favour of " infant baptism. And in the words of the Review we can say : " Inextricable con- fusion has been the inevitable consequence when language used of adults, of persona possessed of intelligence, and capable of spiritual acts, was gratuitously applied to unconscious infants ; and it cannot be matter for wonder that a totally new conception of the ordinance should have been created by such a perversion. So great was the difficulty felt to be by Luther, who retained infant baptism, and assured that the language used of baptism in Scripture applied to the baptized infant, that in order to fence out priestly super.stition, he imagined that God who bestowed regeneration, bestowed also by a direct miraculous act, that intelligent faith which the spiritual nature of Christianity demanded." The Eeviewer also rightly says, that " the non- recognition of the fact that the external rite of infant baptism is not the baptiem 408 SUBJECTS OF BAPTISM. epoken of in Scripture is the soui'ce of the palpable weakness of the English low Churchmen in the discussion of this question" (1852, pp. 388-390). He proceeds to say that " Evangelicals are afraid of looking at the truth in the face. They are hampered by a superstitious feeling about infant baptism. So long as they refuse to admit the real truth, so long must they be content to can-y on this all-important controversy at a fearful disadvantage ; and so long must they continue to experience the bitter consequences of the fact, that here the spii-it of popery, under one or other of its most specious forms, has for the last three centuries retained a footing within the very stronghold of Protestantism, from which it has never yet been dislodged. But a brighter day is dawning. Dr. M'Neile, Mr. Litton, we may almost add the Archbishop of Canterbury, are perceiving that the practice of infant baptism is not found in Scripture. When the fact is universally recognized, the controversy will assume a new form. The ground will be completely cut away from the sacramental theory ; and Protestants will have the benefit of their own principle — the appeal to Scripture as the form of religious truth." GovETT. — " I would therefore call on all who value the gospel of Christ to forsake this ' tradition of men' [infant sprinkling] ; remembering that whatsoever of rite and ceremony is not authorized in Scripture, must be given up. And, when we see how severely the Lord Jesus reproves those who set up so [seemingly] innocent a tradition as the washing of hands, Mark vii [a thing not forbidden of the law], we may learn how displeasing to Him it must be, to adulterate by any human learning His pure institutions." — Tes. of Em. Paul., p. 71. Oxford Tracts. — " There is not a single text in the Bible enjoining infant baptism." —In Crap's Inf. Bap. Unsc, &c., p. 4. Dr. Neandee. — "At first all those who acknowledged Jesus as the Messiah, separated from the mass of the Jewish people, and formed themselves into a distinct community. In the course of time it became apparent who were genuine, and who were false disciples ; but all who acknowledged Jesus as the Messiah were baptized without fuller or longer instruction, such as in later times has preceded baptism. . . . Believing that Jesus was the Messiah, they ascribed to Him the whole idea of what the Messiah was to be, according to the meaning and Spirit of the Old Testament promises, rightly understood ; they acknowledged Him as the Redeemer from sin, the Iluler of the kingdom of God, to whom their whole lives were to be devoted, whose laws were to be followed in all ways. . . . V-Tioever acknowledged Jesus as the Messiah received Him consequently as the Infallible, Divine Prophet, and implicitly submitted to His instructions as communicated by His personal ministry, and after- wards by His inspired organs, the apostles. Hence baptism, at this period, in its peculiar Christian meaning, referred to this one article of faith, which constituted the essence of Christianity, as baptism into Jesus, into the name of Jesus" (His. of Plant- ing, &c., vol. i, pp. 20, 21. Bohn's Edi.). " It was a standing regulation in primitive times that all those who professed to believe the announcement of Jesus as the Messiah, should be baptized" (p. CO). "Since baptism marked the entrance into communion with Christ, it resulted from the nature of the rite that a confession of faith in Jesus as the Redeemer would be made by the person to be baptized." " As baptism was closely united with a conscious entrance on Christian communion, faith and baptism were always connected with one another ; and thus it is in the highest degree probable that baptism was performed only in instances where both could meet together, and that the practice of infant baptism was unknown at this period" (p. 162). "If we wish to ascertain from whom such an institution" (infant baptism) " originated, we sIioitUI .say, certainly not immediately from Clirist Himself. Was it from the primitive church in Palestine, from an injunction given by the earlier apostles ? But among the Jewish Christians, circumcision was held as a seal of the covenant, and hence, they had so much less occasion to make use of another dedica- tion for their children. Could it then have been Paul, who first among heathen Christians introduced this alteration by the use of baptism ? But this would agree least of all with the peculiar Christian characteristics of this apostle. He who says of himself that Christ sent him not to baptize, but to preach the gospel, he who always kept his eye fixed on one thing, justification by faith, and so carefully avoided every- thing that would give a handle or supi^ort to the notion of a justification by outward things (the sarliika) — how could he have set up infant baptism against the circum- cision that continued to be practised by the Jewish Christians i' In this case the dispute carried on with the Judaizing party, on the necessity of cu'cumcision, would easily have given an opporttinity of introducing this substitute into the controversy, if it had really existed. The evidence arising from silence on this topic, has therefore the greater weight" (pp. 163, 164). In vol. ii, p. 336, he says : " We have every reason for bolding iat'aat baptism to bo no apostolic institution, and that it was something HISTOEIC TESTIMONY. 409 foreign to that first stage of Christian development. At first, baptism necessarily marked a distinct era in life, when a person passed over from a different religious stand-point to Christianity." Also, in his Ch. His., he says : " Baptism at first was administered only to adults, as men were accustomed to conceive baptism and faith as strictly connected. Tljere does not appear to be any reason for deriving infant baptism from an apostolical institution" (vol. i, p. 430). He is " certain that Christ did not ordain infant baptism." " At the beginning," says he, "those (among the Jews) who confessed their belief in Jesus as the Messiah, or (among the GentUes) their belief in one God, and in Jesus as the Messiah, were, as appears from the New Testa- ment, immediately baptized. In coiu-se of time, however, it was thought necessary that those who wished to be received into the church should be prepared by a careful instruction and a strict examination" (vol. i, p. 422). — My own conviction is, that no candid reader of the New Testament and early ecclesiastical history can come to any other conclusion than that the first departure from apostolic baptism was the baptiz- ing of the professing believer after longer preparation and examination. Dr. N., speaking of the early, but not apostolic baptism, says, " The baptismal engagement was looked upon in the following light : — The candidate for baptism was supposed to be leaving the kingdom of sin, of darkness, of Satan, which, as a heathen devoted to his lusts, he had hitherto served, and to be entering the kingdom of God and of Christ. He was, therefore, solemnly to renounce all fellowship with that kingdom of which he had before been a subject" (pp. 427, 428). Also (p. 429), " In conformity with the original institution and the original import of the symbol, it was generally adminis- tered by immersion, as a sign of total baptism into the Holy Spirit, of being entirely penetrated by His grace." In connexion with these concessions we feel authorized to apply Mr. Manly's words : "If Christ had intended or approved" of infant baptism, *' He would, at least, have prospectively legislated for it ; but He has not done so." " The New Testament contains no enactment, express or constructive, immediate or prospective in favour of" infant baptism. On this subject there is the silence of death. Bp. Bkowne. — " We read notliiug of infants being baptized by any of the apostles." —Expo, of 39 Art, p. 657. E. A. Litton. — "Adult baptism, the only case upon wliich we possess clear Scrip- tural data." He further speaks of "the exceptional case of infants born within the Christian pale (exceptional as regards Scripture, though ecclesiastically the ordinary one)." — G-uide to Study of Ho. Scrip., p. 147. Dr. J. Het. — " With regard to the Scriptures, what can be deduced from them lies in a small compass. On the one hand they mention no instance of infant bap- tism : on the other hand they afford no instance of baptism being delayed." " How soon any accounts of infant baptism appear in reputable writers is a matter in dispute." "The first proofs are only by implication." — Lee. in Div., vol, ii, pp. 507, 509. Abp. Whateley. — " The silence of the sacred writers on the subject is, at least so far as any express directions are concerned, admitted on all hands" (In Tes. of Em. Peed., p. 50). The cruel Bonner taught respecting " The cliristening of infants," that "the most wholesome authority of the church doth command it ;" and, before him, the president of the Council of Trent testified respecting the heresy of the Baptists, that it was to be overthown, " not so much by the testimony of the Scriptures as by the authority of the church" (Tracts on Lib. of Cons., pp. cxxv, Ixxxiii). — Does not the following from Abp. Wliateley apply partly to himself, and without limitation to many ? " Though we do not, like the Romish church, proclaim infallibility and pro- fess to be under the giudance of Christ's vicegerent on earth, who is authorized to ' develop' new doctrines, and to change Divine institutions (such as denying the cup to the laity), still we are at liberty, it seems, to act as if we did possess this infallible authority, and to improve upon the principles and practice of the apostles at our own discretion ! I shall not undertake to refute this theory, because I cannot but think that any one who can, on calm reflection, adopt it, must be beyond the reach of argument." — Ess., 2nd Se., p. 282. Dean M'Neile. — "Concerning the efficacy of baptism upon infants — concerning the baptism of infants at all, I do not know one word of God."— In Macallan On Sa^., p. 121. 410 SUBJECTS 0¥ BAPTISM. Dr. LiNGARD (a Eom. Cath.)-— " Infant baptism is not taught in the Scriptures, and can only be learned from tradition." — In S. Davis, on Bap., p. 9. Dr. L. Woods admits " the want of an express positive command of Scripture," and " that the New Testament does not contain express mention of infant baptism" CWorhs, vol. iii, pp. 322, 387) ; but like many others he erroneously endeavours (p. 389, &c.) to account for " this silence of the Scriptures and of the early fathers respecting^ the baptism of children." Dr. Wardlaw, opposing Dr. Halley's indiscriminate baptism, says: "In New Testament phraseology, baptism is connected with faith, with repentance, with the glad reception of the word, with the opening of the heart to attend to it, &c." The Scriptures " imply professed faith and repentance as a pre-requisite to baptism — as the order of apostolic practice, and consequently of Christ's appointment."— Jj)p., pp. 302, 307. CouREYER.— " I do not, in fact, find anything in Scripture that obliges us to extend to infants the necessity of baptism." — Decl. of Last Sen., p. 70. Dr. Chr. Ludw. Couard. — " ' He who believeth and is baptized,' says the Lord, ' shall be saved.' As faith and baptism are constantly so clearly connected together, men might reasonably hesitate to baptize infants, inasmuch as faith with them would be impossible. Neither has the Lord himself ordained infant baptism. As little can we prove strictly and convincingly that the apostles baptized children, although we know that they baptized whole families."— I'/ie Life of Chris, chmng the First Tliree Cent., p. 202. Dr. LoBEGOTT Lange, professor in the University of Jena. — " All attempts to make out infant baptism from the New Testament fail. It is totally opposed to the spirit of the apostoUc age, and to the fundamental principles cf the New Testament." —Inf. Bap., p. 101. Dr. Lange. — " Would the Prote.stant church fulfil and attend to its final destiny, the baptism of now-born children must be abolished. . . . It cannot, on any point of view, be justified by the holy Scriptures" (His. of Prot., pp. 34, 35).— This and the above are from an anonymou.s work entitled Baptism, its Design, &c., p. 71, Some others are also from the same treatise. Dr. Lindner. — " For whom is baptism appointed ? For adults, not for children : for adults of all times — not only of those times." " There can be no question about any infant baptism if tlie Christian church will remain true to the gospel. Neither the baptism of John nor Christian baptism can be fulfilled in respect of new-born children."— r/ie Pattern, &c., p. 275. Olshausen. — "By the introduction of infant baptism, which was certainly not apostolical," &c. " There is altogether wanting any conclusive proof for the baptism of children in the age of the apostles. In the words describing the institution of baptism, in Matt, xxviii, 19, the connection of math eteuein with haiHizein and diclaskcin, appears quite positively to oppose the idea that the baptism of children entered at first into the view of Christ." — Com., on Matt, xxviii, 16-20; Acts xvi, 15 ; Matt, iii, 1. Bengel. — " The necessity of regeneration, in the first place, and then of baptism, is here confirmed." — Gno., on John iii, 5. T. Boston. — " There is no example of baptism recorded in the Scriptures where any were baptized but such as appeared to have a saving interest in Christ" fWorks, p. 384). He repeats the truth, that "All the examples of baptism recorded in the Scriptvu-e hold forth none to have been baptized but those that, before baptism, appeared to have a saving interest in Christ." — Such language as this from Mr. B. and others, although levelled at indiscriminate baptism, condemns also that of infants. Venema. — " Before persons were baptized it was necessary for them to believe the preaching of the gospel, which faith they were to profess in baptism." — DL'^s. Sac, 1. li, c. xiv, § 6. Poole. — " I cannot be of their mind who think that persons may be baptized before they be taught: we want precedents of any such baptism in Scripture." — Anno., on Matt, xxviii, 19. Bp. Prideaux. — " Pssdobaptism . . . rest on no other Divine right than Episcopacy" fFasci. Con., loc. iv, § 3, p. 210). This and the preceding are extracted from Pengilly's Guide to Baptism, after which ho adds in a note : " In the Edict drawn up in the year 1547, by command of Chai-les V, Emperor of Germany, to allay disputes between tlie Eomanists and the Keformers, Tradition is expressly stated as the ground of infant baptism : ' Hahef prcntcrca Ecclesia traditiones, &c. ; Hujus generis sunt Baptisuius 2>arviUoruin et alia;' i.e., ' Tlic Churc'.i, moreover, has tradi- tions handed down to those times from Christ and the apostles, through the hands of HISTOEIC TESTIMONY. 411 the Bishops : which whoever would overturn, he must deny the same (viz. the Church) to be the pillar and ground of truth. Of this sort are the baptism of little ones, and other things.' " In Dr. Eyland's Candid Statement, Notes, p. 28. EiGALTiu.s. — " In the Acts of the Apostles, we read that both men and women were baptized when they believed the gospel preached by Philip, without any mention being made of infants."— .i?ino. in Cypr. Ex>is. ad Fidum. T. Knight. — " Nor was baptism itself the first declaration of theii- being Chris- tians, for none was admitted to baptism, much less to the Supper of the Lord, without a previous confession of the Lord Jesus Christ." — Amyn., &c., pp. 210, 211. Dr. M. Stuart. — " Commands, or plain and certain examples, in the New Testa- ment relative to it, I do not find." — On Baiitism, p. 101. Dr. Tvf EEDiE. — " It becomes more difficult to explain the grounds on which infants are to be baptized. We have no command, in so many words, for baptizing little children ; and hence many conclude that they should not be baptized at all." — On Bap., p. 47. S. T. Coleridge, having mentioned the worthlessness of arguments in favour of infant baptism from the baptism of households and from circumcision, asserts that, " the texts appealed to as commanding or authorizing infant baptism, are all without exception made to bear a sense neither designed nor deducible ; and likewise that (historically considered) there exists no sxifficient positive evidence, that the baptism of infants was instituted by the apostles in the practice of the apostolic age." — Aids to Reflection, p. 361. E. Montgomery. — " Scripture makes no direct and authoritative reference to infant baptism at all. It cannot bo shown that Scriptiire gives any open, plain, and decisive precept to baptize infants" (The Gospel, in Advance, &c., p. 402). And yet, according to Dr. A. M'Leod — with whom in this I agree — " Divine appointment alone constitutes a Divine ordinance." The Almighty," says he, " hath bound us, for our good and His glory, to ordinances of his o^vn appointment : infinite goodness hath adapted the Christian worship to the state of the church : no man can reverence God and trifle with His institutions ; the value of any mode of worship depends entirely upon His approbation, and He disapproves man's inventions : every false mode of worship is therefore useless and pernicious." "It is therefore criminal to establish or countenance any ceremony of man's invention as a part of Christian worship." " Faithfulness to Christ demands a practical administration of His ordinances." — £c. Cat., pp. 17, 36, 38, 61. Ill a Discussion oii Infant Baptism, at Kirchentag, in 1854, Dr. Sanders says, " I repeat it, we want not dogma, but Scripture. I rejoice in the conclusion to which the reporter has come ; infant baptism cannot certainly be beheved to have been introduced under mere human influence. But I have been astonished to find nothing but dogmas, nothing but dic- tatorial decisions." Prof. Dorner : "I think it is to be regTetted that the difficulty of the problem has not been sufficiently recognized, nor the diligence with which the reporter has laboured, appreciated." Dr. Ebrard : "It is far easier to say, ' Give us not dogmas (theory) but Scripture,' than to comply with the demand." Prof. Steinmeyer, who is said to have delivered an elaborate report on the subject, and to whom reference is made by the others, says, in reply to those who mshed Scripture, not theory — " To justify infant baptism on Scripture grounds is a very difficult thing. I stand upon the ground of the Reformers' Confessions. Looking up to God I enter upon exegetical labours. Like my colleagues who have Bpoken, I wish to find infant baptism justified from the Bible. No dic- tatorial dogmas avail us here. ' Prove it out of the Bible,' must be the demand. I do not rest satisfied with my present opinion, and confess that infant baptism is a problem not yet fully solved" (Disc, at the Kir., as reported in Evan. Chris, of Nov., 1854). The predicament of these German magnates is the position of many other Psedobaptist divines. 412 SUBJECTS OF BAPTISM. Their confessions on Psedobaptism so much resemble those of Bp. Taylor, on which Mr. Booth has so well animadverted, that I shall quote the remark of the Bishop and the comment of the Baptist. Mr. B. says : " A remarkable declaration of Bp. Taylor's occurs to remembrace. The declaration to which I refer, was made by him when taking a retrospect of the arguments usually produced on both sides of this dispute, and is as follows. ' I think there is so much to be pretended against that [Paedo- baptism] which I believe to be the truth, that there is much more truth than evidence on our side' (Lib. of Prop., sec. xviii, p. 245). Re- flecting on this language of the learned prelate, I am pleased, I am puzzled, I am discouraged. I am j^leased, gi-eatly pleased, to hear a person of the bishop's erudition and penetration acknowledge, that much, so much may be said against infant baptism. I am yet more pleased to hear him tacitly confess, that greatly preponderating evidence is on our side. I am puzzled, however, extremely puzzled ; for I cannot imagine how the right reverend author, notwithstanding all his learning and all his acumen, discovered truth without evidence. This, it must be confessed, is a wonderful secret ; and he would certainly have laid posterity under great obligations, had he but made the arcanum public. Mankind might have reaped a harvest of benefits from the discovery of such an invention ; because it would have been of admirable use in many a pinching case besides Peedobaptism, to which it is here applied. I am equally nonplused, when thinking of truth and evidence taking opposite sides of a controverted subject. Having never heard of any quarrel between them, either before or since the flood, I took it for granted, that they were leagued in eternal friendship ; whereas it now appears, on the word of a bishop, that they cannot agree about infant baptism. This being the case, I am greatly discouraged, in respect of an issue to the present controversy. For as truth and evidence do not depend on the pleasure of man, they are stubborn things ; and we may justly presume they will not easily quit their stations out of complaisance to either side. While, therefore, each abides by her party, the Baptists, it is likely, will plead preponderating evidence, and firmly insist upon it as a maxim of logical prudence, That our assent should always be proportioned to the degree of evidence (Dr. Watts' Logic, part ii, ch. iv, dir. viii). On the other hand, we need not wonder if Pasdobaptists exult in the possession of truth, because it is a precious jewel ; and such truth especially as is attained without evidence, must be precious indeed, it being so extremely scarce. Despairing, therefore, of putting an end to any controversy where truth and evidence take different sides, I must here Lay down my pen." — Pad. Ex., vol. ii, pp. 341, 342. Many Piedobaptist expositions of Christ's commission and other portions of Scripture, previously quoted, as well as many explicit state- ments on the nature of baptism, teach that believers alone are the rightful subjects of Christian baptism. The following may also be added. Leibnitz. — " It muHt be confessed tliat without the authority of the church, the baptism of childvoii could not bo adecxuately defended. — For thoro is no example in ita HISTOEIC TESTIMONY. 413 favour in the several Scriptures, which appear, besides the water, to demand faith also." — Sys. of Theol. Bp. Kenrick (of Philadelphia). — "Without the aid of tradition, the practice of baptizing infants cannot be satisfactorily vindicated, the Scripture proofs on this point not being thoroughly conclusive." — Trea. on Ba^). A. W. Thorold. — " Whatever may be the difficulties of belief or the diversities of doctrine about holy baptism — and they chiefly spring from the silence of Scripture about the baptism of infants." — On the Pres., &c., p. 33. Gesenius, being informed that many in America reject infant baptism, and bap- tize only on a profession of faith, replied, " That is perfectly right ; that is according to the Bible." — Chris. Rev., vol. iii, p. 201. Baumgarten. — "Infant baptism can be supported, neither by a distinct apostolical tradition, nor apostolical practice." — His. of Theol., p. 1208. Meyer. — " The baptism of children is not to be considered as an apostolic institu- tion, but arose gradually in the post-apostolic age, after early and long continued resistance, in connection with certain views of doctrine, and did not become general in the church tUl after the time of Augiistine. The defence of infant baptism transcends the domain of exegesis." — In Green's Hackett on Acts, vol. ii, p. 20. J. Conder. — " At the first promulgation of Christianity, baptism . . . formed an expression of religious obedience." " The believing reception of the doctrine of the apostles, having given birth to a moral change, of which baptism was at that early period not less an evident token than an emblem." — On None, pp. 265, 447, 448. E. Bickersteth. — " The care of God over His church in not more explicitly com- manding by positive and direct institution appointing the baptism of infants, is strikingly seen from the perverse use made of their baptism without such direct institution. Self-righteous formalism grew to a prodigious extent under the outward services of Judaism ; and the simple rites even of Christianity have been abused to the undue magnifying of the priesthood and of the sacraments. If with so little that is said upon the subject, and infant baptism itself flowing rather from inference than positive appointment, men have ventured to identify baptism and regeneration, had then such baptism been more prominent in the Scripture, we may easily conceive how much more extensively it would have been abused. The omissions of Scripture are full of instruction" (On Bap., p. 121). — True, the omissions of Scripture are full of instruction ; but this instruction is best regarded, is most honoured, by omitting what Scripture omits, and practising what Scripture enjoins ; by omitting infant and practising believers' baptism. As the institutions of Moses — whatever omission by any in the next age might be supposed to exist — allowed of no improvement or altera- tion, so the institutions of Christ, as revealed in His word, are perfect, and to the end of time unimproveable and unalterable. J. Hewlett. — "At the time the Scriptures were written, none were baptized but converts." — Com. on Mark xvi, 16. Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge. — " It is true that repentance and faith were required of persons whose baptism is recorded in Scripture, before that holy sacrament was administered unto them." — Cott. Eea., p. 145. W. Palmer, who in destitution of evidence believes that infant baptism prevailed in the time of Irensus, says, " As our Lord had required faith in His doctrines, as well as baptism, in order to salvation, the church was bound to ascertain, as far as possible, that those who desired baptism were believers, and therefore to require from them a profession of their faith" fEc. His., p. 56). — My views on the necessity of bap- tism to salvation are given elsewhere. Dr. E. DE Pressense. — Baptism " is in direct connexion with faith, that is to say, with the most free and most individual act of the human soul." "In the apostolic age it was not administered to infants. We cannot quote any positive fact in the New Testament that proves infant baptism." J. C. Etle pertinently and energetically, but inconsistently with himself, thus reasons with his opponents: "A regeneration which only means admission into a state of ecclesiastical privileges, may be ancient and primitive, for anything I know. But something more than this is wanted. A few plain texts of Scripture are needed ; and they are yet to be found." " I say unhesitatingly, to those who hold the view that there are two regenerations, they can bring forward no plain text in proof of it. I firmly believe that no plain reader of the Bible only, would ever find this view for himself, and that goes very far to suspect it as an idea of man's invention." " When a doctrine of the everlasting gospel is at stake, I can call no man Master. The words of the old philosopher are never to be forgotten, ' I love Plato, I love Socrates, but I love truth better than either.' " — Home Truths, pp, 77, 79. GuEEiCKE. — " We cannot adduce any direct apostolical authority for the practice of infant baptism."— Cftr. Ant., p. 237. 414 SUBJECTS OF BAPTISM. De Wette. — " In the time of the apostles children were not baptized." — In Cole- man's Antiq., p. 117. Bp. Wilson. — " In every one of these and other passages describing' the adminis- tration of baptism, the inward spiritual change of the fallen heart of man from ignorance, obduracy, and rebellion against God, to some beginnings of knowledge, penitence, and spiritual life, was begun before the sacrament was received." "We have no details whatever of that of infants in the Acts of the Apostles nor in the Epistles." Notwithstanding this, " The Divine authority for baptizing them," says he, " is always taken for granted." Again, " In all the passages already cited describ- ing the administration of baptism, the stress is laid on the ' faith,' the ' repentance,' the ' calling on the name of the Lord,' ' the word.' In like manner in other texts." "It is," says he, "a most important point to be again borne in mind that all the instances of baptism detailed in the New Testament, relate from the circumstances of the time, as we have already said, to converts capable of repentance and faith, and for themselves believing the gospel" (Lee. on Col., ii, 12). Bp. W. might have omitted the words, " from the circumstances of the times." Things revealed belong to us. Is there no reason to say that our opponents " introduce into their conclusion an entire class of individuals never thought of in their premises ?" Dr. Hodge. — " The Scriptures contemplate regeneration as preceding baptism." Dr. G. Hill. — " The practice of the apostles in administering baptism, judging by the few instances which the book of Acts has recorded, corresponds to the order intimated in the commission of our Lord, where the instruction to make men disciples is supposed to precede baptism." " The practice of connecting instruction with the administration of baptism, rests upon apostolical authority." — Lee. in Div., vol. ii, pp. 331, 332. Dr. W. Cunningham. — " Adult baptism, then, exhibits the ordinance, as it is usually brought before us, and as it is directly and formally spoken about in the New Testament." " It is evident, from all the representations given us on this subject in the inspired account of the labours of the apostles, that men first of all had the gospel preached to them, were warned of their guilt and danger as sinners, and were instructed in the way of salvation through Christ, and that thus, through the effectual working of God's Spirit, they were enabled to believe what they were told, to embrace Christ freely offered to them, and to receive Him as their Lord and Master. They were told, among other things, that it was Christ's will that they should be baptized, and shovdd thereby publicly profess their faith in Him, and be formally admitted into the society which He had founded." — Brit, and For. Evan. Rev., for Oct., 1860. W. EoBEETSON, the historian, after referring to some who contended that the sacrament of baptism " ought to be administered only to persons grown up to years of understanding, and should be performed not by sprinkling them with water, but by dipping them in it," adds : " This peculiar notion concerning baptism has the appear- ance of being founded in the practice of the church in the apostolic age." — His. of Chas. 5th, p. 180. Dr. P. Fairbaien. — " Baptism was administered by the apostles, not for the pur- pose of creating a relation between the individual and Christ, but of accrediting and completing a relation already formed" (Kev. of Laiu, &c.). See the preceding words of Dr. F., at p. 372. Also, after having spoken of scriptural baptism as believers' bap- tism, he says : " A certain accommodation, it will be iinder stood, requires to be made in applying this scriptural view to the baptism of infants.'" Dr. Smith, an Episcopalian, in defending Eev. J. P. Hubbard, an Episcopalian clergyman, of Rhode Island, who was recently brought into the court for exchanging pulpits with a Baptist minister, says, " It would be hard to find in the pure word of God an absolute command in reference to the baptism of infants. Indeed the argu- ment in favour of the practice of the church in this respect has always rested upon church authority rather than upon the express teachings of the word of God. . . . There is no express command or doctrine laid down in the word of God enjoining infant baptism. . . . There is no direct and explicit teaching, doctrine, and direction in reference to this subject." Abp. Hughes (U. S.), in his Eoman Catholic Catechism, says that the " first principle" of Protestants is, " that nothing is to be practised which is not authorized by scriptural example ; but it does not appear from Scripture that even one infant was ever baptized ; therefore Protestants should reject, on their own principle, infant baptism as an unscriptural usage." Evoi-y writer quoted on the Pentecostal baptism of the three thousand, 'and on subsequent baptisms recorded by the Spirit of inspira- tion, who teaches that the baptized were believers, or that a credible profession of faith in Christ was then requisite to baptism, confirms our view of inspired historic testimony to believers' baptism. Thus HISTORIC TESTIMONY. 415 Newman Hall, in his Homeward Bound, when speaking of the Pentecost, says that the " sign of grace preceded the sacraments." " Repentance was to precede baptism." " Repentance was a fruit of grace already received by those who presented themselves to be baptized ; and baptism was their open profession of Christ." This is what we desire to be present practice. Dr. P. ScHAFF says of apostolic times : " The act of baptism was preceded by brief instruction respecting the main facts of the gospel history and an injunction of repentance and faith in Jesus as the promised Messiah and the Saviour of the world." "The more thorough indoctrination in apostolic truth came after." Though he thus scripturally represents apostolic practice, he believes, with many others that are quoted, that infant baptism, of which Scripture is sUent, was nevertheless practised. He teaches that "the earlier baptism (John, iv. 2), previous to the glorification of Christ, and therefore before the Holy Ghost was given (John, vii. 39), was not essen- tially diiferent from John's baptism of repentance." — Hi's., pp. 567, 568. H. W. Beechee says, " I concede and assert, first, that infant baptism is nowhere commanded in the New Testament. No man can find a passage that commands it ; and if it can stand only on that ground, we may as well give it up first as last." " It is not commanded by Scripture ; there is no well-attested case of its administration in the New Testament ; and it is not brought down as a substitute for circumcision." He admits the origin of infant baptism as every intelligent and candid reader of ecclesiastical history docs, saying, " Wo do not believe that Adam's sin is entailed upon others, and that baptism takes it off; but we acknowledge that the baptism of infants sprang from that notion. And when men say that it originated from a dogma that all Protestant Christendom set aside, it is true.'" — Ser., on Mark x, 13-16.* Dr. A. Barnes. — "There was an examination among the early Christians when a candidate was about to be baptized, and of course such an examination is proper now. Whatever was the ground of the examination, it related to that which existed before the baptism was administered" (Com., on 1 Pe. iii, 21). Dr. B., and others who speak similarly, may say that this is their practice in regard to imbaptized adults. But if Scripture thus teaches respecting bcnitism — saying nothing about the age of its recipient, the words adult and infant being equally without a mention or a hint — it necessarily follows that baptism belongs only to those who have at the time the " good conscience" which it betokens. And this ought to be admitted by Dr. B. and others, as most who have written at length on baptism have in substance, along with him, spoken of " the good conscience, the renovated heart, the piirified soul, of which bap- tism is the emblem" (Com., on 1 Pe. iii, 21). In my concluding remarks I may make a further appeal to those who admit the lack of precept or precedent in the New Testament for the baptism of infants, and who yet may admit with Calvin that " a sacrament, unless it rest upon a certain foundation of the word of God, hangeth but by a thread." — On the Sac, p. 61. Dr. J. MoRisoN. — " The first messengers of the cross did not baptize and then teach ; but they first taught and then baptized. When their testimony to Jesus of Nazareth, who had been crucified and raised again from the dead, produced incipient conviction, roused the energies of conscience, and led to a hearty acquiescence in the minds of listening converts, the badge of discipleship was then put upon them, and they were thenceforward separated to the service of Christ. Baptism was only instructive and beneficial, as it became the sign of those great spiritual blessings exhibited in the gospel testimony, and realized by the power of faith. It was not the Divine mode of making men disciples, but the visible rite by which those who had already become disciples, were formally united to the company of the saved." ''When they believed ' the truth as it is in Jesus,' they were then recognized as trophies of the cross, and their baptism became the significant symbol of their fellowship with the Saviour, and their union to His church." " They believed, and were baptized ; they first became Christians under the power of Divine truth and grace, and then they were enrolled amongst the followers of Christ by means of a rite which proclaimed them to be ' washed and sanctified, and justified in the name of the Lord Jesus, and by the Spirit of our God.' " " The heralds of mercy relied on the power of the gospel. They wielded the sword of the Spirit. They appealed to the convictions of men, and confided in the power of God. When the anxious inquiry was heard, ' What must we do to be saved ?' they pointed the awakened penitent to the cross of Christ, and urged • Two former extracts taken from a correct report of this sermon, ought to have been taken from the sevraon as subsequently published. 416 SUBJECTS OF BAPTISM. him to assume the badge of the Christian profession. It was thus, and thus only, that the distinction between the church and the world was sacredly preserved" (Homi., pp. 263-266). — The apostles acting "thus, and Urns only," they knew neither infant nor indiscriminate baptism. I wonder not that members of Pffidobaptist churches should still cling to infant baptism, while some of their leaders teach that "the baptism of infants was the undoubted practice of the Christian church, in its purest and first ages" (Towgood, on Bap., p. 39) ; ' but I grieve that assertions so unfounded should be made by such men. At the same time the acknowledgments of others on Scriptural countenance to infant baptism remind me of what I read in the Freeman of Dec. 11th, 1868 : " A mem- ber of a Presbyterian church lately paid a visit to his minister. ' I have called upon you, sir,' said John, ' because I am greatly concerned about infant baptism.' ' What books have you been reading on the subject, John,' asked John's minister. ' Sir,' replied John, * I have read no book on the subject except the New Testament.' ' Ah John, John,' replied his minister, ' if I had read no other book on the subject of baptism than the New Testament, I should have been a Baptist myself.' " Notwith- standing the concession in this quotation, I would hope that such a reply is rare in utterance or feeling. Dr. W. Hanna. — " Baptism was the initiating rite by which members were to be admitted into tlie Christian society." " At first, and when the society was in process of formation, gathering its members out of the Jewish and heathen communities, in the midst of which it had its birth, it was obviously required of those admitted by that door that they should make a credible profession of their faith in Christ, such faith constituting the essential element of that character to be possessed and exhibited by all true members of the chiirch. Baptism was to be administered, therefore — could only with a meaning and purpose be administered — to adults who made such pro- fession." " It is to such baptisms as these, the baptism of adults of the first converts to Christianity, that the passages I have already quoted from the New Testament particularly apply" (The Forty, &c., pp. 259, 260). Thus he writes after quoting every baptism recorded in the Acts of the Apostles, and every express mention of baptism in the inspired Epistles. He says, " Why, then, do we baptize infants ? No express mention is made of infants in the command of Christ which instituted this rite ; no distinct case of the baptism of infants is mentioned in the sacred narrative" (p. 265). And the good man fancies an authority for infant baptism from circum- cision, and that tvltoi it became known in the church of Christ that baptism came in the room of circumcision, then did infant baptism begin. " Once that it was perceived that the new rite of baptism took the place of the old rite of circumcision, would not the universal Jewish instinct prompt the practice of having their infants with them- selves baptized" (p. 287) ? What a pity that the whole New Testament is as silent on baptism taking the place of circumcision as it is on believers " having their infanta with themselves baptized !" What a pity that baptism as having taken the place of circumcision was beginning to be discovered in the time of Cyprian rather than in apostolic times ! Admitting that "one decisive instance is as good as a thousand," whether the instance of an inspired command to baptize infants, or the instance of an inspired record of baby baptism, how deplorable for Pffldobaptists that no such record exists ! Is it to be wondered that one of our violent opponents should say that the import of Scriptural facts on baptism "is not to be decided by the conceptions of" "a plain un-lettered English man, with the New Testa- ment only in his hand" (C. Taylor's Facts, &e., p. 21). R. Baxter more worthily says : "What man dare go in a way with neither precept nor HISTORIC TESTIMONY. 417 example to warrant It, from a way that hath a full current of both ?" " Who knows what will please God but Hhnself ? And hath He not told us what He expecteth from us ? Can that be obedience which hath no command for it ? Is it not also to accuse God's ordinances of insuffi- ciency, as well as His word, as if they were not sufficient either to please Him or help our own graces ? 0 the pride of man's heart, that instead of being a law-obeyer, will be a law-malcer ; and instead of being true worshippers, they will be worship-makers !" "For my part, I do not fear that God will be angi-y with me for doing no more than He hath commanded me, and for sticking close to the rule of His word in matter of worship ; but I should tremble to add or diminish." — Plain Scr. Pr., pp. 24, 303. The testimony of Barclay and other Friends is as explicit as that of any Pfcdobaptist, that the baptism of infants " is a mere human tradition, for which neither precept nor practice is to be found in all the Scripture" (ApoL, prop. xii). Their testimony is given at some length in Booth's Pffdoh. Examined. J. Farear in opposition to the evidence whicli so abundantly exists, daringly asserts that infant baptism " can be traced up to the first periods of the church, and has been, till within modem times, its uncontradicted practice." — Bib. Die. Art. Bap. W.J. Shrewsbury teaches that the subjects of John's baptism "were in all probability adults only," and that at 'first much more was required than baptism itself, even repentance towards God and faith in our Lord Jesus Christ." — Inf. Bap., pp. 212, 23G. Dr. W. Cooke says, " The Episcopal church of England, the Presbyterian church of Scotland, the Independents, the various sections of Methodists, the Lutheran Church, the Helvetian Church, the French Reformed Chiirch, the Moravians, the Greek Church, and the Church of Rome, all baptize infant children, and trace the doctrine and practice up to the verge of the apostolic age, and base the duty and the privilege on the immutable authority of God" (Inf. Bap., p. 17). They trace the practice nearly to the apostolic age, and yet base it on Divine aixthority ! The exist- ence of infant baptism can be proved soon after apostolic times, but it can be inferred from Scripture that such a practice was divinely sanctioned ! The tracing of infant baptism to the verge of the apostolic age, as I shall subsequently endeavour to prove, is by misinterpreting the words of Irenjeus and others. Dr. Hey teaches not only that "the most difficult matter to settle is, how the Christians acted in early times with regard to the baptizing of infants," and that Wall's History does not remove all doubts ; but that the very words of the rubric in the Anglican church which say that it is to he retained as most agreeable with the institution of Christ, imply " that God favourably alloweth infant baptism, which plainly acknowledgeth an imperfection in it : it is called a ' charitable work,' a.nd so distinguished from an indispensable duty of a kind perfectly determinate. The next expression of the Article is in the same spirit : ' As most agreeable with the institution of Christ,' There is more latitude in doing a thing as suitable to an institution than as enjoined by positive command" (Lee. in Div., vol. iv, pp. 277, 295). He elsewhere (p. 278) speaks of first proofs, which I should rather designate first assumptions on behalf of its existence, as being " only by implication." CoREODi says : " At the time of Christ and His disciples only adults were baptized ; therefore among Christians at the present day, not children, but adults who ai*e capable of professing Christianity ought to be baptized." — In Dr. Fyfe's Ba/p. Sen., p. 18. Dr. Wardlaw's words apply to the baptizing of infants when he says : " Is it not equally manifest that, nothing of the kind having been done at first, and no principles having been laid down in the record, to warrant prospectively the future doing of it, we have all the evidence we ought to require to satisfy us, that the fact, instead of being in conformity to the mind of God, was a departure from it" (Scr. Arg., p. 20) ? Let it belong to Romish priests alone, who, says Dr. R. Vaiighan, " have asserted their EE 418 SUBJECTS OF BAPTISM. right, to model tlie polity, the (lif3cipline, and the worship of the church at pleasure." Let Dr. V.'s sentiment be the faith and deed of all : " As it is with the doctrines and the precepts of the gospel, so it is in reality with its institutes — nothing is to be added to them, nothing is to be taken from them." — Diac. nn Thess. ii, 3, pp. 47, 46. Dr. ()wEN pertinently teaches : " It is not safe for us to enter on duties not exemplified [in the Scripture] ; nor can any instance of a necessary duty be given, of whose performance we have not an example in the Scriptiu-e." "As it is without precedent, so it is without precept ; and hereby, whether we will or no, all our graces and duties must be tried, as unto any acceptation with God. Whatever pretends to exceed the direction of the Word, may be safely rejected ; cannot be safely admitted." —On thr Person of Christ, pp. 1.34, 170. Mr. Booth, who quotes the above, adds : " Now if these declarations be founded in truth, what becomes of Pffidobaptism ? It must be consigned over to that obscurity in which it was left by the sacred writers." Also, " That the sacred writings are our only rule of doctrine and worship, was the grand principle of the Eeformation ; and happy would it have been if each concerned in that excellent work had uniformly acted under its influence. On this foundation, and in many cases, Protestant writers have successfully opposed the Papal system. Nor in anything more frequent with them, when engaged in that controversy, than a recurrence to this capital principle, and an adoption of Chilling-worth's maxim : the bible only is the religion or PROTESTANTS. Here that excellent saying of Basil is pleaded : ' It is a manifest mistake in regard to faith, and a clear evidence of pride, either to reject any of those things which the Scripture contains, or to introduce anything that is not written in the sacred page.' That of Ambrose also is held in esteem : ' When the Scripture ia silent, who shall speak ?' Nor is Tertullian's maxim in less repiite : ' The Scripture forbids what it does not mention.' Here they tell us that ' we ought to respect the silence of the Scripture' (Claude) ; and they lay it down as a general rule that ' no one need be ashamed of not knowing what God has not revealed,' because ' he that would go farther, gives up his wisdom and endangers his safety' (Dr. Ellis). They further assiu'e us, ' that IDivine revelation is the only foundation, the only rule, and the only law, of all religious worship that is pleasing to God, or accepted by Him :' and that, ' when once a person maintains it allowable to pass over the limits of the Divine command, there is nothing to hinder him from running the most extravagant lengths' (Dr. Owen). They assure us ' that will-worship was always condemned of God, and that it is profane to present to God what He does not require, or to perform worship which He did not appoint' (Chris. Schotamus). They tell us ' that we ought not to worship God with any other external worship than what Himself hath com- manded and appointed us in His holy word' (Bp. Hopkins). ' The Scripture,' say they, ' hath set us our bounds for worship, to which we must not add, and from which we ought not to diminish ; for whosoever doth either the one or the other, must needs accuse the rule either of defect in things necessary, or of superfluity in things unnecessary ; which is a high affront to the wisdom of God, who, as He is the object, so is He the Prescriber of that worship which He will accept and reward' (Bp. Hop- kins). They insist that he who ' shall appoint with what God shall be worshipped, must appoint what that is mth which He shall be pleased ;' that ' by nothing can He be worshipped, but by what Himself hath declared that He is well pleased with ;' that ' to worship God is an act of obedience and of duty, and therefore must suppose a commandment — and is not of our choice, save only that we must choose to obey ;' consequently that ' he that says God is rightly worshipped by an act or ceremony concerning which Himself hath no way expressed His pleasure, is superstitious, or a will-worshipper' (Bp. Taylor). They ' admire that ever mortal man should dare, in God's worship, to meddle any farther than the Lord hath commanded' (Marshall). They tell us that ' nothing is lawful in the worship of God, but what we have precept or precedent for ; which, whoso denies, opens a door to all idolatry and superstition, and will-worship in the world' (ColUngs) They say, ' From the words of our Saviour, "In vain do they worship Me, teaching for doctrines (viz., about worship) the com- mandments of men," we clearly demonstrate that it is unlawful to worship God with any rites, however indifferent in themselves, if they are not prescribed by God' (Pierce). They intreat us 'to consider that what God hath thought needless to appoint, men ought not to make, or pretend to be necessary or important, or even useful. What He commands not in His worship. He virtually forbids' (Dr. Mayo). They inform us that 'a practice [in religious worship] not being enjoined is forbidden ; being disallowed is repi'obated' (Bp. Hurd) ; that ' the declared will of God being the most certain and happy rule of man's practice, especially in those duties which have no foundation, save in Divine revelation, it is the greatest arrogance and affront to the wisdom and will of our Law-giver, to contradict Him therein ;' that ' to prescribe HISTORIC TESTIMONY. 419 anything [in religious worship] which God hath not commanded, though He hath not forbidden it, is such an invasion of His prerogative, that He hath punished it by a remarkable judgment, Lev. X, 1' (Charnock). . . . They insist that ' works not reqviired by the law, are no less an abomination to God, than sins against the law' (Dr. Owen). ' To serve God,' they assirre us, ' is to do everything under this contem- plation, that what we do is the will of God. His will must be not only the rule of what we do, but the very reason why we do it ; else our doings are not His servings' (Caryl). They tell us ' that the silence of Scripture' is a sufficient ground of rejecting the sign of the cross, exorcism, and similar appendages of baptism in the church of Rome, because those things ' not being written in the sacred volume, are therefore condemned' (Mastrieht)." — Peed. Ex., vol. i, pp. 314-318. J. Newton, in his Messiah, speaking of Christian converts, says : '" One tliussaith the Lord has the force of a thousand arguments. They desire no further proof of a doctrine, no other warrant for their practice, no other reason for any dispensation, than Tints the Lord hath said, this He requires, and this is His appointment. Thus their wills are brought into subjection ; and they so understand as to believe and obey."— In Booth's Peed. Ex., vol. i, p. 327. Dr. E. Williams, in evident want of an explicit " Thus saith the Lord," writes : " The question is not, whether Scripture expressly enjoins infant baptism, by a direct specification, but whether it enjoins baptism to all proper subjects, and whether the administrator, who has a discretionary right of judging about qualifications, has sufficient reason to conclude, or such evidence as the nature of the case requires, that infants are .such as are included within our Lord's intention, when He instituted the ordinance." (Antipced. Ex., vol. i, p. 17). — By the union of "a discretionary right," with the supposition that Christ's command is to baptize " all proper subjects," and the guessing of Christ's "intention" apart from His utterance, what scheme may not be applauded ! Dr. W. L. Alexander, when reasoning with Tractarians, can say : " The question between them and us becomes henceforward simply one of ' What saith the Scripture ?' The ' dark, bushy, tangled forest' of antiquity, in which, to use the words of Milton, ' they would imbosk,' must be exchanged for the plain field of Scriptm-e, where we shall behold them in their real proportions, and meet them upon terms, from which neither party, if conscious of a single desii-e for truth, needs to shrink" (Ancjlo-Cath., p. 134). He subsequently (p. 304) says on Christ's commission. Matt, xxviii, 19, 20, and Mark xvi, 1.5, 1(3 : "I understand our Loi-d's woi-ds, then, as ^artually meaning that every one who believes and duly professes that belief, shall be saved. Thatsucli was the interpretation put upon them by the apostles themselves, may be inferred, I think, with considerable certainty from their subsequent practice, in the history of which we find no trace of their attempting to baptize any but such as they had pre- viously taught." Bp. Burnet, who in one place admits the lack of any express Divine precept for the baptism of infants, elsewhere says : " If it is pretended to be a law of God, and a part of a sacrament, we must have a Divine institution for it : otherwise all the advantages that can possibly be imagined in it, without that, are only so many argu- ments to persuade us that there is somewhat that is highly necessary to the purity of Christians, of which Christ has not said a word, and concerning which His apostles have given us no directions." — Oil the 39 Art., on Art. xxv. Dr. Fype (Baptist) asks how it is " that so many Protestants cling yet to institu- tions wliicli tlae Bible confessedly repudiates. This," says he, " is Papist ground. They receive tradition," &c. — Bap. Sen., p. 20. The Contemporary Review (March, 18C9), speaking of the Evangelical clergy of the Established Church, says, " Tlie language of the Bible is against them ; and on their own ground, this is a very sore perplexity. There is one escape, and that a perfectly effectual one ; but they are unwilling to avail themselves of its assistance. They might declare, and they ought to declare, fhsit infant haptism was a practice unknown to the Apostles ; that not only does the Neic Testament vot give one single expression which plainly and necessarily implies that infants were baptized in the apostolical churches, but that it can be fairly argued from a passage in chap, vii of 1 Corinthians that such a practice could not have existed at Corinth. The recognition that the baptism of adiilts was the only baptism known to the apostles, would clear every difficulty on this point out of the way of the Low Chiu-chmen. It is natural that the sacred writers should assume that men who, at great worldly sacrifice, not free from risk of life, came forward to profess the Christian faith by a solemn initiatory rite, possessed the frame of mind which that fact implied — that they were honestly changed and renewed beings. And then it would be easy to pass on to the conclusion that the baptismal service of the Church of England has been constructed on the language of 420 SUBJECTS OF BAPTISM. the Bible, and that the embarrassment has proceeded not from a mistaken view of baptism, but from the application of words used by Scripture of an adult person to an unconscious and, so to say, mindless infant.'' Are our opponents still disposed to complain that we attach too much importance to the entire want of precept and precedent for infant baptism in Scripture, then let them cogitate on the following Protestant and in part Nonconformist sayings quoted by Mr. Booth. Mr. B. says, " That the argument here employed is neither novel nor inconclusive, will appear by adverting to the conduct of Protestants in general, when disputing with Roman Catholics, and that in a great variety of cases. For instance. Do the Popish writers assert that Peter was tlie hishop of Rome for a course of years, and mention many particulars of his conduct there ? ' All these things,' replies Mr. Millar, ' seem to be false and without foundation ; as appears from the silence of Luke, the inspired writer of the Acts of the Apostles, who recorded many things concerning Peter. . . . Peter himself speaks not one word of what the Papists allege. If he had founded the Roman church, why does he nowhere make mention of it ?' Thus also the learned Buddeus : ' If Peter had been at Rome when Paul \vroto his epistle to the church there, who can believe that he would have omitted him among others whom he salutes by name ? Or if he had been there before, who can believe that Paul would have made no mention of him in any part of that ? especially seeing various occasions offered for him to have done so ?' Is the supremacy of Peter or that of the pope in question ? Chamier says : ' If Christ appointed Peter to obtain both temporal and spiritual power, what is the reason that He does not so much as once carefully, explicitly, and most emphatically express it ? Had it been a fact, He would have expressed it. But He has not expressed it : therefore it was not His intention that Peter should have it.' Is it the Vci-palinfalUbility ? Abp. Tillotson says : 'There is not the least intimation in Scripture of this privilege conferred upon the Roman church ; nor do the apostles, in all their epistles, ever so much as give the least directions to Christians, to appeal to the bishop of Rome for a determination of the many differences, which even in their times happened among them. And it is strange they should bo so silent in this matter, when there were so many occasions to speak of it, if our Saviour had plainly appointed such an infallible judge of controversies.' Is it the invocation of saints ? Dr. Hughes declares, ' that the very silence of Scrip- ture is enough to condemn praying to saints.' Dr. Doddridge : ' Dr. Whitby justly observes, that it is very remarkable that Paul, who so often and so earnestly entreats the intercession of his Christian friends, should never speak of the intercession of the virgin Mary, or of departed saints, if he believed it a duty to seek it.' Is it confession to a priest ? Bp. Stratford says : ' We find no such sort of confession required by Christ or His apostles.' Is it confirmation ? Chemnitius opposes it by saying, ' The popish sacrament of confirmation was neither appointed nor dispensed, either by Christ or by the apostles, because it is not mentioned in Scripture.' Is it extreme unction ? The same author declares against it, by observing, ' That there is neither precept nor precedent for it in the Scripture, except so far as relates to the miraculous gift of healing.' It it their clerical celibacy ? Mr. Wharton considers tlie silence of Scripture as the ' greatest of all ' arguments against it. Thus Protestants at every turn against the Papists. _ " We will now produce an instance or two of similar conduct among Protestant Dissenters, when disputing with Episcopalians aboiit the hierarchy and rites of tlio Church of England. Is diocesan E}yiscox>acy the subject of debate or of animad- version ? Dr. Doddridge says : ' The late learned, moderate, and pious Dr. Edmund Calamy observes, that if the apostles had been used, as some assert, to ordain diocesan bishops in their last visitation, this had been a proper time [when Paul took his leave of the Ephesian elders] to do it ; or that, if Timotheus had been already ordained bishop of Epliesus, Paul, instead of calling them all bishops, would surely liave given some hint to enforce Timothy's authority among them. . . . Ignatius would have talked in a very different style and manner on this head.' Mr. Jas. Owen thus : ' How comes it to pass when the apostle (Eph. iv, 11) reckons up the several sorts of minis- ters which Christ had appointed in His churcli, that he makes no mention of superior bishops, if they bo so necessary as some would have us believe ;- . . . It is unaccountable that St. Paul should wi-ite an epistle to the P^iiheaians — and not men- tion their pretended bishop, Timothy, in the whole epistle. . . . It is a certain HISTOEIC TESTIMONY. 421 evidence lie was neither bishop there, nor resident there.' Is it the sign of the cross as an attendant on baptism ? Mr. Arch. Hall says, ' the reader will give me leave to quote the words of Mr. Thomas Bradbury on tlus point : " If," says that excellent person, " Christ had thought that washing with water was not sufficient without tho sign of the cross, He wovM have told us so." ' Thus also Nonconformists reason in various other cases, where the silence of sacred, of ecclesiastical, or of profane authors, can be fairly pleaded against any hypothesis ; concerning which no person of reading and of observation is ignorant. " Again, that Protestants of different communions imite in considering negative arguments of this kind as conclusive, may still fiu-ther appear by the following instances. Tiu-retinus : ' Tho silence of Scripture, ought, with lis, to have great weight.' Bp. Porteus : ' Our Divine Law-giver showed His wisdom equally in what He enjoined and what He left unnoticed. . . . He knew exactly where to be silent, and where to speak.' Dr. Owen : ' The Scriptm-e is so absolutely the rule, measm-e, and boundary of our faith and knowledge in spiritual things, as that what it conceals is instructive, as well as what it expresseth.' Dr. Doddridge : ' To be willing^ to con- tinue ignorant of what our great Master has thought fit to conceal, is no inconsiderable part of Christian learning.' " — Peed. Ex., vol. i, pp. 328-331, Dr. Stennett (Baptist), in Ansivcr to Dr. Adduigton (p. 182) says, "As he supposes ' that none ever doubted then of the propriety of infant baptism, and that therefore it is not to be wondered at, that they [the apostlesj said no more upon the subject ;' I am at equal liberty to sujtpose, and I think upon much better grounds, that none ever had an idea then of baptizing infants, and that therefore it is not to bo wondered at, that they said nothing at all upon the subject." J. Craps (Baptist) says that, had the apostles "baptized all infants, their baptism would have been one of the most important acts of the apostles." "We cannot account for the entire omission of infant baptism in the written Acts of the Apostles, without admitting its entire omission in their living acts." — Cone. Vieiv, p. 5. Baxter says, " If the Scriptures be God's perfect law. it sure determines of all material parts of worship, or else it was not made for a perfect rule concerning wor- ship and positive ordinances : and if not for these wherein the light of nature falls so short, then sure it is a perfect rule for nothing." "It hath many a time made mc wonder, and sorrowful to think, that so many learned sober men should so earnestly contend for these additional traditions, and so zealously cleave to any ceremonies, formalities, or corruptions in worship, which they can but tind that the fathers have used ! when some of them the very Papists themselves have cast oft' ! Mcthinks laon should desire to go on the surer side tho hedge; and seeing where there is no law there is no transgression, sin being nothing else but a transgression of the law, they should conclude that it is certainly no sin (and therefore safest) to lot go those additions which no law cnjoineth ! But on tho other side, that it may be a dangerous sin to use them, both as being an acciisation of Scripture as insufficient, and an adding to God's worship." — ri. IScr. Pr., pp. 302, 303. § 2.— -Uninspired Historic Testimony. S. Knowles. — " Tradition bet,'au with Ignatius, wlio suiTcretl luartyrdom in the year 107.'' " Tliis so-called father promulgated the dogma that baptiani and tho Lord's Sujipcr are unlawfully administered except at the hands of a bishoii."— 2'/(fl Oos., &c., p. 9;!. Count De Oasi-aiun. — " If tho truth is worth the trouble of being sought after and served, then accept the conditions of such a work."— C/iiis. in the Three First Cent., p. li. Ill adducing uninspired historic testimony, our thoughts naturally revert in the first instance to those early Christians who are called apostolic Fathers. Those who from their eminence in the church of Christ, and from their livuig in apostolic times, have received this designation, are Barnabas, Hernias, Polycarp, Ignatius, and Clement of Rome. Much of that which bears their name is supposed to be spurious, or, being genuine, to be so interpolated, that we can do no more than guess what is really theirs. Were their genuine and correct writings possessed, they belong not to the Divine law. " The authority of men, though learned and pious, is worthless, wlicii set against the authority of God j and 422 SUBJECTS OF BAPTISM. tradition, valuable in its own subordinate sphere, becomes unmixedly pernicious, when employed to propound a doctrine, or establish an ordinance" (Dr. Stacey, on Sac, p. 17). "The apostolic fathers," says Dr. R, Vaughan, "were but sorry followers of the apostles" (Causes of Cor. of Chris., p. 3). From their proved record of facts we would accept all the testimony contained. But genuine or doubtful, of earlier or later real date, not a single record of the baptizing of infants do they contain. Such a record belongs to what is admitted to be spurious, or to a certainly later period. It was my intention to cite every reference to baptism from these and some subsequent fathers, but linding so many references and allusions to the simple fact of baptism by John, by Jesus, and by the apostles, that throw no light on the subjects then baptized, I have adduced all that I have seen quoted in corroboration of infant baptism, along with some other references to the Divine ordinance. 1.— Barnabas. Dr. S. StknkEtt.— " Truth is always perfectly consistent with itself ; and however collateral circumstances may be so disguised, or placed in such a point of light by skilful management, as, for a time, to weaken and confound the plainest evidence of a real fact ; yet when those cir- cumstances como to be thoroughly looked into, they Trill not only cease to have their effect, but will corroborate and brighten that evidence to which they before proved so unfriendly."— i(n«., pp. 213, 214. To Barnabas, the companion of the apostle Paul, is attributed an epistle, which Mosheim says, " was the production of some Jew, who, most probably lived in this [the first] century, and whose mean abilities and superstitious attachment to Jewish fables sheAv, notwithstanding the uprightness of his intentions, that he must have been a very diftierent person from the true Barnabas, who was St. Paul's companion" (Ec. His., p. 32). Collinson, in Bampton Lectures (p. 35, 1813), says, " The Catholic Epistle of Barnabas, and the Shepherd of Hernias, on account of many mistakes and injudicious observations which they contain, are, by competent judges, deemed spmious and unworthy of their nominal authors." In the Introduction to the Epistle of Barnabas in Clark's Edition of The AjMStolic Fathers, it is said : " The general opinion is that its date is not later than the middle of the second century, and that it cannot be placed earlier than some twenty or thirty years before." The only reference to baptism by the reputed Barnabas is in § 11 of his Epistle. Considering baptism and the cross to be pre-figured in the Old Testament, after referring to the mention of waters in the prophets and in the fii'st Psalm, he says, " Mark how he has described at once both the water and the cross. For these words imply. Blessed are they who placing their trust in the cross, have gone down into the water," &c. He subsequently refers to the waters of Ezekiel, and adds, " This meaneth, that we indeed descend into the water full of sins and defilement, but come up, bearing fruit in our hearts, having the fear of God and trust in Jesus in our spirit" (The Apos. Fathers, p. 121. Clark's Edi.). Assuredly there is no indication ia these words that the subjects of baptism were then infants. HISTOEIC TESTIMONY, 423 2.— Hermas. Dr. RiDGLEY.— " The example of oiu- Saviour and His apostles ought to be a rule to the churches in all succeeding ages." — Body of Div., ques. 168-170. To Hermas, mentioned by Paul in Rom. xvi, 14, is attributed a work entitled Pastor, or The Shepherd. On this Mosheim says : " The work which is entitled the Shepherd of Hermas, because the angel who bears the principal part in it, is represented in the form and habit of a Shepherd, was composed in the second century by Hermas, who was brother to Pius, bishop of Rome. This whimsical and visionary writer has taken the liberty of inventing several dialogues or conversations between God and the angels, in order to insinuate in a more easy and agi"eeable manner, the precepts Avhich he thought useful and salutary, into the minds of his readers. But, indeed, the discourse which he puts into the mouths of these celestial beings is more insipid and senseless than what we commonly hear among the meanest of the multitude" (Ec. His., p. 32). Murdock says : " But the genuineness and authority of this treatise are now very much questioned by the learned, so that the true author of the Shepherd of Hermas is still unknown" In Clark's Edition of the Apostolic Fathers, we read, " The most probable date assigned to its composition is the reign of Hadrian, or of Antoninus Pius" (p. 320). This work, attributed to Hermas, is in three parts. Visions, Commands, and Similitudes. In his Commands (4. c. 3) he may refer to baptism without mentioniug it, when ha says, "And I said, 'I heard, sir, some teachers maintarathat there is no other repout- ance than that \vluch takes place when wo descended into the water and received the remission of our former sins.' " — Apos. Fa., p. o'A. Clark's Edi. In his Visions (c. 2, p. 334) he sees the clmrch as a tower buUt of stones, and he is believed to have baptism in view when he speaks of certain stones distinct from others " falling close to the water, and yet not capable of being rolled into the water, though they wished to be rolled down, and to enter the water." He speaks (c. 3) of the tower as " buUt upon the waters" (p. 335). In c. 5 (p. 337) he explains that those stones which " are in the act of being brought and placed in the building," arc " those who are young in faith and are faitliful." In c. 7 (pp. .338, 339) he says of those " wliicli fell near the waters, but could not be rolled into them : These are they who have heard the word, and wish to be baptized in the name of the Lord ; but when the chastity demanded by the truth comes into their recollection, they draw back." In bis Similitudes (9. c. 1(5) he speaks of baptism as ''the seal of the Son of God." He says, " The seal then is the water : they descend into the water dead, and they arise alive." He is informed respecting the stones which ascended " out of the pit," and were "applied to the building of the tower," that they were obliged "to ascend through water in order that they might be made aUve ; for iinless they laid aside the deadness of their life, they would not in any other way enter into the kingdom of God. Accordingly those who fell asleep received the seals of the Son of God. For, he continued, before a man bears the name of the Son of God, he is dead ; but when he receives the seal he lays aside his deadness and obtains Life. The seal, then, is the water : they descend into the water dead, and they arise alive. And to them accord- ingly was this seal preached, and they made use of it that they might enter into the kingdom of God." — Ajyos. Fa., -p. 420. Clark's Edi. On the necessity for all to ascend tlirough water into the kindom, according to the supposed teaching of this Hermas, has been founded a plea for the baptism of infants ; on which Doddridge remarks, " The Pastor of Hermas is a visionary book, the genuineness of which is far from being certain ; but allowing it to have ever so much weight, this will only prove that baptism is necessary to those who are the proper subjects of it ; but cannot determine that infants are so" (Mis. Works, p. 493). No candid reader of Hermas, although he may admit that " all infants are in honour witl» the Lord," can discover a syllable in proof of infant baptism as then known. 424 SUBJECTS OF BAPTISM. Hermas is not generally quoted by the advocates of infant baptism. Mr. Hinton says : "Professor Pond, however, makes much of it, and says not a word respecting the fact that Hermas never wrote it. Dr. Woods begins with Justin Martyr, who flourished more than a hundred years after Christ. Dr. Miller claims no passage till Tertullian." 3.— POLYCAEP. Gregoey Nazianzen.— " I honoui- Peter, but I am not called by his name. I honour Paul, but I am not of Paul. The name I bear is derived from no man."— In Coleman's Antiq., p. 24. Polycarp, another of the apostolical fathers, is said to have been discipled to Christ by St. John. He is the reputed writer of an epistle to the Phihppians, and of some other works. On baptism these works are silent. But in the relation of his martyrdom, when the pro-consul commanded him to deny Christ, it is said that he replied thus : " Eighty and six yeaiB have I been His servant, and He lias never vnconged me."* Br. HaUey, having thus quoted Polycarp, says : " Some refer these years to his office, others to his conversion ; but so great a length of time seems most naturally to include his life, and so it has been thought, that from infancy he was enrolled in the kingdom of Christ by baptism. I do not indeed adduce this saying of the venerable martyr as of any weight in the controversy, for its meaning is too uncertain to assist us" (Cong. Lee, vol. XV, pp. 88, 90). Many other things besides what Dr. H. mentions have been thought ; and when an infant can be proved to be serving Christ, something may bo urged hence in favoiu* of infant baptism. The conduct of Polycarp and other martyrs can be best explained by that which Chrysostom has affirmed : ''they, when baptized into Christ, were baptized in the hope of a resurrection from the dead. Their faith laid bold on eternity." 4.— Ignatius. J. Ryland.— " God has not left anj'thiug to an after-thouglit in His decrees, and He will not be a minute too late in any one of His actions." — Bemijiis., by Dr. N. Of Ignatius, another father, Dupin says, that in the time of Eusebius *' there were seven letters which were esteemed undoubtedly to be Ignatius's, and that they were the very same with those that are still extant" (Wickham's Syno'psisonBap.,]).^!). Mosheim says, "There are yet extant several epistles attributed to him, concerning the authenticity of which there have been, however, tedious and warm disputes among the learned. Only the folowiug extracts have reference to baptism. In his epistle to the Smyrneeans he says, according to Abp. Wake's translation, " It is not lawful ^Wthout the bishop cither to baptize or to celebrate the holy communion" (ch. viii). In his epistle to Polycarp ho says, " Let your baptism remain as your arms, your faith as yoxu* helmet, your charity as your spear, your patience as your whole armour" (ch. vi). In his epistle to the Ephesians he says that Christ "was born, and baptized, that through His passion He might purify water" (ch. xviii). Of * In Clark's Edition we read : " Eighty and six years have I gcrvcd Him, and Uo UCTcr did tue iujiu-y : how then can 1 bla^pUeiuo my Ki°u(; and my Saviour V HISTOEIC TESTIMONY. 425 the baptism of infants nothing as yet appears to be known. Moreover Mr. Fletcher speaks of " the so-called epistles of Ignatius as unworthy to be trusted in respect to a point which requires unimpeachable evidence." — His. of Ind., p. 142. 5.— Clement. A. Haidane.— " Too many Christians look to the opinions of men to guide their course."— Lives oJB. and J. A. Haldane, p. 700. Clement, of Kome, is, as a writer, the most celebrated of the Apos- tolical Fathers. Dupin mentions that the two epistles to the Corinthians are the only works known to be his, and the first more certainly than the second epistle, and that after the holy Scriptures he regards this as one of the most eminent records of antiquity. Dr. A. Clarke saj's that this ** Clement was generally believed by the ancients to have been the same \vith that Clement whom St. Paul mentions among his fellow-labourers, whose names are in the book of life." Mosheim says that " two epistles to the Corinthians, written in Greek, have been attributed to him, of which the second is deemed spurious, and the first genuine, by many learned Avriters. But even this seems to have been corrupted and inter- polated by some ignorant and presumptuous author, who appears to have been displeased at observing a defect of learning and genius in the ^vritings of so great a man as Clemens." He adds, " The learned are now unanimous in regarduig the other wiitings which bear the name of Clement, viz., the AjMStoUc Canons, the Apostolic Constitutions, the Eecognitions of Clemens and Clementina, as spurious productions ascribed by some impostor to this venerable prelate, in order to procure them a high degree of authority." — Ec. His., pp. 31, 32. In the first epistle, the only document in existence supposed to be " an authentic production of the friend and feUow-labourer of St. Paul," no reference to baptism occurs. Baptism is mentioned or referred to in other works attributed to Clement. In the second epistle to the Corinthians, ch. viii, we read, " Keep the flesh holy and the seal undefiled, that ye may receive eternal life." He says in his first epistle that Noah " preached regeneration to the world through his ministry" (ch. ix), by which he oleai'ly means repentance rather than baptism. In the second epistle (ch. vi), after referring to Noah, Job, and Daniel, as unable, should they rise up, to deliver their children in captivity, he says, " how can we hope to enter into the royal residence of God, unless we keep oui- baptism holy and undefiled ?" In the Eecogriixfioiis, falsely ascribed to Clement, but written, it is supposed, by some one in the third century, we read in book i, ch. xxxix, on baptism instituted in place of sacrifices : " He instituted baptism by water amongst them, in which they might be absolved from all their sins on the invocation of His name, and for the future, following a perfect Hf e, might abide in immortality, being purified not by the blood of beasts, but by the purification of the Wisdom of God." In ch. Ixiii we read : " I showed them that in no way else conld they be saved, unless tlirough the grace of the Holy Spirit they hasted to be washed with the baptism of three-fold invocation, and i-eceived the eucharist of Christ the Lord," &c. In ch. Ixix he speaks of " our James" as teaching, "that unless a man be baptized in water, in the name of the three-fold blessedness, as the true prophet taught, he can neither receive remission of sins, nor enter into the kingdom of heaven.' ' Again, " But when he had spoken some things also concerning baptism, through seven successive days, he persuaded all the people and the high priest that they should hasten straightway to receive baptism." In book iii, ch. Ixvii we read : " Since I have resolved to stay three months with you, if any one desires it, let him be baptized ; that, stripped of his former evils, he may for the future, in consequence of his own conduct, becpwe heir of heavenly blessings." lu book iv, ch, s^udi be gays, "At the 426 SUBJECTS OF BAPTISM. present time your sins may be washed away with the water of the fountain, or riverj or even sea ; the three-fold name of blessedness being called over you," &c. In ch. XXXV he speaks of " wedding garments, that is, the grace of baptism ;" and in ch. xxxvi of departing from God and receiving any other than Christ, &c., as " things which even fatally pollute the garment of baptism." In book vi, ch. viii he says, " But when you have come to the Father, you will learn that this is His will, that you be born anew by means of waters. . . . For he who is regenerated by water, having filled up the measure of good works, is made heir of Him by whom he has been regenerated in incorruption. . . . God has ordered every one who worships Him to be sealed by baptism." He speaks in ch. ix of the salvation of "the souls that are consecrated by baptism," and of the necessity of baptism for all, righteous or unrighteous ; and exhorts to " hasten to be born again to God without delay, because the end of every one's life is uncertain." In ch. x he says, " But when you have been regenerated by water, show by good works the likeness in you of that Father who hath begotten you." In book vii, ch. xxix he says : " But this also we observe, not to have a common table with Gentiles, unless when they believe, and on the reception of the truth are baptized, and consecrated by a three-fold invocation of the blessed name; and then we eat with them." Having in ch. xxxiv spoken of the necessity of fasting previous to baptism, in ch. xxxv he speaks of Peter as saying, " I find fault with very many, who, when they are themselves baptized and believe, yet do nothing worthy of faith ^vith those whom they love, such as wives, or children," &c. (Clark's Edi.). Other passages from the Recognitions and other works spuriously attributed to Clement, might be quoted, but none containing an intimation of the existence of infant baptism. It was not believed in apostolic times that the apostles " ordained the first-fruits of their ministry to be bishops and deacons of" infants and adults indiscriminately baptized, but of believers, and " of those who might afterwards believe." The author of the Recognitions might live at the time when a distinction had begun to be made between bishops and presbyters, but he gives no evidence of a departure then from the immersion of believers. He can say, " I call the washing of the body with water good, not as if it were that prime good of the purifying of the mind, but because this washing is the seqiiel of that good." As no Paedobaptist, so far as I know, quotes from any of the apostolic fathers in defence of his sentiments, enough or too much has already been cited.* No candid enquirer after truth can maintain that the apostolical fathers bring to light that baptism of infants which the inspired writers had left in total darkness. G.— DlONYSIUB. J. RiLiND.— " "the chief thing I want is the Bible iu my heart."— i?c«iHi!«., by Dr. N., pp. 78, 79. The name of Dionysius, the Areopagite, who is not reckoned as an apostolic father, is given to certain works which have no claim to be considered genuine. Their verity and antiquity, says Dupin, " may very easily be confuted." " The spuriousness of these works," says Mosheim, " is now admitted by the most learned and impartial of the Roman Catholic writers, as they contain accounts of many events that happened several ages after the time of Dionysius, and were not at all mentioned till after the fifth century." This pretended Dionysius, referring to the rite of baptism speaks of the whole body being thoroughly purged by water ; and, referring to the subjects, thus advocates * Since writing the above I have seen an extract from the Conttitutiom by Mr. Towgood which reads, " Baptize your infants, and bring them up in the nurture and admonition of God." How far this is from apostolic advice, all may observe. Towgood speaks of the Comtitutions as " a book thought by some to bo of very great antiquity, and by all acknowledged to be extant in the fourth oi* fifth centuryl"— Diss, on Ch, Bap., p, 49. HISTORIC TESTIMONY. 427 what, he admits, might be pronounced irrational : " But that infants also, who by reason of their age cannot understand, may become participators in regeneration and the most holy mysteries of the Divine communion, seems, as I say, ridiculous to pro- fane men, and not without reason, and also that priests should teach those who cannot hear, and deliver the holy traditions •without effect to those who do not understand ; nor is it less ridiculous that others should make renunciations and sacred professions for them. It is not, however, proper for such holy and learned persons to despise those in error, but religiously and charitably to argue with them according to their ideas, and to dispel their objections ; and moreover, according to the Divine ordinances, to add this also, that Divine things are not by any means to be measured by our understanding, but that there are very many things worthy of God which are concealed from oiu- knowledge, which we are ignorant of, but which may be clearly understood by beings of a superior order to us. For very many things are hidden from those Bupreme and most sublime substances which are known only to the wise and wisdom-creating Divinity. However, on this subject we say this also, that our God-formed preceptors have from ancient traditions handed it down to us as an accepted truth. For they say what is indeed true, that infants, if they be instructed in the sacred law, will attain a sanctified state of mind, will be free from all errors, and without any danger of an impiu-e life. For when this came into the minds of our divine instructors they determined that children should be admitted in this holy manner ; the natural parents of the child offered for baptism should deliver him to one of the faithful ones, who shall well instruct the boy in Divine matters, and under whose care he should be thenceforward as under a Divine father and the curator of his salvation. The priest then orders the person who promises to instruct the boy in a holy way to utter the renunciations and to make the sacred professions" &c. (Contcmp., ch. vii. In Wickham's Synop,, pp. 139, 140). The contrast to holy writ in this extract from the pretended Areopagite, Dionysius, is sufficiently apparent. 7.— Apocryphal Gospels. f. StEADJiAN.— " Though I ctmnot anticipate entire freedom from erroneous statements, 1 trust they will be found such as are consistent with the integrity of the work in every matter of importance."— 3fe7no!r of Dr. S., p. viii. Apocryplial Gospels, whether or not ascribed to prctencled apostolical fathers, equally with the canonical records, although not writings of the first century, fail to prove the existence of infant baptism. These gospels, of which many may be " considered as pious frauds," were written when some " held it as a maxim, that it was not only lawful, but even praise-worthy to deceive, and even to use the expedient of a lie, in order to advance the cause of truth and piety" (Mosheim). Even those, however, to which a genuine author might be ascribed, " have been so disfigured and interpolated that it is very difficult to distinguish between his own statements and those of his successors." In the Acts of St. Thomas, King Gundafar and his brother Gad are said thus to have entreated an apostle : " Whilst our souls axe at leisure, and wo are zealous towards God, give to us the seal : for we have heard you say that the God whom you preach, by means of His seal knows His own sheep." Again, a woman thus entreats : " Apostle of the Most High, give me the seal, that that enemy may not return again tome." In the preface to the Gospel of Nicodemus, Ananias, who is said to have translated the work out of the original Hebrew into Greek, thus writes : " I, Ananias, born of a family of rulers, and acquainted with the law out of the Divine writings, knew the Lord Jesus Christ, having come to Him by faith, and been thought worthy of holy baptism." In this work, Seth, the son of Adam, is said to have received information from an angel concerning Him who would "wash with water and the Holy Spirit both him and his descendants." Further, " All these things, we the two brethren saw and heard, who also were sent from Michael the Archangel, and were appointed to preach the resurrection of the Lord, but first to go and be baptized in the Jordan, where also we went and were baptized with others also of the dead who 428 SUBJECTS OF BAPTISM. had arisen." In the " Apostolical History of Abdias" we read, among the adventures of St. Andrew : " Having' vindicated to the Lord all the inhabitants of that city, he baptized all of them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost, granting to them remission of their sins." I refrain from fui-ther quotations, which are similar in character. The baptism of infants it is not attempted to prove from this apocryphal nonsense. They who wish for all may read their works, or the extracts on baptism culled by J. A. Wickham, in his Syno])sis on Baptism. 8.— Justin Marttk, t)r. J. M. Cramp.—" Apostolic example has the force of authority. It is the inspired exposition of the law. Not so the example of the primitive churches as they are called, that is, as they existed after the apostolic age." — Baji. His., p. 9. Dr. G. Hill.—" Justin Martyr, whom we are accustomed to quote as the best voucher of the opinions and the practices of early times." — Lee. in Div., vol. ii, p. 286. After the writings of apostolic fathers, did we possess their genume remains, naturally come those that lived nearest to apostolic times. But in noticing works attributed to persons whose names occur in the inspired writings, and works attributed to others who are said to have lived in the apostolic period, or in the first century, we have glanced at some works certainly beyond this period. The first writer after the apostles, in whose works is anything bearing on our present baptismal controversy, and whose writings as now possessed arc by all believed to be genuine, is Justin Martyr. He is supposed to have been born about a.d. 114, to have become a convert to Christianity about a.d. 132, and to have suffered martyrdom about a.d. 165. " We have yet remaining," says Mosheim, " his two apologies in behalf of the Christians, which are highly esteemed, as they deserve to be, although, in some passages of them, he shows himself an incautious disputant, and betrays a want of acquaintance with ancient history" (Ec, His., p. 50). Justin is quoted by the advocates and opponents of baptismal regeneration. His record of the baptism practised by the Christians of his day is explicit in favour alone of believers' baptism. Li his First Apology, ch. Ixi, written as some suppose in a.d. 138 or 139, and, as others suppose, about a.d. 150, he says : " I will also relate the manner in which we dedicated ourselves to Clod when we had been made new through Christ ; lest, if we omit this, we seem to bo unfair in the explanation we are making. As many as are persuaded and believe that what wc teach and say is true, and undertake to be able to live accordingly, are instructed to liray and to entreat Gtod with fasting, for the remission of their sins that are past, wo praying and fasting with them. Then they are brought by us where there is water, and are regenerated in the same manner in which we were ourselves regenerated. For in the name of God, the Father and Lord of the universe, and of our Saviour Jeaus Christ, and of the Holy Spirit, they then receive the washing with water.* For Christ also said, Except ye be born again, ye shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven. Now that it is impossible for those who have once been born to enter into their mother's womb, is manifest to all. And how those who have sinned and repent shall escape their sins, is declared by Esaias the prophet, as I wrote above . . . * The translation, " with water," by Mr. Dods, though after tlie example of our authorized version of Scripture, is unfaithful. It ought to liave been '' in water.''^ The original is rn to hndati. Tlie Latin version of (iallaiulius is f)' ai/un. The translation of the sentence in Wick- )iam, apparently .Vbp. Wake's, is, " For they then make tlicir batli in the water in tlio name of the Father," &c. The same words en to hudati, shortly occurring again are correctly rendered I)y Mr. Dods, " in the water." HISTORIC TESTIMONY. 429 And for this [rite] we have learned from the apostles this reason. Since at our birth we were born without our own knowledge or choice, by our parents coming together, and were brought up in bad habits and wicked training, in order that we may not remain the children of necessity and of ignorance, but may become the children of choice and knowledge, and may obtain in the water the remission of sins formerly committed, there is pronounced over him who chooses to be born again, and has re- pented of his sins, the name of God the Father and Lord of the universe ; he who leads to the laver the person that is to be washed, calling him by his name alone. For no one can utter the name of the ineffable God ; and if any one dare to say that there is a name, he raves with a hopeless madness. And this washing is called illumination, because they who learn these things are illuminated in their understand- ings. And in the name of Jesus Christ, who was crucified under Pontius Pilate, and in the name of the Holy Ghost, who through the prophets foretold all things about Jesus, he who is illuminated is washed." — Wri. of Justin, pp. 59, 60. Clark's Edi.J This is the testimony of Justin to believers' baptism as the baptism of his time. Yet Dr. Halley can say : " Previous to the age of TertulUan, our information on this, as on every other subject of ecclesiastical history, is exceedingly defective. The few relics of earlier writers contain but passing references to baptism, but in their re- ferences there is not an expression, not a hint, we will venture to assert, in the slightest degi'ee favourable to the opinions of the Baptists" (vol. xv, p. 88). When such leaders as Dr. H., who I am confident would not knowingly teach falsehood, teach what is so untrue as the last assertion, it is not to be wondered that the baptism of infants continues to be practised. Dr. H. is far from being alone in iitterances on the early fathers of what has not the slightest foundation in truth. Basnage, on the above passage in Justin, observes, " that the apologist plainly mentions the ceremonies of the church, without circumlocution or ambiguity. Dissimulation was not then used by Christians. Unless, therefore, we would represent Justin as telling the emperor a falsehood, it must be confessed that unction and imposition of hands were not yet annexed to baptism, nor used upon baptized persons." Is it not as evident from Justin's words, that those who made a credible profession of faith in Christ were the subjects of baptism, as that unction was not associated with baptism ? Basnage is so confident on his points that he proceeds to say, " Either, therefore, having cast off all sincerity, he concealed in silence confirmation, or confirmation was not at all used ; the latter of which, as more probable, we prefer, lest the holy martyr should lie under a charge of perfidy. This argument is of so much force with me, that I think the patrons of confirmation cannot possibly answer it," — Exer. His. Crit. pp. 60, 67. Our opponents generally may be " commended" as acting " wisely " in the advocacy of infant baptism by omitting this quotation from Justin, and electing another in which baptism is not mentioned, but from which, by the ingenuity of unconscious assumptions and perversions, they plead for the baptism of infants. Dr. Halley thus quotes and comments : " Justin Martyr, on the verge of the apostolic age, says, ' Many men and women amongst us, sixty and seventy years old, were discipled to Christ in their childhood.' These men and women, therefore, were discipled in the age of the apostles. As the Greek word is that which is employed in the commission of our Lord, ' disciple all nations ;' and as Justin was a native of Samaria, his language has been considered as most suitable to illustrate the expressions of the New Testament. As our Lord commands to disciple by baptizing, it has been inferred that these aged persons were in their childhood, discipled by being baptized in the time of the apostles" (p. 89). I have no knowledge that " our Lord commands to disciple by baptizing." I laiow that He has commanded to disciple, or to make disciples of, all the nations ; and that He has taught the necessity of denying self, taking up the cross, and following Him, in order to being one of His disciples. I doubt not that the making of disciples to Christ, is proselyting to Christian sentiment, converting to Christian faith. I believe, notwithstanding all the declarations of Papists and others that 430 SUBJECTS OF BAPTISM. this was never effected " by baptizing." That baptism was administered to the person who was really or professedly discipled to Christ in the time of Justin, his own \Yords clearly evince, nor is there in any portion of his writings the least hint that it was administered to any others. Dr. Halley himself, in a previous volume, of " baptismal regeneration," and of Justin as calling baptism regeneration, says : " We cannot, however, with anything- like certainty, infer that he believes baptism to produce a moral and spiritual change upon the subject. He considers the person as introdiiced by baptism into the fellow- ship of Christians, and initiated into the privileges of the church. It is not improbable that Justin, a Samaritan by birth, considered baptism, as we have seen the Jews considered it, to be a rite of proselytism, and denominated the proselyte thus recognized by baptism, as the Jews would have denominated him, a new-born child, without reference to any other spiritual change. Although he speaks of obtaining remission of sin by water, he represents the person as having pre^aously repented, making his remission consequent upon his repentance. Although he calls baptism regeneration, yet elsewhere he distinguishes them, for he speaks of the washing eis anagennesin, for regeneration, and therefore distinct from it. Would it not appear that he calls baptism, regeneration, the true and inward baptism ? He says, 'baptism is called illumination ;' a term very frequently employed by the Fathers, and yet he plainly distingnishes illumination from the act of baptism, for he says, ' he who is illuminated' — illumination preceding baptism — ' is washed in the name of Jesus Christ and of the Holy Ghost.' From the analogy of the language we might therefore infer that the meaning of Jixstin is to be explained ; he who makes his choice to be regenerated, is baptized, and therefore baptism is called regeneration ; as he who is illuminated is baptized, and therefore baptism is called illumination. This will appear from a passage in the dialogue with Trypho, in which he opposes spiritual circumcision to the carnal circumcision of the Jews : but by spiritual circumcision he does not mean baptism, as some assert ; for Justin says, ' Enoch, and tliose like him, observed it ;' and fm-ther, he says, ' We have received it through baptism, on account of the mercy of God :' — thus distinguishing it from baptism. In the passage where Justin says, 'The commandment of circumcision which enjoins that infants should be circumcised on the eighth day, was a type of the true circumcision with which we were circumcised from error and wickedness,' he is frequently interpreted as saying, the true circumcision denotes baptism ; but ought not Justin to expound his own meaning? and if he do so, the true circumcision is that of the heart." — Vol. x, pp. 200, 201. Could language more clearly than the above teach that the baptism of the professing believer is the only baptism that was known to Justin ? that of baptized infants or catechumens preparing for the fellowship of the church, as now advocated by Dr. Halley and others, he knew nothing ? that of the baptized as a registered class, between the church and the world, he had no idea ? and that to indiscriminate baptism he was an equal stranger ? The writings of Justin, like those of the inspired Luke, enforce the conviction that only professing believers were baj^tized. It would be as logical and just, to maintain that Timothy could read and understand as soon as he was born, because from a child he had known the holy Scriptures which are able to make wise unto salvation through faith in Christ Jesus, as to infer the baptism of infants from Justin'.s words on being discipled to Christ from childhood. The language cannot imply a period in life previous to the possibiUty of becoming a disciple of Jesus. The language of Justin, partially quoted by Dr. H., as will subsequently appear, refers to a state of disciplesbip in which the subjects thereof had continued to the time when he was speaking of them. It was a moral and spiritual character, into which by Divine grace they had HISTORIC TESTIMONY. 431 early been brought, in which they continued — not continuance in a physical operation, in the act of baptizing. Bp. Taylor quotes a passage attributed to Justin, which would often and eft'ectually have appeared, were not its spurious character sufficiently evinced. Dr. Stacet sees from "the writings of the early fathers" that "the example of the apostles had been quietly followed." He says that Justin Martyr, "whose first apology appeared somewhere about the middle of the second century, speaks of numbers of men and women sixty and seventy years old, who, elciiaidon emathetenthesan to Christo from childhood were discipled to Christ. As discipleship was by baptism, the conclusion is, that these were, if not in infancy yet at a very early period, and therefore within the age of the apostles, admitted to the Christian ordinance" (The Sac, p. 169). First, as Dr. Halley, the dogma in direct opposition to holy writ, that our Saviour's command to disciple is accomplished by baptizing, is assumed as a Divine verity ! The popish dogma of discipleship by baptism is affirmed and re-affirmed by the leaders of those Protestant Dissenting denominations who charge the Baptists with making too much of baptism ! Discipleship to Jesus without instruction, without consciousness! I admit that this soul-destroying error is counteracted in Drs. H. and S., but only by an additional error, that of denying that a disciple of Christ means a believer, a Christian. Secondly, it is infei-red that if the baptism of these mentioned by Justin did not take place in infancy, it took place in their early years ; and such assumption and inference unitedly corroborate with much satisfaction the baptizing of infants as an apostolic practice and a Divine ordinance ! The word paidon affords no evidence of baptism or of discipleship in infancy. The word in holy writ is translated child, son, servant, maid, man-servant, and young man. It ia unnecessary to adduce instances, to any who know the Greek language, but the following may be consulted : Matt, viii, 6, 8, 13 ; xvii, 18 ; xxi, 15 ; Lu. i, 54, 69 ; ii, 43; viii, 51, 54; xii, 45; Acts iii, 13, 26 ; iv, 25, 27, 30 ; xx, 12. The apostle Paul speaks of Timothy as having " known the holy Scriptures," not ek paidos, hut apo brephous, 2 Tim. iii, 15. In Job xxxi, 18 we read, " I have guided her from my mother's womb." In Ps. Iviii, 3 we read, " The wicked are estranged from the womb : they go astray as soon as they be born, speaking lies." Basil speaks of those who eh nepioit had been catechized in the word. Clemens Alexandrinus declares pedagogy to be a good institution in virtue eh paidon. Theophilus, of Antioch, speaks of libraries filled with impure doctrines that persons ek paidon from their childhood might learn that which is unlawful. Origen says, They who are called to do the works of the kingdom of God eh paidon, kai protes elikias, from their childhood and earliest days, are those whom the householder hired early in the morning. Again, They who have been faithful (eh paidon) from their childhood, and with pious pains have kept a check upon the extravagances of youth, &c. Plutarch speaks of the voice, countenance, play, and disposition of Cato Minor, eli paidiou. Socrates speaks of the demon that continued to attend him ek paidos. Laertius says of Xenocrates, of Chalcedon, that he studied under Plato ek neou, from infancy. Thus evident is it from language sacred and profane that ek paidon proves nothing respecting the condition of babyhood.* On the import of matheteuo 1 have already spoken. And P£edobaptist concessions to the correctness of what I have asserted, can be read. The use of the same word by Justin as by Matthew (Matt, xxviii, 19) proves no more than the baptizing of those discipled to Christ by teaching, be they ever so young. Let the reader judge whether the preceding or the succeeding speak more worthily. That some of these I shall adduce are Pasdobaptist writers and ecclesiastical historians of the highest eminence, it will not be questioned. Olshausen says : " In the most ancient periods, belief in Christ was indispensable to baptism, as passages from Justin Martyr prove." — Com., on 1 Cor. xv, 29. Dr. DoDDKiDGE says : " Justin Martyr speaks of some ' who had been made disciples from their infancy ;' but this may only refer to their having been early instructed in the principles of the Christian religion." — Misc. Works, pp. 493, 494. Dr. J. Bennett, on Justin's statement respecting Christian baptizing in his day, says that Justin's statement represents "the change in the person's state, from an unbeliever to a believer, as the antecedent, not the consequence, of baptism." After quoting Justin's words, he says, " The peculiar expression exliibits an engagement * Most of these extracts are from Gale'a Befl., pp. 370-872. 432 SUBJECTS or baptism. made undei' a consciousness of the moral power to fulfil it, which none bnt those who are 'made new' could sincerely profess" (Cong. Lee, vol. viii, p. 192). Again, he thus quotes Justin : " There are many men and women of sixty or seventy years, who, from children, were made disciples to Christ, who remain incorrupt, and I glory that I can shew such from every nation ;" and he adds, that " to the original commission Justin seems to allude, matheteusaie. disciple" (pp. 197, 198). The tenets of Baptists forbid not youthful, early discipleship to Clmst. Would that this was the more earnest, believing, and successful aim of the entii-e church of Christ ! Dr. B. also teaches that as in Justin " the laver, or washing, is called illumination," so "the baptism is called regeneration, as it is performed on men who have been regenerated" (p. 193). Ho does not maintain " that Justin is exempt from the appearance of confounding the sign with the thing signified," but he teaches (p. 193) that, as the second century was then more than half gone, corruption was considerably advanced." Dr. Wall teaches that Justin's account of baptism, is " the most ancient account of the way of baptism, next the Scriptiires, and shews the plain and simple manner of administering it." It will be seen by his quotation from Justin that he gives the latter part of the sentence which by many Paedobaptists is omitted, and which, wliile accordant with his statements on baptism, is strongly corroborative of the sentiments I am advocating. He says, quoting Justin, " several persons among us of sixty or seventy years old, of both sexes, who were discipled to Christ in their childhood, do continue uncorrupted." Their continuing uncorrupfed supposes their conversion to have taken place, to be included in their being discipled to Christ. Thus the inspired writer testifies respecting those who on the day of Pentecost (gladly) received the apostle's word, and were baptized, that they continued steadfastly in the apostles' doctrine, &c. The words of Justin as clearly refer to discipled infants as do those of Luke. Dr. R. Wilson, notwithstanding Justin's explicit testimony to believers' baptism as the Christian baptism of his day, can say respecting the fathers and the early ages, that " the utmost research and ingenuity have hitherto failed to extract from them a particle of evidence onbehalf of Antipaedobaptism" (Inf. Bcq}., pp. 52.5, 526). — Indeed ! The Monthly Revie^v more candidly and correctly says, "With respect to the testimony of Justin, it requires very considerable ingenuity to make it, in any view, an argument in favour of infant baptism." — p. 395. 1784. Semisch says : " Whenever Justin refers to baptism, adults appear as the objects to whom the sacred rite is administered. Of an infant baptism he knows nothing. The traces of it which some persons believe they have detected in his writings, ai'e groundless fancies, artificially produced." — Life, Times, a7ul Writings of Justin Martyr, vol. ii, p. 334. Dr. G. C. Knapp says on infant baptism, " Some have endeavoiu'ed to find evidence for this practice even in the writings of Justin the Martyr and Irenaeus ; but they are not sufficiently decisive on this point." — Chris. Theol., § 142. Dr. W. Hanna, with such testimony respecting the practice of baptism in the time of Justin, it is much to be regretted, speaks of having " one strong fact to urge. About a hundred years after the death of Christ, historic traces present themselves of infant baptism ; not as an innovation, as only partially prevailing, as in many quarters objected to, but as the general practice of the Christian community" (The Forty, &c., pp. 268, 269). Neither the evidence, nor the possibility of a single instance of infant baptism, is yet apparent. Semler. — " From Justin Martyr's description of baptism (Second Apol., p. 93) we learn that it was administered only to adults" (In Hinton's His., p. 224). It is grievous to read from learned men in opposition to this, and without a particle of evidence to sustain their assertion, that the baptism of infants was " the undoiibted practice of the Christian church" in "the .ages immediately succeeding the apostles." Dr. L. Woods. — "As the phrase, eh paidon, may relate to children who have come to years of understanding, as well as to infants, I am satisfied on a review of the testimony of Justin, that it cannot well be urged as conclusive in favour of Psedo- baptism." — On Inf. Bap., p. 112. Mr. KoWELL, an American Baptist, on the last quotation from Justin, says : " The use made of this passage shows how some will overstrain and wrest the Fathers, to make them speak in favour of any sentiment their prejudices may have led them to adopt. With regard to the quotation before us, we have to remark, first, that the word used by Justin for discipling is ematheteusatc, the very same used by Christ in the commission, when He directs His apostles to go and ' teach,' or disciple all the nations." Mr. H. confidently regards Justin as teaching that persons of both sexes, " now sixty or seventy years old," had been taught or discipled " at an early age ; but not a word is said of their baptism. To suppose that the teaching was haptizing them, ia unsupported, gratuitous, and absurd."— In Hinton's His. of Bop., pp. 22G, 227. HISTOEIC TESTIMONY. 433 Many testimonies respecting the primitive church that will bo sub- sequently adduced will have especial application to the days of Justin ; and some in subsequent sections under Irenfeus, TertuUian, and others, will also embrace Justin. J. Fletcher designates " a.d. 167-324," "the second post-apostolic age, or the age of innovation." In his conclnding remarks on the time of Justin Martyr, he says : " In the wi-itings of Irenajus and Tertullian, whose names come before us on the page of liistory a little after this time, and indeed in most of the records of the first three centuries, we find abimdant evidence of the resistance which was offered to change and innovation in respect to the primitive state of things. But if a line must be dra^vn after a general manner, between the age of purely apostolic institutions and the succeeding age of innovation, subversion, and xUtimate total corruption, we think it must be dxawTi here. Up to this time the churches of Christ, so far as their organization is concerned, preserve all the main features by which they were characterized in the age of the apostles ; but from this period they become gradually changed" (His of Ind., vol. i, pp. 163-165). He elsewhere correctly informs us that apostolic institutions were subverted not by a sudden convulsion, but by a gradual transition (p. 112). He also says (p. 11) what may be lamentably true concerning some, but not concerning those on whom principally I have animadverted : " Some have passed with breathless haste over tlie inspired records of the apostolic age, making it only a first and brief stage in the progress of the chm-ch ; others inverting the tnie order of things, have gathered together the lessons which may be learnt from the human history of the church in order to falsify those which are taught from the Divine." Dr. S. Stennett says : " Justin's view, in his Apology, was to vindicate the Christians of those times from the cniel reproaches of their enemies ; and among the rest, the horrid one of murdering their infants, and making an impious use of their blood in their assemblies. When, therefore, he proceeds to give an account of their manner of solemnizing baptism, how natural to expect he would speak of infants, if it had been the practice to baptize them ; and especially as he introduces his account with assuring the emperor that he meant, by describing this solemnity, to avoid the charge of seeming to deal unfairly in some part of his Apology ! But not a hint is given about infants, or any ceremony relating to them" ('^hs., pp. 216, 217) ; while " it could scarcely have been omitted without the charge of prevarication." If some errors had now an existence, by which Pa^dobaptism was adopted and defended, these errors had not then produced this effect. Prof. Stuart, on Justin's words, says : " I am persuaded that this passage, as a whole, most naturally refers to immersion ; for why on any other ground should the convert who is to be inifiatecl go out to the place where there is water ?" I will repeat that it is enough for us that Christ instituted believers' baptism, and that the Scriptures contain not a single precept, precedent, or syllable in any way, in fovoiu' of the baptism of infants or those luiown to be ungodly. We need no support from the fathers. Yet their testimony is decisive, so far as positive and negative testimony can decide, that for more than a hundred years after the baptism of the three thousand who gladly received the apostle's word, no other than believers' baptism was known. 9.— iRENiEUS. Dr. Carson. — " I will not neglect an ordinance of Christ, I wiU not adopt an ordinance not founded by Christ, from any diffionlty arising from church history. My Bible . . . ends with the book of Revelation." — On J!ap., p. 188. Dr. A. Alexander.—" No articles of faith, nor institutions of worship, concerning which the 9criptuves are silent, have come down to us by tradition." — The Canon, p. 879. Irenajus is another post-apostolical father. He was, says Dr. Waddington, bishop of Lyons about a.d. 178, and " is chiefly celebrate(J FF 4S4 SUBJECTS OP BAPTISM. for hif? five books against heresies." Dr. Stacey says that " Irenseus, who was born in the early part of the second century, speaks of infants and of Httle children, infantes et jmrvulos, as rer/enerated to the Lord ; bv which he undoubtedly refers to their baptism." L-enseus " undoubtedly" does not here mention baptism. Whether he refers to it, is no more than an inference, on which not Baptists alone, but also eminent Pajdobaptists differ decidedly from Dr. S. Dr. Halley says : " Irenseus, within a hundred years of the death of the apostles, says of Jesus, ' He came to save all persons by himself, — all, I say, who by Him are regenerated to God, — infants, and little ones, and childi'en, and 5'oung, and old.' Infants as distinguished from little children, are here said to be regenerated : and we maintain that according to the current language of that age, a regenerated infant means a baptized infant" (vol. xv, p. 88). Although it can only be inferred that Irenneus speaks of baptism, by maintaining that regeneration is here used by him in the sense of baptism, Dr. H. maintains that Irena^us, as well as others who succeeded him, ''un- doubtedly calls baptism regeneration" (p. 89). He adds ; " Speakhig of the baptismal commission, he says in a passage we have cited m the fifth lecture, ' Committing to His disciples the power of regeneration, he said. Go and teach all nations, baptizing them' ; and again where we have his words in their original Greek, he speaks of the Valentinians being sent by the devil for the denial of the baptism of the regeneration to God " (p. 89). This expression we may subsequently notice. Dr. Wall quotes more nearly than Drs. H. and S. to the end of the sentence attributed to Irenseus, but by not completing the sentence its enomiity or deformity is partially concealed. Dr, W., having given the original, thus translates Irena3us, speaking of Christ : '' Therefore as He was a Master, He had also the age of a master. Not disdaining nor going in a way above human nature ; nor breaking in His own person the law which He had set for mankind ; but sanctifying every several age by the likeness it hath to Him. For He came to save all persons by Himself, all, I mean, who by Him are regenerated [or baptized] unto God : infants and little ones, and childi'en, and youths, and elder persons. Therefore he went through the several ages ; for infants being made an infant, sanctifying infants ; to little ones he was made a little one, sanctifying those of that age ; and also giving them an example of godliness, justice, and dutifulness ; to youths, he was a youth, &c." (His., vol. i, p. 25). Dr. W. then adduces his reasons for believing that Irenasus by regenera- tion means baptism, which he has taken the liberty to insert within brackets.- • The words of Irenseus are: "Idea per omnem venit atatem, et infantibus infans faetu*, tancUficaiis iiifantfg ; in parvidis pnrvulus, sanctificans hane ipsam habnites a-tatem, simul et exe.mpliim HUk pietatis effectux etjiuttititi; el subject ionit ; hijuvenibus juvenis, cxi'mplum juvenihus jiem et sanctificans Domino," &c. lu speakinf,' of Christ as " amonc; littlo children ii little child (parvulm), sanctifyins those who are at this very ago, at the same time also haviuf,'hcou made an example to them (if piety, and righteousness, and obedience," it is probable that Ireuajus had in his mind that passage in Christ's history which speaks of His returning from the temple and being subject to H:is parents. The parculuK is certainly >reshutes, from his sixtieth year." The idea (in Iremrus) of Christ's becoming an infant for the sake of infants, or having any particular age for the sake of those of pi-ecisely the same ago, I wholly reject. The unscriptural idea would require Christ to have lived not only till he was sixty, but much more than twice sixty years of age, not to speak of antedilm-ians and some early post-diluvians, or provision is made for certain ages which is not made for others. I do not in this despise the infancy of Christ, nor reject any scriptural inference from His humanity, His infancy, boyhood, and maturity ; or from those trials and temptations, which through exijerience, make Him a sympathetic High Priest who can " be touched with the feeling of our infirmities." Christ is no more the Saviour of infants dying in infancy by His becoming an infant than by becoming an infant He is tlie Saviour of Methuselah dying at the age of " nine hundred sixty and nine years." They who, with Dr. Schaff and many more, regard "baptism as a means of saving grace," may consistently with themselves, although, as I think, in lamentable opposition to holy wi'it, plead for baptizing " all whom Christ would save."— ^p. Cli. His., p. 573. * That the word " seniores" commonly if not invariably means " aged persons," is undeniable. The only meaning of senex given by Ainsworth, improved by Drs. Morell and Carey, is " an old man or woman;" and of .sch for, " old, withered, wrinkled." Dr. W. Smith's Dictionary gives, " Senior, old, aged, advanced in years." " Subs., An aged person, an old man or woman." Hence the translation of this word in Irenseus, by Cary on the twenty-seventh Article, is " old men." Thus, says Wickham, is Iren.'eus quoted in The Oxford Tract, No. 67, p. 77. Thus in Neander jiii'enes et «eniores is given "young men and old" (Ch. His., vol. i, t). 431. Bohn). Seniores is given " old men" in its t\Yo occurrences iu this passage in Clark's Irenseus, translated by Dr. A, Roberts. 436 SUBJECTS OF BAPTISM. In the Ante-Nicene Library of Messrs. Clark, may be seen the whole of what Irenaeus says. The following from Ire. b. ii, ch. xxii, § 4-6 is extracted : " Being thirty years old when He came to be baptized, and then possessing the full age of a Master, He came to Jerusalem, so that He might be properly acknowledged by all as a Master. For He did not seem one thing while He was another, as those affirm who describe Him as being man only in appearance ; but what He was, that He also appeared to be. Being a Master, therefore, He possessed the age of a Master, not despising or evading any condition of humanity, nor setting aside in Himself that law which He had appointed for the human race ; but sanctifying evei-y age, by that period corresponding to it which belonged to Himself. For He came to save all tlu:ough means of Himself— all I say who tlirough Him are born again to God*— infants, and children, and boys, and youths, and old men. He therefore passed through every age, becoming an infant for infants, thus sanctifying infants ; a child for children, thus .sanctifying those who are of this age, being at the same time made to them an example of piety, righteousness, and submission ; a youth for youths, becoming an example to youths, and thus sanctifying them for the Lord. So likewise He was an old man for old men, that He might be a perfect Master for aU, not merely as respects the setting forth of the truth, but also as regards age, sanctifying at the same time the aged also, and becoming an example to them likewise. Then at last, He came on to death itself, that He might be ' the first-born from the dead, that in all things He might have the pre-eminence,' the Prince of life, existing before all, and going before all. . How could He have had disciples if He did not teach ? And how could He have taught, unless He had reached the age of a master ? For when He came to be baptized. He had not yet completed His thirtieth year, but was beginning to be about thirty years of age. . . . Now that the first stage of early life embraces thirty years, and that this extends onwards to the fortieth year, every one will admit ; but from the fortieth and fiftieth year a man begins to decline towards old age, which our Lord possessedf while He still fulfilled the office of a Teacher, even as the gospel and all the elders testify ; those who were conversant in Asia with John, the disciple of the Lord, [affirming] that John convoyed to them that information. . . . But besides this, those very Jews who then disputed with the Lord Jesus Christ have most clearly indicated the same thing. For when the Lord said to them, ' Yom- father Abraham rejoiced to see My day ; and he saw it, and was glad,' they answered Him, '. '^^O'f ^rt not yet fifty years old, and hast Thou seen Abraham :-' Now such language is fittingly applied to one who has already passed the age of forty, without having as yet reached his fiftieth year, yet is not far from this latter period. ... He did not then want much of being fifty years old."— IFri. of Ire., vol. i, pp. 199-202. Dr. Cave appears to regard the passage from Irenajus as genuine, but admits him tobe in error, into which he supposes him to have been betrayed "partly from a mistaken report which he had somewhere picked up — and partly out of opposition to his adversaries, who maintained that om* Saviour staid no longer upon earth than till the 31st year of His age, against which the eagerness of disputation tempted him to make good his assertion from any plausible pretence." And '• if this were the fact," says Dr. S. Stennett, " we still .see how little stress is to be laid upon a passage, which is thus judged to have proceeded from credulity, and to have been wi-itten in the heat of controversy." — Ans., p. 222. Dr. S. Addington thinks that Irenaeus "testifies that he believed infants capable of renewing grace," or that he speaks of them " as then baptized ;" and that those who deem them capable of renewal " (cannot consistently deem them unfit for baptism" (p. 166). Is capability of renewal the qualification for baptism ? • The editors here give!a note sayinp; that renaseiintur in Deum refers " doubtless to baptism, as clearly appears from comparing book ill, xvii, 1 !" It is in the last passaffe where we read, " Giving to His disciples the power of reKeneration into Gotl, He said to them, Go and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name," &c. On this the Rev. Wi<;an Harvey remarks : "The sacrament of baptism is therefore clunamiH tes anaejennesioi eis Tlieon," the power of regeneration into (or unto) God ! + The original of this sentence it may be gi-atifying to some to read. It is, *' Quia autem triginta annortin ioi and paides for young or feeble converts, and jjaidagoges (1 Cor. iv, 15) for instructors of Christians. There is not, therefore, the least ground to conclude that when speaking of " children dra^vn out of the water," he had any reference to infants. These were young converts. And thus he could speak of the church of Alexandria as a choir of infants. 13.— Tertullian. MoKORAtus.— " Since Christ is the truth, we must follow the truth rather than custom."— In Wickham's Synopsis, p. 363. Dr. DoEDEs.— " Let the New Testament teach what it teaches ; and if men do not agree with it, let them have the com'age to say so." — Herme., p. 59. Dr. H. BoNAR.— " Truth is ever true, In this age or the last, and error false, To-day as it waa yesterday."— Ht/mns, p. 242. Tertullian is said by Dr. Wacldington to have received ordination about A.D, 192, at the age of 45. Riddle, under a.d. 196, says, " Tertullian rises into notice at Carthage ;" and gives for his "Apology" " 198 (al. 205)." Wickham gives to TertuUian "a.d. 220," as if this Avas the date of his flourishing, although evidently he flourished earlier. The flrst part of his book against Marciou, from his mentioning (book i, ch. xv) that he was writing in the fifteenth year of the reign of Sevenis, appears to have been written in a.d. 207 ; but adds Dr. P. Holmes, in his Introductory Notice to Clark's Tertullian, " It is nearly certain that the other books, although connected manifestly enough in the author's argument and purpose (compare the initial and the final chapters of the niSTOEIO TESTIMONY. 445 several books), were yet issued af separate times. Noesselt (in his treatise De vera atate ac doctrina script. Tertullian, sections 28, 45), shews that between the Book i and Books ii-iv, Tertullian issued his De Came Christi and De Piesurrectione Carnis." "In his book i," says Noesselt, *' he announces his intention (ch. i) of sometime or other completing his tract De Prescript. Hmret., but in his Book De Came Christi, he mentions how he had completed it — a conclusive proof that his Book i against Marcion preceded the other books." His book on baptism was probably written in the early part of the third century ; but whether then or in the closing part of the second I durst not affirm. Dupin says that it was written while he was yet a catholic, which means, before he adopted the opinions of the Montanists ; and that he separated from the chmxh " in the beginning of the third century, to follow the sect of Montanus and his disciples." Dr. Wotton " seems to maintain that Tertullian turned Montanist between 201 and 207." The following is testimony to his sentiments on baptism. Dr. A. Claeke says that Tertullian " extols the advantages of water, beginning at the creation of the world ; says a person may be baptized in the sea, in a pond, a river, a fountain, a marsh, a basin, &c., with equal effect ; that an angel presides over baptism, who conveys the Divine emotion to the person as soon as the rite is performed. . . . That martyrdom in certain instances supplies the deficiency of this rite ; that it is not a ceremony hastily to be undergone ; but yet that those who entirely neglect it are guilty of the loss of a soul." CoLiyiNSON quotes Tertullian as saying, " Blessed is our sacrament of water ; for by it the sins of our former blindness are washed away, and we have freedom to eternal life. As John was the fore-runner of the Lord, preparing his way, so the angel [bishop or minister] who dispenses baptism, prepares tlie way for the coming of the Holy Ghost, by the ablution of sins, which faith, sealed and witnessed in the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, accomplishes." Tricalet records that Tertullian, speaking of baptism, "says that' 'before receiving it, the catechumen renounced, at three different times, the devil and his pomps and his angels ; that he was afterwards dipped three times, making some answer beyond that which the Lord has appointed in the gospel ; that, on being lifted out of the font, he was given milk and honey to taste, and that, after that day, he ought to abstain from ordinary baths during the whole week. He was prepared for baptism by frequent prayers, by fastings, by bendings of the knee, and by secret confession of his sins. The time appointed for the solemn rite of baptism was the lifty days after Easter.' " '• ' There was no difference whether persons were baptized in the sea, in a lake, a river, a fountain, a pool, or a basin ; that God can accord the grace of baptism to the faith of him who desires it ; that this grace is obtained also by martyrdom.' " "' On going out of the water the newly-baptized person receives unction, whereupon the name of Christian devolves on him ; afterwards the ceremony of laying on of hands is performed, together with the benediction and the invocation of the Holy Spirit.' "—In Wickham's Syno'j)., pp. 278, 279. That Dr. Pusey and other writers of the Oxford Tracts should quote largely from Tertullian and subsequent writers when the necessity and efficacy of baptism began to be maintained in too great accordance with Tractarian and popish notions, it is to be expected. Tract No. 22 thus quotes Tertullian : " Nothing so hardens men's minds, as that simplicity of Divine works which is seen in the doing of them, contrasted with the greatness which is promised as the effect of them. For instance, in the case before us ; since the candidate for baptism 446 SUBJECTS OP BAPTISM. is plunged into water in so simple a way, without many ceremonies, without any novel ado, without cost, and is bathed* with a few words said over him, and then rises not much or not at all cleaner to look at, therefore it is considered incredible that he can have gained thereby an eternal gift." " Wretched incredulity ! to deny to God His own characteristics, simplicity and power. , . . ' God hath chosen the foolish things of the world to confound its wisdom :' and what is of surpassing difficulty with men, is easy with Him. . . . Mindful of this announcement, as a principle to guide us, let us consider the so-called foolishness and impossibility of the doctrine, that we are new made by water. ... In baptism it has the gift of quickening. Not that we obtain the Holy Spirit in the water ; but by being cleansed in the water from sin and giiilt, we are prepared by the angel for the Holy Spirit. . . . The dove of the Holy Spirit flies to the earth (that is, our flesh) when emerging from the waters after its old transgressions. . . . Though salvation came by mere faith' before the Lord's passion and resurrection, yet when faith is enlarged by the doctrines of the nativity, passion, and resiu-rection, the covenant receives an enlargement also, viz., the seal of baptism, as though a sort of garment for faith, which before was naked, but now is sanctioned by its peculiar appointments. For the appointment of dipping is given, and a form of words prescribed." " Easter is the most solemn time for baptism. . . . Next, the season of Pentecost. Blessed are ye for whom the grace of God is waiting, what time ye ascend out of that holiest batli of your new birth, and first spread out your hands in your mother's presence with your brethren." It is very evident from these quotations that to baptism was given an efficacy in the time of Tertulhan which wonkl prepare for its enlarged administration, which Avould necessarily create the desire for its adminis- tration to young children. And the writings of Tertullian, while opposing the practice, prove its existence. Dr. Wall, after quoting Tertullian as teaching "that none can be saved without baptism," also quotes him as saying, " But they whose diity it is to administer baptism are to know, that it must not be given rashly. Give to every one that askcth tliee, has; its proper subject, and relates to alms-giving : but that command rather is to be considered, Give not that which is holy to the dogs, neither cast your pearls hefore swine. And that, Lay hands suddenly on no man, neither be 2)artai;ers of other men's faults. — Therefore according to everyone's condition and disposition, and also their age, the delaying of baptism is more profitable, especially in the case of little children. For what need is there [ ] that the god-fathers should be brought into danger ? Because they may either fail of their promises by death, or they may be mistaken by a child's proving of wicked disposition. Our Lord says indeed, Do not forbid themto come to Me. Therefore let them come when they are gTown up ; let them come when they understand ; let them be made Christians when they can know Christ. Wliat need their guiltless age make such haste to the forgiveness of sins ? Men will proceed more warily in worldly things : and he that should not have earthly goods committed to him, yet shall liave heavenly. Let them Iniow how to desire this salvation, that you may appear to have given to one that asketh. For no less reason unmarried persons ought to be kept off, who are likely to come into tentation, as well those that never were mai-ried, iipon account of their coming to ripeness, as those in widowhood, for the miss of their partner, until they either marry or be confirmed in continence. They that iinderstaud the weight of baptism will rather dread the receiving of it than the delaying of it. An entire faith is secure of salvation." — His., vol. i, pp. 44, 45. * I admit that the translation plun/jed into water is not a literal translation of Tertullian '.s words in aqva demissus, nor is it one that I would give to these words ; but I have been grieved and astouished to find in Clark's Ante-Nicenc Library, that Mr. Thclwall thus translates Tertullian : " with 80 great simplicity, without pomiJ, without any considerable novelty of preparation, finally, without expense, a man is dipped in water, and, amid the utterance of some few words, is sprinkled, and then rises again," &c. (Tert., vol. i, p. 2:^). I believe that not a scholar in the world can deny tliat "is sp)(Hl7<'(r' is a gross mis-translation of TertuUiau's "^/ic/ii,*," and that ?irt(70 as used by TrrtuUinjtior bo pi !zo, here and elsewhere, never means less than to immerse. Dr. W. Smith's Dictionary gives the meaning of tingo. 1.—" To wet, moisten, bathe. 2.— esp. to soak in colour, to dye, to colour, tinge." Grotius, on Matt, iii, 6, says that '• the ancient Latins used Unriere fur hnpti::arr," and that '• tingo pioinrly and generally signifies the tiame as mermre." Demmm means let iloivii. They went down into the water, and were baptized, as in Acts viii, 88. HISTORIC TESTIMONY. 447 Dr. Wall notices the contradiction in Tertullian, on baptism as being necessary and not necessary to salvation, and supposes him to mean, " that those who put off their baptism negligently, or as slighting it, do, if they finally die without it, lose their life : but that in those that put it oft' only that they may be fitter for it, and in a more likely condition to keep it unstained, if by that means they happen to die without it, the will and piu-pose of being baptized shall be accepted for the deed." This is the " probable guess" of Dr. W., after citing Tertullian's ovsti words, "that the reader may try if he can pick any coherent sense out of them." — p. 4G. Tertullian speaks of little children as guiltless, and yet of baptism as so necessary that he who neglects to administer it when there is danger of death, is guilty of the person's loiin. He says, " Every soul is reckoned as in Adam, so long till it be anew enrolled in Christ ; and so long unclean, till it be so enrolled ; and sinful, because unclean," &c. Dr. Wall supposes Tertullian to mean "that baptism was necessary for all, but that it was not to be given before adult age in any other case but only that of extreme necessity." But the language of Tertullian in opposing the baptism of little children is boastingly adduced by our opponents to prove the baptism of infants to be confirmed as apostolic, becau:-e Tertullian's opposition to the baptism of little children is believed to prove that the custom at the close of the second century, or in the early part of the third, was to baptize infants. I am not quoting, but will now quote the vjonh of our opponents. Dr. Wall says : " But that which most deserves the reader's observation is, that the words of Tertullian do not import that the custom of the Christians at that time was to leave infants* unbaptized : but, on the contrary, they plainly intimate there was a custom of baptizing them : only he dislikes that that custom should be generally used." Also on the custom of the clmrch then to baptize infants. Dr. W. remarks : " Tlie same observation ought to be made concerning the sponsors, or god-fathers, whom he speaks of as used in the baptism of infants that could not answer for themselves." Mr. Pengillt thus quotes Tertullian : " For the law of baptizing is laid down, and the form prescribed : Go (saith He) teach all nations, baptizing them in tlie name, &c. He bound faith and the necessity of baptism together ; therefore from that time all who believed were dipped" (tingv.cbantur). — Guide, &c,, p, 120. * The reader will perceive that Br. Wall, instead of giving little cMltlren for Tertullian's pai-- vulos, t,'ives in/ants. That Tei'tulliaii says not a word about infants, of whose baptism we do not read till a later period, I shall subsequently adduce P.-edobaptist as well as Baptist authority. Whether Dv. Wall is alone in spealdng of infantt: instead of little children, when referring to Tertullian's language, and whether some Baptists without sufficient thought and examination have not in this imitated them, the reader may notice. In Irena?us, already quoted, infantes and parvulos are used to describe as certainly distinct classes of persons as juvenes and senioreg. I may here state that, so far as I know, parnilus, and never infans, is the word used by Tertullian and Origen's translators to describe the children of whose baptism they speak, and which has been read by many Pasdobaptists and Baptists as meaning an infant. I admit that this word may be used when infants are meant, but I maintnu that it does not necessarily designate an infant. Vie may in Englisli speak of an infant by the term child, or little child, but these terms no more prove in themselves that an infant is spoken of than does the Latin jot/ th/hs. Parvulusis not given for ■infant in any EngUsh-Latiu Dictionary I have seen, although I admit that Dr. A. Littleton's, in " infans, infantulus, pueruliis," for infant, gives athird and last word, which is about as appropriate to infants (and also as indefinite) as parvulus. In his Latm-Euglish we read, " Subs. Paivulus, parvula, a little boy, a little giil, a young child." Yet Mr. Chrystal teaches that parvuhis clearly describes an infant ! Ainsworth, improved by Drs. Morell and Carey, and Entick, improved by three linguists (1859J, give only («/n»s as the Latin word for infant; while Entick's gives for parvultts, "a little boy, child," and Ainswoi-th's as Dr. Littleton's. Ainsworth, recently improved by W. Ellis, gives the same for parvulus and infant, giving also for "a little infant, infantulus." Cassell's, edited by Dr. J. R. Beard and C. Beard, gives for infant, infans. filiolus, filiola. Dr. W. Smith's gives for infans, " a little child, an infant," and for parvulus, " little, yoimg ; a parvulo, from a child ;" " ab parvulis, from their infancy, CuiS. B. G. C. 21." Cassell's gives " ab parvulis, from chUdhood." It seems to me clear that though parvulus may be rightly used in application to an infant, it may also be as rightly used in application to a little boy or very little child, children much younger than had formerly been, and probably than even in Africa at this time was generally the case, being admitted to baptism through the xjrofessions and promises of sponsors ; and con- sequently the occurrence of this word is in itself no proof that an infant is meant. Moreover, though etymologieally parvulun is a diminutive oiparrus, lexicographers and use demand not as a necessity of fidelity that our rendering be very Uttle children. Further corroboration \vill be given under Origen, where I trust the candid reader will conclude that while every infant is a little child, but every little child is not an infant, so every infans is a parvulus, but not every parvulus an infans ; and that the fanciful Origen's encouraging to baptize parvulos by offerings under the law for the newly-born, is not proof that they then did actually baptize these, although such reasoning, if accepted, would certainly lead to this," if it had not commenced. 448 SUBJECTS OF BAPTISM, r Dr. Halley quotes from the tract of Tertullian CDe Bapilsmo, c. 18) : "The '< delaying of baptism is more advantageous according to the condition, the disposition, *" and the age of every person, and especially with regard to children. For why is it ^ needful if the case be not extremely urgent, that their sponsors should be brought into ^ danger ? . . . Those who understand the weight of baptism, would rather fear the reception than the postponement of it. Faith uninjiu'ed is siu'c of salvation" (vol. XV, p. 83). "He evidently regarded," says Dr. H., "the obligations of the rite so weighty, its resx^onsibility so great, and the sins committed after it so aggravated, that, as he says, its attainment was more to be feared than its postponement. In his esteem baptism unspotted by subsequent sin, the fides 'Integra was certain of salvation" (p. 84). Dr. H. says of TertuUian's Ti-act, that " we may place it in the close of the Recond century," and he concludes that then "the baptism of infants was a prevalent usage in the chui'ch" (p. 84) ; and, says he, "This passage appears to me by far the moat important which ecclesiastical antiquity supplies on the subject of infant baptism" (pp. 84, 85). Thus does our opponent assume and infer, or leap to con- clusions. The opposition of Tertullian to the baptism of very little children (while saying not a word about infants), is no proof that the baptism of these children prevailed in the chui'ch at large. This being the first mention of such a practice, there is no proof in TertiUlian's words of its existence elsewhere than in Africa, and no probability that the practice had any other tlian a recent origin. For this sentiment, naturally arising from TertuUian's words, we have the highest Psedobaptist sanction. It might be said to us who prominently refer to Christ's commission and apostolic practice in justification and requirement of believers' baptism, Why does not Tertullian refer to these in order to silence his opponents and condemn their practice, instead of replying to its advantages and to one or two Scriptures adduced to favour it ? The probability is, I conceive, that all the arguments advanced to support the baptizing of little children, are handled in his reply, namely, the (unauthorized) application to baptism of Christ's words, when He said, Sufler, &c., and the supposed efficacy of baptism in regenerating and saving. Dr. Halley himself says : " By carefully observing the history of the second and succeeding century, we may discover some vestiges of the primitive usage. " The renunciation of the devil was, at a very early age, considered a part of the baptismal service. We find it so in TertiUlian ; but we also find in his time the renunciation was made by all persons on becoming catechumens. The change seems to have been gradual. As early as Tertullian, the time of instruction preparatory to baptism was comparatively short." " Tertullian represents Christians as 'having testified some time before baptism (aliquanto prius), imder the hand of the chief minister, that wo renounce the de\'il, and his pomps and angels.' Ho also seems to refer to the renixnciatioii of idols on becoming catechumens, as well as on being baptized, when he says, 'We have twice renounced idols.' " — Vol. xv, pp. 112, 113. The glorying of Dr. H. in TertuUian as "an early index," whom "we do well to observe," is vain for the cause of infant baptism. Instead of infant baptism then existing " in contrariety to the corruptions of the age and not in concurrence with them," it was the corruption of the age in I'egard to the efficacy and necessity of baptism, that was then bringing down the practice of believers' baptism to the baptism of very little children. That neither we nor our Pasdobaptist brethren subscribe to Tertullian or any uninspired writer, except so far as we believe them scriptural, is surely not to our dishonour. We stand in no need of Tertullian for the vindication of believers' baptism ; but we maintain that our opponents pervert his testimony in advocating from his word.s the baptism of infants. In entire destitution of evidence does Dr. H. say, " The usage of his age is with us," and most inconsistently and dishonourably does he assert that Baptists " ought either to disclaim his authority or submit to it" (p. 87). We and our opponents profess but one "Master." If we were the professed disciples of Tertullian, our opponents might direct their " Baptist friends" to " this old Anti-Paadobaptist." Let our opponents who advocate indis- criminate and universal baptism as Christ's command and the apostles' practice, and who maintain that on the subjects of baptism "the example of tlie apostles had been quietly followed," no opposition having '• arisen to throw the .subject into special HISTORIC TESTIMONY. 449 prominence" (Dr. Stacey) unto the days of " this stern African" (Dr. H.), account for the dread of early baptism, explain obedience to apostolic example on baptism till the age of Tertulliau with the previous existence of various classes of catechumens, all acknowledged to be unbaptized. Where do we find TertuUian, or any jyreeeding father, " making signals of recognition' ' to our Ptedobaptist friends ? We appeal to TertuUian as evidence of error in his day in thrice immersing, in giving milk, &c., in connexion with baptism, in regarding baptism as effecting the most important change in the character and condition of man, and we appeal to him as evidencing that of which before him no writings Divine or human give a previous hint, namely, that Christian baptism was being administered to little children. Dr. Stagey, advocating " infant baptism," says that TertuUian' s " reference to it is only the expression of an individual judgment against a commonly admitted practice." Can that be justly called a commonly admitted practice which has not been yet mentioned ? " As a personal opinion it is opposed to infant baptism, as an historical testimony, it is strongly in favour of it" (p. 167). " TertuUian, though personally opposed to infant baptism, is really a witness giving unimpeachable testimony to its prevalence in his own age" (p. 168). Can we have historic and unimpeachable testimony on that to which there is no reference expressed or implied ? By assumptions and false inferences our worthy opponents lead astray their readers. Dr. S., as others, mentions that TertuUian opposes infant baptism on "very different grounds from those on which infant baptism is now assailed." "He does not allege against it apostolical tradition or the words of Christ in the great commission." Instead of thia reasoning of TertuUian implying that the baptism of little children was acknowledged to have apostolic sanction, and to have the custom of the church unto his day, it rather implies that the advocates of the baptism of little children did not plead apostolic precept or apostolic practice, but simply the benefit of an earUer baptism than had before taken place, baptism being believed to be a saving ordinance. We adduce TertuUian's words as the first record of the baptizing of little children. We appeal to inspired writ for the baptism of believers only, and against delay on account of age or temptations where faith is credibly possessed. If our opponents say of TertulUan, that "the grounds on which his judgment is based are such as to deprive him of all weight as an authority in support of modern opposition to the rite," is not Cyprian, the first advocate of infant baptism, virtually an historic testimony in favour of believers' baptism, because he advocates the baptism of infants for reasons utterly opposed to those by which our opponents now advocate their baptism ? Do our opponents say, let them by all means be baptized that they may not perish, and if they are sickly and in danger let it be done as it can, rather than be ruinously omitted. Certainly none have less reason to glory in TertuUian than the advocates of indiscriminate baptism. I admit that TertuUian's parvuli has often been translated infants, and many Baptists have reasoned on infant baptism as if by TertuUian's words it was an expressed practice of his times, and in reply to opponents have simply spoken of the many changes from apostolic times that are admitted by Paedobaptists to have then crept into the church of Christ, and of the corrupt sentiment then prevailing in regard to the necessity of baptism to salvation, and of no reference to this practice in inspired writings or in human documents before the time of TertuUian. Hence Mr. Booth thus reasons : " Our learned opposers have taught us to consider ecclesiastical terms and reUgious rites, which are not found in Scripture, as coming into use about the time when they are first mentioned by one or another of the ancient writers. Is our inquiry, for example, In what age baptism obtained the name of a sacrament ? Gomarus repUes, TertuUian is the first who gives it that appeUation (Opera, disp. xxxi, § 3). Is it the consecration of baptismal water ? TertuUian is the most ancient author produced that mentions it (Bingham's Orig. Ec, b. xi, c. x, §1). la it concerning the time when in reference to baptism the use of sponsors commenced ? DeyUngius and others assure us, TertuUian is the first who says anything of it (De Pas. Pru., par. ui, c. iii, § 29. Diss. Gen. Let., let. ii). Is it the imposition of hands as an attendant on the administration of baptism ? Mr. Pierce tells us, TertuUian is * the most ancient author who mentions that rite. . . We make no doubt it began 450 SUBJECTS OF BAPTISM. about the time of Tertiillian, and was at first annexed to baptism' CVind. of Dis., part iii, pp. 172, 175). Is it that unction which was used in the ancient rite of con- firmation ? Mr. Bingham answers, ' There being no author before TertuUian who mentions the material unction as used in confirmation, it is most probable it was a ceremony first beg^n about his time, to represent the unction of the Holy Ghost* (Orig. Ec, h. xii, ch. iii, § 2). Thus also Quenstedius, ' That before the time of Tertullian this rite was not used in the church appears from hence, neither Justin Martyr, nor any other author of a former age, makes mention of it. Tertullian first of all therefore speaks of the unction' (Ant. Bib., p. 338). Is it the custom of making prayers and oblations for the dead ? Chemnitius replies, ' Tertullian is the .first of the fathers who mentions it' (Ex. Con. Trid., p. 536). Is it the ichite garment usually worn for a few days, while recent from the baptismal font ? Quenstedius tella us ' that none of the fathers who flourished in the three first centuries make mention of it. . . . The custom therefore seems to have been introduced in the fourth century' (Ant. Bib., p. 343). Is it the custom of those that were newly baptized carrying lighted tapers in their hands, when going to public worship ? Quenstedius informs 'us, that 'Justin Martyr, in his Second Apology, and Tertullian Be Baptismo, make no mention of any such thing, though they very accurately describe the baptismal rites' (Ibid, p. 344) ; and therefore it must be considered as of a later date. Once more, is it that prostitution of a sacred rite, the baptizing of bells? Mr. Bingham replies, ' The first notice we have of this is in the capitulars of Charles the Great, where it is only mentioned to be censured' (Orig. Ec, b. xi, c. iv, § 2). . . . Had the matter in dispute been appointed by Jesus Christ, and practised by the apostles, there is reason to think the writers of the New Testament would have recorded it in a ' clear and explicit manner ; consequently, it is unreasonable to believe and practise any such thing. Again : the earliest Christian antiquity must be the best. But Paedobaptism does not occur in the genuine writings of the highest and purest antiquity. It cannot be doubted, however, that if it had been practised in those times, the fathers would have mentioned it, as weU as other things of much less importance. We have therefore abundant reason to conclude, that those ancient authors knew nothing of it. Once more, learned men in general conclude, that the commencement of any practice in the Christian church is to be fixed about the time of its being first mentioned by ancient writers." — Peed. Ex., vol. i, pp. 396-398. Mr. Booth has before proved the importance that Tertullian attached to baptism, having quoted, among many other things, his statement that in baptism, when taken up out of the water, they tasted a mixture of milk and honey, and abstained a week from bathing, that when they lay down, or sat down, or whatsoever business they had, they made on their foreheads the sign of the cross ; on which Tertullian says, " If you Bearch in the Scriptures for any command for these and such like usages, you shall find none. Tradition will be urged to you, as the ground of them ; custom as the confirmer of them ; and our religion teaches us to observe them." " Hence it appears," says Mr. Booth, " with superior evidence, that this ancient author considered infant baptism" — the baptism of little children — " as a novel invention, as a practice that was neither enjoined by Divine command, nor warranted by apostolic example, nor yet recommended by the poor pretence of tradition, nor even countenanced by prevailing custom. While, it is very observable, tradition and custom are actually pleaded by him, in favour of certain rites (and one of them an appendage of baptism) which Protestants have generally agreed to reject as manifestly superstitious. It seems apparent also from Tertullian, that the use of sponsors is of as high authority as the practice of infant baptism," or rather, the baptism of little children. — Pad. Ex„ vol. i, pp. 384, 385. Our opponents rightly deduce respecting subdeacons, archdeacons, chanters, canons, deans, archbishops, metropolitans, &c., that they had no existence in apostolic times or in the first centuries of the Christian era, because in the writings of this period there is no mention of these officials. Basnage says, with reference to the office of a subdeacon, "It was not known before the third century. Cyprian honoured that confessor of Christ, Optatus, with the new title of a subdeacon. . . . Let us hear Tertullian in his book I^t? Bajjhsmo. The high priest has the right of administering baptism, then the elder, and also_ the deacon, Why does the ancient author stop here ? Does not authority to administer HISTOEIC TESTIMONY. 451 baptism belong to the subdeacon, when the elder and the deacon are absent ? Seeing, therefore, the name of a subdeacon first came into use after the death of Tertullian, we justly infer that the office of subdeacon was unknown to the church for upwards of two hundred years." — Exer. His., p. 642. Dr. L. Woods has been more un^arded in his language than the brethren before quoted. In reply to him, says Pres. Sears satirically : " It is to be regretted that Neander, and a few other Germans, such as Winer, Schleiermacher, Gieseler, Baumgarten-Crusius, Hahn, Olshausen, De Wette, Miinscher, &c., &c., had not more extensive means of investigation, and were not more deeply versed in the study of the Fathers ! Had they seen Dr. Woods on Infant Baptism, they would have learned ' that we have evidence as abundant, and specific, and certain, as history affords of almost any fact, that infant baptism universally prevailed from the days of the apostles through four centuries. During this period no one denied it.' ' The testimony of the early Christian writers in favour of infant baptism as the uniform practice of the church, is worthy of entii-e credit, and, as the circumstances were, afi'ords a conclusive argument that it was a Divine institution' " (In Hinton's His., p. 243). Without at all believing in any wilful misrepresentation, one cannot free such a writer from blame. Dr. Bennett confesses : " When he [Tertullian] says, ' We little fishes are bom in water,' he refers not to little children, but to Christians in general ; aUuding to the monogram ichtlius, a fish, formed out of the initials of the Greek words, Jesus Christ, God's Son, the Saviour." — Cong. Lee, vol. viii, p. 197. Dr. P. ScHAFF, on TertuUian's testimony, says : " All that can with any certainty be deduced from it is, that the baptism of children was not yet at that time enjoined, but left to the option of Christian parents." — Ap. Ch. His., p. 580. Tertullian declares the acknowledged necessity of baptism, and that it washes away the sins of former blindness. He appears to regard baptism as the sealing and witnessing of faith in Father, Son, and Holy Spirit ; he speaks of the baptized as emerging from the water after old transgressions, and of baptism as a sort of garment for faith ; and he denounces haste in the baptizing of little children, from the advantages of delay to themselves andsponsors. Thewordsof Tertullian, in my judgment, teach that believers' baptism was the practice, but that the baptism of little children, of which he disapproves, was a practice of his day. The baptism of TertuUian's age appears to have been the trine immersion of those that professed a renunciation of the devil, &c. ; but in writing against the Quintillianists he mentions, and condemns another practice, which must then have had an existence, and which being first mentioned here, and mentioned with disapproval, and another practice having been uniformly mentioned in previous records, it is natural and right to believe that this baptism of little children was a recent as well as additional departure from inspired precept and precedent. The words of Jesus commanding the little children on one occasion to be permitted to come to Him, that He might lay His hands on them, pray for them, and bless them, which appears now to have had a perverted application to the baptism of little ones, is rejected by Tertullian as a justification of the practice. He maintains that the early baptisms of the eunuch and of Saul are not common but special cases ; that the baptism of little children was an investing of them with the privileges which worldly discretion in temporal matters condemned, while it was involving sponsors in responsibility and danger that should be earnestly deprecated and carefully avoided ; that baptism implied thoughts and feelings inconsistent both with the innocence and want of knowledge in these youthful ones ; that in other cases delay in regard to this ordin- ance was to be commended, while in all it is better than inconsiderately 452 SUBJECTS OF BAPTISM. or hastily attending to an ordinance involving such obHgations and consequences How far I agi'ee with or differ from his reasoning while thus replying to Quintilla, I need not say. The only thing at which I now aim is to know from his words w'hat was the baptism of his time ; how far it accorded with or had degenerated from apostolic practice in regard to its subjects. My own conclusion, whether improper bias influences or does not influence me, is as I have expressed. I do not deem it probable that these young children included infants, and certain it is that, in TertulHan's time, we have not an express record in any history, human or Divine, of the baptism of infants. The word used by Tertullian is not the Latin word given in Latin Dictionaries or used by Latin writers to describe infants. Our words " little children " do not designate infants, although in occurrences of this phraseology infants may sometimes be included. The phrase does not define and necessarily embrace them. It is the same with parvidi. I doubt not we are approaching the period when baptism, deemed necessary and efficacious to salvation, embraced the new-bom child. The following is a portion of Baptist and Psedobaptist opinion on the testimony of Tertullian. I. T. HiNTON, a Baptist, says : " Nothing can be more evident from the passage itself than that the error Tertullian is combating is that of baptizing young children, not babes." The application to baptism by Quintilla, " the patroness of a small sect in the town of Pepuza, in Phrygia," of the passages, " Give to him that asketh," and " Forbid not the children to come," Mr. H, regards as the arguments of Quintilla and those that agreed with her, whilst Tertullian maintains that we should rather apply to the solemn ordinance of baptism " Give not that which is holy to dogs," and "Cast not your pearls before swine," than, Give to every one that asketh ; and instead of applying to baptism the passage, Suffer the little children and forbid them not to come, the application of it should rather be, that they come while growing up, but that they do not come and be immediately baptized, but come and he instructed, and learn, and when they understand the profession of this solemn ordinance, and the consequences involved in their baptism, when they have become approved catechumens, that they then be baptized. The children referred to by Tertullian are supposed by Mr. H. to be capable of coming to the baptism, but not of thoroaghly understanding what this weighty ordinance involves. I have not given the words of Mr. H. in hia History of Baptism (pp. 234, 235), there being one expression in Tertullian in which I could not follow his translation and that of Mr. Robinson. Chevalier Bunsen, an eminent and learned Paedobaptist, says that " Tertullian's opposition is to the baptism of young growing children : he does not say a word about new-born infants." — Hippol. and his Age, vol. iii, p. 193. Dr. J. M. Ckamp, a Baptist, says that in Tertullian's time " an attempt was made to extend the administration of baptism in an unwarrantable manner. It is referred to by Tertullian in his tract, ' De Baptismo,' in terms of strong disapproval. Some persons had introduced children (not infants) to baptism, or advocated the adminis- tration of the ordinance to them. Tertullian indignantly reproves the practice. 'Let them come,' he says, ' when they are taught to whom they may come ; let them become Christians when thev are able to know Christ. Why should this innocent age hasten to the remission of sins.' Now is it not obvious that Tertullian was entirely unacquainted with infant baptism, and that this children's baptism which then first began to be talked of, was regarded by him as an unauthorized innovation ? The sign of the cross, the giving of milk and honey, and similar ceremonies, were comparatively small matters, trifling circumstances : they were uncalled for additions to the ordinance, and were so far mischievous, but they did not change it. It was still connected with knowledge, and repentance, and faith. But the admission of children, if they were not old enough to repent and believe, would change the ordinance. It would dissever it from those religious pi-e-requi-ites with which it had been hitherto uniformly associated. The Gentile or Jewish rite which had been added to it, tended to make it more imposing, and so attracted the notice of the weak-minded ; but to allow children to be baptized, who were not subjects of repentance and faith, would HISTORIC TESTIMONY. m be, in Tertullian's opinion, to revolutionise the institute altogether. We act more wisely, he remarked, in temporal matters ; surely we ought not to admit to baptism those whom we consider unfit to manage temporal affairs." — B ip. His., pp. 19, 20. E. EoBiNSON, of the last century, the Baptist author of a History of Baptism, speaks as the Baptists already quoted respscting the children mentioned by Tertullian. He says that in Tertullian's time there were two sorts of schools in connexion with the church at Carthage, one kind of which might be called church schools and the other monasteries. He says : " In both these schools children were taught and prepared for baptism. In Tertullian's time these schools were small, and comparatively inconsiderable, but the question between him and his opponents was precisely this, Shall children be baptized when they are first admitted, or shall baptism be deferred till they have been instructed ? Administer it, say the compassionate ladies, for the Lord said. Give to him that asketh. No, replies Tertullian, the Lord did not say so of baptism : maintain them, and instruct them, but do not baptize them till they know what baptism means." — His., pp. 178, 179. G. GiBBS, a Baptist writer, says, " Tertullian mentions tradition as the authority upon which many rites were performed in his day. ' Now to begin with baptism. When we come to the water, we do there (and we do the same a little before in the whole congregation) under the hand of the pastor make a profession, that we renounce the devil, and his pomps, and his angels. Then we are plunged three times in the water ; and we answer some few words more than those which our Saviour in the gospel has enjoined. Wlien we are taken out of the water, we taste a mixture of milk and honey, and from that time we abstain a whole week from bathing ourselves, which otherwise we use every day. The sacrament of the eucharist, which our Lord celebrated at meal time, and ordered all to take, we receive in our assemblies before day : and never but from the hands of the pastor. We give oblations every year for the dead, on the day of their martyrdom. We account it an unfit thing to keep any fasts on the Lord's day, or to kneel at our prayers on that day. The same liberty we take all the time from Easter to Pentecost. We are troubled at it if any of our bread or wine faU to the ground. At every setting out or entry on business, whenever we come in, or go out from any place ; when we dress for a journey, or go into a bath ; when we go to meat, when the candles are brought in ; when we lie down, or sit down; and whatever business we have, we make on our foreheads the sign of the cross. If you search in the Scriptures for any command of these and such like usages, you shall find none. Tradition will be urged to you as the ground of them ; custom as the confirmer of them ; and our religion teaches us to observe them.' " — Def., pp. 326-328. Mr. G. also thus quotes Tertullian. " The flesh is washed, that the soul may be unspotted ; the flesh is anointed, that the soul may be consecrated ; the flesh is signed, that the soul may be fortified." And, says Mr. G., he "declares that 'they only can be saved who are regenerated, and signed with the sign of Christ.' All this Basil and Austin defended, in the fom-th century, on the authority of apostolic tradition." "The consecration of baptismal water," says Mr. G., was in the following age " considered an apostolic tradition." "The anointing of the baptized with oil," ia pleaded for by Basil, Austin, and Ambrose, " as the universal custom of the church, received by apostolic tradition." Thrice immersing, the renunciation of the devil, the imposition of hands, the giving of milk and honey, &c., are all subsequently maintained to be founded on apostolic tradition. " During the second century," says Mr. G., " a variety of doctrines and ceremonies were introduced into the Christian worship, by certain of the fathers, who claimed a personal acquaintance with the apostles, or with those who had been their intimate associates. These opinions and practices, coming recommended by persons thus honoured, had considerable weight ; and resting upon their verbal testimony, were received as simple tradition. In process of time . . . they passed under the name of a)icie)ii and secret ^racZiiiod ;" and more subsequently "they received the imposing title of apostolic tradition." — Def., pp. 326-329. I. Mann, another Baptist, says : " Quintilla, a lady of fortune, who lived in Pepuza, a town in Phrygia, pleaded for the baptism of children, provided they asked it, and brought sponsors. Tertullian, a presbyter in the church, tries to dissuade her from it." — Lee. on Ec. His., p. 60. E.. Pengillt says, " The deficiency in reference to infants was ingeniously supplied by introducing ' sponsors.' They would not dispense with the profession, but they would admit it fey proxy. Two or three persons (and in the case of an infant of high rank, from twenty to a hundred) were admitted as 'sureties,' who professed, mi. behalf of the infant, to repent, renounce the devil and his works, and to believe the doctrines of the gospel. These sureties are first named by Tertullian, a.d. 204," " Here ia 454 SUBJECTS OF BAPTISM. religion hy proxy ; real, personal, experimental religion ! a thing unheard of before since the world began, but when so many strange absurdities were introduced into the church as those before mentioned, we need not be much surprised at this." — Guide, &c., pp. 109, 110. SuiCERXTS, the author of a Greek Lexicon, says that " in the two first ages no one received baptism, but he who having been instructed in the faith, and imbued with the doctrine of Christ, was able to testify that he believed, because of these words, ' He that believeth and is baptized.' Wherefore it was first required to believe : hence the order of catechumens in the church. It was then also a constant custom, always observed, to give the catechumens the eucharist immediately after baptism. After- wards an opinion prevailed that no one could be saved, unless he had been baptized ; and therefore, because the eucharist was before given to the adult catechumens, as soon as they were washed by holy baptism, this also was appointed to be done in regard of infants, after the introduction of Ptedobaptism." — Thesau. under Sunaxis. In Jones's Ec. His., vol. i, p. 277. The Primitive Church Magazine (Aug., 1854), after recording that Dr. Bunsen in his work on Hipfolytus and his Times, distinctly asserts that infant baptism was unknown in the apostolic church and among the early fathers, even till the time of Cyprian, says that " Dr. Kitto, in his Journal of Sacred Literature, gave the weight of his authority to the same conclusion ; and The North British Review frankly con- fessed that ' the correctness of the picture of ancient baptism, given by Dr. Bunsen, wiU not, we apprehend, be disputed by any man who is content to accept the mere facts of the case.' " EiGALTius, with whom, as with some others, the reader will perceive that I do not wholly agree, after having taught that in the Acts of the Apostles we have the baptism of believers, "but not a word of infants," adds: "From the age of the apostles, therefore, up to the time of Tertullian, the matter remains dubious (in ambiguoj, and there were some who, from that saying of our Lord, Suffer little children to come unto Me, to whom the Lord, nevertheless, did not command water to be administered, took occasion to baptize even new-born infants. And as if (seculare aliquod negotium cum Deo transigereturj they transacted some secular business with God, they offered sponsors or sureties to Christ, who engaged that they should not revolt from the Christian faith when adult; which indeed displeased Tertullian." Elsewhere he says, "They gave the sign of faith to a person before he was capable of faith." — Anno, m Cyp. Epis. ad Fidum: and Lib. de Lapisis. Venema says, " Tertullian dissuades from baptizing infants . . . which he certainly would not have done, if it had been a tradition and a public custom of the church, seeing he was very tenacious of traditions ; nor, had it been a tradition, would he have failed to mention it." He says, " I conclude, therefore, that Pasdobaptism cannot be plainly proved to have been practised before the time of Tertullian ; and that there were persons in his age who desired their infants might be baptized, especially when they were afraid of their dying -without baptism ; which opinion Tertullian opposed, and by so doing, intimates that Ptedobaptism began to prevail." —In Booth's Peed. Ex., vol. i, pp. 371, 372. We may apologize for some expressions of Psedobaptist writers when they are speaking of the primitive church, that their expressions are intended to embrace what had an existence in the first three or four centuries of the Christian era, whUe they do not discriminate and particularize as to dates ; but this, as it tends to mislead, is unjustifiable. Especially unjustifiable are such unfounded assertions as the following : " It always was the custom to receive the children of Christian parents into the church by baptism" (Cave's Frim. Chris., p. 18S). Infant baptism " is alluded to and directly spoken of, by the earliest writers never as a thing that was or had been questioned ; but uniformly as a matter, the existence of which was undisputed." On this, Dr. Cox, who quotes it, adds, " To give the direct negative to this assertion, and in the plainest language, might seem uncourteous ; and yet what ought to be done, when aware and able to prove that the contrary is the undoubted fact" (On Bap., p. 135) ? When assertions such as these, which are "in defiance of ascertained fact," are made by Dr. Wardlaw and other leading Pasdobaptists, is it to be wondered that there continues to be the practice of infant baptism ? Dr. John Hey, in the second volume of his Lectures in Divinity, says, " How soon any accounts of infant baptism appear in reputable writers is a matter in dispute." He says 1. — " No dispute or controversy was over hold in ancient times respecting our subject." 2. — " Several persons are spoken of in history as having been baptized late in life." 3. — " One thing which makes passages in the ancients seem less to our purpose than they really are, is the variety of names by which baptism is called, as Jlegeneration; Renewal, Sanctification, Illumination, the Seal, the Grace, &c." 4.— HISTOEIC TESTIMONY. 45^. " Justin Martyr, who lived about forty years after the death of St. John, discourses ' of baptism being to us instead of circumcision.' Irenajus near forty years later mentions infants as ' by Christ born again to God.' Origen about fifty years later still, 'does in several places speak of infant baptism as a known and undoubted practice ; and (in one of them) as having been according to a tradition, ordered by the apostles.' " 5. — "The greatest difficulty arises from TertulUan, who is placed about one hundred years after St. John's death, and therefore before Origen" (pp. 509-511.) Dr. Hey seems to regard Origen, not Tertullian as the first Christian writer who mentions infant baptism. While I believe that Origen speaks expressly of the baptism of little children, not infants, I also believe that if all who write on history were as candid and faithful as Dr. Hey, many strong and erroneous affirmations would havo no existence. He may well say of Tertullian, " It seems odd he should not know, as well as Origen, of the tradition, that infant baptism had been ordained by the apostles." It is common with our opponents to adduce the language of Tertullian to Quintilla as p^o^dng the prevalence of infant baptism in the church of Christ at that time. The words of TertulUan contain not a fraction of evidence respecting it as the irrevailing practice. The reader may notice the testimony of Guericke and others which will subsequently be adduced. Guericke says that "as late as the fourth century infant baptism was anything but universally observed in the East." — Chris. Antiq., p. 239. Dr. Ward LAW teaches that Tertullian '• proves" '■ that the baptism of infants was the general 'jjracUce of the church in Tertullian's time;" and "that it was no innova- tion" (Inf. Bap., p. 117). We emphatically assert that his words prove neither of Dr. W.'s assumptions. Nor does the manner in which he replies to opponents constitute any evidence " that infant baptism was the original and universal practice" (p. 118). Nor is it a fact that Origen, as quoted by Dr. W. from Dr. Lathrop, " expressly declares infant-baptism to have been the constant usage of the church from apostolic times" (p. IIS). Why should Pfedobaptists when reasoning on baptism shut their eyes to the fact that the belief of the chiu'ch in the necessity of baptism to salvation appears earlier than infant baptism ? Dr. W. tries thus to quiet uneasiness that might arise from early silence on the baptism of infants : " Circumcision is never alluded to for more than a century and a half after its institution" (p. 122). "The case is similar, during the first century after the apostles, with regard to infant baptism" (p. 123). If we could refer in God's word to the in.stitution of infant baptism as to that of circumcision, we should treat silence in such circumstances with its merited contempt. But we may suppose and advocate many things besides infant baptism if we will accept Dr. W.'s advice to his reader wondering on account of early sUence : "Let him only supposeijjie uncontroverted universality of the practice from the beginning, and his wonOTr will cease" (p. 122) ! And let him forget that the first record of the baptism of infants was in the third century, when for some time washing' in the holy waters of baptism had been deemed necessary to salvation, and he may in its practice be saved from much compunction ; or without pain he may remember it, if he can also in opposition to historic fact imagine that the opinion that the baptism of infants was necessary to salvation " arose from the practice," and not "that the practice arose from the opinion." — p. 125. Prof. A. A. Hodge exhibits a most lamentable, although I doubt not unconscious falsification of facts, or we see glaring falsehoods in the most eminent Pffidobaptist historians, historians who have every inducement to speak otherwise if facts permitted. Prof. A. A. H. says, " The practice of infant baptism is an institution which exists as a fact, and prevails throughout the universal church, with the exception of the modem Baptists." "We find it noticed in the very earliest records, as a universal custom, and an apostolical tradition. This is acknowledged by Tertullian" (Outlines of Theology, p. 504). The last quotation embraces assertions, which Prof. H. italicizes, every one of which is false, as every reader of the fathers unto the time of Origen may know. As a proof of his veracity. Prof. H. says -. " Origen born of Christian parents in Egypt, a.d. 185, declares that it was ' the usage of the church to baptize infants,' and that ' the church had received the tradition from the apostles.' St. Augustii*» ■ born A.D. 354', declares that this ' doctrine is held by the whole church, not institiiteo-rvulis hcqitismum dan] : when if there were nothing in infants * [in parvulis'] that wanted forgiveneaa • The correct rendering of j)ar«u!f, wliich is the word we have met with iu TertuUian, and which in Irenseua is distinRuished from itifantes, is little children, or very little children ; not necessarily the latter, as dictionaries aud use testify. It may be used for infants, but it does not necessarily designate them, and the word is, in itself, no proof that infants are spoken of. What Greek word was used by Origen, we have no Imowledge ; but, so fiir as I know, parvulus, not infans, is the word invariably used by his translator. Infant, as commonly used by vs, has not a meaning equivalent to the Latin parvuhu. The rendering, " infant," has not only been given by Paedobaptists, but accepted by many Baptists with whom the addition or subtraction of a few years in the end of the second or beginning of the third century, was of no weight in this contro- versy. That use unites with lexicography in proving that while every infans (infant) is a little child, every parvulus [little child) is not an infant, I would refer the Latin scholar to a few occurrences of parvulus. In Terence (Andria, i, 1,8), an old man is represented as thus addressing his slave : " After that 1 bought thee, fi'om a little one (o parvulo) thou knowest that thy service with me was always (justa et clement) equitable and easy." The natural application of these words is to the slave's servitude, which from childhood had been just and generous. Cirsar, speaking of the ancient Germans (b. vi, ch. xxi), says that their whole life is spent in hunting, and in the studu of military affairs ; "from childhood (06 parvulis) they ga.ve themselves to toil and hardness," .Justin, the Koman historian, speaking of the encouragement which Alexander gave to his soldiers to take to themselves wives, and bring up their children in the camp as soldiers, speaks of the latter (xii, 4) as hardened by toils and dangers (a parvula ectate) from a slender age, from childhood, certainly not referring to the toils and dangers of infancy. Also speaking of the death of Antiochus Epiphanes, he mentions his having left a son f Phil., b. xxxiv, ch. 3], whom he calls parvulus. VVe elsewhere learn that this son, known in history as Antiochus i;upator, was then nine years old, that he reigned two years, and was put to death at the age of eleven. In Virgil's ^Eneid [b. iv, 1. 328], parvulus is used to describe a boy old enough to play or sport in the palace. I maintain not that its invariable, hut I believe that its usual, meaning is a little child, a little boy , and that its occurrence 460 SUBJECTS OF BAPTISM. and mercy, the grace of baptism wouldbe needless to them." — Honii. 8, in Levit. c. xii. Origen speaks of Christ's miracles wrought on the body as " inviting to faith those so benefitted, so also the washing through water, being a symbol of the cleans- ing of the soul washed from all stain of sin, is in itself also, to him who yieldeth him- self to the divinity of the power of the invocation of the adorable Trinity, nothing less than the beginning and fountain of Divine gifts" (Com. on Joh., torn, vi, § 17.) — Again, " It may be asked, what is the reason that, whereas the baptism of the church is given to infants [little children] by the usage of the church, when if there were nothing in infants [little children] that needed forgiveness and mercy, the grace of baptism would seem to be superfluous" (In Lev. Horn., viii, c. 3). " For this also the church derived from the apostles a tradition to give baptism even to infant's ietiam parvulis]. For they to whom the Divine mysteries were committed knew that there is in all persons the natural pollution of sin, which must be washed away by water and the Spirit : by reason of which the body itself is also called the body of sin." In his treatise De princi2nis, of which we have only a Latin translation, he saya, " In the Acts of Apostles the Holy Spirit was given in baptism by the laying on of the hands of the apostles. From all which we have learnt that the substance of the Holy Spirit is of so great authority and dignity, that saving baptism cannot otherwise be perfected than in the authority of the most excellent Trinity, that is, in the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit" (1. i, c. iii, § 5). Also, " He who is re- generated by God to salvation, has the work from the Father, and Son, and Holy Spirit, and will not receive salvation unless it be the whole Trinity." In his Exhortation to Martyrdom he says : " We remember also that we have sinned, and that remission cannot be received without baptism, and that according to the evangelical laws we cannot again be baptized by water and the Spirit into the remission of sins, but that the baptism of martyrdom can be given to us." To prove this he refers to Christ aa saying, Canst thou drink the cup which I drink, or be baptized with the baptism with which I am baptized ? And, I have a baptism with which to be baptized, and how am I straitened till it be accomplished. — Sec. 30. In Wickham's Syn., pp. 283-287. Again, " Having occasion given in this place, I will mention a thing that causes frequent inquiries among the brethren. Infants [parvuli] are baptized for the forgive- ness of sins. Of what sins ? Or when have they sinned ? Or how can any reason of the laver in their case hold good, but according to that sense that we mentioned even now : None is free from pollution, though his life be but of the length of one day upon the earth ? And it is for that reason because by the sacrament of baptism the pollution of our birth is washed away that infants [pa?-unh] are baptized" (Horn., in Lu. xiv). Further, " And also in the law it is commanded that a sacrifice be offered for every child that is born ; a pair of turtle doves, or two young pigeons ; of which one is for a sin-oSering, the other for a burnt-offering. For what sin is this one pigeon offered ? Can the child that is new born [nupcr editns parmdus] have com- mitted any sin ? It has even then sin, for which the sacrifice is commanded to be offered ; from which even he whose life is but of one day is denied to be free. Of this sin David is to be supposed to have said that which we mentioned before : In sin did my mother conceive me ; for there is in the history no account of any particular sin that his mother had committed. For this also it was, that the church had from the apostles a tradition to give baptism even to infants [parvulis'] . For they to whom the Divine mysteries were committed, knew that there is in all persons the natural pollution of sin, which must be done away by water and the Spirit : by reason of which the body itself is also called the body of sin." — Com. in Epis. ad Rom, In Wall's His., vol. i, pp. 54, 55. is nowhere a proof of the existence of infant baptism. Let me iinally quote from one of the latest and best of English-Latiu Dictionaries, the one by Dr. \V. Smith aiid T. D. Hall. They give for Child, l.—Pucr, as tlie correlative to adult. 2.— Infans, prop, only of children unable to speak, but also sometimes used, esp. in later Latin, oi young children generally ; infiins piier norem annorum ; inscr. ap. Forcell. s. v. 3. — Filius, a male c. ; Jilia, a female c. 4. — In plu. only, Uberi, as the correlative to parents. 6. — Nati, like liberi, but chiefly in poets. For childhood. l.—Pueritia. 2. — I«/a», and 2.— infans. W'c read under "Infancy. 1." — Infantia [including childhood; till the age of seven]: more precisely pr/nia /«/., Tac. \nn. L 4. 2. — Pucritia prima, trtas iniens : v. childhood, YOL'TH. Phr.: (rovai. a puerulo [a puer(:=zi'roin childhood, Cic. Kam.S.Ifi]; ab infante, ^cn. Ir, 2. ,3.4." For Infant, Bubs., they give, 1.— Jii/a'is, and 2. — Piier [a male child]: an i. "so big." p. (nntillus, Ter. 4. 2. 24 ; more precisely, infans ptier, Cic. K. Am. 53. ISS. ^o puella, infans pnella, a female infant : v. child. For !H/aH< adj., they give, 1. — Infans. 2. — Puerilis. Thus do dictionaries and use prove that infantia mayembraccseveial yearjofour first existence, and that while ;)orr«l«« may mean an infant, it is not a word that dist actively means an infant, nor docs its occurrence, of ittelf, in any iaetance prove that an infant, in the commou scnac of this word, is designated. HISTORIC TESTIMONY, m It is evident that this lan^age of Origen, as given by Eufinus, if it does not mention the baptism of infants, adduces a reason for their baptism, in the declared sinfulness of the new-born, on supposition that baptism is the Divine appointment for the cleansing away of original sin, unless God by confining baptism to believers, has necessitated the damnation of all who die in infancy. There is no quotation of Origen by Dr. Wall, in which he expressly mentions the baptism of infants. Ho discourses, says Dr. W., on Matt, xviii, 10, " speaking sometimes of infants in age," and sometimes of men resembling infants." This is thus given by Dr. W. : " Then again one may inquire, When it is that the angels here spoken of are set over those little ones shewed [or signified] by our Saviour ? Whether they take the care and management of them from the time when they by the washing of regeneration, whereby they were new born, do, as new born babes desire the sincere milk of the word, and are no longer subject to any evil power ? Or from their birth, according to the fore- knowledge of God and His predestinating of them, &c." (p. 64). Dr. W. admits, as we may shortly record, that probably the new born here mentioned by Origen are those who have been born again and are like unto little children. The passage con- tains no proof that the baptism of infaiits was then practised. I admit that as an infant is a little child, while a little child is not necessarily an infant, so parcuJl, which means little children, is a word that may in certain occurrences include or mean infants ; but I maintain it as undeniable that it does not of necessity mean or include them ; and also that it devolves on our opponents who plead the practice of infant baptism from Tertullian and Origen, to prove that infants are included in this word as used by these writers in connexion with baptism. Dr. Halley asserts, but he does not prove, ih&X though "Irenseus distinguishes hQ- tween i«/>i«?es and paru«//," Origen "makes no distinction." He says, in opposing Bunsen, who maintains that parvidi in Origen (as well as in Tertullian) means growing children from about six to ten years old : " I have cited from the Commentary on the Epistles to the Romans the pas- sage,— ' The church has received a tradition from the apostles to give baptism to little children' ^pa/t;///i.s^. What were these 'parvuli '? Not infants, says Bunsen, but ' growing children, from about six to ten years old.' But immediately preceding these words, is a reference to the oflfer- ing of doves or pigeons, according to the Levitical law, for newly-born children. These children, we know, were infants. But Origen says, according to his translator, ' For what sin is one pigeon offered ? Can the newly-born child ' nuper editiis parvalusj have sinned ?' This newly- born parvulus was surely not six years old" (vol. xv, p. 103). Most of this I can admit without retracting aught I have advanced on the import oi parvulus and on its use both by Tertullian and Origen's translator, just as I can admit that infants can be included in little children. But it is only from the connexion or from words immediately associated with parvulus or little children, that it can be ascertained that infants are embraced. In the above where certainly infants are mentioned we see nuper editus prefixed to parvulus, and necessarily prefixed because parvulus alone was insufficient to designate a new-born little child. We rightly call an infant a little child, or a child, but no sane man would conclude from this that every little child, or every child, is certainly an infant. Whether infants are included in parvuli can be proved only from the connexion ; and ho that maintains it is bound to prove it. Dr. H. regards it as here proved from the connexion. But I admit not that the words of Origen's translator 462 SUBJECTS OF BAPTISM. j)rove that he " made no distinction between infantes and parvuli." Origen has the words 7utper editus parvulus, where he speaks of the newly horn child ; and in giving a reason for the baptism of Utile children, namely, that the apostles were acquainted with " the natural pollution of sin, which must be done away by water and the Spirit," he assigns a reason for baptism as applicable to infants as to children of two to six or six to ten years old, a reason which, if it were admitted and became prevalent, must have led to the practice and prevalence of infant baptism, if it did not already exist. I would not complain of any one deeming it probable that the baptism of infants had an existence, when Origen pleaded a justi- fication of the baptism of little ones from natural and universal pollution which must be washed away by water and the Spirit or must lead to ever- lasting perdition, and when he adduces the fact of offering young pigeons or other sacrifices under the old and Divine law on behalf of the new-born little one. If God's ordination, as stated by Origen, on the way in which sin must be washed away, is correct, and if the ofi'ering of sacrifices under the law for the newly born has a legitimate application to baptism, we have pleas for the baptism of infants. I maintain, however, that the occurrence of parvulus alone in this connexion, and so soon after parvulus with niiper editus does not prove that the single word has "undoubtedly" the import of the three words, or of the word infans. On the import of parvidus and infans, and words signifying infancy and childhood, see Notes, pp. 434, 435, 447, and the rendering given to parvulus in Irenseus (pp. 434, 436, 439, 440) by Drs. Stacey, Halley, and Wall, by Venema and Dr. Hebden. If Origen's words, or those of his reckless translator, the original Greek being lost, proved from the connexion the existence of infant bap- tism, they would simply place Origen before Cyprian in the matter of first evidencing its existence. Origen and Cyprian to a great extent were con- temporaneous. The only chronological evidence on this afibrded by ec- clesiastical history is, that about the beginning of the third century, the baptizing of little children had at Carthage an existence, and that about or towards the middle of this century, infants were in Africa being bap- tized ; and this their early baptism was in order to secure the salvation of their souls. If it were true, as Dr. Halley says, that " all the evidence that can be obtained from Origen is decidedly in favour of infant baptism" (p. 82), which I do not admit, it would also be true that we have no evi- dence of the existence of such a practice till about a.d. 220. I would not say that the beginning of the practice must be dated from the time it is first referred to, but comparing Cyprian, Origen, and preceding writers, I will maintain that there is neither evidence nor probability of the exist- ence of infant baptism in the church of Christ till the third century, and no undeniable evidence before a.d. 250. If Origen used reasoning and quoted Scripture, which, if thoroughly carried out, would lead beyond the existing practice and the required defence, he is far from being the only person who in controversy has thus argued. Do we not repeatedly say that such and such pleading, if legitimate, would conduct our opponent stiU farther ? HISTOEIC TESTIMONY. 463 Dr. Wall, without proving infant baptism, quotes from Origen as follows : "Ac- cording to that saying of our Lord concerning infants [_de infantibus'] (and thou wast an infant [wifaiw] when thou wast baptized). Their angels do always behold the face of my Father which is in heaven. So Jesus wrote His law in thy heart in the pre- sence of those children [filiis'] of Israel, beholders of God's face, at the time when the sacrament of faith was given thee" (Horn. 9 in JosuamJ. Dr. W. on this says : "All that is doiibtful in this place too, is whether when he says, Tlioii wast an infant when thou wast baptized, he means an infant in ago or only an infant in the aforesaid spirit- ual sense" (p. Gti). Dr. W. has just before given the quotation from Origen on Matt. xviii, 10, which I have already extracted, and on which he has said : " If Origen meant to say that it is a question whether such a little child as our Saviour then set before the apostles, have his guardian angel given him by God from his birth, or from his baptism ; then 'tis a plain supposal that such infants were baptized. But his mention of their desiring the sincere milk of the word at the time of their baptism, makes it doubtful whether he meant of such who are infants in a proper sense, or whether he had in his mind at that place such men as he had before called Christ's little ones, i.e., men who when converted and baptized, do become humble in spirit, &c. And this doubt is increased by observing the answer that he gives to this his own quotation," &c. (p. 64). This quotation from Origen' s Commentary on Matthew being in the original Greek, neither parvulus nor infans here appears. The quotation itself will acquaint the reader with Origen' s view of three births and of the necessity of the second to the third : " There is perhaps in our generation (or first birth) none clear from pollution though his life be but of one day ; because the mystery of our genera- tion (or birth) in respect of which every one of all that are born, may say that which was said by David in the fiftieth Psalm ; which was this, I was shapen in iniquity, and in sin did my mother conceive me. But in the regeneration (or new birth) by the laver (or baptism) every one that is born again of water and the Spirit, is clean from pollution ; clean (as I may venture to say) as by a glass darkly. And in that other regeneration, when the Son of man shall sit on the throne of His glory, every one that attains to that regeneration in Christ, is clean from pollution in the highest de- gree. Face to face. And 'tis by the washing of regeneration that he comes to that other regeneration." — Wall's His., vol. i., pp. 69, 70. The word infant is by ancient and modern writers sometimes applied to young children, or even to minors generally. But this use of the word, and without expla- nation, in a controversy on infant baptism, woidd be unfair. A girl, supposed by Dr. Wall to be four or five years old, is spoken of by Cyprian as an infant. See Dr. Wall's rendering in His., vol. ii, p. 440; and Messrs. Clark's Cyprian, vol. i, pp. 368,369. Dr. J. Pte Smith, in addition to fallacious reasoning from Origen's admitted writings, says that Origen " speaks of having been himself baptized when an infant" Outl. of Theol., p. 678). It is creditable to the judgment of his editor, that in a note he designates this a "confessedly doubtful statement," and says that Origen's "ex- tant writings do not appear to contain any direct assurance that it was so." Even Dr. SchafE's vision is so obscured by prepossessions, that he says, without qualifica- tion, that Origen " was himself baptized soon after his birth" ('fl'is., p. 581). It is painful to see such excellent men so far through prejudice, first deceived and then deceiving. On the worth of appeals to apostolic tradition by many of the fathers of the church, by Origen among the rest, I may give the following in addition to what has been already recorded. Mr. Gibes quotes "the celebrated Jeremy Taylor," as sayingthat "tradition is no repository of articles of faith, and therefore the not following it is no argument of heresy : for besides that I have shewed Scripture in its plain expresses to be an abundant rule of faith and manners, tradition is a topic as fallible as any other ; so faUible that it cannot be sufficient evidence to any man in a matter of faith or question of heresy." Mr. G. adds, " Can any consistent Dissenter imagine that the great Founder of Christianity, who condemned the effects of tradition on the minds of the Jews in turning them from the commandments of God, would HimseK authorize this method of instruction under the gospel dispensation, and thus prepare the way for the subversion of His own kingdom ? The nature and consequences of traditionary instruction, are arguments against its having originated with any inspired instructor. When we recollect the variety of opinions which men hold on the same subject, the 464 SUBJECTS OF BAPTISM, liability of the best of men to misconceive the plainest tmthg, and the propensity in all men to propagate truth in the form under which they embrace it, is it not manifest that this scheme of regulating the faith and practice of the church must inevitably tend to corrupt its doctrines and to change its worship?" Having subsequently referred to various unscriptural and superstitious observances that by the fathers are defended on the ground of apostolic traditions, he says, '* It is among these customs, let it be remembered, that we first meet with infant baptism, and its appropriate appendage, infant communion. We cannot but think that the time when this practice began, the ceremonies which accompanied it, the principle upon which it was performed, and the authority by which it was supported, prove it to be an episcopal innovation. The first Pisdobaptists did not appeal to the Scriptures for their authority, nor have they given us the oral testimony of any of the apostles ; their refuge is a secret and undefined tradition. How unaccountable is this circumstance in relation to a ceremony of such supposed importance ! Has it any parallel in the history of Christian ordin- ances ? Did any institution come from God, and the church not know how, or by whom it came ? If any of the apostles had enjoined the baptism of babes, certainly some of the primitive fathers would have known which of them, and would have recorded the particulars of the fact : but no such fact is recorded." He then asserts that this beloved ceremony " can boast no higher authority than the most degrading rites which disgrace the annals of popery. Like them it is derived from tradition, and like them must sink into oblivion, when tradition shall give place to the vnritten testimony of God." Further, "If it can be proved that apo.stolic tradition was not sufficient to direct the church even in the second century, we cannot consider it competent authority in the nineteenth ; and to do this, we need only refer to the controversy between the Eastern and Western chiirches respecting the time of keeping Easter. The Asiatic churches celebrated that festival on the fourteenth day of the moon of March, on whatever day of the week it happened, while the Western churches observed it on the Sunday following the full moon. Both parties pleaded the custom of their predecessors, and the authority of apostolic tradition. The bishops of the Asiatic churches said they derived their tradition from John and Philip. The bishop of Rome and his adherents professed to have received theirs from Paul and Peter. This dispute, in which fathers were opposed to fathers, and tradition to tradition, began at a very early period, even while some, were living who had seen the apostles. If it was so difficult a < that time to decide the peculiar circumstances of a public festival, how shall we, in this age, select from the great mass of traditionary laws any one, and invest it with apostolic authority ?" — Def., pp. 325, 326, 330-332. Dr. G. C. Knapp. — " Here it might indeed be objected that the church fathers appeal much too frequently to apostolic tradition, for the sake of giving to their own opinions and to the appointments of the church the more aiithority." — Chris. Theol., p. 436. M. Poole. — " That the fathers were oftentimes deceived in the point of traditions, and in matters of fact, is acknowledged by several of the most learned Papists ; and Baronius gives us divers examples of their mistakes." — N^dlity, &c., pp. 66, 67. M. Henry. — " Irenceus, one of the first fathers, with this passage [John viii, 57] supports the tradition, which he saith he had from some that had conversed with St. John, that our Saviour lived to be fifty years old ; which he contends for. See what little credit is to be given to tradition." — Com^., on John viii, .57. Claude. — "Traditions" are "the most uncertain thing in the world, the most subject to impostures, and the most mixed with human inventions and weaknesses." " Tradition is so far from being able to servo as a rule, that it ought itself to be corrected and regulated according to that maxim of Jesus Christ : ' in the beginning it was not so.' " " There is therefore nothing more improper to be the rule of faith than that pretended tradition, which is not established upon any certain foundation, which serves for a pretence to heretics, which is embraced j^roand con, which changes according as times and places do, and by the favour of which they may defend the greatest absurdities by merely saying. That they are the traditions which the apostles transmitted from their own mouths to their successors." — Dcj'. of lie/., pp. 34, 254, 258. Ellys. — "The plain truth is, there have been such vain pretences to tradition in all ages, one contradicting another, that it seems impossible in this age to discern between true and false. Did not Clemens Alcxandrinus call it an apostolical tradition, that C!hrist preached but one year ? And did not Irenaius pretend a tradition, descending from St. John, that Clurist was about fifty years old when He was crucified." — Pres. ag. I'o., p. ISU*. Bp. Taylor. — " I find that the fathers were infinitely deceived in their account and enumeration of traditions ; sometimes they did call some traditions such, not which they knew to be so, but by arguments and presumptions they concluded them HISTORIC TESTIMONY. 465 so. Such as was that of St. Austin : ' What is held by the universal church, and not known to have been decreed by councils, is to be considered as derived from apostolical tradition." The bishop admits that this rule of Austin " is not certain." I doubt not many things for which apostolical tradition has been pleaded, have wanted both these insufficient credentials. Bp. T. says, " If I should but instance in all the particulars in which tradition was pretended, falsely or uncertainly, in the first ages, I should multiply them to a troublesome variety." Basil, says he, affirms " traditions to be so many that the day would fail him in the very simple enumeration of all traditions ecclesiastical." "And," says Bp. Taylor, "there are yet some points of good concernment, which if any man should question in a high manner, they would prove indeterminable by Scripture, or sufficient reason ; and yet I doubt not their confident defenders would say, they are the opinions of the church, and quickly pretend a tradition from the very apostles, and believe themselves so secure that they could not be discovered ; because the question never having been disputed, gives them occasion to say, that which had no beginning known was certainly from the apostles." " The baptism of infants is called a tradition by Origen alone, at first, and from him by others." " It is said to be a tradition apostolical, that no priest should baptize without chrism and the command of the bishop." " Clemens, of Alexandria, pretended it a tradition, that the apostles preached to them that died in infidelity, even after their death, and then raised them to life ; but he proved it only by the book of Hermes. He affirmed it to be a tradition apostolical, that the Greeks were saved by their philosophy ; but he had no other authority for it but the apocryphal books of Peter and Paul. Tertullian and St. Basil protend it an apostolical tradition, to sign in the air with the sign of the cross ; but this was only consigned to them in the gospel of Nicodemus" (Lih. of Pro., pp. 116-131). Such, in the estimation of Bp. Taylor, is the value of pretended apostolic tradition, whether by Origen, by preceding or succeeding fathers. Lampe. — " Whoever is not an entire stranger to the writings of Irenseus, cannot be ignorant that he placed too much confidence in ecclesiastical traditions." — Com. on John. Bingham. — " Some of the fathers call the quadragesimal fast a tradition, or canon apostolical." — Orig. Eccl., b. xxi, ch. i, § 8. Dr. A. Alexander. — "It is capable of the clearest proof that great uncertainty attended all matters received by tradition, which were not contained in Scripture, even in those times that were nearest to the days of the apostles. This fact is manifest in the case of Papias, who was contemporary with the last of the apostles ; and of Clement of Alexandria, who lived in the second century." — The Canon, pp. 367, 368. Dr. J. Bennett. — "The Scriptures inform us that the earliest tradition was false, though handed down by sincere men, who saw and heard that on which it was based." — Gong. Lee, vol. viii, p. 242. Tueeetine says of tradition, that it " is a convenient word, to excuse and retain those things that were brought into religion, without the authority of Scripture, by the ignorance of the times, and the tyranny of men." — Cog. and Diss., b. i. Bp. Buenet. — " To convince the world, how easily tradition might either vary, or mis-represent matters, let the tradition not only in, but before St. IrenaBus'a time, concerning the observation of Easter be considered, which goes up as high as St. Polycarp's time. If, then, a tradition failed near its fountain, we may easily judge what account we ought to make of it at so great a distance." — Four JHs,, pp. 247, 248. Dr. Owen says, " that when professing Christians had laid great weight on those things that are not mentioned in the holy Scriptures, and which for that reason should have no place, either in the worship of God or in the churches of Christ, they immediately betook themselves to traditions, or to those things which they had heard, by very uncertain reports, were practised by Christians in former times." J. Fletchee. — " What opinion should we form of a modern judge who refused to receive or slightly passed over the testimony of some old men, whether few or many, in reference to an event which occurred forty years ago, although they were conversant with that event, and delivered their testimony independently of one another ; while he willingly received the testimony of younger men, who could not have been conversant with the event, on the sole ground of their having heard certain traditionary tales respecting it ? In every rightly constituted law court, a first witness has the first place in all questions of fact ; and when only a few eye-witnesses are found to agree in their testimony, yet without suspicion of collusion, their testimony is sufficient to overrule that of hundreds who are mere reporters of traditions, and secondary channels of evidence" (His. of hide., p. 120). Subsequently (pp. 198, 199) he says, "We are not surprised, therefore, to find that about this period — the early part of the third 466 SUBJECTS OP BAPTISM. century— a distinction came to be introduced between private Christians and their church officers, which has continued to exist ever since. We refer to the names of clergy and laity. . . . The use of the terms was favoured by the erroneous views which were spreading at that time respecting the analogy between the Levitical priesthood and the Christian ministry." Mr. Payne, in reply to Bossuet, who had laid down as a principle, That the law of the holy supper should bo explained by constant and universal practice, says, " There may be great danger if we make practice to be the rule of the law, and not the law the rule of practice. . . . The Pharisees, who were the great men of old for tradition, did thereby reject and lay aside the commandment of God, by making tradition explain it contrary to its true sense and meaning." — Pres. ag. Po., p. 147. Wycliffe says : " AH human traditions which are not taught in the gospel are superfluous and wicked." So much did the ancient Psedobaptists plead tradition in favour of their practice that Mr. Tombes says, " Nor do I think Mr, Baxter can shew one author until Luther's day, who made infant baptism any other than an unwritten tradition ; although they produce, many of them, Scripture for the necessity, reasonableness, and lawfulness of the church to use it" (Antip., p. iii, p. 767). In our day, the church's authority for infant baptism is maintained by some to be a positive command, which, grammatically construed, means to disciple all of every age in the whole world by bapizing them, thus making the Divine requirement to be. Baptize, baptize, baptize. And these learned and estimable gentlemen main- tain that this is corroborated by every early ecclesiastical writer, TertuUian giving •' historical testimony" to infant baptism as '* a commonly admitted practice" (Dr. Stacey). Origen " has left us," says Dr. Halley, " in his numerous writings, testimonies quite as decisive as that of the African bishops," referring to Cyprian and his sixty-six neighbouring bishops. " Nothing can be plainer than the citations as we have them, although the most important and express are found in Latin translations of lost originals" (p. 82). This confirmation of the existence and prevalence of infant baptism (that had been divinely enjoined and apostoHcally enforced) as having come down so unexceptionably practised by Christians that not one (little) child of Christian parents, orthodox or heterodox, it is believed, was unbaptized, is given by Origen the successor of Pantsenus as president of the catechetical school of the Alexandrian church for unbaptized* children and young men, in which establishment it is admitted that these • Dr. Halley. — " The most attentive student of the apostolic age can never find an unbaptized catechumen : the most cursory reader of the succeedin!? centuries perpetually meets with crowds. Where was the catechumen of the apostolic age — the unbaptized youth under religious instruction ! No one can tell. — Not a shadow of the institute appears. From the apostolic documents we have no reason to suppose that aay such persons existed. What was a catechumen of the succeeding^ centuries? With no person is the reader of church history more fiimiliar. We know his position, his character, his studies, his course, his school, his instructions, his teacher. How are we to account for the difference" [pp. 75, 7G] ? Will the reader judge whether believers' baptism could more easily and naturally degenerate into excessive delay, or whether a command to baptize all ages and all characters could more easily and naturally be metamorphosed into this state of things in the third century ? and what is the real testimony of Origen and every preceding writer? Also let the reader think of these catechumens of the second and third century, all acknowledged to be unbaptized, as corroboratory of the hypothesis boldly maintained that from the beginning the converts to Christianity had their infants and little children baptized along with themselves. C. Buck, in his Thcol. Die, edited by Dr. Henderson, and in accordance so far as I know with every ecclesiastical historian, says of Catechumens : " The children of believing parents were admitted Catechumens aa soon as ever they were capable of instruction." Of one of the most celebrated of HISTORIC TESTIMONY. 467 youths as a rule remained for years receiving instruction before baptism was permitted them ! Yet the Divine command and apostolic practice of discipling everybody by baptism, whether old or young, has " nothing to fear" from the testimony of ecclesiastical history ! Notwithstanding the character of the quotations given from Origen, having given so far as I know, those most approved by opponents for the advocacy of their practice, and notwithstanding the admissions of other Paedobaptists on the little value of declared apostohc tradition, Dr. Stacey, after the example of Dr. Halley and many more, can bolster up Psedo- baptist convictions, saying that Origen " gives repeated testimonies to the existence and antiquity of infant baptism, declaring in one place that ' the church has received from the apostles the tradition that baptism should be given to infants' " (p. 169) ! Oneway in which many Ptedobaptist theologians and historians lead astray their readers is, by recording as the sentiment and practice of the primitive church that which cannot be proved by any writer to have had an existence before the days of Origen and Cyprian, and yet by not sufficiently distinguishing dates leaving the impression on the minds of readers that such a sentiment and practice prevailed in the church from the earliest post-apostolic period. Not to mention Cave, Bingham, Bickersteth, and most writers having a Puseyistic proclivity, Professor Kurtz says : " From the commencement baptism was regarded as necessary in order to have part in the salvation of Christ and as the condition for being received into the fellowship of the church. The fathers generally connected baptism and regeneration. Hence, in theory, the baptism of infants was generally recognized, although it was not universally introduced" ('ffis., pp. 118, 119). He regards infant baptism as then in the first period of "development." It was the necessary connexion of baptism with regeneration and salvation that led, as I maintain, to the baptism of infants, a practice of the existence of which we have no evidence until the third century, a practice for which modern Paedobaptists seek countenance in such passages as Acts ii, 39 : xvi, 33 ; and 1 Cor. vii, 14. Baptists adduce the earliest fathers in proof that the sentiment of Scripture then prevailed, that baptism required previous enlightenment, and faith in Christ. Dr. Bennett says, " As far as we can ascertain, that the early fathers adopted what is called the doctrine of the opus operatum, or the efiicacy of the mere rite of baptism ; we can shew that they beUoved, not only that the soul received a certain effect, but that the body received immortality by baptism." — Cong. Lee, vol. viii, p. 196. Notwithstanding the prevalence of error and the amount of unscriptural practice in the chujch at this period, notwithstanding the adoption of sentiments by Origen, which, if correct, would have commended the baptism even of infants, his writings simply evidence in practice the baijtism of professing believers and little children. The use ot parvulus, instead of being proved of itself to convey in Origen's translator the idea of infant, is conformed to its use in Tertullian and Irenasus for little children, and corroborates this import in distinction from that of infant. these catechumenical schools Origen was president. Yet every ecclesiastic and historic fact on record favours the baptism of infants and little children ! It undeniably prevailed in the time of Origen ! It was the common practice to which the severe and silly Tertullian objected ! Clement, IrenoDus, and Justin are equally explicit and decided in favour of its existence ! Ever since the inspired Peter taught that the promise of remission of sins and the gift of the Holy Ghost was not only to those pricked in their hearts on their repenting and being baptized upon the name of Jesus Christ, but also to their children [posterity] and all whom God should call. He being no respecter of per- sons, the baptism of infants and little children has prevailed, although never mentioned till after A.B. 250 ! 468 SUBJECTS OF BAPTISM. The proof of infant baptism as in existence is afforded first by one who was partly hia contemporary and partly his successor. Were the practice clearly proved as existing at the time of Origen, the truth of Curcellseus's words, with every consistent Protestant, would suffice for its rejection and condemnation: " We Pa^dobaptists observe this rite, as an ancient custom, but not as an apostolic institution." I neither afiirm nor deny the existence of infant baptism at this time. I simply maintain its existence to be unproved ; while the fearfully heterodox sentiments on baptism now embraced would necessarily lead, if they had not already led, to its adoption. BxTNSEN says, " Ptedobaptism, in the modern sense, meaning thereby the baptism of new-born infants, with the vicarious promises of parents or other sponsors, was utterly unknown to the early church, not only down to the end of the second century, but indeed to the middle of the third." Nor are the remarks of Bunsen in his Hippolyhis rendered nugatory by their association with sponsorship. The language of Tertullian on the danger to sponsors from the baptizing of little children, is a proof of sponsorial engagements on behalf of little children before we have proof of the baptizing of infants. I believe, with Bunsen, that Tertullian " does not say one word about new-born infants." "Neither," says he, "does Origen when his words are accurately weighed." He records no instance of the baptizing of these in his time, and no assertion that they were being baptized, at least so far as I know. E. Robinson says of Origen that he " was a singular genius, and he got over all difficulties by distinguishing baptism into three sorts. Ba^jtism wa,s fliiminis,flaminiSy sanguinis ; that is, rit;er-baptism, jfire-baptism, bloocZ-baptism. jRiver-baptism is a being dipped in water. The baptism of fire is repentance, or a disposition to receive grace. Blood-baptism is martyrdom for Christ. In case the first cannot be come at, the two last supply its place, and a person may be saved without the application of water. It is wonderful that both Catholics and Protestants have received this comment for the Scripture doctrine of baptism, and differed only in their manner of explaining it, as Cardinal Bellarmine very fairly observes. They were all led into the mistake by applying to natural infants what Origen had said only of youth and adults. Origen'a infants were capable of repentance and martyrdom : but the infants of the Reformers were incapable of both." — His., pp. 339, 340. Mr. Chambers, speaking of the German Baptists and their arguments, says that " Calvin and other writers against them, are pretty much embarrassed to answer this argument, and are obliged to have recourse to tradition, and the practice of the primitive church." — Cy. Art. Bap. M. TowGOOD says that Paedobaptism is " founded upon Scripture and undouhtecl apostolical tradition 1" — In Booth's Pad. Ex., vol. ii, p. 246. The maintaining of " apostolical tradition" for the baptizing of little children, appears to me, as it did to Neander, to " confirm the hypothesis," that such a baptism lacks " apostolical institution.'" Neander also, admitting that " in the spirit of the age when Christianity appeared, there were many elements which must have been favourable to the introduction of infant baptism" (His. of Plan., vol. i, p. 163), and accepting infant as the rendering oiparvulus by Origen's translators, denies its existence in apostolic or immediately succeeding times, and maintains the little worth of the pretence by Origen that it had apostolic tradition in its favour. Neander's words are : " Origen, in whose system infant baptism naturally finds its place, though not in the same connexion of thought as it held in the system of the North African church, declares it to be an apostolical tradition ; an expression, by the way, which perhaps cannot be regarded as of much weight, being made in an age when a strong inclination prevailed to derive from the apostles every ordinance which was considered of special importance ; and when, moreover, so many walls had already been thrown up between it and the apostolic age, hindering the freedom of prospect." HISTOEIC TESTIMONY. 469 15.— HiPPOLYTUS. A. PiRiE.— " It is Mglily probable tlie Baptist ideas will prevail." — In Booth's PeBd. Ex., vol. ii, pp. 345. T. Watson.—" Truth is a beam that shines from God. Much of His glory lies in His truth. When we are advocates for truth we glorify God. Jude 3." — Body ofDiv., p. 11. Spurg.'s Edi. J. C. Means. — Baptism was a " test of faith, as well as its expression." " If it is the expression of faith, it should only be observed by those in whose hearts faith has sprung- up ; and should be observed by them all, in whatever age and of whatever lineage, and by whatever training, or of whatever period of life they are brought to Christ." — Eela. of Bap., pp. 8, 9. H. Allon. — " In the very nature of things it is impossible that tie concessions which enlighten- ment and freedom claim, can ever be arrested."— Conj. Uni. Addr. 1864. From Hippolytus, who by the Rev. J. H. Macmahon, the translator of his Refutation of all Heresies in Clark's edition, is supposed to have been martyred "somewhere about a.d. 235-239," and to have written his Refutation after a.d. 222, 1 loiow not that any Ptedobaptist has quoted in favour of Infant Baptism. His flourishing must have been during that of Origen. His sentiments on baptismal regeneration appear to have accorded with the apparently prevailing sentiment of his time, since he says, "Christ is the God [who is] above all, and He has arranged to wash away sin from human beings, [thereby] rendering regenerate the old man" (Wri. of Hip., vol. i, p. 402. Clark's edi.). Wickham in his Synopsis (p. 316) quotes Hippolytus as saying: " When the church according to custom desii-es to receive the font, it necessarily has two handmaids in attendance on her. For the church by faith in Christ and charity towards God confesses and receives baptism." Again (p. 332), "Approach, therefore, and be regenerated, O man, to adoption to the Son of God. And how ? he says. If thou hast not committed adultery or murder, nor worshipped idols. If thou art not overcome by pleasure, if thou art not so that pride may govern thee. If thou washest away the filth of vmcleanness, and castest from thee the biu-den of sin. If thou puttest off the armour of the devil, and puttest on the mail of faith, as Isaiah says, 'Be washed, &c.' [Is. i, 16-19]. Thou seest, well beloved, how the prophet foretold the purifying power of baxstism. For he who descends with faith into this laver of regeneration, renounces the devil and devotes himself to Christ." Dr. BuNSEN teaches that Hippolytus scarcely knew the baptism of little cliildren, that in his baptismal sermon he " contemplates exclusively the baptism of adult catechumens;" that " the difference between the Ante-Niceno church and the later church was essentially this — the later church, with the exception of converts, baptized new-born infants, and she did so on principle ; the ancient church as a general rule, baptized adults, and only after they had gone through the course of instruction, and, as the exception, only Christian children who had not arrived at years of maturity, but never infants." — Hip. and his Age, vol. iii, p. 193. Dr. B. has before (vol. i, p. 497) taught that baptism and the Lord's Supper held " the first rank among the sacred acts of the church and signs of her life," while " magic infant baptism," claiming the effects ascribed by the apostles to the solemn profession of faith in the Father, Son, and Spirit, and to its external seal by the Jewish rite of immersion, was still more alien to Christianity." Dr. Bunsen supposed that Hippolytus would thus address the English of the nineteenth century : " We never defended the baptism of children, which in our days had only begun to be practised in some regions." " Baptism of infants we did not know. Much less did we ever imagine that such an act could have any of those words of ovir Saviour applied to it which I see some attach to an external act of a simulacrum of the symbolical immersion, accompanied by the promissory act of third persons, which together they call baptism. We, the old fathers, should have con- sidered such an opinion heretical, and any pretension to make it an article of faith an unwarrantable tyranny" (His., vol. ii, p. 313). He goes on to speak of "the part of the rite according to Christ's institution and the apostolic practice," being "the solemn Christian pledge, not of third persons, but of the responsible catechumen." 470 SUBJECTS OF BAPTISM. What may yet be produced by Paedobaptists writers from Hippolytus, a portion of whose writings has come to light but recently with any assurance of being his, and which by me have not been wholly read, I cannot say. But if anything from these'can be adduced in proof of infant baptism in the time of Hippolytus, it will only be a proof of existence a few years earlier than that which is afforded by Cyprian. And if ought had existed, I believe it would before this have been paraded. The quotations given encourage the idea that infant baptism was not in the time of Hippolytus the Roman practice ; yea, that it was not known to Hippolytus. This is strongly maintained by Dr. Bunsen. Before Cyprian we have evidence that little children were baptized, but no record of the baptism of infants, and not a single statement from which the existence of such a practice can be certainly proved. The baptizing of the very youthful was then advocated with a view to the safety of the soul, although it was believed to have special encouragement from certain portions of the Old and New Testament, especially the former ; and Origen adduces a fact which, if relevant at all, encourages as much the baptism of the new-born as of any older child. 16.— Cyprian and the Early Church.* A. Booth. — "When Justin, for instance, had learned to call baptism the water of life . . . when Clement, of Alexandria, had ascribed to it an illuminating power, and connected adoption, perfection, and immortality with it ; and when Tertullian had pronounced it a Divine blessing, which ascertains the abolition of sin, and is attended with a sanctifying energy ; it is no wonder that in the time of Cyprian, it should be thought necessary for infants to be baptized, and that Pffidobaptism should become a prevailing practice."— Parf. Ex., vol. i, p. 416. Dr. G. H. Ball. — " Hundreds of the most learned Pfedobaptist ministers admit that the Bap- tists have the best of the argument on this subject " " The testimony of those who have written as scholars, is more likely to be correct than that of sectarians." — Mor. Star, p. 209. 1869. Dr. Clagett.— " The power of truth has extorted from some or other of our adversaries tho confession of— the premises which infer our conclusion." Cyprian, the next author among the fathers, the last whom I need now to quote, is the first, so far as I know, who expressly mentions the baptism of infants. Cyprian is believed to have been born about a.d. 200. His conversion appears to have taken place in a.d. 246, his elevation to the episcopate of Carthage in a.d. 248, and his martyrdom in a.d. 258. In one of his first writings, an epistle to Donatus, he expresses the difficulty ho felt when lying in darkness and gloomy night, "that a man should be capable of being bom again — a truth which the Divine mercy had announced for my salvation — and that a man quickened to a new life in * A reader of this section, it altogether unacquainted with ecclesiastical history, may sometimes be puzzled by the apparently contradictory representations of the church in the early period of its ihistory. Let him remember that contradictory sentiments and practices might have an existence not only in different places and persons, but also in tho same place and even in tho eame person; and further, that the words "primitive church," "early period," and similar phraseology, are indefinite, sometimes being used in application to apostolic times, sometimes in application to those immediately post-apostolic, by some to describe the first and second centm-y of the Christian era, by others to embrace the first three, and by some to embrace the first four or more centuries of this era. Careful attention and a knowledge of tho whole connexion may make the meaning of most to be understood. In speaking of the early church in this section, I Bhall refer especially to the first three centuries, occasionally to a subsequent period, and some- times to the first thousand years of the Christian era, adducing P.Tdobaptist (and some Baptist) testimony in opposition to what I regard as Poedobaptist assumptions and errors. HISTORIC TESTIMONY. 471 the laver of saving water, should be able to put off what he had previously been ; and although retaining all his bodily structure, should be himself changed in heart and soul." In his epistle to Pompeius, speaking against the sufficiency of baptism by heretics, he says : "If any one born out of the church can become God's temple, why cannot the Holy Spirit also be poured out upon the temple ? For he who has been sanctified, his sins being put away in baptism, and has been spiritually re-formed into a new man, has become fitted for receiving the Holy Spirit. . . . Water alone is not able to cleanse away sins, and to sanctify a man, unless he have also the Holy Spirit." " It is the church alone which conjoined and united with Christ, spiritually bears sons." " The birth of Christians is in baptism, while the generation and sanctification of baptism are with the spouse of Christ alone." In a letter to Januarius and other Numidian bishops, on baptizing heretics, he says, "The very interrogation which is put in baptism is a witness of the truth. For when we say. Dost thou believe in eternal life and remission of sins through the holy church ? we mean that remission of sins is not granted except in the church, and that among heretics, where there is no church, sins cannot be put away." It is not surprising that Cyprian should be a favourite with Anglican Sacramentarians and Successionists. But he is also a favourite with Dissenting Psedobaptists. He even teaches that " the Lord, sending his apostles, commands that the nations should be baptized," and he gives explicit testimony to the existence, and his own approval of the practice, of infant baptism, with reasons for this approval, in which sixty-six neighbouring bishops agree. This is in a letter to Fidus, who had written to him on the baptism of infants, and which is supposed to have been written " a.d. 253." I shall transcribe from Clark's Edition of the Ante- Nicene writers. Cyprian says, " But in respect of the ease of infants, which you say ought not to be baptized within the second or third day after their birth, and that the law of ancient circumcision should be regarded, so that you think that one who is just bom should not be baptized and sanctified mthin the eighth day, we all thought very differently in our council. For in this course which you thought was to be taken, no one agreed ; but we all rather judge that the mercy and grace of God is not to be refused to any one born of man. For as the Lord says in His Gospel, ' The Son of Man is not come to destroy men's lives, but to save them,' as far as we can, we must strive that, if possible, no soul be lost." If the approval by Cyprian of unbaptized catechumens, and of faith in adults previous to baptism, could not be proved, the advocates of indiscriminate baptism might claim Cyprian as an authority in their favour. This venerable saint, who can recommend immediate baptism for the salvation of every infant is appealed to by those who maintain the restriction of baptism to the children of beUevers, who by birth from a believing parent inherit the inestimable blessing, to the seal of which it is maintained they must have an undoubted right. As a reason- for baptizing the new-born child, Cyprian inquires, " For what is wanting to him who has once been formed in the womb by the hand of God ?" He says, " all men are like and equal, since they have once been made by God ; and our age may have a difference in the increase of our bodies, according to the world, but not according to God ; unless that very grace also which is given to the baptized is given either less or more, according to the age of the receivers, whereas the Holy Spirit is not given with measure, but by the mercy and love of the Father alike to all. For God, as He does not accept the person, so does not accept the age ; since he shews Himself a Father to all with well-weighed equality for the attainment of heavenly grace. For with- respect to what you say, that the aspect of an infant in the first days after its birth is not pure, so that any one of us would still shudder at kissing it, we do not thin^ 472 SUBJECTS OF BAPTISM. that this ought to be alleged as any impediment to heavenly grace. For it is written, ' To the pure all things are pure.' Nor ought any of us to shudder at that which God hath condescended to make. For although the infant is still fresh from its birth, yet it is not such that any one should shudder at kissing it in giving grace and in making peace ; since in the kiss of an infant every one of us ought, for his very religion's sake, to consider the still recent hands of God themselves, which in some sort we are kissing, in the man lately formed and fleshly born, when we are embracing that which God has made. For in respect of the observance of the eighth day in the Jewish circum- cision of the flesh, a sacrament was given beforehand in shadow and in usage ; but when Christ came it was fulfilled in truth. For because the eighth day, that is, the first day after the Sabbath, was to be that on which the Lord should rise again, and should quicken us, and give us circumcision of the Spirit, the eighth day, that is, the first day after the Sabbath, and the Lord's day, went before in the figure ; which figure ceased when by and bye the truth came, and spiritual circumcision was given tons. " For which reason we think that no one is to be hindered from obtaining grace by that law which was already ordained, and that spiritual circumcision ought not to be hindered by carnal circumcision, but that absolutely every man is to be admitted to the grace of Christ, since Peter also in the Acts of the Apostles speaks, and says, ' The Lord hath said to me that I should call no man common or unclean.' But if anything could hinder men from obtaining grace, their more heinous sins might rather hinder those who are mature and grown up and older. But again, if even to the greatest sinners, and to those who had sinned much against God, when they subsequently believed, remission of sins is granted — and nobody is hindered from baptism and from grace — how much rather ought we to shrink from hindering an infant, who, being lately born, has not sinned, except in that, being born after the flesh according to Adam, he has contracted the contagion of the ancient death at its earliest birth, who approaches the more easily on this very account to the reception of the forgiveness of sins — that to him are remitted, not his own sins, but the sins of another. And therefore, dearest brother, this was our opinion in council, that by us no one ought to be hindered from baptism and from the grace of God, who is merciful and kind and loving to all. Which, since it is to be observed and maintained in respect of all, we think it to be even more observed in respect of infants and newly-born persons, who on this very account deserve more from our help and from the Divine mercy, that immediately, on the very beginning of their birth, lamenting and weeping, they do nothing else but entreat." — Vol, i, pp. 196-199. Thus, according to the translation by Dr. R. E. Wallis, writes and reasons the first Christian writer respecting the baptizing of infants, and unites with him sixty- six supporters of his sentiments in advising Fidus ! The unscriptural practice and the unscriptural reasoning are worthy of each other. It will also be seen from the above quotation how some writers can speak of Cyprian as advocating the baptism of infants from their not having committed sin, and how others can speak of him as advocating their baptism to prevent their damnation. While maintaining that there is no earlier proof of the existence of infant baptism than about the middle of the thii-d century, as I admit its existence at this time in the North African churches, I shall not notice subsequent fathers except barely referring to them, and especially in the testimonies of Psedobaptists on the extent to which infant baptism prevailed during the first thousand years of the Christian era. I admit that infant baptism must have been in existence, and might have been for some years, when Cyprian wrote as above respecting it. I admit that it spread and increased throughout the church of Christ till it became well nigh universal. I need not attest its increase and prevalence by the writings of the fathers. I shall adduce some Pa^dobaptist writers of eminence in regard to prevalent errors when the baptism of infants first appears, and in corroboration of HISTOEIC TESTIMONY. 478 what I believe to be tlae truth respecting the early church in opposition to what I deem the groundless and erroneous assertions of some recent and eminent P^dobaptists respecting the first three centuries, and respecting the first thousand years of the Christian era. The inquiry whether the eighth day of age was the most proper time for the baptism of the child was not made by any one, so far as it can be ascertained, either during the apostolic age, or till the fii'st quarter of a thousand years from the bu'th of Christ had passed away. The information was not needed before the baptism of infants originated. Respecting a Divine ordinance, a positive institution, I treat as it deserves the supposition that we must guess what the apostles would think and Sf^y, and suppose " whether" till the days of Cyprian, " it is not just possible, that the apostles' example, or the example of those inferior ofiicers who usually baptized, was not sufiicient to afi'ord ample information to the churches as to the nature of baptism" (Gamble, on Scr. Bap., p. 159) ; so that notwithstanding " the silence of the New Testament," and of early ecclesiastical history respecting the baptism of infants, it may neverthe- less be approved and practised. " The apostles' example" is indeed sufl&cient, not however guessed, but recorded. I might remark, that the impartial reader of the fathers can scarcely fail to perceive how accordant mth the ecclesiastical writers of the third and fourth century, and with expressions in the earlier fathers, are the High Church Establishmentarians of our o'mi country and of the Continent. The Scriptm-es, John iii, 5 and Titus iii, 5, were early strained into an embracing of baptismal regeneration, while the connexion of a death to sin, and a putting on of Christ with baptism, was mistaken to corroborate regeneration in baptism, instead of corroborating the fact that baptism was administered to professedly behoving applicants, and to none else. In John iii, 5, as I think, the Saviour emphasizes the necessity of being born of the Sjnrit, to one who according to all probability admitted the Divine requirement of water baptism, and had submitted to the same. In Titus iii, 5, the apostle is speaking of the washing of regeneration, from the fact that the baptized professed and were supposed to be regenerate, not meaning that baptism effected this, or that the Holy Spirit chose the precise time of baptism for His renewing operations in the penitent beUever. Some of our High Church brethren, equally with ourselves loving, adoring, and trusting the Saviour, do not embrace the absolute opus operatum of baptism, but maintain that at the precise time of baptism the Holy Spmt works the glorious regeneration, if in an adult, in connexion with the faith of the recipient of baptism, and if in a little child, in connexion with its baptism in all respects duly performed. Instead of quoting from Dean Alford, Bp. Wordsworth, and many others in support of this, it will be sufiicient to give the following from the Bampton Lectures of Mr. Liddon. Canon H. P. Liddon.-—" The church teaches that each of you was made a partakei? of the Divine nature at his baptism" (p. 30). "The instrument of regeneration on Christ' s_ part, according to St. Paul, is the sacrament of baptism, to which the Holy- Spirit gives its efficacy, and which, in the case of an adult recipient, must be welcomed to the soul by repentance and faith. Eegeneration thus implies a double process, one 474 SUBJECTS OF BAPTISM. destructive, the other constructive ; by it the old life is killed, and the new life forth- with bursts into existence" (p. 345). Let the reader think of this regeneration in infants. Having spoken of the Christian's dying, being buried, rising, and living, with Christ, he says, " Of this profound incorporation baptism is the original instrument. The very form of the sacrament of regeneration, as it was administered to the adult multitudes who in the early days of the church pressed for admittance into her communion, harmonizes with the spiritual results which it effects. As the neophyte is plunged beneath the waters, so the old nature is slain and buried with Christ. As Christ, crucified and entombed, rises with resistless might from the grave which can no longer hold Him, so, to the eye of faith, the Christian is raised from the bath of regeneration radiant with a new, a supernatural life" (p. |346). Does the apostle intimate in the words, " So many of you as were baptized into Jesus Christ," that he is speaking but of a part of the baptized ? And could infants be among those who " in the early days of the church pressed for admittance into her communion ?" The sacraments, Mr. L. teaches — and who that believes in the Book of Common Prayer will deny it ? — " are ' effectual signs of grace and God's good-will towards us, by the which He doth work invisibly in us.' Thus in baptism the Christian child is made ' a member of Christ, a child of God, and an inheritor of the kingdom of heaven.* And ' the body and blood of Christ are verily and indeed taken and received by the faithful in the Lord's Supper' " (pp. 480, 481). The motives to Christian faithfubiess, he teaches, " are rooted in a doctrine of Christ's sacramental union with His people" (p. 490) ! I consent to his sentiment that " we are washed in a stream of cleansing blood, which flows from an atoning fountain, opened on Calvary for the sin and uncleanness of a guilty world," more than to our being "sustained by sacraments which make us really partakers of the nature of God" (p. 497) ; although I believe in an attendance on every Divine ordinance as contributory to the permanence and adornment of piety in every Christian. Hagenbach says that Cyprian founds not " his argument in favour of infant baptism upon the guilt of original sin, but upon the innocent condition of infants. Tertullian, on the other hand, urges this very reason in opposition to infant baptism. But Cyprian looks more at the beneficial effects it is designed to produce, than at the responsibility which is attached to it" (His. of Doc., vol. i, p. 212). Cyprian appears to me to look at the babe as innocent, and as exhibiting the marks of God's recent exertion of creative power, and also at the babe's guilt as inherited from Adam, and endangering its salvation if, in the innocency of infancy it dies without the washing away of this original sin in the waters of holy baptism. If Tertullian and Cyprian had bound themselves in argument and practice to Divine precept and apostolic practice, the former, while dissuading from the baptism of little and ignorant children, would not have shrunk on the ground of future temptations from baptizing the credible professor of faith in Christ, even though exposed to great temptation, nor would the latter have hurried to the administration of baptism before the possibility of faith being experienced or professed. The reasoning and conduct both of Tertullian and Cyprian (not to mention Origen) corroborate the testimony of eminent and candid Paedobaptist historians and theologians respecting the extensive prevalence of unscriptural sentiment and practice at this period. Hegesippus, to whom I do not refer as a Pa3dobaptist, has been quoted as saying, •' that up to the time of which we are now speaking, the church retained the character of a chaste and unspotted virgin ; for as yet, those who endeavoured to corrupt the right riile of evangelical instruction, concealed themselves in the secresy of retirement. But after that the holy assembly of the apostles had become entirely extinct by death ; and that generation of men had, as at this day, passed away who had enjoyed the pleasure of listening to their wise and heavenly instructions ; then there sprang up a combination of the most impious heresies, frauds, and evil practices of false teachers." —In Gibb's Defence, pp. 218, 219. Tradition is as necessary to Pasdobaptism as it is to the distinction between bishops and presbyters, and the orders of Canons, Deans, Arch- deacons, and Ai-chbishops. Dr. Wall and othei-s, Anglicans and professed Protestants, instead of adhering to the oracles of God, expressly appeal to tradition. Hence Dr. Wall, referring to Bp. Taylor and his work on the Liberty of Projjhcsyinfj, says : " He objects (16), that all arguments from tradition are much decried by Protestants in other cases, and therefore ought not to be made use of in this. To which Dr. Hammond and he answer HISTOEIC TESTIMONY. 475 that Protestants did never renounce the arguments from tradition in general : but on the contrary ivhatever appears to be the tradition of the apostles, or to be the practice of the Christians in those first times, they wiUingly own. And that what they decry, is either the tradition of later times, or else the false pretences to the older ones" (His., vol. ii, p. 24). It is thus and only thus, that Pfedobaptism, sponsors, signing with the sign of the cross, and many other things, can be defended. But it is a dishonour to Divine revelation, as if in itself it were insufficient. It is a renunciation of Protestantism, if the celebrated saying of Chillingworth is true, that " the Bible, and the Bible only, is the religion of Protestants." Even the testimony by Cyprian to a practice of the third century as a supposed corroboration of what was apostolic, is completely negatived by the testimony to a directly opposite practice one hundred years nearer to apostolic times. Who can object to Mr. Fletcher, when in his History of Independency (p. 120) he says : " Even in respect to the first three centuries, to combine the testimony of Clement and Tertullian, or of Polycarp and Origen, is a great mistake. Why should not the rules of common sense be followed in these, as in all other matters?" Dr. Kahnis is not alone in teaching that " the idea of the Old Testament priest- hood" in application to the church of Christ, had been adopted in the time of Cyprian, " the bishop being compared to the high priest, the elders to the priests (the word priest having arisen from presbyter), the deacons to the Levites ;" and that " Cyprian, bishop of Carthage, specially advocates this view in his usually emphatic manner" fThe Clmrch, &c., p. 102). The testimony of learned theologians to an ecclesiastical historic fact, is not rendered nugatory on our behalf by their being themselves so far apart from Divine truth as to talk about " the sacramental power of the word," and to say that " the word begets believers in baptism, the sacrament of regeneration." Our opponents teach that ' ' the notices of infant baptism in the writings of the early fathers are confessedly few" (Dr. Stacey,p. 167). "As wo ascend to apostolic times," says Dr. Wilson, " the testimony of the fathers on all subjects is found to be exceedingly meagre and indefinite" (Inf. Bap., p. 528). We say that there are no "notices of infant baptism" whatever, but that the earliest uninspired records on Christian baptism, as in Justin Martyr, are explicit on Christian baptism as being the baptism of the professing behever. Nor is there a record of exception to this till " the severe TertuUian" reprobated the endangering of sponsors on behalf of little children, and advocated in some others an unscriptural delay. Dissuading from one extreme, as has been done by many, he encouraged another. Many of the advocates of infant baptism dwell on the want of opposition to this practice evidenced by the writings of the earliest fathers. This is no proof of the existence of the practice. These early wi-itings say nothing on incense, lights, and vestments, in connexion with Divine worship, on the christening of bells, horses, &c. But it is firmly believed that as "no polemical interest in the question had yet been excited, the example of the apostles," in the practice of infant baptism, ' ' had been quietly followed" (Dr. S., p. 167). Dr. Wilson, referring to "the first three centuries," says, " Our opponents cannot detect among the fathers of these centuries the origin of infant baptism" (p. 527.) We think we detect its origin in 476 SUBJECTS OF BAPTISM. the third century in the desire to wash all in the saving water of ba2)tism. We fix not the precise year, and name not the first administrator. We say not that the error on the efiicacy and importance of baptism gave immediate birth to the error on the subjects of baptism. And we protest against the demands of our opponents from ourselves. Dr. W. says — and many others say in substance the same — " Strange that of the origin of an abuse so radical, so prevalent, and so permanent, no record should be found." " Baptists, however, affirm it to be a patristic innovation, though without the shadow of proof. They give us conjectures and assertions in abundance, still their origin of infant baptism remains shrouded in impenetrable darkness" (p. 527). The rejecters of infant baptism, be it known to Dr. W. and all others who affirm the existence of infant baptism during the period of the early post-apostolic fathers, devolve on those who practice it an adducing of " the shadow of proof" that it then had an existence. We see and acknowledge its existence in the third century, and whether we can or cannot adduce the innovator, the cause of the innovation, the infant on which the baptismal operation was first performed, and the day which signalized the first departure from apostolic precedent so far as to the baptizing of an infant, we surely, to every rational and unbiassed mind, prove sufficient for our cause in proving the authority for our practice in inspired precept and precedent, the non- existence of inspired precept or precedent for the baptism of infants, and the want of uninspired precept for it or practice of it till the early or middle part of the third century. In doing this we do more than enough, for it devolves not on us to prove its non-existence, but on our opponents to prove its existence and scriptural sanction. If it is said that we do not prove its non-existence in these times, I reply that we evidence that every record during this period, human or Divine, adduced to jJ^'ove its existence, is a complete failure. The advocates of infant baptism talk of its origin in the third century as amazing and incredible, without the record of terrible opposition and a fearful struggle through which it must have burst into existence and gained a footing, of which the fathers of those times would undoubtedly have left a distinct record. We think the origin of infant baptism sufficiently plain in the reason first assigned for the practice, namely, the saving efficacy of baptism, a doctrine in reference to baptism which must have rendered violent opposition to the baptizing of infants an impossihility. While many in the present day who deny the saving power of baptism, practice and advocate it, who is there among all those who believe it to be necessary, or generally necessary to salvation, who approves not of infant baptism ? Men must become devils were infant baptism to die out among those who maintain with Dr. Wall and his Anglican brethren the "impossibility of salvation to be had, according to God's ordinary rule and declaration, any other way than by baptism," although they " may hope that for extraordinary cases and accidents He will make an allowance" (vol. ii, p. 167). But will Dr. Wilson and our Presbyterian brethren reply to Dean Milman and others on the distinction between bishops and presbyters, adhering to the principle on which they reply to Baptists ? Dr. M. eays : " We discover no struggle, no resistance, HISTOEIC TESTIMONY. 477 no controversy. The uninterrupted line of bishops is traced by the ecclesiastical historian up to the apostles ; but no manner of remonstrance against this usurpation has transpired ; no schism, no breach of Christian unity followed upon this momentous innovation" (His. of Chris., vol. ii, p. 65). The Episcopalian has better grounds for his distinction of bishop from presbyter, because of his going much nearer to apostolic times, than the Paedobaptist has for mfant baptism ; and also because of the admitted fact that the first mention of the baptizing of little children — some say of infants — is in connexion with a reprobation of the practice. Which of our opponents can trace the origin oi sponsors in the churches ? Some of them affirm and some deny their fu-st use on behalf of infants. Tertullian does not, so far as I know, oppose sponsors. He opposes their endangering of themselves by becoming responsible for those who in his judgment are, according to Scripture and reason, too young to be baptized. Must we say, because of the darkness in which the origin of sponsors is shrouded, and because of no record of opposition to this in the early fathers, there is not therefore a " shadow of proof " that the use of sponsors " is a patristic innovation." While the Scriptures in every precept demand discipleship to Jesus as the requisite to baptism, and in every example of baptism corroborate this by recording discipleship to Jesus as the precursor of baptism, or, by recording nothing, leave the limitation to the believer in all its force, " we are not careful to answer" the taunts, or reply to the baseless boasts of our opponents. " That infant baptism is a patristic innovation," or that it is an invention and adoption of the church of Christ in the third century of the Christian era, some of us confidently believe. Dr. Halley and some others are aware that the most learned historians on their side admit infant baptism to have had no existence in the times of the early fathers ; but, says Dr. H., "much as we respect their learning, we still should like to Ivnow the authority by which they support their opinions" (p. 188). He and others demand proof from them and us of a nonentity, instead of adducing proof themselves of a pretended reality. They misconstrue assumptions, surmises, silence, and inferences on these into a proof of reality. We are taunted by Christian and learned Ptedobaptists with holding sentiments of which the Christian world knew nothing for the first thousand years. And while we give the most distinct and emphatic contradiction to such assertions, we are spoken of as almost admitting it, and not being known ever to have proved the contrary. It is no part of our sentiment and requirement that the father or mother of any believing candidate for baptism must have been pious at the birth of such child. Believers' baptism has nothing to do mth the parents whether they be childi'en of the devil on earth or in hell, or whether they be children of God in the flesh or in glory. We maintain that believers' baptism was the practice of the apostles, and was not deviated from, so far as ecclesiastical records testify, till towards the close of the second century, and that of the baptism of infants we have no record before the middle of the third century. On the part of our opponents there is much inglorious boasting respecting the first thousand years of the Christian era. Some of this 478 SUBJECTS OF BAPTISM. boasting it may be proper to notice and expose, although it is more than sufficient for the condemnation of infant baptism, to prove that history affords not a shadow of proof that it existed before the end of the second or the earher part of the third century. Dr. Stacey briefly says : " The assertion so often made may here be repeated — the more confidently aa no refutation of it has yet been given — that for the first ten centuries of the Christian era infant baptism was the common practice of the church ; that in every case of adult baptism, the subject was, when bom, the offspring of heathens or of Jews ; and that not a single instance is recorded of an individual, whose parents were professedly Christian at his birth, receiving baptism in mature life, or failing to receive it while he was yet a child" (p. 176). Our learned and estimable brother has such a knowledge not only of all the catechumens of the early ages, a class of persons acknowledged to be unbaptized and to be preparing for baptism, and who dwindled away through the rise and progress of infant baptism, but of the paternity of all baptized believers in regard to this one particular ! A refutation, which, he says, has not yet been given, I shall shortly record from the writings of Psedobaptists as well as Baptists. Dr. Halley is here more vainglorious than his Wesleyan successor. He seems to think himself as now using upon the poor Baptists " Ithuriel'a spear." "The position which I advance," says he, "has been long before the world, but I do not believe it has ever been controverted" (p. 78). Have Drs. Gale, Stennett, Ryland, Gill, Newman, Cox, Carson, &c., in the consciousness of inability to reply, all been dumb, so far as Dr. H. knows, respecting this Psedobaptist stronghold ? The proving again and again of its entire worthlessness in opposing believers' baptism or upholding infant baptism, even were it true, can apparently be entirely overlooked. But what is that important fact for the cause of infant baptism which is believed to have been not controverted ? " Our Baptist friends can find no clear and certain instance of any child of parents, who were professedly Christian at his birth, being baptized in adult age, or of any such child being among the catechumens, or, in short, of any such child being unbaptized in the time of his youth, during the first half of the Christian era ; nor do I confine them to the Catholic church under its various patriarchs and its different branches, spread over the world, Latin, Greek, Syriac and Coptic ; but extending the inquiry to all heretics and schismatics of all kinds whatsoever, who practised Christian baptism at all, I ask them to find a solitary Baptist like themselves, down to the close of the first millenium of the Christian faith." Not one among the orthodox or heterodox, ofiicial or unofiicial, of any grade, "in any remote comer of the church, or outer court of it," will make to us "any certain sign of recognition." We " travel an unfrequented road in which it is not easy to discover a single vestige of a solitary traveller for nigh a thousand years" (pp. 78, 79), After much flourishing on no anchorite, Donatist, or Arian, no Catholic or heretic, none throughout the world for a thousand years being capable of recognition as a Baptist, if a few doubtful characters at the close bo omitted, ho says (p. 80), " Shew me the unbaptized man or woman, boy or girl, born of baptized parents." If the HISTOEIC TESTIMONY. 479 assertion of Dr. H. has by any Baptist been uncontroverted, it has not been, I trust, in ignorance that Justin, the first writer after apostolic times, so far as we know, distinctly teaches that no other than Baptist sentiments and practice were known by him. This wonderful glorying of oui- opponent in what he deems to have been uncontroverted by any Baptist at the time when he wi-ote, and on what it would almost seem he deems the salvation of our cause to depend, may be expected to demand a special reply. 1. — He says, " Our Baptist friends can find no clear instance of any child of parents who were professedly Christian at his birth, being baptized in adult age." To this a sufficient reply is already given in the proved character of baptism in the apostolio and subsequent period unto the close of the second century, as acknowledged by the Paedobaptist historians that have been quoted. Not only do the inspired writings give no historical record of the baptisms and additions to any particular church for the requisite length of time, but they deal not in such demanded "genealogies." Nor have we an uninspired history of any church during the first miUenium of Christianity, stating the additions to the church and the genealogies of its members. The first uninspired ecclesiastical documents — in this respect resembling the oracles of God- give ample testimony to the baptism of professing believers, and to the reqrdrement of faith in the baptized, but not a solitary instance of the baptism of an infant. But we repeat, that if infant baptism had commenced immediately after apostolio times, it would be snfficient for us that apostolio practice, according to the inspired writings, recognizes no such custom. But whether ecclesiastical records incidentally supply instances of children that had in their youth and at birth pious and "baptized" parents, and that remained unbaptized tiD maturity was attained, the reader of subsequent and previous quotations can judge. 2. — We are told that there is no clear and certain instance "of any such child being among the catechumens." Whether ecclesiastical and Paedobaptist historians state truly that the children of church members were committed to the instruction of catechists, I will not aflBrm, beyond that I know nothing in opposition to its truthful- ness. I will leave the reader to pass his own verdict on subsequent quotations respecting this. Let it be remembered that it refers to a period post-apoatoHc. Itia known and acknowledged by our opponents that these catechumens were unbaptized. I will not trouble myself about the " endless genealogies" of catechumens, to ascertain whether the parents of all were heathen at the time of their birth, or whether some were the children of Christians born after parental conversion. I know nothing respecting these schools that gives the least intimation that they did not for many years contain the children of Christians without any respect to conversion having taken place before or after the birth of these children. Besides, it is evidenced by the principal writers on ecclesiastical history that baptism in the second century waa deferred tiU there was satisfaction respecting the possession of faith in Christ, that Tertullian at the close of the second or beginning of the third century, is the first Christian writer who intimates a departure from this. They then knew nothing of baptizing all persons or all applicants indiscriminately, and I feel assured that the baptizing of infants is not evident until the third century. 3. — It is said that we have no clear and certain instance of any child of parents professedly Christian at his birth, " being unbaptized in the time of his youth, during the first half of the Christian era." Does it belong to the Baptists to prove that any child was unbaptized ? Are we in equity as well as pomposity required to prove a negative ? For our practice we adduce the warrant of Divine command and inspired precedent. We further — although this is not necessary — prove that in the times immediately succeeding the apostles, baptism was, so far as any record on the subject gives any information, confined to professing believers. We can also adduce both Baptist and Pffidobaptist opinions that the children of eminently pious parents, whose conversion is believed to have taken place when these children were born, were not baptized till they themselves became believers in Christ. Let Dr. H., or any other Paedobaptist in the world, give a clear and certain instance of ant unconscious BABE BEING BAPTIZED BEFORE THE THIRD CENTURY IN ANT PART OF THIS EARTH. 4. — Dr. H. says, " I ask them to find a solitary Baptist in their sense of the word, a clear, well-defined, honest-looking, plain-spoken Baptist like themselves, down to 480 SUBJECTS OF BAPTISM. the close of the first millenium of the Christian faith." Dr. Staoey adopts this, but less in the logomachy of a braggadacio. If Dr. H. during this period can see one that agrees with him on the action and subjects of baptism, he can see what I have not discovered. If there existed a solitary Wesleyan " in their sense of the word," I am much mistaken, although in many, and in the most important sentiments of Wesleyans and Independents generally, I rejoice to think that many from apostolic times have believed. liDr. H-jhy a, Baptist in our sense of the word, meeizis one who believes that baptism is immersion, and that its scriptural subjects are believers — and what else than this is the distinguishing sentiment of every " clear, well-defined, honest- looking, plain-spoken Baptist ? — it is strange to me, whatever may be Dr. H.'s mistakes respecting the first half of the Christian era, if he does not believe that every Baptist who has written at length in defence of baptism, has maintained that the apostle sand their immediate uninspired successors were all men clearly holding the distinguishing sentiment of Baptists. We have no manner of doubt that Jesus Christ, that Peter, Paul, and all the Christians of whom we read in God's word, were Baptists in our sense of the word, approving of the immersion of those who make a credible profession of faith in Christ, and regarding nothing else as Christian baptism. We believe and maintain that nothing else than the immersion of believers was known in the church of Christ as baptism till the latter part of the second or the former part of the third century. Some proof of the correctness of this sentiment has already been given, and more ia at hand. The precise period when trine immersion, and when the baptism of infants commenced, we, at least I, do not afiirm. The demand of our opponents, that we prove the required negative, namely, that a certain child was unborn at the time of the parent's conversion, or that a certain child was not promptly baptized when born after parental conversion, is a demand in opposition to the laws of controversy, indicates the exigency of the Padobaptist cause, and conveys an idea that is partial, or at variance with the reasoning of our opponents. If, according to the reasoning of some, a person had a pious parent in his boyhood, his baptism must have taken place ; and, according to others, were the conversion of the parent but six months before hia own conversion, he must have been baptized, because it is maintained that along with the convert, all his famihj were baptized : and, say some, all his servants too, of whatever age or character, and, say some, if it could be done in regard to the adult portion without coercion and scorn on their part, while others say, all the young children would be baptized. The reasoning of Dr. Halley and others on the Divine promise " unto you and to your children" as teaching that God demanded the baptism of the children along with the parent, we maintain to be contradicted by the inspii'ed phraseology quoted, by apostolic practice, and that of the earliest subsequent period. If our sentiments are scriptural, it is not to be demanded or expected that those of whom we read in the earliest uninspired ecclesiastical history, should be in everything like ourselves, for, says Dr. H. : " That there was some contrariety in the administra- tion of baptism, between the apostolic practice and the discipline of the ancient church at the earliest subsequent time in which it can be ascertained, is undeniable." I believe that no Baptist or Independent can faU to discover the word bishop used in the second century in a sense not accordant with its use in the oracles of God. In which church of apostolic or immediately succeeding times was there a monthly celebration of the Lord's Supper ? I assert not that Baptists are conformed in all things to apostolic practices. Nor do I justify their deviations. My aim is to defend only what I believe to be scriptural. And I am now advocating the immersion of those, and those only, who make a credible profession of faith in Christ. In the fact of immersion, a tenet of the Baptists distinguishing them from those who practise pouring or sprinkling as baptism, I maintain that wo have the example of the church universal — excepting pouring or sprinkling in regard to afflicted ones, and very exceptional cases — for a longer period than the first millenium of the Christian era. I believe in an earlier change from believers to infants, and a speedier prevalence of the innovation. While our practice of discipling, baptizing, and further instructing with a view to the increased and permanent development of personal Christianity, in professed obedience to a Divine command and in the following of inspired precedent, corroborated too by the earliest post-apostoHc practice, stands in no need of what is so pompously demanded, the children of heathens, of orthodox believers, of heretics, and all others, being equally eligible to baptism on believing with their hearts on the Lord Jesus, it is most disingenuous and unfair on the part of Dr. Halley, if he means by " a Baptist in their sense of the word," any other than one who only immerses and who confines this to those who are professed believers. This is what he knows and acknowledgea HISTOEIC TESTIMONY. 481 to be the sentimentg which distinguish us from other Christians. The practice of the church must be established by testimony. For believers' baptism we adduce the testimony of Justin and other fathers. Let Dr. H. or any other man produce testi- mony of the baptism of little children before the closing of the second or the early part of the third century, and testimony of the baptism of infants before the third century. Strong expressions of confidence which we may believe to be utterly unfounded, can bo expected and boruo ; but lengthened, and elaborate boasting on our supposed ignorance respecting the piety and baptism of the parents of baptized believers, respecting this parental status at the birth of those who were baptized as believers, which, if correct, adds not the weight of a feather to the support of infant baptism, is to be contemned and deprecated. Let our opponents prove the baptism of infants of any parents in the apostolic or immediately subsequent period. Previous to adducing further testimony on behalf of believers' baptism as the only baptism of the early post-apostolic ages, it may be proper to notice a redoubtablo champion of infant baptism from the ranka of our Presbyterian brethren.* * Since writing (at p. 479) that so far as I know the statements of ecclesiastical historians are correct, that the children of Christians as well as others were committed to the instruction of eatechists, I have examined on this the Paedobaptist and Baptist church Histories and ecclesias- tical Dictionaries and Annals to which from my own library I had access. In many of these I have found nothing definite. All who enlarge at all on this speak of catechumens as unbaptized, as in a state of preparation for it by receiving instruction, and distinguished from the faithful, who being approved and baptized had been admitted to membership with all its privileges. In every prosperous and increasing church, when the apparent convert had to submit to a probation of perhaps two or three years, there were catechumens ; and the bishop, presbyter, deacon, or other approved person, was the tutor or catechist. In some of the large and influential churches, as at Alexandria, Antioch, Rome, &c., the catechumenical class became a school presided over by a person of some learning and celebrity. Especially was this the case at Alexandria, where probably the establishment became wider than ordinary both in the range of its subjects and the character of its pupils. The following may convey instruction to the novice in ecclesiastical history, and a portion of it relates to our present theme. Dean Hook. — " Catechumens. A name given in the first ages of Christianity to the Jews or Gentiles who were being prepared and instructed to receive baptism. It comes from the Greek word katechein, which signifies to teach by word of mouth, or viva voce." — Ch. Die. Art. Catec. E. H. Landon. — " The period of the catechumenate was ordinarily two years, which, however, was lengthened or abridged according to the state of the catechumen as to learning and moral fitness." " There were degrees or classes of catechumens ; hut the number and the distinctive mark of each class were variable. Greek writers speak of two classes, the imperfect and perfect. The former were called audientes ; the latter, which comprised those who were fit to receive holy baptism, were sometimes styled genuflectcntes, because they were permitted to be present at the prayers of the church, and to kneel at the same time with the fideles, whilst the imperfecti were only allowed to enter to hear the gospel and sermon. Bona adds two other classes to the audi- entes and gemiflectentes, viz., competcntes and electi, Fleury distinguishes two only, the audientts and competentes." — Ec. I>ic. Art. Catec. Neander, after speaking of the names of catechumens and their period of probation, says : " For the private instruction of these catechumens no distinct office was instituted in the church. At Carthage, the duty devolved, after a period of probation, on some individual who had dis- tinguished himself among the church readers, who thereupon assumed the title of catechist. At Alexandria, where it often happened that men of education, even learned men, and persons accustomed to philosophical speculations, applied for instruction in Christianity it was necessary that the eatechists should be men of liberal education, and able to satisfy the doubts and objections of heathens, and to meet them on their own ground. Able and learned laymen were therefore here selected ; and this class of eatechists led afterwards to the formation of an important theological school among the Christians at Alexandria" (Ch. His., vol. i, pp. 423, 424). Speaking, in the next volume, of " the Alexandrian school," he says, " Now we find in the outset at Alexandria but one man appointed by the bishop to hold the office of catechist, whose business it was to give religious instruction to the pagans, and, moreover, bodutless to the children op the Chris- tians IN THAT PLACE." " The catechumcns were then divided into two classes. But though the office of catechist at Alexandria dilfered in no respect originally from the same office in other places, yet it could not fail to become gradually of itself an entirely different affair." GiESELEB says that at Alexandria there " began to be very soon felt the necessity of an instruction beyond the usual one given to catechumens, as well for the philosophical proselytes as for those who were to become teachers." — Ec. His., vol. i, p. 229. Kurtz says that " the larger churches employed special eatechists for the instruction of catechumens," and that "the catechetical school of Alexandria," from an institution for the instruction of catechumens, became " a theological seminary." — Ch. His., vol. i, pp. 113, 137. GuERicKE teaches that the catechumenate was to prevent the intrusion of merely nominal Christians into the church, and that " from the beginning of the second century such as sought to be incorporated into the church by baptism received under the title of katechoumenoi (TertulHan calls them audientes) preliminary instruction from a teacher expressly appointed for the purpose." —Man.ofCh.Anf.,^.2.2i. Dr. W. C. Taylor, speaking of the time of Commodus, says : " In consequence of the increasing number ol converts, and the difficulty of dietinguishing those who were actuated by pure motiyee, II 482 SUBJECTS OF BAPTISM. It IS not enough for the satisfaction of our opponents that we adduce the believers' baptism of the fost post- apostolic ages as the only baptism Christians were now divided into classes, the Faithful and the Catechumens."— ifis. ofChr., p. 206. W. Bates says that in the early church catechists " did not constitute any order, and their duties were often discharged by the bisliops and others of the clergy." — Col. Lee. on Chr. Ant.,p. 42. Bingham says that " catechumens, though but imperfect Christians, were in some measure owned to be within the iiale of the church ;" and that the office of catechist " was sometimes done by the bishop himself." — Antiq., vol. i, p. 29 ; vol. ii, p. 50.t Br. Mahan says, " The catechetical school was an institution intended r.ather for those without, than for those within the church. In its simplest form, St. Paul dwelling at Rome in his owa. hired house, receiving all who came, preaching the kingdom of God, and speaking of things con- cerning the Lord Jesus Christ — or the same apostle disputing daily at Ephesus in the school of one Tyrannus — presents, on the whole, a just concei^tion of it." Eventually the one at Alexandria bore some resemblance to a present " University." — Ch. Hia., pp. 231, 232. MosHEiit teaches that no vestige of the catechumenate " is to be found throughout the whole of the New Testament," but that " after some little while, it was judged expedient to divide the multitude into two orders or classes, viz., that of ihefaUhful, and that of the eatechnmens. Of these the former were such as had been solemnly admitted members of the church by the sacra- ment of baptism, and publicly pledged themselves to God and the bretliren that they would strictly conform themselves to the laws of the community" (Commentaries, vol. i, pp. 241, 242).— Nothing is said of a third class of baptized infants and little children. We shall subsequently read explicit testimony to the reception of the children of Christians as well as others to the catechu- menate from Mosheim's Eecl. His., and Bp. Barlow; and the convictions of IJr. Schaff, Bp. Taylor, and others, on unbaptized children of eminently Cliristian parents in the third and fourtb centuries. J. E. Riddle, under a.d. 180, says, "Christians are now divided into two classes, the Faithful and Catechumens." —Ec. Chro.,p. 27. Dr. Cramp (Baptist) says : " The catechumen institution maybe traced back to an early period — as far as the second century. At first, we gather from the New Testament, converts were baptized as soon as they acknowledged Christ." " In the jieriod which is now before us the catechumens were a distinct order. Certain persons, called catechists, were appointed to instruct them. They occupied a separate place in Christian assemblies, and were required to ^vithdraw before the celebration of the Lord's Supper, which they were not permitted to witness. From the Latin phrase used in dismissing the assembly, the whole service was called ' il/wsa,' from which the English word • Mass' is derived. There was the M!.«sa Catecliumenorum, or the service of the Catechumens, and the Missa Fidelium, or service of the Faithful." " It is a very noticeable fact, that the baptismal service, as prescribed in the earliest liturgies, was prepared for catechumens only. There was no provision for infants. Had infant baptism been then in existence, tlie ecclesiastical arrangements would have recognized it, and there would have been a twofold service, as there is now in the Church of England, one for infants, and the other for ' those of riper years.' "—Bap. His., pp. 33, 34. Dr. WtLSH teaches that by the labours of the Alexandrian catechists, " many individuals, dis- tinguished by their learning, and talents, and wealth, were gained over as converts to the new faith," and that " the learned doctors of the catechetical school went forth as missionaries to distant lands." —Ch. His., vol. i, p. 258. The Rel. Tr. Soc.'s Church History, chiefly from Miluer, says (vol. i, p 206) that Pantecnus " taught all that desired him ; whereas the school of his predecessors had been more private." Dr. E. Burton, in his Ch. His. (p. 251), speaking of Pantaenus and the catechetical school at Alexandria, says that " the Christians at .Alexandria had an advantage over those of other places, in being able to attend lectures on their own religion, as well as on various branches of science. The mode of instruction appears to have borne some resemblance to that pursued in modern universities, -where public lectures are delivered by professors. Their schools were numerously attended, not only by those who were already converted to Christianity, but by those who had still to choose their religion, or who were professedly heathens." Dr. Eadie says : " Catechetical schools were erected adjoining the chuiches, where the catechu- mens assembled to receive instruction from the catechist. A famous catcchetic school, or school of divinity, existed for many years at Alexandria." "At first all who professed to bolieve in Jesus Christ, and repented of their past sins, were immediately admitted to baptism, as was Simon .Magus, and were subsequently taught the particular doctrines of the Chiistian religion ; but, afterwards, none were admitted to baptism until they had been instructed in the principles of the Christian faith. Hence arose the distinction between believers and catechumens." "Catechumens were the lowest order of Christians, whose instruction in the principles of the Christian religion formed the first part of the service of the church. Though but imperfect Christians, being "unbaptizkb, they were acknowledged to be within the pale of the church. Persons were admitted into this state by imposi- tion of hands, prayer, and the sign of the cross. Thk baptized ciiildken of believing tarents •WERE admitted CATECHUMENS AS SOON AS THEY WERE CAPABLE OF LEARNING ; but it is nOt Certain at what age those of heathen converts were admissible" (Ec. Cy. Art. Cate.). Could the baptized children, when able to learn, become unbaptized catechumens? Unless also by " heathen converts" he means these while catechumens and unbaptized, the thstinctiou between them and Christians is a fancy. The word baptized is needed in connexion with the infants of believing parents by Dr. E.'s system of theology, and it is sometimes used, as in creeds and formularies, at the expense of truth and consistency. We do not, however, maintain the undeviating ch.aracter of catechumens in all places from their origin to their extinction ; nor is Dr. E. responsible for the above emphasizing. Dr. ScHAFF says that the Alexandrian school, accordmg to tradition founded by Mark, and •' under the supervision of the bishop,'' " was originally desitjiicd only for the practical purpose of HISTOEIC TESTIMONY. 483 that is then mentioned in any extant wi-itings, that we adduce this as corroborative of the believers' baptism of which alone we have a record in apostohc times. All this in the estimation of our learned opponents amounts to nothing. " The adult baptism which alone can sustain his system," as teaches Professor Dr. E. Wilson, and others occupying an equally exalted position in Paedobaptist Dissenting Colleges, is this — "In the case of a child born to Christian parents, was the ordinance deferred till the child arrived at years of maturity ? Did the practice of the ancient church in this case sustain adult baptism ? We take the negative, and we challenge Baptists to the proof" (Wilson's Inf. Bap., p. 526). Instead of adducing proof that a single child was baptized during these ages, they demand from us proof respecting the piety or ungodliness of the parents of these baptized believers at the time of their birth. To this proposition respecting the parentage of the baptized believer, they again and again " solicit the attention of Baptists," " challenging them to overthi'ow it, if in their power." They teach that these records of the ancient church give not a particle of corroboration and encouragement to the Baptist cause ! I am acquainted with scarcely any reasoning more flagrantly perverse, and more unblushingly and confidently advanced. This with Dr. W. is case 1 for the baptism of infants. And case 2 is, that we find no author during the first centuries opposing (the nonentity of) infant baptism on Antiptedobaptist principles ! And this author and record must have been ! "And the later that date, its struggle with adult baptism must have been the more severe, and a record of the struggle the more certain" (pp. 526, 527) ! There is an entire overlooking of the gradually increasing importance that was attached to baptism, the growing convictions preparing willing heathens and Jews of all classes for baptism. But in that home of the Philonie theology, of Gnostic heresy, and of Neo-Platonic philosophy, it soon very naturally assumed a learned character, and became at the same time a sort of theological seminary, which exercised a powerful influence on the education of many bishops and church teachers, and on the development of Christian science" (His. of Anc, Chr., vol. i, pp. 495, 496). lie adds in a Note : " Eusebius calls it to tes katechesios didaskaieion and dUlaskaleion ton ieron logon ; Sozomen, to ieron didaskaleion ton ieron mathemeton ; Jerome, ecclesiastica schola." Literally, Eusebius calls it the school of oral instruction and school of sacred words (or, discourses) ; Sozomen, the sacred school of sacred lessons ; Jerome, the ecclesiastical school. Liddell and Scott give for katechcsis, instruction by word of mouth, education: esp. in Eccl., the elementary religioiu teaching of converts before baptism. Speaking of a.d. 311-590, Dr. S. teaches that " many adult catechumens and proselytes" " post- poned their baptism until some misfortune or severe sickness drove them to the ordinance ;" and that " this custom was resisted by the most eminent chm-ch teachers, but did not give way tiU the fifth century, when it gradually disappeared before the universal introduction of infant baptism" (vol. ii, p. 484). If catechmneus in the second century, and later, were certainly unbaptized, which by eminent Psedobaptists is as distinctly admitted as Christ's death and resurrection, were we to admit that in the last stage of the existence of this class, catechetical instruction "preceded the baptism of proselytes and adults, and followed the baptism of children," our sentiments remain and are corroborated, that Christian baptism is believers' baptism, and that the " introduction of infant baptism," the sentiment in and by which it originated, and the growth and prevalence of the sentiment and practice, aided to terminate the unscriptirral catechumenate. Such a state of things is altogether probable, if it would not be inevitable. An applicant for membership in the evangelical Psedobaptist churches of this country, receives the same treatment whether baptized or unbaptized. The same profession of repentance of sin and faith in Christ is requisite, and the reality in each is tested in the same way, or for the same reason believed to be sincere or insincere. The baptism of infancy, or baptism and membership then, are now treated as a nullity, except that baptism is not required. When Dr. S., under a.d. 190-311, speaks of catechumens, he designates "the catechumenate" the " preparation for baptism." When it was the preparation for baptism it must have preceded it ; though "at a later period, after the general introduction of infant baptism, it followed" (vol. i, p. 497). The baptism of unconsciousness needing personal ratification in those who were spared, not unnaturally there arose a service which was improperly designated con- firmation, and which, " after the cessation of proselyte baptism," as says Dr. S. (vol. ii, p. 487) " gradually came to be regarded as au indepeadeut sacrameut." 484 SUBJECTS OP BAPTISM. in regard to its saving efficacy, which the most eminent Pa^dobaptist ecclesiastical historians acknowledge to have led to the practice of infant baptism, and to have necessitated its introduction without opposition, unless they could have pleaded for the eternal damnation of infants by advocating their dying unbaptizcd. And case 3 is the inability of Baptists to detect the origm of infant baptism. Thus blinded to the observance of facts, and unconsciously perverting those which are noticed, this learned writer can further teach 1. — That " the extent to which infant baptism is known to have prevailed in the third centm-y is to us unaccountable on Baptist principles !" 2. — The opposition of Tertullian to the baptism of little children, which we have already noticed, is believed to make him ** at once the enemy and supporter of infant baptism." 3. — He mentions *' Origen's testimony," which, says he, " should be viewed in combination with that of Irenseus and Justin." Then in " Conclusion — It forms no objection against infant baptism, that in patristic times it was often attended with abuses and perversions" (pp. 629-533). Thus speaks he of what had its rise with other abuses and perversions, and after one great perversion, baptism being then maintained to effect what it represented ; and thus unconsciously does he, as I think, "contravene the authority of heaven" by his gross assumptions, false inferences, and perverse reasoning on the behalf of infant baptism. His learned reasoning on the subjects of baptism, is worthy of his previous assertion on the action, namely, " that among the ancient Greeks as well as among the Egyptians, immersion formed no part of the ordinary process of bathing" (p. 305). Instead of adducing in reply to Dr. W. previous animadversions on Dr. Halley, let us now notice some more correct writers. Dr. Cramp (Baptist) mentions that it has been argued in favour of infant baptism that in the Roman catacombs there are or have been "inscriptions intimating that the infants buried in them were 'neophytes ;' " but none of those inscriptions, says Dr. C, " are of earlier date than the fourth century, at which time infant baptism was beginning to prevail, even in Italy." — Cate., p. 81. Dr. K. R. Hagenbach says : " Infant baptism had not come into general use prior to the time of Tertullian. Though a strenuous advocate of the doctrine of original Bin, that father, nevertheless, opposed Paedobaptism, on the ground that those who have not committed any actual transgression, need no cleansing from sin. Origen, on the contrary, pronounced in favour of infant baptism. In the time of Cyprian it became so general in the African church, that the African lushop Fidus, appealing to the analogous rite of circumcision under the Old Testament dispensation, proposed to delay the performance of the ceremony of baptism to the eighth day. Cyprian liowcver did not give his consent to this innovation." Concerning the period of Basil and the Gregorys he says : " The notions formed in the iprecediug periods concerning the high importance and efficacy of baptism were fully developed in the present, especially by Basil the great, Gregory of Nazianzen, and Gregory of Nyssa, and defined with more dogmatiq precision by Augustine. Neither the baptism of blood, nor that of tears lost its significance. The theologians of the Greek church zealously defended infant baptism, while Augustine brought it into more immediate connexion wdth the doctrine of original sin (in opposition to the Pelagians). Salvation was denied to imbaptized chUdren" (His. of Doc, vol. i, pp. 207, 386, 387). Ho mentions that Gregory of Nazianzen, thought it better that infants " slaould bo sanctified without their own consciousness, than that they should depart being neither sealed nor consecrated" (p. 389). He appealed to the rite of circumcision which took place on the eighth day, but not, so far as Dr. H. is aware, to any precept of the Now Testament. On infants dying unbaptized, and obtaining " perfect salvation," ho " distinguished between intentional and unintentional delay." Hagenbach also quotes HISTOEIC TESTIMONY. 485 "Ullman, p. 461," on Gregory of Nazlanzen, who gives a number of different names of Christian baptism, and says : " The following is the principal thought on which this abundance of names is founded : all the blessings of Christianity appear concentrated in one point in baptism, and are dispensed, as it were, all together in one moment : but all these names can only in so far be applied to baptism, as the person to be baptized possesses the right disposition, without which none can enter into the kingdom of heaven" (p. 3SS). Thus Gregory, and many who have succeeded him, have attributed to baptism the working of that which in apostolic times was supposed to be possessed by the approved candidate for baptism, and to be professed and represented in the baptism itself. Nor will it ever be, that baptism " delivers from lusts, and elevates to a higher spiritual life" unconscious babes. I believe with Hagenbach that while scriptural records " prove nothing" in favour of the existence of infant baptism, " nor does the earliest passage occurring in the writings of the fathers." Dr. GouLBUKN is one of those who believes in the insufficiency of Scripture to set at rest Infant Baptism ; but the dean believes, " K you will allow the usages and sentiments of the primitive church, as attested by the earlier fathers, to be any evidence of what the apostolic practice was, " then the evidence in favour of infant baptism becomes " so strong that it is impossible for any reasonable man to resist it" CActs of the Deacons, pp. 307, 308). We decline to accept as apostolic that which is first manifest ia the third century. That infant baptism was " universally prevalen'' in the second century," or in the third century, facts disprove. GiESELER, speaking of a.d. 117-193, says : " Baptism was preceded by instruction, fasting, and prayer. The baptism of children was not universal" (Ec. His,, vol. i, pp. 174, 175. Clark's Edi.). Also he says, "Many new usages were connected with baptism itself towards the end of the second century." Further, "The baptism of infants did not become universal till after the time of Augustine." — Ec. His., vol. ii, pp. 47, 48. Bp. Burnet believes that "in the first times" "chiefly the adults were baptized" COn the xxxix Art., p. 363). This, although believed by others, is inconsistent with Pffidobaptism whenever prevailing. This is testified, I believe, by the baptismal records of every Pffidobaptist mission. Geotitjs. — " It does not appear that infant baptism did universally obtain in the primitive church, but was more frequent in Africa than anywhere else. In the councils of the ancients one shall find no earlier mention of Pa3dobaptism than in the council of Carthage. In TertuUian's time it appears there was nothing defined concerning the age in which they were to be baptized that were consecrated by their parents to Christian discipline, because he dissuades by so many reasons the baptizing of infants : and Gregory Nazianzen, speaking of those who die without baptism, mentions among the rest those who were not baptized by reason of infancy ; and he liimself, though a. bishop's son, and educated a long time under the care of his father, was not baptized till he became a youth, as is related iu his Hfo" CAnno., on Matt, xix, 14). Not possessing the Latin Aimotations of Grotius, and the writings of many other con- tinental divines in the original, I know not whether they have used words as indefinite as the x>0''i"vulus of TertuUian and Eufinus. But whether or not, the ascertained import of parvulus, and the distinction between it and infans, are not affected thereby. Baumgarten. — "There is no satisfactory proof of the practice of the rite in the first two centuries." — In Wallace on Bap., p. 66. Menzell. — " One of these last [abuses] was infant baptism, a departure from the original form of the sacrament." — His. of the Ger. and the Be/., vol. i, p. 123. Meter. — " The baptism of infants is very old, but its origin cannot bo traced anywhere" (In Stier's Words, &c., vol. viii, p. 304). It cannot be traced in the com- mission, in apostolic practice, or as certainly practised till the third century. Aug. Hahn. — " Baptism was in the appointment of Christ to be administered to all those who penitently confessed their sins, and believed in the gospel of Jesus. According to its original character and design it could be administered only to adults, who alone were capable of the knowledge of sin, and repentance, and faith. Neither in the Scriptiires, nor in the history of the first century and a half, is there a certain example of infant baptism to be found." — In Stier's Words, &c., vol. viii, p. 312. GuERicKE, having referred to certain seasons, as Easter, &c., as times early preferred for the celebration of baptism, says : " But the practice of infant baptism, which gradually became the universal custom, necessarily tended to destroy the preference for these seasons." Also, "Naturally enough, the institution of infant baptism was not without considerable influence on the whole rite of baptism." He believes, contrary to myself in the general adoption of infant baptism, "in the second century," but admits, " We cannot adduce any direct apostolical authority for th^ 486 SUBJECTS OP BAPTISM. practice of infant baptism ;" and, unfavourably to the idea of its general adoption in the second centiiry, he subsequently says : " As late as the fourth century infant baptism was anything but universally observed in the East." Having referred to the advocacy of early baptism by Cyprian and his "Carthaginian synod," he says, "Not- withstanding, a long period elapsed before a correct theory on this head, and stiU longer before a correct practice, jDrevailed universally." — Antiq., pp. 237-239. Beetschneidee. — "All the earlier traces of infant baptism are very doubtful : on the contrary TertuUian is the first who refers to it, and he censures it. Origen and Cyprian, on the contrary, defend it. In the foui'th century its validity was generally acknowledged, although the church fathers found it necessary to warn against the delay of baptism. Even Pelagius did dot dare to call the correctness of it in question. Augustine poiuted out the removal of original sin and the sins of the children as its definite object ; and through his representations was its universal diffusion promoted." — Theol., vol. i, p. 469. Matthies. — " In the first two centuries no documents are found which clearly shew the existence of infant baptism at that time." — On Bap., p. 187. Prof. Kurtz, writing on a.d. 323-692, says, " During this period it was still common to delay baptism, either from radifiference, from superstition, or from doctrinal prejudices. These motives also operated against the practice of infant baptism, which had long been recognized, not only as lawful but as necessary." Again, "After the general introduction of infant baptism, the strict distinction between the ' missa, catechumenorum' ajTid the 'missa fidelium' ceased." Again, " When infant baptism became general, separate baptisteries were no longer necessary, and instead of them fonts were placed in the churches" (His., vol. i, pp. 226, 229, 237). Could a believer in the apostolic institution of infant baptism thus write ? The existence of unbaptized catechumens at the close of the second century and afterwards, is not in itself an evidence of the non-existence of infant baptism, or I might adduce Dr. Jamieson and others on the candidate for baptism " declaring his resolution to abandon the service of Satan and all the sinful works and pleasures of which he is the patron." It was the rise and prevalence of infant baptism that destroyed the catechumenical classes. Drs. BoGUE and Bennett. — "The history of infant baptism is an inextricable maze." How different is this from the bold and untruthful assertions of Prof. Hodge and some others^ who teach that from the beginning it was the universal practice, who see every writer as confirming its existence, its prevalence, and its apostolic practice ! Ecclesiastical history aiFords as much evidence that organs were used by the first Christians in connexion with Divine worship, as that the baptism of infants then existed. Ecclesiastical historians speak of the rise — not apostolic institution — of infant baptism, just as they speak of the rise — not apostolic institution, but "very ancient institution — of God-parents." LiMBOECH says that " the necessity of Psedobaptism was never asserted by any council before that of Carthage," and that "the subject of baptism to whom it is to be administered, is a believer ; one who is endued with a true faith in Jesus Christ, and touched with a serious repentance for his past offences." — 8ys, Div., 1. v, c. xxii, § 2. Cattenbubgh. — "It cannot be unanswerably proved that infant baptism was practised from the beginning of Christianity." — /Sjnc. Theol. Chris., p. 1059. W. Capito. — " In the first times of the church no one was baptized, nor received into the holy communion of Christians, till after he had given himseK up entirely to the word and authority of Christ." — In Schyn, His. Men., p. 170. WiNEE. — " Originally only adults were baptized ; but at the end of the second century in Africa, and in the third century generally, infant baptism was introduced ; and in the fourth century it was theologically maintained by Augustine." — In Hinton'a His., p. 242. Salmasius says, " An opinion prevailed that no person could be saved without being baptized, and for that reason the custom arose of baptizing infants." — In Tates's Tenets, &c. Rheinwald, on infant baptism says, The "first traces of infant baptism are found in the Western church, after the middle of the second century, and it was th© HISTORIC TESTIMONY. 487 subject of controversy in proconsular Africa towards the end of this century. Though its necessity was asserted in Africa and Egypt in the beginning of the third century, it was even to the end of the fourth century, by no means universally observed, least of all in the Eastern church. Notwithstanding the recommendations of it by the fathers, it never became a general ecclesiastical institution till the age of Augustine" (Hinton's His., p. 242). And yet Augustine, as quoted by Stier (Words, &c., vol. viii, p. 331), speaks but on this fashion : '" The custom of mother church in baptizing little ones, is not to be made light of, or thought a superfluous thing ; but it is to be regarded as an apostolic tradition only." Dr. E. Williams. — "The first Christians held that the heart was purified by faith ; the accompanying symbol of which became by degrees the instrument of purification. Holy baptism was at first preceded by a vow, in wliich the young soldier expressed his consciousness of spiritual truth. But when it became twisted into a false analogy with circumcision, the rite degenerated into a magical form," &c. — Essays and Revs., p. 86. J. E. EiDDLE, in his Ecclesiastical Chronology, against a.d. 176, wliich I maintain is much too early a date, wiites : " Evidence of the practice of infant baptism at this period" (p. 26). At p. 34, he says: "Baptism, in the second century and beginning of the third, was now more generally administered to infants." Immediately before this he mentions that " Exaggerated statements respecting the efficacy of the sacra- ments of baptism and the Lord's Supper gain currency, attended with superstitious veneration for those rites, and abuses." And immediately after it he mentions several alterations or additions in connexion with baptism at this period. He says, under A.D. 256, " The Council of Carthage enjoins infant baptism. At this period it was xisual at Carthage to administer the Lord's Supper to infants" (p. 43). At the " end of the fourth century," he speaks of the Lord's Supper as "received by baptized persons, including children" (p. 51). At about A.D. 370, speaking of public worship, he says, " Until the practice of infant baptism became general, it was divided into two parts" (p. 79). Under a.d. 450, he says, " Infant baptism had now become general." — p. 105. W. Bates, Fellow, Lecturer, and Hebrew Lecturer of Christ's College, Cambridge, says in his College Lectures on Christian Antiquities (p. 115), that "in ancient times," " their whole bodies were immersed or dipped in water, to represent the death, and burial, and resurrection of Christ, and to signify their own dying unto sin, the destruction of its power, and their resurrection to a new life." The application of this to infants is with me an impossibility. Dr. DoDDRiDaE. — " It is indeed surprising that nothing more express is to be met with in antiquity upon this subject, but it is to be remembered that when infant baptism is fiLrst apparently mentioned, we read of no remonstrance made against it as an innovation ; and that as we have no instance of any persons expressly asserted to have been baptized in their infancy, so neither of any children of Christian parents baptized at years of discretion" (M isc. Worls, p. 495) . To us it is not at aU surprising that early antiquity is so silent on infant baptism ; nor indeed that Tertullian does not expressly designate the baptism of "little children" an innovation. Without expressly using the term, he appears to us in his reasoning clearly so to regard it. Wlien baptism had been from the beginning a solemn token " of our accepting the gospel covenant, peculiar to those who did so accept it" (p. 488), silence was to be expected; and when baptism began to be considered necessary to salvation, the baptism, first of little children, and then of infants, was likely to appear and to prevail ; notwithstanding " that Christ instituted such an ordinance as baptism," to be a solemn token " of our accepting the covenant," "to those who should believe His gospel." Dr. Whitby is confident that the apostles were "sent to preach to those that could hear, and to teach them to whom they preached, that Jesus was the Clirist, and only to baptize them when they did believe this ;" and that this is not only "absolutely necessary in the nature of the thing, till a Christian church among the heathen or the Jews was founded," but also that this is " expressly said by Justin Martyr to have been the practice of the first ages of the church." — Com., on Matt, xxviii, 19. MosHEiM. — " In the earliest times of the church, all who professed firmly to believe that Jesus was the only Redeemer of the world, and who, in consequence of this profession, promised to live in a manner conformable to the purity of His holy religion, were immediately received among the disciples of Christ. This was all the preparation for baptism then required ; and a more accurate instruction in the doctrines of Christianity was to be administered to them after their receiving that sacrament." Subsequently, says he, " None were admitted to baptism but such as had been previously instructed in the principal points of Christianity, and had also given 488 SUBJECTS OF BAPTISM, satisfactory proofs of piona dispositions and upright intentions. Hence arose the distinction between catechumens, who were in a state of probation, and under the instruction of persons appointed for that purpose ; and hclievcrs, who wore consecrated by baptism, and thus initiated into all the mysteries of the Christian faith" (Ec. His., p. 33). Speaking of the first century, after mentioning that baptism " was performed by immersion of the whole body," ho says : " At first it was usual for all who laboured in the propagation of the gospel to bo present at that solemn ceremony ; and it was also customary, that the converts should be baptized and received into the church by those under whose ministry they had embraced the Christian doctrine. But this custom was soon changed" (cent, i, c. iv, § 8). Under the third century Mosheim writes : " There were, twice a year, stated times when baptism was administered to such as after a long course of trial and preparation offered themselves as candidates for the profession of Christianity. This ceremony was performed only in the presence of Buch as were already initiated into the Christian mysteries. The remission of sins was thought to be its immediate and happy fruit, while the bishop by prayer and the imposition of hands was supposed to confer those sanctifying gifts of the Holy Ghost which are necessary to a life of righteousness and virtue" (p. 79). To talk about mystery regarding the origin of infant baptism, while these sentiments are maintained and approved, is as reasonable as to doubt the existence of heat where there is fire, or the fact of an impure stream when it flows from a corrupt fountain. To have prevented infant baptism would have required, at this period of the church's error and corruption, a constant miracle. Bp. Barlow. — " I do believe and know that there is neither precept nor example in Scripture for infant baptism, nor any just evidence of it for above two hundred years after Christ ; that Tertullian condemns it as an unwarrantable custom, and Nazianzen, a good while after him, dislikes it too. — Sure I am that in the primitive times they were first Catechwneni, then Illmninati, or Ba/ptizati ; and that not only Pagans, and the children of Pagans converted, but children of Christian parents. The truth is, I do believe Pcedobaptism (how or by whom I know not) came into the world in the second century ; and in the third and fourth began to be practised (though not generally) and defended as lawful from that text grossly misunderstood, John iii, 5. Upon the like gross mistake of John vi, 53, thoy did for many centuries both in the Greek and Latin church communicate infants, and give them the Lord's Supper, And I confess they might do both as well as either." Dr. Wall, who gives a portion of this in his History (vol. ii, pp. 26, 27), states (as I think very unfairly, or very mistakenly) that Dr. B. " himself fairly recanted ;" and he gives his letter of recanta- tion to Mr. Wilks, in which I see no retraction of a syllable, although he painfully felt his indiscretion in having so written, and written what was never intended to bo made public, and written too with no intention of ceasing to baptize infants. D. EoQBRS. — " I take the baptism of infants to bo one of the most reverend, general, and uncontrolled traditions which the church hath, and which I would no less doubt of than the creed to be apostolical, although I confess myself yet unconvinced by demonstration of Scripture for it" (In Vanity of Inf. Bap., by A. R., part ii, p. 7). Mr. E., like Bp. Taylor, and possibly many others, was satisfied that truth was on his side, only evidence was lacking. Dr. W. HuRD. — "It is pretty clear, from the writings of many learned men, that Dr. John Wickliffe, the first English reformer, either considered infant baptism a3 tmlawful, or at least not necessary." — His. of all Rel., p. 718. L. Coleman. — " The general introduction of the rite of infant baptism has so far changed the regulations of the church concerning the qualifications of candidates, that what was formerly the rule in this respect has become the exception." "The learned in Germany generally" " either deny that the baptism of infant children was authorized by Christ and His apostles, or they content themselves with stating the historical facts in relation to the subject — giving the earliest evidence of the rite in question, without advancing any theory whatever respecting the origin of this ordinance" (Chr. Ant., pp. 110, 116). He has before said respecting Augustine, that " he was about to be baptized in early childhood, that he might die as a Christian, under the covenant. But the administration of the ordinance was deferred in consequence of his recovery ; and the delay he regarded as a kind providence. From this example the inference is, that he might have received duo preparation for the ordinance from his pious mother, but that his baptism would have been an exception to the general rule on this subject" (p. 28). In his Chronological Index (p. 210) ho gives for a.d. 282, " Infant baptism common among the Persian churches." Bp. Hinds. — " It is true that infant baptism is not mentioned expressly by any earlier writer than Justin Martyr and IronMus ;" — nor indeed by these, I unhesitatingly Pifflrm, aa every candid reader must testify. Speaking of the primitive martyrs, ho HISTOEIC TESTIMONY. 4^9 eaya, " Every son of tlie clmrch was baptized into a faith which taught him to aspire to an imitation of Christ." — Rise, &c., pp. 257, 236. Dr. Bloomfield. — " In the early agea of Christianity, those who acknowledged Jesus to be the Messiah were received by this solemn rite into the Christian church." Bee. Syn., on Acts ii, 41. Dean Hook. — "The rite of infant baptism is not enjoined in Scripture." "For the practice we must plead the tradition of the church universal." — Ch. Die. Art. Inf. Bap. Dr. G. V. Lechlee. — " Confession of faith belongs to baptism according to ancient usage." — In Lange, on Acts, viii, 2(3-40. Chambers. — " It appears that in the primitive times none wore baptized but adults." — Cy. Art. Bajy. Bp. Taylor. — * " But tradition, by all means, must supply the place of Scriptui'e, and there is pretended a tradition apostolical that infants were baptized : but at this we are not much moved ; for we, who rely upon the written word of God as sufficient to establish all true religion, do not value the allegation of traditions ; and, however the world goes, none of the Reformed churches can pretend this argument against thia opinion, because they who reject tradition when it is against them, must not pretend it at all for them. But if we should allow the topic to be good, yet how will it be verified ? for so far as it can yet appear, it relies wholly upon the testimony of Origen, for from him Austin had it. Now a tradition apostolical, if it be not consigned with a fuUer testimony than of one person, whom all after ages have condemned of many errors, will obtain so little reputation amongst those who know that things have iTpon greater authority pretended to derive from the apostles, and yet falsely, that it will be a great argument that he is credulous and weak that shall be determined by so weak probation in matters of so great concernment. And the truth of the business is, as there was no command of Scripture to oblige children to the susception of it, so the necessity of Padobaptism was not determined in the church till in the eighth age after Christ ; but in the year 418, in the Milevitan Council, a provincial of Africa, there was a canon made for Ptedobaptism : — never till then ! I grant it was practised in Africa before that time, and they or some of them thought well of it ; and though that be no argument for us to think so, yet none of them did ever before pretend it to be necessary, none to have been a precept of the gospel. St. Austin was the first that ever preached it to be absolutely necessary, and it was in his heat and anger against Pelagius, who had warmed and chafed him so in that question that it made him innovate in other doctrines, possibly of more concernment than this" (Lib. of Pro., pp. 336, 337). After speaking of the admission of infants to baptism by the early church as implying egregioiis prevarication " in asking questions of them, who them- selves knew were not capable of giving answer : and to supply their incapacity by the answer of a god-father, is but the same unreasonableness acted with a worse circumstance," he refers to TertuUian, who advises the delay of baptism, and adds, " The same also is the counsel of Gregory, bishop of Nazianzum, although he allows them to hasten it in case of necessity ; for though his reason taught him what was fit, yet he was overborne with the practice and opinion of his age, which began to bear too violently upon him ; and yet in aTiother place he makes meution of some to whom baptism was not administered dia nepioteta, ' by reason of infancy.' To which if we add that the parents of St. Austin, St. Jerome, and St. Ambrose, although they were Christian, yet did not baptize their children before they were thirty years of age, it wiU be very considerable in the example, and of great efficacy for destroying the supposed necessity or derivation from the apostles" (pp. 339, 340). After stating that "Christ never gave any precept to baptize" infants, "nor ever Himself, nor His apostles (that appears) did baptize any of them," that Mark xvi, 16 teaches that " faith and baptism in conjunction will bring a man to heaven; but if he have not faith, baptism shall do him no good," he says, "The conclusion is, that baptism is also to be deferred till the time of faith ; and whether infants have faith or no is a question to be disputed by persons who care not how much they say, nor how little they prove" (pp. 340, 341). "I consider," adds he (p. 343), "that the baptizing of * An objection has been made to Bp. Taylors's remarks as being bis own opinions. His words arc in his Liberty of Prophesying, in which he pleads for the toleration, in opjiosition to the i)er- secution, of the Anabaptists. And when he has spoken on behalf of Baptist sentiments, he says, " Thus far the Anabaptists may argue." I will not aflSrm and will not deny, notwithstanding what he subsequently wrote, that all had his personal conviction. It is clear that he regarded Baptist arguments as having in them much force, and as being sustained by greater " evidence" than those adduced by Fiedobaptists. 490 SUBJECTS OF BAPTISM. infants does rush us upon such inconveniences which in other questions we avoid like rocks." Dr. HoFLiNG. — " As to the history of infant baptism, sure enough it cannot be denied that prior to Tertullian nowhere is it mentioned in express and altogether precise terms." — Sac. of Ba/p., p. 104. A. S. Pateeson, — "What was required of those who were admitted into the Christian church by baptism in the earliest ages ? Nothing but a firm belief that Jesus was the only Redeemer of the world, and a promise to live conformably to the purity of His holy reUgion." " Was this always the case ? No. When the churches increased, none were admitted to baptism but such as had been previously instructed in the chief points of Christianity, and had also given satisfactory proofs of pious dispositions and upright intentions." — Ch. His., vol. ii, p. 2'J. Dr. C. Hase. — " Candidates for admission to the church Were first carefully instructed, and rigidly examined in all the studies of the several stages of their education." — Ch. His. from a.d. 100-312, p. G8. CouRETER, after declaring the insufiiciency of Scripture to prove the necessity of infant baptism, says, "It does not even appear, after the practice was introduced, that it was judged, as it is now, of necessity, since it was very common then to defer the reception of this sacrament to an advanced age, and even till death" (Decl. of Last Sen., p. 70). — The delaying of baptism on account of a prevalent idea respecting subsequent sin, is not inconsistent with the belief in its mighty and glorious efficacy. Dr. Von Coellin. — " It was certainly not the design of Jesus to introduce infant baptism. Its later introduction into the church was an effect of the erroneous doctrines which were entertained of the connexion of bai^tism with salvation." — Bib. Theol., vol. ii, p. 145. Dr. Bannerman, who teaches that " the church has no power in regard to the ceremonies and institutions of Divine service, except to administer them," and who forcibly iterates and reiterates this important fact, says respecting the chiirch in its early history : " Within the period of the first four or five centuries, there were intro- duced into the field of religious worship the germs of most, if not all, of the mass of reUgious observances by which the church of Eome is at present distinguished. Even the Reformation did not apply a full and effectual correction to this superstitious and sensuous tendency on the part of the churches that were in doctrine and faith reformed. In our own country, both in the northern and southern divisions of it, the history of the sore contendings between the advocates and opponents of church rites and ceremonies, of human invention and authority, forms no unimportant or uninteresting part of its ecclesiastical history." Yet, again, the church " has a right to administer and carry into effect the express appointments of Christ, and no more." " The church has no latitude beyond the express warrant of Scripture, and is forbidden as much to administer a worship not there revealed, as to preach a gospel not there revealed. The single fact that the rule of church power in the worship of God is the rule of Scripture, is decisive of the whole controversy in regard to rites and ceremonies." " The worship not enjoined in the Word of God is will-worship." " There is no possibility of denying this argument, except by denying that the Scriptures are the only rule for worship, or by denying that they are a sufiBcient one." — The Ch. of Christ., vol. i, pp. 349, 361, 362, 367. Some of the following Is Psedobaptist testimony to the gradual influx of error and corruption into the church of Christ from apostolic times. Dr. J. Bennett says, "The futile theory, that our religion could not have been corrupted so early as the second century, weighs lighter than air against solid facts." " The Greek chui-ches were, for the first three hundred years, hastening to that state which, in the next three hundred years, brought Mahomet upon them, to sweep them away as with a flood." He teaches that the steady progress towards the "great apostacy is visible from the apostles' days till the whole length mystery of iniquity was revealed." " The epistles of Ignatius prepared the way for Hildcbrand." " The heathenism taught in the chair of Alcxandi-ia would have chocked the men of apostolic times. The next in succession, Origen, though superior to his master, by pursuing the same course, alarmed the church, which, however, owes the equivocal position in which he was placed, between saint and heretic, to the wounded pride of Demetrius, rather than to his love of truth." " That the corruption was rapidly advancing when TertulUau wrote, ho himself declares." Of Tertullian he says, " Cyprian hailed him piaster. Eusebius and Jerome laud him, which they could scarcely have ventured to HISTOEIC TESTIMONY. 491 do, if it Bad been notorious that all TertuUian's censures were calumnious and false. Carthage must have been in an apostate state when her bishop wrote his letters." "The predicted apostacy steadily advanced, and many years of darkness, superstition, and guilt, had their commencement ia ages that have been ignorantly applauded as primitive and pure." "There is scarcely an error in doctrine, or corruption in practice, or superstition in worship, by which the church was ever troubled, that may not be traced to very early times, and that was not defended by some venerated name." " Where we stop, as too late to be really the church of the fathers, generations having passed away, and degenerate sons having risen up, so that ' there were few like the fathers,' some woidd begin" (Cong. Lee, ■pjy. 25^-265). To the Pffidobaptist, one is disposed to say, " Physician, heal thyself ;" and then say, Wheke we stop, some WOULD BEGIN. Dr. W. H. Stowell. — " Those who have added to the devout reading of the New Testament an intelligent study of Christian history, will remember the insidious process by which the human in religion has stealthily encroached on the Divine." " The minds of the Christian people were led by insensible degrees to lose, in the mere adjuncts of religion, much of the individuality, the spiritual life, the inward fellowship, enjoyed by the church at the beginning. The church assumed the visible organization of human institutions. The doctrines of the gospel received the tincture of men's opinions." " At length it was determined by the authority of councils, that the guilt of original sin is remitted by the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ bestowed in baptism, that this sacrament contains and imparts, as well as signifies, the grace ; so that all who are not regenerated hy the grace ofhaptisin, are born to eternal misery and ever- lasting destruction." — Cong. Lee, vol. xiv, pp. 150, 156. Our opponents, one after another, can record these views of baptismal necessity and efficacy as those of the early chui'ch, and jei demand that a change of subjects from behevers to infants must have been attended with a tremendous struggle, and that the violent conflict must have had a distinct record ! Mosheim, on the first centm-y, says : "The Christian church was scarcely formed, when, in difi'erent places, there started up certain pretended reformers, who, not satisfied with the simplicity of that religion, which was taught by the apostles, meditated changes of doctrine and worship" (Cent, i, c. v, § 1). On the second century, referring to councils, he says, " These councils, of which we find not the smallest trace before the middle of this century, changed the whole face of the church and gave it a new form" (cent, ii, c. ii, § 3). Speaking of the simple creed and simple piety of teachers in the early church, he says, " This venerable simplicity was not, indeed, of a long duration ; its beauty was gradually defaced by the laborious efforts of human learning, and the dark subtleties of imaginary science" (c. iii, § 2). " The cause of morality, and, indeed, of Christianity in general, suffered deeply by a capital error which was received in this century. . . . Certain Christian doctors, either through a desire of imitating the nations among whom they lived, or in consequence of a natural propensity to a life of austerity (which is a disease not uncommon in Syria, Egypt, and other Eastern provinces) were induced to maintain that Christ had established a double rule of morality and virtue, for two different orders of Christians . . , the one for persons in the active scenes of life, the other for those who, in a sacred retreat, aspired after the glory of a celestial state" (§ 11). Further, says he, " There is no institution so pure and excellent which the corruption and folly of man will not in time alter for the worse, and load with additions foreign to its nature and original design. Such, in a particular manner, was the fate of Christianity. In this century, many unnecessary rites and ceremonies were added to the Christian worship" (o. iv, § 1). "Thus they administered mUk and honey, which was the ordinary food of infants, to such as were newly received into the church, shewing them by this sign, that by their baptism they were born again, and were bound to manifest the simplicity and innocence of infants in their Lives and conversations" (§ 6). " The sacrament of baptism was administered publicly twice every year, at the festivals of Easter and Pentecost, or Whitsuntide, either by the bishop, or the presbyters in consequence of his authorization and appointment. The persons that were to be baptized, after they had repeated the creed, confessed and renounced their sins, and particularly the devil and his pompous allurements, were immersed under water, and received into Christ's Jiingdom by a solemn invocation of Father, Son, and Holy Ghost" (§ 13). Under the 492 SUBJECTS OF BAPTISM. first century, but not speaking exclusively of this period, Moslieim says, " The Chris- tians took all possible care to accustom their children to the study of the Scriptures, and to instruct them in the docrinos of their religion ; and schools ■were everywhere erected for this purpose, even from the very commencement of the Christian church." In some of these schools, Mosheim teaches, the youth received an education suitable to the solemn ofBce of the holy ministry. He expresses his confidence that " St. John erected a school of this kind at Ephcsus, and one of the same nature was founded by Polycarp at Smyrna. But none of these were in greater repute than that which waa established at Alexandria, which was commonly called the catechetical school, and is generally supposed to have been erected by St. Mark" (cent, i, c. iii, § 7). That the catechetical school of Alexandria was flourishing at about the middle of the second century, wiU be denied, I believe, by none. That all the catechumens of this and every other similar establishment are invariably spoken of asunbaptized,as preparing for baptism, is admitted with equal universality. What but Pasdobaptist exigence could lead to the speaking of these establishments as schools for the children of the heathen and unconverted ? There is, I believe, as much evidence that the children of Christians were excluded from these establishments, as that these children were baptized in infancy during the first or second century of the Christian era. I shall omit what is said by Mosheim respecting the heresies of the second century arising from " Judaizing" teachers, and from admirers of "the oriental philosophy;" but shall give from him the following on the third century: "The ancient method of ecclesiastical government . . . degenerated towards the form of a religious monarchy. For the bishops aspired after higher degrees of power and authority than they had formerly possessed ; and not only violated the rights of the people, but also made gradual encroachments upon the privileges of the presbyters. And that they might cover these usvirpations with an air of justice, and an appearance of reason, they published new doctrines concerning the nature of the church, and of the episcopal dignity, which, however, were in general so obscure that they themselves seem to have understood them as little as those to whom they were delivered. One of the principal authors of this change in the government of the church, was Cyprian" (cent, iii, part ii, c. ii, § 3). He adds that, ''though several yet continued to exhibit to the world illustrious examples of primitive piety and Christian virtue, yet many were sunk in luxury and voluptuousness, puffed up with vanity, arrogance, and ambition, possessed with a spirit of contention and discord, and addicted to many other vices, which cast an undeserved reproach upon the holy religion, of which they were the unworthy professors and ministers" (§ 4). After bestowing praise on Origen, he says : " It is not without a deep concern that we are obliged to add, that he also, by an unhappy method, opened a secure retreat for all sorts of errors that a wild and irregular imagination coiild bring forth. Having entertained a notion that it was extremely difficult, if not impossible, to defend everything contained in the sacred writings from the cavils of heretics and infidels, so long as they were explained literally, according to the real import of the terms, he had recourse to the fecundity of a lively imagination, and maintained that the holy Scriptures were to be interpreted in the same allegorical manner that the Platonists explained the history of the gods" (cent, iii, c. iii, § 5). On the Eites and Ceremonies of the Church during this century, he says, " There is not the least doubt, but that many of the rites, now introduced into the church, derived their origin from the reigning opinions concerning the nature of demons, and the powers and operations of invisible beings. Hence the use of exorcisms and spells, the frequency of fasts, and the aversion to wedlock. Hence the custom of avoiding all connexion with those who were not as yet baptized, or who lay under the penalty of excommunication, as persons supposed to be under the dominion of some malignant spirit."— Ch. iv, § 1. We trace the origin of our sentiments and practice on believers' immersion as alone Christian baptism to the Lord Jesus and His apostles, and adduce Mosheim's testimony to the first post-apostoHc age as confirmatory of the correctness of our opinions, and adduce as a nearer approximation to truth than the boastful assertions of some more recent writers concerning the first thousand years, his statement respecting the Baptist denomination, that " the true origin of the Baptist denomination, who espoused the Mennonite views, and who acquired the stigma of Anabaptists, by administering anew tho rito of baptism to thoso who como HISTORIC TESTIMONY. 493 over to their community, is hid in the remote depths of antiquity." And it might be remarked that however much the corruption of Christianity may on many accounts be deplored, it is accordant with the inspired predictions of Peter and Paul (2 Pe. ii, 1-3 ; Acts xx, 29-30 ; 2 Thess. ii, 3-4 ; 1 Tim. iv, 1), and it enforces the duty of searching the Scriptures and of appealing absolutely to the oracles of God. The following — most of which is also testified by Mosheim — is from a Baptist, on the corruptions of the third century. I. Mann. — " There was an assumption of dignity and pomp among the bishops of the church, which had not existed in earlier ages. About a.d. 255, the bishops changed the appearance and the name of their seats in the churches, and the different courts where they sat. These were formerly designated ' seats' only ; now they were called ' thrones :' a circumstance in itself scarcely worth a mention, only as it shews the vanity and affectation of dignity wliich began to creep into the church. Holy fasts and festivals began also to be multiplied about this time ; and there was evidently a symbolizing with the Pagans, and the ancient Jews in the appointment of these days. Easter, Whitsuntide, Christmas,* and many other days were distinguished as sacred days, and placed on the same ground with the Lord's Day itself. About this time baptism began to be administered only twice a year, at Easter and Whitsuntide ; and about the same time (in the third century), an unscriptural veneration was paid to the tombs of the martyrs, and expressions were introduced into prayer, which look too much like offering supplication to the departed spirits of holy men. The clothing of the functionaries in religion also was now changed ; vestments were set apart and consecrated for the sole iise of the ministers of religion, and the orders in the church were greatly multiplied. Certain forms of monastic life were prescribed ; and it began to be regarded as a mark of superior sanctity to retire into desert places, and live in solitude for the purposes of devotion." — Lee. on Ec. His., pp. 65, 66. Dr. J. Pye Smith says that the Clementine Recognitions " speak of baptism and the Lord's Supper as the two acts essential to salvation." He also says (Outlines, pp. 634, 635) that the " progress of ecclesiastical corruption had spread widely and penetrated deeply before the close of the third century." It would therefore be most illogical, as another teaches, to test any hypothesis in respect to the apostolic pattern by what is recorded of the Christian church in the fourth century. Neither can any unscriptural practice be proved to be scriptural by its origin being shrouded in darkness. Dr. G. TowNSEND quotes Dr. Smith as saying, that " after the death of the apostle John, the departures from scriptural purity were rapid and fearful. Besides dangerous errors in the primary doctrines of the gospel, we find many corruptions in discipline and order long before the close of the third century. Observances and ceremonies, snatched up from the abrogated Judaism, and even imitations of heathen rites, were obtruded upon Christians." Dr. T. adds, " This is all very true," "but there was more wheat than tares" (Ecc. and Civ. His., vol. i, p. 201) ; and this wo have every disposition to accept. The Author of Popery Confuted 6y Papists, says : " The church of Rome will not acknowledge their points of doctrine to be erroneous, unless we can assign the time, and point out the persoiis who first broached them. If a man be sick of a consumption, will he refuse help of the physician, unless he can resolve him, whether his lungs or his liver were first infected, and shew the time when, and the occasion how his body grew first distempered !" — Po., &c., pp. 26, 27. S. T. Coleridge, speaking of the church in the early centuries of the Christian era, says : " Of superstitious notions respecting the baptismal ceremony, and of abuse resulting, the instances were flagrant and notorious. Such, for instance, was the frequent deferring of the baptismal rite to a late period of life, and even to the death- bed, in the belief that the mystic water would cleanse the baptized person from all sin, and (if he died immediately after the performance of the ceremony) send him pure and spotless into the other world." — Aids to Bef., p. 362. Dr. Hallet believes that the heresy of baptismal regeneration has "ecclesiastical authority from a very early source" (vol. x, p. 175). And he can wisely say, " Cyi^rian * Dr. Kahnis says, " It was not till the fourth century that the celebration ol Christmas in remembrance of the birth of Christ originated."— r/ie Church, &c,, p. 112. 494 SUBJECTS OP BAPTISM. and his suffragans are not in my opinion very valuable commentators on St. Paul." How little does it weigh that Dr. H. can say, " From Cyprian downwards there is not the shadow of a controversy." There is not, relative to the existence of infant baptism, but there is, respecting the extent of its prevalence in the third and fourth centuries. Dr. R. Vaughan says that Cyprian " had so far imbibed the prevalent theory in regard to the nature and influence of demons that he viewed every man in his uncon- verted state as subjected to the power of an unclean spirit, which no influence but that of the Christian exorcist, and of the waters of baptism, could expel." After quoting him as saying, " But when the person so possessed is come to the saving waters, and to the sauctification of baptism, we ought to know and believe that Satan is then conquered, and that the man being thus devoted to God, is liberated though the Divine regard toward him ;" he says, " One effect of views like these in relation to baptism was, that it should be deemed strictly necessary to salvation." "Thus baptism, in consequence of the false views which became prevalent concerning it, was thrust for a time from its proper place as the strictly initiatory rite of the Christian dispensaton." He subsequently says, " In the vast space between the age of Constantine and our own, there is scarcely a corruption of ' the truth as it is in Jesus' presenting itself, which might not be shewn to have made its appearance, and to have received considerable development, in the first three centuries." "On the question relating to the extent in which the doctrines of Christianity were corrupted before the commencement of the fourth century, it should be almost enough that a reference be made to the excesses which we have seen as characterizing some of the early heresies, and to the dangers and unscriptural speculations which we have already described as frequently met with in such writers as Justin Martyr and Tertullian, and as teeming in almost every page of Clemens Alexandrinus and Origen." — Cong. Lee, on the Causes of the Corrup. of Chris., pp. 220-230. If recital and approval by the fathers of the first, second, and third century, be proof that a doctrine or practice is apostolical, how abundant the proof that baptismal regeneration, the signing of the cross, infant baptism, infant communion, &c., &c., are all apostolic ! A Baptist reviewer of The Revelation of Law in ScHpture, Considered, &c., says, " Dr. Fairbairn notices, both Jewish and Gentile converts adopted ceremonies quite inconsistent with the simplicity of the gospel. The evil was soon felt ; but the remedy was forgotten. Instead of checking ritualistic observances by appealing at once to the New Testament, the fathers temporized, and at length accepted the rule — that whatever customs were found in the churches, whether originating with the prelates or the people, were to be held as sacred, and were to be everywhere observed. Tertullian formally eniinciated tliis principle, Cyprian carried it out, and even Augustine confirmed it." — Yet these fathers, however inconsistent with themselves, could on other occasions honour the authority of Divine revelation. Dr. Gill, in reply to Mr. Towgood, whose Dissertations were entitled, "The Baptism of Infants, a reasonable ser\ace, founded on Scripture and undoubted apostolic tradition," says : "Moreover, it is donhtfid whether there ever was such a thing as apostolic tradition ; or that ever anything was delivered by the apostles to their successors, to be observed by them, which was not delivered in the sacred writings ; and I defy this gentleman, and demand of him to give me one single instance of any apostolic tradition of this natm'o ; and if no such instance can be given, it is vain to talk of undoubted apostolic tradition ; and upon what a miserable foundation must infant baptism stand, that rests upon this ? Unwritten apostolic tradition is a nonentity, as the learned Alting calls it ; it is a mere chimera ; a refuge of heretics formerly, and of papists now ; a favourite argument of theirs, to prove by it what they please." — Reply, p. 7. Dr. A. Alexander. — " It is of no consequence, therefore, to adduce testimonies from the fathers, of the second, thii-d, and fourth ages of the Christian church, to show, that such ceremonies were then in use, in some particular part of the church ; or even in the church universal." — The Canon, pp. 3G9, 370. L. Coleman. — "Ecclesiastical history is, to a largo extent, a history of corruptions." Antig., p. 423. Isaac Taylor. — "There is, I believe, no controversy concerning the historical fact, that practices had been established, and that notions were prevalent, relating to the HISTOEIC TESTIMONY. 495 ritual parts of Christianity, in the fourth century, of which we can discover scarcely a trace in the apostolic age. No one pretends to afiirm that Chrysostom, Ambrose, and Augustine, speak of baptism and the eucharist precisely as Paul, and Peter, and John, had spoken of them." — Anc. Chr., vol. i, p. 397. Dr. L. Woods says, "Take the Baptist churches now existing, and distinguished for their piety and zeal, in Great Britain, in America, or in India. Should any of these churches attempt to introduce infant baptism, would not a loud voice be quickly raised against them" (On Inf. Bap., p. 136) ? True. But suppose that among aU these churches prevailed the sentiments of the closing part of the second centmy and of the entire third, on the danger of damnation even to little children in dying unbaptized, would it not be preposterous to expect the demanded outcry, while there was being along with the use of sponsors, a gradual descending, till at length it reached to the baptism of infants P " The early Christian fathers," says Dr. W. (p. 169), " attributed to baptism itself a mysterious inherent elEcacy. They supposed that it directly conveyed grace and salvation to the soul, and that without it no one could be saved." The Rev. W. Walker, an English Episcopalian, wi-iting ia 1677 against the Baptists, says (p. 146), " As the general custom now in England is to sprinkle, so in the fore end of this century the general custom was to dip." Who ever heard of an outcry and commotion in the Church of England on account of this innovation, even though it is done against the clearest directions of the rubric, which allow departure from immersion only in certified cases of weakness, and though every clergyman haa solemnly pledged his adherence to the rubric ? Dr. ScHAFF, from whose History of Ancient Christianity we might quote with approval his designation of the Pentecost, on which the baptism of the Spu-it and " the conversion and baptism of three thousand persons" took place, as the " birthday of the Christian church" (vol. i, p. 61) ; liis assertion respecting Christians, that " they at first called themselves disciples, believers, brethren, saints" (p. 62) ; and hia affirmation that the Bible is " not only, nor principally, a book for the learned, but a book of life for every one, an epistle written by the Holy Ghost to mankind" (p. 82) ; says under a.d. 100-311, "During this period, while the church is still a missionary institution in the midst of a heathen world, infant baptism yields to the baptism of adult proselytes, as in the following period, upon the union of Churcli and State, the order is reversed" (p. 401). — I believe that no missionary institution, founded on a supposed commission to baptize j^roselytes and their children, ever did or ever will give a preponderance to ''adult proselytes." He says, however, in the same page, "The cases of Gregory of Nazianzen, St. Chrysostom, and St. Augustine, who had mothers of exemplary piety, and yet were not baptized before early manhood, shew sufficiently that considerable freedom prevailed in this respect even in the Nicene and Post-Nicene age." In vol. ii, p. 483, he says, '" Many Christian parents postponed the baptism of their children ;" and he acknowledges, as others, those sentiments on bap- tism to have then existed which we maintain to have naturally and necessarily led to the opposite practices of delay and early administration. He admits that "the apostolic fathers make no mention of" infant baptism ; and on the baptism opposed by TertuUian, he says, " Tertullian sviggests that it was usually based on the invitation of Christ, ' Suffer the little children to come unto Me, and forbid them not' " (ji. 402). He elsewhere speaks of the Divine institution of infant baptism as in the days of Tertullian, not yet " enjoined, but left to the option of Christian parents." He teaches (vol. ii, p. 483) that infant baptism does not proj^erly fi.t into the system of those who deny original sin, because " baptism as a rite of purification, always has reference to the forgiveness of sins;" and that in the time of Augustine, the practice of infant baptism "was by no means universal." Our opponents can believe that in the first three centuries no fewer than ninety different heresies sprang up, that in the second sponsors were used at baptism, and that baptism was regarded as a saving ordinance ; but to beheve that in about two hundred years beHevers' baptism had received the addition of infant baptism, they regard as " the height of absurdity even to surmise," as "impossible to imagine," so great is the apostacy involved ! I am not writing the history of the Baptists or of baptism, and therefore deem it unnecessary to record testimony to the existence of Baptists — of those who maintained and practised the immersion of 496 SUBJECTS OP BAPTISM. professing believers as Christian baptism — during the dark ages. If this sentiment and practice for a time had entirely disappeared, it is not the only part of revealed truth that for a time was then extinct ; and if this was not restored by Luther and his associates when a glorious reformation was effected, it is not the only particular in which they failed to return to the "Christianity of the apostolic age." There are several expressions which I had marked for quotation and comment here from Mr. Thorn, Drs. Halley, Stacey, Bushnell, and others, on ecclesiastical history, in contrast with the testimony of the most eminent ecclesiastical historians now adduced, which I shall omit. They as a whole too much resemble the following from Mr. Thorn : '* It seems that Justin, Clement, Tertullian, &c. — all real primitive fathers — who lived near the beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ, found this rite very general, or even universal, in the church" (Inf. Bap., p. 452). Let the following belong to Mr. Thorn alone : "If the practice arose from a desire in parents to save the souls of their infants, it was as likely to have sprung up in the times of the apostles as afterwards" (p. 453). Is it as likely that Peter and Paul believed in baptismal regeneration as Tertulhan, Origen, and Cyprian ? The Baptists " are unconsciously biassed to a purblind contemplation of what is advanced adverse to their own sectarian opinions" (p. 576). Let us listen further to more worthy testimony. Dr. KiTTo's Cyclo'pmdia. — "Infant baptism was established neither by Christ nor the apostles. In all places where we find the necessity of baptism notified, either in a dogmatic or historical point of view, it is evident that it was only meant for those who were capable of comprehending the word preached, and of being converted to Christ by an act of their own will." " Many circumstances conspired early to introduce the practice of infant baptizing. The confusion between the outward and inward conditions of baptism, and the magical effect that was imputed to it ; confusion of thought about the visible and invisible church, condemning all those who did not belong to the former; the doctrine of the natural corruption of man so closely connected with the preceding ; and, finally, the desire of distinguishing Christian children from the Jewish and heathen, and of commending them more effectually to the care of the Christian community — all these circumstances, and many more, have contributed to the introduction of infant baptism at a very early period." Thus, says Dr. Jacobi, the author of this article on Baptism, of whom Dr. Neander, in transmitting it, says, " As my other labours would not permit mo to work out the article (on Baptism) for the ' Cyclopedia of Biblical Literature,' I requested a dear friend, J. Jacobi, to undertake it, who, by his knowledge and critical talents, is fully qualified for the task, and whose theological principles are in unison with my own." Dr. J. concludes with an earnest appeal that we "retain the baptism of children, now that it has been introduced." Indeed ! Dr. Neander, after mentioning TertuUian's wish that children should be led to Christ by instruction, and that they should be baptized " from personal conviction and by their own free choice," says, " But when, on the one hand, the doctrine of the hereditary corruption and guilt of human nature, the consequence of the first transgression, was reduced to a more precise and systematic form ; and when, on the other, from the want of a due distinction between the outward sign and the inward grace of baptism (the baptism by water and the baptism by the Spirit), the error became more and more firmly established that without external baptism no one soever could be delivered from that inherent guilt, could be saved from the everlasting punishment that threatened him, or raised to eternal life ; and when the notion of the magical etfccts of the mere administration of the sacrament gained ground continually — the theory was finally evolved of the unconditional necessity of infant baptism. About the middle of the third century this theory was already generally admitted in the North African church. . . . But if the necessity of infant baptism was acknowledged in theory, it was far from being universally recognized in practice." " Aa the church of North Africa was the first to bring promineutly forward the HISTOEIC TESTIMONY, 497 necessity of infant baptism, so did they also join with it the communion of infants." —Ch. His., vol. i, pp. 434, 434, 435, 461. Prof. Mahan. — " Before the third century there was already a catechumenal probation of three years preparatory to baptism : a custom for which we look in vain for any apostolic precedent." " The sacrament of baptism had already admitted many additional observances. Previous fasting, exorcism, renunciation, unction, trine immersion, recital of the creed, use of sponsors, and after the day of baptism a week's abstinence from daily washing, are among the peculiarities mentioned by early writers."— C/i. His., pp. 375, 385. Dr. Cramp (Baptist) says : " There was a gross departure from primitive simplicity and purity." " They sought to cover it by pleading not direct Divine origin, but presumptive apostolicity. The existence of any practice in a church that claimed apostolic appointment, was deemed proof presumptive that it had always existed there ; and universal or general observance stood instead of Scripture texts." — Scrip, and Tra., p. 30. Dr. BuNSEN. — "The baptism of new-born infants grew out of that of children advancing towards the age of boyhood." "The theories respecting Paedobaptism, according to any of the theories of the systems of the Eeformed churches, would be perfectly unintelligible to the ancient churches, and cannot be brought into harmony with their consciousness and monuments except by fictions and conventionalities."— ffip. and Ms Age, vol. iii, p. 202; vol. ii, p. 109. It may be thought that being Baptists we too eagerly adopt the views of Bunsen, that parvuU in Tertullian and in the translation of Origen, is used for Httle children, but not for infants. Indeed one writer is confident that "if it does not mean infants, there is not a word in the language which does" (Chrystal's His., p. 253). I admit the universal difficulty of entire extrication fi-om bias, and will only say that I have endeavoured to judge correctly while coming to the conclusion that while infant baptism might have an existence in the early part of the third or in the latter part of the second century, no writings demonstrate its existence before those which relate the correspondence between Fidus and Cyprian. Nor can I forget that Dr. Stoiighton rightly maintains "that no legislative authority attaches to the proceedings of the Ante-Nicene, any more than to the post-Nicene church ; that usages are not proved to be apostolic and Divine, simply because they obtained in the third, or even the second century" (EccL, p. 23). Moreover, J. R. Thomson truly says : " Cj'prian, though a very bold and a very able man, and a memorable mart}T for Christ's cause, must be regarded as one of the most successful agents in bringing about the practical ascendancy of sacerdotal and prelatic doctrines" (EccL, p. 79). I conceive we are justified in saying to some, "your church principles, what are they (I. Taylor's Anc. Chr., vol. i, p. 407), if" they are not sanctioned by inspired precept or precedent ? Presbyterians, Independents, and Wesleyans cannot trace the baptism of infants as near to apostolic times as the High Churchman his sacramentarian views, nor have they on this higher authority than he. It is also worthy of notice that Cyprian, speaking of the baptism of infants, so far as I have been able to ascertain from the original in Dr. Wall and others, never uses parvulus for an infant, but always infans. This is corroboratory of what I have previously advanced. I began a chronological record of facts during the first thousand years, bearing on the controversy between Baptists and Paedobaptists, yet by no means necessary to it ; but finding, with Dr. Wall, that <* it is a business KK 498 SUBJECTS OF BAPTISM. of a gi'eat deal of dust and tediousness, to search after the birth and parentage of so many men," I have not completed my purpose. A part of that which follows has some relation to this, althougla it is principally a continuation of Psedobaptist testimony similar to that which precedes. The Council of Laodicea, a.d. 267, says Dr. Wall, ordered that tliose admitted to baptism "must all be able to say the creed." Basil says : " Faith and baptism are the two means of salvation inseparably cleaving together ; for faith is perfected by baptism, but baptism is founded by faith" (On the Ho. Sp., ch. xii). Ecclesiastical history testifies to an existence of infant and believers' baptism in the church for ages, till at length that of believers became the rare exception, or non-existent, where the gospel had been planted. SuiCERUS. — " Chrysostom again says, ' If an infant die without baptism, through the negligence of the presbyter, woe to that presbyter ! but if through the negligence of the parents, woe to the parents of that infant." Also, he is quoted by Noel (On Bap., p. 257) as sajdng, " The doctrine of the necessity of baptism to salvation was not the doctrine of the two first ages, but only an opinion taken up afterwards ; upon which foundation the practice of infant baptism was introduced into the church." Salmasius and Suicerus. — " In the two first centuries no one was baptized, except, being instructed in the faith, and acquainted with the doctrine of Christ, ho was able to profess himself a believer." Augustine. — " Not only persons who are come to the use of reason, but also little children, and infants newly born, if they die without baptism, do go into everlasting fire." "All antiquity," says Baxter, "hath firmly held that believers' infanta do receive remission of original sin by Christian baptism." Dr. Owen. — "Most of the ancients concluded that it [baptism] was' no less necessary to salvation than faith or repentance itself. Grotius. — " It was no small evidence that the baptism of infants many hundred years was not ordinary in the Greek church, because not only Constantino the Great, the son of Helena, a zealous Christian, but also Gregory Nazianzen, who was the son of a Christian bishop, and was brought up long by him, was not baptized till he came of years, as is related in his life." — On Matt, xix, 14. A. Booth (Baptist) thus reasons : " Now, if the parents of these Christian fathers and Caesars, though professing themselves the disciples of Christ, did not baptize their infant offspring, we may justly presume, whatever might be the reason of their conduct, that many others in those times were influenced by the same reasons, and acted a similar part." — Pwd. Ex., vol. i, p. 405. Brandt. — " That good and very ancient custom of baptizing infants, is advanced with too much violence by some, and opposed with no less by others. This ceremony, as some think, prevailed first in Africa and Greece ; but in such a manner that some doctors of the church openly declared that they would not consent to it." — His. of Bef., Ann. on b. ii. Bp. Tatlor. — " It is more certain that the church did not in all ages baptize all the infants of Christian parents than that they did in the first age. St. Ambrose, St. Hierom, and St. Austin were bom of Christian parents, and yet they were not bap- tized till the fuU age of man, and more." — Diss, from Fo., p. 117. Dean Stanley.— "The baptism of infants, no doubt, prevailed (a.d. 312-337) just as the communion of infants prevailed also. But each of the sacraments must often have been deferred to a time when the candidates could give their whole minds to the subject. If, even a century later, such men as Ambrose and Augustine, bom in Christian families, trained in Christian schools, and with a belief in the main truths of Christianity, were still unbaptized, the one in his thirty-fourth, the other in his thirty-second year, we may be sure that the practice was sufficiently common in the far more tmsettled age of Constantino." — Lee. on the His., &c., p. 254. Walapridus Strabo, a Eoman Catholic ecclesiastical historian of the ninth century, says, " It should be observed, that in the primitive times, the grace of baptism was wont to be given to those only who were arrived at such maturity of body and mind that they could understand what were the benefits of baptism ; what was to be confessed and believed ; and, finally, what was to be observed by those who were regenerated in Christ."— In Wallace's Ch. Bap., p. 64. M. FoRMEY, referring to the latter part of the second century, says, " They baptized from this time infants as well as adults." — Ahr. Ec. His., vol. i, p. 33. Mr. Westlake (Baptist) thus refers to the variance of our opponents on the origin pf the Baptists r " Those of thorn who are mere drivellers in history often assert That HISTORIC TESTIMONY. 499 the Baptists sprang into existence about the middle of the sixteenth century. Mr. Wall styles Peter de Bruys and Henry his disciple, who flourished in the tivelfth century, the first of the Anti-Pa3dobaptist persuasion. Mr. Philpot .says, That Auxentius, bishop of Milan, who lived in the second century, was one of the first of those who denied baptism to children. Mr. Stokes tells us. That Tertidlian, who lived in the second century, was one of the first Baptists in the world. And Dr. Mosheim says, That the orig-in of the Baptists cannot be ascertained, as it lies hid in the dark ages of antiquity" (On Bap., p. 138). Mr. W. believed that by consulting the Evangelists, their origin might be traced to " the reign of Tiberius Caesar, when Pontius Pilate was governor of Judea." LxjDovicus ViVES (a Lutheran). — "No one in former times was admitted to the sacred baptistry except he was of age, understood what the mystical water meant, desired to be washed in it, and expressed that desire more than once, of which practice we have yet a faint resemblance in our baptism of infants ; for an infant only a day or two old is yet asked (in the Lutheran church) whether he will be baptized, and this question is asked three times ; in whose name the sponsors answer, ' He does desire it.' " The Church of England. — " Wilt thou [the infant, or rather, the god-parent in the name of the infant] be baptized in this faith ? A. — That is my desire." By such an absurd arrrangement, it can be authoritatively maintained according to the Articles of Edward the Sixth, that " the custom of the Church to christen young children, is to be commended, and in any wise to be retained in the Church." On which Mr. Tombes, a learned Baptist, said, " Nor do I think Mr. Baxter can shew one author until Luther's day, who made infant baptism any other than an unwritten tradition" Anti-Pcedo., part iii, p. 767). The Church of England now maintains that the baptism of young children is " most agi'eeable with the institution of Christ." If Mr. Tombes has truth on his side in his appeal to Mr. Baxter, infant baptism existed in the church more than a thousand years before any of its advocates dared to rest it historically on any better foundation than tradition ! CuRCELLiEUS, a learned divine of Geneva, and Professor of Divinity, says, " The baptism of infants in the first two centuries after Christ was altogether unknown ; but in the third and fourth was allowed by some few. In the fifth and following age.^ it was generally received. The custom of baptizing infants did not begin before the third age after Christ was born. In the former ages no trace of it appears. It was introduced without the command of Christ. . . . Therefore this rite is observed by us as an ancient custom, but not as an apostolical tradition." ZoNAEAS is thus quoted by Dr. Gale, on the Neo-Ca3sarean canon : " It says, in the profession of becoming followers of Christ, everyone's choice is required ; and by this it appears whether they come to holy baptism with a willing mind" (Bcf., p. 36). Also Balsamon, on the same canon, respecting an unborn cliild — The fathers of the council " say. Every person's own profession is necessary at baptism ; but now the child unborn, being void of all sense, cannot make the professions which are to be made at baptism;" Dr. Wall, however, says that Balsamon adds, "an embryo cannot have sponsors, but infants do promise by their sponsors." It would appear from Dr. WaU (His., vol. iv, p. 69), that these persons lived in the twelfth century, and that possibly the meaning of both is the same. Ency. Metro. — " The ancient British churches did not practice the immersion of minors." Bede, the historian, who died in a.d. 735, says, "Men were first to be instructed into the knowledge of the truth, then to be baptized, as Christ hath taught, because without faith it is impossible to please God." The language of Bede also accords with the practice of the church as described by Justin, when they baptized those who were persuaded and did believe and promise. Gkose, in his Supplement to the Antiquities of England and Wales, says respecting the action and subjects of baptism : "Baptism was in primitive times administered only at Easter and Whitsuntide, unless in cases of necessity, and chiefly to adults, and was performed in the open air, in fountains, lakes, rivers, and even in the sea. The persons to be baptized were immersed three times, on the naming of the three persons in the Trinity. Sprinkling was in some cases allowed, but persons so baptized were incapable of holding any dignity in the church. It was long disputed whether infants were originally admitted to this ceremony, and it was often delayed a long time for different reasons." ViTRiNGA. — " The ancient Christian church, from the highest antiquity after apostolic times, appears generally to have thought that baptism was absolutely necessary for all that would be saved by the grace of Jesus Christ. It was, therefore, customary in the ancient church, if infants were greatly afflicted, and in danger of • 600; SUBJECTS OF BAPTISM. death, or if parents were affected with a singular concern about the salvation of their children, to present their infants, or children, in their minority, to the bishop to be baptized. But if these reasons did not ut^o them, they thought it better, and more for the interest of minors, that their baptism should be deferred till they arrived at a more advanced age ; which custom was not yet abolished in the time of Augustine, though he vehemently urged the necessity of baptism." — Ohs. Sac, tom. i, 1. ii, c. vi, § 9. The Magdkbtjrg Centubiatoes, comprising some of the most eminent and learned men in Europe at the time, giving the histoi'y of the church, century by century, say respecting the first, " In this age they baptized only the adult or aged, whether Jews or Gentiles, ;" respecting the second they say, " It doth not appear from any approved authors that there was any mutation or change in respect to baptism from the first century." Concerning the third they say, " As to the rite of baptism in the churches of Asia, wo have no testimony of any alteration ; but concerning the African churches, there were great corruptions, in opinion at least, if not it practice." One of these which they adduce is the baptism of infants. If any trust is to be placed in the intelligence and veracity of these and other historians, how lamentable it is that Dr. Hanna should teach that historic traces of infant baptism "as the general practice of the Christian community" present themselves in " about a hundred years after the death of Christ," and that " from the third century down to the fifteenth, it was the universal custom of the Christian church" CThe Forty, &c., p. 269). That infant baptism was the general practice of the Christian community in a hundred years after Christ's death is flatly contradicted by almost every eminent PsBdobaptist historian with whom I am acquainted. Its universal practice from the third to the fifteenth century is not a fact ; and, if it were, it is worthless, from the fact that many other corruptions prevailed during this period, which, being post-apostolic, has to be tested by the Divine and written law. Johannes Bohemius. — " In times past, the custom was to administer baptism only to those who had been instructed in the faith, and seven times in the week before Easter and Pentecost catechised. But afterwards when it was thought and adjudged needful to eternal life to be baptized, it was ordained that new-born children should be baptized, and god-fathers were appointed who should make confession and renounce the devil on their behalf."* — Bohemius was a learned man of the twelfth century. Pascal. — " Formerly it was necessary to come out from the world in order to be received into the church ; whilst in these days we enter the church almost at the same time that we enter the world. . , . But we must not impute to the church the evils that have followed so fatal a change ; for when she saw that the delay of baptism left a large portion of infants still under the curse of original sin, she wished to deliver them from this perdition by hastening the succour which she can give ; and this good mother sees, with bitter regret, that the benefit which she holds out to infants becomes the occasion of the ruin of adults." — Thoughts on Rel., on " Comp. of Anc. and Mod. Chris." Episcopius. — " Pffidobaptism was not accounted a necessary rite, till it was determined so to be in the Milevito Council, held in the year 418." — Ins. Theol., 1. iv, c. xiv. De la Eoque. — " The primitive church did not baptize infants ; and the learned Grotius proves it in his Annotations on the Gospel. Even the practice of the Eomish Church is an evident token of it ; for with them baptism must be desired before they enter into the church ; and it is the god-father that asks it in the name of the child. A formal and express profession of faith must be made, which the god-father also makes in the child's name ; a promise must be made to renounce the world and the pomps of it, the flesh, and the devil, all of which is done by the god-father in the name of the child. Is not this a visible sign that formerly it was the persons themselves, who in their own name desired baptism, made a profession of their faith, and renounced their past life, to consecrate themselves to the Lord Jesus Christ for the time to come." — In Stennett's Ans. to Rus., jjp. 188, 189. Dr. Holland. — " In the first plantation of Christianity among the Gentiles, such only as were of full age, after they were instructed in the principles of the Christian religion were admitted to baptism." — In Dr. Wall's His., vol. ii, c. ii, § 14, • In several of these quotations from works, the originals of which I do not possess, I regret to find a greater difference between them as given by different authors, than can be satisfactorily accounted for from the fact of their being nly to eat of the bread which he had brought with him, as the thank-offering for the follow'ing Sunday, his contribution towards the general meal. — At the dawn of Sunday, the baptismal font was filled, accompanied with a blessing, which corresponds exactly with the prayers used in consecrating the elements intended for the Lord's Supper. The deacons assisted the men, and the deaconesses the women, to take ofl" all their ornaments, and put on the baptismal dress. They were then presented to one of the presbyters, who called solemnly on each of them to renounce Satan, and all his service, and all his works. The deacon and deaconess accompanied the neophytes into the water, and made each of them in turn repeat after them a confession of faith in the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. . . . After this, the persons baptized were clothed in white, and conducted into the church. . . . Baptism is indeed called a new birth, * regeneration.' But in what sense ? Was it a sort of magical conversion of the curse into a blessing, effected now, in the case of the infant, by the act of sprinkling ? Was it the forgiveness of sins not intended to be brought back to the recollection of parents or sponsors who were present, but to be applied to the infant itself ? The ancient church knew no more than do the gospels and the apostles of such superstition, which contains less spirituality than many of the lustrations of the old world, and not much more than the taurobolia and crioholia, mysteries of the last stages of heathenism, purporting to purify the neophyte by the blood of victims. On the contrary she bears authentic testimony, in all her ordinances, against this corruption aud misunderstand- ing." Dr. B. " removes the origin of infant baptism from TertuUian and Hippolytua" to the time of Cyprian, he " being the first father who, impelled by a fanatical enthusiasm, and assisted by a bad interpretation of the Old Testament, established it as a principle." " The difference, then", between the Ante-Nicene and the later church was essentially this : the later church, with the exception of converts, only baptized new-born infants, and she did so on principle ; the ancient church, as a general rule, baptized adults, and only after they had gone throu;jh the course of instruction, and, as the exception only, Christian children who had not arrived at years of maturity — but never infants. TertuUian's opposition is i;o the baptism of young, growing children ; he does not say one word about new-born infants. — Neither does Origen, when hig expressions are acciu-ately weighed. Cyprian and some other African S02 SUBJECTS OF BAPTISM. bishops , . . wcro the first who viewed baptism in the light of a washing away.of the universal sinfulness of human nature, and connected this idea with that ordinance of the Old Testament — circumcision." "The baptism of new-bom infants grew out of that of children advancing towards the age of boyhood." "The ancient baptism comprised, on gospel grounds, four spiritual elements — instruction, examination, the vow, the initiation. — To each of these elements was attached a sacred symbol, an externally working act of the church, who, by means of her bishops and elders, ordained in the place of God. — To instruction, the blessing corresponded ; to examination, the imposition of hands ; to confession, immersion in water ; to the vow for life and for death, the unction as priest and king. Thus did the beggar enter into the communion of the faithful ; thus the emperor, when he ventured to do so. — Constantine considered of it unto, his death-bed. It is impossible but that this ceremony should have produced a great general impression, which was not diminished if the initiated were the child of Christian parents. The act was his own, as much as it was in the case of a convert from heathenism. . . . What did the Reformation itself ? The Reformers retained the doctrine of Augustine, together with Pajdobaptism. It is true, nevertheless, that they regarded the baptism of new-born infants merely as an offering, a dedication of the children by their parents, as a vicarious act, and as the first step only in a process which was actually to be completed by themselves in riper years, after their Christian education was finished, through their own voluntary confession and vow. Confirmation is, at the present moment, together with the principle of intellectual liberty, the Bible, and the hymns, the principal means of keeping alive German Protestantism. — But, at the same time, the doctrine of the sacraments did not admit confirmation as one of them. — Consequently, it was not held to be necessary to salvation, because not prescribed by the gospel, which, however, is equally silent upon the subject of the sprinkling of children. — Thus the essential points in the gospel and in the practice of the apostles, faith and self-sacrifice, have been placed lower in the scale than the sprinkling which was adopted instead of the Jewish immersion, and the personal act has been held in less estimation than its substitute. This may be compatible with the Romish doctrine of good works, but is as repugnant to the evangelical doctrine of justification by faith, as it is to the precepts of the gospel and the practice of the apostles. The leathern scholasticism of the seventeenth century, it is true, knew how to justify all that ; but of this justification, neither Scripture, rightly interpreted, nor reason, speaking its own language, can take cognizance. . . . The Reformed [Calvinistic] Church, which had no scruple in swallowing the camel of Ptedobaptism, as being in harmony with Scripture, found no place in its theological conscience for confirmation, because it was not prescribed in Scripture — was a human invention." This extract from Bunsen's Hippolytus, vol. ii, pp, 105, 106, 110, 111,113, 115, 116, 121, 122, 225, is now taken, along with some other extracts, from a carefully-written, but anonymous work on " Baptism," published by Pewtress, and others. Let our opponents who daringly assert that the earliest church baptized the children, yea, the infants of Christians, prove their assertions in opposition to what is explicitly and emphatically asserted by Bunsen respecting aU the catechumens, and respecting the little children whose baptism is spoken of by Tertullian and Origen. Dr. B. further says : " Wlien the church attached rights and promises of blessing to anything except the conscious abandonment of sin, and to the voluntary vow of dedicating life and soul to the Lord, as Justin the Martyr, as well as St. Peter defines it, the consciousness of sin and the longing for real truthful reformation died away in the same proportion among their number." Dr. KiTTo's Journal of Sacred Literature, in January, 1853, has the following on Bunsen's Hipiiolytus : " The Baptists will hail its appearance as corroborating their distinctive views. Picdobaptism was unknown to Hippolytus. It was iinknown in the post-apostolic clrarch (to which Bunsen unhesitatingly adds the apostolic itself) till Cyprian first established it as a principle. Baptism of children had only begun to be practised in some countries, being defended in the time of Tertullian and Hippolytus merely as an innovation ; but infant baptism was not Icnown. . . . On thi.s interesting point we refer to the third volume, where the subject is treated more correctly than in any other work." Woiild that all Pajdobaptists had the intelligence and honesty to see and teach as " correctly" as the above ; or witli Bunsen on Scrip- tural baptism speak of " this alteration and complete subversion of its main featinres, brought about principally by the Africans of the third century, and completed by Augustine," and would act consistently with such instruction ! Lkibnitz. — " It appears to me that those who reject chui-ch authority cannot siistain the attacks of the Anabaptists." — Sys. of Thcol. James Douglas (of Cavers). — " Eaiitism is connected in the Scriptm-cs with jrcencratioii ; but not as the Romanists connect them. They are guilty of the fallacy HISTORIC TESHMONY. 503 of the ' ustcron pmtcroii — in plain English, of putting tlio cart before the horso. In ancient times the regenerated were invited to be baptized — believe and be baptized — belief being the first act of the regenerated mind. With the Eomanists, persons are baptized in order to bo regenerated, but vrith. a woful want of the expected result. It is wonderful how scriptural Dr. Wiseman is on the subject of baptism, when he hopes in this way to perplex Protestants. ' The apostles were simply told to baptize all nations ; but how do you prove from this that baptism is to be administered to infants ? Yet the English Church Articles prescribe infant baptism. Or whence comes the warrant for departing from the literal meaning of the word, which means immersion, and the adoption of mere affusion, or sprinkling of the water ? There may have been infants in the families or houses spoken of as baptized — probably so ; but this is only conjecture, and not proof ; surely not enough to base an important practice on, which, without better authority, should seem to contradict our Saviour's command, that faith should precede or accompany baptism — He that believeth and ia baptized shall be saved. For a positive institution wholly depending on the will of the Legislator, positive authority is requisite for any modification of the prescribed act. Where is the security for these modifications, if not in the explanation of the church, conveyed to us by her ancient practice.' " — Popery and Inf. North Brit. Rev. — " History confirms the inference drawn from the sacred volume. Infant baptism cannot clearly be traced higher than the middle of the second century, and even then it was not universal. Some indeed have argued that in the silence of Scripture it is fair to presume that a custom whose existence is seen in the second century must have descended from the apostles ; but the presumption is wholly the other way." — Aug., 1852. Dr. J. Gardner. — " Baptist doctrines seem to have been held by the early British churches, and Augiistine, when sent over from the Holy See, failed in his endeavours to persuade them to conform to the practice of the church of Eome." — Faiths, &c. Art. Bap. Dr. Lange. — '■ It must now be gi'anted by every unprejudiced reader of holy Scripture and Christian antiquity, that the baptism of new-born childi-en was altogether unknown to primitive Christianity." — His. of Prot., p. 221. Dr. Olshauken admits that Pa3dobaptism comes not from Christ or the apostles, and speaks of " the baptism of infants, which the church for wise reasons introduced subsequently." " The condition of the church after the close of the third century imperatively required the introduction of infant baptism" (Com., onMatt.iii, 1; Acts xvi, 15 ; &c.). it may be possible to speak of infant baptism as wisely introduced, as indeed "a great improvement upon apostolic practice," if instead of Chillingworth's test of right, we admit with Dr. Kahnis, that '" the three authorities which should decide the docrines of the church are: Scripture, tradition, and the progressive self-consciousness of the church" CTlic Church, &c., pp. 147, 148). Nor do I see, notwithstanding the association of tradition and self-consciousness with Scripture, the consistency of this with certain siibsequent words : " If the apostles, even in their epistles, had to speak against mis-representations of their teaching, it could not but happen that, iu after times also, the consciousness of the church should add what was human, nay, what was erroneous, to the word which had been delivered" (p. 149), Let aught but Scriptui-e be admitted as authority, and Protestants, yea, Protestant Dissenters, may prop up that which has as much divinity in it as had the Dagon of old, and no more. Dr. K. admits (p. 149) that transubstantiation itself, although a novelty when enounced by Paschasius in the ninth centm-y, in the eleventh had "become tradition, i.e., an established doctrine mth the appearance of antiquity." Bp. BossuET is thus quoted by Mr. Macallan, who makes his own comment and additions : " Bossuet, the acute and eloquent Catholic bishop of Meaux, says, • Experience has shewn, that all the attempts of the Reformed to confound the Bap- tists by the Scripture, have been weak ; and, therefore, at last they are obliged to allege to them the practice of the church' — i.e., in ages succeeding the apostolic times. So, the Oxford divines, in a convocation held 1(547, acknowledged, that, ' without the consentaneous judgment of the church, they sliould l)e at a loss, when they are called upon for proof in the point of infant baptism.' But what these Oxford divines termed ' the judgment of the church — the universal church,' was not the judgment of the primitive chiu'ch, but the church after it had been greatly corrupted — just as when Lord Lyttleton speaks of the church, he does not mean the cluu-cli universal, but the church established by Henry VIII, Edward VI, and Elizabeth. The 'Apostolic fathers,' though they often speak of the baptism of adults, say notliing of the baptism of infants ; — even the writers of the second century, like the inspired penmen and ' Apostolic fathers' who immediately succeeded them, say nothing of infant baptism. During the third century, when, as Salmasiua remarks, ' the opinion prevailed thatnoj 604 SUBJECTS OF BAPTISM. one could be saved without being baptized, the custom arose of ba^ptizing infants,' and in succeeding centuries, along with infant communion, it became very general. This is what is meant by the testimony of tradition, and ' the consentaneous judgment of the church' — it is the judgment of a church degenerate and sadly fallen into corruption —just as 'the voice of the church' in the mouth of an Episcopalian, is the voice of a reforming, but only half-reformed church," whose first head I might designate " a semi-catholic and violent persecutor," " though, doubtless, the foremost ecclesiastical reformer of his age." — See Macallan, on Bap., pp. 133, 134. Dr. Bruckner, speaking of our days and those of the Eeformers, wisely says : " Be it ours to resort again and again to God's word, with these our more abundant means, that we may extract from it fresh treasures, test by it our present body of doctrine, and bring to light from the inmost depths of revelation the purpose and truth of God concerning our salvation" (The Church, &c., pp. 224, 225. Clark's Edi.). He teaches that in all present faults "lie so many duties for our age ;" that we are "sufifering from the neglect of former times" (p. 228), the Eeformers having but partially reformed the church of Christ. Dr. .Waterland. — "A profession of faith was from the beginning always required of persons before baptism. We have plain examples of, and allusions to something of that kind, even in Scripture itself (Acts viii, 12, 37; 1 Pe. iii, 21). Upon these instances the Christian church proceeded." — Eight Ser., p. 317. Sec. Edi. Herzog (with additions by Dr. Bomberger, &c.). — " Infant baptism became more prevalent during the fifth and sixth centuries." — Cy. Art. Baptisteries. Dr. Smith, an Episcopalian, defending in court the Rev. J. P. Hubbard, of Rhode Island (U. S.), who in 1868 had exchanged pulpit services with a Baptist minister, says, on the practice of the. Baptist church, that it " is only that which was maintained to a great degree in the early church, and in a comparatively pure period." — Let those who disapprove of ovu* adducing these concessions, j)rove infant baptism to have had an existence in apostolic times, or for more than a hundred years after the death of the last apostle. With these concessions of the most eminent Psedobaptists concerning the non-existence of infant baptism in the apostolic churches, and in the churches of the immediately succeeding ages, confirming a previous assertion that neither inspii-ed nor uninspired writers afford a shadow of evidence of its existence during this period, we can bear to be taunted with ignorance respecting the paternal and maternal piety of those Christians, of whom we read in the inspired or uninspired writers of this period — respecting theii" piety at the birth, or in the boyhood or girlhood of these Christians. The existence of infant baptism in the third centuiy we admit and in the words of Ptedobaptists account for its existence, for its rise and progress, and almost if not altogether its subsequent universal prevalence ; and for this without violence, so that the boasting of some of our opponents with respect to the first millenium of the Christian era is not only vain in regard to the first part of this period from the irrelevance and glaring unfairness of such a demand from the inspired and uninspired writings of this time, but is also unnecessary in regard to the latter part, because we acknowledge during all this period the existence and prevalence of infant baptism. I have not the disposition to waste time or exhaust patience in endeavouring to ascertain whether the assertions of Baptists and Paedobaptists in relation to certain eminent Christians are correct respecting the piety of their parents at the time of their birth. Whether in every case the real fact be now capable of demonstration, I know not. Parental piety during the early childhood of their children is sufficient, if aught respecting this was needed. The following extracts and remarks, in addition to reasoning and facts inviting the serious attention of Pa^dobap- tists, contain some assertions relating to paternity, in addition to what have already appeared. HISTORIC TESTIMONY. 605 Mr. Macallan, a Baptist, says, " Now will Dr. Wardlaw say ttat a stranger to baptist principles would be justified in concluding that the reason why the baptism of the posterity of Baptists is not recorded in church history, is, that they ivere baptized in infancy ? Yet this is the very argument used by himself in reference to the primi- tive Christians ! But what will our Ptedobaptist friends say to the fact that several ages after the apostles, such men as ' Chrysostom, Jerome of Stryden, Theodore the emperor, Gregory Nazianzen, Augustine, Ambrose, Polycrates, Basil, son of Basil, one of the Christian bishops,' &c., were not baptized till they made a personal profession of their faith, though they are recorded to have been born of Christian parents ? Basil's ' grandfather was a martyr, and he was educated, like a second Timothy, under his gracious mother ; yet he was baptized in Jordan by Maximus, on the profession of his own faith, and became a learned man and a great preacher.' One instance of this kind, in its bearing on the practice of the church in the age in which it took place, is worth a score of objections such as that we have now been considering." — Bap., pp. 64, 65. Daille, instead of teaching that all the infants and little cliildren of the early Christians were baptized, says : " In ancient times they often deferred the baptizing, both of infants and other people, as appears by the history of the emperors, Constan- tino the Great, of Constantius, of Theodorus, of Valentinian, and of Gratian, in St. Augustine ; and also by the orations and homilies of Gregory Nazianzen ; and of St. Basil, upon this subject. And some of the fathers too have been of opinion that it shoiild be so deferred." — Right Use of the Fathers, b. ii, c. vi. Dr. R. Wilson says, " If it was customary in the apostolic age to withhold baptism from the infant children of the multitudes of converts, and let them grow up sustaining to the church the same relation as heathens, is it not strange that no instance can be found of the baptism of any of this large and interesting class" (p. 502) ? This is from the brother who teaches that baptism is of no use without the training. Cannot the training take place without the previous baptism ? Do Baptists repudiate training ? By what authority does Prof. W., in imitation of his brethren, demand a revelation respecting the paternity of the professing Christian, and by demanding this, however unintentionally, blind the eyes of his brethren ? It is enough for us that the records are baptisms only of professing believers. But speaking of " the mere silence of a document," Dr. W. says that " the Baptist can show no better foundation for the leading tenet of his system" (p. 503). We emphatically affirm the opposite ; while we maintain that there is no parallel between entire silence as to the baptism of any infant, and entire silence as to whether the believer had a baptized parent when he was born, or as to what had been the character of his training from the earliest dawn of reason to the time of his being baptized on the profession of hia faith in Jesus. Dr. Mato says : The Baptists " have not a single precedent in Scripture — of their subjects of baptism, the children of Christian parents, whose baptism was delayed tUl they were of adult years, to make a profession of their faith," on which Mr. Booth says, " But if tins objection have any weight, it must lie with equal force against the continuance of baptism among Christians, or the administration of it to any description of subjects, except in reference to such persons as are converted from Judaism, Mohammedanism, or Paganism" (Pmd. Ex., vol. i, p. 364). Also, in vindica- tion of believers' baptism, Mr. B. quotes from Dr. Mayo, "It is sufficient for my purpose that our practice can be found in the New Testament." Mr. B. well says, •' The character of parents, and family relations, have nothing to do in the new economy, which is entirely spiritual, — are of no avail in that kingdom which ' is not of this world ; the subjects of which are born, not of blood, nor of the wOl of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God.' If the candidate give evidence of his being a disciple of Christ, it is all the institution demands, and all that apostolic practice required. Such being the true state of the case, why should our opposers insist on a scriptural precedent for baptizing the adult oiFspring of Christians ? Why call for an example of that which makes no part of the institution, but is merely circum- stantial ? We sometimes baptize people of sixty or seventy years of age. As well, therefore, might it be objected, that there is no instance in sacred writ of any person so far advanced in years being baptized by the apostles. How far the following observation of Dr. Owen will here apply, is left with my reader. ' It is merely from a spirit of contention that some call on us, or others, to produce express testimony, or institution, for every circumstance in the practice of religious duties in the church ; and on a supposed failure herein, to conclude that they have power themselves to institute and ordain such ceremonies as they think meet, under a pretence of their being cir- cumstances of worship.' " — Peed. Ex., vol. i, p. 365. •S06 SUBJECTS OP BAPTISM. The Acts of the Apostles "contains an account of the formation of many chui'ches, but a continued history of none." Except that the daughters of Philip prophesied, and that the household of Stephanas who appear along with him to have been baptized, ministered to the saints, so far as I recollect, " Nothing appears respecting any of the descendants of the first Christians ; so that if from the silence of the historian it is concluded that they were not baptized in mature years, it may be replied, the silence of the historian is as powerful an argument that none of them were converted, or that none of them lived to mature age," or " that baptism was instantly discontinued in the church ;" and by thus reasoning " it would be hard to say how many corruptions both in doctrine and practice might be ui'ged on our regard." Dr. W. Watts, on Austin's being 'signed with the sign of Christ's cross, and seasoned with His salt as soon as he came out of the womb of his mother, who greatly trusted in Christ, observes : " This was the practice of the primitive times ; by which religious parents devoted their children unto Christ long before their baptism, which in those days was deferred till they were able to answer for themselves" (Austin's Confes., b. i, c. xi, p. 17). In Austin's time I believe that infant baptism extensively prevailed. Whether Dr. W. by "primitive times" means Austin's or a preceding' period, I will not affirm. Dr. Field — " Besides those who were converted from paganism, many that were born of Christian parents put off their baptism a long time." — Some of our opponents who can see an argument for the baptism of infants from the silence of Scripture and the earliest ecclesiastical history respecting piety in the parents of those who were baptized, can apparently see nothing against the baptism of infants from the entire silence of Scripture and the earliest ecclesiastical history respecting such a practice. Dr. Wall maintains that though Constantino's father favoured Christians, and is much applauded by them, he died a heathen. He admits that there might be an acknowledgment, a kind of professed acceptance of Christianity in instances wherein the scriptural profession of Christ in baptism was deferred, as was the case with Constantino, and that these persons def eriing their own baptism could not be expected to baptize their infant children. Then he proceeds to say respecting Gratian, and Valentinian the second, " There is no proof that their father, Valentinian the first was a baptized Christian when they were born ;" and that the father of Theodosiua the first " was not a baptized Christian when he was born," and " of St. Basil, there is no proof to the contrary, but that he were baptized in infancy." The same he says " of St. Hierom." Of Nectarius he says, " There is no apparence of his parents being Christians ;" of Ambrose, " There is no account of his parents being Christians at tho time of his birth ;" that Austin's " father was a heathen when this his son was born ;" and that " Monica, Adeodatus, Alipius, and some others," "do none of them make instances for this purpose." That Gregory Nazianzen was not baptized in infancy Dr. Wall admits ; and, although appearing dubious respecting the piety of his father at the time of his birth, saying, " I shall determine notliing, but leave it to others," he adduces what appears to mc preponderating evidence that the first Gregory was a Christian bishop when the second was born. Dr. W. adds : " The far greatest part of those that were not baptized in infancy, but were left to take their own time for it, we find to have put it off from time to time till they were apprehensive of death, excepting such as went into orders, or the like. But we find no baptized person, except this Gregory, that did so leave his children unbaptized. If all the children of this elder Gregory were born after their father's Christianity, and yet left un- baptized, it is the instance but of one man's practice. And there is some more excuse for a bishop, or other minister to do this, than for other men ; because, if his children fall sick, or into any sudden danger of death, he is ready at liand in the house to give them baptism. It was probably in some compliance with this practice of his father, that St. Gregory in one of the places that I (juoted, gives that opinion, which is singular in him, that it is a good way if a child appear not to be in any danger of death, to defer his hoptism for some time. Ho mentions three years or thereabouts. And as he at the same place advises and counts it necessary, if it be in danger 0/ HISTORIC TESTIMONY. > 507 death, io baptize it immediately ; so 'tis probable, the same was hia father's opinion, and that this his son had no sickness in his infancy, and so he thought he might defer the baptizing him" {His., vol. ii, pp. 81, 82). Whether Dr. Wall's assertions or con- jectiures respecting Gregory and all others in the fourth and subsequent centuries be correct or imfounded, Baptists appeal not to these for authority ; we can afford to admit that all then baptized their infant children, believing in baptismal regeneration, or that some delayed baptism. I adduce Dr. Wall by no means as decisive authority ; but that I may not do injustice, not having myself given the needed effort to ascertain in those cases the existence or the precise period of paternal piety or baptismal profession — holding indeed in thorough contempt all argumentation from an hypothesis of such a character and necessarily obscure — believing Dr. Wall to be honest, although from strong prepossessions liable to err, and having been proved to designate that an express declaration which is but his own inference, and, as many eminent Pasdobap- tists maintain, in opposition to probability. " To the law and to the testimony." If Dr. Halley and others, instead of valngloriously calling on Baptists to prove the piety of the parents of any Christians of whose baptism at mature age we find a record during the first thousand years, and pompously assigning to us the orthodox and heterodox of all kinds out of which to make our choice, — would adduce from inspired or uninspired language the record of a single infant (using this word in its present common acceptation) that received professedly Christian baptism among orthodox or heretical Christians of any class till after a.d. 250, they would more worthily demean themselves as men of piety and learning, and more efiiciently serve the cause to which they adhere. Their present course, however unconsciously to themselves, is a shirking of the responsibility resting upon them in regard to evidence. Were a similar demand made by our brethren for a departure from other apostolic pre- cepts and precedents on the ground of silence on some irrelevant par- ticulars, Christianity would soon be shorn of all its essential and glorious characteristics. The Rev. J. C. Ryle ivrites in a way according to which one could wish that all Protestants would consistently act, when he says, " One point has to be ascertained and only one, — ' What saith the Scripture of truth?' " (Home Truths, p. 68). How many in words admit this, who neglect its application to the baptism of infants, to sponsors, &c. ! Ai-e not the words of R. Watson on Luther respecting the Lord's Supper true in regard to Psedobaptists at large on baptism ? " The mind of Luther so powerful to throw ofl' dogmas which had nothing but human authority to support them, was as to the sacrament, held in the bonds of early association" (Theol Ins., vol. iv, p. 470). Sir Isaac Newton says : " The Baptists are the only denomination of Christians who have not symbolized with the chm'ch of Rome." — Bap. Mag., 1849. Dr. Neander says, " There does not appear to be any reason for deriving infant baptism from an apostolical institution, and the recognition of it which followed somewhat later, as an apostolical tradition, serves to confiiTB this hypothesis" (Ch. His., vol. i, p. 430. Bohn's Edi). Were I writing a history of baptism, I should quote much more from Neander and others, on the "embarrassment" of "the Wittembergers" in defending the baptibui of infants ; on Melanchthon's acknowledgment that the enthusiasts "had attacked them in a weak place, for he knew not how be should refute" them, and that " he thought it best not to dispute ou 508 SUBJECTS OP BAPTISM. this subject ;" on Luther's difficulty in relieving himself " though he put down objections more by bold assertions than by arguments ;" on his insisting that " his opponents could not prove that infent baptism was against Scripture," and, " who could tell whether God did not implant faith in early childhood;" on Melancthon's finally asserting "that the Holy Spirit was imparted to childi'en by baptism, and produced according to their capacity a new tendency towards God ;" and that finally " these arguments prevailed, and thus the necessity of Infant Baptism was estab- lished !" We may assuredly adopt Mr. Fletcher's words on Independency : *' The testimony of the most learned and impartial of modern ecclesiastical historians is all but unanimous in reference to the fact" that baptism on a credible profession of faith, was the only baptism known in apostolic times and for ages afterwards. " By a gradual transition to other principles as the result of a series of innovations," not " by a sudden convulsion in the religious world," " apostolic institutions were ultimately subverted." ^(His., pp. 113, 115). As we can neither question the historical knowledge, the literary abilities, nor the freedom from all desire to sink the reputation of Pa3do- baptism, of most of the writers now quoted for testimony from early ecclesiastical antiquity, we cannot but condemn the writers whoever they be, who speak " as if the highest and purest ecclesiastical antiquity were quite against us, and as if no man of learning and of impartiality would risk a denial of it." It is a fact, however lamentable, that while many continental divines admit the non-existence of infant baptism in apostoUc and immediately subsequent times, speaking of this period as the infancy of the Christian church, the time of its partial and imperfect develope- ment, while the time when Psedobaptism was become prevalent was the time of manhood, of thorough developement, Nonconformist divines in our own country occupying the highest position in their respective de- nominations, do virtually, — however unconsciously — falsify the truth of early ecclesiastical history by representing their own groundless inferences as veritable facts. In further reply to the hypothesis that notwithstanding admitted and continually increasing corruption iu the early church, a clamour must have been made against the introduction of Paedobaptism, I will record the reasoning of a Conformist in favour of Episcopacy. " I would ask a conscientious Dissenter," says Mr. Eeeves, "whether in his heart he can believe that the primitive saints and martyrs would invade the episcopal power of their own heads ? . . . And if they did, whether it was possible for the invaders to prevail in so short a time over Christendom, and without opposition, or one word of complaint from the degraded presbyters against the usurping prelates ? For usurpa- tions of this sacred kind, we know with a witness, never come in without remarkable clamours and convulsions ; are seldom perfectly forgotten, and the revolution skinned over without a scar. That bishops, therefore, should obtain wherever the gospel did, so soon and with such universal silence, cannot be accounted for any other way than that the gospel and the episcopate came in upon the same Divine title" (Ai^ol., vol. i, Pref., pp. 31, 32). Also, says Chillingworth on corruption in the church of Rome, *' If any man ask, How could it become universal in so short a time ? Let him tell me how the — communicating of infants became so universal, and then he shall acknowledge, what was done in some was possible in others." It is undeniable that many innovations took place in the second and third centuries, against which we read of no remonstrance at their first appearance. The papist argues for communion in one kind from the beginning on this hypothesis of no remonstrance ; mSTOEIC TESTIMONY. 609 •' Seeing men, tenad.ous of religion, are easily disturbed by an alteration of tMngg pertaining to it ; u through a course of twelve hundred years the holy supper had been administered in the church under both kinds, without its being declared lawful to communicate under one only ; immediately upon this custom being changed, the greatest disturbances and disputes would have arisen in the church about the alteration. Concerning which, whereas in history there is no mention, we receive it as an undoubted conjecture, that the practice was never considered as new, but always used from the beginning, and fixed in the minds of beUevers as lawful" (Salmero, in Booth's Peed. Ex., vol. i, pp. 392, 393). To this the learned Chamier replies : " That aU changes in religious affairs excite commotions when they are made, may be safely denied. For long before the advent of Christ many changes were made in the Jewish religion — and yet without any tumult." — Also, we can affirm that the baptism of very young children " excited inquiry" and "resistance," and this too is " registered" "in the controversies of the age." TuBKETiNE, on the commotion of novelties, and knowing their time and author, says, " But jou will say. If any alterations have taken place in the church of Eome since the apostolic age, the time when, and the persons by whom they were made should be pointed out. But no reason obliges us to this. As if various alterations did not frequently occur to our notice, of which neither the time nor the place, nor the first authors can be accurately known." " It is difficult, if not impossible to mark the first moments in which any corruption began, though the fact be so manifest that it cannot be denied. But what necessity is there to point out either the authors or the times, provided the facts be certain ? In order to prove that you have the plague, is it necessary for me to shew in what moment the destructive ^sease began to rage ?" De Nee. Sep., Dis. v, § 10. We have neither evidence of commotion nor knowledge of the time ■when confirmation, bowing towards the altar, the custom of sponsors at baptism, the ceremony of exorcism, and a multitude of errors commenced. Dr. Owen says. It is not " agreed, nor, so far as I see, will it ever be agreed among learned men, when first a disparity among the ordinary officers of the church, in order, degree, or power, did first begin, nor by what means it was brought about." Moreover, says Bp. Stillingfleet : "As to the impossibility of innovations coming in without notorious opposition, I see no ground at all for it, where the alteration is not made at once, but proceeds gi-adually. He may as well prove it impossible for a man to fall into a dropsy, or a hectic fever, unless he can tell the punctual time when it began. And he may as well argue thus : Such a man fell into a fever upon a great debauch, and the physicians were presently sent for to advise about him ; therefore the other man hath no chronical distemper, because he had no physicians when he was first sick: as because councils were called against some heresies, and great opposition made to them, therefore when there is not the like, there can be no innovation." — Pres. ag. Po., p. 310. A. M'Lean (Baptist), on the baptism of infants : " But granting that we had no account of any opposition being made to it, it does not follow that it must have been practised from the beginning. The communion of infants in the Lord's Supper was as early introduced, and as extensively practised for six hundred years, as their baptism was, and I may add, with as much reason ; yet we read of no opposition made to it : was it therefore practised from the beginning ?" — Works, vol. vii, p. 100. Dr. S. Stennett fAns. to Dr. A., pp. 231-245) maintains it " absurd to insist that unless we can fix with certainty the exact time when the first infant was baptized, point out with unquestionable precision the true motives and causes leading to it, and trace this practice through its gradual progress to the period when it generally obtained in the church; that unless we can do all this, it is to be presumed from its having prevailed in the third century, that it is no innovation, but of Divine original.' ' It is sufficient for the baptism as for the communion of infants, to say, There is no authority for the practice in Scripture. " All you can reasonably expect from me," says Dr. S., " is a probable account of the source whence this innovation originated, and the manner in which it was introduced : and this I am ready to give you." He says, " It is certain also that some innovations have arisen imperceptibly ; imperceptibly at least, to us, who live in a late period of Christianity : for, with all the lights which history furnishes, it is out of our power to fix precisely the origin of some of those ceremooiea which yet Protestants generally acknowledge to be unscriptoral." He 510 ■ SUBJECTS OP BAPTISM. notices among other things the fact relative to this country, th^t in the course of about fifty years immersion was almost wholly laid aside, " and sprinkling substituted in its room, Avithout the allowance of the Institutor, as Dr. Whitby acknowledges." The origin of the baptism of infants he traces as others, to a mis-understanding of John iii, 5, and of our Savioui''s words, " Suffer little children to come imto Me." In opposition to the supposition of universality in the prevalence of infant baptism in the third century he quotes Dionysius, of Alexandria, describing Novatian as rejecting holy baptism, subverting the faith and profession which goes before it; and Vansletaa assuring us respecting Alexandria, that "in the first ages none but such as were thirty years of age were baptized there," and that some time after permission was given to " baptize the children of Christians." " No less," says he, " than ninety heresies are said to have sprung up in the three first centuries. And spurious books without number were forged under the names of Christ and His apostles, and the apostolio writers ; and, what is remarkable, many of them cited by the primitive fathers as genuine." If some of the Pasdobaptist professors of this century — instead of teaching in glaring destitution of all evidence the existence of Psedobaptism from the beginning of Christianity, the corroboration of this by the writings of the earliest fathers, and its consequent prevalence during this period — had taught no more than that from A.D. " 400 to 1150, no society of men, in all that period of seven hundred years ever pretended to say it was unlawful to baptize infants," we should have had less cause to speak of the blind leading the blind ; although my acquaintance with the history of this period is not such as to enable me to endorse Dr. Wall's statement. It is sufficient for my present purpose to have a knowledge of ecclesiastical history to the latter part of the third century. Before we read of the baptism of infants we read of the celebration of baptism with an air of mystery, and with cautious secresy. The inducement is strong to record the light which Dr. Stennett and others throw on " the Anabaptists of Munster," on the extent to which Paedobaptists shared with them in violence, and on the reprobation of all violence and coercion in religion of which the Baptists, along with the Friends, have given as convincing proofs as any denomination of Christians. Also, we are assured by Ivimey that the German dis- turbances were begun by Ptedobaptists, by Papists, that after the reformation Lutherans and Papists, as well as Baptists, i;nited in these disturbances for the securing of civil liberty ; and, without examining into the correctness of his statements, I hesitate not to record my agreement with him, " that it was not their principle about baptism that led them into such extravagant notions and actions" (His. ,yoI. i, p. 16). Believers' baptism accords with the principle of personal willinghood in every religious matter, and looks frowningly on all coercion and persecution. I maintain not that among Baptists as well as others there are none unworthy, nor that the best are sinless ; but I maintain that their principles are favourable to all holiness and goodness ; and that coercion is a necessity of Paedobaptism in a religious ordinance. J. H. Wood, in his Baptist History (pp. 67, 68), after mentioning that Luther's sentiments as appearing in his translation of the New Testament, and in his declaration that " it cannot be proved by the Scriptiires that infant baptism was instituted by Christ, or begun by the first Christians after the apostles," are in accordance with our views, and that " nearly all the reformers expressed themselves in similar language about baptism," says : " "The true principles of reformation were not carried out by" Luther, who " maintained that a Christian church should include whole parishes;" &c. " Just emerging from papal darkness, the true principles of Christian liberty were not fully understood ; and while tlie devout mind traces the work of God in the amazing efforts and the glorious success of the Reformers in removing the veil of ignorance, breaking the fetters of superstition, and promoting a revival of true god- liness, it cannot but regret their retention of a degree of that spirit of persecution, which, by whomsoever encouraged, is a flagrant outrage on Christian principle." In application to the work in hand, and to myself who, I may again say, am not writing a history of baptism, or of the Baptists, I will conclude this section with the following approved quotations. — J. Fletcher : " To enumerate all the influences which have contended against the primitive faith and institutions of the Christian church — to note their character and origin — to review all the changes in doctrine and practice which have resulted from them — is the work of the ecclesiastical historian" fHis. of Ind., p. 108). — Dr. R. Wilson : "The friends of evangelical truth will firmly persist in measuring the Fathers by the standard of God's word, in holding up ' the law and the testimony' as the Divine rule for all times and all men, and rejecting \vithout compunction whatever is most venerable on earth, when it is found to contravene the authority of heaven" finf. Bap., pp. 533, .^)34). — Dr. E. Williams : " As nothing should be . considered as an established principle of faith, which is not in some. part. of. .. ON THE MEANING OF INFANT. 511 Scriptiire delivered with perspicuity, so that perspicuity should be sought for principally where the point in question is most professedly handled" (Note on Maurice, p. 36). — Augfustine : " Whatever is beside the Scripture, reject it, lest ye wander into clouds." — Cyprian : " Custom without truth is only antiquated error." SECTION XXX. ON THE MEANING OF THE WORD INFANT. F. JoHNBTONE.— " Ab far, therefore, as preaching the truth and exposing error, exhorting sin- ners to the obedience of Christ, and convincing gainsayers of a delusion, may be called agitation, we should deem ourselves faithless servants to the Lord Jesus were we to ' cease to agitate the church upon the question." — Bap., p. 8. R. Baxtke.— " I ever judged controversy fitter for the press than the ■pnlyit,"— Plain Scr.Pr. The plan of this work embraced a section on the meaning of the word infant. I almost, but not altogether, abandon this. This word is generally used to describe a child in the first period of life. " In common usage," says the Imperial Dictionary, " a child ceases to be an infant within the first or second year, but at no definite period." The word has in many writers a wider import, or embraces a longer period of the first portion of life, and, in English law, at the present day "embraces a person under the age of twenty-one years." The ancient and frequent use of the word in application to the young, as we commonly use the word "minors," renders the occurrence of this word not in itself a proof, where the baptism of an infant is mentioned, that the baptism of a babe is intended. At the same time the word infans is used to describe a babe, and was, I believe, the common Latin word. That babe is not the invariable import of infant, is evident from Dr. Wall's speaking of an infant in one place that " was probably four or five years old" (His., vol. ii, p. 440). Also, on Jewish proselyte baptism, Dr. W. says, " Concerning the age of the child to be baptized, they had this rule : 'Any male child of such a proselyte, that was under the age of thirteen years and a day, and females that were under twelve years and a day they baptized as infants at the request and by the assent of the father, or the authority of the court" (vol. i, p. Ixxxi). Another use of the word infant is also mentioned by Dr. Wall, where he says : " There was indeed a custom of calling converts newly baptized (though they were middle aged or old) infants, by way of allusion ; and a sermon made to a congregation of such was called Sermo ad Infantes" (vol. iv, p. 51). Somewhat similarly Zonaras, in the twelfth century, teaches that God's word enlightens fnepious) infants, the simple, the teachable. Also, say.eliovers' baptism, can yet believe that those who baptize infants are )iof the persons on whom it devolves to adduce proof from Scripture to authorize their practice, but that it devolves on tliose wlio believing that Holy Writ sanctions only believers' baptism, and who bai^tize only those who credibly profess their faith in Christ, to prove that the baptism of infants is eiToneous and ought to be abandoned ! R. Baxter more commendably says, " Herein the justest order, it belongeth to the affirmer to prove such a right. He that brings his claim must shew his title." — Disprt., p. 2.54. The North Britl.th Review, having mentioned that not, a sinrile trace of infant bap- tism is to be found in the New Testament, subsequently says : •' The burden of proof is entirely on those who affirm its applicability to tliose whose minds arc incapable of any conscious act of faith." — Aug., 1852. Dr. Wardlaw, having recorded certain suppositions on the baptism of the twelve men at Ephesus, says, " It may be, that 1 cannot prove all these particulars; but their probability, even their possibility, is sufficient for my purpose" fAppen., 'p.2^!i). So say we in connexion with all that we advance in rrpbj to opponents on the baptism of households, that of believers having been proved to have Divine ordination and ajjostolic practice, and that of infants in no instance being proved to have either. And so say wo on immersion in re]ily to the frivolous objections of our opponents to the immersion of any whose baptism is recorded in the New Testament. Dr. W. ADVANTAGES OR EVILS OP INFANT BAPTISM. 515 adds : " On controverted points, there is one case, and if I mistake not, only one, in which supposition is fairly admissible as a foundation of argument. When a thing has been satisfactorily proved otherwise, and a supposition is required to establish consistency in one particular, such supposition may be legitimately made. In other words, when two states of a fact are supposa.ble, that one not only may fairly be preferred, but ought to have the preference, which best harmonises with what has been previously established." Some of our opponents seem to think that because there existed — I should say, is presumed to have existed — a Jewish, a Mosaic, a patriarchal, and an Abrahamic church, yea, a post-diluvian and an ante-diluvian church, all of which embraced children, and into which from Abraham to Christ the entrance was by circumcision of the male children, it devolves on the Baptists to prove, and to prove hij adducinii express prohibition of the baptism of infants, that their own sentiments are correct ! We maintain, and all our opponents admit, that baptism is a positive institution. Positive institutions demand positive directions. These there are in reference to believers ; these there are not in reference to infants. How then can it devolve on Baptists who reject the baptizing of infants to prove more than the accordance of their own practice — the baptism of believers — with the word of God ? This proved, the other in the circumstance of lacking proof falls to the ground. SECTION XXXIT. ADVANTAGES OR EVILS OV INFANT BAPTISM. Dr. J. MoHisoN.— " Let no ouo imagine from these strictm'es upon a most corrupt system of theology, thut baptism is looked upon by the preacher as au unmeaning or iusigiilficaut ceremony. On the contrary, ho would seek t.) rescue this ordinance of Christ from all counterfeit glosses and interiiretations, that it may occupy its own lUgnitied position among the institutions of the New Testament."— JSTomk'., &c., pp. 34G, .T47. J. A. Haldane. — " On considering all circumstances, we have abundant cause to be thankful that the Reformers escaped so far as they did from the prejudices of their education ; but, instead of ijressing forward, their desceudauts have been contented to walk by their light. The venera- tion in which their names have been held, has prejudiced the great bulk of the people against any deviation from their sentiments."— Sn. Wor., pp. IKJ, 111. E. Parsons.—'- He who does overvthing rioht in His equity," " does all things 7fell in His wisdom."— /Si")-. OH Acts xx, 88, p. II. Br. Owen'. — "All the ordinances and institutions of the gospel do give light into and exhibit the things themselves unto the minds and faith of believers. Herein tbey discern tho reasons and grounds of their use and benefit : whence our whole worship is called our reasonable service." — OnHeb vii, 11. On the importance, the advantages, and evils of infant baptism, I purpose to give the recorded opinions of certain Pfedobaptist and certain Baptist T\Titers, my own sentiments agreeing with the latter in every matter of moment in this controversy, unless dissent is expressed. On the importance of baptism itself — it being a Divine and New Testament ordinance, clearly enjoined, evidently regarded by the apostles of Christ as binding on every proselyte to Christianity, without the observance of which, except in cases of ignorance or mistake, there is a contempt of the 516 SUBJECTS OF BAPTISM. Divine law, and of the Divine favour, a contempt or abuse of all God's perfections, and of all His exhortations and promises to obedience — I should now write more had I not, through separately and previously issuing a work on the Action of Baptism, already written something on its Utility and Importance which was intended for this part had the whole been issued in one volume, or at one time. I will take as granted the reader's conviction of the importance of "walking in all the commandments and ordinances of the Lord blameless," and that "God's way" "alone can be truly, entirely, and permanently productive of good" (Wardlaw's Let. to M'Neile, p. 6). Also, while admitting on behalf of myself the lack of infallibility, and crediting all others with the same want, I would maintain the importance of charity and love to all who sincerely and supremely love the Lord Jesus, of a constant openness to conviction, and with no coveting of change from the simple and foolish love of change, of an earnest desire to increase in the knowledge and likeness of the Divine Saviour on the part of every one of His disciples. The opinions of Pa^dobaptist ^^Titers on the importance of baptism and of infant baptism are, according to their acknowledgments, gi'eatly at variance with much Ptedobaptist practice. The advantages of Paedobap- tism assumed by some, prove the estimation in which by them it is necessarily held. Either Baptist writers do not perceive in their denomination the same amount of dereliction from theory and principle, or they have not, so far as I know, recorded them to the same extent. Whatever is a departure from Scripture, all ought to deplore ; whatever is accordant with the Oracles of God, all ought to approve in theory and practice. I am, however, far from condemning every Pajdobaptist, to the extent of his deviation from Pa^dobaptist writers, even those of his own denomination. One uninspired teacher or pastor in the same denomina- tion, has the right to think for himself, and if need be to ditler from his brethren and his former self, although on points through a belief in which he was inducted to his office, and which by mutual understanding, clear compact, or solemn subscription, are understood to belong to the official position held, it demand a withdrawal, and a subsequent conduct in accordance with existing sentiments. And over the taught no human being has the rightful lordship. " Let every man be fully persuaded in his own mind." Baptists believe Christian baptism to be immersion on a credible profession of faith in Christ. This baptism they believe to be sj'mbolic of cleansing from sin, of regeneration by the Divine Spirit. The subject is supposed to have died, to be in baptism buried, and to rise again to newness of life ; this death, burial, and resurrection can be said to be with Him who died, was buried, and rose again, that we might have "eternal life." Ptedobaptists regard inftints (as well as believers) as proper subjects of baptism ; and many believe that sprinkling, pouring, or immersion, may constitute the action. To the subjects of baptism, and to the benefits or evils of its administration to infants, our thoughts are now being directed. Some Peedobaptist denominations having written creeds to which every pubHc teacher in such a body must express assent previous to ADVANTAGES OE EVILS OF INFANT BAPTISM. 517 his occupying this position, and some of these creeds being particular and express on the advantages of baptism, of infant baptism, it is easy to understand their high if not their precise estimate of this symbolical ceremony. The Roman Catholics believe that through the (opus operatam) performed deed, the priest regenerates and saves the child that, dying unbaptized, would perish. Hence the Council of Trent says : "If any one shall say that baptism is — not necessary to salvation, let him be accursed. . . . Sin, whether contracted by birth from our first parents, or committed by ourselves — by the admirable virtue of this sacrament, is remitted and pardoned." The Greek Church attributes to baptism an efficacy, similar to that which the Romanist believes it to possess. Hence the Greek father, Chrysostom, says: "Baptism is a ransom to the captive, remission of every debt, the death of sin, the regeneration of the soul, a robe of light, a seal not to be violated, a chariot to heaven." The Lutheran belief on the benefit of baptism has a resemblance to that of the Papists. Hence Luther : " There is in the baptism of infants the beginning of faith and of a Divine operation, peculiar to themselves." Gerhard : " The sacrament of baptism does not profit without faith ; nevertheless it is the efficacious means by which God of His grace works faith, regeneration, and salvation in the hearts of infants." Buddeus : " Seeing infants cannot be brought to faith by the preaching of God's word, it follows that it must be effected in another way, namely, by baptism ; by which men are born again, and so receive faith." — See these and others in Booth's Pad. Ex., vol. i, pp. 422, 423. The Reformed Continental Churches hold views on baptism'similar to those of Luther. Hence Calvin says: "Grace cometh with the sacra- ments, not from the sacraments, but from God." " They avail or profit nothing, except when received by faith." — Tre. on the Sac, p. 21. The Anghcan Church beheves baptism to be "generally necessary to salvation ;" and speaks of baptism wherein the child is "made a member of Christ, a child of God, and an inheritor of the kingdom of heaven." This church believes that two sacraments are ordained by Christ — baptism and the Supper of the Lord; and that " Sacraments ordained of Christ be not only badges or tokens of Christian men's profession, but rather they be certain sure witnesses, and effectual signs of grace, and God's good-will towards us, by the which He doth work invisibly in us, and doth not only quicken, but also strengthen and confirm our faith in Him." " And in such only as worthily receive the same, they have a wholesome eff'ect or operation ; but they that receive them unworthily purchase to themselves damnation" (Art. xxv) ; also that " Baptism is not only a sign of pro- 618 SUBJECTS OF EAPTIPM. fession and mark of difference, whereby Christian men are discerned from those that be not christened, but it is also a sign of regeneration, or new birth, whereby as by an instrument, they that receive baptism rightly are grafted into the church : the promises of forgiveness of sin, and of our adoption to be the sons of God by the Holy Clhost, are visibly signed and sealed ; faith is conhrmed, and grace increased by virtue of prayer unto God. The baptism of young children is in any wise to be retained as most agreeable with the institution of Christ" (Art, xxvii). In this article the word " rightly" occurs in connexion with the reception of baptism as an apparent condition of promised blessings, and in the preceding article as an evident condition of benediction, while the Catechism teaches children without condition or exception to speak of baptism wherein they were made the members of Christ, the children of God, and the inheritors of the kingdom of heaven. As the articles do not specify what is meant by baptizing rightly and receiving baptism worthily, one would suppose it could not mean more than its being done by the priest along with the utterances by himself and sponsors as the Book of Common Prayer directs. After the baptism of an infant the priest says: "We yield Thee hearty thanks, most merciful Father, that it hath pleased Thee to regenerate this infant." There is, however, much diflerencc of opinion among Episcopalians as to the importance and benefits of Christian baptism. Dr. Waterland says : " Baptism alone is sufficient to make one a Christian, yea, and to keep liim such, even to his life's end, since it imprints an indelible character in such a sense as never to need I'cpeating." — Disc, of Fund., p. 48. Dr. J. Scott, on Matt, xxviii, 19, says : " By this commission Christ's ministers are authorized and constituted tlie legal proxies of the Holy Trinity, in the stead of those blessed persons, to seal the new covenant with the baptismal sign to those whom they baptize; and thereby legally-to oblige the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, to perform the promises of it to all those baptized persons who perform the conditions of it." — Chris. Life, vol. iii, p. 2'3G. Lord Ltttleton believes that every baptized infant receives the power, to be available when required, to servo God according to the gospel ; in other words, that he may be saved if he will" fOii. Inf. Dap., p. 13). Further, says he, "I know it is sometimes held, that the blessing depends on the faith and prayers of those who bringthc child — surely one of the hardest of sayings, that of two helpless infants, one shall bo effectively received into God's favour, and the otiier not, according to the poor, and weak, and inadequate— often indeed casual and accidental state of mind of two or three other people" (p. 29). " How is it possible," he has before asked, '"to suppose a diiference in God's sight in the actual state of two unconscious infants r'" But if it is the hai>lir^cd infant that receives the injiccr to he saved if lie will, is it not "one of the hardest of sayings," that his power to be saved at all is made to depend on the impulse, whim, or supposed duty, of those that have the infants uuder theii- charge ? "Whioh is "the hardest of sayings," to make the salvation, or even the power of salvation if he wills, to depend on a priest, on a parent, or on a sponsor i' It is to mc strange that either Archdeacon Har^, or any member of the AngUean Church, can maintain that " infant baptism admits only to certain po.ssiblLities," uidcss they meau that its right and worthy reception is a blessing and its unworthy reception a curse, HO that its reception is to the possibility of a blessing or a curse. But it appears to mo that evei-y Episcopalian clergyman must knock his head either against the baptismal sei'vicc and the Catechism, or against the Ai-ticlcs ; or, if holding the sentiments of many evangelicals, against both. For the Articles teach that the sacraments aro more than badges or tokens of Christian men's profession, that they are sure witnesses and effectual signs of grace. Mr. Hastings holds " that baptism confers a capacity." A baptized babe has a capacity which an unbaptized one does not possess ! Lord Lyttleton Ijolievcs " that the blessing of regeneration is undoubtedly conveyed to some duly baptizod infants ; but, in tlie iiii])ossibi]ity of onr discerning the cases, they pro- pounce the same charitable judgment upon all" (p. lU). It is one of the mysteries of ADVANTAGES OE EVILS OF INFANT BAPTISM. 519 otliics, how men who believe that liars ^liall be shut out of the kingdom of heaven, can deliberately affirm that a thing is, and solemnly thank God that it is, being at the fvords bj' which it might be expressed. But the words used most certainly convey the idea of confidence respecting the salvation of the departed. " Whence," says Mr. Macallan, '• has all the vast variety of opinions, especially in the Chiu'ch of England, respecting the efficacy of baptism, originated ? Chiefly, if not entirely, from the unwarrantable administration of the ordinance to infants, and the consequent misapplication to them of language which has no rational meaning but as applied to those who know and believe the gospel. Lord Lyttlcton admits : " I assume, on the authority of the Church of England, that infant baptism is to be found in Scripture, and therefore I do not go about to prove it" (p. 17). Also, speaking of regeneration, he says, " Even within our church, Mr. Orlando Forester, for instance, admitted that the reasoning seemed to lead him away from the doctriuo of infant baptism entirely, to that of the Baptists, which is at least a perfectly consistent sys- tem. He said, however, that he thought it safer that infants should be baptized, though with no full understanding why it should be so. It was, however, according to that unreasoning and implicit acceptance of the order of the church to which I before alluded" (p. 23). "The unreasoning and implicit acceptance of the order of the church," say, of Rome, is all that the Pope requires ! If we will thus prostrate our judgment, we are at liberty to believe the baptizing of an infant produces regeneration in fuU or in embryo, or secures a capacity to be used by the infant, or a power to be possibly called into exercise at some futiu'c time, or aught else, if the church so determine. Of the spiritual regeneration of which adults arc capable, and which is required of them, infants are admitted by many Episcopalians to be incapable. Hence Mr. Goode, and Lord Lyttleton make a distinction "between infant regeneration, and that regeneration of the heart — that spiritiral regeneration, which is necessary in the case of one come to the years of discretion" (Lord L., p. 12). " All the regeneration" says Mr. Macallan, whose words I choose now to quote, " that this class contend for is of a vague, undefiuable, embryo kind, which, slumbering during the period of infancy, yet in some mysterious way secures the infant's safety in the event of death ; but which, if life be spared, rises, in the cases of tliosc ■".'ho foster its growth in after years, into a holy maturity ! Others, again, and these by far the most numerous class in the church, disclaim all secondary causes of regeneration, and give to it its broadest and most unqualified and scriptural sense — maintaining that, in this high sense, infants are, by baptism, purified from all natural guilt and defilement — 'grafted into the holy ehurch of Christ' — become the children of God, and are ' made heirs of the kingdom of heaven.' Hence, after baptism, they present in all its Uterality the form of thanks- giving appointed by the church : — " We yield Thee hearty thanks, most mercifirl Father, that it hath pleased Thee to regenerate this infant with Thy Holy Spirit, to receive him for Thine own child by adoption, and to incorporate htm into Thy holy church.' So, in confh-mation, also, after the entire absence of all religious character has been, in numberless instances, manifested by the young people confirmed, a similar style of address is, as it appears to us, presumptuously and profanely presented to God, in the following words : — ' Almighty and ever-li\'ing God. who hast voirchsafed to regenerate these Thy servants by water and by the Holy Ghost, and hast given unto them forgiveness of all their sins,' &c. !" — On Bap., pp. 116, 117. Because regeneration in connexion with baptism is the doctrine of the church, and in the scriptirral sense of the word is believed to be impossible to be experienced by infants, or impossible to be known of them, a new meaning is given to the word ; and we arc told that the passages of Scripture which associate the new birth with baptism, " are to be understood rather of adult baptism than of infant baptism ;" and Lord L., floundering in the mud like other advocates of infant baptism, assumes "that in some cases certainly, though in which we cannot tell, the infant is regenerate ; and I ventiu'e to think that those who recoil from the idea that this can always be so, have not enough observed, that the sense in which they deem it important that the word regenerate should be used, goes beyond what is possible of infants. We should, therefore, be brought as before to the conclusion, contrary to our assumption, that no infant ever can be regenerate." Again, " it being admitted that regeneration is truly predicable of somo infants — of none of whom it can be predicted in the full scriptural 520 SUBJECTS OF BAPTISM. sense — it follows, that it must be so in its first sense of some initial grace, which, as it seems, cannot purport less than I have claimed for it." " In answer to the bishop of Mclboui-ne," says Mr. Macallan, "who, it seems, had said 'that the church could not certainly assert, " the reg-eneration of the infant," which it covild not certainly know,' Lord Lyttleton replies, ' That seems to assume that regeneration can only be known to have been given, by outward fruits or by some fruits, which confounds a thing and its effects, as if the grace of God could not be received in vain.' " But baptismal regeneration, the blessed effect of infant baptism, is in the view of low Churchmen, at least of Lord Lyttleton, " a power received by the infant, to be available when required, to serve God according to the gospel ; in other words, that he maybe saved if he will" (p. 13). " The power to be saved in the way of the gospel, through faith and love, by the aid of the Spirit, is the gift conferred in baptism" (p. 3). These are the words of one who admits that the Scriptures require repentance and faith in order to baptism, but who also teaches that these need only be personal in those who are capable of them. In the rest baptism gives the power of future repentance and faith if they will ! A baptized person " has the effectual sword of the Spirit put into his hands, if he will use it !" To what a fearful character here, and perdition hereafter, these wild assumptions doom all the children of Friends ! And into what " a delusion and a snare" are those led, who are taught and who believe that such is regeneration, and such the result of infant baptism ! Where in Divine revelation do we read of baptism giving a latent power to be used at some future time, putting into the hands of its recipient the effectual sword of the Spirit, if he will use it? Is not God's word the sword of the Spirit ? And is it not equally accessible to the baptized and the unbap- tized, and as the sword of the Spirit equally efficacious in each ? Do parents who neglect the baptism of their children prevent the Spirit's use of His own word, and thus effect the certain damnation of their offspring ? And can the effectual sword of the Spirit be possessed in vain ? Thus are reason and revelation abused by those who seek to have on their side God's word, and the contradictory and unscriptural creeds composed from mixed motives about three centuries ago. J. C. E.TLE, in his Lecture on Lu., iii., teaches that the reason why baptism is not followed by the advantageous and happy results which ought to appear, is that it ia not accompanied with prayer. Christ being baptized prayed. The worthy Mr. C. does not teach that prayer should characterize the baptized at the time of their baptism after the example of Christ. Nor does he mean, I presume, that the priest does not pray ; but that want of prayer in the parents or sponsors prevents the blessing. Does the priest thank God that the child being baptized enjoys regenera- tion and adoption if parents and sponsors have rightly prayed, and have then acted or will subsequently act worthily ? DoDWELL seems to think that the wicked, if unbaptized, will not be everlastingly punished, for he says that " the soul derives its immortality from the Spu-it of God in baptism." He gives no intimation so far as I know, that the Spii'it of God in any other way gives to the soul its immortality. W. MuDGB — notwithstanding that there are for all at baptism the same teaching, prayers, and thanksgivings, and the same teaching for all children in the Catechism, namely, that in baptism they were made the children of God, &c. — can say, " We do not doubt but some may be regenerated or born anew in baptism, but we much doubt ■whether many be so." Bp. Wilson says : " We have no instance of the particulars of the administration in the case of infants, and no details of the blessings therein communicated to them" (Lee. on Col., p. 228). Indeed, says he (p. 229), speaking of the imperfection of infant Isaptism till subsequent confirmation, " It is the sponsor, so to speak, who is in tho mean time baptized in the name of the child !" Bp. Burnet says that " in such only as worthily receive the sacraments they have a wholesome effect or operation" (On Ai-t. xxv). "The virtues of the sacrament being put," says he, " in the worthy receiving, excludes the doctrine of opus opcratum." But if Bp. Burnet had been explaining the Baptismal Service as required by the Prayer Book, or the Catechism taught to childi-en, could he have thus wi-ittcn on the peradventures of baptismal benefit, at least, where the service takes place as required by the Book of Common Prayer ? English Reformers (T. Russell). — " If thou be baptized a thousand times with water, and hast no faith, it availeth thee no more toward God than it doth a goose when she ducketh herself under the water. Therefore if thou wilt obtain the benefit of baptism, thou must have faith." — Vol. iii, p. 290. Bp. Taylok in stating how " far tho Anabaptist may argue," having just spoken of baptism that saves us as being "not the only washing with water, of which only children are capable, but the answer of a good conscience towards God ; of which they ADVANTAGES OE EVILS OF INFANT BAPTISM. 521 are not capable till the use of reason, till they know to choose the good and refuse the evil," adds : " And from thence I consider anew, that all vows made by persons imder others' names, stipulations made by minors, are not valid till they, by a supervening act, after they are of sufficient age, do ratify them. Why then may not infants as well make the vow dc novo, as do novo ratify that which was made for them atoHiigifo, when they come to years of choice ? If the infant vow be invalid till the manly con- firmation, why were it not as good they staid to make it till that time, before which if they do make it, it is to no purpose" (Lib. of Pro., pp. 346, 347). He has before said, "Either baptism is a mere ceremony, or it implies duty on our pai-t. If it be a ceremony only, how does it sanctify us or make the comers thereunto perfect V If it implies a duty on our part, how then can children receive it, who cannot do duty at all ? And indeed this way of ministration makes baptism to be wholly an outward duty, a work of the law, a carnal ordinance ; it makes us adhere to the letter without regard of the spirit, to be satisfied with shadows, to return to bondage, to relinquish the mysteriousness, the substance, and spirituality of the gospel. . . . Baptism is never propounded, mentioned, or enjoined, as a means of remission of sins, or of eternal life, but something of duty, choice, and sanctity is joined with it, in order to the production of the end so mentioned." I can see the consistency of this with inspired writ in Eom. vi, 2-4, Gal. iii, 27, 1 Pe., iii, 21, and every reference to baptism in Scriptm'e (Acts, ii, 38, where repentance is associated with baptism ; Mark, xvi, 16, where believing is associated with it, and any other passage, being not an exception) ; but not with its glorious advantages as taught in the Anglican Catechism and Baptismal Service. Well might the bishop say, "I consider that the baptizing of infants does rush us upon such inconveniences which in other questions we avoid like rocks." Canon Stowell deemed the pledging of infants by godfathers and godmothers so rational and commendable as not to lay Churchmen " open to just blame from any body of Christians, who maintain the baptism of infants ; since, if they do not regard the ordinance as a seal of the Christian covenant, in what light do they regard it ? Or on what ground do they administer it to children ?" A Baptist has AVi-itten : " The Episcopalian knows that the rites of his own church and its form of government, and the infant baptism of his Dissenting opponent, have equal authority ; and ho surely says to him tliis proverb : ' Physician, heal thyself.' " Let both come to and abide by " the law and the testimony." Canon Liddon says : " In baptism the Christian child is made ' a member of Christ, a child of God, and an inheritor of the kingdom of heaven'" (Bamp. Lee). And Mr. Fisher observes that " out of twenty five questions of which the catechism now consists, no less than seventeen relate exclusively to the nature and efficacy of the Sacraments." — Liturg. Purity, p. 293. Dr. C. J. Vaughan. — " Every baptized child is regenerate ; is, as the following words explain the meaning, <;rfl/ietZ i (1^0 the body of Christ's church." It "is taken out of the world of nature, and transferred by an ordinance of Christ's appointment into the world of grace." — The Liturgy, &c. Abp. Whatelet, on the benefit of baptism to childreu, teaches that by it they are received " into the number of God's adopted children, and have thrown open to them, as it were, the treasui-y of Divine grace, through which, if they duly avail them- selves of it — though not otherwise — they will attain final salvation" (Essays, 2nd Se., p. 289). After quoting Eom. vi, 3 ; viii, 15 ; Gal. iii, 26 ; and Col. ii, 12, ho says : " These addresses and exhortations are foimded on the principle that the disciples, by their dedication to God in baptism, had been brought into a state of reconcilement with Him, had been admitted to privileges which the apostle calls on them to improve" (p. 301). Subsequently he thus approvingly quotes another Abp. — " ' In the case of infant baptism' says Abp. Sumner, ' there are evidently no similar means of ascer- taining the actual disposition.' The benefit received is strictly gratuitous, or of ' free grace.' It is promised however to faith and obedience, pre-supposed in the recipient, and pledged in his name by the sponsors. Whence it follows that the blessings attached to the sacrament must fail, if the conditions fail in those who are capable of performing them : and that the faith and obedience must become actual and personal in those who arrive at mature age' " (p. 315). Treasures of grace are thrown open to the baptized ! If — not otherwise ! Baptism pre-supposes faith in the recipient, and the sponsor pledges this for the infant ! The baptized are supposed to be brought into a state of reconcilement by baptism, but if there is no improvement made of baptismal blessings, the benefit fails ! The entire lack of benefit from baptism, wherein the subject is made a member of Christ, a child of God, and an inheritor of the kingdom of heaven, may arise, it would seem, according to the testimony of archbishops, from failure in fulfilling the conditions of baptism ; conditions belonging SUBJECTS OF BAPTISM. apparently to the iiifaut baptised in uucousciousnesB, and to the solemnly vo\ving Bponsor ! Such, in our Church by law established for the professed promotion of uniformity, is the wonderful diversity of sentiment on Baptism. Some indeed maintain that the baptizing of a babe means " tliat it is born an heir of all that constitutes the outward kingdom of heaven" that baptism is the sigii and seal of the "birth-claim to this heritage ;" but this theory, as says the Eev. J. Best, " is nowhere to be found in the Scriptures." Dr. Wall, who on the Act of baptism says, "The immer.«ion of the person (whether infant or adult) in posture of one that is biu'icd and raised up again, is mxxch more solemn, and expressive of the design of the sacrament, and the mystery of the spiritual washing miich better, than pouring a small quantity of water on the face ; and that pouring of water is much bettor than the sprinkling," on the Suhjccts says : " The solemnity of the circumstances in the administration of baptism (as also of the other sacrament) does very powerfully strike and affect the mind of anj' devout Christian that sees it administered. The baptism of an infant cannot have all the solemnity which that of an adult person may have." — His., vol. iv, pp. 405, 404. It does not appear to mc how Churchmen can consistently deny that the salvation of all the sprinkled is seriously jeopardized, or certainly thwarted, not one so christened being lawfully and sufficiently baptized, not even the few in whom is professed weakness or sickness ; for their rubric requires that if god fathers and god-mothers shall certify the priest " that the child may well endure it, he shall diji it in the water discreetly and warily," "but if they certify that the child is weak, it shall suffice to pour water upon it." Vigorous babes are to be dipped: and the weakly are to have water poured on them, as sufficing in such cases for baptism, which otherwise is dipping.- It would also be well for Churchmen to consider the language of the North Biiiish Ecview, in an article said to be from the pen of a worthy Presbyterian professor (from which several quotations have before been taken), who, though himself not wishing the discontinuance of infant baptism, can yet say to his erring brethren in the Southern Establishment on their baptismal service : " The unconscious- ness of the infant is the real foiis mali. The baptismal service is founded on Scripture ; but its application to an unconscious infant is destitute of any express scriptural warrant. There is absolutely no trace of it to be found in the New Testament" (Aug. 1852). Nor do I wonder that Dean Alford, in his Address to Chesluuit Students, says : " All kinds of outrageous things are said and printed as being according to Scripture, because men will not use the eyes and the cars which God has given them." I will not weary myself or the reader with quotations from Drs. Hook and Pusey, Messrs. Bennett and Maconockie, or from those belonging to the Broad Church. The rubric to which the differing Anglicans give assent and promise adherence, maintains a change to be effected in and by baptism, which the oracles of (iod do not sanction. The sentiment of Presbyterians on the benefits of baptism appears from their standard Confessions and Catechisms, and from the wiiters of various members of this denomination of Christians. * John Wesley's .loinual, 173G.— " May 5th, I was asked to baptize a child of Mr. Parker's, second bailill' of Siiviinuiib ; but Jlrs. Parker tohl me, ' Neither Mr. P. nor I will consent to its bciuf? dipiiod.' I unsweroil, ' II' yon ccvtify that yom- cliild is wcaU, it will suffice, the rubric says, to pour water uiiou it.' She n^iilitd. ' Nay, the child is not weak, but I am resolved it shall not be dipped.' Tliis avj^iuuent I could not confute. So I went home, nud the child was baiitized by aiiotlicr person." Does the rubric now justify and recognize as valid bai)tism the sxu'inkling or even the poiiriu}; of water on the face of babies without respect tolbcir wcakucBS or struugtb, and jo utter silence ou this by priest, imrcut, or sponsor ? ADVANTAGES OE EVILS OF INFANT BAPTISM. 523 The Confession of Faith agreed upon by the Assembly of Divines at Westminster, whicli has been previously quoted, teaches, amoug other things, that sacraments arc " seals of the covenant of grace," instituted "to represent Christ and His benefits, and to confirm our interest in Him, as also to put a visible difterence between those that belong unto the church and the rest of the world, and solemnly to engage them to' the service of God in Christ according to His word." The word of institution contains " a promise of benefit to worthy receivers" (ch. xxvii). " Baptism is a sacra- ment of the New Testament, ordained by Jesus Christ, not only for the solemn admission of the party baptized into the visible chiu'ch, but also to bo unto him a sign and seal of the covenant of grace, of his ingrafting into Christ, of regeneration, of remission of sins, and of his giving up unto God through Jesus Christ, to walk in newness of life." And "not only those that do actually profess faith in and obedience unto Christ, but also the infants of one or botli believing parents are to be baptized." And " Although it be a great sin to contemn or neglect this ordinance, yet grace and salvation are not so inseparably annexed unto it, as that no person can bo regenerated or saved without it, or that all that arc baptized are undoubtedly regenerated." " The efficacy of baptism is not tied to that moment of time wherein it is administered ; yet notwithstanding by the right use of this ordinance, the grace promised is not only oiFered, but really exhibited and conferred by the Holy Ghost, to such (whether of age or infants) as that grace belongeth unto, according to the counsel of God's own will, in His appointed time" (ch xxviii). It appears from this that baptism is a sign and seal of the covenant of grace and of giving up to God through Jesus Christ to walk in newness of life, and that infants are i)ropcr subjects, and that though the rite is not inseparable from regeneration and salvation, and may be administered where these have not taken place and never will, yet that in those whom God in His grace has foreordained to eternal life, baptism will in God's appointed time, wliethor in infancy or mature age, confer by the Holy Ghost the necessary regeneration ! Baptism is properly administered to " the infants of one or both believing parents," so that they are " worthy receivers" of an ordinance whicli confers the renewing of the Holy Ghost in the elect at God's appointed time, though some of these may rise up and live and die Vvfithout the least evidence or probability of being regenerate ! The insignificance of the l)lessing, when indeed enjoyed, no one can allege against the administration of the ordinance ; only the cases of enjoyment are unkno^vn except to Him that sees the end from the begiiniing. If our worthy Presbyterian brethren maintained that no person can be regenerated or saved without baptism, they woidd have a reason for administering to infants having one or two believing parents (tliese being within the pale of possible salvation, and within the covenant of grace) that bai)tism which immediately or subsequently regenerates those whose salvation is possible, although in entire ignorance as to the persons thus embraced. It is said in ch. x, 3, "Elect infants dying in infancy, arc regenerated and saved by Christ, through the Spirit, who worketh when, and where, and how He pleaseth." It would seem to be known that baptism confers regeneration in these, and that God graciously grants the ineffable blessing if perchance these die unbaptized. I am, however, incapable of reconciling the acknowledged belief of my opponents cither with themselves or with Scripture. That baptism can and will confer the Holy Ghost on the elect in infancy or in maturity, may be consistent with the hypothesis that God's " ordinances, especially the word, sacraments, and prayer," are all "made effectual to the elect for their salvation" (Lur. Cat., A. 154): yet I cannot reconcile the limiting of the benefits of baptism to those among the baptized who in the secret determination of God are chosen to eternal life, with the idea that all the infants of a believing parent are in the covenant of grace, on the ground that the promise, the promise of the Holy Ghost, is unto ijou who repent and receive God's word, and to your seed. The Larger Catechism says that Christ has ordained baptism "to be a sign and seal of ingrafting into Himself, of remission of sins by His blood, and regeneration by His Spirit, of adoption, and resurrection unto everlasting Ufo ; and whereby the parties baptized are solemnly admitted into the visible church, and enter into an open and professed engagement to be wholly and only the Lord's" (A. 165) ; and then teaches that " baptism is not to be administered to any who arc ovit of the visible church, and so strangers from the covenant of promise, till they profess their faith in Christ and obedience to Him ; but infants descenduig from parents, either both or but one of them professing faith in Christ and obedience to Him, are in that respect within the covenant, and to be baptized." It is to mc marvellous that persons can believe that a covenant with an unconscious child, embracing forgiveness, regeneration, adoption, and eternal life, is suspended on the profession of faith by one or both believing parents. I wonder not that those who can thus believe, can also teach that baptism is " a sign and seal of our regeneration and ingrafting into Christ, even to infants" (A. 177). If this is God's covenant of grace, it is not secret, but 524 SUBJECTS OP BAPTISM. revealed ; and believers and their infant children, whoever besides, arc to the end of time God's elect ! Lot the reader think, What does baptism c.rhibit to ii\fants ? while he roads, " A sacrament is a holy ordinance instituted by Christ in His church, to signify, seal, and exhibit, unto them that arc within the covenant of grace, the benefits of His mediation ; to strengthen and increase their faith, and all their graces ; to oblige them to obedience, to testify and cherish their love and commiuiion one with another; and to distinguish them from those that are without" (A. 1G2). Have infants faith ? Or is it meant that the baptism of infancy is intended to strengthen and increase subsequent faith if it should ever bo possessed ? Does the baptism of unconsciousness lay under obligation and thus prove a benefit ? Have infants love and communion one with another, and are they, Ijcing baptized, distinguished from those infants that are without the visible church, or without interest in the covenant of grace ? Is baptism indeed scripturally thus advantageous ? To the question (161), " How do the sacraments become effectual means of salvation ?" a question which implies that the sacraments do in some way become effectual means of salvation, we have the answer : " The sacraments become effectual means of salvation, not by any power in themselves, or any virtue derived from the piety or intention of him by whom they are administered, but only by the working of the Holy Ghost, and the blessing of Christ, by whom they are instituted." Baptism is no ordinary blessing if it is effectual through the Holy Ghost to the salvation of all infants having one or two believing parents, if the infants of unbelieving parents and of believing parents who neglect to baptize, are destined to perdition, or are saved by something else than baptism being made effectual through the Holy Ghost to their salvation. The Shorter Catechism, however, in reply to the question (91), How do the sacraments become effectual moans of salvation ? says, " The sacraments become effectual moans of sal- vation, not from any virtue in them, or in him that doth administer them ; but only by the blessing of Christ and the washing of His Spirit in them ihat by faith receive them." And a sacrament is said (A. 92) to be a " holy ordinance instituted by Christ ; wherein, by sensible signs, Christ, and the benefits of the New Covenant, are represented, sealed, and applied to believers." Finally, I quote the following from The Directory for the Public Worship of God: "That baptizing or sprinkling and washing with water, signifieth the cleansing from sin by the blood and for the merit of Christ, together with the mortification of sin, and rising from sin to newness of life, by virtue of the death and resurrection of Christ. That the promise is made to believers and their seed, and that the seed and posterity of the faithful, born within the church, have, by their birth, interest in the covenant, and right to the seal of it, and to the outward privileges of the church, under the gospel." Baptism appears here far less beneficial than in some previous assertions. For the seed of believers are believed to be, by their natural birth, within the covenant of grace and within tho church of Christ. This being the case, it should be confined to Presbyterians (nor do I wish that they should thus continue) to believe that we can be born in anything to which, without losing it, we have a subsequent introduction ! Instead of certain benefit to any infants from baptism, we learn from Presbyterian standard creeds, that while baptism seals inestimable blessings to all, it makes none sure of these, but certainly confers them on some ! These creeds would be more correctly designated learned crudites on infant baptism than its benefits. If all who consider baptism to consist of two parts, of an outward and visible sign, and of an inward and spiritual grace, would teach that baptism cannot rightly be received except where there is repentance towards God and faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, I could, as I think, perceive consistency with reason and revelation. If baptism scripturally consist of two parts, it must follow when either part is wanting to the professed baptism, and knoicii to be ivanting, that it is a deficient and unscriptural ceremony, and undeserving of the name of baptism. But having noticed the authorized creeds and catechisms of Presbyterians on baptism, we will now notice what a few of their eminent writers have recorded or uttered, some of the most recent of which indicate that on these creeds, to which every minister has been bound to give assent, light is beginning to break forth. Not yet, however, in all. ADVANTAGES OR EVILS OP INFANT BAPTISM. 525 Erskine and Fisher (of a former generation), on the Shorter Catechism, while approving of the ordinance of baptism being publicly performed, encourage parents whose children may die before the regular opportunity of baptism, that "in these circumstances the want of it cannot harm the child." AH is right with the child, it would appear, if, at least in certain circumstances, it dies without baptism ; but if it should live, the blessings of the covenant of grace must be sealed to it by baptism. And because of what we read respecting John the Baptist (Lu. i, 15), it appears to be contidently believed that some infants may be literally filled with the Holy Ghost from the womb, and consequently before they are baptized, unless they are born baptized. The devoted Baxter taught that " infants are in covenant with the Holy Ghost, still conditionally as their parents are ;" that " the Holy Ghost is promised in baptism to give the child grace in his parents', and in his own faithful use of the appointed means" (Cases of Cons., p. 43). He says not where this promise is recorded, but he says on the same page, " Almost all infant cases are to us obscure." He also asks, " What the better are infants for being baptized P" And he answers, " The children of the faithful are stated by it in a right to the foresaid benefits of the covenant, the pardon of their original sin, the love of God, the intercession of Christ, and the help of the Holy Ghost when they come to age, and the title to the kingdom of heaven, if they die before they forfeit it by sin" (In Wordsworth's Chris. Ins., vol. i, p. 491). It would have been information to some of us to have been told in what part of God's word it is so written. He further says, " With a reasonable provision for Christian training we baptize, and when this is wanting, ' what profit is there of ' the ordinance ?" Dr. E. Calamt teaches that the water of baptism is in every instance "utterly unavailable," unless there is "either expressed or implied a vow of hearty compliance with all the demands of our holy religion." — On Vous, pp. 24, 25. Prof. Wilson, on infants dying in infancy, makes a candid acknowledgment which implies utter ignorance of the necessity or advantage of baptism in these cases. Dr. Carson having maintained " that the infants even of Abraham himself were not saved when they died in infancy, by Abraham's covenant ;" that the patriarch " waa not the spiritual father of liis own infant seed ;" that " he was the spiritual father of none among his descendants but such as believed," &c., Prof. W. maintains that the infant seed might be " saved by Abraham's covenant" without " spiritual paternity and filiation." Both however agree that " the infant dying in infancy is saved ' through the bruising of the heel of the seed of the woman.'" "But the question is," says Prof. W., •' how are these sufferings practically available ? The adult realizes a beneficial interest in them throwgh faith ; the same interest is secured to the infant in a way which we do not profess fully to understand" (Iiif. Bap., p. 426). The reasonable and scriptural deduction might here have been, that baptism, the sign of regeneration and cleansing, which the believer experiences, and in baptism pro- fesses, can be solemnly, significantly, scripturally, and profitably administered to the believer, and that baptism to infants should be omitted, and deemed unprofitable until from God we have a further revelation and commission. Pi-of. W. does not regard the observance of outward ceremonies as ever having conferred spiritual salvation. Having expatiated in glowing eloquence on the privileges into which the man-child " entered by the door of circumcision," he adds (p. 427) : " All we maintain is that the seal of tl^e covenant connected the infant seed of church members with the Lord's heritage by a bond which gave them free access to the privileges of the ancient economy, under circumstances happily calculated to impress the youthful mind, and draw the heart's first love to ' God, the God of Israel.' " Prof. Hodge maintains that " theoretically, ' infants of one or both believing parents,' and practically, ' of parents one or both of them professing faith in Christ,' " ■' ought to be baptized." And he also says that "those who, having been baptized in infancy, do not by faith and obedience discharge their baptismal vows when they are of mature age, forfeit their own birthright, and of course cannot plead its benefits for their children" fOutl., &c., p. 506). The child of a believing parent is born in the church, and has rightfully the blessings of the covenant sealed to him in baptism, but these sealed blessings he may lose in mature age by not living a Christian life ; and he at the same time deprives his children of all those benefits which he has wickedly thrown away. If the impiety commences after he has become a father, the children previously born are born in the covenant and in the church, and those subse- quently bom, neither enjoy these blessings nor any title to them. The first-born are the elect of God, ordained to life from eternity by God's secret decree, until a wrong character prove an opposite destiny ; and the latter-born are aliens from the common- wealth of Israel, strangers from the covenants of promise, the children of Satan, and 526 SUBJECTS OF BAPTISM. heirs of hell, until the evidence of parental faith in Jesus shall satisfactorily convince that there is a filial title to baptism in the enjoyment of the blessings signified thereby. If God's being a God to the believer and his seed means that his infant children are in the same covenant with the father, it seems to me that the inestimable benefits these infanta possess (and to how many of those children that are beyond infancy it reaches I cannot say), are traceable rather to parental faith than to personal baptism ; and conseqiiently that the children of parents lacking the possession of faith may trace their loss, not to the want of personal baptism, but of parental piety. Our Presbyterian brethren appear to regard themselves in possession of a revela- tion to put down none of the children of unbelievers, (if we may possibly except those who die in infancy), as in infancy among those fore-ordained to eternal Hfe, to put down none of these as in "' the kingdom of the Lord Jesus Christ, the house and family of God, out of which there is no ordinary possibility of salvation" (p. 498). They have apparently the I'evelation of an organic; unity to the extent pleaded for by Dr. Bushnell and some others. But notwithstanding the benefit in infancy possessed by the child of a believing parent, direct from the parental faith, baptism itself is of no ordinary advantage to some at least, for "besides being a sign, baptism is also the seal of grace, and therefore a present and sensible conveyance and confirmation of grace to the believer, who has the witness in himself ; and to all the elect a seal of the benefits of the covenant of grace, to be sooner or later conveyed, in God's good time" (p. 507). I must leave the reader to judge whether or not there is a drawback to the benefits of baptism in the fact that these benefits " belong to the believer before or without baptism" (p. 508) ; " that baptism does not in all cases secure the blessings of the covenant" (p. 508). If, however, it does in some, and may possibly do this in every other case, it is worth more than all the trouble both in the cases of success and failure. But Prof. Hodge also adds, " These blessings depend on two things (1) : The right use of the ordinance; (2). The secret purpose of God" (p. 508). As " the secret things belong unto the Lord our God ; but those things which are revealed belong unto us and to our children for ever," I conclude that the blessed benefits of infant baptism will be " forever" " secret," unless it please God to favour us with a new revelation. Prof. Bannerman teaches that sacraments " are means of grace to the individual who rightly partakes of them ;" that " their special virtue is more and greater than other ordinances ;" that " the nature and extent of the supernatural grace imparted in sacraments it is not possible for us to define, but they have a virtue in them beyond what reason can discover in them." We are taught, however, that " baptism in the case of all infants baptized gives to them an interest in the church of Christ as ita members," and "there seems to be reason for inferring, that, in the case of infanta regenerated in infancy, baptism is ordinarily connected with that regeneration ;" yet baptism " does not bestow the saving blessing, but brings them in after-life into contact with that blessing ; it does not constitute him a member of the kingdom of heaven, but it brings him to the very door, and bids him then knock and it shall be opened to him." His right of property obtained by baptism has a subsequent realization tln-ough his own 'personal act offaitlt . But the bereaved mother sorrowing at the tomb of her bapized little one may comfort herself tliat it " was indeed signed with the sign of Christian baptism ; and that in its case the baptism with water and the baptism of the Spirit were bound xip in one !" The above quotations are from the Bap.]Maij., 18CP (pp. 4G5, 4GG), which says that this volume on The Church of Chrlsi, edited by a son of the late Dr. B., is " published under the special sponsorship of Professor Rainey and Principal Candlish." M. Heney taught that " the water of baptism is designed for our cleansing from the spots and defilements of the flesh ;" yea, that " in baptism our names are engraven upon the breastplate of this great High Priest ;" that ' ' this, tlieu, is the elficacy of baptism ; it is putting tlie child's name into the gospel grant." Did M. Henry believe all those to be baptized of whom Christ said, " Of sucli is the kingdom of heaven ?" He also says : " Infant baptism speaks an hereditary relation to God, that comes to us by descent ;" that "baptism seals the promise of God's being to )/(,<' a God, and tliat is greatly encouraging ; but infant baptism increases the encouragement, as it assures me of God being the God of my fathers, and the God of my infancy." — Trea. o« Bnp., pp. 193, 201. A. Booth thus animadverts on the above and other quotations from M. Henry : " A Roman Catholic author teaches how the most ignorant persons may become true believers by making the sign of the cross. Now T feel myself no more disposed to believe that baptism is tlie means of conveying to infants, or to adults, all those capital blessings of which among a thousand others Mr. Henry speaks, than I do to receive this doctrine concerning the sign of tlie cross : or to adopt the notion of ADVANTAGES OE EVILS OP INFANT BAPTISM. 527 ancient pagans, when they teach, that the use of salt and water purifies the heart ; or to imagine with some cf the Roman Catholics, that baptized bells have a mighty efficacy to frighten away devils from their vicinity. Yet calculated as the language and sentiments of Mr. Henry arc, to excite in the breasts of ignorant persons a deceit- ful dependence on the baptismal rite, it is manifest from ecclesiastical records, that things of a similar kind, and often, if .possible, more grossly erroneous, have been asserted by Ptedobaptists in every age, from the time of Cyprian to the present day." —Pwd. Ex., vol. i, pp. 431, 432. Our Presbyterian bretliren are not alone in demanding that the infant offspring of a believing parent should be baptized, or Dr. Halley could not have written, that " Dr. Wardlaw nowhere notices a single blessing, which, being imparted to the children of believers, is denied to other children under religious instruction" (lie})!]), &c., p. 127). It would be easy to adduce many Presbyterians whose sentiments are in accordance with the Assembly of Divines at Westminster ; but, believing that the dissentients may be nearer to Scripture, I prefer to quote a few of these, simply addmg, in special application to previously quoted -wiiters, my agi'eement with Baxter when he says, " I cannot deny but some divines have argued weakly for infant baptism, and used some unfit phrases, and brought some misapplied Scriptures" (PL Scr. Pi:, p. 7) ; and my equal agreement with Dr. Beattie, that "' they who allow themselves to con- tradict matter of fact, will find it no easy matter to avoid contradicting themselves." — Es. on Truth, p. 170. Dr. W. Anderson, in a Speech delivered before the Synod of the United Presbyterian Church, May ICth, 1860, it being the Tricentenary of the Reformation in Scotland, said : " Our reforming ancestors imported from Rome into the Reformation not a little of the doctrine of the mysterious, mystical power of the sacraments, as administered by the forenamed authorized priesthood. I need simply mention in evidence not only Luther's dogma of consubstantiation, and Calvin's notion of a real presence in the ordinance of the Supper, but the deliverance of the Wesminster Divines in the Shorter Catechism on the subject of baptism. I have never seen nor heard of a satisfactory attempt to vindicate that deliverance from the charge of teaching baptismal regeneration." Dr. W. Cunningham, in reply to the charge of Dr. W. Anderson against the Shorter Catechism, says among other things, — " In the Catechism we have first a general description given of a sacrament, intended to embody the substance of what Scripture is held to teach or indicate, as equally and alike applicable to both sacra- ments. One leading element in this description is, that the sacraments are for the use and benefit of helicvcrs, and this principle must be kept in view in all the more specific statements afterwards made about either sacrament. This consideration as well as the whole scope of the statement, clearly implies that the description given of baptism proceeds upon the assumption that the persons who partake of it are possessed of the necessary qualifications, that is, that they arc helinvers, and do or may kno^v that they are so. This principle is a perfectly fair and natural one. It has always been a fundamental principle in the theology of Protestants, that the sacraments were instituted and intended for believers, and produce their appropriate beneficial effects only through the faith which must have previously existed, and which is expressed and exercised in the act of partaking in them. This being a fundamental and recognized principle in the Protestant theology of the sacraments, it was quite natiu-al that it should be assumed and taken into account in giving a general description of their objects and effects. And the application of this principle of interpretation to the whole deliverances of the Westminster divines iipon the subject of the sacraments in the Confession of Faith and in the Larger Catechism, as well as in the Shorter, introduces clearness and consistency into them all, whereas the disregard of it involves them in confusion, absiu'dity, and inconsistency." The sacraments " belong properly to, and can benefit only those ivho have an interest in the covenant, the J'cederaM ; and there is no adequate ground for counting upon their 528 SUBJECTS OP BAPTISM. exerting their appropriate influence in individual cases, apart from the faith which the participation in them ordinarily expresses, and which must exist before participa- tion in them be either warrantable or beneficial." — Brit, and Fo. Ev. Rev., Oct., 1860. I quite aga-ee with Dr. C, that both baptism and the Lord's Supper are "instituted and intended for believers," and that faith is or ou^ht to be " expressed and exercised in the act of partaking in them," and that faith "'ni^i,st exist hefore participa- tion in them he either warrantable or beneficial." Infant baptism is therefore a useless and sinful ceremony, putting aside, and putting itself into the place of, the divinely- ordained believers' baptism. On the way in which we ought to understand Presbyterian Standards and those of some other Eeformed churches, I both agree with and differ from the learned Doctor. I firmly believe that to apply their declarations respecting baptism to infants "involves them in confusion, absurdity, and inconsistency," although I might have hesitated to express myself quite so strongly, had I not been emboldened by my worthy brother ; but to consider these standards as referring only to believers' baptism, while they expressly teach that "the infants of such as are members of the visible church ought to be baptized," is to make confusion worse confounded, or at least to accomplish no diminution of " confusion, absurdity, and inconsistency." The standards ought to have confined baptism and its benefits to believers, or in our inability to search the heart, to those who make a credible profession of faith. It is only thus that we conform to the oracles of God, and uproot the soul-destroying error of dependence on the ojpus operatum in baptism. Let us admit with Dr. C, " that the sacraments are intended for believers, that they can be lawfully and beneficially received only when faith has been already produced ; that they imply or suppose the previous existence of the great fundamental blessings of remission and regeneration," and with Dr. C. we may say, " These vievfs GO TO THE BOOT OF THE MATTER, AND, IF FULLY AND FAITHFULLY APPLIED, WOULD PREVENT THE FEARFUL MISCHIEF, VfHICH CANNOT, WE FEAR, BE BEACHED IN ANY OTHER WAY." Dr. Guthrie. — " Prone as we of Scotland are to boast that our fathers with Knox at their head, came forth from Rome with less of her old superstitions about them than most other churches, to what else than some lingering remains of popery can we ascribe the extreme anxiety which some parents show to have baptism administered to a dying child ? Does not this look like a rag of the old faith ? It smells of the sepulchre. ... Is there not reason to suspect that at the root of this anxious and unnecessary haste, there lies some lurking feeling that baptism — if not essential — is at least serviceable to salvation, and has some connexion, near or remote, with regeneration and remission of sins ? Now, with all respect and due regard to the feelings of others, so far as they are conscientious, we cannot look upon such notions as else than the rags of an old superstition. We acknowledge no authority in these matters, but the word of God" (Gos. in Eze., pp. 231, 232). If the idea, that the bap- tism of an infant has some connexion, remote or distant, with regeneration and salvation, is a rag of the old superstition, surely it becomes the Scotch, and all others, at once to lay aside the practice. Dr. Hanna as firmly as his honoured brethren at large disbelieves in the power of baptism to convey " the regeneration or new birth of the soul," while he teaches more distinctly than most that according to Scripture, " repentance toward God, and faith in the Lord Jesus Christ," ought "to precede the baptism." — The Forty, &c., p. 2G0. Dr. P. Fairbaibn says : " To be regenerated, in the language of Scripture and the estimation of the apostles, is not to find admission merely into the Christian church ; it is to become a new creature, and enjoy that witness of the Spirit which is the pledge and foretaste of eternal life. What is said of regeneration, is equally said of faith in Christ (John iii, 18-36 : 2 Cor. v, 7, &c.)."—Eev. of Law. p. 266. Dr. Candlish says : " In many ways it may be inferred from Scripture that all dying in infany are elect, and are therefore saved." — TJie Atonem., &c. In Logan's Words, &c., p. 37. G. Gilfillan. — "I have often been asked, and asked by women with tears in their eyes and horror in their hearts, to corae away in haste and baptize dying babies, lest they should perish for ever. But, although it was with pain to my own feelings, as well as to theii-s, I have always refused" (In W. Logan's Words of Comfort, p. 76). Mr. G. is a firm believer not only in the salvation of those dying in infancy whose parents are believers, but equally in the salvation of such as have unbelieving parents. Thus according to Mr. G. and Dr. Candlish, the want of baptism shuts out of heaven 710 dying infants. Dr. Tvveedie. — " What are the benefits that are actually derived from baptism ? Let it be scrupulously observed that no benefits can bo enjoyed by any but believers." ADVANTAGES OR EVILS OP INFANT BAPTISM. 629 "As this ordinance is the doorway of entrance into the visible church, it makes us, externally, fellow- citizens with the saints, and of the household of God." "It possesses no intrinsic power apart from the faith of the receiver and the blessing of God ; the benefits which belong to it by Christ's appointment are still represented and applied to believers in the ordinance." — On Bap., pp. 25, 26, 31. D. Fraser regards the faith of the parent as secui-ing salvation for himself and his house. And he says, " In due time, and in the suitable circumstances, the promise of this family salvation shall be happily realized." — The Bap. Con. * Dr. J. Bannerman, late Professor of Apologetics and Pastoral Theology in the New College, Edinburgh, in The Church of Clirist, edited by his son, commended by Prof. Rainey, who summarizes the Contents, and by Dr. CandJish, who writes the Preface, thus teaches on baptism and its benefits : " That any outward institution may answer to our idea of a sacrament, it must be a positive appointment of God" (vol. ii, p. 6), " The first characteristic of a sacrament is, that it must be a positive institution of Christ in His church" (p. 42). This is written by one who takes us first and almost last of all to the book of Genesis for the justification of infant baptism. Had I possessed these volumes before the former part of this work was printed, I might have given quotation and animadversion now necessarily omitted. It is enough to express my conviction that ninety-nine out of a hundred of the accoimtable beings in this world have not intelligence and time to master the reasoning of the astute professor, whether, this being accomplished, they see its worthlessness or admire its depth and happy termination. But to the benefits of infant baptism. Speaking of baptism and the supper, he says, " It is carefiiUy to be noted that they pre-suppose or imply the possession of grace in the case of those who partake of them" (p. 12). " They serve to strengthen the faith of those who already believe, and add to the grace of those who previously possessed grace." They are " seals of a personal covenant between God and the believer" (p. 13). " The case of infant baptism, which is, as we shall afterwards see, in some respects exceptional, and not to be taken as completely bringing out the full and primary idea of the sacrament, we for the present put aside" (p. 16). " In partaking of the ordinance," a person " embodies in the sensible actions of the ordinance a spiritual surrender of himself to Christ, in the manner and upon the terms wliich Christ has appointed." " The outward signs of the sacrament exhibit, then, a twofold action : the believer giving himself to Christ in covenant, and Christ giving HimseK to the believer in the same covenant" (p. 17). If these are scriptural representations of Christian baptism, faith is a pre-requisite. " The seal implied in the sacrament pre-supposes justification ... is a voucher given to the believer that he is justified already" (p. 25). Baptism is " the great initiatory rite of the church . . . fitted symbolically to represent the union of the believer to Christ," the Lord's Supper setting " forth the communion of the believer with Christ." "Baptism is no exception to the ordinary principle that represents all the blessings of God's salvation as associated with faith on the part of the receivers of them" (p. 50). ' — Who does not say. Therefore " the case of infants" is not "an exceptional case," biit an excluded one ? The attempt is vain to justify the baptism of infants by inference replete with fallacy on the supposed existence of a former church, between which and the church of Christ there is supposed to be undoubted sameness, circum- cision and baptism being (p. 85) " signs and seals of the very same covenant blessings." Dr. B. admits difficulties "in the case of infants baptized," " which it may be hard to solve," and " useless to deny" (p. 94). For " the announcements of Scripture which imply the necessity of faith or of a professed faith in order to baptism, are framed upon the principle of adult baptism, not upon the exceptional case of infant baptism" (p. 105). He imagines a state of things, the baptizing of infants, admits that it is not mentioned, allows that recorded facts are opposed to the supposition, and fancies the reason of silence to be the universal knowledge and approval of the practice ! Further, " It is very plain, and very important to remember, that the only true and complete type of baptism is found in the instance of those subjects of it who are capable both of faith and repentance, not in the instance of those subjects of it who are not capable of either. The Bible model of baptism is adult baptism, and not infant" (p. 109). What a pity that there should in Christians be such stern opposition to "the Bible model of baptism," and that the following three benefits should be declared to result from the baptism of infants ! " 1. — Baptism, in the case of aU infants baptized, gives • The extract at p. 526 from Dr. B., taken from the Baptist Magazine on reading it there, wa3 not remembered when these extracts were subsequently taken from the purchased volumes while thia work was passing through the press. 530 SUBJECTS OF BAPTISM. to them an interest in the church of Christ, as its members" (p. 112). But many Psedobaptists deny infant membership in the churches of Christ. Many other things than the baptizing of infants might tend to increase our interest in their welfare ; and their baptism requires that this "be a positive institution of Christ in His church." " 2. — Baptism in the case of all infants baptized, gives them a right of property in the covenant of grace ; which may in after life, by means of their personal faith, be supplemented by a right of possession." If baptism gives the right at some future time to believe on the Lord Jesus and be saved, it is not an ordinary privilege. I do not read, however, that Paul thus spoke of right to salvation on the part of the jailor and his house, when he said, Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved, and thy house. Their baptism is acknowledged by Dr. B. to have been given them after the pre-requisite and saving faith. I do not read that God so loved the ba'ptizcd world that He gave His only begotten Son that whosoever believeth on Him should not perish. True we read, " He that believeth and is baptized shall be saved." But this language is admitted to teach in accordance with every other scriptural reference to baptism, yirsi, believe, secondly, be baptized. Without doubt the Judge of all the earth will do right, and will not mistake as to right of property and right of possession, although we may be perplexed how the unbaptized infant ever obtains the right to own or possess spiritual blessings. There is here no supplemental note from author, editor, or commender, informing us whether infants dying unbaptized lose the heavenly inheritance, or whether they have the possession without the right of property therein, or whether the unbaptized infant if spared, will through subsequent faith in Christ acquire at once the right to own and possess the purchased inheritance of blessings, and baptism be in such a case the obedient avowal of the experienced faith in Jesus. These subtle distinctions and abstruse reasonings by which our Caledonian brethren quiet conscience in the continued practice of infant baptism will sometime be very differently viewed by them or by ourselves. We do not yet believe that, " what the Word of God addressed to the intelligent and responsible adult ia, that baptism is when administered to the unconscious and irresponsible infant" (p. 115) ! We understand God's preached word to be like its faithful preachers, who are the savour of life unto life, or of death unto death. Is baptism such to the unconscious and irresponsible? We have not learned that baptism puts the infant "into the covenant with his God" (p. 115), and that in subsequent years having through grace believed, he may be found " with the charter of right [baptism, I suppose] in hia hand, making good his right, not of property merely, but of personal possession in all the blessings that are written in it" (p. 116) ! On baptism as a " present seal" in the case of the adult believer, and "a prospective seal" in the case of the infant, "in connexion with the faith which he has not at the moment, but which he may have afterwards" (p. 116), I will not now animadvert, but only observe, that in preferring the term sign to that of seal, we deny not the presence of God and the blessing of the Spirit in connexion with every obedient and believing observance of this ordinance. We believe in the adaptation of this Divine institution, through our bodily senses to instruct and impress our minds ; and to sanctify and comfort our hearts, to strengthen our faith, to increase our love, and invigorate every grace, by bringing before our minds, in connexion with the blessed working of God's Spii-it, the imspeakable gift of God, and the inestimable blessings of redemption tlirougli the atoning death of Jesus, His glorious resuiTCction, His efficient mediation, and the renewing of the Holy Ghost. But " 3. — There seems to be reason for inferring that, in the case of infants regenerated in infancy, baptism is ordinarily connected with regeneration" (p. 117). There is sup- posed reason to believe that God's secret decree to regenerate the elect who are baptized has its realization, at least in these infants, at the time of their baptism ! Om* learned brother divides infants into throe classes. First, those baptized who are never regenerated, and never have "the right of possession." Secondly, those baptized that are afterwards regenerated, to whom ivhcn regenerated^ baptism becomes " the seal, as it had previously been the sign, of the covenant." If our learned brethren know not whether the baptized infant be regenerated or not, how can they talk of administering to infants the sign and seal of the new covenant blessings ? For it is but admitted, thirdly, that there are " those infants baptized with water in infancy, and also regenerated in infancy" (p. 118). As the Anglican chm-ch in the ordered Burial service sends to heaven all the baptized who have not committed suicide and have not been excommunicated, giving thanks that God has been pleased to take these to Himself in whatever wickedness they have died, so our Presbyterian brethren give the seal of the covenant to every child having a believing parent, feeling assured that some of them are in the covenant. Moreover, Dr. B. encourages the belief that there .are infants who die in infancy unbaptized whom God regenerates and saves, and that we may hope in the salvation of all such. ADVANTAGES OE EVILS OP INFANT BAPTISM. 531 Concerning the inconsistencies of P^clobaptists and contradictions of themselves and one another on the privileges of the children of believers ; on their hereditary advantages ; on the benefits of baptism as introducing to blessings, such as adoption into God's family and church membership, which on being born they possessed, and were therefore qualified for the ordinance ; on being introduced into the church by baptism, and yet having no real membership nor admission to the Lord's table ; on baptism as efi'ecting and not effecting a change in relative position, relative holiness, real relation to God and heaven, sin and holiness, Satan and hell ; on its present, its solely prospective, and merely potential advan- tages ; on the advantages of infant baptism on condition of sponsorial engagements ; on condition of a primary benefit to parents, on condition of faith being possessed by the infant ; on condition of baptism or its privilege being subsequently improved or faithfully used by the baptized infant ; on baptism as belonging to the infants and Httle children of church members only, of any that are hopefully converted, or of all irrespective of parental character ; and on baptism as belonging or not belonging to the entire household, volumes of quotations, affecting most if not all denominations of Paedobaptists, might be given in illustration and evidence. Well might Mr. G, Ewing say, " It unfortunately happens that the ordinance of baptism has come into Protestant churches, with an uncommonly large share of the superstitions and absurdities of the church of Rome." — On Bap., p. 10. The following fi'om an American paper indicates some spread of light, and a small step towards the reception of baptism with personal convic- tions, and a good conscience towards God : " The Presbyterian Banner says : * The General Assembly has left the reception of private members, who have conscientious scruples about the baptism of their children, optional with the sessions. Sessions may receive such, or may not, as the facts in the case may warrant.' " — Mor. Star, June 20, 1866. Congregational Paedobaptists difier widely from each other on the importance and advantages of infant baptism ; and possibly some hold sentiments on its advantages and insignificance that make them to difier from themselves. A writer in the Patriot (July, 1866) teaches that the church by a symbol takes the baptized children to itself, to train for Clu'ist, and that "this ordinance does confer the highest privilege and blessing that human souls devoutly gifted can confer on their fellow-beings." This is claiming for the rite more than is claimed for it by the Broad Churchmen, and by some Independents, who teach that baptism " repre- sents at once the new relations to God into which all mankind are now brought by Jesus Christ, and the duty which the church of Christ Sssumea towards all men, willing to communicate its truth, and bring the blessing of salvation to all to whom it can be imparted." A confemng of the highest privelege and blessing, unless theii- bestowment by man be a figment, includes much more than a representing of any relation of man to God, or any duty of the church to itself or the world. Dr. Hallet and some other Pfedobaptiat Dissenters have taught that we are made discjplea by baptism, and that our Saviour's command to disciple all nations, baptizing 532 SUBJECTS OF BAPTISM. them, &c., is a command to disciple by baptizing ; yet they would not acknowledge the ungodly to be Christians, or fit persons for union with the disciples of Christ in the breaking of bread in remembrance of Christ, and other privileges of Cliristian discipleship. Dr . H. believes in the utter inutility of infant baptism without subsequent training. Yet if it made any one a disciple of Christ, if it accomplished in any instance the purpose of Jesus in His commission to make disciples, it would prove of infinite utility. Dr. H. also emphatically teaches that discipKng must be accomplished by baptizing and teaching. I agree with Dr. H., that, " If the doctrine of justification by faith be true, the party concerned, as soon as he believes on Christ, obtains all those good effects, although he has never been baptized ;" and that " without faith, however he may have been baptized, he can never obtain them" (Ooncj. Lee, vol. x, pp. 84,85). In speaking of persons being justified by faith, we are not speaking of infants, but of those capable of believing. Dr. H. also speaks of baptism as a sign of " the inward cleansing of the Spirit" (vol. x, p. 56), and " the proper recognition of a member of Christ's kingdom." — p. 64. Dr. Williams says of baptism : " Thereby the subject is translated, ministerially, from a state of distance to a state of nearness, is separated from the world and joined to the universal church ; is thereby legally entitled to all the other external privilegea of the gospel dispensation, of which the subject is capable, this being the rite of initiation into them." Also, says he, "Ami a baptized person .p He hath put His own name upon me : and His language in effect is, ' I will be thy God, thy Father, thy everlasting portion.' " What quotation from the Book of Common Prayer, if relied on by the baptized and confirmed, is more delusive and soul-destroying than the language of Dr. W. and many others on the benefits of Christian baptism ? Elsewhere Dr. W. says : "We overlook the nature of privileges, if we conclude that because anything is a privilege to one, it must bo so to another ; for if there be no answerable qualification, no subjective suitableness, no capacity of possessing, it can be in those circumstances no privilege." And yet in another place CAntix>. Ex., vol. i, p. 188) he teaches that baptism merely exhibits blessings which are bestowed according " to the sovereign pleasure of the God of means." And in another place (vol. ii, p. 296), speaking of his benefits from being baptized in infancy, he says, " Didst thou confer a legal right to these spiritual and everlasting blessings, by a deed of gift, directed, signed, sealed, and delivered tome, for my use and service, when I deserved no pity?" Tea, says he (p. 300), " I was then constituted a visible member of Christ;" " I waa then visibly ingrafted into Christ" (p. 301). "I was ina,ie a, felloiv-citizen -mth the saints, and of the household of God." After speaking of his blessed relation to the Holy God, the Holy Saviour, the holy church, and the holy angels, he says (p. 309) that his " holy baptism was a solemn and express entrance on all these holy relations and connections." And Dr. Halley speaks of him and Dr. Payne as persons " who thought carefully on every subject of which they wrote, and who therefore wrote on no subject without exhibiting it in its just and full proportions" (vol. xv, p. 330). But that there are exceptions to this characteristic of Dr. Williams, I believe as firmly as that there is inconsistency in Dr. Halley, who speaks of baptism as " a sign of external privilege," and who teaches that " baptism is nothing else" (vol. xv, p. 52), and who teaches also that it is a sign of "the inward cleansing of the Spirit" (vol. x, p. 56). Nor do I believe that baptism can be only the sign of external privilege, and also make a person a disciple of Christ ; nor indeed that baptism represents regeneration or an "inward cleansing" which we are to .suppose is either experienced or not experienced, which at some time may be, or which may never be experienced by the baptized ; or a cleansing which is exiDorienced either by the baptized, by the adminis- trator, by sponsor, by parent, by spectator, by the church, or by one of the child's remote progenitors. Some of these hypotheses Dr. H. would repudiate as strongly as myself. Mr. Gamble, on baptism, in reply to the question, " What is the benefit it confers- on the child ?" says : " It is a sign that children are subjects of the Saviour's kingdom, whilst it typifies the cleansing influences which they need to purify their souls" (8cr. Bap., p. 207). I see no absurdity in this. If God had thus taught, I would so believe and act. I admit with him, that "if God has instituted a sign," we are not "at liberty to dispense with the use of that sign, because all the blessings which it typifies might be enjoyed without it" (p. 208) ; while I also maintain that we are not at liberty to use the divinely-instituted sign at any other time or in any other way than as divinely appointed. He says that baptism " is a symbolical representation of the spiritual purity required by every child, and of the merciful provision which the gospel has made to regenerate and sanctify his fallen nature" (p. 212). In which part of the gospels or epistles in the New Testament are we thus taught ? Dr. Wardlaw considers " that the emblematical signification of baptism is to be ADVANTAGES OE EVILS OF INFANT BAPTISM. 533 found in the purifying nature of the element employed in it— in the cleansing- virtue of water," that thus baptism " denotes the removal of sin, in its guilt, and in its pollution," that this is at least the principal, if not even the exclusive import of the institution," which he conceives to be intended for the infants of believing' parents, although he admits that the words of the institution give no intimation of this. He says, " Much has been said by Pasdobaptists of the rights and privileges of infants, and of the impropriety of abridging their privileges and abstracting their rights, in refusing them baptism. But the right and the privileges are not worth the contend- ing for, unless the ordinance be connected with parental instruction, discipline, and prayer" (On Inf. Ba])., p. 163). As the instruction and discipline of infants are beyond parental capability, it would seem that infant baptism cannot be immediately beneficial. Elsewhere he thus cautions : " Let all beware of trusting, in any measure, for their salvation to any outward observance." Again: "It is evident that the pouring of a little water on an infant's face can, in itself, do it no good ; and as littla would the immersion of its whole body. The mere external recognition of its connection with the Christian community can be of no benefit, except as associated with subsequent teaching." Again : " I gladly admit the fact that salvation is not confined to the seed of believers. I delight in the conviction of the salvation of all who die in infancy." Mr. Macallan remarks, " that this disclaimer, as it respects his own private opinion, does not in the smallest degree remove the objection from this popular but flimsy argument, that, by refusing baptism to infants, the Baptist theory excludes infants from the covenant of grace, in virtue of which alone salvation flows to the human race. — Dr. Wardlaw's complaint of unfairness against Mr, Birt, is founded on the mis-conception that what Mr. B. alleges against the Paadobaptist system was a charge against Pajdobaptists themselves." — Oil Bap., pp. 39, 40. J. Burnet maintains that baptism "must teach, or it is useless ;" and that since it teaches " that all are by nature depraved, we understand Christianity fhen in connection with the ordinance of baptism ; but we understand it only because wo extend it to infants" (Twen. Lee, p. 90). What a reason for administering a positive rite ! Mr. B. held it to be absurd to baptize adult \mbelievers. Are ungodly adults without depravity ? But children that have one believing parent " are to be regarded as ceremonially holy, and therefore eligible to the Christian ordinance of infant baptism!" — p. 92. G. Clayton had not a doubt that it will at the last day appear, " that the seeds and principles of the better life were, in some instances, infused into the mind at the very hour when baptismal water was externally applied in the name of the Father, &c." Dr. E. Vaughan. — " I see a great beauty myself in infant baptism. I am interested in that rite ; but I think we are becoming ritualists if we feel that we could not do our diaty by our children without that rite." We agree with Dr. V. that duty to children can be performed without baptizing them, and that " the thing signified is a hundred- fold more to be coveted than the thing typifying it :" and wonder not that Dr. Carson should write : " When Peter saw that it was a good thing to be washed by Christ, he must have more washing than Christ commanded. Just so with our Ptedobaptist brethren. Christ commands believers to be baptized ; they cry out, ' Not ourselves only, but our little ones.' " Dr. Bogue's opinion on baptizing a child near to death appears in the Life of the Eev. Eichard Knill. Mr. Knill has left it on record that " Having received ordination, he found some new services demanded of him. ' The first,' he says, ' was to baptize a little child who was supposed to be near death. I at first refused, but afterwads applied to the tutor for advice. The dying cliild, said the doctor, will neither be better nor worse for it, but you may be a blessing to the distressed parents : go, sir, and may the Divine blessing accompany you." Of course he could not have visited this family, and been a blessing to the distressed parents without baptizing the child ! Or apart from the need of removing parental ignorance and prepossessions regarding baptism, needed in this case of an afflicted child, no Baptist minister could have afforded equal consolation ! Greville Ewing has commended the pouring of water on the face as baptism, that "it may thus not only wet the surface as a figure of washing, but be drunk into the mouth as the emblem of a principle of new life and of continuing support and refreshment." Mr. Thorn has spoken more lengthenedly and strongly than most on the supposed evils of baptizing only credible professors of faith in Christ, and on the supposed advantages of infant baptism. He speaks of our " doctrine" as that " which would drive the youthful offspring of believers into a directly opposite, a less favourable, and, relatively, a degraded position to that which they sustained" " during, at least, ftftecA 534 SUBJECTS OF BAPTISM. hundred years" before Christ. The privileges of infants— as members of a nation in which sometimes piety and sometimes ungodliness prevailed, which without authority is confoundingly designated the church of God, and is spoken of as the pattern in membership after which the church of Christ must be composed — are by our opponents greatly exaggerated and misrepresented. We deny both the premises and inferences of Mr. T. respecting his supposed church of the previous fifteen hundred years. And for the status of infants in the church of Christ, as well as for their baptism, we lack the authority of Divine revelation. But to what place does Mr. T. suppose that we drive children ? The outer circle of Christian congregations, to which the ungodly belong, is the region to which Mr. T. assigns them, while he talks of the Baptists as " shutting out the purest patterns and fairest specimens of meetness for the church and heaven" (pp. 73, 74). We deem it a duty with their dawning intelligence to communicate scriptural instruction, and to attempt, under God's guidance and blessing, prayerfully and earnestly sought, their earliest possible acceptance of Christ, and then as believers their association vnth believers in the church of Christ. I do not maintain that in us there are no imperfections, and that there is never unauthorized delay in regard to baptism and reception into the church ; but I maintain that it is not a blessing to children or any others, to be baptized or received into the church previous to the experience of faith in the Redeemer. Neither were infants in the cloud and in the sea, nor are present baptized infants " initiated into a state of higher relative holiness than thoy were in before" (p. 46). Mr. T. says, "We know that all are born in sin and shapen in iniquity — as well the children of real saints as the children of open sinners" (p. 87) ; and he asks those wh9 would baptize "only the children of godly and regenerated persons," who he is confident would " instruct even the seed of infidels and practical heathens," " why may they not undergo the ceremony which ministerially and officially constitutes and recognizes them young disciples, and entitles them to a Christian education" (p. 89) ! Why not iadeed, if we can thus make children the disciples of Christ, and if only thus we can " feel justified in teach- ing the youthful progeny of unrenewed persons the doctrines, duties, and privileges of the gospel?" And especially if, as Mr. T. asserts, " Christ's law is, first baptize, and then teach" (p. 89) ! Indeed the advantages of infant baptism cannot be told; for "Abraham's personal faith was sufficient to secure circumcision, with all its social and spiritual blessings, to his children, and to their seed after them." Thse social and SPIRITUAL blessings flowing to all the circumcised posterity of Abraham from his faith, mightily raises our previously exalted conceptions of the power of faith in the father of the faithful ! That baptism is in the place of circumcision, but a much greater blessing, who doubts ? _ Further, while infant baptism is so efficacious in making young disciples, it is commended to the kind consideration of Baptists, that it does not pledge " the little folks to become Congregationalists instead of Wesleyans, or Episcopalians instead of Presbyterians ; for they are baptized only to Christ, or to His religion generally" (p. 165) ! " We see that liberty of conscience is not destroyed by infant baptism ; that the parties can act as freely as if they had never undergone this ceremony" (p. 165). I fear this freedom at maturity " to be dipped by some Baptist minister," if they should deem this a duty, extends very, very much further. If infant baptism guaranteed that the young "become Christians instead of Turks, Heathens, or Jews," with whatever denomination of Christians the young might unite, it would by some of us be held in very different estimation. But we believe no more in an infant's pledge expressed by sponsors or implied without them, than we do in the introduction of infants by baptism " to great religious blessings and obligations" (p. 240). I deny not that baptism received in intelligence and willinghood mvolves additional obligation to walk in God's commands, but I deny that infant baptism introduces "to great roUgious blessings and obligations" (p. 240). Mr. T. admits that "the great point thelirst preachers aimed at, was to persuade the people, that the Messiah had actually come into the world, and had died for their salvation. This being done, baptism unto Christ was at once administered to them. And this perfectly accords with the com- mission" (p. 201). This perfectly accords with the commission which elsewhere, he tells us, yfsisfirat to baptize, and then to teach ! And notwithstanding the pretended ri^ht to instruction and initiation to religious privileges given by baptism, he also (p. 266) says : " To this wicked world, the Lord has given His word — a great blessing to us now and every way ; as were the oracles of God to the Hebrews, in ancient ages. He affords the worst of men the means of grace — a preached gospel, and the privilege of uniting in prayer and praise, in His holy temple." I believe with Mr. T. that those who maintain " that water-baptism seals, makes sure all the spiritual blessings of regeneration," " may claim near kindred with Pusey and the Pope" (p. 343) ; and I yet think that his induction of children by baptism ADVANTAGES OE EVILS OF INFANT BAPTISM. 535 into inestimable privileges is, " like persons promising you wonderful benefits froui their charms or spells" (p. 344). Yet Mr. T. says of baptism and circumcision, that " when applied to persons, they secured to them the external means of obtaining tlio blessings themselves, but did nothing more" (p. 352). This is surely no inconsiderable accomplishment ; for unless there bo internal means of obtaining spii'itual blessings, those having neither circumcision nor baptism are shut out from pardon and heaven. But this good man, for such I fii-mly believe him to have been, is as winding as a ser- pent in his statements on the benefits of infant baptism. In the next page he thus speaks of its benefits to those who comply with its claims. " Circumcision and baptism typified great and glorious spiritual blessings ; and they introdiiced all, who complied with their claims, to many advantages and consolations for soul and body — for time and eternity. Tlicy induct us to a grand dispensation of blessedness, for which we should be heartily and unfeignedly grateful, and of which om- children should not be deprived." But again : " Before persons can canonically attend the sacred school of Divine wisdom, to learn and become conversant with the sublime and gracious mysteries of our holy religion, they must be formally consecrated to such a noly scholarship, and be symbolically cleansed from the pollutions of their previous natural condition" (pp. 353, 379, 380). "As, then, all children are born in sin and shapen in iniquity, are as ignorant of God and of their duty to Him as the brutes that perish, and have within them all the latent elements and principles of a siibseqiiently increasing vicious impiety ; they too must be formally purified and ofiiciaUy introduced to the privileges of a religious education. If baptism must precede Christian training, in the case of adult idolaters and polluted heathens, because of their uncleanness, it should also precede the regular instruction of all destined to be young disciples in the laws and religion of Christ" (p. 380). Infant baptism "is simply a dedication of the young to Christ," " as vessels were consecrated to the service of the temple. It ia ostensibly initiating them to the rights and privileges of Christian instniction and pastoral superintendence" (p. 427). If these statements were correct, how much of teaching must be surreptitious and uncanonical ! But infants are not only brought by baptism into the outer court of God's temple, they are " baptized and brought into a visible covenant relation to the general body of His [Christ's] followers;" and there is a "recognition of them as parts of the great Christian community" (p. 449). Does " the great Christian community," the general body of Christ's followers, consist of the recognized children of God and the acknowledged children of the devil ? And are all these " of the kingdom of heaven ?" Must infants also receive the rite of initiation into the kingdom of God, because being of the kingdom of God they are fit subjects for this rite ? Wc have been told by Mr. T. that, " to undergo this rite was deemed equal to being enlisted into the army of Christ, the Captain of salvation ; or to be inducted to the association of great and good men ; or to be enrolled as pupUs in the school of Divine wisdom and knowledge ; or to be written as expectants of advantage in some benevolent institution" (p. 467) ! Further, " Children and young people, informed that they were baptized or discipled unto Christ, in their infancy, by beloved parents, may be as much influenced by the communication, as though they had originally been well informed of, and consenting parties to, the rite itself" (p. 481) ! The possibility of deceiving the young and the more elderly in regard to obligations we do not doubt ; and wc believe as firmly in the condemnation of doing evil that good may come. Mr. T., at page 538, says, "We contend that baptism does effect a change in the child's relation to the church," and at p. 548, teaching that Baptists baptize "into the special society of believers," not into " the congregation generally, but the congregation in particular. On the other hand, when we baptize, it is into the general body of worshippers, or to the means and benefits of the training schools of the gospel;" and into this "no one can legitimately enter, but through baptism" (p. 548). Subsequently baptism is an " initiation of them to the church or congregation of professors of the gospel," without which " children have no legitimate claim to religioiis education, or to a seat in the school of heavenly instruction" (p. 605) ! The reader will not wonder that Mr. T., if unable to remove from parents " every doubt or difficulty in the matter," should recommend "that they shoiild give their children the benefit of the doubt, and certainly have them baptized to Christ — formally introduced into His school, and numbered with His young disciples" (p. 606). Indeed, " what other act besides prayer can be equal" to this ! As all Divine teaching is unscriptural " without an official religious matriculation," that is, without baptism, because not " according to the order which God has laid down — first, baptize, and then teach them" (p. 605) — it cannot be expected that the same blessing from on high will attend the instructing of the unbaptized as of those that have received the Divine matricula,tion. And be it Huderstood, baptism is " an induction of persons, adult or infant, to the public teacl^... 636 SUBJECTS OF BAPTISM. ings and con^-egational privileges of Christianity" (p. G12) ! Parents may baptize doubtfully, but " by this relative act" the children are obliged, unless they feel *' unquestionably" that they are free, through the parental act being wrong (p. 614), Through baptism they have been " entitled to be designated Christians, in the wide and general sense of that term," and have been " recognized as young disciples of the Son of God," and to complete the deception they are bound to persevere in the way to heaven, the blessed goal to which the arrival of aU is of supreme importance. Mr. Thorn's crudities on infant baptism have a more extensive acceptation than some may suppose. In the " Principles of Faith and Practice held by the Church at Queen Street, Leeds" — by how many other churches held I know not — it is asserted that baptism is "to be administered to little cliildren or adults, as a sign that they are thereby admitted to all the privileges of Christian teaching" (Manual, 1869, p. 8). What is the difference between the above and Mr. Thorn's idea on the benefit of baptism, that it gives a canonical introduction to Christian teaching, that having baptized a person, young or old, we may then according to Divine order, tell such a one that God has so loved the world as to give His only begotten Son on its behalf ? M. TowGOOD, whoso work has a prefatory commendation by Drs. Bogue, J. Pye Smith, T. Eaffles, and eight other learned men, teaches that the baptized children of believers dying in infancy have in the state of discipline or probation into which it may be presumed dying infants pass fOn Bap., pp. 15, 16), more advantageous and favourable circumstances than are assigned to those dying unbaptized. Dr. Ward LAW said to Dr. W. Anderson : "I regret deeply that in controversy with the Baptists I was seduced into the use of expressions savouring of a limitation of the salvation of deceased infants to the seed of the righteous. I abhor the thought ; and am persuaded that this question of the extent of the atonement will yet turn on the question of Infant Salvation." — In W. Logan's Words of Comfort, p. 35. Dr. J. Campbell, on some of the benefits, evils, and inconsistencies of Paedobap- tism, will be quoted under Concluding Remarks. H. W. Beecheb, when the conscience is not against infant baptism, recommenda it " on the groimd that there is .or may be benefit in it. The child is not affected by it, but in presenting the child for baptism the parent says, ' I will bring up this child in the nurture and admonition of the Lord' " (Scr. on Mark x, 13-16). Thus is the child benefitted according to Mr. B., who requires that one parent be a Christian. While one portion of the Independent or Congregational denomination believes ia scriptural authority for baptizing any human being within the limits of possibility, and without a certain kind of profanity, whether the subjects be conscious or unconscious, the evident children of God or the devil ; while another portion believes in authority from Scripture to baptize believers and their children ; while a third party beUeves that all children that are offered for baptism should be baptized, but no adults without a credible profession of faith ; and while a fourth party beheves that without the authority of precept or precedent from Divine revelation for infant baptism, it can neverthelss be defended (Brit. Quar. Rev., Jany., 1869) ; so on the amount of advantage derivable from baptism there is equal diversity of opinion. There probably is not greater difference among the Independents on the' nature, benefits, and evils of infant baptism as practised by themselves than there is on their own declaration of faith, which reads thus : " XVIII. They believe in the perpetual obligation of baptism and the Lord's Supper. The former to be administered to all converts to Christianity and their children." Yet the Congi-egational Union, in May, 1867, while arranging for the reception of Union churches, resolved, " That this assembly, while adhering to the terms of ' The Declaration of Faith and Church Order' on the subject of infant baptism, and maintaining the right of the Union to take any action in conformity with the principles expressed which may at any time appear to it to bo expedient," &c. How many Congregational churches theoretically accept ADVANTAGES OR EVILS OP INFANT BAPTISM. 637 baptism as a Divine institution for "converts to Christianity and their childi'en," and practically thus regard it, refusing the ordinance to every child in whose parents or parent there is not at least credible evidence of conversion ? Wesleyan sentiment, as explained and enforced by R. Watson and others, is that baptism is a seal and confirmation as well as a sign. Hence E. Watson teaches that the sacraments " are seals as well as signs, that is, that they afford on the part of God pledges of grace and salvation ; that as a covenant has two parties, our external acts in receiving the sacraments are indications of certain states and dispositions of our mind with regard to God's covenant, without which none can have a personal participation in its benefits, and so the sacrament is useless when these are not found ; that there are words of institution ; and a promise also by which the sign and the thing signified are connected together" (Ins., vol. iv, p. 388). If this is correct, unconscious babes, and unrenewed adults are not ordained subjects of baptism. Infants know nothing of " states and dispositions of our mind with regard to God's covenant." To them therefore baptism is " useless." Mr. W. proceeds to teach that the sacraments " are not signs merely of the grace of God to us, but of our obligations to Him." "They are also seals. A seal is a confirming sign, or, according to theological language, there is in a sacrament a signum signifcans, and a signum confirmans ; the former of which is said significare, ' to notify or to declare ;' the latter, ohsignare, ' to set one's seal to,' ' to witness.' As, therefore, the sacraments, when considered as signs, contain a declaration of the same doctrines and promises which the written word of God exhibits, but addressed by a significant emblem to the eenses ; so also as seals, or pledges, they confirm the same promises which are assured to us by God's own truth and faithfulness in His word (which is the main ground of all affiance in His mercy), and by His indwelling Spirit by which we are sealed, and have in our hearts the earnest of our heavenly inheritance" (p. 389). If this is correct, the design and the benefit of baptism are confined to believers. In unconsciousness it is impossible " to set one's seal to," " to witness." What infant has ever prof essed or evidenced the possession of God's " indwelling Spirit," " the earnest of our heavenly inheritance?" " God has added these ordinances," says Mr. W., " not only to bring His merciful purposes towards us in Christ to mind, but constantly to assure us that those who believe in Him shall be and are made partakers of His grace. These ordinances are a pledge to them, that Christ and His benefits are theirs, whilst they are required at the same time, by faith, as well as by the visible sign, to signify their compliance with His covenant, which may be called ' setting to their seal' " (pp. 389, 390), This language explicitly teaches the benefit of baptism and the Lord's Supper, and their exclusive adaptation and advantage to believers. Who else do signify their compliance with God's covenant ? Much more might be quoted from Mr. W. in accordance with the preceding. Were other records consistent with these, we should not read that " to the infant, baptism is a visible reception into the covenant of grace," that to the infant " it conveys the present blessing of Christ," and that "it secm-es, too, the gift of the Holy Spirit, in those secret spkitual influences by which the actual regeneration of those children who die in infancy is effected ; and which are a seed of life in those who are spared." If baptism communicates the " seed of life," how can any, young or old, if unbaptized, be heirs of glory ? All this should be reserved for our AngUcan Sacramentarians and Papists, however accordant it may be thought with the words of Wesley, that " if infants are guilty of original sin, in the ordinaiy way they cannot be saved, unless this is washed away by baptism," and that "in an ordinary way there is no other means of entering into the church, or into heaven," Let it be left to Canon Liddon 538 SUBJECTS OF BAPTISM. and his brethren to Siiy, "You have received by and in baptism the germ, the gift of life, you have but to develope it," Is the germ of Hfe given without a " response of the inner man to the love and work of God ?" without " a receptive state or condition ?" Who knows that the germ or seed of hfe is given, when its possession is incapable of being evidenced ? Whitfield, in some things opposed to Wesley, considers John iii, 5 to urge the absolute necessity of baptism. Yes, where it may be had ; but how God will deal with persons unbaptized," says he, in all humility, "we cannot tell." — Works, vol. iv, pp. 355, 356. R. Thornley Smith, in a Discourse on God's Promises to the Children of His People, teaches parents to bring their children to baptism "with the expectation that Christ will honour His own ordinance, and bestow on them the grace of His Holy Spirit." He teaches them that " potentially children become in baptism God's children, and we do not hesitate to say that through the atoning sacrifice of Christ the Holy Spirit imparts to them the germ of a Divine nature which . . . need never be lost, but will ultimately ripen into the fulness of the life of God." I know not any Baptist who entertains such exalted conceptions of the efficacy and consequent importance of baptism as Messrs. Watson, Wesley, and Smith. And yet we are they who make too much of baptism ! Some of our Methodist and Congregational, our Presbyterian and even our Episcopalian Christian brethren will smile contemptuously, or sigh sorrow- fully, on seeing this volume, if perchance it is seen by them, as another proof of our excessive magnifying of this ordinance, and in assurance of their own correct estimate of the nature, efiicacy, and importance of this ordinance, will refuse to read this, or aught else written otherwise than in advocacy of their own views ! I will however, quote a little from one branch or another of the beloved and honoured though erring Wesleyan family. I have read in Wesleyan Missionary Notices, that " a baptism of adults from among the heathen produces, under all circumstances, a peculiar and solemn impression." This is the testimony of others respect- ing the immersion of believers in our own country. A churchman when speaking of another ceremony says, "No ceremony can be more impressive than this, if we except the baptism of adults" (Brewster's Lee, p. 360). Dr. Stacey says that things substitutionary for or supplementary to Divine appointment, are "not only superfluous, but by false dependence generated by them, absolutely pernicious" (The Sac, p. 15). I would also apply to the baptism of infants, in its necessary tendency and unchecked results, his remarks on Confirmation : "It begets a faith without truth and a hope without object, blinds by an assumption it cannot sustain, and deceives by a promise it cannot fulfil" (p. 13). Instead of being scriptural, and beneficially efficacious, "it is not only destitute of foundation, but is a mockery, a delusion, and a snare." — p. 13. J. Farrar teaches, in the words of E. Watson, that baptism " is both as to infants and to adults, the sigrn and pledge of that inward grace which, though modified in its operations by the difference of their circumstances, has respect to and flows from, a covenant relation to each of the three Persons in whose one name they are baptized — {icceptauce by the Father, uwion with Christ . , . and the communioq of the ADVANTAGES OE EVILS OF INFANT BAPTISM. 539 •Holy Ghost" (Bib. Die. Axt.Bap.). Whatever pledges these spiritual and inestimable blessings, whether to infants or adults, and especially if to both, is of no ordinary advantage and importance. W. J. SHREVk^sBUBT is SO shrewd as to observe, " It would surely have been rather puzzling to the apostle to have ascertained, when he was going on with the baptism of the family, at which child to stop" (Inf. Bap., p. 155). I admit that all trouble of discrimination would cease, were the test of credible profession abandoned, and were persons admitted indiscriminately to baptism, membership, and the Lord's Supper ; and I wonder not that he should say, "What a monstrous thing would it have been for instance, for a man to have lieen a Christian bishop, and his children still unbaptized heathens ;" " not suffered to bring them within the pale of the church !" but with the children as with the fathers " the whole work must begin de novo" (Inf. Bap., pp. 161, 163) ! Should we not have had the benefit of wonderful ease if God had arranged it, and informed us, that everything to the world's end is right with the posterity of a believing parent ! There would then have been no "new generations of heathens" in Christian families. It is something, however, that baptized children are not heathens, and that for these (p. 242) parents have " a special right to plead for the fulfilment of all the covenant promises of which their baptism is both a sign and a seal to their souls !" — But did Mr. S. baptize all in every believers' family ? Dr, Stacet, when speaking directly on the benefits of infant baptism, I cannot quote with entire approval. He teaches that " the thought of childien growing tip Christians is seldom entertained, even as a possibility, nothwithstanding parents give them to the Lord in baptism ; and thus in their earliest infancy, have impressed upon them the seal which attests their interest in Christ, and consecrates them to His service" (The Church, &c., p. 172). If the " interest in Christ" precedes the attesta- tion, of what use to the unconscious child is the attestation ? If baptism effected this, there would be a weighty reason for the baptism of all infants. " True spiritual life," Bays Dr. S., " is, in every case, the sole gift of God. But domestic education may as well be the instrument of it as anything else, and with all the greater suitableness, as, from the relation between parent and child — the almost identity of one with the other — it is naturally more favourable to its origination" (p. 173). " Domestic education" is of inestimable importance ; but if spiritual life is attested in infancy, can domestic education lead to its "origination?" He has spoken of the sacraments as forma eymbolically expressive of the fundamental facts and verities of the gospel, and means by which a personal interest in its benefits is publicly recognized, and oneness with Christ in fellowship with His disciples is ostensibly enjoyed (Sac, p. 3). Further, " The life may be secretly given, and remain like buried seed in the good ground of the youthful heart. It must, of course, exist under conditions agreeing with the age of the subject, and will not, for this reason, transcend in the child the natural develop- ment of its powers. A time will also come when it will pass into consciousness and act — become an inward experience and voluntary service ; and this may even be definitely marked by more or less of that state of mind which we call repentance' ' (Ch., pp. 173, 174). He can quote with approval Baxter's words : " I doubt not to affirm, that a godly education is God's first and ordinary appointed means for the begetting of actual faith and other graces in the children of believers. Many have seminal grace before, but they cannot sooner have actual faith, repentance, love, or any grace, than they have reason itself in act and exercise. . . . The ordinary appointed means for the first actual grace, is parents' godly instruction and education of their children" (pp. 176, 177). Our feelings are those of unmixed thankfulness that it is revealed respecting little children, without regard to baptism, "of such is the kingdom of heaven ;" that we have a command to bring them up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord, although we have not a revelation respecting the growth of hidden life pcevious to consciousness and accountability ; that we can give to the young and the more elderly the command to repent and be baptized upon the name of Jesus Christ, and can thus assure them of the same blessings being divinely engaged for them as are enjoyed by their believing parents, although we can give no revelation concerning embryo faith and holiness, relative grace, infant church-membership, and the growth or the destruction of an unseen spiritual life in the imconscious. It would be easy to comment on several expressions by Dr. Stacey on tlie results and benefits of baptism, of baptism which is maintained to be Bcripturally infant and indiscriminate. He says that ** baptism establishes an outward connexion with the universal church, by making the person jbaptized a disciple of Chiist" {Sac, p. 242). This accords with his idea that 540 SUBJECTS OF BAPTISM. "the command of our Saviour was that the apostles should make disciples by baptizing." How far this alters what was erroneous or supplies what was defective in Christ's words, I will not now say. Dr. S. denies that baptism ahould be administered exclusively "on a profession of their faith," but he speaks of the thousands baptized on the day of Pentecost as "converted." He sees "an obvious propriety in the order" of Peter's words, " Eepent and be baptized." Also J* repentance and baptism conjointly look forward to forgiveness" (p. 100). Is this consistent with a command first to baptize, and thus to make disciples ; and then to teach? Speaking of an individual consecration of "himself or his child to the Lord," the commendable form for which " is baptism with water into the name of the triune Jehovah," he says, "The act is not alone, standing out in solitary isolation and self-completeness, but one which presumptively unites the future to the present, and pledges the service of a whole life. It does not die away into itself, but marks a period from which separation from the world and incorporation with the people of God visibly and formally commences. It has therefore all the force and meaning of a covenant transaction, implying, as it obviously does, reciprocal engagements and promises" (p. 275). The idea of reciprocal engagements between God and infants is preposterous. And " unto the wicked God eaith, What hast thou to do to declare My statutes, or that thou shouldest take My covenant in thy mouth ?" Nor do I see how the baptism of infants is "an imperishable witness of past dedication to the Lord, and of visible incoi'poration with His people ; a continual enforcement of the truth, virtually acknowledged in the rite itself, 'Ye are not your own,' and of the consequent exhortation, ' Glorify God in your body, and in your spirit, which are God's ;' an everlasting monument and record of privileges, vows, and growing responsibilities, of all the interests indeed, present and future, involved in the position of one who is * redeemed from the curse of the law,' and 'called unto the fellowship of Jesus Christ our Lord'" (p. 276). Can all this be the result of a rite received in unconscious- ness, the reception of which is never known but on the testimony of others? I deny not that circumcision left an "imperishable ^Ndtness," and one that was personal. Moreover, can baptism be as Dr. S. asserts, when administered to those known to be ungodly ? It might be well for some who maintain the immediate, abundant, and lasting benefit of infant baptism, to re-consider what they have written on that tractarian heresy, which supposes regeneration to take place when the child's "will, that which constitutes the essence of his personality, may have no share in the work ;" which supposes " the bestowment of spiritual good without even the knowledge of the individual receiving it." " The tendency, if not the design of the theory, is to honour the ordinance and degrade the man, and yet while degrading the man to exalt the priest" (p. 298). Dr. S. teaches that the gospel, as compared with the law of Moses, is " more purely spiritual in its principles, and more severely personal in its requirements." He repudiates the idea that " the subject is now more mechanical and less moral, more simply receptive and less intelligently ftctive." Such an idea has not "the slightest evidence to support it" ADVANTAGES OR EVILS OP INFANT BAPTISM. 541 (pp. 300, 301). " In every case conscience is wholly silent, because in every case it is wholly unaware of the pretended result." " If sins are remitted, and the seeds of goodness implanted in baptism, how is it that the natural growth of this communicated gi-ace is not generally witnessed in after hfe" (p. 305) ? "To creatures like ourselves that can hardly be called a good, certainly not a blessing of any moral value, which is not intelligently apprehended and felt" (p. 308). The doctrine " certainly suggests the notion, that Divine grace is a kind of subtle energy mysteriously infused into the mind, and operating like some invisible essence as if by mechanical or chemical law" (p. 309). But, says Dr. S., "both reason and Scripture unite in the statement, that the soul cannot be effectually wrought upon, either to conversion in the first instance, or to subsequent edification and comfox't, without the concurring activity of its own particular powers" (p. 309). In opposition to the tractarian dogma of baptismal regeneration — and I should say equally to that of baptismal discipleship — Dr. S. worthily says, " The nature of the change itself, in every stage of its progi'ess, from the first pulsations to the fullest maturity of the Divine life, is of such a character as to require with the knowledge of its existence the undoubted co-operation of the subject" (p. 310). Ho\v strongly expressive of the propriety and advantages of infant baptism is the following: "In Scripture the communication of Divine grace is suspended on conditions which pre-suppose and require the exercise of the understanding and will. No statement is ever made which can justify the insulation of these faculties from theii* associated affections in the reception of spiritual good." " Christ iajirst made unto us wisdom, then righteous- ness and sanctification, and redemption" (pp. 314, 315). " Being bom again not of corruptible seed." " We read of God's 'giving the Gentiles the Holy Spirit, purifying their hearts by faith' " (p. 316). " The sealing is effected with the knowledge and consent of the person sealed." "It is the Spirit operating on a mind consciously active" (p. 317). "Throughout the whole process the intelligent activity of man concurs with the vital efficiency of the Holy Spuit" (p. 318). There are not two kinds of discipleship any more than there are " two kinds of regeneration, primary and secondary," or " two processes of renewing agency, taking place in wholly different conditions, and adapted separately to the conscious and unconscious mind" (p. 327). " What is true of regeneration," or discipleship, " is true of spiritual proficiency in general — of that Divine nurture and growth by which the soul is strengthened to a vigorous man- hood, and made perfect in every good work" (p. 328). The sacraments " are means of grace, not as vehicles and conveyances of secret gifts, implying simple receptivity in the persons observing them, but as occasions of Divine communication to him whose soul is brought by prayer and faith and earnest desire into full agreement with their nature and design" (pp. 330, 331). Much more might be quoted in proof that the human must be " intelligently associated with the Divine," in the reception of spiritual good ; and that consequently the baptizing of infants, while tending to deprive them of a future pri\'ilege, secures no present benefit. ♦' To be profitable, as indeed to be personal, the service of God must be a 542 SUBJECTS OF BAPTISM. reasonable service ; but it can be tbis only by the joint engagement in it of the understanding and the heart" (p. 345). I believe that infants of Christians are not " bound by that circumstance" of their baptism, to a Christian profession, nor that the childi-en of Pagans and Mohammedans are bound by aught done to them in infancy, to become idolaters or followers of the false prophet. Having adduced the sentiments of several eminent Pffidobaptists on the advantages and worthlessness of infant baptism, instead of extended remarks of mine, I shall now adduce on this the sentiments of several Baptists, from which the reader may judge whether we or our opponents make too much of baptism ; and can adopt that conclusion on the advan- tages or evils of infant baptism which he deems most accordant with Divine teaching. I will now say that I cheerfully admit that some of the evils which Baptist writers mention, are in many honom-ed Pa^dobaptists, although at the expense more or less of consistency, neutralized or mitigated by their earnest and faithful proclamation of Christ's atoning and finished work as the only and all-sufficient foundation of hope for every human sinner, of the personal character of true religion, and of the unvarying necessity of individual repentance toward God and faith in our Lord Jesus Christ in all those that are come to years of discretion. Evangelical clergymen in our Establishment may mitigate the dire evil of baptismal regeneration taught in the Prayer-book, by a faithful proclamation of the glorious gospel of the blessed God. But consistency, the prevention of all evil, and the securing of unmixed good, demand a coming to the root of the mischief in word and deed. R. Pengillt, the author of an excellent Ouide to Baptism, after speaking of the majority of professing Christians as having held, and of the majority of Pffidobaptista as now holding, the necessity of baptism to salvation, a doctrine openly avowed by the Church of Rome, and disavowed by many Episcopalians, Presbyterians, Indepen- dents, and Wesleyans, who yet, says Mr. P., " hold opinions, which, when fairly carried out to their consequences, come little shortof the same amount" (p. 110) ; and, says he, " while they avow the premises, I must be allowed to insist upon the conclusion" (p. Ill) ; on the use of baptism says : It " proclaims impressively, though no voice is heard, the sinner's pollution, the penitent's purification, the believer's death and burial to the sinful practices of this world, and what the Lord Jesus passed through to work out redemption for His people ;" " and, being placed at the entrance to the visible church of Christ, it is a personal profession of belief in and reliance upon Christ, and a willingness to submit to Him in all things." Siibsequently, he teaches that 1. — Baptism was designed " to teach the siitfitlness of ninn, and the necessity of forgiveness And fipintual ■purificittioii in ovdt'v to eternal life." Acts ii, 38 ; xxii, IC. " 2.— Baptism was intended to teach and signify the Christian's entire abandonment of a life of im^yiety, and hid entrance upon a new life of devotion and dedication to God." Rom. vi, 3-5; Col. ii, 12. "3. — Baptism was intended to present a figure of our Lord's overwhelming sufferings." Matt, xx, 22; Lu. xii, 50. "4. — No less does baptism pre-represent what the Christian anticipates as the destiny of his own human nature, when he shall descend like his Redeemer into the grave, and at his Saviour's second coming be raised to glory." " 5. — And, finally, this sacred rite in reference to its siibjects, appears evidently designed to form « line of separation between the world and the church." Gal.iii,27; &o. (pp. 131-130). To infant baptism, •'a mere human invention, subversive of God's institution, imposed upon the church of Christ through false notions of saving efficacy, and \vitliout the least Scripture authority," he applies the words of T. Boston : " The saints have no confidence in man's extomals. I call those tilings so, which God uover mado duty, but men make ADVANTAGES OR EVILS OP INFANT BAPTISM. 543 them so. These are not only vain confidences, but vain worship and service, that is, loathsome to God. Matt, xv, 9. Men are apt to cut the law short enough as it is found in the Word, but men's nature has a wonderful itching after mahing additions of their own to it. Hence a cloud of superstition has darkened some churches, and the simplicity of gospel-worship is despised. Men's inventions are brought in upon, yea, instead of Divine institutions. But though they should be bound with the tie OF Antiquity, as Matt, v, 21 ; with the tie of Chuech Attthoeitt, as Matt, xxiii, 4 ; or with the tie of Civil Authoeitt, as Hosea v, 11 ; seeing it cannot be set home on the conscience with, Thus saith the Lord, it ,ia to be rejected, and by no meana complied with, be the hazard what it will. Deu. iv, 2. ' Ye shall not add to the word which I command you, neither shall you diminish aughtfrom it' " (pp. 113, 114). — Did our opponents but see that they are adding to the word of God and subverting a Divine ordinance, many would as promptly discountenance infant baptism as they now denounce any course derogatory to God and injurious to man. Mr. Macallan says, "If we had the same authority to baptize infants as the Jews had for their circumcision, although there were no perceptible advantages arising from it, our duty would be to obey ; and in our obedience we might expect the Divine blessing, but not otherwise ; for of every unauthorized appendage to the ordinances of God, He will say, as He did to the Jews of old, when they brought their vain obla- tions, ' Who hath required this at your hand ?' " — On Bap., p. 43. Mr. GiBBS contends that the theory of infant baptism "tends to lessen the importance of the Christian revelation ;" and, by appeals from Christ to Moses, " to adulterate the truth, to corrupt the practice of the church, and to rob Christ of His glory as Legislator in Zion;" and theit " the arguments adduced in support of this theory are not discoverable by the illiterate ;" that they " can only be made to appear plausible by a laborious process of moral reasoning, and by inferences drawn from very remote premises;" that "the theory of Paedobaptism is only adapted to the constitution of a national church," it having "a manifest tendency to unite the church and the world;" and being "therefore necessarily opposed to the principles of Dissent." Having spoken of the Ptedobaptism of many as practically denying " the doctrine of personal election and particular redemption," and having spoken of the Boul-destroying error of supposing, as many do, that baptism regenerates and saves, he maintains the connexion of this with " that demoralized state of society which is both the characteristic and the disgrace of what are called Christian countries." " No marked obloquy is considered as attaching to the notoriously scandalous lives" of those baptized in infancy, "on the ground of having violated the solemn compact" supposed to be " made at the time of their baptism. The measure of their guilt ia estimated generally by the injury done to the laws of society, and not by any disgrace that they are supposed to have brought upon the cause of God and truth by apostatizing from a religious profession ;" while it is far otherwise with one who, having been " bap- tized on a declaration of his own faith in Christ, deviates from the path of rectitude." Thus indeed many " being taught to believe a lie in the first instance, presume upon the mercy of God while they live in the violation of His laws, and die under the influence of a most awful and destructive delusion" fDef, &c., pp. 225-250). He has before (p. 31) said, "We cannot help concluding that the charge so frequently brought against us 'of making baptism a saving ordinance,' attaches with greater justice to those who affirm, ' that baptism puts the child into covenant with God, unites it to the church that it might be saved, constitutes it a visible member of Christ, gives it a legal title to read the Bible, to all the contents of that sacred volume, and to all the means of conversion.' " Having spoken of the scriptural practice of baptizing and adding to the church those that receive the truth of the gospel, he speaks (p. 33) of some with whom " baptism stands alone ; it has no connexion with other parts of the Christian system ; for it neither introduces its subjects to the Lord's Supper, nor confers upon them any one privilege which uubaptized children do not enjoy to an equal extent, and by a right quite as legitimate." Mr. Ceaps, having spoken of infants as " totally incapable of every pre-requisite for baptism," maintains that infant baptism is injurious; and that if advantages " could be proved, it would not be sufficient to justify the practice, as there is no scriptural authority for it;" yet that if proved " beneficial, this would considerably weaken our objections to the practice." He says "1. — Infant baptism is injurious because it subverts a Divine ordinance." " Popery does not more completely subvert the doctrine of justification by faith, or the ordinance of the Lord's Supper, than infant baptism subverts the ordinance of Christian baptism. And is not this subversion of a Divine ordinance injurious ? Must it not be detrimental to individual believers, to the Christian church, to the cause of evangelical truth, and the honour of the Saviour, to change and pervert a Divine ordinance ? If our Lord has commanded us to baptize 644 SUBJECTS OP BAPTISM. lelievers, and instead of doing this we baptize infants, do we not by this impugn Hia wisdom, dispute Hia authority, and disobey His command ? And is it not most injurious to do this ? Is not this to transgfreas the command of God by our tradition ?" *' The institutions of God are always wiser and better than the institutions of man." He (2) dwells on th«/aJse religious principles which are taught or encouraged by the baptism of infants ; as salvation by the gospel, without " sanctification of the Spirit and belief of the truth," and as if infants among the heathen, where they have not the gospel, are not as certainly as the infants of Christians, saved through the sacrifice of Christ ; salvation by baptism while baptism itself only symbolizes salvation. The necessity of infant baptism in order to salvation arises from its supposed power to regenerate and save. He maintains, fourthly, that "infant baptism teaches that religious ordinances may profit human beings otUenuise than through the medium of the rational and moral faculties." This "encourages a blind confidence in a mere ceremony. It sanctions mysticism in religion. It darkens counsel by words without knowledge. It countenances an expectation of profit from religious ordinances with- out knowledge, faith, or obedience. Its tendency is to encourage a merely formal religion." " Fifthly, infant baptism teaches the false principle of relative holiness." Also, infant baptism encourages or " sanctions a false ride of Christian faith and duty." The greater number of those who practise it, " advocate the practice on the ground of apostolic tradition, the writings of the fathers, or the authority of the church." Further, infant baptism in its general results " frustrates the design of Christian baptism, considered as a mark of distinction between the church and the world." Moreover, infant baptism tends " to neutralize some of the mest important scriptural docrines and obligations — to make a gospel ministry appear inconsistent, and so to weaken its force — and, what is of greater importance than all other considerations, to deceive precious souls on the momentous concerns of eternity" (Inf. Bap., pp. 67-92). In some instances by inserted words these quotations arelesa strong than the original, in no instance stronger. Mr. C.'s amplification and supposed proofs are here omitted for want of space. While Mr. C. in his Concise Vieiu (pp. 8, 9), on the benefit of conscious obedience, is reasoning against Dr. Halley, he saya, " Dr. Halley says, ' All that is good in baptism both parties retain,' Sac, p. 301. Yet he says, ' In any sacrament there is — nothing of the least worth except conscientious obedience to Christ,' Sac, p. 295. There was not on the part of Dr. Halley any con- scientious obedience to Christ in his baptism ; hence nothing of the least worth is retained in his baptism." " Dr. Halley's baptism was not a conscious and voluntary act ; he cannot say in reference to his own baptism, ' I do (or have done) that which my Saviour will acknowledge to be what it really is, my sincere act of obedience to His own command,' Sac, p. 296. There was on the part of Dr. Halley no obedience to the Saviour in his baptism." He did not " fulfil righteousness," and baptism was not with him "the answer of a good conscience." He did not in baptism worship or devote himself to Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. He did not by baptism " put on Christ," or lay himself vinder obligation to " walk in newness of life." " His baptism in infancy ' appears precisely equivalent to the assertion, that it is our duty to perform as religious service, what, so far as we can ascertain, has no use, meaning, or BENEFIT WHATEVER.' " He elsowherc (Inf. Ba})., pp. 59, 60, 71) says, " Does the gospel admit of compulsion in its ordinances whilst it disallows of compulsion in pecuniary contributions for its support ? Can it be less necessary that we should act from choice in that ordinance which is intended to denote the dedication of ourselves to the Eedeemer and His service, than it is that we should act from choice in the contribution of our property to the Saviour's cause ?" " Can it be consistent to commence religion with compulsion and then to reject compulsion at every subsequent step ? And if we practice compulsion in the important ordinance of gospel baptism, how can we consistently condemn others for practising it in less important matters ?" " Believers' baptism is a reasonable, edifying, and impressive ordinance, every way consistent with an intelligent, voluntary, and spiritual religion." All who tliorougMy embrace believers' baptism regard infant baptism as injurious, because God's institutions can never be altered but for the worse. Nor would it be difficult to shew that infant baptism has tarnished the gloiy of Cluistianity by changing its spiritual character, by the reception of a worldly and uncongenial element, by admitting proxy as well as coercion, by seizing the period of impotence, unconsciousness, and irresponsibility, instead of waiting till the judgment could be informed, and the glorious ADVANTAGES OR EVILS OF INFANT BAPTISM, 545 truths of revelation could be applied to the intellect and conscience, in order, under God, to bring about a cordial acceptance of the Saviour, and a personal, intelligent, believing, significant, solemn, and scriptural profession of Christianity. Dr. A. Campbell maintains at length the "evil" of "infant sprinkling." He adduces 1 Sam. xv, where Saul is recorded to have said to Samuel, " I have performed the commandment of the Lord," apparently judging that he has observed the spirit, though he has departed from the letter of the command, that he has obeyed it substantially ; whom the prophet solemnly rebuked, saying among other things, " Why didst thou not obey the voice of the Lord ?" " To obey is better than sacrifice ; and to hearken than the fat of rams." " Will-worship," says Dr. C, "is a worship founded upon the will of man, and not on the will of God. It is designated by the Saviour as vain." He says that the actual operation and effect of infant sprinkling " is to introduce the world into the church. It has camabzed and secularized the church more than any other innovation since the first defection in Christianity." If the sentiments of many Pa3dobaptists prevailed, all their infant offspring would be "initiated into the church." This he mentions as being characteristic, with slight exceptions, of Scotland " about one hiindred years ago," and of Germany, France, Spain, England, and indeed all the Western Roman empire, in the year 1300, and for several centuries before ; while the members of Christ's church should be a peculiar people, born of God. It must be admitted that some present Pa3dobaptists miiddlingly make baptized children to be and not to be members of the church, and a few do intelligently and earnestly teach that menibersliip is voluntary, personal, and on a credible profession of faith. Dr. C. proceeding, says that infant sprinkling " deceives the child," and " encoui'ages superstition in the parent ;" that it has been " the grand means of introducing an ungodly priesthood into the church, and of giving that priesthood an unhallowed dominion over the people ;" that it has extensively " pro- duced a persecuting spirit ;" and, finally, " that infant baptism, or, as it is now, infant .sprinkling, has thrown the gTeatest obstacle in the world to the union of saints, and is, of all traditions the most necessainly schismatical" (Debate, pp. 288-307). Such were the late Dr. C.'s opinions. His illustrations and what are deemed proofs I must omit. Tlie reader will see that he refers to the past as well as the present. And though it is a fact that multitudes of our present Pfedobaptist brethren are as free as ourselves from a spirit of intolerance and persecution, it is also a fact that had there never been a deviation from the personal, voluntary, and spiritual character of Christianity recognized in the baptism of believers as opposed to that of infants, the persecution and martyrdom which ecclesiastical historians to the scandal of Christianity are bound in fidelity to narrate, could have had no existence. I. T. HiNTON, speaking of the moral influence of baptism on the church, and comparing believers' baptism with that of infants, says, " 1. — Believers' baptism requires and admits of no other authority than the Scriptures. According to the very best Paidobaptist authorities themselves, infant baptism requires the reception of tradition to sustain it. It has been fully proved, indeed, that even tradition does not sustain it. But the very fact of appealing to tradition exercises a baneful influence on the church," &c. "2. — The practice of believers' baptism sustains the principle that Christ is the Legislator of His church, and that the ordinances and government of the church are to be derived from the New Testament alone. Infant baptism, on the contrary, has intermingled Judaism and Christianity, and that to a most pernicious extent." "3. — Believers' baptism harmonizes mth the genius of Christianity. It is both spiritual and personal. Why should that harmony be violated in a solitary case ?" An accepting of the faith of sponsors, parents, or others, instead of the faith of the baptized, he maintains to be a contradiction of the word of God. " 4. — The baptism of believers constitutes a strong line of demarcation from the world." "5. — The baptism of believers clearly tends to organize a kingdom ' not of this world.' It renders a national establishment all but impossible." " Dr. Wall justly observes that all national churches have practised infant baptism." "The practice of baptizing infants did not spread extensively till after Christianity became the State religion of the Roman empire." " 6. — The moral influence of believers' baptism is whoUy opposed to priestcraft of every kind. It receives no member into the church tiU he has been brought to think for himself on the most important of all subjects — the salvation of his soul. It teaches him to call no man master but Christ. On the contrary, the whole system of infant baptism requii-es the ' church-member' to allow himself first to be baptized without his knowledge, and then, as soon as he can learn the form of NN 546 SUBJECTS OF BAPTISM. words?, to be drilled into systeraatic doctrines, which as it required the minda of great men to arrange, so it needs the application of intense thought to comprehend." The last does not apply to all Pajdobaptists, although it certainly accords vrith some Pisdobaptist catechisms for children. " Finally, the baptism of the New Testament, that of believers, is wholly opposed to, and destructive of, the papal apostacy, theoretically and practically. Had men been left till they had arrived at years of discretion before they were invited to become members of that church, how many milliona would have refused to enter who found themselves already entangled in her snare . . . made full members of the church, and therefore exposed to all the ecclesiastical and civil terrors of excommunication, if they were in the least degree refractory" (His. of Bap., pp. 352-358). We believe not that many of our honoured Paedobaptist brethren are favourable to " the mystery of iniquity ;" but we believe they countenance what was a necessary stepping-stone to its enthronement. We believe that our views of baptism are alone in harmony with the gospel system, with its personality, spirituality, and unworldliness j and that present daring pretensions and zealous efforts of sacramentarians invest believers' baptism with special importance. A. Booth, an honoured defender of believers' baptism, says that " baptism, being an appointment of Christ and a branch of religioiis worship, should ever be viewed as an evidence of our Lord's Divine authority, as a fruit of His consimimate wisdom, and an expression of His immense goodness. Thus considered, its design must be gracious, and of a practical tendency. Now it appears, that many Paedobaptiats agree with us in maintaining that it was chiefly intended to represent our communion with its great Institutor, in His death, burial, and resurrection. . . . Nothing is more reasonable than to suppose, that a reception of baptism should be calculated to promote the exercise of those dispositions, hopes, and views, which qualify a candidate for it. So, for instance, if nothing short of really believing in Jesus Christ, can be a sufficient ground of professing faith in Him ; and if such a profession of faith be required previous to baptism ; then, certainly the baptized person should constantly aim at living by faith, as a characteristic of those who are truly righteous. Habitually regarding the hlood of Christ, not the baptismal water, as cleansing from all sin; and the obedience of our great Substitute, not a submission to this ordinance, as that righteousness by which a sinner is justified; he may be said, in the language of inspiration, to live by the faith of the Son of God. As every candidate, properly qualified for the sacred rite, solemnly avows the authority of Christ, and a sincere desire of living in subjection to Him, as Lord of conscience and King in Zion ; so, after baptism, he should often reflect on that avowal, with earnest prayer that the holy dispositions he then felt may increase and operate with all their force. Thus adverting to the doctrine of Scripture concerning baptism, he finds it rich with encouragement for hope, and big with exhortation to duty." Mr. B. also says : " That baptism is of real importance to the church of Christ, and that believers, in a cheerful submission to it, have reason to expect a blessing, we firmly maintain ; but that infant baptism is big with much greater advantages than adult baptism, as Mr. Henry insists, we cannot admit." After quoting from Mr. H. and another, he thus proceeds : " What then can be the reason of infant baptism being much more advantageous than adult baptism ? Mr. Baxter himself shall answer for us, by giving a general negation to the bold assertion. ' Upon my first serioua study,' says he, ' I presently discerned that infants were not capable of every benefit by baptism, as are the aged.' To be more particular. Is infant baptism of greater advantage than that of adults because it is more solemn ? If we appeal to Dr. Wall, hia answer will be : ' The baptism of an infant cannot have all the solemnity which that of an adult person may have. The previous fasting and prayer, the penitential confessions, the zeal and humility and deep affection of the receiver may be visible there, which cannot be in the case of an infant.' Is it because infants are better capable of reflecting on the nature, the design, the obligation of baptism, than adults ; or because they are more proper subjects of ministerial exhortation ? None will pretend the one or the other. Peter speaks of baptized persons having the answer of a good conscience toxvards God ; and Mr. T. Bradbm-y tells us ' that the benefit which arises from this ordinance is owing to the answer of a good conscience.' Is it then because infants have a letter conscience, and make a better answer, than believing adults ? That cannot be ; for as the minds of mere infants are not capable of com- paring their own conduct with the rule of duty, they have, properly speaking, no conscience at all. Our brethren, indeed frequently speak of covenanting with God in baptism ; but mere infants are totally ignorant ; and Mr. Baxter tells us, ' It is a known rule in law that consensus non est ignorantis.' The language of common sense, as well as of casuists, is : ' That infants are not capable of contracting,' either with ADVANTAGES OR EVILS OF INFANT BAPTISM. 647 God or man. Is it because the conscience of a person is more tenderly affected by considering what was done for him while incapable of moral agency, than by reflecting what was done by him and upon him, with the full consent of his will ? To suppose any such thing insults the understanding and feelings of mankind. For, as Bp. Sanderson observes: 'In personal obligations no man is bound without his_ own consent : — and a spiritual obligation, which is in the conscience, must necessarily be personal, as every one's conscience is his own ; and such an obligation cannot pass into another person.' Children, when arrived at years of discretion, may be told that they covenanted with God when baptized in their infancy ; but as engaging to bo the Lord's is a personal thing, and as they could have no idea of such transaction at the time of their baptism, so they cannot have any recollection of it ; consequently their consciences cannot feel an obligation in that respect, as those of baptized believers may and ought." — PcbcI. Ew., vol. i, pp. 432-435. Mr. Macallan, referring to the objection in North Britain, that believers' baptism "wears an unfavourable aspect to those who die in infancy," declares his " conviction that the ivhole iveight of the objection lies on the other side. We believe," he continues, " that the salvation of those dying in infancy, is not affected by the faith of the parents, nor influenced in the smallest degree by any ceremony that may be performed by their parents upon them. We do not believe that the Scriptiires afford any evidence that those who die in infancy are excluded from the benefits of the Saviour's atonement ; but while we cheerfully aUow that many of our Psedobaptist brethren entertain the same benevolent views with ourselves on this subject, it is very obvioua that their popular argument for infant baptism presents an appalling representation of the condition of the myriads who have died in infancy whose parents have not been believers. The argument is, that the infant children of believers are interested in the covenant of grace along with their parents, and, therefore, are entitled to baptism as the seal of that covenant. The denial of baptism, therefore, to such infants, is represented as a denial of their interest in the covenant of grace, and an exclusion of them from its privileges. Now, the plain and obvious inference from this is, that the infants of all who are not believers are excluded from an interest in this covenant, and have no right to its privileges. In what an awful light does this present the condition of the overwhelming majority of infants, who die without this supposed covenant relation of which so much is said ! The principles that we espouse possess no such frowning features towards any portion of the infant race. " But even supposing that there were any truth in the notion (which, we are con- vinced, there is not) that it is by the faith of their parents that the infants of believers are shielded from danger during the period of infancy, the infants of believing Baptists would be as secure as the infants of believing Psedobaptists, unless it were alleged that the performance of the baptismal ceremony was necessary to complete their security, which is never pleaded but by the advocates of the figment of baptismal regeneration, for which our brethren will no more contend than we. In what conceiv- able way, then, can it be shown, that the withholding of baptism from infants can deprive them of any privilege, more than the withholding from them of the bread and wine of the Lord's Supper ? We can conceive of no blessing that the infants of our Pasdobaptist brethren possess that ours do not. We have often asked our brethren to tell us what it is, but they have never been able to do it, and we believe no man ever wiU be able to do it to the end of time. If we mark the infants on whom the ceremony is performed, we can perceive no difference between them and our owii. As they grow up, we do not perceive any more indications of piety in them than in oxu* own. Nay, we do not perceive any recognition of their supposed membership with the churches to which their parents belong, more than our own with our churches. _ Are they the objects of the church's prayers ? So are ours. Do they receive religious instruction ? So do ours. But are they treated as church members ? Never, more than ours. They have to apply /or membership, just as ours have ; and are received on a personal profession of faith, just as ours are. If these supposed infant members grow up profligates, the honour of the church of their fathers is never considered to be involved in their profligacy ; if they grow up to adorn the gospel, the churchy of their fathers does not share the glory till they be formally received into its fellowship ; and it often happens that in their connecting themselves with another, the glory of their Christian character is borne away from that church of which they were declared to be members during their infancy (for with their infancy their supposed membership always dies away). What, then, is that vague privilege of which our children are deprived in consequence of their not being baptized ? Nothing, we are convinced, but a naked fancy that vanishes before an impartial examination." — On B(vp., pp. 39-43.* * Mr. M., in a note, here acknowledges that Dr. Wardlaw does not consider the baptized inlants 548 SUBJECTS OF BAPTISM. On the supposed benefits and evils of infant baptism the reader has now seen the sentiments of Baptists and Predobaptists. We might have read from Dr. Halley on the observance of Christ's commission by the apostles, that " we may safely conclude that not a single convert was unbaptized, so far as this authority extended ; and from the subsequent history, we may infer that the commission was understood as not confined to the apostles." Dr. Dwight says that " nothing is a privilege, in the rehgious sense, but what God has made such : and Ho has made nothing such except in His own way, and on His own terms. Baptism is a pri\'ilege, when administered and received in the manner appointed by Him, but in no other. When this ordinance is received in any other manner, it is plainly no obedience to any command of His, and, therefore, has no promise, and, let me add, no encouragement to hope for a blessing. Blessings descend when God is pleased to give them. But He cannot be expected to bless them, unless He is obeyed." — Ser. 159, vol. v, p. 315. The last quotation accords with Dr. S. Stcnnctt, when he says : " If infant l^aptism be unscriptural, it must be a vain ceremony ; and whatever the proposed advantage may be, the hope and dependence it creates, must be false and unwarranted" (Ans., p. 270). To which I might add, that the inevitable tendenaj of a baptism of the unconscious is to create and foster a false dependence, while the baptizing of those alone who make a credible profession of faith in Christ necessarily precludes a false depend- ence on baptism, and promotes the exaltation of Christ as the only foundation of trust for salvation. I am now speaking solely of the natm-al and certain tendency of the doctrine of infant and believers' baptism, while I am far from denying that many Pa3dobaptists as explicitly as any among the Baptists direct their hearers to the Lamb of God, and teach that the finished work of Jesus is the foundation which God has laid in Zion on which alone the hopes of ruined and helpless humanity may rest with confidence and safety. Neander, in his Church History, records that "Gregory, of Nyssa, says, ' The child is by baptism placed in the paradise from which Adam was expelled ; the marks of evil Avhich were brought upon human nature, are taken away by baptism ;' " and that Augustine says, "The sacramentum jidel in children is called faith, and if the child comes to mature age, the sacrament is not repeated, but ho only learns to understand it, and enters into the truth with the determination of his will. Till this can take place, the sacrament acts as a protection against the influence of the powers of evil." More wisely, Rob. Pulleyn says, "Outward baptism only represents that which faith effects." " Faith blots out sins ; baptism indicates this." We are not surprised that Neander says, " In defining the terms used respecting this sacrament, much difficulty was found in of believers as members of any particular church, but in a stale of " training for tlie full fellow- ship of the people of God." He says he regards the eliil Jreu of believers as disciples in a situation somewhat aualoKous to that of the Etliiopian eunuch, who, although " a professed disciple of .Tesus," was not constituted " a member of any particular church." Witli Mr. M. I say emphatically, " Instead os the cases beino analooohs, tukre is no sifc.ARiTX between them." ADVANTAGES OE EVILS OF INFANT BAPTISM. 549 settling the relation of the res sacramenti to the mo amentum. The questiu;i was proposed, How this effect could take place in unconscious infants, in order to explain the fate of unbaptized children who were believed to be lost." If infant baptism were necessary to the administering of instruction, exhortation, caution, admonition, and encouragement to children, to parental training of them in the nurture and admonition of the Lord, and to the ministerial addressing of parents on their duty to their children, to a sense of obligation in children to their parents or their God, to an intro- duction of the children into covenant with God, or were in itself really helpful to this or any of these, more could be asserted than can now be Staid in its favour. The reader will perceive among the advocates of infant baptism great diversity of sentiment regarding its advantages. The sentiments of some I should designate deadly poison, those of some others a pious and heretical figment. Some agree with ourselves that the reception of the ordinance in a state of unconsciousnes, or in any other state than in the experience of faith in Christ, is of no benefit to the recipient. It is, I believe, of no more advantage than if administered to an adult when asleep, or under mesmeric intiuence. It is an injury to receive baptism in infancy, and to be told when come to years of discretion and the experience of faith in Christ, that the command of Christ on one symbolic rite has already been obeyed — obeyed in unconsciousness — and is now unnecessary, yea, that ba)itism now would be a re))etition and a sin, that the profession of faith in Christ through the s^nnbolic ordinances of Christianity, by the happy and loving believer in the good news of redemption from sin and ruin through the iinished work of Jesus, is confined to the Lord's Sujiper. Whether the new-born child of God is c\"er conscious of his loss or not, I maintain that by erring parents and others he is, should he be spared, denuded of a Christian pri-\ilege when persuaded that his Saviour's precept and pleasure on baptism were jierformed by him in infoncy, and that no profession of his faith in, of his love and devotedness to Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, has in baptism to be made by him ; that no declaration in this ordinance has to be made by him of his thankful belief that the Son of God died for guilty and ruined man, was buried, and rose again to live for ever and save unto the utmost them that come unto God through Him ; that he himself is now dead to sin, and by Divine grace lives hence- forth in newness of life, looking forwards to the resurrection of his own body from death and corruption to a life of glorious and happy immortality in re-union with the soul, in likeness to his glorious Redeemer, to be for ever with his Lord, and in the company and employment of the ransomed and the holy. It may be that some erring Baptists demand greater publicity in Baptism than Christ has enjoined, and that some make the road to this ordinance more difficult than the Scriptures require, and that in om- country and in present times and customs there is a slight amount of self-denial in the " one baptism" which is divinely and which must be wisely and lovingly enjoined, while the obliterating of its conscious, voluntary, and believing reception, is the taking away of a privilege. 550 SUBJECTS OP BAPTISM. Baptism supposes a covenanting with God, and implies a profession on the part of the baptized most inappropriate, not to say absurd, to infants, but a profession which the believer can solemnly and profitably make, a profession which can have a hallo'sving and quickening influence on himself at the time and afterwards. The idea of a benefit arising to the baptized in subsequent years from being told by their parents what a solemn and comprehensive profession of faith and promise of obedience they made so many days after they were born ! And while I oppose the idea of inesti- mable blessings being in baptism divinely pledged and sealed to the bap- tized, I deny not that baptism, in representing the washing away of sins through the death and resurrection of Jesus, signifies or intimates the riches of Divine grace in providing a Redeemer who died, was buried, and rose again, that we might have eternal life. But baptism consisting of two fa.b.ts, and _ requiring one part, it is believed, implies not a possession of the most momentous part, but supposes that it may sometime be possessed, if the child, the church, the parent, the guardian, the sponsor, the parson, or somebody does his duty ! Or, with some, it is believed that the child of a believing parent — no other child being a proper subject of baptism — being in the covenant of grace and in the church of Christ at birth, and being initiated into the same, or at least into the latter, by baptism, will, if it belongs to the elect, be brought by God's sovereign grace into the number of the renewed when it pleases God that sin and Satan should no longer reign in this chosen one ! Some believe that baptism efi'ects what it represents ; while others believe that the blessings represented are only experienced when baptism is done rightly and received worthily ; while some of the latter believe in the possession of these inestimable blessings when the baptism is received, and some in their reception at some subsequent time. Some regard bap- tism as giving the power to become Christians and enjoy salvation, so that the realized privilege hinges on the use of the so communicated power and privilege ; and some regard baptism as symbolizing truth, and blessings which ouc/ht to be possessed at some future time, and which possibly may be. Some teach that all little children possess the gi'ace of baptism, and if unbaptized are proper subjects for this ordinance. Those who perish, as it is not believed, except by certain sacramentarians, that those who die in ungodliness are saved, lose in subsequent life the grace once enjoyed. I have sometimes felt a disposition to enquire of those parents who maintain the advantage to growing and adult childi'en — especially to the former — of reminding them of the great obligations to love and serve God arising from their part in the solemn transaction that took place when they were babies, whether they have not sometimes a doubt as to all obligation of the child arising from the ceremony performed on it in unconsciousness. It is difficult to conceive that in some the doubt should not be so strong as to quench all the glow arising from the idea of a good deed having been performed on the child. Do Pfedobaptist parents never think of the difierence between the solemn, personal, beUeving profession ^nd engagement in baptism, and the farce of a profession and engagement ADVANTAGES OE EVILS OF INFANT BAPTISM, 551 In unconseiousnes ? Do Psedobaptist parents, before their children ai^ come to years of knowledge, engage them by a solemn act to love and obey their parents, to speak the truth, to act justly and kindly to one another and to all men ; and when they are come to years of understanding solemnly assure them of their responsibility in regard to such a disposition and conduct, from the solemn engagement implied in some transaction of their babyhood ? This would be deemed absurd. I deny not the obliga- tions of childi'en, of men and women, to their parents and to their God, for what parents in their love and inteUigence have kindly and rationally done for them and to them. Ingratitude and unkindness to earthly parents are a sin only less base than ingratitude and disobedience to our heavenly Parent, and the former is never separate from the latter. I believe not more firmly in the duty of parents to train up their children in the nurture and admonition of the Lord, than I do in the duty of children to obey and honour their parents. Nor do I believe that any sin so frequently meets with its punishment in the present life, as ingratitude and unkindness to parents. If parents without authority from precept or example in God's word, will perform a ceremony which is intended to prevent the personal profession of love and devotedness implied — if such profession, as Baptists and many Paedobaptists think, is implied — in being baptized into the name of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, and will deduce from this the farce of obligation to love and serve the Lord, they might surely invent and perform a baby ceremony /ro?M ivhich they might with equal propriety and force adduce the obligation to avoid in youth and riper years everything untruthful, unjust, unkind to all their fellows, if these are not included in the obligations from baptism. I do not doubt that along with infant baptism there may be those appropriate meditations, those fervent and believing prayers, and those holy resolutions made in dependence on Divine grace, which, being practically and faithfully carried out, lay the child under obligations on immediately becoming accountable, and which obligations continue to the end of life, these parental meditations, prayers, and resolutions, having a connexion both with subsequent parental training and with the Divine blessing. But these meditations, prayers, and resolutions, though they may be associated with a reading of Scripture, pastoral instruction and exhortation, and the prayers of others, are not inseparably linked to bap- tism, nor do the}' require baptism in order to a subsequent and consistent development, nor need they in a forestalling spirit prevent a seriptui-al baptism by its administration apart from spirituality, willinghood, or even consciousness, in the baptized. Nor do I by any remarks reflect on circumcision in its application to male infants descending from Abraham, and to all others embraced in the Divine command. I believe too in the resemblance of circumcision to baptism in some things ; and that our Saviour might have appointed a symbolic ceremony of some kind for infants and children, in addition to the baptism enjoined on disciples; but I believe as fu'mly in the absence of the precept as in the mischievousness of the practice. Nor do I maintain that the endeavours to convince children of obligations arising from vows made on their behalf have always 552 SUBJECTS OP BAPTISM. been ineffectual. We may impress by means as unnecessary as unwise. There arc such things as pious frauds. Nor arc they always without effect, although the end justifies not the means. Some of the Baptists object to a dedication service, similar to the baptismal service among many evangelical Christians, but without the baptism, on the ground that real dedication to the Lord can only be personal, and that ceremonies and observances in addition to what arc divinely enjoined, arc prone to receive at length improper estimation. There is, however, no need for the word dedication. Wc might have a birth service as appropriately and usefully, I think, as we have a death service, or funeral service. It might be objected to public prayer in connexion with interment, that we may possibly encourage the practice of praying for the dead. Our conduct does not, I believe, encourage this. It is well Imown that we pray only for the living. We feel it appropriate to pray for bereaved survivors, and utter words of comfort and exhortation at such a time to them ; and we know its accordance with the precepts to comfort one another with the facts of revelation respecting pious departed ones, to exhort one another and so much the more as we see the day approaching, and in eveiything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving to let om* requests be made known to God. As death, so is birth, a special event. The entrance into this world of a young immortal, in every husband, in every parent, ought to be the occasion of special prayer and praise to God, and special meditation on increased responsibility. And what but good can result from a birth service in which appropriate portions of the inspired volume shall be read, those come into a new relation or increased responsibility shall be suitably addressed, and thanksgiving and supplication be presented to the Giver of all good '? Reason and revelation require that special events be specially regarded ; but revelation being silent as to the precise mode of cherishing and manifesting the appropriate feeling whether it shall be an affair of the closet or of the family, whether social or more public, or whether the latter shall be in addition to the former, which is, or should be a daily act, from year to year, and the latter but once in its special and public or social character, it must be left to every individual to judge and determine, while others may also give their opinion and advice. Whatever bo the character of the birth service, if there be a special service of any kind, its entire and universal separation from baptism must prevent its beipg confounded with infant baptism, and prevent baptism from being designated a divinely appointed registration. • Nor would the child of a Christian be then called a federal Christian ; nor would nonsense continue to be uttered about a child's right to the seal of the covenant, and the certainty of an infant's benefit from baptism, unless the parent first fail to be benefitted thereby. The enlightened, penitent, believing observance of the symbolic and divinely enjoined immersion must be felt equivalent to a solemn and comprehensive confession to God of repentance, and faith in our Surety, and to an opening of the mouth to Him in an approved and comprehensive engagement, in place of which no other service must have an existence. ADVANTAGES OE EVILS OF INFANT BAPTISM. 553 Whatever may be the advantage of baptism as a conscious, an enlightened, a voluntary, a solemn, and so far as wo can judge a holy and consistent service, over baptism by compulsion in unconsciousness, it cannot be denied that the tendency of the latter is to subvert the former. Hence in the New Congregational Hymn Book there are nine hymns on infant and one on adult baptism. Dr. S. Stennett, ou tlic benefit of baptizing iiifantf>, says, " It ■will be .said perhaps, that a recollection of their baptism will load them into a knowledge of the great truths signified by it, such as the necessity of dying to sin and living to righteous- ness, and of the washing of regeneration to that end. But is not a knowledge of these truths more naturally and properly acfiuired by instruction from the word of God, than by a reference back to a ceremony jierformed on them, of which they can them- selves have no remembrance ? But if it be further urged, which is the main consider- ation, that a recollection of their having been baptized, by the impression it will make upon theii' minds of the solemn obligations they were thereby laid under to God and their duty, will bo a powerful motive to excite them to faith and repentance ; I reply by denying the fact that their having been baptized does lay them under any personal obligation to faith and repentance. For, supposing baptism were a sign or token of his resolution who votantarily submits to it to believe and repent (which yet is an absurd and unscriptural account of the intent of the institution), it yet would not, it could not, oblige children to repent and believe when they gTOw up, because it is no sign or token to them of their resolution to believe and repent, they not having voluntary submitted to it. "What then becomes of all this reasoning from the advantage of persons recollecting the solemn engagements they are laid under by their having been baptized in their infancy 'i a Idnd of language which has a shew of piety in it, but not one principle in Scripture or reason to support it. ' Yo\i were baptized a few days after you were born, therefore you are bound to repent and believe the gospel.' Is it imaginable that a child, possessed of any tolerable understanding, can be at all influenced by such reasoning. He must instantly perceive the absurdity of it, and instead of being disposed by it to believe and repent, rather feel himself prejudiced against faith and repentance. There is then no fitness in baptism to the end for which it is administered to children." — Aas., &c., pp. 36, 37. A. Booth, on the advantages and evils of infant baptism, says : " That the apostles mention baptism, and inform us of great numbers who were baptized, aro facts ; but where do they mention infant baptism ? That they mention the ordinance as containing matter of instruction, motives to holiness, and grounds of exhortation, in reference to baptized believers, is a fact ; but where is Pa;dobaptism represented by them as containing any of these things, ^vith regard to children when they grow up ? That they mention baptism as affording grounds of reproof to disorderly professors, is a fact : but where do they mention Piedobajjtism as administering reproof to Christian parents for neglectmg the education of their children ? That they exhort and caution believing parents respecting their children, is a fact ; but where do they fetch their motives from infant baptism ? That they exhort and charge children to be dutiful to their parents, is also a fact ; but where do they remind children of their filial obligations being enforced by having been baptized in their infancy, or exhort them on that ground ? Yet had Paidobaptism been then practised, and had it been attended with such vast advantages as our author pretends, it might, perhaps, have been as pertinently urged as the latter part of the fifth command, ou account of its being more precisely agreeable to the gospel dispensation. Mr. Henry, it is plain, did not fail to exhort both piarents and children on the ground of infant baptism. No, he treats it as a capital soiu'ce of motives by which to enforce the performance of both parental and filial duty, though the apostles have not said a word about it in any of their exhortations. Candour forbids my supposing that he thought himself either more wise in the choice of his arguments, or more zealous in the application of them to practical purposes, than those ambassadors of Christ, but yet every one may see a remarkable difference between their conduct and his in this respect, which difference must have had an adequate cause. I cannot help thinking, therefore, that either the inspired wi-iters knew nothing at all of Pa:dobaptism, or had a very mean opinion of it ; for it seems unaccountably strange, that they should all have approved the practice, and yet all agree, on such a variety of occasions, to say notliing about it. But supposing it was practised by them, and that they considered jt as \n\\c\i mofo advantageous than the baptism of believers, theii' conduct is yet 654 SUBJECTS OF BAPTISM. moro amazingly strange ; Ijocause they expressly apply the latter to practical purposes, though entirely sUent about the former: — an example this which our opponents are not inclined to imitate. Peruse the writings of modern Pa^dobaptists, and you plainly perceive the advantages resulting from baptism almost entirely confined to that of infants. Consult the apostolic records, and you find them all connected with the baptism of adults. We may now venture an appeal to the reader, whether he would not suspect any unknown author of being a Baptist, were he to find him treating on all the various topics lately enumerated, and yet perceive that he is quite silent about infant baptism ?" Mr. B. then quotes the reasoning of Chillingworth, Bp. Stratford, Turretine, Abp. Tillotson and others on the silence of Scripture respecting the dogmas of popery, and maintains, inutatis mutandis, the application of what they write in all its force to the baptism of infants ; and he concludes by saying : " Either the baptism of infants has been sadly misrepresented by the generality of those who have pleaded for it since the times of Cyprian ; or it is calculated to do immense mischief to the souls of men, by leading persons to imagine that they were born again, cleansed from sin, interested in all the benefits of our Lord's death, and made heirs of heaven by what was done for them while destitute of reason — done for them in many cases by ungodly priests and profligate sponsors. For as Dr. Owen has well observed, the father of lies himself could not easily have invented a more deadly poison for the souls of sinners ; as they are taught by these unscriptural dogmas to rest satisfied with a supposed regeneration by their baptism."— Pcec?. Ex., vol. i, pp. 438-443. SECTION XXXIII. CONCLUDING REMAKKS. t)r. H. Hecgh. — " Who knows not the influence of system over the best minds ; how it often clouds the clearest intellect, and embitters the kindest and gentlest nature?" — Civ. Estab., p. 25. F. Johnstone. — " It is our part to bring evidence and leave it to the judgment of every Chris- tian and candid mind." — Bapt., &c., p. 11. v. Alsop. — " God is the Sovereign and absolute Legislator, who may suspend, rescind, alter His own laws at pleasure ; and yet He has laid such a stress upon the meanest of them, that no man may, nor any man, but the man of sin, dares presume to dispense with them, much less to dispense against them." — In Booth's Peed. Ex., vol. i, p. 28. T. Watson. — " Divine worship must bo such as God Himself has appointed, else it is offering strange fire. Lev. x, 1. The Lord would have Moses make the tabernacle ' according to the pattern in the mount.' Ex. xxv, 40. He must not leave out anything in the pattern, nor add to it. If God was so exact and curious about the place of His worship, how exact will he be about the matter of His worship. Surely here everything must be according to the pattern prescribed in His \/OTd."— Body of Div., pp. 5, 6. Spurgeon's Edi. In conclusion, I design — while remembering, and desiring my reader ever to remember, that the essence of religion is not orthodoxy, but jnety (Dr. J. Caird) — further to vindicate my attempt and sustain my endeavours to defend and preserve a Divine ordinance, although in opposition to men estimable and learned, and liberally to use the help afforded by some pre- ceding writers. I purpose again earnestly to appeal on behalf of obedience to the written Oracles of God. I believe that all argumentation in opposition to believers' immersion as the baptism of the New Testament, is based on assumption and sustained by fallacy, although these are not in every assertion so glaring, as in Dr. John Edwards's statement that this great controversy on the baptizing of children is settled in Cant, vii, 2, where we learn that though infants " arc not able to take in spiritual pouiishment after the ordinary way, it may bo done, as it is said here by CONCLUDING EEMAEKS. 565 the navel, by that federal knot or link, which ties them fast to their Christian and believing parents" (Exer. Crit. Phil., exer. ix). I believe, with Dr. Tweedie, that a person may be "strongly convinced of the necessity of ' contending earnestly for the faith once delivered to the saints,' and of * withstanding even a brother to the face,' when he has swerved from the simple truth as it is in Jesus" (On Bap., p. v). In the language of another Presbyterian brother, I can say that I do not " per- ceive everything among ourselves to be right, and all things in which our neighbours differ from us to be wrong." I believe too that institutions which in apostolic times were by Divine appointment " common to churches of all climes, must be binding on churches of all ages." Nor do I see how those who think with Dr. J. Campbell, can regard this production otherwise than as a well-meant endeavour. He says, "All Christians are under a solemn obligation to follow the ascertained universal practice of the primitive churches, founded and regulated by Christ's commissioned servants, the apostles. Paul manifests much solicitude upon the subject, and most solemnly enjoins upon the churches adherence to all his injunctions (2 Thess. ii, 15). Nor is he sparing of approbation when obedience has been implicit : * I praise you, brethren, that ye remember me in all things, and keep the ordinances as I delivered them to you' (1 Cor. xi, 2). Nor is he less prompt in the reprobation of novelties and innovations : * If any man seem to be contentious, we have no such custom, neither the churches of God' (1 Cor. xi, 16). The doctrine of these Scriptures unquestionably is, that one general practice prevailed at the beginning, and that churches were not permitted to deviate from that practice." — Ch. Fel., p. 12. Dr. J. Brown has forcibly asserted : " Wlienever human authority has found ita way into the church of God, it has not rested satisfied with merely adding to the lawa and institutions of Christ ; it has always in some measure altered and annulled them. When, in the Roman Catholic church, so many ceremonies were added to the simple rite of the Lord's Supper, the result was, that the one half of the original ordinance was abolished, by the cup being denied to the laity. Wherever saints' days atd observed on human authority, the Lord's Day, appointed by Divine authority, ia neglected. Whenever the ministers of religion are supported by State endowments, the Divine financial law, ' Let him who is taught in the word communicate unto him that teacheth in all good things,' is superseded, and, as far as man can do it, repealed. When men introduce their own terms of communion, Christ's terms of communion are sure to be disregarded ; and when, in the Presbyterian churches of this country, a host of unauthorized, or at any rate unappointed, services, were connected with an administration of the Lord's Supper ; then an ordinance, which in the primitive age was observed every Lord's Day, was converted into an annual religious festival. The Christian church is even yet very imperfectly freed from the unholy influence and the mischievous operation of human authority. The house requires to be more carefully swept than it was at the reformation from popery, and a more thorough search must be made for the old leaven, that it may be completely cast out. Let all individual Christians, let all Christian churches, learn to act on the principle, that in reference to Christian faith, and duty, and worship, the question is not, ' How thinkest thou ?' but, ' How readest thou ?' not. What is use and wont ? but, ' What is written in the law ?' not, How is it to be arranged by us ? but. How has it been settled by our Master P" On Matt, xv, 1-20; Mark vii, 1-23, he says, "Our Lord's conduct here shews us that we are not from the fear of giving offence . . to refrain from speaking the truth, especially with regard to doctrines and usages, unsanctioned by Divine authority, which men endeavour to impose as articles of faith and religious ordinances, and by which they cast into the shade doctrines plainly revealed, and substantially pjake void ordinances clearly appointed by the Lord. It is po uncommon thing whoq 556 SUBJECTS OF EAI'TISM. tlic trutli, with regard to the spirituality of our Lord's kingdom — with regard to the dauger of building ' hay aud stubble' on tho ouly foundation — with regard to the only financial law of the church, aud the g-uilt and danger of neglecting, aud still more attempting to repeal that law — it is no uncommon thing, when the truth on these subjects is spoken, however calmly, for persons ... to be dissatisfied and offended. And some very well-intentioned persons, like the disciples, are disposed to say. It is a pity — would it not have been better to avoid such subjects ? But is the truth to bo concealed ? This would be, on the part of him who knows it, unkindncss to his mistaken brethren, injustice to truth, treason against the God of truth. To all men, especially to well-meaning though mistaken brethren in Christ, we ought to avoid giving unnecessary ofiencc. We ought to be ready to sacrifice personal comfort to a gi-eat extent, rather than incur this evil. ' If meat make my brother to fall, I mil cat no meat while the world standeth.' But we must not sacrifice a jot or a tittle of Christ's truth to gain this or any other end, ho^\revcr apparently desirable The ' teaching for doctrines the commandmouts of men' — the ' making void God's coui- maudments by men's tradition' we must clearly expose, aud strongly condemn, undiverted from our course by the fear of shocking the prejudices even of those genuine Christians who have been entangled in the snares of any of those systems where man holds the place of God, however much we may love their jjersons, and value what is genuine in their Christian faith and character. This is kindness to them, as well as justice to truth." — Disc, and Say. of ov/r Lord, vol. i, pp. m, 500, .501, 505. J. Fletcher, in introducing aud justifying his Hlsiory of Independency, thu3 writes : " Whatever may be tho importance of a charitable, peaceful, forbearing spirit, is this iu itself adequate to the accomplishment of the desired end i* . . . Woidd not a sincere aud wise iu<(uiry discover that, so long as revealed institutions and principles were departed from — so long as human expedients were substituted for Divine arrangements, it would be impossible for the various sections of the church to approach each other, except for purposes of display on public occasions ? . . . And if an age of activity, which is at tho same time an age of division aiul of threaten- ing error, is to be wisely directed and brought into a state of conformity to the will and designs of Christ, that end can be accomplished by words alone — words spoken and wi'itten — words tnithful and powerful, rebutting error, attacking superstition in her strongholds, and leading men back to primitive doctrines aud primitive institutions. A conciliatory spirit is always right, but the truth as it is iu Jesus is never ill-timed. . . . The great thing needed is jwsltiv<:. truth, and truth positively .Divine. If any one thinks that he has it, it is his duty to l)ring it forward and submit it to the atteutiou of tho world. With conciliation, iu reference to principles, truth has nothing to do ; while coni'imjniisc, in reference to principles divinely revealed, is treachery to God. A mere stripling, divinely directed, slew mth a sling and a stone Goliath of Gath ; and the smallest and apparently weakest party, acting with faith under the same direction, may be enabled to accomplish the overthrow of the most gigantic and inveterate errors." — pp. viii-xiii. If there be justice unci jn'oprioty in the preceding quotations from eminent Pfedobaptists, my own aim, if intelligently and courteously pursued, cannot be condemned. I would also remind my opponents that, while each is at liberty to think for himself on the import of any passage, human or Divine, the hrm denial by one or another of themselves of the validity of every argument, of the relevance and force of every writing, inspired or uninspired, to prove the existence of infiint baptism in apostolic times or in the immediately succeeding ages, ought, in my judgment, greatly to diminish their conhdcnce aud dogmatism, if not to awaken in themselves a suspicion respecting tho accordance of their sentiments with Divine revelation. It is not honourable in present advocates of infant baptism to ignore to the extent to which they do, the coniident assertions of their most intelligent fellow-P:edobaptists, destitute of all bias iu favour of such a sentiment, that God's word contains not a single precept for infant bii,])tism, nor a single example of it ; that to persons come to yeary ul intcUigoiice and to these alone the sipustles were undoubtedly ycnt with CONCLUDING REMARKS. 557 a commission to disciple and baptize, that infant baptism can no more be inferred from any inspired declaration than diocesan episcopacy, that the idea of infant baptism being proved by the baptism of households, or by the promise of remission of sins and the gift of the Holy Ghost to beUevers and their children and all afar off, " as many as the Lord our God shall call," is deceptive and contemptible ; and that every allusion to children in the gospels and epistles affords not a particle of support to the baptizing of infants. It is also a fact that our Protestant opponents, equally with ourselves, condemn the making void of God's commands by human traditions, and the altering of anything divinely regulated. They applaud with us the maxim of Chillingworth, that the Bible only is the religion of Protestants. They tell us that "the silence of Scripture" "is a sufficient ground for rejecting the sign of the cross, exorcism, &c., in baptism;" that an allowed departure from scriptural precept or precedent " opens a door to all idolatry and superstition and ^vill- worship in the world." Is it relevant in any one that approves of subscription to the Book of Common Praj'er, to say with Chillingworth : "That our Saviour designed the bishop of Rome to this office, and yet would not say so, nor cause it to be written — ad rei memoriam — by any of the evangelists or apostles, so much as once, but leave it to be dra^vn out of uncertain principles, by thirteen or fourteen more uncertain consequences ; he that believes it, let him" (ReL of Prot., p. i, c. ii, § 22) '? Is it consistent on the part of Dr. Mayo, or any Pfedobaptist Dissenter from prelacy, to say, " Had our Lord or His apostles, who esteemed not their lives dear unto them to promote the good of souls, thought parochial, diocesan, and metropolitan districts necessary, or even important and useful, judge you whether they would not have given at least one instruction or command concerning them ?" Dr. A. M'Leod, respecting the New Testament dispensation says : "All its doc- trines are conducive to piety. Christianity, in its doctrines and institutions, is one connected system. No part can be altered without diminishing the beauty of the whole. Error in sentiment produces error in practice ; and every deviation from truth tends to absolute apostacy. It is the duty of every disciple to know the law of the house of God." "It is at our peril if we continue wilfulty ignorant of what God has revealed concerning the church." " He who is inattentive to the external form of the dispensation of grace, is guilty of despising the wisdom which orders it, the goodness which influences, and the authority which establishes it ; and is con- sequently exposed to the judgments of Jehovah. Eze. xliv, 5-8." — Ccitr,, pp. V, 2. I am aware that some Psedobaptists maintain that infant baptism is enjoined in Christ's gi'eat and solemn commission ; and against these I make no charge of inconsistency in their other appeals to the importance or necessity of a conduct accordant with Divine precept ; although I conceive their mistaken interpretation of the commission to involve its lamentable perversion. To the sentiments and reasoning of many I cannot but conceive the following from a Baptist to be apropos. " l3 it not strange, is it not absolutely unaccountable, if our Lord intended infants 558 SUBJECTS OF BAPTISM. should be baptized, and if they actually were baptized by the apostles, that it should not be so much as once expressly recorded in all the New Testament ? Baptism itself is frequently mentioned — mentioned as an appointment of Christ, as a duty to be performed, as an ordinance often administered, as a motive to holiness, and also by way of allusion ; yet, though all these occasions of expressly mentioning infants as entitled to baptism, or as partakers of it, repeatedly occurred, the sacred writers have united in observing a profound silence with regard to both the one and the other. Admitting the baptism of infants to be from heaven, the silence of inspired authors on this head is the more surprising, because they were far from being backward expressly to mention children on other occasions of much less importance to the purity of Christian worship, the conduct of believing parents, and the edification of our Lord's disciples. For instance : do infants fall a sacrifice to envy and cruelty, by the sanguinary edict of an Egyptian tyrant, or the bloody order of an infamous Herod ? they are expressly mentioned (Acts vii, 19 ; Matt, ii, 16). Do cliildren partake with their parents, once and again, of miraculous food? it is expressly recorded, a first and a second time (Matt, xiv, 21 ; xv, 38). Are little children presented to Christ for Hia healing touch, or His heavenly blessing ? we are expressly informed of it by these evangelists (Matt, xix, 13 ; Mark x, 13 ; Lu. xviii, 15). Did children along with their parents attend Paul, when taking leave of his Christian friends in the city of Tyre ? they also are expressly mentioned (Acts xxi, 5). Now though the particular mention of children in all these cases was pertinent, they being concerned in the several transactions recorded, yet, as none of these instances refers to a positive ordinance of Divine worship, of which kind baptism is, we may safely conclude that if Christ had warranted, and if the apostles had practised infant baptism, it was of much greater importance to the church of God for the sacred writers to have expressly mentioned it, than for them to have been so particular in the cases here adduced. It is observable also, that the explicit mention of children in these passages has little or no tendency to establish any doctrine, to enforce any duty, or prevent any dispute among the disciples of Christ ; whereas a plain information of our Lord's having commanded children to be baptized, or of the apostles baptizing infants, might have answered these important purposes. But infants are not expressly said to be baptized, our opponents themselves being judges, consequently we may conclude that infants were not then concerned in any such transaction. " Again, remarkable are the words of Luke, with which he introduces his evangelical narrative, and his apostolic history : ' Forasmuch as many have taken in hand to set forth in order a declaration of those things which are most surely believed among us — it seemed good to me also, having had perfect understanding in all tilings from the very first, to write unto thee in order, most excellent Theophilus, of all that Jesus began both to do and to teach.' From an exordium of this kind to each of his inspired narratives, the reader may justly suppose, that an article of such importance as Peedobaptism has long been esteemed by millions, would not have been entirely omitted by him, had our Lord enjoined, or had the apostles xjractised such a rite. Yes, had it been the custom of those times to baptize infants, it might be justly expected the sacred historians would have expressly mentioned it once and again, with some of its leading circumstances. Considering his conduct with regard to other affairs, in which he omits or mentions children, we certainly had reason to expect it. To the instances already adduced from his writings, I will here add one or two more. Does Luke, for example, inform us, when describing the outrageous conduct of Saul, that he ' com- mitted men and women to prison,' without mentioning children? Relating the triumphs of Divine truth, he also tells us, that when the Samaritans believed, they were baptized, both men and women ;' but says not a word of infants (Acts viii, 3, 12 ; comp. xxii, 4). If then we justly infer, that little children, along with their parents, were not the object of Saul's persecuting rage, because they are not mentioned as such in the history of his cruelty ; why may we not for the same reason conclude, that infants, together with their parents, were not the subjects of baptism as administered by Philip ? It was undoubtedly as much the business of Luke to relate, with explicit precision, what Philip did in the course of his evangelical ministry, as it was to relate the persecuting conduct of a blind bigot, who endeavoured to exterminate the Christian cause ; and a plain account of the former was of incomparably more importance to succeeding generations, than the most accurate information concerning the latter. For Philip's beneficent labours, in preaching and baptizing, are an example which the ministers of Christ are obliged to imitate ; but every one is bound to detest the persecuting spirit of Saul. Must we then consider the historian, when mentioning men and women in verse the third, as meaning adults only ; but in verse the twelfth, when he uses the very same words, as intending parents and their infant offspring ? ... If, then, common sense and common honesty unite in affixing the same ideas CONCLUDING EEMAEKS. 559 to the same word in each of those places, the consequence is obvious ; for either no infants were baptized in those days, or Philip departed from the usual practice. To prove the latter, will be an arduous task ; to grant the former, is giving up the cause." —Booth's PoBil. Ex., vol. i, pp. 319-322. Mr. Booth next quotes Bp. Taylor as saying, "If that which is omitted in the discourse be pertinent and material to the inquiry, then it is a very good probability that that is not true that is affirmed." "Everything is to be suspected false that does not derive from that fountain whence men justly expect it, and from whence it ought to flow. If yoii speak of anything that relates to God, you must look for it there where God hath manifested Himself, that is, in the Scriptures" (Due. Dub., b. ii, 0. iii). Also Vitringa, on present Episcopacy : " If we were disposed to judge impartially, laying aside aU prejudices and predilections, we should scarcely be induced to believe, that neither Luke in the Acts, nor Paul, nor yet any of the apostles in their epistles, should not have made the least mention of any bishop superior to presbyters, if there had really been any such pre-eminence, or dignity, or peculiar office, or singular title of one of the presbyters, instituted or known in their time. For they were obliged frequently to speak, and actually did speak about the churches, and concerning the government of the chiu'ches" (De Vet. Syn., pp. 479, 480). After the example of Chillingworth to the papists, may we not say : That our Saviour designed infanta should be baptized, yet would not say so, nor cause it to be written so much as once by evangelists or apostles ; though they often mention baptism as appointed, aa practised, as important ; but leave the claim of infants on that ordinance to be made out by the long labour of inferential proof — by a consideration of proselyte baptism, Jewish circumcision, the Abrahamic covenant, and passages of Scripture where baptism is either not mentioned, or is mentioned only in reference to adults ; he that can believe it, let him. Mr. Booth proceeds thus : " Supposing the Divine authority of infant baptism, it will readily be allowed that it was of unspeakably more importance for us to have been plainly informed of an apostle ha'ptizing some little child, than to be expressly told that Paul circumcised Timothy. Of the former, however, Luke says not a word; though of the latter he is most explicit (Acts xvi, 3). Did many Jewish Christians in the apostolic churches circumcise their children ? Of that also we have the most plain information from the pen of our Divine historian (Acts xxi, 20-21). This last particular is very remarkable. For who, on Paedobaptist principles, can possibly account for the perfect silence of Luke respecting the baptism of infants ; while he so plainly informs us, that the Jewish believers in general cu'cumcised their offspring, even after the obligation of that rite had entirely ceased ? If, as otir opposers imagine, all the ministers and members of the apostolic churches were Paedobaptists, baptism, for an obvious reason, must have been much oftener administered to infants than circumcision, fond as the Jewish converts were of the latter. Shall an ordinance, then, of the New Testament, which is to continue till the end of time — an ordinance, that was very frequently performed and of great importance, be quite overlooked by an historian, who knew he was writing for the direction of the church in all future ages ? What ! shall he plainly mention a practice which was then the fruit of ignorance, and of bigotry to an obsolete system, while he quite overlooks a still more common practice, that was matter of indispensable duty to every Christian parent on the behalf of hia infant offspring ? Plainly mention a prevailing fault among the primitive Jewish converts respecting their male children ; but omit their duty and their obedience in regard to both male and female infants respecting baptism ? Not over-kind, surely, would he in this case be to the character of those ancient Christians, nor over-scrupuloua in his examples for the use of posterity ! This, though not naturally impossible, exceeds the utmost bounds of probabOity. " Our opponents insist that the writers of the New Testament were all Paedobaptists. But either this is a great mistake, or these venerable authors must have had a very low idea of their own practice — much lower than Cyprian or Austin, or any of our zealous opposers in the present age. For while those infallible writers mention children on various occasions where baptism is not concerned ; they relate the bap- tizing of great numbers in different parts of the world, mthout once mentioning infanta as parties in that affair. Nay, they relate the baptizing of believers, in different places, with as little notice of infants, as if no infant had belonged to any whom they did baptize ; yet strange to conceive, the hypothesis of our opposers manifestly implies that infant baptism was then a very common practice ! For it implies that the baptism of children always accompanied that of their parents ; and that the future offspring of such converted parents were made partakers of the sacred rite. On this principle, what a prodigious number of children must have been baptized before the canon of Scripture was completed ! Now as this is an example which no ecclesiastical historian, 560 SUBJECTS OF BAPTISM. allowed to have been a Pffidobaptist has chosen to imitate ; and as it is an example which could not have been imitated when recording the transactions of later times, without omitting facts which were essential to a good narrative ; so there is ground to believe, that the inspired historian had really 7io facts to relate concerning the baptism of infants ; which is a sniScient reason for their saying nothing about it. For, surely, they were not inferior to later historians, either as to sjiiritual msdom, or holy zeal, or historic fidelity ; nor could they be ignorant that the immortal productions of their ■ pens were to be considered by all the disciples of Christ, not only as a mirror of past facts, but also as the law of Divine worship, and the rule of religious practice to the end of time" (pp. 325, 32G). — At least the Holy Spirit was not ignorant that this was the destined position of these productions. Mr. Booth also says, " Many were the positive rites ordained by Jehovah in the ancient Jewish church ; some of which were intended for the people at large, and others for particular characters among them. There is not, however, that I remember, a single instance of any ritual service designed for persons of a particular desci'iption, and of those persons, whether priests, Levites, or others, being under the necessity of inferring their interest in that sei-vice by a chain of reasoning from remote principles. No, the persons whose duty it was to regard the rite, were plainly described, as well as the manner of performing it ; so that the most ignorant among them, as far as we can perceive, were at no loss in that respect. Nor have we any reason to think that the positive laws of the New Testament are less easy to be understood than those of the Jewish economy. Dr. Owen, however, seems to have been of this opinion when he said, ' Everything in Scripture is so plain as that the meanest believer may understand all that belongs unto his duty, or is necessaiy unto his happiness. . . . There can be no instance given of any obscure place or passage in the Scripture, concerning which a man may rationally suppose or conjecture, that there is any doctrinal trutli requiring our obedience contained in it, which is not elsewhere explained' (Ways, &c., pp. 176, 185).— Thus also, Mr. W. Bennett: 'What is the rule of all instituted worship ? The revealed word of God only ; who hath given us a full discovery thereof, in all things necessary for our faith and practice, by His written word.' — Rel. Wor., ques. vii. " To imagine, therefore, that the first positive rite of religious worship in the Christian church, is left in so vague a state as Pfedobaptism supposes, is not only contrary to the analogy of Divine proceedings in similar cases, but renders it morally impossible for the bulk of Christians to discover the real grounds on which the ordinance is administered. For, doiabtless, a great majority of those who profess Christianity, are quite incapable of entering into several subjects, tlie discussion of which is found so necessary by learned men, in order to establish the right of infanta to baptism. On this plan of proceeding, a plain unlettered man, with the New Testa- ment only in liis hand, though sincerely desirous of learning from his Lord what baptism is, and to whom it belongs, is not furnished with sufficient documents to form a conclusion. No ; he must study the records of Moses, and well understand the covenant made with Abraham, as the father of the Jewish nation. Stranger still ! he must, according to the opinion of many, become a disciple of those who are the humble pupils of Jewish rabbles — of those learned authors who, being well versed in the writings of Maimonides, and in the volumes of the Talmud, imagine themselves to have imported into the Christian church a great stock of intelligence concerning the mind of Christ, relative to the proper subjects of baptism. For it is thence only he is able to learn, that the children of proselytes were baptized along with their parents, when admitted members of the Jewish church ; and thence also he must infer, that our Lord condescended to borrow of His enemies an important ordinance of religious worship for His own disciples. — Nor is this all : He must study the antiqiiated rite of circumcision ; he must know to whom it belonged, and the reason why ; then he must compare it with baptism in this, that, and the other iiarticular, after which he must draw a genuine inference, respecting the point in hand. — ^Nor has he yet performed the arduous task. For, as the New Testament says nothing expressly about the object of his inijuiry, he must sift the meaning of several passages in sacred writ that say not a word about it, in order to find that infants, of a certain description, are entitled to baptism. For instance, he must consider 1 Cor. vii, 14, in a very particular manner. Here ho must settle what is meant by the word sanctified, and by the term holy. Ho must accurately distinguish between the holiness attributed to the child, and the sanctification ascribed to the unhclicvl'iKj parcat; so as to give the infant a right which tlio parent has not, in a positive institution of Jesus Christ. — When all this is duly performed, he must fortify his mind against the objections to wliich tins fine-spun theory is liable. He must inquire, for example, so as to satisfy liis own conscience. Why, when our Lord gave commission to teach and baptize ; why, when His apostles CONCLUDING REMARKS. 661 requlrecl a profession of faith from those whom they did baptize, no exception was made in favour of infants ; and, by a train of reasoning he must at last infer, that, so far as appears they meant what they never said, nor ever did. Such is the roiind- about logical labour which the ploughman has to perform, if he would not pin his faith on the sleeve of the learned.* " But if, on the other hand, we consider positive precept and apostolic examples as the only rule of administering baptism ; if we consider evangelists and apostles aa recording, plainly recording-, all that our Lord meant us to know concerning this institution ; the labour of the most illiterate, who can read his own language, is both short and easy. For the New Testament being the only book that he wants to give him a complete idea of baptism, he has nothing to do but to open that sacred volume ; consult a few express commands and plain examples ; consider the natural and j)roper sense of the words ; and then, without the aid of commentators, or the help of critical acumen, he may safely decide on the question before him : because, our opponents themselves being judges, we have in that code of Divine law and history of apostolic practice, both express commands and express examples for baptizing such as profess faith in Jesus Christ, but none else. "When these things are duly considered, we shall not wonder that learned and eminent Predobaptists have expressed themselves as follows. Lord Brooke, for instance, has made the ensuing acknowledgment : ' To those that hold we may go no farther than Scripture, for doctrine or discipline, it may be very easy to err in this point now in hand [i.e. infant baptism] ; since the Scripture seems not clearly to have determined this particular' (On Epis., sec. ii, ch. vii). Mr. Baxter : ' If the very baptism of infanta itself, be so dark ia the Scripture, that the controversy is thereby become so hard as we find it ; then, to prove not only their baptism, but a new distinct end of their baptism, will be a hard task indeed' (Plain Scrijy. Proof, p. 301). N.B. — This acknowledgment is contained in Ins book, entitled Plain Scripture Proof of Infants' Church-rnembership and Baptism. Dr. Wall : ' At what age the children of Christians should be baptized, whether in infancy, or to stay till the age of reason, is not so clearly delivered, but that it admits of a dispute that has considerable perplexities in it' (His., p. ii, ch. xi). Mr. Henry : " There are difficulties in this controversy, which may puzzle the minds of well-meaning Christians' COn Bap., p. 70). Dr. Isaac Watts : ' Though there be no such express and plain commands or examples of it [infant baptism] wi-itten in Scripture as we might have expected ; yet there are several infer- ences to be drawn from what is written, which afford a just and reasonable oncom-agement to this practice, and guard it from the censure of siiperstition and will-worship' fBcr. S^r. Ser., vol. ii, pp. 180, 185). Anonymous: ' In the controversy about infant baptism, the inquiry ought not to be, Whether Christ hath commanded infants to be baptized? but, "VVhether He hath excluded them from baptism' (Cases to Kec. Diss., vol. ii, p. 405) ? Thus also the very learned and excellent Vitringa : ' He, in my opinion, that would argue prudently against the Anabaptists, should not state the point in controversy thus — Whether infants born of Christian parents oiight necessarily to be baptized ? but, Whether it be lawful, according to the Christian discipline, to bap- tize them ? Or, What evil is there in the ceremony of baptizing infants' (Obs. Sa., tom. i, 1. ii, c. vii, § 9) ? These extracts remind me of a remarkable interview between Saul and Samuel. The former, when recent from his expedition against Amalek, said, ' I have performed the commandment of the Lord.' To which the venerable prophet replied, ' Wliat meaueth then this bleating of the sheep in mine ears, and the lowing of the oxen which I hear' (1 Sam. xv, 13, 14) ? So, in the present case, these respectable authors would fain persuade us that they perform the will of the Lord when they sprinkle infants. But if so, we may ask, What mean these concessions and cautions which we have ? Do they not betray a conviction of some capital defect in the foundation upon which Pasdobaptists proceed ? Yes, the two last of these learned authors especially, were keenly sensible that Psedobaptism is tender ground ; and that whoever walks upon it had need be careful how he treads." — Peed. Ex., vol. i.pp. 337-342. After adducing from various Pasdobaptists the concession that the scriptural commands of baptism require faith, and that the scriptural precedents of baptism are those of professing believers, Mr. B. adds : " Some of these authors imagine that Pffidobaptism is lawful, though it be not commanded. But here they seem to forget * I maintain not the applicability to every Ptedobaptist wi'iter of all that Mr. B. says, but that he holds up to deserved scorn the grounds of Ptedobaptism many assume, and their principal reasoning in its favour. Nor do I maintain the necessity of these quotations, after having adduced concessions from so many of the most eminent and learned Psedobaptist historians and divines, that infant baptism had no existence in apostolic times or those immecliately succeediug. 00 662 SUBJECTS OF BAPTISM. that baptism is a positive rite, and that when practised it is an act of Divine worship. A precept, therefore, or an example, must be necessary to warrant the performance of it ; and consequently to authorize its administration to any description of persona whatever. Whether infants only ; whether all infants, or only some ; and if the latter, whether none but the children of church-members, or of all that appear to be converted ; or finally, whether those persons only who profess faith in Jesus, should be baptized ; are things which lie entirely at the sovereign pleasure of the great Institutor. Hia will, which is always perfectly wise and good, is the sole determiner here. Now aa we cannot know His Divine pleasure unless it be revealed ; as every intimation of Hia pleasure is attended with Divine aiithority ; and as the whole of His revealed will is contained in Scripture ; if the sacred page exhibit no command for Pasdobaptism; nor any exam^jle of it, the lawfulness of baptizing infants must be a mere surmise — a conjecture without probability. For, not to urge the common arguments against popish superstition, and waiving that excellent maxim of Ambrose before mentioned, ' Who shall speak when the Scripture is silent ?' I would only demand whether the performance of a religious rite, in the name of Jehovah, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, can be lawful, if the Divine Majesty have not appointed it ? It is clear Mr. James Owen thought it was not ; because in a similar case he says, ' It is a plain profanation of God's holy name, and of a great and holy ordinance' fVal. ofDis. Min., p. 143). . . . Thus also Dr. Owen : ' What men have a rifif/ii to do in the church by God's institution, they have a command to do' (On Heb. vii, 4-6). If, then, the law of proceeding, in this case made and provided, require that infants should partake of the institution, we undoubtedly must act a condemnable part in withholding it from them. If, on the contrary, that Divine rubric, that sacred canon, confine all that is said of it to such as profess faith in the Son of God, our opponents, for the same reason, must be highly culpable : because their practice restrains it almost entirely to such as lie under a natural incapacity of professing repentance and faith. Nor do we imagine any of them will say, -with some of the popish casuists, That a practice ia innocent because it is customary, " We are frequently charged with being extremely fond of getting people into the water ; but whether it be really so, I leave the impartial to judge. We, how- ever, may say this for ourselves, that we never immerse a person in the sublimest of all names, without his consent ; no, nor yet without his explicit request : whereas those who lodge the complaint against us are well aware, that it would in general be very absurd for them to ask the consent of those whom they sprinkle in the same glorious name, because they are certain it could not be gi-anted. Besides, they consider the consent of a parent, or of a proxy, as qiute sufficient, though the subject of the ordinance be ever so reluctant." After speaking of positive laws as implying their negative (as quoted at pp. 257, 258), he says, "We may safely conclude, therefore, that though negative arguments in various cases have no force ; yet in positive worship and ritual duty, they are, they must be valid. Otherwise, it will be impossible to vindicate the Divine conduct in punishing the sons of Aaron for offering strange Jh-e; or Uzzah for touching the ark, seeing neither the one nor the other of these particulars was expressly forbidden. Remarkably strong to our purpose, are the words of Dr. Owen on Heb. i, 5 : ' An argument taken negatively,' says he, ' from the authority of the Scripture, in matters of faith, or what relates to the worship of God, is valid and efi'ectual, and here consecrated for ever to the use of the church by the apostle.' And on those words, And our Lord sx>rang out of Judah, of which trihe our Lord spake nothing concerning the priesthood ; the same excellent author says : ' This silence of Moses in this matter, the apostle takes to be a sufficient argument to prove that the legal priesthood did not belong, nor could be transferred, unto the tribe of Judah. And the grounds hereof are resolved into this general maxim : That whatever is not revealed and appointed in the worship of God, by God Himself, is to be considered as nothing, yea, as that which is to be rejected. And such he conceived to be the evidence of this maxim, that he chose rather to argue from the silence of Moses in general, than from the particular prohibition, that none, who was not of the posterity of Aaron, should approach unto the priestly office. So God Himself condemneth some instances of false worship on this ground. That He never appointed them ; that they never ccim,e into His heart; and thence aggravated the sins of the people, rather than from ihe particular i:>rohibition of them (Jer. vii, 31)." — Vol. i, pp. 346-350, These extracts from Mr. Booth are a portion of hia Reflections on No Precept nor Precedent for Psedobaptism in Scriptiu'e, and are, as recorded CONCLUDING EEMAEKS. 563 by myself, a fulfilment of the promise given at p. 1 of this volume. On the use of sponsors and on confirmation as a vain plea for the baptizing of infants and little children, and on the recklessness with which the solemn and comprehensive promises are given and accepted, I shall not now enlarge. These things demand a separate and special notice. It is, alas, but too accordant with this system that we should thus read in a public paper of December, 1857 : " In the return of deaths for the past quarter, there is one of a man aged 76, who was for many years an inmate of one of the Westminster workhouses. In the course of nine years he assumed the responsibility of becoming sponsor to upwards of a thousand children born in the workhouse ; and for the service of becoming god- father, he was upon each occasion rewarded by the parish authorities with a pint of porter !" And it is the faith and promises of sponsors that are the justification of baptism to the unconscious child, instead of con- fining it to those who make a personal and credible profession of faith in Christ ! Almost all the premises from which Baptists argue in limiting baptism to professing believers, the canons of interpretation they adopt, and their interpretation of those passages of holy writ where baptism is mentioned, and of those which are supposed to have a bearing on this subject, are either expressly or implicitly approved by some of the most eminent Pfedobaptists that have ever filled the professor's chair, or adorned the Protestant pulpit. Thus when we speak of baptism as a positive institution ; of positive institutions depending as to the actions and subjects they embrace, on God's revealed will ; of positive laws implying their negative; &c., all is cheerfully and fully granted. I have not, so far as I know, made a single assertion on the Divine authority for beHevers' immersion, on the absence of scriptural precept and precedent for the baptism of infants and unbelievers, on the prevalence of believers' immersion during the first post-apostolic period, on the rise and cause, and final prevalence of pouring and sprinkling in lieu of immersion, on the origin of the administration of baptism to little children and to infants, on its progress and final prevalence, which most eminent Paedobaptist testimony does not explicitly confirm. Have I treated with contempt the plea of apostolic tradition, unsupported by revelation, and with disgust the plea of Jewish proselyte baptism for which we are to search the silly records of Jewish rabbis instead of God's oracles, worthy Paedobaptists have shared or do share with me in these feelings. Do we say that certain passages of Scripture are impertinent to this controversy, and that others afibrd no proof of infant baf)tism ; do we assert that matheteuo, Matt, xxviii, 19, certainly does not mean, to perform a ceremonial rite, but to win to Christ, the highest Psedobaptist authorities agi'ee with us. Not one topic of argument or text of Scripture, so far as I know, is adduced by any one Psedobaptist in defence of infant baptism, which some other does not reject as worthless for the purpose for which it is used. More than one does in substance say, on the Baptists' canon of interpretation, as Dr. Halley on Dr. Carson's, that they '' can detect nothing unfair or unreasonable." *' The cause of P^dobaptism," says Mr. Booth, "seems to be very uu- 564 SUBJECTS OP BAPTISM. happily circumstanced. For if a passage produced in its favour mentions top- tism, it says nothing of infants ; or if it mention seed, or sons, or little children, or indefinitely an individual, it says nothing of baptism ; if it mention children in connection with the term iiromise, the word baptized being in the context, it very untowardly falls out, that the blessing promised is not hcqjtism, nov does the term children iiigmiy infants ; if it mentions ^trs^ fruits and lump, root and branches, the sacred writer neither speaks of baptism, nor seems to have had any thought about it ; or, siipposing it to mention children and to represent them as holy, there is a deep silence respecting baptism. If therefore infant baptism be a Divine appointment, the predicament in which it stands must be quite peculiar." — Pad. Ex., vol. iii, p. 325. Another Baptist, J. Rutherford, maintains that — since "the generality of our Paidobaptist brethren frequently gi-ant, that the Scriptures are more copious and clear in the point of believers' baptism than for the other side of the question" — "we must look upon it as quite unaccountable, and receive it as extremely unkind, should they paint us in black colours for espousing that tenet, or rigorously withstand our sentiments" (On Bel. Bap., p. 50). He appropriately (p. 67) exhorts all to act in such accordance with conviction that the prayer may sincerely be presented, " Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done in earth as it is in heaven." The following on the prevailing ignorance, differing sentiments, and varying inconsistencies of Ptedobaptists on infant baptism, and on the evils of this, is from the pen of a Peedobaptist who has eminently served his generation. Dr. J. Campbell on Pjedobaptism says : " Ignorance of principles, and negligence of practice, in reference to it, with a few partial exceptions, reign among churches, with united sovereignty, over all the land. Whether we look to the English or Scottish Independents, we behold the same evil, and that evil existing and operating nearly to the same extent. Numbers of pastors among these two bodies, differ respecting the grounds and the proper subjects of infant baptism ; but in all that follows the administration of the ordinance, there is between them a most harmonious and unanimous negligence of their baptized children. From the time at which the ordinance is administered and the names registered, there is apparently, on the part of pastors and churches, an end of all concern, control, and even connection" (Jethro., p. 207) . If at some future period the children of the members thus baptized should happily feel the constraining power of a Saviour's love, and express a desire for fellowship, they must apply in the same manner as the children of the alien and the stranger, and pass through the usual formalities as much as the unbaptized offspring of a heathen man or a publican. Tlioy are received as from the world — as persons between whom and the church there had been neither bond nor union, connection nor relation. All the difference between them and a candidate from Caffreland is simply this: — in their case there is no fresh administration of the ordinance of baptism" (p. 208). He says, " This order of things cannot always last, and should be immediately abandoned. It surrenders the whole argument for infant baptism ; for it exhibits the ordinance as applied to children, as an idle and unmeaning ceremony. It does more ; it is fraught with boundless mischief to the souls of men, by its uniform and inevitable tendency to help on a mortal delusion respecting their personal salvation" (p. 211). He quotea with apparent approval from the Wesminster Assembly's Confession of Faith, that the seed of the faithful are " born within the church," and that by baptism they "are received into the bosom of the visible church." Dr. C. says, '' The fatal on-or of our day, and of the Independent denomination in connection with others, is the absence of proper ecclesiastical discipline among the children of the memljcrs, or rather the utter absence of all discipline." He quotes from Dr. Miller the following on baptism : "The children of professing Christiana are CONCLUDING REMARKS. 565 already in the church. They were born members. Their baptism did not make them such" (p. 228). Also, " Baptized young persons ! think of this : you have been in the bosom of the church ever since you drew your first breath. The seal of God's covenant has been placed upon you," &c. But, speaking on purity of fellowship, he says, "The New Testament church comprises all, in every nation, who have been born of the Spirit, who have exercised ' repentance towards God and faith towards our Lord Jesus Christ'" (pp. 376, 377). I quite agree with him on the state of things "at present existing among Psedobaptist bodies," that it is enough to expose their "theory of infant membership to scorn." Ho also says, " The ordinances of the gospel are only another mode of dispensing the gospel itself ; and, next to the gospel, it is of the utmost importance, that these ordinances be properly administered. This rectitude of administration requires that they shall be administered to proper persons, and in a proper manner" (p. 380). When speaking of the English and Scottish Establish- ments, he says : " In no parish is there a pure and scriptiu'al administration of the ordinances. In addition to much that is wholly papistical in respect of manner, there is, as to persons an utter confusion of all distinctions — a most revolting prostitution of sacred symbols — a fearful violation of all scriptural principle, attended with the most frightful havoc to the souls of men. To expound and to expose the enormities of the national system, with respect to baptism, or to the Lord's Supper, would be to fill volumes. Presuming on your knowledge of this most monstrous perversion, wc ask you, how long you mean to stand by as apparently indifferent spectators ? Are these matters in which yon can safely profess to have no concern and to be neutral ? Are you not, as a body, called to be witnesses for God ? Does not the Lord Jesus Christ hold you responsible for the use you make of your clearer light, and moro accui'ate acquaintance with His royal pleasm-e? Are you not as much bound to make war against the perversions of gospel ordinances, as against perversions of gospel doctrine" (pp. 380, 381) ? He calls on his brethren to " strain every power to bring over Chi'istian brethren to the obedience of Christ." He inquires, " Ai'c the previous abuses of baptism and of the Lord's Supper to last for ever ?" He exhorts his brethren to " lay aside all the popery, in all its shapes and shades, which you now share, in connection with the Establishment." He says, " I^et the difference between you and the Establishments be as distinct and as wide as a complete scriptiiral reformation can make it" (p. 381). He also adds (p. 382), "The course which we are urging, and that course alone, can produce ultimate imion among the people of God, and gather into one sepulchre the sinful sectarian distinctions which now so lamentably prevail, and keep the best of men asunder.' ' I can express emphatic approval of the return to the oracles of God as advocated by Dr. C. The exposing of each others' errors ui a Christian spirit, and the appealing to each other on behalf of what we l.ielieve to bo divinely enjoined, in the conviction that error is unconsciously and conscientiously held, while the conduct of each is in unvarying accordance with his own views of God's revealed will, I believe, tends not ultimately to alienation and separation, but to a warmer attachment and a closer union among God's people, as well as to increasing conformity to God's will. I appreciate motives in certain endeavours that have been put forth to enlighten Bap- tists ; and I honour more than motives in what years ago was written by Dr. AVardlaw and others on behalf of Christian voluntaryism, of some of whose utterances it has lieen my privilege to make another application. While I believe in the hopelessness of aU endeavoiu-s to convince of error some in every section of the chm-ch of Christ, 1 believe that the best friends of the Anglican Church, not to say of the British nation, are the members of the Liberation Society ; and while I honour some recent efforts of Dr. Mellor and others, I would hail further endeavours to enforce the instruction of inspiration, whether on baptismal regeneration (which I have but very slightly noticed, having no expectation that this volume will be seen by many Episcopalians, and my special aim in writing being to instruct those who on this agree with myself) or on other errors which characterize the Established church of this country, all being written in ardent love to Divine truth and the souls of men. Efforts to "persuade men," efforts oral and by the pen, have the highest sanction. Our opponents are equally divided among themselves respecting the subjects to be baptized and the reasons for baptizing. Some have pleaded against "baptizing any children but such whose parents, one of them at least, were communicants" at the Lord's table. Others have maintained that the children of true believers, whether church-members or not, arQ ^^^ SUBJECTS OF BAPTISM, entitled to baptism. But these have maintained that the children of ungodly parents ought by no means to be baptized. Indeed it has been thus written on this subject: "Wilt thou know, oh vain man ! that — until thy life is better, thy bringing an infant to an ordinance is an abomination to the Lord, like smoke in His nose. Until thou hast done offering thyself to mammon, thou hadst as good offer thy child to Moloch" (Bradbury's Du. and Doc. of Bap., p. 14). These hypotheses have been rejected by a great number of the Paedobaptists, as narrow notions and uncharitable restrictions. "Austin and others," says Mr. Booth, "were so far from confining baptism to the children of real saints, that they maintained the propriety of baptizing the children of infidels, if they fell into the hands of Christians (See Bingham's Orig. Eccl., b. xi, c. 4, § 17, 18) : with whom numbers of the moderns agree. Thus, for example, Buddeus : * The infants of infidels, or that come under our power by other means, are doubtless to be baptized' (Thco. Mor., p. iii, c. iii, § 70). . . . Thus also DeyUngius, another learned Lutheran : ' The children of Pagans, of Turks, and of Jews, if by purchase, or the right of war, they come under the power of the church, are to be baptized' (De Prii. Fas., p. iii, c. iii, § 12). Mr. Baxter thus : ' Wlien wo either buy infants, or they are left orphans wholly to us, so that they are wholly ours and at oiir dispose, the parents being either dead, or having given up their interest to us, I doubt not, though they were the children of Jews and Turks, that it is our duty to list them under Christ, and enter them into His school, kingdom, or church, by baptism' (Plain Scrip. Proof, p. 101). The Synod of Dort, Mr. Brandt informs us, was very much divided about the baptizing of such children as are purchased, or taken in war, but came to no resolution upon the point" (Pad. Ex., vol, ii, pp. 293, 294). Some of the children just mentioned would probably be considered by change of circumstances as virtually having pious parentage, those subsequently acting as parents having the fear of God, and thus believing in the necessity of a pious progenitor they might deem themselves consistent in advocating the enlisting of the above-mentioned, and their entrance into Christ's " school, kingdom, or church by baptism." Mr. BicKEBSTETH has quoted Mr. Strong with approval, as saying, " Children are members of the visible church, where their parents are in covenant with God" (On Bap., p. 128). And in Mr. B.'s judgment, Mr. Strong "shews that children have always been members of the church." If where the parents are in covenant with God the children are, the baptized and the unbaptized miist be in covenant with God, even though Mr. Bickersteth's catechism teaches that before baptism they are the children of wrath, and in baptism are made the members of Christ, the children of God, and the inheritors of the kingdom of heaven. The practice of the Church of England, however, as well as of other national establishments, is opposed to the restricting of baptism to the children of godly parents. And various Dissenters are of the same opinion, while some go further than others in this direction. Matthew Henry (on Bap., p. 72) and Baxter (Disp. of Right, &c., pp. 257, 280) deemed the right of children to baptism to be suspended when their parents were excommunicated. Mr. Towgood says, "Foundling infant? are very rationally brought to baptism, by those who will engage solemnly for their Christian education" (Inf. Bap., &c., pp. 53, 54). Dr. Ames says : " Exposed children, whose parents are not known, if they were born among Christians, are charitably to be accounted the children of Christians, if there be not just cause of presuming the contrary" (De Cons., 1. iv, c. xxvii, § 5), and are consequently to be baptized ; as well as the children of the excommunicated, if Buitable sponsors be found for them (§8). Beza expresses himself thus : "Charity bids us hope well of all, and labour to restore those who are taken captive in the snare of the devil; therefore, God forbid we should conclude that when parents are excom- municated, their posterity belong not to the people of God." — See Booth's Pa;d. Ex., vol. ii, pp. 294, 295. Dr. E. Williams says, " The qvialification of the subjects of baptism must bo resolved to the discretionary nature of the commission, or the supposed wisdom and prudence of the administrators, equally as the choice of an audience, the choice of a concionatory subject, and so on." I will not transcribe the perplexities of Dcylmgius respecting monstrous girths, aud his instructions respecting theni to j^oung ministers. Many CONCLUDING EEMAEKS. 567 have maintained the sufficiency of a credible profession, or of a profession of faith by one of the parents, and others have beheved in the sufficiency of a hope respecting the piety of either parent. A great number of Paedobaptists, most learned and eminent, as the quotations in this volume sufficiently evidence, hold "themselves obliged by the words of the institution to reject such as have not been instructed in the Christian faith," admitting that in the commission there is no reference to any but those come to years of understanding. There have been those who have beheved and there are now those who exphcitly maintain the equal right of all children to baptism, and some have advocated the indiscriminate character of baptism, maintaining that the right to baptize has an extent equal to that of discipling, embracing the very same persons, the discipling being indeed accomplished by the baptizing. This plea for universal and indiscriminate baptism is disowned by the great bulk of evangelical Piedobaptists, and such a practice is deemed an awful profanation of the holy ordinance. I doubt not, however, that these learned men have felt the difficulties of restriction, unless they restricted the ordinance to those making a credible profession of faith in Christ ; and I have much sympathy with some of their remarks on the invalidity of every pretext for baptism from the covenant of circumcision and, of every argument for the restriction of baptism to certain infants from any known or supposable spiritual difference between one infant and another. Among persons of independent thought, shades of difference are to be expected, where there is general agreement. But contrariety, and that so great, not only as to the subjects of baptism, but also as to the reasons for its administration, the nature and foundation of the ordinance, indicate a departure from Scripture, and demand its candid examination. An endeavour to extend the right of baptism to others than such as credibly profess their individual faith in Christ, has led to all the perplexities, contradictions, absurdities, and perversions of Divine truth which characterize Pcedobaptist writers on the subjects of baptism. It has been said by a Pasdobaptist (Dr. Macalla), "We do not borrow infant baptism from the papists, we borrow it from the apostles, and from Moses, and from the prophets." I believe not that popery, in the common acceptation of that term, invented the baptizing of infants. Infant baptism was, before poperj^, except in the germ, had an existence. It is, so far as can bo ascertained, of African origin, and, having entered, abode in both Western and Eastern churches. The Reformers, with Luther at their head, retained this practice, to the church's injury, and their own dishonour. It has been justly said, "A difficulty, which has resulted from the abuse of an ordinance, can never be fairly urged against the proper and legitimate use of it" (Dr. Wardlaw's Inf. Bap., p. 177), But infant baptism is more than an abuse, it is another thing th^cn believers' baptism, it is the subversion of a Divine ordinance. The practice to which we should reach through all entanglement and difficulty is the practice which the Head of the church, according to Dr. Wardlaw and many others, most solemnly enjoined in the commission to His, disciples. The following has been WTitten by certain Baptists on th^ varying and opposing sentiments of Pfedobaptists, 568 SUBJECTS OF BAPTISM. E. Pengilly thus concisely gives the varying grounds of Pasdobaptists for tho baptizing of infants : " Their grounds are various and contradictory. The early Fathers who practised it urged the virtue of the ordinance in taking away sin, and securing eternal life ; adding the certain ruin of those that neglected it. The Church of Rome holds, ' If any one shall say that baj)tism is — not necessary to salvation, let him be accursed.' The Greek Church, by Cyril, patriarch of Constantinople, affirms, ' We believe that baptism is a sacrament appointed by the Lord, which except a person receive, he has no communion with Christ.' The Lutheran Chiu'ch, and the Church of England, hold both the ordinances 'as generally necessary to salvation.' The former, agreeing with Calvin and Melancthon, ' own a sort of faith in infants,' afford- ing them a right ; while the English Chm-ch hesitates not to baptize them ' because they (the infants) promise by their sureties' repentance and faith, ' which promise, when they come to age, themselves are bound to perform.' Many learned wi'iters, as well as churches, have expressed their views upon this inquiry. Dr. Wall, Dr. Hammond, and many others, hold that the practice of ' Jewish Proselyte Baptism' is the foundation of the Christian rite, and as infants received the former, so they should the latter ; but Dr. Owen, Dr. Jennings, and others, have proved that no such practice existed among the Jews to afford such a pattern till generations after Christ. Sir N. KnatchbuU assumes circumcisioii as the proper foundation. Beza, and after him Dr. Doddridge and others, considered the holiness of the children of believers, as making them proper subjects. Mr. M. Henry and Dr. Dwight, contended that ' the profession of faith made by the parents' was their children's right. Dr. H. F. Burder affirms, ' The identical principle which pervades and unites the whole of the argument — is that infants are to be baptized solely on the ground of connexion teiUi their parents;' and this he explains, 'it is a connexion in the covenant of grace, the covenant of redemption, the everlasting covenant, embracing all that man can desire, or all that Jehovah can impart.' An anonymous writer affirms that ' children by baptism are actually hrowlht into the covenant of grace.' This is denied by another, who i-eplies that the ' children of believers are really and truly in the covenant of grace before their bai^tism.' Such endless contrariety and absurdity are consequent upon having no Scripture authority." — Guide, &c., pp. 83, 84. The Author of " Facts opposed to Fiction" (whose work is edited by W. Jones), who ^vrote in reply to the " Churchman's Reasons for bringing his Children to the bap- tismal font," on his examination of arguments in favom- of infant baptism, says : " I was surprised to find, in the progress of this inquiry, that the most candid and learned, as well as the most violent Pajdobaptist wi'iters, had conspired involuntarily to refute each other. I marked, in silent wonder, every prop which the ingenuity or perverseness of man could possibly have imagined, as it fell under the irresistible stroke of afrieml • — till the stupendous, ancient, yet ill-founded monument of superstition ' fell like- wise ; and great v/as the fall of it.' " I shall only adduce two extracts in illustration. " The Churchman says, ' I bring my children to holy baptism, because tradition, and the universal practice of the church of Christ, sanction my practice in so doing' (p. 8). Mr. Robinson objects that, ' If — whatever wo find to have been a general and prevailing custom a few hundred years after the apostles, must necessarily be allowed to have been the practice of their times too, I am afraid we must not only liave forma of prayer, but also prayers for the dead, and invocations of saints, and angels, and so on' (Review of the Case of Liturg., p. 111)." — Facts, pp. 1-3. G. GiBBS, having spoken of differences among Psedobaptists on the mode and ceremonies of baptism, speaks of the authority for infant baptism as " the most perplexing part of their theory." He says, " Some affirm that this rite rests upon our Lord's commission to disciple all nations, which, say they, includes the baptism of infants. Others deny this, and allow that neither the letter nor the spirit of this commission will admit of such an interpretation. A supposed iiniversality of grace is assigned by some as a sufficient reason for baptizing infants ; while those Pasdobaptists who believe the doctrine of particular redemption, deny this altogether, and in their turn bring forward circumcision as scriptural warrant for the practice ; others reject circumcision as their authority, and profess to administer this rite on the ground of Jewish proselyte baptism — while many discard these Jewish ceremonies, and declare that the child's j:)t;rAOi!r( J interest in the covenant of grace gives him an undoubted right to baptism : again, this covenant relation is questioned, and the faith of the parents is considered as the child's only title to this privilege. There is yet another party of Pffidobaptists who disclaim all these authorities, and who consider that the efliccu'ij of tlic ordinance itself, whidh they believe conveys salvation to its subjects, affords au unanswerable reason for its administration ; and by others the « uthorily of the church is pleaded as an infallible guide in this, as in other matters of faith and i.'nicticc." JIc m^a, on " the ordiiiauco us ivjl'oalins' au opiioi'tmiity cf a'Mvcssing CONCLUDING EEMAEKS. 569 parents on the duties of their parental character," " that the application of water to the infant for such a xnirposc 'nnercly, is not infant baptism : it is a gervice called indeed by that name, but not practised till of late by any body of professing Christians in any age or country. It is the mere act of sprinkling a child's face : it is a ceremony sin generis, differing in its nature, use, and design, from that general system of Pfedobaptism which is a rite instituted as ' an outward and visible sign of an inward and spiritual grace ;' and not to teach parents their duties in relation to their children.' ' " Had the Protestants been wise enough to have left Pasdobaptism in the bosom of that community from which they seceded, or having adopted it, had they placed it where the Papists have very properly done, among the ceremonies of their church, and not among the ordinances of the gospel, they would, on this point at least, have screened the word of God from the attacks of some of its bitterest adversaries." — De/., &c., pp. 237-242. T. Westlake says : " Mr. Towgood derives infant baptism from apostolic tradition. But Curcellajus says, it is not an apostolic tradition, but only an ancient custom. Dr. Hammond derives infant baptism from Jewish proselyte-bathing. But Dr. Lardner and Sir N. Knatchbull tell us, That proselyte baptism is a mere fiction of the Rabbins, by vfliom some persons have suffered themselves to be imposed upon. Pope Innocent the third, Peter Edwards, and others, assert, ' that baptism came in the room of circixmcision.' But Dr. Hammond, Turrettimis, Chamierus, and others, say. That baptism did not come in the room of circumcision. Jon. Evans, Herbert Mends, and others, tell us, That the children of believing parents are to be baptized. But Pope Gregory the seventh, Dr. William:-!, and others, aifirm, that oil children, without distinction, ought to bo baptized. Anselm says. Children should be baptized 'that thoy may bo made lioly ones. But Beza tells us that the children of saints are admitted to baptism because they are holy ones. Dr. Williams exclaims, ' Was I baptized in infancy ? How highly have I been honoured ! How greatly benefitted ! For, from that early period has the pardon of sin, free salvation, eternal life, with every New Covenant blessing been scaled to me.' Yet Mr. Horsey, when addressing the parents of a recently sprinkled infant (notwithstanding all the above sealed bless- ings) says, ' You anticipate, but with grcai nncertaiiitij, its futui'e character and lot, is it an ernbryo-angel, or an cmhryo-ficndf Mr. P. Edwards asserts, That baptism is nowhere called a biirial, and that the apostle in Eom. vi, 3, 4, and Col. ii, 12, 'Buried with Him in baptism,' &c.,does not allude to baptismal immersion. But Chrysostom, Hoadley, Wills, Clarke, Goodwin, Macknight, Tillotson, Baxter, Doddridge, Whitfield, Wesley, and scores beside, declare that in these passages there is an allusion to tho ancient manner of baptizing, which was by immersion, Mr. Towgood says, ' Should immersion be allowed to have been tho only ancient, apostolic, and scriptural mode of baptizing ; yet a strict .adherence is not obligatory on us ; but this circumstance may very lawfully and fitly bo exchanged, for sprinkling, or pouring.' But Mr. Charnock says, ' God never gave power to any man to ehange tlis ordinances, or to disjjense with them.' The Baptists, in this instance, agree with Mr. Charnock. The clergy of the Establishment baptize, or rather rhantizo infants on the faith of sponsors; tho Presb3rterians do it on the faith of parents ; and Kivetus, Thysius, Buddeua, and others, on tho faith of the infants themselves ! But even those who plead for tho faith of infants, are as nnich at variance about that faith, as they and the rest of their brethren are about every other part of the subject. For Mr. Leigh says, that infants may have an imputed faitli ; Mr. Bingham suggests, that they have a passive faith ; Witsius hints, that they have a relative faith ; Chemnitius says, ' They have faith in seminc; and Prideaux asserts. That they have the faith of the covenant, though not the faith of the covenantees ! . . . such contradictory evidence as the above would nonsuit any cause — but that of infant sprinkling — in any court — but that where Old Prejudice sits as judge" (On Baj)., pp. 135-138). The last clause is applied to what Mr. W. has recorded from Paedobaptists on tho " mode, subjects, and history of baptism." More recent writers are equally opposed to one another on the reasons for infant baptism. Compare Drs. Halley and Wardlaw on the commission of Christ and on the covenant of circumcision. Compare Dr. Wardlaw on the baptism of households with Neander and others already quoted. Compare Dr. Bushnell on the absurd extent to which, with much important jnstructioii and admonition to parents, he carries his faYouritc idea of th^ 670 SUBJECTS OF BAPTISM. organic unity of the human family, with the concessions of a host of Pfedobaptists, that no little child is saved or lost through the piety or imgodliness of its parents. Nor do the preposterous inferences from Peter's words, " unto you and to your children," which are deduced by many, lack contradiction from others. While not adducing the concessions of our opponents as an authority for the baptism of believers, neither do I with an unkind feeling to those whom I deem erring brethren, adduce their contradictions on the authority for infant baptism or its uses. I write with the conviction that believers' baptism (and no other) is revealed as divinely enjoined and apostolically practised ; also, that, in the words of Dr. H. Heugh on voluntary contributions for the support of Christianity, this Di\dne appointment has the "appearance of permanence ;" that "no indication is given of a period when another order of things should arise, when this original and divinely instituted" ordinance "should bo supplanted by another, better and more efficient ;" " that this appointment is honouring to the Lord Jesus, and to the best interests of His church ;" " and that the abolition of the one, and the substitution, by human authority, of others in their room, would be dishonouring to the Redeemer and injurious to His church." — On Civ. Est. of Eel, pp. 68, 69. J. G. Manly, who has been previously quoted as teaching that faith is a pre- requisite to baptism, subsequently says on "external Ecclesiastical Eelations" what is at least equally applicable to believers' baptism : " The question is not what is, but what ought to be 5 not what we have been taught, but what is truth ; not whither our predilections and interests may lead us, but to what result the most searching scrutiny and the most ardent love of verity will conduct us. The present investigation is too much beset with prejudice, partizanship, and private interests, to admit of thoroughness and success, unless we are prepared to buy the truth at any price and hold it unsold at any risk. The timidity that cannot part ■with leading-strings, and that cannot pass the barriers of progenitors and parties, will either never enter here, or will quickly return to its olden counsels and its golden conclusions. But he who loves truth for her own sake, who distinguishes her voice and steps continiially, and who gazes upon her celestial symmetry and loveliness with inextinguishable ardour, will heed no toil and dread no danger in pushing his way to the proper goal" (Eccl., pp. 180, 181). I believe with Mr. M. in the fulness of apostolic qualifications " to publish the nature and conditions of communion and to conduct through the ecclesiastical portals of belief and baptism, the proper applicants" (p. 1-16). But who now separate "belief and baptism?" Why knowingly administer baptism -without the divinely-required prerequisite ? " The folly and error of joining together what God has created and placed asunder, are as great as the folly and error of putting asunder what God has joined together" (p. 284). And vice versa. A New England Synod interrogates and affirms as follows ; " What have infants more than mere membership to give them right unto baptism ? We know of no stronger argument for infant baptism than this, That church-members or faaderati, are to be baptized" (Dr. Mather's His. ofN. E., p. 79). Others deny that we have any record in the New Testament of one being baptized as a church-member, or that the initiatory ordinance is intended to introduce into the church of Christ. Some admit the faith of a parent, and others the faith of an ancestor or more distant progenitor, as qualifying an infant for baptism. The following on this subject is recorded by Hanbury concerning the Congi'egational Puritans. They believed that " the children of believers" should be baptized as well as their believing parents (His. Memo, of the Ind., vol. i, p. 168). Tliey did "not conceive of baptism as a charm, or think it effectual to all it is put upon" (p. 211). Robinson maintained that " the church is not gathered, nor men thereinto admitted, by baptism." "The church is not given to baptism ; but baptism, on the contrary, to the church ; as are all other the Lord's public ordinances and oracles" (p. 2(56). Baptism, he taught, "ought not to be ftdministercd without ' faith coming between, either of the party to bo baptized, ox 9t CONCLUDING EEMARKS. 571 one parent at the least' " (p. 374). It " doth no more belong to the seed of godless parents, than doth the comfort flowing from the righteousness of faith unto the parents themselves" (p. 375). It is maintained by Ainsworth that "Christian infants," at least those " dying in infancy," " are born again ' of the Spirit ;' and so must needs, in some measui'e, have repentance, faith, holiness, without which there ia no regenera- tion" (p. 413). He asks, " And why should it be thought incredible that God should work faith in infants" (p. 414)? "Baptism," says he, "is the sign of faith and holiness" (p. 415). His words may imply that the gospel should be preached to infants, God having " commanded ' the promise' of grace, and accomplishment of it to the seed of the faithful, even in infancy, to be preached. . . . And seeing all believers are by His commission to be baptized ; the infants of the chm'ch being beUevers, in respect of the beginning of faith, though not ' actually,' as I have formerly proved ; they are also to be baptized by virtue of Christ's commission" (pp. 416, 41 '7). With all this absurdity in attempting to educe infant baptism from Christ's commission, it would seem as if John's baptism was not supposed to be that of infants, when on its attendant confession of sins we read, that though not " a strict private examination of every particular person," " their confession of sins and profession of faith were rather to be conceived some solemn and public testification of their consent unto the doctrine that was preached unto them" (p. 536). One New England article of faith says, "The matter of a true visible church, is, either infants or persons of age and understanding." Another article says, "The members are saints called out of the world and united together into one congregation, by a holy covenant, to worship the Lord and edify one another in all His holy ordinances." — Vol. ii, p. 300. Cotton maintains that " the Lord Jesus Christ maketh the profession of the faith of His name, &c., to be the rock and foundation of a visible church; then we shall build a church without a foundation if we receive such members . . . as do not hold forth such a profession." Yes, " all the members ought to be saints, by calling ; and 'faithful brethren ;' it cannot be thought an unreasonable cm-iosity, &c., to take a due trial of men by a confession of sins, as John Baptist did, and by a profession of their faith, as Philip did ; before they receive them" (pp. 5, 6, 7). These worthy and erring bretlu-en could conscientiously say, " Ceremonies we use none, but are careful to administer all things according to the primitive institution" (p. 568). But who ia reminded of any part of God's word when reading the following : " Baptism may be orderly administered to the children of such parents as have professed their faith and repentance before the church as above ; or where either of the parents have made such profession. Or it may be considered also, whether the children may not be baptized, where either the grandfather or grandmother have made such profession, and are still living to undertake for the Christian education of the child ... or, if these fail, what hindereth, but that, if the parents will resign their infant to be educated in the house of any godly member of the church, the child may be lawfully baptized in the right of its household governor according to the proportion of the law. Gen. xvii, 12, 13" (pp. 578, 579). It would only be going further in the same direction, and with equal support from God's word, to say that all infants may be baptized if the church Will do its best towards their education, on the ground of the piety of Noah, of which we read a little nearer the beginning of the inspired volume than Gen. xvii. The Now England Congregational Puritans maintained, that " visible saints only are fit matter, appointed by God, to makeup a visible church of Christ;" but that the term "sainta" comprehends "the infants of confederate believers." — Vol. iii, p. 268. While many have maintained that the piety of some ancestor, or the promise, to a gi'eater or less extent, of some one on the child's behalf, is requisite to entitle infants to baptism, others see " no reason that the wickedness of parents should prejudice the child in things pertaining to eternal life," and believe that baptism, independently of the parents, '* is a benefit to infants, or it is not." Clearly, as Dr. Williams says, " The champions are by no means agreed upon this question, On what is the right of infants to baptism founded."— iVofes on So. Eel, p. 58. These contradictory statements of our opponents on the benefits and grounds o£ Infant baptism reminded Mr. Booth of Jewish rabbles, quoted by Glassius, who have maintained "that there are seventy ways of expounding Divine law," and of rabbi Lipman's maxim, That the law was callable of divers explications, aud all of them| 572 SUBJECTS OP BAPTISM. though never so incompatible and contradictory, were nevertheless the words of the living God f'Pcerf. Ex., vol. ii, p. 308). But with greater approval he quotes the following. Dr. Kiush : — " Errors may be opposed to errors ; but truths, upon all subjects, mutually support each other." Dr. Owen : — " Every undue presumption hath one lameness or other accompanying it : it is truth alone which is square and steady. . . . Men put themselves into an uncertain and slippery station where they know not what to fix upon." Elsewhere, reasoning against the Jews, he says, " They know not what to fix upon, nor wherewith to relievo themselves. Although they all aim at the same end, yet what one embraces, another condemns. . . . For error is nowhere stable or certain, but fluctuates like the isle of Delos, beyond the skill of men or devils to give it a fixation" (p. 447). Dr. Allix : — " When men dispute against the truth, what one of them builds up is presently pulled down by another' ' (pp. 308, 309). In opposing the advocates of popish infallibility and transubstantiation, our opponents can say, " We find every party exposing the falseness and^mpossibility of every one's hypothesis but their own. Their greatest men confess the uncertainty of their own proofs, That there is not in Scripture any formal proof of transubstantiation" (p. 300). Thus, Sir W. Jones, respecting a commonly received principle of natural philosophy: — "Is it not enough to discompose the muscles of a hermit, to see men thus notoriously contradicting one another, and all gravely pretendingto authority and demonstration." Booth's Pad. E.c, vol. ii, p. 447. Nor can I detect impertinence in the following from Mr. Booth : " I will venture to challenge our Pajdobaptist brethren to produce an instance of equal disagreement among Pi-otestants, about the proper mediums of proof, where the same general conclusion is intended by each. That a number of persons, however judicious or pious, when writing in defence of a doctrine, or of a duty, should not all think the same topics of argument, or the same texts of Scripture, applicable to the subject before them, is not to be wondered at ; bxit then, in every other instance that I have observed, they all agree in considering some particular arguments, and some passages of Scrip- ture, as ]jro'j)erly helongiafj to the subject of discussion. Thus it is with the English Baptists in regard to their distingiiishing sentiment and practice. They perfectly agree, so far as I have observed, in applying many declarations and facts recorded by the apostles, as directly in point, with reference to the mode, the su])ject, and the design of baptism ; and this, I think, ovu- opponents themselves must acknowledge. — Here, however, we have an example of a singular kind. Piodobaptism is the thing to bo defended by a number of learned pens, each of which glows ^vith zeal for its honour and safety. But, behold, some of them reject one topic of argument, and some another ; these except against an application of that sacred text, and those explain this in such a manner as is foreign to the subject, until all the promises are frittered away, and nothing remains in which they all agree, but a naked conclusion ; and yet this very conclusion must be worked mtli caution, or you will not have tlie pleasure to see them quite unanimous . For while multitudes labour to prove Paidobaptism highly necessary, and while most of them consider it in the ligllt of parental duty on the infants' behalf; others, and among them the great Vitringa, only plead for its being lawful, or that there is no harm in it. A conclusion, therefore, in wliich they all agi-ee, must be tlius expressed : Poidohaptlsni is lawful. Or, Thci-r is no evil in baptii^inr/ in.Jants. If you Ijush for a general conclitsion one step farther, they vary in their judgment — they divide — they quarrel among themselves." — Patl. &:, vol. ii, pp. 313, 314. Can the readei" woudor that among eminent Pfcdobaptlsts there should bo those who beUevc there is a future for the Baptists, that " it is highly probable that the Baptist ideas will prevail ?" And lest any reader should yet think me unjust in my quotations, let me quote the following vindica- tion of himself by Dr. Cornelius Burgess. •' It is very true that Calvin, and othel* reverend divines, do often require faith aa the hand of the soul» to apply unto the believer the gi-ace offered in the sacraments. But is it not also true, that both Calvin and the rest have also that which I have alleged out of them ? If not, then let me bear the blame for ever. If so, why do men complain that I wrong mine authors ? If I allege a passage out of Bcllarmine against the popish tenet in any particular, will any man conclude that I have wronged him, because they are able to shew that BoUarmino himself writes the contrary in some ptber parts of his works? If I find an tmthor speaking for mo, I cannot be justly CONCLUDING REMARKS. 573 taxed of falsifying him, althoi^^h he speaks never so directly against me in another place, unless it appear that he retracted the first, and professeth an alteration of his judgment." (In Booth's P(Ct7. iJ.v., vol. iii, p. 447). "I allege Arcudiiis," says Claude, " to confront him with himself, concerning some truths and matter of fact, which do now and then escape liim ; after the same manner as I would quote Cardinal Perron, and Bellarmine, and Mr. Arnaud himself, not as witnesses that believe what I would conclude, but as persons who affirm things, from whence I con- clude what they themselves do not believe." Though some baptize on the faith of one or both of the parents, and some on the faith of sponsors, Bp. Browne says, " The theory that the faith of parents or of sponsors is necessary to give effect to baptism in infants, ia not to be maintained for an instant" (On the 39 Art.). The " judicious" Hooker says, " A ■wrong conceit — that none may receive the sacrament of baptism but they whose parents, at least one of them, are, by the soundness of their religion, and by their virtuous demeanour, known to be men of God — hath caused some to repel children, whosoever bring them, if their parents be mispersuaded in religion, or for other misdeserts excommunicated. . . , Be it, then, that baptism belongeth to none but such as either believe presently, or else, being infants, are the children of believing parents. In case the church do bring" children to the holy font whose natural parents are either unknown, or known to be such as the church accurseth," " were it not against both equity and duty to refiise the mother of believers [the church] herself, and not take her in this case for a faithful parent ? It is not the virtiie of our fathers, nor the faith of any others, that can give us the true holiness which we have by virtue of our new birth" fEr. Pol., b. v., § 64). Dr. Beith, on the baptism of infants, says, " Previous to its administration, indeed, they are included, by virtue of their parents' faith, in the visible church of Christ" (Nar. of Sue. Ber.). Yet he is a subscriber to the Westminster Confession of Faith, which says that baptism is " for the solemn admission of the party baptized into the visible church." Luther, Boston, Dibdin, and others, teach that infants have faith. This by others (as Leibnitz, &c.) is denied, and declared (by Jacobi, &c.) to be an absurdity. The majority maintain that baptism regenerates, and might say with Augustine, that " if they die without baptism, they do go into everlasting fire ;" but this is declared by others to be a delusion of Satan for deceiving and ruining men's souls. One says infants should be baptized because Abraham's male descendants were circumcised. Others say, Circumcision has nothing to do with it. Some say, Because infants are federally holy ; and others say that this phrase is unscriptural and unintelligible. Generally a sponsorial faith, one such expressly or by implication instead of a personal faith, is expected. Until within about three hundred years, sponsors have been expressly demanded so far as can be ascertained from the commencement of infant baptism in the third centmy ; or from the second century, when the baptism of little children and extravagant ideas of the efficacy of baptism were preparing the way for the baptism of infants. Those who are complaining of the abundance of Pasdobaptist quotationfs I would remind of the justly venerated J. A. James, who, in his Defence of Nonconformity, says : "Let no one complain of the method I have adopted in selecting so largely from clerical works, and making the advocates of the Church of England her assailants. This is but an equitable employment of the artjumentum ad horninem'" (p. vi). If quoting from opponents, says Abp. Whateley, is done in fairness, "neither party really disapproves of such a procedure on account of its intrinsic unfairness, but merely when it makes against themselves" (On the Sac, p. 49). Our opponents do not simply beUeve one argument or one Scripture adduced by one Psedobaptist to be less strong than that produced by another, but their opposition to each other is of this character. Dr. Halley founds infant baptism on " the commission to baptize all the nations." Dr. Wardlaw says, *' No such thing is contemplated by Him who gave the commission, as the baptism of infants." Dr. Wardlaw says the ground of infant baptism is "the covenant relation between beUevers and their seed." Dr. Halley says, "In all arguments which assume any distinction of 574 SUBJECTS OP BAPTISM. privileges among children on account of the faith of their parents, we must disclaim all participation." Dr. A. Clarke I believe to have condemned Pajdobaptism and some of its advocates, when he said, " Men must not mould the worship of God according to their fancy — it is not what they think tvill do, is proper, innocent, &c,, but what God Himself has ])rescrihed, that He will acknow- ledge as His worship. However sincere a man may be in a worship of his own invention, of man's commandment, it profits him nothing : Christ Himself says it is vain." — Com., on Matt, xv, 9. Dr. J. Brown has my approval when, speaking of "impurity in doctrine, or in worship, or in discipline, and sectarianism in constitution or in spirit," as " the master maladies under which, in various degrees, all the churches of Christ are labouring," he says ; "A leading cause of those evils is an undue regard to human authority, a principle endlessly varied in its forms, and most malignantly efficient in [its operation. The only cure for both these evils, which are more closely connected than is generally apprehended, is to be found in a return to entire submission to Divine authority. That — that alone will bring back the purity and unity of the apostolical age. To promote this most desirable object, all who in any measure know the truth on this subject, should speak it — and speak it in its own spirit, which is that of love. When thus spoken, it will not be spoken in vain" (Disc, and Say., &c., vol. i, p. 507). This, says Dr. B., is necessary to unity as well as purity.^' I much sympathize with the praise of a few expositors by Dean Alford, "because of the almost total absence from their pages of any wish to bend plain language so as to suit preconceived notions ; because they simply inquire throughout, not ' What may it mean ?' but, 'What does it mean' " (Addr. to Ches. Stu.J ? Nor can I express dissent fi'om A. F. Douglas, who thus reports "the amazing ignorance which prevails so extensively both among laity and ministry concerning" infant baptism. '* Not one in a hundred can tell you anything about the matter. They comply with the custom ; nay, consider it decorous, respectable, and religious ; but that is all." "In addition to this the argument for infant baptism is very much a theological one, which to comprehend in its full force, requires some little mental exercise." "It is easy to see that at first blush, the Baptist has the best side of it." — The Pastor, &c. It is probable that the acknowledgment of one who has become a Baptist is true respecting " difficulty felt" in regard to the great bulk of teachers and the taught among Ptedobaptists. He had attained " ' distinct and definite views upon the subject' of baptism, so far as it refers to adults ; but he could not attain to similar views of the ordinance as administered to infants. He found, as Dr. Cunningham says, that * there is a great difficulty felt, a difficulty which Scripture does not aftbrd us any adequate means for removing, in laying down any distinct and definite doctrine as to the bearing and efficacy of baptism in the case of infants.' " He devoted a "part of his spare time to the reading of Church History, and other works bearing on the subject of baptism, wTitten by learned men who practised infant baptism, and who did not immerse, but CONCLUDING EEMARZS. 675 sprinkled ; he was surprised to find that they distinctly admitted that, in the first ages of Christianity, none were baptized but those who made a profession of ' repentance toward God and faith toward our Lord Jesus Christ.' He also found that they all admitted with Calvin, 'that the term baptize means to immerse, and that this was the form used in the primitive church.' He was amazed to find that their practice was so much at variance with these admissions. In reading Dr. Wayland's Life of Dr. Judson, the well-known American missionary to Burmah, he met with a letter which that great and good man, immediately after he became a Baptist, wi'ote to the Congi'egational church with which he had been connected before leaving America." He now came "to clearer views of the spirituality of Christ's kingdom. He saw that it was a kingdom entirely different from the Jewish nation. He saw, as Professor Moses Stuart says, that there is a difi'erence between that 'politico-ecclesiastical community and that one of which it is said that it is not of this world.' " He eventually "became thoroughly satisfied that there is no warrant in the word of God for the baptism of infants," and that the term baptize •' means to immerse." J. BuTTEEWORTH says — " Probably some of my Christian brethren are ready to say, that baptism is a disputable point. I own it ; but at the same time know that the subject is no worse for all that. If all religious subjects were to be cast aside because they are controverted, we must shut up our Bibles, and bid farewell to the Christian religion. But I hope I have not so learned Christ, as to desert the duties or doctrines of His religion, because men oppose them. Others may say that there haa been as much said upon the subject as can be advanced. That is more than I know. Bnt suppose it is true ; yet God's ministers should give Zwie iipon line, and precept upon precept, Is. xxviii, 13. Some say, it is not essential to salvation, and therefore no occasion for so much ado about it. This savours strongly of antinomianism ; for if we are to neglect the duties of religion, because they are not essential to salvation, we may throw off all duty at once. Upon this principle, farewell sabbaths, prayer- meetings, and other religious duties. Others may say, that a subject of this nature should be left to more masterly hands. To which I answer, that God hath sometimes chosen the foolish things of the ivorld, to confound, the wise; and God hath chosen the weak things of the world, to confound the things which are mighty ; and base things of the world, and things which are despised, hath God chosen, yea, and things which are not, to bring to nought things that are; that no flesh should glory in His presence," — Ser. on Acts ii, 38, pp. 14, 15. Mr. D. Young, on becoming a Baptist, says that he was asked, "Are all the united Presbyterian ministers wrong, and you right ?" " Is there anything against infant baptism in the New Testament ?" " Is the question of baptism of such importance as to warrant you to leave such a sphere of usefulness ?" He thought that truth was " not established by the number of its adherents," and " that loyalty to our heavenly Head is all-important." Dr. S. Stennett has my cordial approval where he says, I will " assert, that as the institutions of the gospel derive their authority from Christ, so to treat them as matters of little consequence, and to consider it as a weak, officious, useless kind of zeal, to maintain them in their primitive simplicity, because they are not of the same important consideration with" some other matters, " is grossly to affront the supreme Head of the church. Besides, positive institutions are not arbitrary signs of subjection to the authority of our Divine Master, in which light, however, their importance is considerable ; but they are wisely adapted to the great purpose of promoting practical religion ; wherefore the treating them with indifference has a manifest and direct tendency to injure those other more noble truths and duties which, I readily agree, demand our superior zeal. To which I will add, if, upon this popular ground of the trifling importance of positive institutions, every attempt to rescue baptism from human innovation is to be considered as the fruit of violent attachment to peculiarities, and a criminal zeal for a favourite mode and party ; I know not upon what suffi- cient plea our first Eeformers are to be justified in theii* warm and steady 576 SUBJECTS OP BAPTISM. opposition to the corruptions of popery ; or their successors, the Pmitans, in their dissent from the established church." Also he inquires, "Are the friends of Paedo- baptism only to be permitted to speak ; and those on the other side to be required, at the peril of that little reputation they may have for ' candovir, humility, integrity, and benevolence,' to hold their peace ?" — Ans., pp. 281, 282, 286. Baxter has my thorough condemnation when in his Plain Srrij^tnre Proof (p. 9), he teaches that " positives about worship" " are mentioned in Scripture but sparingly and darkly," and therefore "must needs be difficult;" while I deny not that "all the talk and disputing in the world will not make that easy which God hath left obscure." AVhether the fault of opposing sentiments on infant baptism be in Baptists or Pajdobaptists, it is not in the lamp to our feet which God has provided. Bp. Ellicott has my cordial sympathies when, in exhorting the young man to diligence in obtaining an accurate knowledge of the Divine Spirit's records, he says : " As he wearisomely traces out the subtle distinctions that underlie some illative particle, or characterize some doubtful preposition, let him cheer himself with the reflection that every effort of thought he is thus enabled to make, is (with God's blessing) a step towards the inner shrine, a nearer approach to a recognition of the thoughts of an apostle, yea, a less dim perception of the mind of Christ" (Pref. to Epis. to the Oal., p. x). He also deplores that too often "the commentator, on the strength of some ' received interpretation' or some dogmatical bias, has stated what the passage ought to mean, and then has been tempted, by the force of bad example, to coerce the words ^per Hehraismum,' or 'per enallagcn,' to yield the required .sense. This in many, nay, most cases, I feel certain, has been done to a great degree unconsciously, yet still the evil effects remain" (pp. vi, vii). This he deplores as existing in opposition to finding out the actual import of words, and the peculiar shade of meaning which the context may scorn to impart. On the importance of being obedient to the teaching of Christ, and oji what we personally believe to have been taught by Him, on baptism and on everything else, volume on volume of quotations might be written. Yet it is difficult to persuade some of our opponents, that we, in being firm, are not bigoted ; and that we, in regarding anything else than immersion in water on a credible profession of faith in Christ as not Christian baptism, however pious may have been the intention of the administrator or the baptized, are not unjust or uncharitable. It was a pleasure recently to find Lord Cairns thus speaking on behalf of the Judicial Committee of the Privy Coimcil : " As to the argument that the use complained of is at most only part of a ceremony, their Lordships are of opinion that when a part of a ceremony is changed, the integrity of the ceremony is broken, and it ceases to be the same ceremony." In infant sprinkling for Christian baptism, we say that two parts "of the ceremony" are "changed, the integrity of the ceremony is broken, and it ceases to be the same ceremony." I believe with Dr. Stacey that the "mutilation" of the Lord's Supper by the Papists, "is one of the many proofs of the deep apostacy of that church ;" that "it is a bold and flagrant departure from the simple terms of its institution, a reckless and inexcusable innovation on the practice of apostolic and subsequent times, and a virtual substitution of the decrees of popes and councils for the clear announcements of the word of God" (p. 247). There is "the paring down and virtual setting aside of a Divine enactment" (p. 254). "A few Scriptures are put to the rack and tortured into an utterance which Roman theology interprets as an approval of its heresy" (p. 255). Without believing in any design on the part of Dr. S. to pervert any Scripture, I am reminded of the adage, which I believe to be partially applicable, " Physician, heal thyself." CONCLUDING EEMAEKS. 677 What Mr. Sibree says respecting Dissenters on the constitution, order, and discipline of the church of Christ, might be truthfully applied to many on baptism. "In their attention to the weightier matters of revealed religion, they have been chargeable with a considerable degree of culpable negligence respecting those topics which relate to the constitution, the order, and discipline of the church of Christ. The consequence has been that many have been induced to believe that the subject is left at large in the New Testament, and that no kind of importance is attached to it." — Lee. on None, pp. 262, 263. But those of our honoured opponents who believe with us in the supreme and exclusive authority of God's written word, in our judgment misconstrue the Divine oracles in the attempted defence of their practice. Much as I have -written on the Act (not Mode) and Subjects of baptism, believing neither the act nor the subjects to be circumstantial and unimportant, I desire not to increase distance or promote disaffection among Christians. I see not why in one section of Baptists, be they right or wrong in then* Open Communion sentiments, if Congi-egationaUsts ^ acted consistently with avowed sentiments on immersion, pouiing, or sprinkling as baptism, there might not be a speedy approach to amalgama- tion. I can also say with Dr. Schaft*, that " a Christ able and ^villing to gave none but adults, would be no such Christ as the gospel presents. The exclusion of a part of our race from the blessings of the kingdom of heaven on account of age, has not the slightest warrant in the holy Scriptures ; and our noblest impulses, our deepest religious feehngs rise against such a particularism" (Ap. Ch. His., p. 572). It is not age but gin that shuts out of heaven. It is not baptism but the blood of Christ, by which any one of us, old or young, can be saved. In advocating the immersion of believers, or expressing my conviction that consistency with present sentiments demands, on the part of most of our opponents, the providing of a baptistery and a pitcher equally with that of a small font, I am conscious of no unkind feeling towards them. Nor am I able to deny that " the waitings of Pasdobaptists in defence of infant baptism" "contain some of the most curious specimens of special pleading to be found in the English language," although I believe this to be done unconsciously. I believe that the baptism of an infant, as it regards the infant, "is no more a rehgious act than the involuntary motion of its heart" (D. Young's Dia., p. 36); and that it can have no consciousness or memory of the act every one will admit. If our opponents rejected that baptism on which they generally admit the dead silence of holy writ, their controversies, perplexities, and inconsistencies on membership would soon cease, none being able to say with Pascal, that formerly " it was necessary to come out from the world in order to be received into the church ; whilst in these days we enter the church almost at the same time that we enter the world." Let believers' baptism take the place of infant baptism, and not only will civU establishments of Christianity have a speedy end, but we and those now opposed to us shall all say with Rev. E. R. Conder when presiding over the Congregational Union of England and Wales, in 1869 : "If there be 578 SUBJECTS OP BAPTISM. one plain, fundamental, undeniable principle, supplied by the New Testament regarding the Christian churches, it is this : — that oui* Lord meant to found a brotherhood, to which all who believe in Him should belong." *' The churches planted by the apostles were" " eamest-heai-ted beUevers in Christ," while, it may be presumed, some waited " before they found coui-age to apply for baptism, and were recognized as members of the church ;" and others not at once enlisting under Christ's banner and flinging themselves heart and soul into the holy war in accordance with their deep convictions — and which should be a warning to those who now yield not to firm assurance respectmg duty and privilege — eventually fell back into the ranks of Christ's foes. Moreover, with Mr. C, we should all disbelieve "that within some twenty years from its foundation the Christian church had become an hereditary and ritual, not a spiritual fellowship — a supposition for which I need not say, there is not the shadow of evidence." To the scriptural requisite for church-membership as maintained by Mr. Conder, Dr. Mellor, and others, nothing is wanting but a pleading of the same requisite for the initiatory ordinance. Our brother C. admits that members of the Congi-egation, including the children of church-members, should become members of the church "like other persons." And why not on the same Divine authority be admitted to baptism "like other persons," on "personal application" and a "spiritual Christian character?" Notwithstanding the repeated reference to God's wiitten word as our only rule of faith and practice, I would again on this appeal to those evangelical Paedobaptists whom I regard as, along with the Baptists, not- withstanding all the failings of both, the glory and bulwark of the nation, by whom we are to be saved from priestly assumptions and popish errors, or to smk into medieval ignorance, degi'adation, and ruin — I would appeal to them from the acknowledged fact that the baptism of infants is in no part of God'p revelation ; that whether its origin is traceable to the third or second century, it is of no moment ; that a departure from the Bible only as our religion is a step necessarily in the direction of Rome or Infidelity ; and that by every historical fact, by ever}'thing now transpiring, by every prediction or prognostic respecting the immediate or distant future, we are called upon to value and adhere to the book "by inspiration given." These views of the importance of biblical sentiment and practice, I might enforce by quoting from the recent address of Rev. J. C. Harrison when presiding over the Congregational Union, in which he speaks of " the mischief" of disregarding "the direct expression of the will of Him who made us," in which he says, "We consider that we are bound by His [Christ's] authority as regards truth, life, and ecclesiastical polity." " We should meekly take our place at His feet, and make it our one concern to understand what He has said," desiring "to hold all our Lord taught, and 07ily what He taught." With some of our opponents we regard " the catholic consent of all ages" as a figment, and we condemn the idea of accepting as inspired the interpretation of Scripture given by the first " six Ecumenical councils." We have no intimation in God's word that a time would ever come when we are to accept " God's truth, as inter- CONCLUDING REMARKS. 579 preted by the primitive doctors and fathers of the church" (Chrj'stal, pp. 83, 270). Those who adopt these views of inspiration or interpretation can afford frankly to admit that proof of infant baptism in "the apostolic or immediately subsequent age, is not afforded by the writings of this period. But the idea of a supplement to the inspired records, of perfect- ing Divine arrangements by human ingenuity and experience, is to be abhorred. The New Testament contains God's final revelation " of what we ought to believe and what we ought to do." " We are bound firmly to maintain, and earnestly to contend for the truth as it is in Jesus," for this truth as revealed, not in rabbinical traditions or hoary ecclesiastical records, but in the oracles of God. Let us apply to the Act and Subjects of baptism what Mr. Harrison so admirably says on church membership : " Surely it is quite incredible that Christian churches should be so frequently referred to in the New Testament as the product of our Lord's work on earth, as the stored and treasured fruits of His labom's of love, and that He should have left them to take shape just as human wisdom and caprice might devise." " The proper origin of the Christian church was at Pentecost." And assuredly baptism was then administered to the proper subjects. This was not left to be developed by the wisdom of a later age. More- over, an examination of " all the Epistles" teaches that baptism, as membership, was the result of supposed " faith," " birth," of " spiritual life to be fostered and developed in the church." The reply of Mr. H. to the queries, *' How can you secure that only the regenerate shall find admission to your churches ? Are you able unerringly to discern spirits ?" is worthy of consideration by all who foolishly maintain that believers' baptism requires a discerning of spirits. And does not the follo^ving, with my convictions, commend at least my aimin all I have written on Christian Baptism ? — " It should be our conscientious endeavour to make each Christian church in principle and essence what our Lord intended it to be, a company of regenerate and believing men, joined to each other by common love, and loyalty to their one great Master." Were the entire sufficiency, and the Divine, exclusive authority of Scripture applied to baptism as by some it is naturally and legitimately applied to church membership, the mightiest arguments for the baptizing of infants would speedily be flung away as cobwebs ; of heathen infants, and of Christian infants from the fact of baptism, or of having one parent that makes a profession of Christianity, we should soon cease to hear. The idea that the baptism of infants is justified by the promise of a Christian education, and by a supplemental confirmation supposed to bear ji resemblance to apostolical (conjirminfi) strengthening and establishing of those that had been previously converted, or to the putting of apostolic hands on those that had just been converted and baptized, would be despised. The knowledge that " the apostolic origin of infant baptism is denied not only by the Baptists, but by many Pasdobaptists" (Dr. Schaff), along with the personal conviction that the New Testament sanctions not the practice by a single precept or precedent, would revolutionize both feelings and practice. 580" SUBJECTS OF BAPTISM. I do not maintain that I have noticed everything that has been advanced against believers' baptism, or everything that has been advanced in favour of the 'baptism of infants. I believe that the leading arguments for infant baptism have been noticed, and their futility proved. I can assure the reader that, lengthened as my remai'ks have been, I have often remembered and sympathized with the expressed desire of Dr. R. W. Hamilton to spend his remaining days in the quiet blessedness of his pastoral duties ; and that I have not forgotten the v?ords of Dr. H. Bouar on " our one life," in his *' Hymns of Faith and Hope :" " 'Tis not for man to trifle : life is brief, And sin is here. Our age is but the falling of a leaf, A dropping tear. We have no time to sport away the hours ; All must be earnest in a world like ours. Not many lives, but only one have we, One, only one ; How sacred should that one life be. That narrow space ! Day after day filled up with blessed toil. Hour after hour still bringing in new spoil." Nor do I deem the following from Rev. A. Booth, with which my own remarks are interspersed, inappropriate for concluding remarks : " Now, reader, are you a baptized person ? Have you professed faith in the Son of God, and have you been immersed in the name of the eternal Trinity ? Reflect, then, on what yom- baptism teaches, and on what your solemn profession demands." Make it your daily business to act consistently with your baptismal profession, adorning the doctrine of God your Saviour in all things. " Perhaps you are one of those who call themselves Baptists in sentiment,* but are not yet baptized. If so, I beg leave to inquire, why not a Baptist in practice ? Is it because you are conscious of not being fit for the ordinance ? You are, it may be, dead in sin, and have only an educational knowledge of this institution. Should that be your case, you have reason to tremble every moment. Unfit for baptism you are indeed, and equally, unfit for heaven." Repent ye, and believe the gospel. Repent and turn to God, and do WOBKS meet for REPENTANCE. GOD COMMANDETH ALL MEN EVERYWHERE TO repent, because He hath appointed a day in the which He will judqe THE WORLD IN RIGHTEOUSNESS. NoW IS THE ACCEPTED TIME, with Him who is NOT WILLING THAT ANY SHOULD PERISH, BUT THAT ALL SHOULD COME TO REPENTANCE. — "But peradvcnturc you are not careless about your immortal interests ; you hear the gospel with devout attention, read the Bible with fervent prayer, examine with great anxiety the state of your soul, and yet, after all, a painful suspicion prevails that you are not a partaker of regenerating grace. If so, I would take the liberty of suggesting a hint for your direction, from that remarkable distinction which the beloved apostle makes between fathers, young men, and little children. You are pained, it may be, because you cannot find the marks of a father, while you ought rather to be thankful for those of a little child ; that is, of a young or a feeble convert. Now it is plain, from the tenor of apostolic practice, that baptism and the holy supper were intended for the weakest of real disciples ; for we have scarcely an instance in ♦ Some of the nnbaptizcd with lamentable inconsistency call themselves Baptists in principU. What principle is there when practice is in direct opposition to conviction of what is right ? CONCLUDING EEMAEKS. ^81 th© New Testament of baptism being adminiatered, without being informed that the persons baptized were but just before converted. — You are afraid, or ashamed, perhaps, of the despised immersion ; and that is the reason you have never participated of the ordinance. Afraid ! Ashamed ! of what ? The chill of the water ? The sneer of your fellow-worms ? If either fear or shame had been allowed thus to operate in the bosom of Abraham, when hoary with age, he would never have submitted to that command, ' Ye shall circumcise the flesh of your foreskin.' If selfish and servile passions prevent your obeying an appointment of Christ, you deserve the severest censure ; for our Lord Himself has declared, ' He that is ashamed of Me and of My word, of him will I be ashamed.' — You reply, it may be, ' It is not essential.' Essential to what ? Your pardon or justification ? By no means. But is not a prevailing disposition to obey the authority of Christ essential to true holiness ? And is not holiness essential to real happiness," and a grace " without which no man shall SEE THE Lord ?"— See Peed. Ex., vol. ii, pp. 338-340. Baptism in the oracles of God — and if this baptism be believers* baptism, then believers' baptism — is as certainly enjoined as reading the Scriptures and prayer. Let us prove ourselves the friends and disciples of Christ by keeping His commands. Let none live in conscious disobedience, and yet declare a horror of scandalizing a Christian profession. Let no feeling of shame, no idea of personal humiliation prevent or delay a walking in God's ordinances. Are there none among Paedobaptist Dissenters respecting whom we might ask as Andrew Marshall respecting Establishmentarians, "Is it possible they can allow themselves to remain in so painful a situation." — Reply, &c., pp. 284, 285. Dr. Wabdlaw's words are worthy of universal regard : " We truly honour either His [God's] authority, His wisdom, or His love, when we go forward in the way Ho marks out for us, in the undoubting assm-ance that implicit obedience to His will can never ultimately be injurious, but must in all cases prove beneficial, in promoting the glory of His name, the prosperity of His cause, the effectuation of His purposes, and the happiness of His creatures. I know no principle of greater importance ; and I urge it anew, though at the risk of being charged with vain repetition — that in every instance in which the Lord of the conscience lays down a rule for us, we have nothing to do but to follow it. The stronger our faith, the more prompt and fearless, and uncompromising will be our obedience." "It is quite possible to argue, on exceedingly plausible grounds — gi'ounds which on some points it might not be easy to dispute, or prove fallacious . . . but let the case be ever so plausible which human sagacity may reason out, it is still but a hazardous ground on which to place the determination of anything that relates to God's institutions and designs." — Scr. Arg., pp. 7-9. M. TowGOOD says, " There is no mention made in the New Testament of any definite instructions of Christ to the apostles, or of the apostles to Christians, in regard to the baptism of little children. But can we infer from this that no definite instruc- tions were given ?" "We cannot certainly conclude that our Saviour did not give His apostles specific instructions on this or any other subject, merely because such instructions are not preserved in the records of the New Testament" COn Ba^)., pp. 39-41). — Though our opponents detest the corruptions of popery as much as we, who can deny that the tendency of such reasoning as the above is to Eome or infidelity ? Mr. Gamble says, "If we do wrong in attaching importance to mere names, wo surely cannot err in attaching importance to character." He teaches that " such men as Luther, Calvin, Knox," &c., must have been "persuaded that they were acting in accordance with the revealed will of God" CScr. Bap., p. 79). He inquires if these " were all so blinded by prejudice as to be unable to discern the truth" (p, 80). And while he admits there are "those who have advocated believers' baptism," he says, " but how few, in comparison with the long array of scholars and divines" on the other side. Yet when Ptedobaptist writers contradict themselves and reject every one his brother's argument as worthless, what is the worth of their testimony ? We honour the character of Nathanael given by the Son of God Himself ; but we remember the query. Can any good thing come out of Nazareth ? We honour the character of the eleven apostles who were most explicitly told by Jesus that He must suffer, die, {ind rise s-gain on the third day j but we know also their unbelief and error on thes^ 582 SUBJECTS OF BAPTISM. when Christ had died and had early on the thii'd day risen again. We pronounce not our opponents "dishonest" or wicked; but we adduce Mr. Gamble's words, that " none of us are entirely free from prejudice. Our tastes, our inclinations, our educa- tion, exercise an unconscious, but powerful influence upon oiir minds, and bias our jiidgment far more than we are aware" (p. 77). Besides, Mr. G. does not wish us to act because these excellent men so believed, but to give their words "a calm and serious examination." — The tendency of Pajdobaptist reasoning on baptism is, however, to a lamentable extent, to draw away our thoughts and practice from what is written in the oracles of God, to what has admittedly no record there, but what it is thought the apostles would think, and partly on account of what silly rabbis have recorded. Menno, in the sixteenth century, vindicating himself from the charge of having become a Baptist, " through the efforts and means of seducing sects," says: "To speak of a person's being re-baptized, sounded very strangely iu my ears. I examined the Scriptures with diligence, and meditated on them earnestly ; but I could find in them no notice of infant baptism. As I marked this, I spoke of it to my ' pastor ;' and after many conversations he acknowledged that iufant baptism had no gi-onnd iu the Scriptures. Yet I dared not trust so much to my understanding. I consulted some ancient authors, who taught me that children must by bai^tism be washed from their original sin. This I compared with the Scriptures, and perceived that it set at nought the blood of Christ. Afterwards I went to Luther, and would gladly have known from him the gi-ound [of infant baptism] ; and he taught me that we must baptize chUdren on their own faith, because they are holy. This also I saw was not according to God's word. In the third place I went to Buceb, who taught me that we must baptize children, in order that we may be able the more diligently to take care of them, and bring them up in the ways of the Lord. But this, too, I saw, was a groundless representation. In the fourth place I had recourse to Bullingeb, who pointed me to the covenant of circumcision ; but I found, as before, that according to the Scripture the practice coixld not stand." At length, convinced that he had been "deceived with respect to infant baptism," he received believers' immersion. — Menno., &c., p. 2. Dr. R. A. Ftfe says : " The grand inquii-y in Christianity is, not what may we leave undone, or alter, and yet be saved, but what has the Lord required of us ? Wo are not appointed judges of God's commands, but doers of them" (Bap. Sen., p. 20). Wo are not now subject to fines, imprisonment, banishment, or death, for obedience to God's word, so that the sin of disobedience is by our special privileges greatly Bp. Taylor, in his Diictor Diihitantium, has many remarks — some of which he applies exclusively to the Lord's Supper — admirably applicable to baptism. He says, " The institution of a rite or sacrament by our blessed Saviour is a direct law, and passes a proper obligation in its whole integrity" (p. 319). If Jesus has enjoined immersion, immersion is our duty. If the word by which He enjoins baptism means equally to immerse, pour, or sprinkle, then one of these operations equally with the other is enjoined, and any one of these observances is our duty and a fvdfilment of the command. If Jesus has enjoined the baptism of believers, and has not enjoined the baptism of any others, the baptism of those who are known not to possess faith, or the administration of baptism regardless of faith, is in opposition to the Divine law, and is not baptism in its integrity. Bp. T. further says, " Whatsoever is a part of Christ's institution of the sacrament is for ever obligatory to all that receive it" (p. 320). "We are to take and use them [external rituals and ceremonials] in the simplicity of their institution" (p. 324). " It is not well that we shoidd dispute against a Divine institution upon a pretence of our own vain arguings." " It is not to be despised that our blessed Lord gave this sacrament as His last will and testament" (p. 326). " If it be a man's testimony, saith St. Paul, yet no man disannulleth or addeth thereto ; and therefore to disannul or lessen a portion of the testimony of the Son of God must needs be a high impiety" (p. 327). It is, if done knowingly ; and it is desirable that it were not done ignorantly. Again, " The greater probability destroys the less" (p. 111). " An opinion reljdng upon very slender probability is not to be followed except in cases of great necessity or great charity" (p. 117). "In negative precepts the affirmatives are commanded, and in the affirmative command- ments the negatives are included" (p. 29G). "All those rituals which were taught to the church by the apostles concerning ministerios, which were of Divine institution, do oblige all Christendom to their observation" (p. 624). Further (p. 751), "An action is neither good nor evil, unless it bo voluntary and chosen." J believe with the Episcopaliau Chiystal, that he who has iutelligeiitly CONCLUDING REMARKS. 58S " studied the peculiarities of difi'ering parts of the Church, has found that no one part monopoHzes all the faults or virtues" (His., p. 140). In contending for the faith once delivered to the saints, I would not condemn or despise those who in opposition to myself are fully persuaded in their own mind. To our own Master we all stand or fall. I approve not of holding the truth in unrighteousness or enmity, in bigotry or uncharitable- ness. I endorse what Dean Alford says in Good Words on Our Christianiti/, of the present and of the future {]). 47. 1870): "As long as any trace remains among us of persecution, or exclusion from sympathy, or depreciation, or alienation, on account of doctrinal persuasion, so long our Christianity is defective in one main point — its standard of the Christian character." Moreover his remarks on a Revision of Scripture (p. 52) are worthy of application to baptism : "If we are conscious that we are reading in our churches, and are sending forth to our people an inaccurate representation of the revelation of God to man, then it is our bounden duty to correct that inaccuracy, let the results be greater small." With him, while maintaining that every man should act according to his own convictions of Divine teaching, each behig fully persuaded in his own mind, I regret and reject the idea, "that there is no such thing as authoritative truth ; that my doctrine is true for me, and his for him ; that every man is to himself the measure of truth, and that truth has no independent existence." I wish every Baptist to adorn on baptism and in his whole disposition and deportment the doctrine of God his Saviour, to live "on terms of affectionate brotherhood" with all who " love our Lord Jesus Christ in sincerity," but I believe with the author of Dr. Steadman's Memoir, who having borne testimony to the doctor's catholicity, adds : "Had he not wished Christians to become Baptists, he had been a recreant to hia principles, and a traitor to his God" (p. 472). It is not in my power to say to what extent any should speak or write controversially. But I have no hesitation in asserting that it is an undoubted privilege to "follow the Lamb whithersoever He goeth." Also there is force, and on the part of some, an applicability to their baptism, in the words : " Didst Thou the great example lead In Jordan's swelling flood ? And shall my pride disdain a deed That's worthy of my God ?" The advice given by Rev. Eustace Carey, to a lady who said — " I see adult baptism to be quite right, and yet I cannot make up my mind to submit to it : I am very unhappy about it sometimes ; I suppose you would advise me still to pray about it, Sir" — is worthy of practical regard by all who see believers' baptism to be the only baptism of the New Testament. He said : " Go and do what you know to be right, and pray afterwards. Your prayevs will then be likely to give you more pleasure.'.' '^Memoir, p, 92. 584 SUBJECTS OF BAPTISM. M. Henry says : " In the solemn dedicating and devoting of ourselveg to God, it is good to make haste, and not to delay ; for the present time is the best time." He adds : " They who have received the thing signified by baptism should not put off receiving the sign" (Com., on Acts viii, 36). He says on Acts x, 47 : " Though they had received the Holy Ghost, yet it was requisite they should be baptized ; though God is not tied to instituted ordinances, we are." He speaks of Christ's baptism as teaching " us that we should not stick at pains and travel, that we may have an opportunity of drawing nigh to God in an ordinance." " Those that are of greatest attainments in gifts and graces, should yet in their place bear their testimony to instituted ordinances by a humble and diligent attendance on them." He whom it is the privilege of all to glorify and enjoy, has for us endured the heaviest cross, and despised the deepest ignominy. Himself animated in this by the joy that was set before Him ; let us, denying self, confessing and following Christ, be cheered by the eternal and ineffable joy and glory soon to be entered upon by the faithful. •' My soul, with all thy wakened powers, Survey the heavenly prize :" ** And in the blooming prospect lose The sorrows of the way." Be not followers of Christ merely in profession, or conviction, or intention, but in deed and in truth. Think " what manner of love the Father hath bestowed upon us ;" "and it doth not yet appear what we Bhall be." Let us " survey the wondrous cross on which the Prince of glory died," till " the whole realm of nature" appear insignificant to present in return for Christ's amazing love ; till we feel our whole selves a living sacrifice to Him that has bought us with His blood. This is om- privilege, our honour, and our obligation. And let those who think with the writer on Christian baptism practically say, " 'Tis not as led by custom's voice. We make these ways our favour'd choice, And thus with zeal pursue. No, heaven's eternal sovereign Lord Has, in the precepts of His word, Enjoin'd us thus to do." APPENDIX. 585 APPENDIX. I.-DE. BAETH. Dr. Ceamp.— " Bartholomew Hubmcyer's words (ho was a Baptist martyr, who suffered at the stake in 1528) are very significant, and deserve to be seriously considered by all the friends of Christian reformation. ' I believe and know,' he said, ' that Christendom shall not receive its rising aright, unless baptism and the Lord's Supper are brought to their original purity.' "—A Gate, on Bap., p. 10. Such is the impoi-tance which I attach to the commission, and the scriptural import of "disciple," that even at the expense of repeating some ideas, I shall attempt the further disclosure of error in the sentiments of Pfedobaptists. Dr. Earth teaches that •' according to the original, the general commission is, ' make disciples of ' aU nations, which is then divided into two parts — viz. (a) baptize them in the name of the holy Trinity ; (b) teach them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded." Therefore according to Dr. B. the command of Christ to make disciples is accomplished by baptizing and teaching. If however teaching is included in discipling, it is clear that infants are not referred to in Christ's commission, notwithstanding Dr. B.'s pleasure that in opposition to the " doctrine of the Anabaptists," baptism precedes tuition according to the common practice of the whole of Christendom." He also teaches that our Lord speaks in Matt, xxviii, 19, " of the infants of Christian parents ;" and in Mark xvi, 16, " of adult heathens ;" in Matt, xxviii, 19, of baptism which "pre- cedes faith ;" and in Mark xvi, 16, of faith which " precedes baptism ;" and that " he that beUeveth and is baptized shall be saved," " does not afl&rm that faith and baptism are the sole requisites for salvation, but only that they are the first, because according to Matt, xxviii, 20, the faith here mentioned is inseparable from the observance of the commandments" (Com., on Matt, xxviii, 19, and Mark xvi, 16). We may assert just whatever we please, and make God's word to teach anything, if we adopt Dr. B.'a license to say without a fraction of evidence, that Christ's command in one place speaks of children and in another of adults, that the children of Christian parents are meant here, and adult heathens there, that the aU nations to be discipled in Matthew are not the same persons as the every creature in Mark to whom the gospel is to be preached ; and that Matt, xxviii, 19, speaks of the children (infants) of Christian parents, while the 20th verse speaks of an observance of the commandments as insep- arable from faith ! It is possible, and sometimes unconsciously, to interpret Divine writ according to human practice, instead of giving a natural and correct interpretation, and making human practice invariably bend to the oracles of God. II.-REV. E. E. CONDEE. 5. CsAfs.— " If 'all nations' include infants, so do the words 'every creatui-e'—' jjreacfe the gotpel to every creature.' "—Cone. Viexo, p. 8. Dr. Angus.—" A disciple is one who takes another as his teacher. The disciple of Christ is one who takes Christ as hia teacher, recognizing in Him, at the very outset, his Saviour and ^iag."— Baptists, p. 21. "Baptism and teacliiag," says Mr. Conder, "being spoken of as co-extensive, the burden of proof rests on those who maintain that cluldren ought not to be baptized) 586 APPENDIX. though they ought to bo taught" CCom., on Matt, xxviii, 19). This is so plain and important that in writing an unsectariaii commentary our learned brother must eay so much. The word children, unless here used sophistically, doubtless includes infants, whose baptism Mr. C. can commend and practise. Does Mr. C. teach infants ? Do the opponents of erring Baptists everywhere teach and baptize infants ? Mr. C. allows that Baptists teach children, and we allow that Pa;dobaptists do the same. But if baptism and teaching are "co-extensive," can baptism belong to those who being unconscious are incapable of being taught ? I am not aware that the sentiments of Baptists require from them a refusal to baptize children, except those who are not capable of comprehending the fundamental trutlis of Christianity, and those who give not credible proof of " repentance toward God and faith toward our Lord Jesus Christ." The qualification for baptism is not being an adult, or having lived a certain number of years or seconds ; it is moral. If Mr. C. by teaching, which I presume is the case, means teaching them to observe all things whatsoever Christ has commanded, which, in the commission, is enjoined subsequently to the baptizing, and subsequently to the discipling, which is the last of the three things mentioned in the commission, the Baptists admit that this is a duty enjoined towards all the baptized. If Mr. C. means teaching as given in the authorized version for discipling, then he means that baptism should be as indiscriminately administered to the haughty and scornful Brahmin, to those in any country steeped in sensuality, as the gospel should be preached to these. And undoubtedly that gospel which is intended to bring down high looks, to humble the proud and save the lost, and which '' is the power of God unto salvation to every one that believeth,' ' is designed for all, and with the highest sanction is being preached to every creature. Moreover, the interpretation by Mr. C. of discipling as " a general expression embracing the two which follow, ' baptizing' and 'teaching,' " involves not only the profanation of baptism by its administration to the penitent and the most ungodly, but the teaching equally with the baptizing of unconscious babes, if baptism and teaching are " co-extensive," and if infant baptism is enjoined in the Divine commission. I. CoBBiN, in his Evan. Stjn., on Matt, xxviii, 19, well says, " ' Make disciples of all nations' ; which means, instruct them in the faith, and persuade them to the belief and reception of it ; for how else should men be made disciples, but by instructing them in the doctrine held out to their acceptance ?" On being baptized into Christ, he says on Gal. iii, 27 : " For as many of you as have sincerely consented to the baptismal covenant, and so been baptized into the faith of Christ, and relation to Him, have thereby put Him on as your garment, and wholly given up yourselves to Him, and so as His members are united to Him : and all that are baptized profess this, which the sincere perform." If some of the above is in the words of others, it has the evident approval of Mr. C. III.— REV. H. J. "GAMBLE. » Dr. R. A. PyPE.— " We cannot conceive of anything which the great God commanded which would be beneath the dignity of an archangel to obey.' — Baj). Sen., p. 20. T. H. Hudson.—" The Christian religion is a body of Divinity, all the parts of which should be explained and enforced."— Oh Bap., p. 10, Mr. Gamble interprets the commission as teaching " that all applicants ought to he baptized, and then instructed that they may become disciples" (Scr. Bap., p. 3) ! He teaches that " the only safe and certain rule" is, "to adopt that interpretation which is best supported by the particular circumstances, the connexion of the passage, and the analogy of the faith" (p. 10). This requires in my judgment that the apostles should first make the disciples, by instruction convert to the faith in Christ, and then baptize them, giving them subsequent instruction with a view to their Christian growth, stability, and consistency. But Mr. G., who is replying to Mr. Noel, thinks it necessary, first, that Mr. N. " shew that disciple means to convert or constitute believers. When he has done this, by clear and satisfactory evidence, ho will do something to prove that wo are to regard the participle adjuncts as accessories to the verb, and not as expressing the means of carrying into effect the injunction which it gives" (pp. 10, 11). If the Saviour's teaching who are His disciples, and the use of the word in the Acts of the Apostles, do not demand that disciples of Christ be believers in Christ, I despair pf proviuj it. Mr. G. atlds ; " Sccpiid. If the participlosj which fpUow the verb APPENDIX. 587 aro to be regarded as enjoining tlie performance of consecutive acts, then Mr. Noel has no right to violate theu" order. If he will baptize none but those whom he has converted, to be consistent, ho should teach none but those whom he has baptized" (p. 11) ! There is ia Mr. N. no violation of order, because teaching is necessarily incliided in making disciples. Mr. G. adduces from Lightfoot what he deems a "rabbinical parallel to the commission," a solitary example violating all New Testament usage and order, converting baptism into a ceremony like those which introduce into the mysteries of a secret order, the example of a Gentile saying " to Hillel the Great, ' Make me a proselyte in order that you may instruct me' " (p. 12) ! Mr. G., from this rabbinical rubbish, adduces Dr. L.'s demand that we cease "to " argue from riiathcteusate, the necessity of religious instruction as a prerequisite for baptism" (p. 12) ! Ho teaches (p. 27) that the apostles administered baptism " to all who sought instruction in the great truths of the gospel, avowing their belief in the Messiahship of Christ;" and on the Pentecostal baptism he says, "I admit that three thousand souls were converted on this memorable day, but there is no evidence that their conversion preceded their baptism" (pp. 11, 12) ! They were not certainly converted when " they gladly received" the words of Peter, but before the end of the day they certainly "were converted!" "Peter's reply was not to the inquiry, Wlio are to be baptized ? but to the question. Who are to bo saved ? and its sum and substance is baptized penitents" (p. 31). Ergo, they were first baptized, and afterwards, before night, they repented of sin ! I deny not that apostolic practice was, without delaying in order to further evidence, immediately to baptize those who ccredibly professed their acceptance of the gospel ; nor do I advocate any departure from this. Mr. G. further says, " The apostles were to disciple the nations, baptizing and teaching them. Surely no injunction can be broader or more comprehensive than this ; and unless we find a quaUfyiug clause, it must, of necessity, include infants as well as adults" (p. 81). Every one admits impossibility to be a disqualifying fact. We cannot disciple or teach the unconscious. Were a command given to demand from a nation the promise of subjection, must infants promise ? The destroying of infants is possible, but not their discipling. " Baptism is a rite to be administered to learners," says Mr. G., but " it is not a ' solemn profession of repentance, faith and devotedness.' " Baptism " is placed at the co'imnencement of a course of instruction, pledging those who submit to it, to repentance and faith ;" and " it is not essential to the administration of a symbolical rite that it shoiild be ' asked for as a privilege,' or that its subject ' should be active in its reception' " (pp. 90, 91). Baptism is divinely placed "at the commencement of a course of instruction," but it may be administered to a child on the day of its birth ! Baptism is no profession of present repentance and faith, but the subjects of baptism are pledged to be at some future time penitent and believing ! Baptism thus pledges its subject without his being "active in ita reception !" And we are to believe much of this, because the gospel preached by the apostles with the Holy Ghost had in many a speedy reception, which was quickly followed by their baptism. Again, Mr. G. says that Baptists " infer that ' Disciple nations' means to disciple adults. We infer that, to disciple nations means to disciple both adults and infants. There is no limitation in the commission." " If infants are not capable of exercising repentance and faith, there is no necessity that they should do so" (pp. 96, 97). But there being no other way of becoming disciples of Christ but through repentance and faith, nor of being professsed disciples but through such a profession, we remind Mr. G. of the words of Dr. HaUey, that " the command certainly enjoins no more than we are able to perform," that where we "cannot," "of course our obligation ceases" (vol. XV, p. 3). Mr. G. says, "We appeal to the commission as the direct proof that we are to baptize infants ; and to circumcision as an indirect proof " (p. 98) ; but both sources of proof I believe to be equally inefficacious. He subsequently says that the apostles " were commanded to disciple by baptizing" (p. 164). Could this be proved, we should have authority to baptize to the utmost extent of capability, and as con- fidently as the Pope himself, to speak of the safety of the baptized. He also (p. 184) Bays — but I am certain he is incorrect — that all Pasdobaptists "adduce in its support, the commission given by the Saviour to His apostles, and aU regard the Abrahamio covenant under which infants were circumcised, as the same under which infanta were baptized," .688 APPENDIX. IV.— PEOF. R. WILSON, D.D. C. Stovel.— " If every advocate for this ceremony were tied down to the intended use of each passage he (luotes. and never iicrmitted to terminate his investigation, or to affirm anything until all the inspired authorities are made to agree in his conclusion, no man would ever dare to under- take a scriptural defence of infant baptism. It must have some inference from Jewish rites, ancient customs, antecedent notions, or some piecemeal argumentation, or it finds no resource." Bap. jBec.,p. 155. The origin of Psedobaptism is historically traceable to exaggerated views on the eflBcacy of baptism. A prepossession arising from its existence and prevalence, pre- vents a thoroughly candid examination of the New Testament, the sole authority for Christian baptism. The Presbyterian naturally desires to approve of the Westminster Confession, which says : " Not only those that do actually profess faith in and obedience to Christ ; but also the infants of one or both believing parents are to be baptized" (ch. xxviii, 4). Dr. Wilson, the Presbyterian professor of Belfast, in maintaining that profession is a prerequisite to adult baptism, is scripturally opposed to Dr. Halley. He also, although a strong advocate of the baptism of infants, admits that " baptism properly so called has invariably sustained the character of an initiatory observance. Its leading design as a symbol of purification, is to signalize in an impressive manner, the transition from the world to the church, or more generally the admission of man into the favour of God" f'Jnf. Bap., p. 339). The consistency of this with believers' baptism is conceivable. It is also accordant with the admission that " baptism into Christ implies an acknowledgment of our blessed Lord in His personal and mediatorial character, and of the faith which He founded," and that in like manner " the baptism of the commission implies an acknowledgment of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost" (p. 308). "Religious qualification," when conveniently speaking of " profession a prerequisite to adult baptism," he considers to be requisite to "an entrance into the church of Christ" (p. 343) ; although he bap- tizes the infants that have one or two believing parents, these being, according to the sentiments of Presbyterians generally (unless the writer is much mistaken), bom in the church. He allows that to consider the commission as embracing three particulars : " 1. — To disciple them to the faith ; 2. — To initiate them into the church by baptism ; 3.— To instruct them when baptized, in the doctrines and duties of a Christian life," is in substantive accordance with the teachings of Scripture" (pp. 344, 345). He nevertheless maintains that the structure of the commission, " Disciple the nations, baptizing them," " by no means requires that the subjects of baptism must have received previous Christian instruction." Yet " necessity for instruction previous to baptism," he holds " to be implied in the language, ' baptizing them into the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost.' " He is so certain that the commission to disciple baptizing does not necessarily mean that the baptism should precede the instruction, that he can say : " The connexion between discipleship and baptism in the commission, no one will maintain to be incompatible with the idea of previous Christian instruction' ' (p. 347). Every inspired record respecting the nature and propagation of Christianity he believes to forbid the supposition that we are commanded first to baptize and then to teach. He says " that baptism into the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, necessitates at least previous Christian instruction we consider to be demonstrable" (p. 347). Why do not our opponents who generally agree with Prof. Wilson in this, and all of whom believe this to be a part of the commission — why do they not maintain with us that the commission demands instruction previous to baptism, and at once abandon the baptism of infants ? The commission teaches no other baptism than a baptism into the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Not only are Dr. Wilson's sentiments on this part of the commission most decided, but he is happy to believe that Dr. Halley cannot consistently contest them. Hence he says : " It appears to us impracticable to dispense with previous qualification in the shape of religious knowledge, and open or implied Christian profession, unless we obliterate that part of the commission which enjoins ' baptism into the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost.' We are not siu-e that the views of Dr. Halley, as stated in some parts of his able volume, would permit him to contest our present position. Touching the mode of baptism in connection with the com- mission, he says, 'To immerse eis to onoma, into the name of the person w/ioserch'jriou is professed, is the religious rite of making proselytes, as to immerse into the name of the Father, and the Son, and of the Holy Ghost, is the appropriate act of the apostles ptnd ministora of the gospel' " (p. 3^18). 'Dr. W, may say that ho is speaking of jidult APPENDIX. $B& baptism ; true, but he is declaring what is the meaning of inspired writ, of Christ's commission, and Christ's only express command to baptize. He further says, " The necessity of a profession of faith prior to baptism is rendered more exjjlicit by the language of Mark — 'And He (Jesus) said unto them, Go ye into all the world, and preach the gospel to every creature. He that believeth and is baptized shall be saved ; but he that believeth not shall be damned' " (p. 349). It is not necessary to quote his defence of this portion of Mark's gospel as entitled " to a place in the canon." " The form of the commission in the one evangelist differs from that in the other, but the substance appears to be one and unalterable" (p. 350). Speaking of their structure, he says, "Matthew's is a commission to preach and baptize, Mark's a commission simply to preach ; but the latter, in a promise appended to the commission strictly so called, introduces baptism as an ordinance which it was plainly the duty of the apostles to administer" (p. 350). In speaking of "the prescribed order of apostolic procedure in the administration of baptism," he maintains that in Mark we are taught that "first in time, as well as in importance, stands the preaching of the gospel" (p. 350). He allows that the construction of Matthew, Disciple aU the nations baptizing them, will enable a person who will " rest upon the mere syntax of the clause," " to contend for the priority of baptism to every other act of apostolio service" (p. 351). I believe not that the syntax, on which I intend subsequently to say more, gives this immoveable decision to the structure of the clauses in Matthew's commission. I will now only express my conviction that the syntax of this part of the commission, allowing two courses, leaves the precedency of teaching or baptizing to be determined by the connexion of all the parts of the commission, by the certain import of Bisciple, and by apostolic practice, which undoubtedly accorded with Christ's teaching in this His commission. The interpretation of the latter part of this second clause, "baptizing them into the name oj the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost," as given by Drs. Halley, Wilson, Stacey, &c., &c., demands that baptism be preceded not only by hearing the gospel but by believing it. That preaching should precede baptism. Dr. W. may well engage to " produce the certificate of apostolic approval" (p. 351). He says that the apostles " summoned the world from sin to salvation — they urged upon all men ' repentance toward God and faith in our Lord Jesus Christ.' Keeping in view this order of procedure, we perceive an obvious reason for placing faith, or a profession of faith, before baptism. ' Preach the gospel to every creature. He that believeth and is baptized shall be saved.' In indicating an argument, we do not, with Dr. Wardlaw, confine om-selves to the clausal relation of belief to baptism ; we take in the antecedent preaching, to which belief succeeds by a natural law of association : and thus we reach the conclusion that the faith of the text precedes its baptism. Unless some reason more potent than any we have met with in the writings of Dr. Halley and others, can be brought forward to disturb this order, we must adhere to it as the order of the passage, the order of nature, the order of God" (pp. 352, 353). The precedence of faith to baptism I believe to be also taught in the commission recorded by Matthew, where I look on three things enjoined by Christ, the making of disciples, the adminis- tering of baptism, the teaching to observe all things whatsoever Christ has commanded, the order of which I believe to be equally "the order of the passage, the order of nature, the order of God." After referring to Dr. Halley's ingenuity or " counter-ingenuity" on the order of words, and after maintaining that as we have not access to the heart, we must accept the " profession of faith" as " a qualification for baptism," without attaching import- ance to the mere form of expression, "He that believeth and is baptized shall be saved," " Eepent and be baptized," he says : " Convinced that the arrangement is neither indifferent nor fortuitous, and the order which it suggests is borne out by the character of Christianity, and the practice of its apostles, we are prepared to uphold it as embodying a principle of great value in the diffusion and maintenance of our holy religion" (p. 354). He also says: "It is true, indeed, as Dr. Halley asserts, that * good men were baptized by the apostles, and so were bad men ;' but we are not aware of a solitary instance, and he has produced none, in which the rite was administered to any but professed believers" (p. 352). He has before taught that the use of water in baptism is " a sanctioned and veritable fact," but that " the spiritual initiation constitutes" in his view "the essence of the ordinance" (p. 314). I might by the way observe, that if there can be spiritual initiation by baptism, without faith, there yet must be important truth in the popish dogma of regeneration from the opus operatum. He has also taught that "the commission" interpreted by "inspired comment" demands both " the substance and the symbol." " Our relationship to Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, must be attended with spiritual cleansing, which finds its appropriate emblem in the application of water to the body" (p. 314). In like 690 APPENDIX. manner Dr. Halley speaks of baptism as " the sign of purification on being admitted into the kingdom of Christ" (in Dr. W., p. 344). Tliis is the import of Christ's commission as illustrated by apostolic practice and inspired records, the commission in which nevertheless Dr. Wilson conceives that he finds room for infants ! By the help of the Abrahamic covenant, of rabbinical writings which ages after Christ first mention Jevidsh proselyte baptism, and of various assumptions and fallacies, he conceives there is room for the baptism of infants in a commission whose clause on baptism (baptizing them into the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost) demands faith in the baptized, and which interpreted by apostolic comment in all they say and do as recorded, demands professed belief ! My hope is that the reader will prefer the inspired record of what Christ commanded, and the inspired record of what the apostles practised, to any assumptions from Genesis, Ezekiel, the Talmuds, or any other source. Dr. Wilson, having given an interpretation of the commission in accordance with the view and practice of the Baptists, having stated that God requires not from man a knowledge of the heart, and having at length leaped to the conclusion that Baptist sentiments require this, modestly says : " We defy mortal man to execute the commission in the Baptist version of its injunctions. We would gainsay the fitness of an angel from heaven who should attempt the undertaking" (p. 492). What words \n\\ describe Dr. W.'s attempt to find room in the commission for infants, after the correct interpretation of the inspired words which 7ie has given! Instead, however, of finding, or imagining to find room in the commission for all infants, Dr. W. can see room onhj for infants having one op two believing, or professedly, or hopefully believing parents ! It may not be unprofitable to some to read the following Pfedobaptist and Presbyterian testimony to the import of Christ's commission on baptism. Dr. P. ScHAFF. — " Baptism in the nam© of the triune God was solemnly appointed l)y Christ shortly before His ascension, to be the sign and seal of discipleship under Him." — His. of Anc. Chr., vol. ii, p. 122. Prof. J. Bannerman. — " The natural and indeed unavoidable interpretation of the apostolic commission seems to establish . . . that a literal baptism, or washing with water, was to accompany discipleship brought about by the preaching of the gospel" fThe Ch. of Chr., vol. ii, p. 44). " The body washed with pure water was an emblem of the soul purified and cleansed through the blood and Spirit of Christ." " The action by which the washing of baptism was submitted to by the recipient wa.s expressive of his passing imder the washing of regeneration and the renewing of the Holy Ghost." The being " baptized ' into the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Ghost,' was symbolical of his dedicating himself to the Father, through his justification by the blood of the Son, and his sanctification by the grace of the Spirit" (p. 45). Dr. B., advocating the idea that baptism indicates a covenant transaction between God and the heliever, says, " The very words of the institution seem to point to this. Baptism ' into the name {eis to onoinaj of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Ghost,' means more than baptism bytheir authority." Itimpliesa " dedication of himself to the three persons of the blessed Godhead, luider the separate characters which they bear in the work of redemption ;' ' while in Eom. vi, 2-4, " the apostle must be held as referring to the baptism of a believer, in whose case it was a spiritual act of faith, embodying it in the outward ordinance." " The immersion in water of the persons of those who are baptized, is set forth as the burial with Christ." "Their being raised out of the water is their resurrection with Christ" (p. 47). " Their immersion beneath the water and their emerging again were the putting off the corruption of nature and rising again into holiness, or their sanctification" (p. 48). Further, " The recipients of the ordinance are to bo baptized ' into the name, cis to onoma, of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost.'" ''It necessarily implies previous knowledge and instruction in the funilamental truths of the gospel system ; and this, again, implies that the Church, in administering the ordinance, has a right to require some evidence, such as an intelligent profession of the faith, that such knowledge has been obtained. All this points very distinctly to a profession of faith in Christ as a necessary prerequisite to the administration of the ordinance in the case of candidates for baptism." '■ The association of the person's profession, faith, repentance, or believing, with baptism, appears in a multitude of passages ; while not one passage or example can be quoted in favour of the connexion of baptism with an absence of profession." " In short, almost every example of baptism which the New Testament records, there is enough in the narrative, however scanty and compressed it be, to bring out the fact, that in close association with the administration of the rito appears the religious profesaiou of the recipient. And, ou the other baud, it may APPENDIX. 591. be safely asserted, that in no example of baptism recorded in the New Testament can it be distinctly proved that no such profession was made" (pp. 64, 65). At p. 63, he has said, " There is some weight due to the order in which the terms of the commission mn, as indicating the order in which the discipling, the baptizing, and the teaching of all the nations were to take i^lace." After dwelling on the " three particulars" of discipling to the faith of Christ, of baptizing, and of further teaching, he says : " This is the order in which, according to the nature of the various particulars embraced in the commission, they were to be accomplished. That the order of procedure here indicated is in harmony with the nature of the work to be done by the church in reference to the world, is abundantly plain from the scriptiu'al account given of it in many other passages of the Bible." After this exposition of our Divine Saviour's teaching and apostolic practice on baptism, the attempt to justify a baptizing of infants from a former covenant is aa contemptible as the result is futile. Suppose it granted as Towgood (^0;i Bap., pp. 25, 26) asserts, that if Christ's words had been. Go, proselyte all nations, circumcising them, our thoughts would certainly have been directed to the Abrahamic covenant and the circumcision of male infants, yet the use of the word baptiaing, iQstea,d of circum- cising, directs our thoughts to John's baptism of repentance and confession of sin, to Christ's making of disciples and by means of the apostles baptizing them ; and while the all-suiiicient record of apostolic practice opposes the idea of a single infant being then baptized, and confirms the natural and only legitimate import of Christ's commission, we are shut up to the obligation of baptizing only the professing believer. Nor do I believe that in ten years one in ten of this world's intelligent and accountable beings could in their spare moments master the acknowledged Presbyterian difficulties so as to comprehend the whole labyrinth of their speculations in what ha.s the appearance of an attempt to overthrow the admitted import of what Christ taught, and to abolish the admitted practice of Christ's obedient apostles. I admire Dr. Halley's bold determination to abide by Christ's commission, grammatically interpreted, and corroborated by apostolic practice. But, alas, when he has made the interpreta- tion which he maintains to be grammatically correct and necessary, he shrinks aghast from his own conclusion, and seeks to justify his rebellion by maintaining that obedience would profane the ordinance and dishonour its Author ! His unexceptional command must have its exceptions ! Dr. P. Faiebaikn. — " ' Go and teach all nations, baptizing; them,' &c. ; ' He that believeth and is baptized shall be saved.' Not, therefore, baptized, in order to believing, but believing in order to be baptized ; so that ideally or doctrinally considered, baptism presupposes faith" (Rev. of Law, p. 265). This interpretation, he maintains, is corroborated by invariable apostolic practice, as the Spirit of inspiration has recorded. v.— DR. J. STACEY. J. CEAPg. — " Tell a sinner that his baptism made him a disciple of Christ, and you encourage the fatal delusion, thct therefore ' he— shall be saved.' The practice of manufacturing discipleg by baptism, is the drag-net of the man of sin, who, ' as God, aittethinthe temple of God.' "—Cone. View, p. 3. Dr. J. Stagey.—'' The vital current is not poured into man as into a vessel, or diffused through his powers like some invisible essence. It is given to him only when he thirsts, and he receives it only as he drinks it." — The Sac, p. 844. G. Macdonald.— " Obedience is tlie grandest thing in the world to begin with. Yes, and we shall end with it too."— S^r., on Matt, xx, 25-28. Newman Hall.—" While enduring what afllictious God may appoint, we should also be doing not what our wishes prompt, but what His precepts enjoin,"— Ser., on Lu. sxii, 42. Dr. Stacey teaches that " baptism is an ordinance which stands at the door of the church, to guard its entrance and to prevent its inner sanctuary from defilement" (The Sac, p. 94) ; but not so as to exclude from this ordinance the decidedly unre- generate, but not indeed so as to exclude any. The command is "to 'go and disciple all the nations,' baptizing them into the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost' " (p. 95). " ' All the nations,' coupled with the form of injunction, ' disciple, baptizing,' gives a scope and amplitude of charge which no ingenuity of criticism can fairly compress within the limits required for what is called ' believers' 592 APPENDIX. baptism'" (p. 95). Indeed this initiatory ordinance, guarding the church from defilement, belongs to every character, however ungodly, because the enjoined discipling is carried out by baptizing all the nations ! The commission, as we might expect, in opposition to the Presbyterian sentiment, according to Dr. S., embraces all children, the limitation to children of one or two believing parents being as inadmissible as its limitation to the believing or professedly believing. But though every infant in the world bo included in this commission, and every child and adult also, " it is true, the success of the apostles could not exceed the willingness of the people to become disciples." This we believe. They could not disciple coercively, whether men would! or would not. Unless their uttered truths and the Spirit's operations had a persuasive and converting efficacy they succeeded not in discipling. Dr. S., however, adds, " But wherever the willingness existed, there the command to ' disciple, baptizing,' was to be obeyed" (p. 96) ! The command is indiscriminate as to character, sex, or age, and is universal in its apphcation, but it is " to be obeyed," where the willingness to become disciples exists ! I have been accustomed to regard discipling as effecting by the power of Divine truth and the Divine Spirit a willingness to obey God in regard to baptism and every Divine precept in those who before were at enmity with God ; and that the very persons on whom the discipling is to be accomplished are those alienated from God and holiness ; and thus that success in discipling is success in producing xvillingness to follow the Lamb whithersoever He leads. Dr. S. teaches that the indiscriminate character of the baptism enjoined by Christ, is corroborated by " the circumstance" that John "admitted to his baptism" those whom he called a ' generation of vipers' " (p. 96), as well as by the records of apostolic baptisms ! It would seem — and the doctrine is not to be rejected because it is Puseyistic and Popish, if it be but scriptural — that Christ commands His apostles to make disciples by baptism,* and thus to disciple all, whether infants or adults, and whatever the character of the adults, throughout the whole world ! Baptism doea therefore really make infants, children, and adults of all characters into the disciples of Christ ! Our Saviour did not then mean that the apostles were to disciple all to Him, i.e., proselyte, convert them ; but they were to disciple all, i.e., baptize them to Him. My brother has no right to speak of persons through Christ's commission being " received as disciples by baptism" (p. 96). According to his interpretation of the commission they were to be nfiade disciples by baptism. To make disciples, to recognize disciples, and to receive as disciples, are not one and the same thing. No fair ingenuity of criticism will enable persons, who elsewhere admit our Saviour to mean that His apostles were to make Christians — this being the general import of disciples of Christ, as taught by Christ Himself and subsequent inspired usage — to maintain also that as the word disciple is sometimes used in application to a scholar in a lower sense, we may consider the making of disciples to be effected in those who become learners of the lowest degree, without regard to credible evidence of piety, yea, in those who it is hoped or desired may at some time, if spared, &c., become learners, and moreover to be effected in any person of whatever character if he becomes baptized. Dr. S. sees in the commission of Christ, that "the gospel of the kingdom was to be preached in all the world for a witness unto all nations ;" but there is no such idea in Christ's commission as that of preaching the gospel, if it is simply. Go ye therefore and disciple all the nations by baptizing them. According to Dr. S., "In Matthew there is a command to baptize all the nations, in Mark no trace of such command can be discovered" (p. 115). In Matthew " the command to disciple by baptism is followed by the injunction to teach, and the injunction to teach by a specification of the grounds on which the whole will be successful to the salvation of the individual" (pp. 115, 116). I will not animadvert on this " specification of the grounds ;" but evidently no inter- polation is seen in speaking of the command to disciple hy baptism. The insertion of the preposition is but regarded as grammatically authorized. Greek syntax is supposed to render the insertion synonymous with its omission. If the Head of the church had needed this hy as do our Paadobaptist brethren, my conviction is that He would have inserted it. We might also suppose from the above, that teach, like disciple, is a verb in the imperative mood. If the command. Disciple, baptizing, " is followed by the injunction to teach," the command, Disciple, is followed by the injunction to huptize. Both these words (baptizontes and didaskontesj are present participles following and equally related to matheteusate. Dr. J. Stacey.— " Tho coramnnd to disciple by baptism is followed by tbe injunction to teach" (p. 115). " The disciples were to be made by baj/tism, not made and then baptized" (p. 164). "It is not ' disciple and baptize,' but ' disciple, baptizing'— the participle specifying the manner in which the thing prescribed is to be accomplished" (p. 164). " The command of our Saviour waB that the apostles should make discipled by baptizing."— p. iiS9. APPENDIX. 593 Dr. S. also says, " ' He that believcth and is baptized shall be saved,' gives no instruction in regard to baptism" (p. 116). Possibly his words express more than he intends. He says also that " it afSrms only that both are the appointed conditions on which salvation is to be obtained" (p. IIG). I would not assert that it affirms so much. But on " no instruction in regard to baptism" from Mark svi, 16. Were an earthly sovereign to send an ambassador to certain rebelling subjects with the good news of pardon (like, Go ye into all the world and preach the gospel), and were he to add, He that lays down his arms and takes the oath of allegiance shall be forgiven (like, Ho that believcth and is baptized shall be saved), the sovereign's readiness to pardon, and the sovereign's requirement of the lajdng down of arms and taking the oath of allegiance, wovild not be regarded as dubious. Much instruction is contained in God's word where we have no express precept, or thousands of passages give " no instruction." But it is wished and sincerely intended to prove that baptism may be administered to inquirers as well as believers. Let us cling to revealed truth, however balked in obtaining sanction for an approved sentiment or favourite usage. My belief is that Mark xvi, 16, along with every record of inspiration respecting apostolic practice, is corrobora.tory of baijtism as succeeding discipleship. Nor do I regard this passage, while promising salvation to the baptized believer, and teaching the duty of every believer to be baptized, as teaching that we cannot be in a saved state before baptism. The sinner who has repented, and with his heart has believed on the Lord Jesus, may as a saved person enter the water of baptism in perfect consistency with this text, and in accordance with the fact that we are justified by faith, that we are saved by grace through faith, and with the apostolic words, " Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and thou shalt bo saved, and thine house." A person might cordially accept the Savio'ar in cii'cunistances that rendered baptism, impracticable. A person might receive the love of the truth respecting the Saviour of sinners, and be taken into eternity before his baptism could take place. In every heart renewed by grace there is meetness for glory. And with spared life every Cliristian will manifest the desire to observe all Divine commands. The Divine pleasure and requirements respecting the baptism of believers, as I conceive, are not obscurely revealed in the inspired record, " He that believcth and is baptized shall bo saved." Dr. S. repeatedly teaches that " the command of our Saviour was that the apostles should make disciples by baptizing" (p. 239). He says : " The participle ' baptizing' has the imperative force of the verb ' disciple,' and being in the present tense requires to be construed as contemporaneous with it ; it therefore simply expresses the manner in which the action of the verb is to be accomplished" (p. 96). The commission is, Make disciples . . . baptizing . . . teaching them to observe, &c. If it is a fact that the present participle following a verb of command is necessarily the action or the carrying out of the verb of command, it must follow that our Saviour commanded his apostles to make disciples by baptizing into the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, and by teaching to observe all things whatsoever Christ has commanded, and that baptizing into, &c., and teaching to observe, &c., are contemporaneous vrith discipUng. If so, can infants bo included in discipling ? Dr. S. seems to think that we regard Mark xvi, 15, 16, as a supplement to Matt. xxviii, 19, 20, and tliat we also regard it as " a modification of the original command" (p. 115). I have no idea th.at either modifies the other, and I believe the folly of Pffidobaptists to be the same in endeavouring to extract an arg-ument in favour of infant baptism from Matthew as from Mark. It is our opponents who will have one declaration to "restrict or qualify, or lose itself in" another. Matthew and Mark accord with, confirm, and illustrate each other. There is in both such a " collocation of words," and such " a logical connexion" of words, as to demand the conclusion that only believers' baptism is scriptural. I admit with Dr. S. that some able "textual critics" reject from the canon this part of Mark's gospel, and agree with him that " the weight of testimony against it" is greatly " inferior to the considerations in its favour." — p. 114. This, however, is but the beginning of grammatical analysis by some of the pre- decessors of Dr. S. whose erroneous supppositions he has accepted ; and his conclusion he believes to be " amply supported by facts." In our Lord's commission. Dr. S. says, " The proper antecedent to the word tliemis all nations. No other, without a violation of grammatical consistency, can be offered in its stead. Imagination may supply one, but the passage wUl not acknowledge it. The two terms are co-extensive, anions them, having the same range as '^anta etline , n\\ the nations" {-p. 162). The difli'erence of gender between etline and autous, 1 admit, constitutes no proof that ethne is not the antecedent to autous; but with Dr. S. this difference in gender is so unobjectionable that he can say, " As well might it be said that, because the word rendered them waa a masculine form none but males were to be baptized" (p. 162). He seema here to QQ 594 APPENDIX. forget, as he must certainly know, that if males and females were intended, ouious is the very word which the Greek language would have required. I fully admit exceptions to what is THE rule both in Greek and English, namely, that the pronoun conform to the rule to which it belongs in gender and number. A frequent exception is in nouns such as the neuter ethne (which in its import embraces persons), having pronouns connected with them in the masculine gender. I by no means deny that nouns denoting things which have life may be found having pronouns of the same gender as " the natural character of the object" (See Winer, edited by Moulton, p. 175 ; S. G. Green's Hand-Booh to the Gram, of the Gr. Tcs., § 317 ; and Matthiie, § 434). In Eom. ii, 14, quoted by Winer, and in many other passages, the pronoun can have no other antecedent than such a noun as ethne. This is not the case in Matt, xxviii. 19. It is u fact noticed in Greek gi-ammars that such verbs as ■Hiai/ieieuo, which moans to make disciples, may have a noun to which the pronoun belongs, in such a word as mathetas, disciples. It is not, therefore, inconsistent with Greek syntax that autous, in Matt, xxviii, 19, should have mathetas, for the noun to which it belongs. Hence in the grammar of Matthias we read, " Adjective and demonstrative pronouns are often referred, in respect of gender, to words which are implied in a preceding one from the sense or composition" (§ 435). While we have the authority of gTammar that mathetas is admissible as the antecedent to autous — I do not now say, has equal claims to ethne — we have not a shadow of evidence from any part of God's word, that any man hy baptism ever was or could be made a disciple of Christ. I admit that baptism crowned the instruction which made the disciple, and I maintain that it should be followed by further instruction and obedience. Dr. S. being certain that cth7ie is the antecedent of autous, maintains that " the subjects of baptism must, with only such limitation as is required by the previous terms of the commission, embrace all that the phrase comprehensively requires ;" that " tized infant possess any incorporation with the people of God, not possessed by unbaptized infants ? Is an unconscious babe competent to any such thing as separation from the world and communion with the church of Christ? Dr. S. thinks little children " unquestionably competent," and indeed that Christ, in a commission which teaches " the order and kind of service required," has enjoined it upon us thus to transform and translate Inj baptism persons of all ages and all characters. Dr. S. reminds one of our established church, which professes in baptism to make an unconscious babe a member of Christ, speaks of tho child as so made, and thanks God for this glorious result ; although Mr. IBickersteth teaches that the name Christian originated " probably from their open confession of Christ," and that "we take oiu- name Christian because we own no other Founder or Master in our religion but Jesus Christ" (Oti Bap., p. 233). It is to bo presumed that in a commission from Christ " intended to guide the apostles in the order and kind of service required," and intended to guide iinto the world's end, there would be nothing in tho import of discipling dubious to apostolic minds, or to those living after apostolic times, and being wishful to "do His will." Either discipling must have been a word of not infrequent use, and of well-known import, or discipling must previously have been apostolic work, or vi^hat is included in being a disciple must have been taught by the Saviour Himself. It would be a reflection on the Saviour to suppose that wo in the nineteenth century are incapable of learning the import of making disciples of all the nations, from the acknowledged import of this inspired phraseology, from the abundant light thrown on this by Christ's explanation of what a disciple is, by the subsequent use of this word by inspired writers, and ^T apostolio pi-a,otioe as eviaoing tho import tjiey attached to their Redeemer's com- APPENDIX. 599 mand.* Let the reader jiidge whether discipling is making Christians, making believers in Christ as the Messiah and Saviour of sinners, by a preaching unto all capable of understanding it the glorious gospel of the blessed God, or whether this discipling is by baptism to separate from the world and incorporate with the people of God old and young, believers and infidels, the moral and immoral, the conscious of all characters and the unconscious. I propose, however, to reply more fully to some of the assumptions of Dr. S. in my animadversions on Dr. Halley. Remembering that Dr. S. informs us that "the Christian idea is closely assimilated" to "the Jewish idea of discipleship," I will only, in conclusion, record the opinion of Dr. Adam Clarke on the import of disciple or proselyte, commended by Home in his Introchiction, vol. iii, pp. 207, 268, and that of Dr. W. Cooke, on baptism and Christ's commission. Dr. Clakke, on Christ's words, "AVhosoever will come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross and follow Me" (Mark viii, 34), says : " It seems that Christ formed, on the proselytism of the Jews, the principal qualities which He required in the proselytes of His covenant." This is "the first condition required by Jesus Christ, and which He considers as the foundation of all the rest :— If a man be willing to come after Me. The second condition required in the Jewish proselyte waa, that he should perfectly renounce all his prejudices, his errors, his idolatry, and every- thing that concerned his false religion ; and that he should entirely separate himself from his most intimate friends and acquaintances. It was on this ground that the Jews called proselytism a nnv Mrth, and proselytes new horn, and nciu men; and that our Lord requires men to be born again, not only of water, but by the Holy Ghost. See John iii, 5. All this our Lord includes in this word. Let him renoxmce himself. To this the following Scriptures refer : Matt x, 34 ; John iii, 3, 5 ; 2 Cor. v, 17. The third condition on v/hich a person was admitted into the Jewish church as a proselyte was, that he should submit to the yoke of the Jewish law, and bear x^atientlythe inconveniences and sufferings with which a profession of the Mosaic religion might be accompanied. Christ requires the same condition ; but, instead of the yoke of the law, He brings in His own doctrine, which He calls His yoke. Matt, si, 29, and_ Hia cross, the taking up of which not only implies a bold profession of Christ crucified, but also a cheerful submission to all the sufi'erings and persociitions to which he might be exposed, and even to death itself. The fourth condition was, that they should solemnly engage to continue in the Jewish religion, faithful unto death. This condition • Mr. Ceaps (Baptist) in his Concise View (pp. 2, 3), says that the commission cannot require disciples to be made by baptism. 1. — Because of Christ's desci'iption of His disciples, Lii. xiv, 27, 28,33; John viii, 31 ; " xiii, 35 ; xv, 8. 2. — "If disciples were made by baptism, it would be of greater impoi-tance, as a means of salvation, than the preacliing of the gospel. '' 3.— "Baptism would be esseniUil to salvation." 4. — "All baptized infidels would bo discipk's of Christ. 5. — " Christ sent Paul to make disciples, Acts xxvi, IG, 18. Yet he says, ' Christ sent me not to baptize but to preach the iiospcl.' G. —To the church at Corinth Paul says, ' Though ye have ten thousand instructors in Christ, yet liave ye not many fathers ; for in Christ Jesus I have begotten you through the gospel.' Yet he says to the same Corinthians, ■ I baptized none of you but Crispus and Gains,' " &c. " He had disciplcd many through the gospel — had bapii:ied but few. 7. — Paul says, ' I thank God that I baptized uono of you,' &c. AVould Paul thank God that he had not made disciples ? 8. —None will deny that Jesus Himself made disciples — none will afSrm that Jesus Himself bapti-ed. 9. — The making and the baptizing of disciples are mentioned as distinct acts." John iv, 1, 2. " The disciijles were made by Jesus, but baptized by His disciples. 10. — Tho ^disciples the commission requires to be made are real disciples — ' disciples indeed.' It is impossible 'to make such disciples by baptism." Admitting that Greek Syntax and Greek usage, as tlie English, allow the participle to express an accomplishment of the action or import of the preceding verb, but do not require this, as Greek usage will shortly bo superabundantly adduced in clearest proof, so strong is my conviction ven-pccthig the imiwrt oi a. disciple of Christ, :mCl of d!;;ci2>lino to Christ, as plainly taught in (tha oracles of God, tiiat were Matt, xxviii, 19, 20 adduced in a Greek Grammar as an instance of the accomplishment of tho verb by the iiarticiple, I would maintain, and I think prove, that such a reference must have been inadveitently given. I am aware to what I may be held up for this expression ; but I maintain that discipling to Christ, while necessarily including teaching, is not described by " teaching men to observe all things whatsoever" Christ has commanded ; that tho teaching by which discipleship to Christ is accomplished, is i-esxiecting man's guilt, and i-uin, and the redemption that is in Clmst Jesus ; that it is tlie teaching included in preaching the gospel, the glorious gosijel of the blessed God, the unsearchable riches of Christ, the gospel of Christ which is the power of God unto salvation to every one that believeth. The means of maldng disciples to Clirist is not by baptizing, nor by the teaching of all Ciirist's commands, nor by both unitedly, but by making known to guilty and perishing humanity the good news respecting the Lamb of God that taketh away the sin of the world. When smuers come to the knov.'ledge of the truth as it is in Jesus, I'eceive the love of the truth, believe with their hearts on the Lord Jesus, then are they disciplcd to Christ. Were we to use the words of an apostle, and say, " Though we, or an angel from heaven, preach any other" disciples of Christ or means of discipling to Christ " let him be accursed," v.'o should not be applying his words to a theme less vital than that Q their primary application, 600 APPENDIX. Christ also requires ; and it is compriRcd in t'ais word, Let him FOLLOW Mc. See the following' vGv?c-;."' — Com., on Mark viii, 34. Dr. W. OooKE, in his volume on The Deify, &c. (pp. 546, 547), says on Matt, xxviii, 19 : " The ordinance of baptism was established as an initiatory rite of the Christian system — a rite performed on introducing men to the knowledge of the true God." " Baptism as a Christian ordinance is a solemn recognition of God as our Creator, our sovereign Lord, who alone has an absolute right to our services and our hearts." " Baptism is a solemn act of worship." " Baptism is a solemn act of personal dedica- tion to God." " Baptism is a sign and seal of a covenant engagement between us and God, a covenant in which we receive the word of God for our oracle. His will for our law. His example for our pattern, and His glory as the sole end of our existence." As he infers the Deity of Father, Son, and Spirit, wo from his words make another and equally legitimate inference. " If baptism express, as we have stated, a recognition of the true God, an act of worship directed to the true God, a dedication of ourselves to the service and glory of the true God, then" let infant and indiscriminate baptism be immediately abandoned in theory and practice. VI.— DE. HALLET. J. Kelly. — " Give willing shelter to no error." " Assist in removing, with a cautious and reverent band, the accretions which time may have gathered around the fair fabric of the truth, and in bringing it out in its own simplicity and beauty." " The correction of what is wioug is an important service to the most sacred of all causes." " Nothing is so desirable, nothing is so much needed, as to bring all our opinions and all our teaching, into exact conformity to the word of God."— The Di. Cov., p. 35. Dr. A. Raleigh.— "It is lawful, if we can, to dash one false assumption against another, that either or both may be broken and removed, and room made for the truth." — Ser., on Pr. xxviii, 13. C. H. Spurgeon. — " It is a very iiotent rejoinder to a man in argument when you can produce from some of his own works statements on your side against him." — Ser., on Eph. v, 14. Abp. Whatelby. — " It is the very discipline of the mind by which we advance towards clear- ness of conceptions, to be xierpetually comiiaring our oi)Lnions together, in order to detect inconsistency, and rejecting those which apijcar ill-founded, or modifying so as to reconcile with each other such notions as appear agreeable to truth." — Mise. Bern., p. 101. Dr. Halley has undertaken the defence of infant baptism from the commission more valorously than any other wi-iter with whom I am acquainted. Dr. Addington, an Independent minister of former celebrity, is thus quoted by Dr. S. Stennett : " We are told ' that the duty recommended in the word matlieteusate, whatever it be, is nothing distinct from baptism, much less previous to it ; that the apostles arc not required to disciple and baptize, but by and in baptizing ; a.nd that thei-e is not the least huit of any previous qualification for the ordinance ;' and ' that we have no authority from hence to baptize believers, for they are not mentioned' " fAns., &c., pp. 141, 142). Dr. Stennett thought that the "sensible and learned friends" of Dr. Addington would not " thank him for these bold assertions ;" but Dr. Halley main- tains the grammatical necessity of discipling by and in baptizing, and by and in baptizing and teaching, and he has brought all his learning and ingenuity to bear in the support of this. He worthily deems Christ's commission "the great law of Christian baptism" (Cong. Lcc, vol. xv, p. 3), and "the chief authority for the continued practice of baptism" (p. 5) ; and he may probably deem the baptizing of infants undeserving of Christian patronage if Clirist's own and only commission to baptize does not give the practice direct and explicit sanction. With him there is in the outset, in comparison of arguments from the commission, a nol:)lo despising of the miserable expedients ©f his friends who, from the commanded circumcision of male infants in token of God's covenant with Abraham, of whicli the book of Genesis contains the record, and from some other sources equally irrelevant and una,vailing, "believe there is a sanction for administering Christian baptism to infants. Whatever corroboration of infant baptism Dr. H. conceives may be obtained from St. Paul's Epistle to the Corinthians, or from any other source, he appears to believe that our sanction for this practice is requii-ed and contained in Christ's commission. He also appeals to the commission with a confidence and boldness, with such evident integrity and conscientiousness, as is truly refreshing to such as regard Genesis, Jeremiah, and Ezekiel, with the Mishua, the Talmuds, and Maimonides, as miserable subterfuges for determining the divinely appointed subjcds of Chbistian baptism. He does not, iilsQ Pr. Wardlaw ftud a host of learned Ptedobaptists, interpret the commission a^ APPENDIX. 601 clearly and admittedly embracing" only those come to years of discretion, and also teach that from another source it may be maintained that infants, at least infants having one believing parent, are proper subjects of baptism ; that our Saviour has enjoined one course, but by some loop-hole which we have been wise enough to discover, has left us to conclude that another course is right. However much the present writer may diifer from Dr. H. as it regards the foundation for infant bai^tism which he supposes that he finds in the commission, he firmly believes that if infant baptism has not a sanction here, it merits universal rejection. The perusal of Dr. H.'s remarks to no extent diminishes admiration of his moral character and intellectual x^ower, while I believe that no part of his work is more replete with false reasoning, gross assumptions, and glaring inconsistencies. But lest I have already spoken too strongly let us examine at least some of his assertions somewhat in detail. Dr. H. having chosen Matt xxviii, 19, as the text for his 7th lecture, says : " The precise point of inquiry being suggested by the terms of our Lord's commission, we cannot too constantly or carefidly keep them in view. Go ye therefore, and teach, or disciple, all the nations, baptizing them into the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. The question respecting the subjects of baptism is here resolved into one of grammar and criticism. It is simply, what is the antecedent to the word them, or for what noim is that pronoun substituted ? Going forth, disciple all the nations (i^anta ethnej, baptizing them fautousj, all the nations, into the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost ; teaching them, all the nations, to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you. So far as the grammatical, construction is concerned, the meaning of the terms is precisely the same as it would be if the words of the command were, baptize all the nations. Adhering, therfore, to the grammar of the words, we say the commission, which no man has a right to alter, is — baptize all the nations." In a note he adds, " I suppose no one will object that autous being masculine does not refer to panta ta ethne being neuter ; as tliis would betray gross ignorance of the common rule of Greek syntax, known by every school boy, respecting the reference of pronouns to neuter nouns. Tertullian renders the passage: Ite et docete noJ.ioncs tingcndas in Patrcm; et in Filium, ct in Spiriium Sanctum" (vol. xv, pp. 1, 2). The extract from Tertullian reads thus in English : " Go and teach the nations to be immersed into the Father, and into the Son, and into the Holy Spirit." The rule in Greek syntax which Dr. H. supposes every school boy to know, is not the common rule defining the agreement of pronouns with the nouns to which they belong, according to any Greek grammar, ancient or modern, with which I am acquainted. It is an exception to the rule of agreement for pronouns. But in pronouns belonging to such words as the neuter noun ethne, in the import of which are human beings, it is one of the most frequent exceptions, so that Pa^dobap- tists may safely affirm that it is not inconsistent with grammar that the neuter ethne should be the noun to which the masculine pronoun autous belongs. The expression of Dr. H. is calculated to mislead the merely English scholar, while his probable meaning, for anything I know, may be admitted by every Greek scholar. The rule in all Greek grammars, so far as my knowledge extends, is in accordance with what Webster in his Syntax and Synonymes of the Greek Testament assorts respecting adjectives and participles as well as respecting pronouns, namely, that they " agree with their substantives in gender" (p. 53). It is true that, in the words of Mr. Webster, " to this rule there are many exceptions, which fall under the head of rational concord, kata sunesin, the concord being regulated by the sense rather than by the gi-ammatical gender" (p. 53). He also says, " Sometimes the word to which the adjectival attribute refers, is suggested by the nature of the context" (p. 53). Greek grammar on pronouns has been noticed '(p. 594), in reply to Dr. Staccy. This commission, " the grammatical construction" of which is given by Dr. H. with siipposed correctness and certain emphasis, he rightly maintains " we should suppose to be clear, distinct, and express, sajdng neither more nor less than is intended" (p. 3). Dr. H. is willing so strictly to adhere to "the letter of Scripture instead of pursuing inferential or analogical reasoning" (p. 2), that he will not accept even " a little quiet, gentle distillation in the alembic of inference or analogy" (p. 2) which he gently hints is done by those who from the letter of the commission "extract believers' baptism" (p. 2). Indeed the process by which the Baptists make this extract from the commission he deems unusually "curious and refined," "as not a word about believers is to be found in the whole commission" (p. 2). " It commands us to baptize all the nations — not the believers only, not the adults only" (p. 3). It is deemed very inconsistent on the part of Baptists to limit the baptizing of the commission to disciples, because there are no " obvious and undeniable reasons" for imposing a »' restriction upon the general terms of what may be called the great law of Cbrigtw-a 602 APPENDIX. baptism" (p. 3). If Baptists object tliat I>r. H. himself admits " some limitation" to the baptizing', the doctor considers his reply to bo " obvious, as the command certainly enjoins no more than wo are able to perform. We are commanded to teach all the nations ; but if classes or nations will not, or cannot bo taught, with them, of course our obligation ceases" (p. 3). " Wlien Christ says. Teach all the nations, what right have I to exclude any who can be taught ? And when He says, Baptize aU the nations, what right have I to exclude any who can be baptized" (pp. 3, 4) P " That we cannot baptize some is no reason for our exclusion of others" (p. 4). Thus the supposed commands to baptize all the nations and to teach all the nations, have no limitation but that of possibility. And the matter of order is so entirely out of the question that if we may not first teach or baptize at haphazard, we may do either first, just as we are able ! There is no law, and there can be no transgression ! If we cannot persuade to abandon lying, we may persixade to submit to baptism ! Who will forbid obedience to one command because another is for the present neglected ? If a man will not give up his drunkenness, he may be induced to partake of the Lord's Supper ! This, however, is wrong, because apostolic practice and inspired instruction teach that this is not God's order. But on baptizing first or teaching first, there is nothing to be learnt from the inspired records ! They give no instruction about first preaching the gospel, and then baptizing them that received and believed the glad tidings ! On baptizing or teaching those we can either baptize or teach, Dr. H. says : " If it be Baid, infants cannot be baptized, we ask why they cannot" (p. 4). I am happy to believe with the President of New College that " there is no insuperable difficulty in dipping an infant" (p. 4). Nor do I know that any person of any denomination disbeheves its possibility. This limitation of possibility is the limitation No. 1 to the command to disciple every human being, man, woman, or child. And the good doctor is so willing, I doubt not really willing, to do justice to his opponents, that he " will examine" any reasons for limitation, if they " be adduced." But, as he says, " the limitation, if there be any, must be proved by direct, or inferential, or analogical reasoning, or by reasoning of some kind or other" (p. 4). I also quite approve of the preference which he maintains ought to be given to '" the literal signification" of the commission, by the terms of which he assures us he feels bound " to maintain that it is the duty of the Christian church both to baptize and teach, to the utmost extent within its power, ' all the nations,' unless we find in other parts of Scripture some restriction imposed in terms as plain as those of the command" (p. 5). Any restriction of the commission " must be at least quite as express and incontrovertible as the command, the sense of which is to be affected by it" (p. 5). On this basis he endeavours " to raise the superstructure." He teaches that " the great argument for the baptism of infants" is, that they "are certainly included in the term 'all the nations,' " which does not " mean only a few adults" (p. 6), To the gi-ammar of the commission he makes his appeal. The phrase " baptizing them," derives, says ho, " its breadth of meaning from the antecedent ' all the nations ;' " so that he can say, " To any part of the commission, the discipling, the baptizing, or the teaching, I Iniowonly one limitation, the want of ability to execute it" (p. 6). Thus " I maintain," says he, " on the terms of the only commission to baptize, that to baptize an infant is just aa much the duty of the church and a duty resting upon just the same authority as to baptize a Hindoo." — p. 6. Before we proceed to Dr. Halley's other interpretations of the commission, it may be proper to notice two positions that are assumed and maintained in preceding extracts, namely, that the discipling of "all the nations" means a discipling of all infants and children as well as of all adults, within the limits of possibility, and that cthac, nations is undoubtedly by the common rule of Greek syntax the noun for which autous, them, following baptizing and teaching, is substituted. Instead of the command to disciple all the nations, being necessarily a command to disciple infants, I maintain that the thing is impossible .from the import o/ making DISCIPLES. Instead of infants being necessarily referred to in the words all the na'io)is, there is abundant evidence that in this phraseologj'- Ihere is not necessarily any reference to infants, and that in this passage there can be no reference to them. On the import of matheteuo, given in the authorized version to teach, and in the margin to make disciples or Christians of, either rendering excluding infants from those to be discipled, I will adduce the testimony of a number of lexicographers and critics. On Matheteuo : Ltddell and Scott.—" To he pupil to one, tiai. II. Trans. To malce a disciple of, Una, N. T. Pass. To bo instructed." DoNNEGAN.— inf/i a dat., " To be the disciple of any one. Act., ivith an accMs, jll N. T., to instruct. APPENDIX. 60^ ScHREVELltrs. — " To teach, with accus. ; to be a disciple." ScHLEUSNER. — Intraiis. To be a disciple and hearer, to be taiTght, to be com- manded or trained. Thiis it is said of Joseph, of Arimathea, " who also was a disciple of Jesus," who also followed the doctrine of Jesus, &c. Trans. To teach, to command or train, to make a disciple, and especially in the New Testament, to draw any one to the Christian religion, to imbue any one with the first elements of the Christian religion (Matt, xxviii, 19). Matheteusate, panta ta ethne, teach, or render followers of My doctrine, all nations, i.e., make them disciples, John iv, 1 ; Acts xiv, 21. Kai tnatheteusantes ikcmous, and had drawn many to the Christian faith. Dr. E. EoBiNsoN. — "Intrans. To be the disciple o/any one. InN, T. also trans., to train as a disciple, to teach, to instruct." Paekhubst. — " 1. To be a disciple to, or follower of another's doctrine. — Matt, xxvii, 57. 2. To make a disciple. — Matt, xxviii, 19; Acts xiv, 21. 3. To instruct — Matt, xiii, 52. But Matheteutheis in this text may perhaps as well be rendered, macie a disciple, accordiag to sense 2." Stbphanus. — " To be a disciple, to be a hearer. But also, for To teach." M. Weight. — " I am a disciple : to instruct." E. Leigh. — " To teach or to make disciples ; To deliver the doctrine of faith ; To imbue with the first elements of the Christian religion. By teaching to bring to the faith of Christ, as the Syriac interpreter rightly explains. — Matt, xxviii, 19. Mathe- teusate, Go and teach all nations ; or word for word from the Greek, Go, make them disciples, as it is expounded, John iv, 1. Disciple (should it be lawful for me thus to Bpeak for the sake of teaching) or Make Me disciples, Bullinger. It signifies both to teach, as Matt, xxviii, and at the same time also to be a disciple, as Matt, xxvii, 57. But it is distinguished from t'ic^osA'tni in this, that '/(i.af/(efeuei)!. is to teach and instruct those who may be estranged from our authority and our learning that they may be made disciples, but didaslccin signifies to teach those who are already made disciples, and are ah-eady given to our authority." W. Geeenfield. — " To be the disciple of, follow any one as a disciple ; to make or cause to be a disciple ; by impl. to teach, instruct." * If these lexicographers and learned gentlemen had any knowledge of the import of matheteuo, and their testimony the reader will perceive to be perfectly accordant with that of the most eminent critics already adduced, it is as absurd to believe that matheteuo is used in application to infants, as to believe, when wo read of a nation acknowledging their allegiance while the king takes oath respecting his future goverament, that every suckling in the kingdom acknowledged its allegiance. The following from similar authority is a portion of similar testimony from the import of Mathetes : LiDDELL and Scott. — "A learner, pupil, Lat. discipulus. Freq. iu Att, of the pupiils of philosophers and rhetoricians." Donnegan. — "A learner, a disciple." 8CHEEVELIUS. — "A disciple." ScHLEUSNEE. — " A disciple, a follower of a certain doctrine, esp., one following' and professing the doctrine of Christ, a Christian. Matt, x, 42, eis onoma mathctoit, (in the name of a disciple), because he is a follower of My doctrine. Acts vi, 1, i)le- thunonton ton matheton, the number of Christians increasing." Dr. E. E0BIN8ON. — "A disciple, scholar, follower of a teacher. Emphatic, for t'i'ue * A classical Professor, ou the imiiort of matheteuo has "^vi-itten : " The true clistinction between didaskein aud matheteueiii I believe to be this — didas. is the geuei'al term for teach ; it means to teach any body or anything. Mathcieiiein is a derivative verb, formed from the substantive mathetes. As to verbs in co and eiio, Buttman says (p. 302), ' These verbs are derived frona almost all terminations, and denote chiefly tiie situation or action of him whom the radical noun designates : thus, doulos a slave, douleuo to be a slave, to serve, kolax a flatterer, kolakeuo to be a flatterer, to flatter, alethcs true, alctheuo to be true, to speak the truth, basileus Icing, basileuo to reign, &c. Most commonly they are intransitive, but sometimes also transitive.' With this statement of Buttman's, Donaldson in the main agrees. Accordingly the first meaning of matlie- teuo is to be a mathetes, a pupil, learner. But it also came to be used transitively, as in Matthew, yihQVQ it evidently means to wake a person a discifile, or learner," ' 604 APPENDIX. disciples, John siii, 85 ; xv, 8. After Christ's death the term disciple takes the broader BcnsG oi follower, believer, the same as Christian, Acts vi, 1,2; xi, 26." Stephanus. — " Discipulus." M. Wright. — " Scholar, disciple." E. Leigh. — " A disciple very often. It signifies all those who follow the instruction of Christ. It is sometimes taken in general for any of the faithful of Christ, Lu. xiv, 26 ; Acts i, 15 ; vi, 1 ; xi, 26. In the evangelical history the apostles are almost stiU understood by this name, as Matt, ix, 10; x, 1." It is taken also for a learner or scholar who submitteth himself to another to be taught ; any learner. Matt, xi, 2 ; Acts XX, 30. Hypocrites, which heard and professed Christ's doctrine, without any love to it or faith in it, are so called, John vi, 66." W. Greenfield. — " A disciple ; whence mathetria, a female disciple, female Christian, Acts ix, 36." If these lexicographers have correctly given the import of malhetes, where is the possibility of making an imconscious babe the disciple of Christ ? In the quotations, I have omitted references to classical, and some other authority, given in support of the renderings by these learned writers. To the import of disciple I shall next adduce the testimony of a few divines ; testi- mony which from Wycliffe, Luther, and Calvin, from Howe, Owen, and a host of puritan divines, from Ptedobaptists of every period, it would be easy to multiply a thoiisand fold. It is used by these in application to the followers of Christ as of like import to Christian, as it was used in the days of the apostles, as Dr. Eobinson, previously quoted, truly and explicitly affirms. And I shall first quote a brother whose praise is in all the churches : S. Martin. — " It is not an easy thing to be a Christian. It is not an easy thing to be a disciple. There is a sense in which the yoke is easy and the burden light ; but, dear brethren, you who are Christians at all know right well that you have every day to fight against the world, and the flesh, and the devil." — Ser., on 2 Chron., xiv, 11. Dr. Raffles. — " A church is a voluntary association of the disciples of Christ, or such as profess to be so, for the purpose of mutual fellowship and oversight in the Lord, in the celebration of Divine ordinances, the maintenance of Christian discipline, and the promotion, in every way, of the cause of Christ among and around them." — Memoirs, p. 409. Dr. P. Fairbairn. — " Disciple is one who has learned of another, has imbibed his views, and follows his guidance." — Imp. Bi. Die. Art. Bap. Dr. Eadie. — "Disciple (Matt, x, 24). One who receives, or professes to receive, instruction from another (Matt, xi, 2 ; Luke xiv, 26, 27, 33 ; John ix, 28). In the New Testament it denotes the professed followers of our Savioiir ; but not always His true followers (Matt, xxvi, 20, 21 ; John vi, 66). To all His disciples the language of the Master is, ' Learn of Mo.' " — Bi. Cy. Art. Dis. A. Hewitson. — " Love of theory should have no existence in the mind of a disciple, whoso single aim is to know the mind of Christ, as it is embodied in the holy Scriptures," —Life, by. J. Baillie, p. 82. The sentiment of Dr. Wardlaw, if we except the instance of Joseph of Ai-imathea, whose discipleship is qualified by the word secretly, I believe to l)e incapable of refutation. It is that the word disciple in the New Testament " invariably denotes, there, not one who comes to bo taught, and submits to instruction, without at all com- mitting himself to the doctrine of the teacher, but one who has hoard, and who j5ro/t'ssses to receive the lessons, and becomes an avowed adherent of the master." — Reply of Dr. H., p. 197. J. Fletcher. — " The members composing the churches were Christians, and Christians only ; avowed and recognized disciples of Christ. All were on a common footing of independent faith and practice." — His. of lad., p. 103. E. E. Conder. — " True discipleship lies in following Jesus." "We must all have the spirit that will make us ready to give up everything for Christ. The test of truo love is self-sacrifice." — Com., on Matt, iv. It is evident that those wi'iters, and thousands more, could speak of sincere disciples of Christ as saints indeed, and like Flavel teach that the keeping of the heart is " tUo great work and business of their lives." Bocauso they used tho words " sainti APPENDIX. 605 indeed," tliey did not suppose that they were darkening counsel, and that they would occasion quibbling about the import of saint. They had such views of a Christian, or a disciple of Christ, as were possessed by the authors of Christian Progress, Christian Charity, Christian Experience, &c. These could speak of disciples as believers, and would not hesitate, after Bp. Hall's example, to apply to them as Christ's charge and their duty, "Ye believe in God, believe also in Me." Indeed says the Eev. Thomas Boston, and I think correctly, "To be a disciple of Christ and a believer are reciprocal terms" (Tlies. Theol. de Baj)., p. 125). And similarly the Eev. W. Thorn speaks of " Believers, Christians, Converts, and Disciples" ('li)/. Baj)., p. 301) Although else- where he says, " When we speak of disciples, of course we mean scholars, pupils, or students in the schools of Christianity" (p. 107). Except for gaining the baptism of infants it may be regarded as universally admitted by Christians that disciple " signifies as does its Greek original, a learner, one that becomes acquainted with the doctrine and discipline of another, who is his teacher." "A Christian is a disciple, that is, a learner of Christ, whose teachings he is by profession, bound to ascertain, revere, and observe, in the use of whatever means he has in his power." " The true disciple, after his measure, becomes like his Divine Master." So Dr. Halley, notwithstanding his lowering and perverting of the import of disciple in the commission, in other parts of the same book uses the nouns disciples. Christians, and believers as synonymous terms. The apostles are usually designated by him disciples or apostles, while the members of apostolic churches have the designation of disciples, of believers, and of Christians, sometimes one word occurring after the other in the same page. Speaking of Matt, xxvi, 19-25, as compared with Mark, and of John, ho says at p. 172, " In John the disciples are represented ... In Matthew these doubting disciples say ... In John the answer is given to the beloved disciple ... In Matthew it is given to the disciples." See also pp. 251, 253, 254, 257, 259, 338, 340, 341, 345. In some of these passages it embraces not the apostles only but other followers of Christ. When speaking of those who came together at Troas to break bread the inspired record is followed : " The disciples in Ti-oas came together . . . the disciples coming together" (p. 159. See also p. 262). He speaks of the events of that evening when the Lord's Supper was instituted, as " deeply interesting, not only to His disciples who were present, but to all who believe on His name" (p. 25G). The apostle Paul is said to have " evidently regarded the service (of the Lord's Supper) as did the fii'st Christians" (p. 264). And respecting its observance Dr. H. appeals to "all professing Christians" (p. 267). He speaks of the "primitive Chris- tians" and of " Christians in later ages" (p. 339). " The memorials of His death are committed to all believers . . . All who are justified in acting upon the presumption that they are Christ's disciples ... If the fear of displeasing the Lord deters any true disciples . . . The dying request which Jesus gave to His disciples . . . The believer oiight to avoid both transgressions of Christ's law" (pp. 361,362). Speaking of the little ceremony belonging to the religion of Jesus, he deplores " How much His professed disciples have made from that little by their additions, perversions, and substitutions" (p. 392). If to make disciples, v^hich is acknowledged by Dr. H. to be Christ's commission to His apostles, is nothing else than to make disciples, believers, or Christians, which words are used interchangeably and as synonymous by Dr. H. himself, what right has he to say that " not a word about believers is to be found in the whole commission ?" The substance of the word is in matheteusate, and no one on the earth beneath, or in the heavens above, is able to separate it therefrom. Dr. Halley's writings, when he has not the baptizing of infants before his mind's eye, are confirmatory of this. But defending the practice of infant baptism, he diminishes, alters, and perverts the import of disciple and believer, instead of adhering to the scriptural representation of Dr. Fairbairn, more fully explained by Dr. Eadie. Instead of teaching that disciple or believer is used in application to the sincere and false, a profession of disci2)leship or faith being made, he teaches that "the terms 'disciple' and 'believing' in the New Testament" are used in application to the unreycnerate, the learners of Christ's doctrine, the attendants on His ministry, the learners of His doctrine, and learners of a very lotv order. He thus gets to the conclusion that neither faith in Christ, nor the i^rofession of it, nor the capability of it, is necessary to our being discipled to Christ. He moreover quotes "another illustration of the terms ' disciples' and ' believing,' in John viii, 31, 32 : ' Then said Jesus to those Jews which believed on Him, If ye continue in My word then are ye My disciples indeed' . . . Although these persons are said to have believed, and were therefore disciples in the common sense of the word, it remained to be seen on further proof of their continuing in the word of Christ whether they would become disciples indeed" (pp. 118-120). It is admitted here that believing is necessary to being disciples " in the common sense of the word." Elsewhere he speaks of learners becoming " disciples indeed," 60G APPENDIX. becoming " converts," and then they are eligible to "the fellowship of the church" (p. 105). Did Christ, in commanding: His disciples to go and make disciples, instead of meaning that they should make disciples indeed, mean that they should make the medley multitude whom Dr. H. and others would here number among the disciples ? I know not that any one denies that a person may believe to the extent to which Simon did, without having repentance towards God and trust in the adorable Jesus as his Saviour ; that a person may bear the name of a disciple of Jesus withoiit being a disciple indeed. But note how interchangeably, and as synonjrmous, the words dis- ciple and believer are used even by Dr. Halley, as indeed they are by every intelligent Christian. This is accordant with God's word in the use of disciple and believer. " Believers were the more added to the Lord." Saul first breathed out " threateninga and slaughter against the disciples," and afterward "assayed to join himself to the disciples : but they were all afraid of him, and believed not that he was a disciple," " The disciples were called Christians first in Antioch." " Be thou an example of the believers." If the import of disciple and believer according to God's word and Dr. Halley's belief, are synonymous, has Dr. H. on the commission to make disciples, more right to say " not a word about believers is to be found in the whole commission," than he has to say that not a word about disciples is to be found in the whole commission? In Wesley's Notes on the commission, we read, " Disciple all nations," "Make them iVIy disciples." Did the Saviour mean and wish less than this? Does He wish the making of hypocrites ? Is not every true disciple of Christ a believer on Christ ? There is as much evidence that believer as that disciple is no designation of a Christian. Paring down and perverting the import of scriptural terms, we may be assured that believer does not necessarily represent a regenerate person ; and in the assurance that whosoever believeth on Christ shall not perish, we may see nothing to forbid that the unregenerate shall have everlasting life. Learning and ingenuity by some plausibilities and a heap of perversions may extract every truth from God's blessed book. The very first word in Christ's commission (mailieieusate) — as is every subsequent part — is in direct opposition to the assumption that there is any reference to infants in the commission. Having read the exposition of this word by lexicographers, critics, and divines, and having noticed Dr. H.'s concession that in holy writ persons "are said to have believed, and were therefore disciples in the common sense of the word," and believing that our Saviour no more used the word "Disciple," or "Make disciples," in an uncommon sense than that He spoke to the disciples in an unknown tongue, let us notice the other occurrences of this term in God's word. It occurs but in the commission and in three other places in the New Testament. In Matt, xiii, 52, it is in the authorized version rendered "instructed." "There- fore every scribe which is instructed unto the kingdom of heaven, is like," &c. The word is mathete\dlieis. In Matt, xxvii, 57, it is rendered, "was disciple." "Who also himself was Jesus' disciple." The word here is matheteuse. In Acts xiv, 21, it is rendered " had taught." " And when they had preached the gospel to that city, and had taught many." In the margin it reads, " had made many disciples." The word is here matlieteiisantes. Every one of these occurrences, whether a transitive or intransitive iise, is confirmatory of the word as utterly inapplicable to infants. On Matt, xiii, 52, Webster a,nd Wilkinson say, " Every one who is matlteteuthtis enrolled and taught as a disciple, is," &c. On Matt xxvii, 57, they say, "Verbs in euo are formed from nouns, and have generally an intransitive signification of being in some state, in possession of some quality ; but they frequently express transitively Rome action implied in, or consequent iipon, that state or quality." On Acts xiv, 21, they say, " All the city heard the gospel, many became believers." Yet according to Dr. Halley, " not a word about believers is to be found in the whole commission" (p. 2) ! Dean Alfoed, on Acts xiv, 21, instead of had taught many, says, had made many disciples. On Matt, xiii, 52, instead of " every scribe which is instructed," he says, " literally, made a disciple." Dr. Bloomfield, on Matt, xxvii, 57, says : " Ematheteuse. Not 'had been,' as Wakcf . renders, but ' was then' a disciple. . . . Doubtless he was fully a believer in the Messiahship of Jesus, but, as is said in the parallel passage of John, ' secretly, ■for fear of the Jews.' " This is consistent with his own interpretation of the word in Matt, xxviii, 19, " disciple them or convert them to the faith ;" also with the interpre- tation of F. M., and others, "make disciples of, i.e., convert." Dr. J. A. Alexander, on Acts xiv, 21, says, " Huvi'ng both evangelized that city and taught many. They not only preached tlio gospel but received converts." The converts without doubt were by their instruction made, before as converts they were received. APPENDIX. 607 Baumgaeten says, " Paul ami Bai-Babas proceeded to Derbe, where nothing remarkable occurred except what in every case must be considered a great event ; a considerable number of disciples were gained to the faith in Jesus (ver. 21)." CONTBEAKE and HowsON say, " It does not appear that they were hindered in ' evangelizing ' the city : and the fruit of their labours was the conversion of ' many disciples.' " — Life and Epis. of Paul, vol. i, p. 240. Dr. A. Baenes says, " Had taught many ; or rather, had made many disciples." On Acts ix, 19, he says, " With the disciples, with Christians." Dr. J. Bennett says, " They not merely preached the gospel in that city, but made a considerable niimber of disciples." Baeton Bouchiee says, " ' They taught many,' or as the word more correctly signifies, ' made many disciples.' " The paraphrase of Dr. S. Clarke on " who also himself was Jesus' disciple," is " who secretly believed on Jesus, and embraced His doctrine." In the Notes of Valpy's Greek Testament yve read on Matt, xiii, 52, " Since you understand these things clearly, says our blessed Lord, I now charge you to perform the duties of true teachers, and as scribes v/ell ■i5isirucfecl._ . . . _ MatheteutJieis, leing instructed, may also be rendered being made a disciple, according to the sense of matheteuo, Matt, xxvii, 57." Schleusnee, on Matt, xiii, 52, says, " Every teacher who well understands My doctrine." The Syriac translation by Etheridge, is, " Every scribe who is learned in the kingdom of heaven." W. Teollope, on Matt, xiii, 52, says, "The words matheteiitheis de hasilcia, shoiild be rendered disciplined, to the kingdom, i,e., thoroughly acquainted mth the character and pretensions of the gospel." On Acts xiv, 21, he has " matheteusantes ikanous. Having made many disciples." The Em2)hatic Diaglott reads : "And having preached the glad tidings in that city, and made many disciples, they returned," &c. DODDEIDGE thus translates Matt, xiii, 52, " Every scribe who is disciplined to the kingdom of heaven," &c., and Acts xiv, 21, "And having preached the gospel to that city, and made a considerable number of disciples, they," &c. Poole, on Matt, xxvii, 57, says, " a disciple, one that had learned of Christ." Bengel, on Matt, xiii, 52, has, " matheteutheis, instructed. As hasileuo signifies both to make a king and act the king, so also matheteuo to make disciples (expressed in John iv, 1, by mathetas poieinj and act or le a disciple, see ch. xxvii, 57." Elsley, on " every scribe which is instructed," adds, " i.e., who becomes a disciple.' Dr. Hey. — " Matheteusato panta ethne, means make disciples (mcithetas) oi all nations." — Lee. in Div., vol. iv, p. 297. E. R. CoNDEE writes : " Every Scribe. The apostles not having yet been sent forth, or become familiar with the idea of the Christian ministry, their Master uses the most familiar and intelligible word to express a well instructed teacher of God's truth. They did not yet know that in time to come they should be not merely ex- pounders, but wi-iters of inspired Scripture. Instructed, or ' discipled.' " — Com., on Matt, xiii, 52. Dr. D. Beown speaks of Joseph's discipleship as having been timid previous to Christ's death, and as being then courageous ; and he adds that "the heroism of faith is usually kindled by desperate circumstances, and is not seldom displayed by those who before were the most timid, and scarce known as disciples at all." Dr. James Moeison. — "And disciple all the nations, that is, And bring all the nations into a condition of disciplehood — of disciplohood to Me." "It brings beautifully into view men's fundamental need of education — education under Christ. All men need to become pupils of Jesus Christ." — Com., on Matt, xxviii, 19. These learned Pffidobaptists, it will be seen, give to matheteuo a meaning accordant with the marginal rendering of our authorized version, to make disciples or Christians. But aU these are unnecessarily adduced to prove that matheteuo, to be or to make a disciple, necessarily includes the idea of teaching or l^eing taught, and that faith, 608 APPENDIX. weaker or stronger, more or less comprelieiisive in regard to tmtlig embraced, is an ingredient belonging to the import of this word in every scrifitural occurrence. There is not, I believe, an evangelical Episcopalian in the world, who, if not thinking of the baptism of infants, would withhold his consent from the language of Scott, who, speaking of Joseph of Arimathea, mentions that ho " waited for the kingdom of God," that " ho had secretly become a disciple of Jesus ; but being timid, moving in a high rank in society, and knowing the malignity of the rulers, he had not openly confessed hia faith;" and who on Acts xiv, 21-23 says, "After the apostles had published the glad tidings of salvation, and ' made many disciples ' in Derbe, they re-visited the several cities v/hcnce they had been driven by persecution ; to instruct, encourage, and establish the new converts ; cxliorting them to continue in ' tlie faith,' " &c. Nor do I believe there is any Presbyterian minister, who will object to Dr. D. Davidson's interpreting ilce openimj of the door of faith unto the Geritilcs, as " the successful introduction of the gospel unto the Gentiles," or even the successful accomplishment, under God, of the discipling enjoined in the commission. Nor do I believe there is an Independent minister in existence who, forgetful of infant baptism, would object to the rendering of Dr. Doddridge : " And having iDreached the gospel to that city, and made a considerable number of disciples, they returned to Lystra and to Iconium and Antioch, confirming the souls of the disciples, exhorting them to continue in the faith," &c. Nor do I believe there is a Wesleyan minister in the world, who, forgetting Pasdobaptism, would deem Dr. A. Clarke heterodox, when on Acts xiv, 22, he v/rites : " Confirming the souls of the disciples. The word disciple signifies literally a scholar. The church of Christ v/as a school, in which Christ Himself was chief Master ; and His apostles suhordinatc teachers. All the converts were disciples or scholars, who came to this school to be instructed in the knowledge of themselves and their God : of their duty to Him, to the church, to society, and to themselves." How applicable to infants are such expressions as, "All the converts were disciples or scholars !" These Psedo- baptist testimonies accord with that of the Baptist R. Robinson, who says that mathetcuo " always signifioth either to be or to make disciples, wheresoever it occurs in all the Scriptures : as Matt, xiii, 52 . . . Matt, xxvii, 57 . ,. . Acts xiv, 21." In Matt, xiii, 62 the Syriac has, "made a disciple." In Acts xiv, 21, " the Syriac and Arabic, more properly, having made many disciples." " The Persian paraphras- tically expounds it. Go ye and reduce all nations to My faith and religion." In Rob. 's Claude's Essay, vol. i, pp. 33, 34. There is not one person, I believe, in all these denominations, who understands the Greek language and the oracles of God, who, forgetting Pa3dobaptism, will not admit that the marginal reading in Matt, xxviii, 19, Make disciples or Christians of all nations, is a more literal rendering than teach all nations, and that the inspired writer who teaches that " The disciples were called Christians first in Antioch," uses the word disciples as synonymous with believers or Christians. Having taught in Acts xiv, 21 that in Derbe the gospel was preached and many disciples were made, in the next verse he speaks of the souls of disciples being confirmed, and of their being exhorted to co7itinue in the faith. If I am mistaken as to faith — I say not how weak or how strong — being a necessaey ingredient in the character of a disciple, so that without faith there is no discipleship to Christ, let some learned Pajdobaptist give " the grammatical construction" of these verses. Let him hence adduce in-oof or confirmation of the hypothesis, that disciple means a learner of the lowest degree, an unconverted man, or an infant, if baptized ; and that the Lord of glory, declaring His possession of all power, solemnly enjoined His apostles to accomplish this dis- cipleship, 25rcviously qualifying them for their great work by the baptism of the Spirit. But if faith is absolutely requisite in every disciple of Christ, let Pajdobaplists take shame to themselves for taunting Baptists with putting it into the commission, and let them cease unscripturally and absurdly to say that wo are commanded to disciple infants to Christ.* Every occiu'rence of ■)natheteno in addition to Matt, xxviii, 19, has now been examined, and every occurrence is corroborative of its invariably ujeaning to be or to make a disciple, and thus is opposed to the idea that there is in the commission any reference to infants. * We arc not only taunted by Dr. H. ^vith putting believers into the commission whilst ho biuiself uses believers as sjnonymous with disciples, but also ■nitb expoimdiii!^ tbo commission as allowing to treat tbose as bolievcrii, wlio " make a credible profession of faith." Ho says, " Of credible profession there is not a word ia the commission according to which they baptize ; and they have no more rigiit to assert this llinitatiou as their gloss or amcndineiit, than thoy havo to append a clause restricting baptism only to Jews, or only to Gentiles— uiily t.' nun, or only to women. By wLat authority doest thou these things, or who gave thee this authoi'ity" (vol. xv, J). b3) i" He also >vho strenuously maintains that the Lord's Supper is intended only lor the regen- i APPENDIX. 609 As long as maiheteuo includes teacliing-, which it certainly does, so long will it imply in the persons taught " a capacity of receiving instruction. But infants are not capable of being taught. Therefore it was not, it could not be, our Saviour's meaning to require His ministers to teach and baptize them" (Dr. Stennett, p. 133). Matheteuo not only includes teaching, but the effect of teachiug, teaching successfully, so as to accomplish the discipling, that discipling which is eiiected only by teaching. Infants cannot be introduced into the commission without perverting the import of discipling. Whether mathetes or etline be the antecedent to autous, on which I make no positive affirmation, the scriptural import of discipling debars its application to infants. If Christ by commanding to disciple meant only. Make learners of the lowest degree, He meant what is distinct from baptizing, and what cannot be performed on infants. Adherence to the proper import of discipling, is not only important as deciding the scriptural subjects of baptism, but as stopping the inlet to other and fearful perver- sions of Divine truth. The words of Hooker are as truthful as they are forcible when he says : " There is nothing more dangeroiis than this licentious and deluding art, which changeth the meaning of words, as alchymy doth or would do the substance of metals, maketh of anything what it listeth, and bringeth in the end all truth to nothing." — Works, vol. ii, p. 211. I will, in concluding this part of the proof that infants have no place in the com* mission, adduce our Saviour's testimony to the character of a disciple of Christ, and a, few other occurrences of the word disciple in the New Testament. In reading what Christ teaches to be included in being a disciple, we must marvel greatly if He who subsequently tauglit that we are to the end of the world to disciple all by baptism, says on His disciples not a word about that of which infants are capable, but in every explanation states what cannot pertain to infants or the ungodly. Jesus said, " If any man come to Me and liate not his father, and mother, and wife, and children, and sisters, yea, and his own life also, he cannot be My disciple. And whosoever doth not bear his cross, and come after Me, he cannot be My disciple . . . Whosoever he be of you that forsaketh not all that he hath, he cannot be My disciple" (Lu. xiv, 26, 27, 33). Jesus having washed " the disciples' feet," &c., said, " Let not your heart be troubled; ye believe in God, believe also in Me. In My Father's house are many mansions : if it were not so, I would have told you. I go to prepare a place for you. And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again, and receive you unto Myself, that where I am, there ye may be also" (John xiii, 5, &c. ; xiv, 1-3). A man cured of blindness that had been from his birth, being interrogated a second time by certain Pharisees respecting the mode of his cure, said, " Wherefore would ye hear it again ? Will ye also be His disciples ? Then they reviled him and said, thou art His disciple; but we are Moses' disciples" (John ix, 27, 28). A damsel said to Peter, "Art not thou also one of this man's disciples" (John xviii, 17)? "None of His disciples durst ask Him who art Thou" (John xxi, 12) ? "And in those days Peter stood up in the midst of the disciples, and said . . . Men and brethren," &c. (Acts i, 15, 16). "And when Saul was come to Jerusalem, he assayed to join himself to the disciples, but they were all afraid of him, and believed not that he was a disciple" (Acts ix, 26), " The disciples were called Christians first in Antioch" (Acts xi, 26). " And the disciples were filled with joy and with the Holy Ghost" (Acts xiii, 52). Paul would have exposed himself to great danger at Ephesus, but " the disciples suffered him not" (Acts xix, 30). At Troas, on the first day of the week, " the disciples came together to break bread" (Acts xx, 7). To the elders of the Ephesian church, Paul said, " Of your own selves shall men arise, to draw away disciples after them." erate, is so conscious that God does not require from us a knowledge of the heart, that he expressly maintains "the restriction of the Lord's Supiier to those who malte a credible profession of religion" (p. 154). Again, " A Christian church is a voluntary society, consisting only of such persons as make a credible profession of faith in Christ" (p. 121). Dr. H. will thus admit to the Lord's Supper disciples, believers, on faith credibly professed ; and to baptism disciples, that is learners, those under Christian instruction, or those who it is desired and hoped may at some time receive Christian instruction. It might also to some be gi'atifying, if not also extensively useful, if a disciple is a learner in opposition to being a Christian, to be informed wliat amount of knowledge is requisite, or to what extent a person must be under Christian instruction in order to be a disciple of Christ. What is the precise point above entire ignorance of Chi-ist, and short of being a Christian, that will constitute a person a disciple of Christ ? and that we may not be deceived in a matter so intimately connected with the soul's salvation, in what part of the inspired volume is the question clearly solved ? Does discipleship to Jesus consist in once allowing Divine truth to fall on our ears, and even if unwillingly or unconsciously heard, if also baptized ? Or is the way to heaven not quite so broad and easy ? Actually observing any Divine direction is a distinct thing from being taught to observe the same. Our glorious Legislator, iufiuitely wise and kind, our Diviue Redeemer, cannot have left us in the dark on this matter. 610 APPENDIX. We also read, " Finding disciplesg, we tarried there seven days : wlio said to Paul througli the Spirit," &e. " A certain disciple was there, named Timotheus." "This is the disciple that testifieth these things." In accordance with these Scriptures, Prof. J. Farrar rightly teaches that Christ " by His disciples baptized many that . . . were brought to %)rofess faith in Him as the Messiah." — Die. Art. Bap. From the whole of what has now been advanced on the import of making disci2>les of all the nations, it may be concluded that " disciples" means those who believe on Jesus as the Messiah and the Saviour of sinners, who personally trust in Him and yield themselves to Him. Persons might be disciples of Christ although their know- ledge of Christianity was very elementary. Discipling being a fact so far as those not knowing the heart are capable of judging, progress in Divine knowledge and practice would be a proof of sincerity. Although spiritual babes, these disciples were received to the Lord's Supper, and to all that God had ordained for the welfare of those that have redemption through the blood of Christ. It is not, therefore, to be wondered that the Christian church at large regards a disciple of Christ as a believer in Christ, a follower of Christ, a Christian. In no other light under the guidance of Divine inspii-ation can the term be considered. And if this is what by the preaching of the gospel Christ commissions us to accomplish, infants belong not to the com- mission. If our opponents will pervert the import of disciple because some having the name had not the reality, they may similarly pervert the import of Christian, convert, believer, and many other words. But it is thought, notwithstanding the acknowledged and undeniable import of disciple, that in being commanded to disciple, or make disciples of all nations, we are undoubtedly commanded to disciple infants as well as adults, and that consequently infants can certainly be discipled to Christ, or be made disciples of Christ. If infants are necessarily meant when this phraseology (all nations) occurs, the matter is decided against the Baptists, although the Saviour in our judgment has enjoined an impossibility. But let inspired or other writings give their verdict. The Lord is said to have brought the fear of David upon all nations (1 Chr. xiv, 17). Did infants fear him ? In a Messianic Psalm we read, "All nations shall serve Him." " All nations shall call Him blessed" (Psalm Ixxii, 11, 17). The interpretation by Dr. H. of all nations is, "all the people who constitute the nations" (Reply, p. 40). Do infants servo Christ, or call Him blessed ? Similarly test Isaiah xxv, 7, Haggai ii, 7, and other Old Testament occurrences of the phrase. Is there a vail over unconscious babes, which God will destroy ? Is Christ the desire of these ? Are infants exhorted to praise the Lord (Psalm cxvii, 1) ? Are they among those that shall come and worship before God, and glorify His name (Psalm Ixxxvi, 9) ? or that shall see God's glory (Isaiah Ixvi, IS) ? When the " gospel of the kingdom" is " preached unto all nations," is it preached to babes? Where we read, "by thy sorceries were all nations deceived," must we certainly include infants among the deceived ? Ai-e infants, because a part of the nations, undoubtedly included among "all the nations that forget God," who "shall be turned into hell" (Psalm ix, 17)? Drs. Halley and Stacey explicitly teach that this is not the doom of any dying in infancy. We read also, " Ye shall be hated of all nations for My name's sake" (Matt, xxiv, 9). Are infants along with others here meant P Dr. H., on our being commanded to disciple all the nations, speaks as positively of our being commanded to disciple infants as if it were clear and certain as any axiom in Euclid. We read again, " This gospel of the kingdom shall be preached in all the world for a witness unto .nil nations" (Matt, xxiv, 14). And the apostle of the Gentiles speaks of its being " made known to all nations for the obedience of faith." Is the gospel a witness to infants? la ii made known to them? Are they capable of the obedience of faith ? Similarly test Mark xi, 17, Acts xiv, 16, and other such passages. Was the temple called by infants "the house of prayer?" Are infants certainly meant along with adults as walking "in their own ways ?" Wliat can be more preposterous than to suppose that infants are meant in the cases adduced ? And because commanded to disciple all nations, are we to regard it clear as a sun-beam that wo are to disciple infants ? When the father of a family says in his letter that they all unite in love to the friend or relative to whom he is writing, must we necessarily believe that the unconscious baby unites in sending love ? Does the spirit of inspira- tion, does the Divine Saviour use human phraseology with some peculiar and extraordinary meaning ? That infants are undoubtedly referred to along with adults in the command to disciple all the nations, is one of the assumptions on which it is attempted to demonstrate the duty of infant baptism. " To disciple a nation," says Dr. H., " is nothing else than to disciple all the people who compose it." If the APPENDIX. 611 apostles " did not * so conceive,' they did not understand their commission" (Re'ply, p. 39). Dr. H. might suppose that if we are commanded to "preach the gospel to every creature," we must so far abandon common sense in interpreting common phraseology, as to preach the gospel to every " man and woman, child and suckling." I deny not that infants are included in " all nations" as certainly as they are in " every creature ;" but I maintain that from the common use and well-known import of such phraseology we may know as well as the disciples knew that the command of Jesus required not an absurd preaching of the gospel to infants, or the impossible act of making them disciples. What did the Rev. T. Binney mean when he taught that the Christian dispensation is " intended to unite all nations in a common /ati/i" (Ser. on John xviii, 21, p. 12) ? When nation rises against nation, is it a fact that the infant with the adult, if not as adroitly and effectually, yet as certainly uses bow and arrow, rifle or gun.P As assuredly were infants meant in Christ's commission. My own belief is that the apostles, in being sent to make disciples of all the nations, to preach the gosi^el to every creature, were not sent with a Divine message to babes, but that they were sent to those come to years of discretion, to actual sinners, needing mercy from a justly offended but infinitely loving God. Their first work, instead of being to"preach to infants along with others, or to baptize any, was to deliver from God to perishing and helpless sinners a message of unparalleled love and mercy, to preach repentance and the remission of sins in Christ's name ; finally indeed among all nations, but beginning at JeriTsalem (Lu. xxiv, 47). As Dr. H. is willing seriously to consider the limitation of the commission professing to rest upon other Scriptures, let these now adduced have serious consideration. They merit the regard of all who, like Dr. D. Thomas, may have said : " Are there any nations where there are not children ? If not, where is your authority for excluding children from baptism ?" (Genius, &c., p. 735) ; or who may have imagined that Dr. H. has forcibly said, " How can all be anything but universal?" "To disciple a nation is nothing else than to disciple all the people who compose it." "A nation may be baptized as it may be converted, or may be extirpated, not at once, or as a nation, but by its individuals in succession" (Reply, p. 39). A worthy seqixence and consummation from a false premise ! We may convert infants as well as adults ! When the nations of Europe were gathered to the crusade, infants were enlisted ! Who can now object to the hypothesis that our Saviour commanded to disciple every infant in the world ! But it is further maintained that we are commanded to baptize infants, because etline is, in Matt, xxviii, 19, the antecedent to autous, the commission requiring that we disciple persons of all ages, and of all characters, and that we baptize the same, or rather that we disciple these by baptizing them, or by baptizing them into the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, and by teaching them to observe all things whatsoever Christ has commanded. On ethne as the antecedent to autous I may remark, first, that if this were proved it would not foUow that we are authorized to baptize infants, unless I have just given an incorrect exposition of making disciples of all the nations. There being no reference to infants in that command, the reference being only to persons come to years of discretion, to actual sinners, if ethne is the antecedent, and if we are commanded to disciple by haptieing, on which something may shortly be said, instead of being commanded to baptize infants, we are rather commanded to baptize promiscuously the godly and the wicked, if the godly are found among those to whom the glad tidings of redemption through Jesus' blood are to be proclaimed. Indeed, if panta ta ethne in the commission prove a command to baptize infants, these words prove a command to baptize any, however ungodly, and however scoffingly and profanely they may receive the ordinance. Dr. H. would have been consistent with his own interpretation of these words in advocating indiscrimin- ate baptism, if he had not excluded the profane scoffer, &c. But that ethne is the antecedent to autous, I believe, has not yet been proved. According to Greek and English syntax the rule is that pronouns agree with the nouns to which they belong in gender and number. See p. 601. An exceptional rule, and one of frequent occurrence, to which Dr. Halley refers as the common rule of Greek syntax known by every school-boy, admits that ethne, although neuter, may yet be the antecedent to the masculine autous. Matthije says, " Adjectives, adjective-pronouns (as the possessive pronouns houtos, haute, touto ; hode, &c. ; autos, hos, he, ho), and participles, conform themselves properly, in gender and number, to the substantives with which they are put as epithets or predicates, or to which they refer" (§ 43i).* He admits that " from * Dr.'Carson, on the application Jof an exceptional rule to the commission, is much more positive and etronglthan myself. Amongst other things he says, " The phmseologyi disciple all the 612 APPENDIX. this rule there are many deviations in Greek wa-iterf? : 1. — They refer an adjective, &c., to the substantive only in its sense, and put it in the gender which is implied in the substantive, though this last has a different gxammatical gender." Thus Dr. Stacey speaks of adjectives or pronouns " agreeing not mth the grammatical termination of the noun, but with the natural character of the object," " when the object designated by a neuter noun is not itself neuter ;" and quotes Winer as saying that this " takes place uniformly when the neuter noun denotes things which have life ;" and states that Rom. ii, 14 is an example " in which this very neuter noun for nations occurs in a similar connexion with a masculine pronoim — etlme . . . houtoi." SoDr. Halley, in reply to Mr. Stovel, says on " eilme implying persons and not things, masculine in sense, although not in termination, it might be used in the masculine with quite as much propriety as in the neuter, agreeing with what grammarians call the natural gender" (p. 37). There is difference, however, between Matt, sxviii, 19 and Eom. ii, 14. In the latter lioutoi can stand for no other noun than etlme. In the former, according to another exceptional rule, the pronoun awfous can stand for a noun implied in matheteuo. " Adjectives and demonstrative pronouns are often referred in respect of gender, to words which are implied in a preceding one from the sense or composition" (Matthise, § 435). This exceptional rule will allow mathetas to be grammatically the noun to which autous belongs, whilst the difference in gender between ethne and autous forbids not that ethne may grammatically be the noun to which awfoits belongs. Also, the agreement of such a pronoun as autot(s with siich a noun as ethne, I believe to be of more frequent occurrence than the agreement of such a pronoun as autous with such a noun as mathetas implied in the verb matheteuo, so that at least a first leaning to ethne as, if the sense will permit, the antecedent of aiitous — although ethne, nations, having a pronoun, has not always one of the masculine gender — may be justifiable in every Greek scholar, and an acceptance of this might be required, were it not that the grammar of the passage allows of another antecedent. Further, it is not necessary for me, in maintaining that there is no reference to infants in the commission, to admit or deny that ethne is the antecedent to autous. It has been shewn that in " all the nations" to be discipled, there can be no reference to infants. If autous after baptizing has ethne for its antecedent, it includes no infants. More- over, if the first autous has ethne for its antecedent, as given by Winer and S. G. Green, the latter autous has the same ; and infants are excluded from discipling if it is by baptizing and teaching, as I shall subsequeiitly maintain. That which I now maintain is, that if the pronoun autous after baptizontes has ethne for its antecedent, the baptizing is distinct from the discipling, and is subsequent thereto, so that the bap- tizing of them into the name of the Father, &c., is the baptizing of them being discipled, and the teaching of them to observe, &c., is the teaching of them, being discipled, or discipled and baptized, to observe, &c. The commission mentions not firstly, secondly, and thirdly, but I maintain what Dr. H. admits and contradicts, that the parts of the commission are the discipling, the baptizing, the teaching to observe, &c. I believe — in the words of Dr. Stacey — that this commission was "intended to guide the apostles in the order and kind of service required of them as the earliest preachers of the gospel. Their first duty was to make disciples." I do not maintain this simply from the order in which discipling, baptizing, and teaching to observe, &c., appear in the commission. I admit that participles in the Greek or the English language may follow an indicative or imperative verb, where the ideas of firstly, secondly, and thirdly, would be a perversion of the evident import, as when we in the words of an English and Greek scholar say, " Go, preach the gospel, exalting the Saviour, dealing faithfully with the souls of men ;" but I maintain that sixch is the import of discipling to Christ, as clearly taught by Christ Himself, and by the subsequent inspired use of matheteuo uni mathetes, and such hadpreviouslybeenandsubsequently was apostolic practice, as the oracles of God clearly reveal, that we are shut xvp to a just exposition of the commission by a strict adherence to the order of the commands. It may be nations, baptizing them, necessarily confines tLe baptism to the persons who shall be discipled. The antecedent to the pronoun is the word disciples, taken as grammarians speak, out of the verb disciple. The very nature of the thing requii-es this ; it is obviously only disciples that they could baptize. Unbelievers would not submit to baptism. 1 will undertake to shew the greatest bumpkin in England, that the restriction is necessarily in the expression. ' Go,' says a corn-merchant to his clerks, ' buy all the grain in the market, storing it,' &c. Does any idiot ask, what grain is to be stored ? Is it not the grain that is bought, and not the grain that they could not obtain, or was bought by others ? Could there arise a (luestion on this subject? What would l)e thought of one of the clerks, who should ask, 'Do you mean, Sir, that I am to store all tlic grain in the market, whether I can buy it or not ?' Shame," &i;. tOn Bap., pp. 255, 256). The illustration given by Dr. C. is certainly one in point, and directly opposed to the whole reasoning of Dr. H., that the present participle must be contemporaneous witli the verb, nud esin'css its action. APPENDIX. 613 maintained by some that baptizsing is a part, is tlie completing, the crowning part of discipling ; but how can this be, when it is followed in the commission by didashontes autotis, equally related to matheteiisaAe with haptizontes autous ? If we are taught in the commission that baptizing is a part of discipling, and have any instruction as to its being the first or last part, we are taught that it is the first part. It is in me perfectly consistent to admit that in apostolic times, so far as we know, disciples remaining unbaptized were unknown. The duty of being baptized was so faithfully proclaimed and so well known, that no person refusing to be baptized could be regarded as a disciple. It does not follow from this that baptizing is a part of discipling ; nor does it follow from this that in the present day and among ourselves, when the Greek word for baptizing is Anglicized instead of being translated, and when error on baptism has long prevailed, that there are not many disciples of Christ who believe that they are baptized when they are not, and that there are not eminent Christians who erringly but conscientiously refuse to be baptized ; whilst many others attribute to it an efi&cacy which it never did and never will possess. But I believe firmly — and painfully too, because in this I am directly counter to esteemed opponents— that every individual, having a knowledge of the Greek language, and entirely ignorant of Christian practice, having read the whole of the New Testament, would thus paraphrase Christ's com- mission : Go ye therefore, disciple all the nations, baptizing them (being discipled) into the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost, teaching them (being discipled, or being discipled and baptized) to observe, &c. In other words, make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them into the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost, teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you. In opposition to this let us further notice the interpretation of Dr. H. Greek syntax is supposed imperatively to demand that we thus interpret the commission of our Lord : Disciple all the nations by baptizing them. This is one distinct interpretation of discipling explicity avowed as well as explicitly denied by Dr. Halley. That John's baptism, says Dr. H., " was regarded as the initiatory rite hy which the Jews were made his disciples, is evident from the words of the evangelist : ' The Pharisees heard that Jesus made and baptized more disciples than John' " (vol. X, p. 131). " Our Lord commands to disciple by baptizing" (vol. xv, p. 89). " During the ministry of our Lord upon earth, the great truth announced was, that Jesus of Nazareth was the Messiah promised to the fathers ; and those who desired to learn His doctrine, were ' made and baptized disciples,' or made disciples by baptism, (p. 105). In giving us the summary of his argument in the seventh lecture he says, " We have seen that the commission of our Lord was to disciple all nations, baptizing them" (p. 90). He asserts his agreement with Dr. Wardlaw on the baptism of children, " that their baptism has not constituted them properly members of a particular society, lut only disciples of Christ, under training for the duties and enjoyments of His kingdom" (Reply, p. 125). 'This interpretation would accord with the instruction of Dr. Stacey that we are commissioned by Christ /rsi to make disciples by baptism, and then to teach them to observe, &c. On the pernicious heterodoxy of this sentiment something has been said in reply to Dr. S. That an action performed on the body should eif ect the mighty and glorious, moral and spiritual change included in becoming a disciple of Christ, is monstrous as the Romish doctrine of transubstantiation, and ruinous as that of baptismal regeneration. In the " Select Works of the Eev. and learned D. Clarkson, B.D.," edited for the Wycliffe Society by the Eev. Basil H. Cooper, we read : " The resting upon the opus operatum, the mere outward performance of a duty, when the heart is not engaged therein, is an open pit, which none shall fall into save those that are blind." — p. 468. But Dr. H. also as distinctly teaches what is altogether different from this, namely, that our commission is to disciple as many as we can by and in baptizing and teaching. Where he teaches that the participle " baptizing" following the command to disciple, being a present participle, requires the baptizing to be contemporaneous with the discipling, and to be the means by which the discipling is accomplished, he may not always mean that discipling was accomplished by and in baptizing to the exclusion of teaching them to observe all things whatsoever Christ has commanded, but that the present participle following a verb in the indicative or imperati-ve mood requires to be understood as specifying the action of the verb and as necessarily contemporaneous therewith ; so that in the commission, there being two participles, the discipling ia accomplished by and in the baptizing and teaching. That I do not apply this, and that this cannot be applied to some quotations already given, every reader may perceive. But to his words. " Our commission is to disciple as many as we can, by 614 APPENDIX. baptizing and by teaching them" (p. 71). " We make disciples, according to Christ's commission, by baptizing and teaching" (p. 105). " It has been shown, as the words imply, that we are to make disciples by baptizing and teaching" (p. 116). "We are to baptize in discipling, or in malang disciples ;" we are " to disciple iajitizing, which is the true version of the passage. As we are commanded to disciple all the nations, baptizing them and teaching them, the meaning is precisely the same as if we were commanded to baptize and teach all the nations in fulfilling our duty of making them disciples" (Reply, p. 30). " It appears to me that a Baptist might as well say, the expression, ' he cried, saying,' means, he said nothing until he had ceased crying, as that the command, 'disciple, baptizing and teaching,' means, do not baptize and teach until you have made the disciples. The participle must be connected with its verb, and not by separation be converted into another verb, as Mr. Stovel, in defiance of all grammar, expounds this command to be 'disciple and baptize,' instead of ' disciple, baptizing' " (p. 31). Without entering now into the grammar contended for, I would here afiirm my belief that no Baptist in the world has ever taught that we are not to teach until we have made the disciple ! Every Baptist maintains that teaching is necessarily included in discipling, whatever may be his opinion as to teaching them to observe all things whatsoever Christ has commanded being divinely intended to follow the baptizing. Dr. H. assiires us that he employs the command " to make disciples," " in connexion with its participle — ' make disciples, baptizing' as the basia of " his " whole argument" (p. 32). "Mr. Stovel," says he, "nowhere attemptsto reconcile either of his versions with the tense of the participle ' baptizing,' which being present is to be construed as contemporaneous with the verb. It cannot imply any postponement until the act of the verb be completed" (p. 47). " There is no grammatical construction which will justify any translation which postpones the baptizing until after the discipling. If Mr. Stovel will produce a rule of syntax, according to which the present participle denotes an action subsequent to the action of its verb, and not contemporaneous with it ; that is, if he will prove that the expression, ' he cried, saying,' means he said nothing until after he cried, then I will abandon the controversy, by admitting that to ' disciple baptizing' may mean not to baptize until after you have made disciples" (p. 48). I agree with Dr. H. that the command. Disciple, baptizing, implies that baptizing is commanded, " as when I say, ' read standing,' I command the person as imperatively to stand as I do to read" (p. 156). I can also say that I believe standing and reading to be two acts as distinct and specific as discipling and baptizing. He says, " What is the difference in the signification of the two phrases, ' Disciple all nations, baptizing them,' and ' baptize all nations, discipling them f ' I coiiess I have not sufficient acuteness to detect the slightest shade of difference. It is no more apparent than in the phi-ases, ' they were baptized confessing their sins,' and ' they confessed their sins being baptized.' The former verbs are imperatives, the latter are indicatives ; but their connexion with their respective participles is precisely the same" (pp. 156, 157). In the same page Dr. H. says, "We are commanded to disciple, baptizing and teaching, or, what is the same thing, to baptize and teach in making disciples." How would it read, " They were baptized in and by confessing their sins." According to Dr. H., Greek syntax will not allow us to give any other interpretation. If confession is made in being baptized, the baptism is not infant. But Dr. H. on this page teaches that certainly we are to baptize " in making disciples." At p. 159 he teaches that although matlicteiio "is usually an intransitive verb, denoting to learn or to be a disciple, it must be here used in a transitive sense, to teach, or to make disciples. Let it mean what it may, the phraseology of its connexion proves that it is to be accomplished by baptizing and teaching." Suppose that we accept one of the renderings now given by Dr. H., we shall then have, according to the above, " Teach all nations by baptizing and teaching !" Finally, " Let Dr. Wardlaw produce a present participle like ' baptizing,' in connexion with a verb, and yet not connected with the action of the verb, as a present or contemporaneous act, and he will do some- thing to refute my reasoning. Such a construction of a verb and the present participle, I will venture to say, he has never seen." — p. 160. These lengthened extracts from Dr. H. are given partly that the reader may be in no doubt as to the oracular manner in which he speaks of the stern demands of Greek syntax, of inevitable requirements by the grammatical construction of the commission, in the interpretation which he has given to it ; partly that the reader may see how much of what he advances is simply a gratuitous assumption ; partly that I may condemn him out of the words of his mouth ; and principally that what I believe to be the true import of the commission may be more firmly established. I am far from maintaining that the whole of my venerable opponent's ideas are a figment of the imagination. I admit that the present participle following a verb imperative or indicatiYO, usually expresses an action contemporaneous with that of the yerbi { APPENDIX. 615 deny that this is invariably and necessarily the case. I admit that the present participle following a verb as in the commission hai^fizontcs and didashontes follow mafhetcv.sate, freqiiently expresses the manner in which the action of the verb is accompUshed, and the import of the sentence instead of being perverted or altered, if in such a case we insert the preposition hy before the participle, will only be the more clearly expressed. I say not that examples of this relation of the participle to the verb, where such must be the import, are not given in Greek grammars. I deny that this construction demands svich an interpretation according to Greek or English syntax, and I adduce what is above rules of grammar, that upon which grammatical rules are founded, I adduce use in proof of the correctness of my assertions. Were one person, in Greek or English, to direct another to kill a man, tlirusting the dagger at once to his heart, no one would doubt that the participle here specifies the manner in which the deed was to be accomplished. When we read, he cried saying, no one doubts that the saying is contemporaneous with the crying, and though some might object to its being said that the crying was accomplished by the saying, none probably would deny that the saying is nothing else than the crying definitely and articulately expressed. But that every participle following a verb is not like " saying" in the sentence, " he cried saying," is well known. Dr. H. adduces in proof of baptism being enjoined in the commission, the command to "read standing," as certainly enjoining standing as well as reading. True, but when I say, " read standing," do I mean that the reading is accomplished by the standing ? This is the interpretation which Dr. H. oracularly teaches us that Greek syntax demands. I deny not that reading and standing would be contemporaneous actions in a fulfilment of the command, "read standing ;" but I deny that either is accomplished by the other. Matthiffi says, that "Verbs which express any emotion of the mind, as *to rejoice, to be indignant, vexed, ashamed, to repent,' &c., take in the participle the object or operative cause" (§ 555 [551] ). The same writer also says : " Every action which admits of being considered as only accompanying another which is the main action, and may thus be represented as an accessory circumstance of another, the Greeks are fond of expressing by the participle" (§ 557 [2] ). Mr. Moulton, in a Note in Winer's Grammar (p. 434), says : "In copiousness of participial phraseology, the English comes much nearer the Greek than either the Latin or the German." Dr. S. G. Green, in Handb. to the Gram, of the Gr. Tcs., pp. 363, 364, says : "A participle without the Article, and in grammatical concord with the subject of the verb, may stand as adjunct to the verbal predicate. These adjuncts may be of various kinds, as — a. Modal, setting forth the manner in which the given action was performed, b. Temporal, denoting (i) a contemporaneous, (ii) preceding, or (iii) consequent fact._ c. A participle often expresses some relation of cause, condition, &c., to the principal verb. This relation the general sense of the passage will shew. Causal. — Acts iv, 21. Concessive. — Eom. i, 32. Conditional. — Eom. ii, 27; Matt, vi, 27 ; Rom. viii, 23; 2 Cor. V, 2. d. Intensive, a Hebraism." Such rules teach that while it would not be ungrammatical to interpret Matt, xxviii, 19, as teaching to disciple by and in baptizing and teaching, it is not grammatically necessary. Whether the verb and participle are to be thus understood must be determined by their import, or by this and the con- nexion. The variety grammatically admissible is abundantly attested by that highest authority, use. Two oiit of three of the examples adduced by Dr. H. undeniably oppose the inference he would deduce, that discipling is certainly accomplished by baptizing and teaching. Eeading is not accomplished by standing. The disciples of John were not baptized by confessing their sins. I may send my domestic to Mr. , or to the market, for fish, bidding her to go, calling on her way home at , and bringing back, &c. In this case the calling and the bringing back are not the simple accomplishment of the going, neither are they contemporaneous with it. I may say of a servant that he went to a certain house, carrying with him the trunk which had been borrowed, and bringing back the basket which had been lent. I am not aware that the Greeks, " fond of expressing by a participle," would object to a literal translation of the participle in these sentences. If objection is made, however, to bringing, which in these sentences is not contemporaneous with the imperative "go," or with the indicative "went," that elegance would in English (or even in Greek) have led to the use of another verb with the conjunction instead or the participle, none will object that " calling" and " carrying" are not an accomplishment of the action in the preceding verb ; and none, I believe, can afiirm that these sentences, whether in English or Greek, are ungrammatical. If I say to an over-wrought friend, Go you to Switzerland, taking your wife with you. surveying in your way the beauties of the Eliine and the attractions of the principal towns, and having breathed for a few weeks the bracing air, and witnessed the romantic scenery of the -Republic, you will return a pew man, and find all yoiu: work easy aad pleasant, do I wean that he is to go iv 616 APPENDIX. taking and surveying ? If I say with a learned wi-iter that " Peter the hermit went through all the nations of Europe, gathering them to the crusade," will any one believe that " gathering" is the means by which " going" is accomplished ? If I say that a certain celebrity visited different nations, increasing thereby his bellicose and industrial knowledge, and mightily enhancing the subsequent power and greatness of the nation which he governed, every one knows that ho did not visit by increasing and enhancing. I may drown a man, continuously baptizing him, and the drowning is accomplished by the baptizing. I may cool iron, dipping it into water, or pouring water upon it, or even sprinkling it with water, and the cooling is accomplished by the dipping, or poviring, or sprinkling. I may wade through a river, being immersed unto the chest, but the wading is not accomplished by being immersed unto the chest. And if I command to gather all the frnit from certain trees, excepting only a little on the highest or outermost branches, or if I command to hew down a certain tree, leaving only the stump, the gathering is not accomplished by " excepting," nor the hewing down by " leaving." I dissent not from the sentiment of a Greek scholar already quoted, that " ' Disciple by baptizing' is an allowable rendering if we regard only the grammar of the passage, but not allowable when we consider the New Testament character of a disciple, and the condition of discipleship." The participle may or may not accomplish the action of the verb. The vaunted rule, oraciilarly expressed by Dr. H. and endorsed by Dr. Stacey, proves nothing at all; or rather it has no existence. But let us come back to the Book of books, that from use we may undoubtedly ascertain whether the grammatical construction of the commission requires us to believe that we are commanded to disciple by and in baptizing them into the name, &c. We read in Matt, viii, 27: "But the men marvelled, saying," &c. ; and in Matt, ix, 53 : " The multitudes marvelled, saying," &c. Was the mar- velling accomplished by the saying ? or was the saying altogether contemporaneous with it ? We may say that the saying was in connexion with marvelling, and thus was contemporaneous with it ; but every one, as I presume, will admit that the marvelling certainly preceded and occasioned the saying, and thus was perfectly distinct from it. And few will doubt that while it had an existence prior to the saying, it also had one subsequent to it. See also Matt, xix, 25 ; xxi, 10, 20 ; xxvi, 8, &c. If the command to disciple baptizing grammatically demands that the baptizing be "contemporaneous with the" discipling, if " it cannot imply any postponement until the act of the verb be completed" (Reijly, p. 47), the baptizing, in accordance with the expression, "the men marvelled, saying," may yet grammatically constitute no part of the discipling. We also read : " There came to Him a man, kneeling down to Him" (Matt, xvii, 14). "The Pharisees came to Him tempting Him" (Matt, xix, 3), Did the man come to Christ 6y kneeling down to Him ? Was the kneeling down contemporaneous with the coming ? or was it after he had come that he kneeled down to Him ? Did the Pharisees come to Christ hy tempting Him ? Was the tempting ContemiDoraneous with the coming, or subsequent to it ? When our Saviour commanded to " lend, hoping for nothing again" (Lu. vi, 35), did He mean, lend hy hoping for nothing again ? When He said, " That ye may ... sit on thrones, judging the twelve tribes of Israel," did He mean that they were to sit 61/ judging? When the Pharisees sent unto Clirist "their disciples with the Herodians, saying. Master," &c. (Matt, xxii, 16), was the se?iclin(7 accomplished by the " saying ?" Did not the sending also as certainly precede the saying as it was distinct from it ? And why may not discipling precede baptizing, and lead to baptizing as grammatically and sensibly as, in the passages quoted, the sending preceded the saying, the coming preceded the tempting and kneeling, and the marvelling and having indignation (Matt, xxvi, 8), while accompanying, causing, and succeeding, also preceded the "saying?" "Upon the first day of the week," holy women " came unto the sepulchre, bringing the spices," &c. (Lu. xxiv, 1). They did not come hy hringmg the spices. The thieves mentioned Lu. X, 30, " departed" not by " leaving" the person " half dead." Wicked Jews (Acta xiv, 19) "drew" not Paul out of the city hy " supposing ho had been dead." Similarly I might expose the maintained error by referring to Lu. iv, 35 ; xxiii, 48 ; Acts viii, 27; xvi, 20; xxiv, 11; Heb.x, 12, 13; &c. In the following, three participles follow the verb : ' ' Jesus went about all the cities and villages, teaching in their synagogues, and preaching the gospel of the kingdom, and healing every sickness" (Matt, ix, 35). Did Jesus go about by teaching, by preaching, by healing- ? Mr. Noel on this says : " In each place the preaching and the healing necessarily followed the arrival ; but the three habits of travelling, teaching, and healing, were, with respect to the whole tour, concurrent" (p. 25). He adduces this passage in connexion with his reasoning that if wo admit the contemporaneous character of discipling, baptizing, and teaching to observe, &c., we are not necessitated •jio interpret the commission as meaning, make disciples by baptizing and by teaching ■^ APPENDIX. 617 to observe, &c. He teaches that we may regard discipling, baptizing, and teaching as both contemporaneous and consecutive : " With respect to each individual, the actions are consecutive. Each minister disciples or converts the individuals first, then baptizes, and then teaches the details of Christian character and conduct ; but comprehensively considered, these actions are contemporaneous, since of the whole body of the ministers of Christ, to whom the commission is given, some are preaching the gospel, and some are teaching the details of Christian doctrine, through all successive generations" (p.25). This follows the utterance that, in his judgment, according to New Testament usage, the participles (Col. iii, 16) express " actions subsequent to the action of the principal verb" (p. 24), and that this order characterizes the construction in Matt, xxviii, 19. We also read : " Be not drunk with wine, wherein is excess, but be filled with the Spirit, spealving to yourselves in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody in your heart to the Lord, giving thanks always . . . submitting yourselves," &c. (Eph. vi, 18-21). Does the apostle mean that they were not to be drunk with wine but bo filled with the Spirit by speaking, singing, &c., or does he mean that this speaking, singing, and making melody in their hearts, giving thanks and submitting to one another, are to be subsequent to and consequent on their being filled with the Spirit? I admit that speaking to themselves in psalms, singing, &c., as mentioned by the apostle, would promote sobriety, and an increase of the in-dwelling Spirit, but I beUeve that these happy and holy exercises are intended to be the result of being filled with the Spirit. Nor do I say that persons cease, or that it is intended that they should cease, to be filled with the Spirit, when they speak in psalms, &c., and give thanks, any more than that they ceased marvelling, when they began to speak (Matt, viii, 27). Were we to admit this passage as doubtful, it would still remain that the present participle following the verb may or may not specify the manner in which the action of the verb is to be accomplished, that with regard to this the participle in itself proves nothing. Again, the apostle says, " Take the helmet of salvation and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God, praying always with all prayer and supplication in the Spirit, and watching thereunto," &c. (Eph. vi, 17, IS). Does he mean that they are to take the helmet of salvation, and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God, by praying and by watching ? I maintain that prayer and watchfulness are distinct from the taking of God's word, however helpful to this they may prove. Where the apostle says, " Let the word of God dwell in you richly in all wisdom, teaching and admonishing one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing," &c. (Col. iii, 16), does he mean that we are to let the word of Christ dwell in us by teaching, admonishing, and singing ? or does he clearly specify thi'ee separate acts to be preceded by and consequent upon Christ's word dwelling in us richly ? Thus in the commission of Christ, the baptizing into the name of the Father, Son, and Spirit, and the teaching of them to observe all things whatsoever Christ has commanded, are intended to be preceded by, and to be consequent upon the discipling. The idea of Dr. H., constituting his chief foundation for infant baptism, is a gross assumption. Grammatical construction or rules of syntax, demanding that bap- tizing be contemporaneous with discipling and the means by ivhich the discipling is accomplished, are the hypotheses of credulity, the creation of the heart rather than of the head. That every participle and verb are like " He cried saying," if such an idea is entertained, is a delusive fancy. I may say. Let us praise God, singing the doxology, and undoubtedly I mean that we are to praise God by singing and in singing the doxology. I may say. Let us remove hunger, eating mutton-chops unto satiety, and without doubt I mean that the removing of the hunger is to be by and in the eating ; and so in a thousand other instances. But on the other hand a thousand instances could be adduced in which the introduction of by and in would be not an interpretation but the clearest perversion of the meaning. Might I not say to an idle prodigal, Abandon your prodigality, giving yourself to business, recovering your lost property, changing your cottage into a mansion, supplying your family with the comforts of life, and at the same time distributing blessings on all around you ? Might I not bid another who has accepted money with an accusing conscience. Go, acknowledge your fault, returning the money ? Might I not say to an anxious sinner. Go into your closet with your burdened heart, and there make your penitential confessions and believing supplications to the God of mercy and salvation, returning to your friends with the loss of your burden, and assuring them of the gladness of yoiir heart and of the glorious effects of penitential and believing prayer ? Can no man bid his servant. Make purchases, bringing them home without delay ? Can no farmer bid his Bon, Inquire the price of certain produce, bringing him word immediately ? Must he necessarily say. Inquire and bring? Can he not bid his servant take to the market the whole of his potatoes, buying provender with the money, and bringing it back in the same wagon in which be takes the potatoes ? Was no sc^uire ever able to say 618 APPENDIX. that he had bid his servant fetch from his cellar so many bottles of beer, opening: thorn and bringing them into the room as needed ? Did no lady ever bid her servant Go to the market, taking with her a basket, and bringing back cheese and butter ? Do the participles in all these sentences specify the action of the verb, or oven another action that is contemporaneous ? Does the Greek language, notwithstanding the fondness of Greeks for the use of the participles, forbid the translation of these sentences into similar phraseology ? Does it refuse to insert present participles after these verbs in the indicative or imperative mood ? "Would such phraseology grate on the ear of the Grecian, or of the Greek scholar, as certainly opposed to some rule of Greek syntax ? What testimony have we on this in the quotations from the New Testament already given ? I admit that the phraseology just adduced may not be so common, at least in English, as is the use of the present participle when its action is contemporaneous with that of the verb ; but I maintain that no rule of English grammar or Greek syntax necessitates the present participle to have an action synonymous and contemporaneous with that of the preceding verb, and that the Scriptures quoted accord with the writings of the best authors, and with common modes of speech in various languages. Whether the action described bo synonymous or distinct, contemporaneous or subsequent, will be determined by the import of the words and the nature of the text and context. A writer wishing to bo understood would alter the construction of his sentence if the use of a participle or participles rendered his meaning dubious. I differ in nothing from Dr. H. on the import of "he cried saying," but I deny that every present participle thus specifies the accomplishment of the action named in the preceding verb, and in specifying the same action necessarily specifies a con- temporaneous action. I woiild not deny that in Col. iii, 12, 1.3 the participles specify to the extent of their meaning, the manner in which the action of the verb is to be accomplished. " Put on therefore as the elect of God, holy and beloved, bowels of mercies, kindness, humbleness of mind, meekness, long-suffering, forbearing one another and forgiving," &c. I would not affirm that when the apostle Peter teaches to (feed) act as shepherds towards the flock, that which is embraced in the subsequent participles may not be (or at least to some extent) the accomplishment of this precept ; namely, " taking the oversight not by constraint, but willingly ; not for filthy lucre, but of a ready mind, neither as being lords over God's heritage, but being ensamples to the flock." When Paul exhorts Timothy to keep that which is committed to his trust, avoiding iirofanc and vain bahhJings (1 Tim. vi, 20), I can believe that the avoiding of profane and vain babblings would be accessory, would be very helpful to a keeping of that which was committed to his trust, but not that it was the same thing. And when ho tolls the Eplicsian elders that grievous xvolves shall enter in among them, not sparing the Jloch (Acts xx, 29), I believe that the entering in was neither by not sparing nor in not sparing the flock. When he further says, "of your own selves shall men arise, speaking perverse things" (ver. 30), I believe that the arising was not by speaking or in speaking, that the arising preceded the speaking, even if (in resemblance of the expression they marvelled, saying), the speaking can possibly embrace a portion of the time included in the arising. When the inspired writer says in the same chapter that " they all wept sore, and fell on Paul's neck, and kissed him, sorrowing," &c., was sorrowing the accomx)lishment of kissing him, or does sorrowing specify the actions of the three verbs ? Does not the present participle here describe that which preceded the actions of two, yea of the three verbs, and which, along with their love, occasioned the weeping sore, the falling on Paul's neck, and the kissing of him ? I do not maintain that the sorrowing ceased wlien the actions to which it led took i)lace, and when the final salutation had transpired. In Acts xx, 31, as in many other places, the authorized version gives, instead of the participle of the original, the copulative conjunction and a verb ; not " watch, remembering," but " watch and remember." Is remembering here the accomplishment of watching, or is it not rather an acompaniment of it, or a reason for it ? In Acts xxii, 16, where we read, " Arise, and be baptized, and wash away thy sins, calling on the name of the Lord," admissions or objections to the theory of Dr. H. may depend on our confining the participle to the last verb or attaching it to the throe. In Jude, vers. 18-23, are numerous participles. In ver. 18 we have 2^oreuomcnoi after the intransitive verb esontai ; there shall be scoft'ers, walking, &c. Being scoffers is distinct from walking after their own lusts, although one sin ever is accessory to another. In ver. 19 we have apodiorizonfcs and cchontes after eisin. These be they separating themselves . . . having not the Spirit. Will any one say that the import of cisi is accomplished by the participles ? In vers. 20, 21 are two ^Participles preceding and one succeeding the verb tcresate. The preceding participles, rather than the succeeding one, describe the accomplishment APPENDIX. 619 of keeping themselves in the love of God, although I would not deny that the accompaniment of this, namely, a looking for the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ unto eternal life, is accessory and necessary. In ver. 22 we read, " Of some have compassion, making a difference." The practice of compassion could not be simply by "making a difference." There may be a difference in treatment where the whole is cruel. In ver. 23 we read, "And others save with fear, pulling them out of the fire, hating even the garment spotted by the flesh." Whatever may be admitted in favour of saving with fear by pulling out of the fire, it is undeniable that misountes expresses not the accomplishment but an accompaniment of sozete. Who will doubt on reading these extracts, that " every action which admits of being considered as only accom- panying another which is the main action, and may thus be represented as an accessory circumstance of another, the Greeks are fond of expressing by the participle ?" In Acts X, 20, we read, " Arise therefore and get thee do^vn, and go with them, doubting nothing." Was the apostle to get him down and go with them by doubting nothing, or was this to be an accompanying fact ? In 1 Cor. xv, 58, wo read, " Be ye steadfast, unmoveable, always abounding," &c. Although always abounding in the work of the Lord would promote their being steadfast and unmoveable, it is certain that the abounding in the work of the Lord is a distinct thing from being steadfast and unmoveable. When Paul says to Timothy, "Foolish and unlearned questions avoid, knowing that they do gender strifes," no one can doubt that the fact of knowing that these questions gender strifes, instead of being the accomplishment of avoiding, is a reason assigned for avoiding them, or a motive to their avoidance which is adduced. When he says, " continue thou in the things which thou hast learned and hast been assured of, knowing of whom thou has learned them," did he intend continuing to be accomplished by knowing ? or was knowing, &c., mentioned as a reason and motive ? When he says of the Lord Jesus, " who hath counted me faithful, putting me into the ministry" (1 Tim. i, 12), he does not mean that he was counted faithful 6?/ being put into the ministry. Whatever fitness this embraced, whatever motive this constituted, the being counted faithful is distinct from putting into the ministry, and had apparently a prior existence, not extinguished by the consequent and subsequent fact. Similarly we meet with a verb and participle where we read, " Whatsoever ye do, do it heartily, as to the Lord, and not unto men, knowing," &c. Again, " Count it all joy when ye fall into divers temptations ; knowing," &c. (James i, 3). " Be not many masters, knowing that," &c. (James iii, 1). In. Eom. xv, 25 the apostle says, " I go unto Jerusalem to minister (rather, ministering) unto the saints." The apostle does not go to Jerusalem by ministering unto the saints. In James ii, 9 we read, " Ye commit sin and are convinced (rather, being co7ivincedJ of the law as transgressors." Did they commit sin by being convinced, &c. ? In Luke ii, 45 we read, " And when they found Him not, they tiu-ned back again to Jerusalem, seeking Him." Did they turn back by seeking Him ? In Acts xxiv, 17 we read, " After many years I came to bring (rather, bringing) alms to my nation and offerings." The apostle went not by bringing alms and offerings. See also Acts xv, 27 ; xxv, 13 ; 1 Cor. iv. 14 ; Heb. xiii, 13 ; 2 Pe. ii, 5; Matt, xix, 22 ; &c., &c. The reader will clearly see from the passages quoted that Greek usage is certainly condemnatory of the hypothesis of Dr. H. that •' disciple, baptizing" must necessarily mean " disciple by baptizing." The present participle can express an action or state of mind altogether distinct from, and additional to, what is embraced in the verb ; it can express a reason for the action of the verb ; it can express an accessory or an accompanying action of the verb, without embracing and specifying the means by which the action of the verb is accomplished. With regard to " disciple, baptizing" as meaning " disciple mi baptizing," I admit, as before, that the Greeks, as well as the English, in using the present participle in connexion with a verb, usually express in the partici]3le an action contemporaneous with that of the verb. Biattman indeed says (p. 403, Dr. Robinson's Edi.) : " In all participial constructions, there strictly lies at the basis a relation, of time, i.e., the action of the participle, in whatever connexion it may stand with that of the other verb, is almost always to be regarded either as antecedent, contemporary, or future, in respect to that other ; and is put accordingly in the requisite tense. But in viewing this relation, a mode of conception is often possible, different from that which is familiar to ourselves ; and hence it happens that we often find in writers the Part. Aor. where we should expect the Part. Pres., and vice versa." " But the Part. Pres. can stand when both actions are conceived of as continued or constantly repeated." In accordance with this a living Greek scholar says, " We should expect the present participle to express something co-existing with the action of the principal verb ; but there are undoubted exceptions." I believe that baptizing into the name of Father, Son, and Spirit, and teaching to cbserye ali things whatsoeyer Christ bag oomiaanded, describe actions intended to bf 620 APPENDIX. contemporaneoua with discipling only as these actions are for observance throughotit the Christian church " unto the end of the world." Thus they are and have been contemporaneously taking place. I maintain that individually the discipling is intended in Christ's commission to be distinct from and to precede the baptizing, and the teaching to observe all things, &c. 1. — Because the import of disciples of Christ and discipling to Christ, is in the New Testament such as to make the widest distinction between the import of matheteuo and the performance of any ceremonial observance ; while the natural and required application of " teaching them to observe all things," &c., is to those who are discipled to Christ. 2. — Because no rule of Greek grammar, so far as I know, demands that the participle must describe an act contemporaneous with that of the verb ; while certainly no rule demands that the participle describe the accomplishment of the preceding verb. 3 — Because examples ahound in opposition to this contemporaneous and accomplishing idea. 4. — Because order in the actions described may be expected in so solemn and imijortant a direction as this given by the Head of the church, in connexion with assurance of possessing all power in heaven and on earth, given for the instruction and guidance of His disciples throughout all agea and in all places with a view to the world's conversion and to a character in His disciples which would be to His glory and their eternal benefit. 5. — Because individual discipling had previously preceded baptizing, so that the apostles could not understand Christ by such language as teaching anything else. And 6. — Because apostolic practice teaches that they thus understood Christ. I might add that for more than one hundred and fifty years after this commission was given by Christ, we have no evidence that in a single instance there was a departure from discipling and then baptizing; bearing in mind that a knowledge of the heart God does not require from us ; that as Dr, H. admits a credible profession to be the requisite in regard to an admission of believers to the Lord's Supper, so was a credible profession of faith in Christ sufficient for baptism. To post-apostolic evidence of the import of the commission, I attach com- paratively little importance, although elsewhere I record strictures on the assertions of my opponents relative to this period. The quotations already given, in addition to those from Dr. H., so clearly prove it to be a figment of the imagination that the grammatical construction requires us to consider the present participle as specifying the manner in which the action of the verb is to be accomplished, that I shall not further write in special and exclusive reference to this assumption. On previous practice I shall not repeat what has already been advanced on John's baptism as the baptism of repentance and faith in the coming Messiah. On Christ's baptizing by His disciples, I might remind some of my opponents how emphatically and properly they condemn in the commission an insertion oi first, secondly, &c., an insertion of the copulative and, or of the adverb theii. I maintain not the impropriety of these when giving an acknowledged paraphrase of the commission, not a rendering but a meaning involved in the phraseology. I will unite with my opponents in stigmatizing every addition to God's word, every subtraction from it, and every alteration of it. I may not be so confident as some that if the Divine Spirit had inserted the copulative between the verb and the participle there would have been no cavilling. Such are the ingenuity and depravity of men, and such are the imperfections, and from varioiTS causes the erroneous conceptions of Christians, that phraseology the most distinct and explicit is capable of being wrested. It is asserted by the Spirit of inspiration that " Jesus made and baptized more disciples than John." Here we have two verbs united by the conjunction and, enabling us to say that Jesus made and. baptized disciples. We conclude from this that the baptizing of a disciple is something distinct from the making of a disciple, and we think that the order described is that of making and baptizing disciples, the baptizing of disciples being subsequent to the making of disciples. Yet a good and learned man can thus write of John's baptism : " That his baptism was regarded as the initiatory rite hyichich the Jcxvsivcre made his disciples, is evident from the words of the evangelist, ' the Pharisees heard that Jesus made and baptized more disciples than John' " (vol. x, p. 131). The same writer can say: "Our Lord commands to disciple by baptizing" (vol. xv, p. 89). "Those who desired to learn His doctrine, were ' made and baptized disciples,' or made disciples by baptism" (p. 105). These are the statements of one who says of himself and those who think and act with him : " We abide by the literality of the commission" (p. 8) ; and who lectures his opponents on making what he deems a "perfectly gratuitous" (p. 13) limitation of the commission. "Instead of the literal interpretation," says he, "a gloss is appended" (p. 13). "They have ventured to alter the terms of the commission as they literally and grammatically appear in the sacred record" (p. 14). A truth interpreted, as I think, less literally and correctly, a truth more glaringly wrested and perverted, than is by Drs. Halley and Stacey the fact of Christ's making e,nd baptizing disciples, I do not know, Thia taking away of a conjunction, tliig APPENDIX. 621 insertion of a preposition in its stead, and this converting of a verb into a substantive, prepare the way for boldly adding- hy in Christ's commission ; or the addition of the preposition needs the perversion of the previous truth. But as there is no "by" in the commission, " we must require express authority for its insertion" (p. 14) ; and as there is no conjunction in Dr. H.'s rendering or import of " Jesus made and baptized," we must require express authority for its extraction ; and as no noun is in the words " made and baptized," but two verbs are united by the copulative conjunction, we must require express authority for converting one of these verbs into a noun. With all my strength of conviction regarding the import of making and baptizing disciples, I believe my opponents incapable of knoivingly wresting any part of the oracles of God, whether iib be the record of an historical fact, or of a Divine command. On the practice of the apostles as teaching what they understood Christ to mean, although the record of this practice is those other Scriptures limiting the commission, which Dr. H. is willing seriously to consider, it is not proper that I should here enlarge, as they have already been examined. Nor shall I adduce and enlarge on allusions to baptism, on the baptized as rising to ne^l'ness of life, as putiing on Christ, as "risen with Him through the faith of the operation of God," or of baptism as " the answer of a good conscience toward God." I believe that every record is corroborative of that view of the commission which I have maintained. I will now advert only to the first apostolic baptism. Dr. H. says : " If he (Peter) said to the crowd of inquirers. Be baptized, every one of you, it is obvious that he was ready to baptize any one" (p. 22). The reader may remember that Peter said, " Repent, and bo baptized everyone of you in (upon) the name of Jesus Christ." Dr. H. on evidence of repentance says : " The presentation of the party for baptism was the only evidence which could have been afforded or required" (p. 22). '' The narrative appears to me inexplicable, unless Peter was ready to administer baj^tism indiscriminately to all applicants" (p. 23). Yet, God's word says, " Then they that (gladly) received his word were baptized, and the same day there were added unto them about three thousand souls. And they con- tinued steadfastly in the apostles' doctrine," &c. Notwithstanding this inspired testimony regarding the three thousand, Dr. H. says : " Three thousand persons were baptized ' the same day ;' but upon ' the same day,' a deed could not bo done with confidence, upon the presumption that the parties were really and heartily Christians. An illusive opinion is prevalent, that there was less probability of delusion in the early age of the gospel than there is at present ; but to many imder the mighty preaching of Peter, with the miracles of the Pentecost before their eyes, there must have been great danger of mistaking excitement for religion. Coming over to Christianity was not, in the true sense of the term, becoming Christian. Baptizing three thousand in the first day of their conviction, seems precisely equivalent to baptizing all applicants" (p. 61). A credible profession of being Christians — if we may adopt Dr. H.'s expression regarding Christians, or those for whom the Lord's Supper is intended — cannot be given, and on the dp.y of Pentecost could not be given, on the day of first hearing the gospel ! It is an illusion to think that amid the miracles of the time when the apostles had received the baptism of the Spirit and were endued with power from on high, and when the first throe thousand baptized continued steadfastly, there was less probability of delusion than now ! The only satisfactory account of the baptizing of these three thousand that received the apostles' word, and continued steadfastly, &c., is that the apostles baptized "all applicants!" And indeed this is the only consistent account, because "baptizing three thousand in the first day of their conviction, seems precisely equivalent to bap- tizing all p^iplicants !" The facts of being commanded to repent and bo baptized every one of them in the name of Jesus Christ, of receiving the apostle's word, and of continuiyjg steadfastly in the apostle's doctrine, give no instruction whatever, if they were but baptized on the same day ! Granting that continuance v,-as subsequent to their baptism, it was continuance in genuine piety, which had an existence previous to their baptism, and which is described by their receiving of the apostle's word. Moreover, I am not aware that God's word asserts that they were baptized on the same day as that on which they received the apostle's word ; but regarding it as a natural inference, and as accordant with other practice, I object not on this ground. As a worthyJiiiaZe to all that is advanced by Dr. H. in opposition to these three thousand being baptized as accredited believers, he says : " Why. then, were they baptized ? Because, as the apostle said, ' the promise' was to them and to their children" (p. 61) ! They were baptized, not because in God's name commanded to repent and be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ, and because they did repent, or professed their repentance and faith in Jesus Christ; it was not because they received the apostle's word, or professed to receive it, or gave credible evidence of its ' reception, but because of "the promise" to them and their children! The reason 622 APPENDIX. of their baptism is the conditional promise of the Spirit, or of remission of sind and the gift of the Holy Spirit to them and to their children (posterity), and to all afar off, "as many as the Lord our God shall call," a promise depending on repenting and being baptized upon the name of Jesus Christ, as believers in Jesua the Messiah and Saviour of sinners ; yea, this is the reason for the baptism of those of whom God's word says, "Then they that (gladly) received his word were baptized!" Before dismissing this Pentecostal baptism of about three thousand, let us read what Dr. H. says when he is teaching the Friends that our commission to baptize is a commission to perfoi-m an action on the body by means of water, not to regenerate the soul through the truth and Spirit of God. He says: "The objection to the common interpretation, as it is often propounded, is the supposed incongruity between the general commission, Disciple all nations, and the mention of a specific precept to baptize, when the converts were to be taught to observe all things whatsoever Christ commanded. But this supposed incongruity is in accordance with the common phraseology of the New Testament, and therefore becomes an argument in favour of the literal interpretation, ' Then Peter said unto them, Repent and be baptized, every one of you ; then they that received the word were baptized.' It may be here asked. Why should Peter add to the general charge, Repent, the reference to only one specific duty ? That he did so, whatever might have been his reason, is sufficient for our purpose. Baptism, aa the sign of discipleship, was in the first instance, enjoined upon every disciple. As, therefore, Peter charged his hearers, connecting the general and the specific, ' Repent, and be baptized,' meaning ■with water ; so our Lord charged His apostles, ' Disciple all nations, baptizing them,' meaning with water" (vol. x, p. 68). To me it appears that Dr. H., in reasoning with the Friends, regards the baptism enjoined by Peter as a " specific duty" added "to the general charge. Repent," just as in "the general commission* baptizing is a specific duty added to the discipling of all nations ; and if the " specific" be in "the general," if baptizing be in repenting, baptism is not infant. Further, the persons whom according to the commission we are to teach to observe all things whatsoever Christ commanded, are, when reasoning with the Friends, "jthe converts ;" but, when reasoning with the Baptists, the word "them" following teaching (didas- kontes), has "all nations" for its antecedent, so that instead of referring to disciples, believers, or converts, which according to Dr. H. would be interpolating and perverting Divine truth, it embraces — according to every rule of syntax and every law of hermeneutics, and all the learning of Dr. Halley — every idolater, every brood of vipers, and every infant, in the world. Or areall persons in all nations converts ? And is the commission an injunction to disciple converts? If Dr. H., when writing on the perpetuity of baptism, believed that " baptism as the sign of discipleship was in the first instance enjoined upon every proselyte," and that the commission, the Pentecostal baptism of about three thousand, and "the common phraseology of the New Testament" unite in teaching this, I much deplore that he should subsequently have become so heterodox on Divine teaching in regard to the subjects of baptism, and that he should have issued together, yea and with some countenance from the Congregational Union, both his orthodoxy and heterodoxy. A s I believe not that he or they would knowingly contradict themselves and Divine truth, I have quoted the whole paragraph on which I have rightfully or mistakingly commented. Before leaving this part of the com- mission, I may distinctly record my conviction that evcx-y one is in error, who maintains that because we read, Disciple . . . baptizi:ig . . . teaching, it is NECESSARY to regard our Saviour as having enjoined three distinct acts. The C07istruction does not grammatically require this interpretation. Again, those are in error who maintain that Greek syntax demands that the participles following the verb be understood to express the act of the verb, so that the discipling is accomplished by and in the baptizing into, &c., and teaching to observe, &c. This idea is not reqidred by Greek syntax, in application to this phraseologj' ; it is rendered impossible by the scriptural import of disciple, and it is condemned by every inspired record concerning baptism. The first "Baptist," in the words of Prof. Bannerman, " demanded a profession of a religious kind from those whom ho baptized." "The baptism and the confession of sins went together, the one being the accompanying condition of the other" {Ch. of Chr., vol. ii, pp. 61, 02). Thus subsequent baptisms according to outward and credible profession. On the order of Christ's words in the commission I would neither infer nor assert BO strongly as some, nor speak so contemptuously of order as do others. Mr. Baxter says — and not without some ground for his strong assertions — " When Christ layeth down in the apostolical commission the nature and order of Hia apostles' work, it is APPENDIX. 623 first to make disciples, and then to baptize them into the name of the Father," &c, " This is not like some occasional historical mention of baptism ; but it is the very commission of Christ to His apostles for preaching' and baptism, and purposely expresseth their several works in their several places and order. Their first task is by teaching to make disciples, which are by Mark called believers. The second work is to baptize them. . . . The third is to teach them all other things which are after- wards to be learned in the school of Christ. To contemn this order is to renounce all rules of order ; for where can we expect to find it if not here ?" Dr. Halley holds in contempt the ingenuity of an argument for order from the collocation of the words of the commission, and deems it sufficient to refer us to the words of Ananias to Paul, " Arise, and be baptized, and wash away thy sins," maintaining that the argument of order requires " that baptism should precede the washing away of sin" (pp. 14, 15). But if Dr. H. believes with myself that Ananias refers to the washing away of sin as being symbolically set forth in the act of baptism, this passage opposes not the order which characterizes the commission. Dr. H. subsequently refers (p. 16) to 1 Cor. vi, 11 ; " but ye are washed ; but ye are sanctified ; but ye are justified in the name of the Lord Jesus, and by the Spirit of our God." Admitting- a reference to baptism in the expression, "ye are washed," the ordinance is not literally spoken of. It is the blessing which in the ordinance of immersion is emblematically exhibited, of which the apostle speaks. And while admitting degrees of sanctification, believing that justification and sanctification are inseparable, and consequently contemporaneous in commencement and continuance, there is nothing here opposed to my maintenance of order in the commission. On " He that believetli and is baptized," in Mark xvi, 16, Dr. H. thus concludes : "We, however, must protest against the assumption that reasons for the collocation of words are to be demanded in controversy. That he who believetli and is baptized will be saved, we cordially believe; but why belief should be mentioned before baptism, we are not bound to explain" (p. 18). As long as this passage is regarded as a part of Scripture, whether the words wore uttered by Christ subsequently or previously to those in Matthew, whether on the same or another mountain, or at any other place, they must be regarded as conveying instruction which cannot be thus contemptuously set aside. And while Dr. H. may continue to " protest against the doctrine that if two things are commanded, and persons will not do the one, their disobedience is a reason to justify their not doing the other" (p. 60), I hope others will continue to demand apostolic example or some inspired authority for deviating from the order of the actions enjoined in the commission. I say not that in all precepts order is remembered and intended to be observed, and still less that in the record of facts that have transpired, or of blessings that are enjoyed, order of time is to be expected and demanded in their narration ; but, in this solemn commission of Christ, those who deviate from the order, I maintain, ought to have reasons unspeakably weightier than scornful remarks on the attaching of imi^ortance to a collocation of words, as if God and man, under the necessity in uttering ideas of saying one word before another, spoke at random and hap-hazard. If order is mere gabble, why talk our opponents about the initiatory ordinance ? Wliy maintain that faith should precede the Lord's Supper ? If the man who speaks about priority in words and in parts of sentences, is so silly as to animadvert on a mere collocation of words because every man that speaks must necessarily say something first, is it worth while to care what comes first ? Will all be understood by intuition ? Will it, however expressed, be perfectly obvious to those who wish to know ? I maintain not that my opponents so mean, or that order in commands is invariably observed, but I maintain that the proof of deviation from order devolves on those who maintain this deviation, and that contempt of order is especially ungraceful and inconsistent from lips professing to adhere to the grammar and letter of the commission. In the literal and grammatical constriiction of the commission intended to be observed to the end of the world, we have three different clauses, two of which follow the first and one of which follows the first and second ; but these clauses contain neither the words nor the ideas of baptizing as many as we can whether we can teach them or not, and of teaching to observe all things (even the Lord's Supper, &c.), whether they can or will be baptized or not. Dr. H., profaning baptism, cries aload for order in regard to the Lord's Supper. He appeals here to apostolic instruction and practice, to which, consistently with our interpreta- tion of the commission, we appeal in regard both to baptism and the Lord's Supper. The discipling enjoined we believe to be the making of disciples or Christians, converting sinners to the faith of the gospel, gaining the world to Christ. Apostolic records prove that this was the first and great work of the apostles, and that after this without delay they baptized the professing converts. They did not wait to make them experienced Christiams. They baptized them, though babes in Christ, and threw the responsibily of sincerity on those whom they baptized. Every deviation from this 624 APPENDIX. on any ground of expediency is human, not Divine. The baptism enjoined is to some extent calculated to test sincerity and to promote stability. Union mtb the church la intended to be promotive of steadfastness and growth, through watchful care and kindness, and being fed with the sincere milk of the word. A neglectful trying whether the babes will live is as cruel as it is unscriptural. Every record of apostolic practice and of the practice of immediately succeeding ages, accords with the order of the commission. Nor can any deny, supposing it had been our Lord's will that we should disciple persons before we baptize them, that His meaning would be more naturally and clearly expressed by His saying, Go, disciple all nations, baptizing them, than by His saying Go, baptize all nations, discipling them (See Stennott, p.l40). The reason why Dr. H. denies that it can be demanded of him to give " reasons for the collocation of words," is not stated to be a certain rule known by every school-boy. If "the collocation of words," is so contemptible a matter that no one is bound to explain the same, the infidel and the papist may possibly substantiate some of their negations and dogmas which have been considered incapable of proof. Only let " the arrange- ment of words" be accepted as evidence or confirmation when it is on the approved side, and let it be rejected as worthless when it is opposed to our wishes, and we shall prove our points gloriously. But while strongly opposed to the subtraction or to a perverted meaning, of any x^art of God's word, and to all additions thereto, we would also saj'. Let him that would transpose " any part of the commission, the discipling, the baptizing, or the teaching," adduce his authority for disregarding order in thia solemn command from Christ to His disciples, intended to be undeviatingly and unexceptionably obeyed even " to the end of the world." * • We may next observe that infant baptism has no place in Christ's commission because the command is, " Baptizing them into the name of the Father, and of tlie Son, and of the Holy Ghost." On this it is easy to be brief. There is not, I believe, a Pcedobaptist of repute who gives an interpretation of these words, whether among Continental, English, Scotch, or American divines, who does not interpret them to the virtual exclusion of infants. While infants cannot be included in the first clause. Disciple all the nations, without perverting the import of " Disciple," they are excluded from the second by the enjoined baptism being into the name of the Father, &c. If infant baptism is either in Christ's commission to baptize, or is unauthorized, our only alternative is, that it is not approved of God. I shall not reproduce what has already been extracted from leading theologians of the Episcopalian, Presbyterian, Independent, and Wesleyan denominations, on baptizing into the name of God as being a professed belief in and subjection ^oHim, on the Commission, and on Rom. vi, 2-4; 1 Cor. X, 1, 2 ; xii, 13, and Gal. iii, 27. I shall quote, hov.'cver, from Dr. Halley, who says " that baptizein construed with the pi'cposition eis, is to immerse into," and that " to immerse eis to onoma, into the name of the person whose religion is professed, is the religious rite of making proselytes, as to immerse into the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Ghost, is the appropriate act of the apostles and ministers * Suppose that one says respecting another : " He got a most excellent breakfast, and waa very hungr}' ;" " He had a pleasant ride, and sent for the horse ;" shall we say that it is quite as proper, and that it conveys exactly the same idea, as to say, " He was very hungry, and got a most excellent breakfast ;" " He sent for the horse, and had a pleasant ride ?" Shall we say that why one is mentioned before the other, since they could not be mentioned both at once, no one is bound to explain ? or shall we suppose the Lord of glory to speak more obscurely and carelessly in an important precept than men would '? Suppose a master to command his man-servant to clean his boots, to saddle his horse, and bring the horse to the door, might he perform the last first and the first last, and, in reply to his complaining master, say that he had done what he was commanded to do, and that to talk about the order of the commands was simply to quibble about the collocation of words ? If the mistress of a house bids her maid to light the fire in the break- fast room, to take the dust otTthe furniture in the room, and have the breakfast ready at eight o'clock, might the maid in her obedience reverse tlio order of the commandB, or niter the order according to her iilcasuro, and insolently replv to complaints that it is simply gabble about "the arrangement of the words V" Shall wo thus treat the Lord of glory ? Admitting that every mistress of a house will certainly not in every command observe an order intended to be regarded, the servant v.ho is justified in altei-ing the order of the commaud.^ knows from her previous api>roved jiractice, or from instruction previously received, or from the evident nature of the work enjoined, that her deviation is justifiable and commendable. Mr. Noel says, " The order of words in any sentence expressing various actions, generally, though not always, indicates the order of the actions themselves, because in expressing various consecutive acts, it is natural to express the first action first. The instances of this harmony between the order of the words and the order of the acts are iunumcrablo, and generally we should feel that a reversal of the order of the words would violate our souse of propriety. A few specimens APPENDIX. 625 of the gospel" (Vol. x, pp. 824, 325). Tliuf3 writes Dr. H., "in expoiindinsr the commission of our Lord." And he adds : " So we read of being baptized into Christ (Eom. vi, 3) ; baptized into His death (ibid) ; baptized into one body (1 Cor. xii, 13). Paul inquires of the disciples of Apollos,eis/t oun ehapiistheie (Acts xix, 3), into what then were you baptized" (p. 325) ? That this explanation excludes infants from the commission, and from apostolic baptisms as referred to in the above epistolary passages, I am bound to believe. Immersion into the name of Jesus involves a ^7'o/ess ion o/ His religion, although it is not the religious rite of making proselytes. I might here remark, that if those baptized into Christ are supposed to have vital union with Christ, it does not follow that baptism (opere operatoj effects this, or that baptism as by an act of legerdemain is lost or metamorphosed. The same sentiment, namely, that in Christian baptism is the profession of disciple- ship to Christ, appears to be taught by Dr. H. when ho is instructing the Friends, that the word baptizing in the commission should be understood in its literal and ordinary import, that it is an action to be performed on the body, not on the mind, that though water is not expressed in the commission, or by Peter, when he said. Repent and be baptized, every one of you, the whole of what is previously and subsequently recorded proves that water was the intended element, that "in the language of the New Testament proselytes are baptized into Christ by water," and that "baptism as the sign of discipleship was in the first instance enjoined upon every proselyte" (Vol. x, p. 68). Dr. H. does not here speak of baptism as the mode or means of discipleship, but aa the sign of it. He does not here teach that in the first instance they were proselyted by baptism, but that then baptism was enjoined upon every proselyte. When baptism was enjoined upon the proselyte, and was the sign of discipleship, could it be infant baptism ? Elsewhere we are told that to be " baptized into Moses" is to bo " initiated by water into the religion or covenant which he announced" (p. 118). But notwithstanding this asserted import of baptism into Moses, and into Christ, and the fact that baptism is "the badge of discipleship" (p. 120), that of the "new birth baptism is the visible sign" (p. 183), and that it is "the proper recognition of a member of Christ's kingdom" (p. 61), some of our opponents would have us also believe that Christ has commanded us to disciple by baptizing infants into the name of the Father, &c. Without making the positive assertions of some relative to Jewish baptism. Dr. H. is disposed to refer to it and to infer from it. He says that " the proselyte was represented as newly born, and his baptism was undoubtedly a sign of hisproselytism, an indispensable rite by which it was accredited." He is said by Dr. H. to be " proselyted or newly born, by water as the sign ; but the proselytism, not the baptism, was his new birth" (Vol. x, p. 119). The proselyte, we are further told, according to the Talmud and Maimonides, •" was regarded as introduced into new connexions, a new parentage, and a new state" (p, 119), If baptism shall be strictly the sign and accrediting of a proselyte, it mil exclude infants, although the Jews baptized the children of the proselyte. Nor will I abandon hope that Dr. H. may yet see believers in the commission, and accept a credible profession of faith from an inability to search the heart, and its not being required. He maintains that we have may illustrate tliis fact. Had the wise men who visited Bethlehem said respecting Jesus, not, ' We have seen Kis star in the east, and are come to v.-Drship Him,' but, ' We are come to worship, and have seen His star,' they would have spoken less exactly, Matt, ii, 2. If John had said to his disciples, ' Every tree which bringeth not forth good fruit is cast into the fire and hewn do\vn,' he would have spoken loss properly than when he said of such a tree, ' It is hewn do^Mi and cast into the fire,' Matt, ill, 10. And similarly when our Lord said, ' The rain descended and the floods came,' Matt, vii, 27, the order of words indicated the order of the facts. And that there is in our text a harmony betv.eeu the order of the words and of the facts, is rendered more XH'obable by our finding the same order to be invariable in the New Testament. If the order of the facts had been that persons should first be baptized and then believe, we should find this order of words in some places, but this latter order of words is never found. Acts ii, 38, we read, ' Repent and be bap- tized ;' Acts sviii, 8, ' Many believed, and were baptized ;' and Eph. iv, 5, ' There is one Lord, one faith, and one baptism.' But we never find, ■ Ce baptized and reijent ;' ' They were baptized and believed;' ' There is one baptism, one faith.' This constant order of the words cannot be accidental, and must intimate that belief precedes baptism in reality, as the one pi-ecedes the other in the language of Scripture" (On Ban., pp. 37, 38). In .John iii, 5, there is order of emphasis : " Except a man be born of water and op the Spirit." " There is," says Mr. Noel, " an order of emphasis, as well as of time " To the greater portion of written and oral teaching a new interpretation will be admissible when the order of terms emjjloyed gives no indication respecting the order of ideas. Dr. Wardlaw says : " Is it no unwarrantable tampering with the tei-ms, to invert the order of the leading ijarticulars, and when our Lord places discipling and believing before baptizing, to affirm that baptizing may as well be first ?" " And when that collocation is uniform too— without a solitary exception ?" — Appen., pp. 311, 312. 626 APPENDIX. a commaud to baptize all naticms, bntit is a command which we obey in baptizing "all applicants;" and it fairly expounds his views to admit that the "application be understood to imply" — not a professing to receive the doctrine of those who i^reaeh the gospel, but — " professing to be willing to learn their doctrine" (Rcjily, p. 121). Cannot this be regarded, along with baptizing into the name of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, as a step towards baptizing on a credible profession, as, if not expressly taught in the commission, yet legitimately, yea, necessarily to be inferred therefrom ? Moreover, if profession is by implication included in the application for baptism, may not profession be more fully and distinctly implied in the baptism itself ? Tea, do we not already agree, and may we not possibly " appear to contradict each other when we only differ about the use of our terms F" for, says Dr. H. further, " If I have anywhere said that no profession is required, my meaning must have been, as I have often expressed it, required as a qualification, not as implied in the a'pjjlicotion, oe in thk ACT ; or else that the profession was not one of personal piety, or one submitted to the judgment of the administrator" (p. 197). For the above emphasizing Dr. H. is not responsible. I will also hope that the profession will shortly be regarded aa approving Christ's own character and requirements, and giving to Christ the whole heart and life. What can we think of professing in baptism that wo are now open to conviction, that we will think about Christ's character and claims, that if they have our approval they shall have our submission, that we are not, as formerly, intent on serving sin and the devil, that we desire an increase of knowledge, and are ^villing if you please in baptism to make this profession to qualify us for further instruction, to answer Christ's purpose in ordaining this badge of discipleship, this visible sign of the new birth, and that you may make disciples according to injunction by the contemporaneous acts of baptizing and teaching ? The following from Drs. Kling and Morison are corroborative of the sentiment I am maintaining. Dr. C. F. Kling (on 1 Cor. i, 13) says : " Were you baptized into the name of Paul — that is, was the name of Paul called over you at your baptism, as though he were the person to whom you pledged yourselves, and in whom ye believed, and whom you professed as your Lord and Saviour ? This is certainly the sense, although ' the baptism into the name' may be regarded primarily as submersion into it as a person's life-element ; so also as an introduction into fellowship with the party named as into an essential ground of salvation, or as immersion in reference to him, so that the obligation to profess faith in that which is expressed by the name is indicated" (Com., on 1 Cor. i, 13). Dr. James Morison, speaking of baptism into the name of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, says: " In Christian baptism the relation of the baptized person to this tri-personal God is recognized. So far as ritualism is concerned, it is initiated. That is, the actually existing inward or spiritual relation is outwardly, or materially, and cere- monially, manifested. It is not created or produced ; biit manifested, because recognized as pre-existent. The baptism is inxo the name of the tri-personal God, because there is no other possible way by which finite minds can deal, in consciousness, with God than through His name" (Com., on Matt, xxviii, 19).— If baptism ceremonially •manifests "an existing inward or spiritual relation" to God, manifests this, " because recognized as pre-existent," this inward or spiritual relation, pre-existent to baptism and manifested in baptism, is either that effected by the new birth, or that of a gracious economy and probation through the death of Christ. That the apostles did not seek to baptize every man, woman, and child, irrespective of their moral and spiritual character, and because they were under a dispensation of grace, is as evident as is the lack of such authority in the commission they received. Nor is it possible for unconscious babes to " deal, in consciousness, with God" in any way. M. Henry, in his Treatise on Baptism (pp. 39, 40), teaches that baptism into the name of Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, means more than baptism by authority from and calling upon Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, that " we are baptized (eis to onomaj into the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost ; i.e., in token of our believing in God the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost." " To be baptized into the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost, is to be baptized into a solemn profession of" "an assent of the understanding, and a consent of the will," &c. Further, this commission excludes infants, because Christ says, "teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded yoa." This command cannot be obeyed on infants. It cannot have reference to them. They are not contemplated in any clause of the commission, either the dipt^ipling, the baptizing into the name of Deity, or the teaching to observe all things whatsoever Christ has commanded. The baptism of infants ia not " from heaven," it " is of man." But, says Dr. H., " that we appendix; 627 Cannot baptize some, is no reason for our esclnsion'of others" (p, 4), and "we have, according' to the letter of this commission, no more right to limit the command to baptize to those who are tanght, than wo have to limit the command to teach to those who are baptized" (p. 4). Dr. H., who teaches that autous is co-extensive withpaiifa ethne, that it includes all characters and all ages, demands from Baptists "reason for an exception to the letter of the law" (p. 4) ; and yet he says, " Infants, indeed, whose parents will not present them for the purpose, cannot be baptized, and so they are excepted on the same ground as their parents ; but the infants of Christian parents, and the infants of parents willing to be taught in Christian schools, and foimdlings and orphans under Christian care, can bo baptized, and are just as much included in the letter of this commission as any other persons whatsoever" (p. 4). — Ample reason I have endeavoured to give for the exclusion of infants from every part of the commission already examined. But if panta ethne has been rightly interpreted by Dr. H., and if autous has the same extent of meaning, "the letter of this commission" includes as certainly the iTnwilling as the willing parents, and the children of one class as certainly as the children of the other, and the foundlings and orphans under the care of one equally with those under the care of the other, as well as the teaching of all these equally with the baptizing of them. Dr. H. demands a restriction "express and incontrovertible" as his supposed command. The teaching of them to observe all things that Christ has commanded excludes infants in terms sufficiently express and assuredly incontrovertible. What have we in the commission, or in any part of God's word, " express and incontrovertible" for baptizing any child of the devil except the scorner, for baptizing " foundlings and orphans" if " under Christian care," and "the infants of Christian parents," and of others if "willing that their children shall be taught in Christian schools ?" Is this indeed " in the letter" of Chi'ist's commission ? Christ's luminous commission speaks as expressly of godfathers and godmothers, as of parents or guardians, children or applicants. " Of credible profession," says Dr. H., "there is not a word in the commission" (p. 33). In which part of the commission are the words just quoted from Dr. H. ? By legitimate reasoning it can be proved that God requires not from the administrator of baptism a searching of the heart, but that a " credible profession" of faith in Christ, or discipleship to Christ, he is authorized to accept. I know of no legitimate reasoning, " direct, or inferential, or analogical," or of any other kind, from the commission or from any other source, by which the baptizing of the infants of Christian parents, of foundlings under their care, or of any other infants, can be supported. Yet Dr. H., who will receive to baptism a portion of those known to be ungodly, and will reject another portion even if they are willing and if they are applicants for baptism, who will baptize a portion of infants, and neglect the rest rather than resort to meana which he deems unwarrantable, wishes it to "be understood" that his "argument through this discussion is founded on the literal interpretation of this commission" (p. 5). Adhering " to the gi'ammar of the words," abiding " by the literality of the commission," he teaches that by " all thenations" we are to understand all individuals of all classes and ages, that "them" after baptizing, and " them " after teaching, embrace the same persons, and that a correct interpretation gives no limit but that of possibility ; and mingling the three clauses of the commission in one mess, he teaches that if we cannot perform the first, we may if possible perform the second or the third clause, that we may take the second before the third, or the third before the second, that if persons will submit to baptism and will rebel against other commands of Christ, this disposition forbids not baptism, but forbids the Lord's Supper ; * that according to the letter and grammar of the commission we are commanded to baptize those who will not be baptized, and to teach those who cannot be taught, by which letter and grammar the baptizing of infants and of godly or ungodly adults is established ! If parents and guardians will consent, and thus far become sponsors, "the grammatical construction" and "the literal interpretation of this commission" * Dr. H. is shocked that when we baptize one who deceives lis, " the unbeliever assumes what does not belong to him, and the fallacious asi3mnption is accredited by the Christian teacher who recognizes him as a son of God" (RepU/, p. 59). Does not he do the very same thing if he ever administers the Lord's Supper to one who deceives him ? If "a lie upon his lips, however complete liis immersion, cannot make the unbeliever a partaker of believers' baptism ;" can "a lie upon his lips" make the unbeliever a partaker of the believers' eucharist ? If Dr. H., on becoming a Baptist, chooses to re-baptize those whose conversion is afterwards proved to be subsequent to their baptism. I beUeve he will find as much liberty and encouragement among Baptists to practise his convictions as Baptists now have in Independent chnrches, and perhaps a little more. 628 APPENDIX. demand that their children and those they hold in charge bo baptized, and if parents and guardians will not consent, this grammatical construction and literal interpretation demand their exclusion ! Dr. H. feels bound by the grammar of the commission to regard the enjoined baptizing as equally extensive with the enjoined discipling ; and, on baptizing, he teaches that he, not " entrusted ' with the power of the keys,' " but being " a poor fallible creature," " dare not assume the responsibility of rejecting an applicant for baptism who makes his application without any obvious impropriety" (Reply, p. 171). He in his fallibility does not expressly affirm that those whom we are commanded to disciple are applicants, who make application without any OBVIOUS IMPROPRIETY. That these constitute all the individuals of all the nations he does not expressly assert. He who in the commission to make disciples cannot see a word about believers, who lifts up his voice like a trumpet against the interpola- tion of Scripture and on behalf of unrestricted universality within the limits of possibility in the administration of baptism, ynll dare to baptize applicants, IF the applicatioii he made without any obvious impropriety I When there is no interpolating and perverting of the Divine commission, through the insertion of "by," and by the fancied requirement of grammar, and no disregarding of Divine order, I in my fallibility do firmly believe that " obvious impropriety" in applying for baptism will be regarded as the making of application without a credible profession of faith in Christ. As yet Dr. H. is shocked that Baptists, fallible mortals, should dare to maintain believers' baptism, or baptism on a credible profession of faith ; that we who have not access to the heart should presume to judge of faith and fitness, and especially when commanded to baptize every body -. but he, " a poor fallible creature," being divinely and explicitly enjoined to baptize every one in the whole world, dares to baptize those who apply without any obvious impropriety ! And along with the church, although the power of the keys is possessed neither by himself nor by the church, nor by the two unitedly, he dare undertake the awful responsibility of receiving to the Lord's Supper and membership in the church of Christ on a credible profession of faith ! According to Dr. H., "teaching them to observe all things whatsoever Christ has commanded" is a part of discipling, because the grammatical and literal interpretation of the commission is to disciple by and in baptizing them and teaching them. The baptizing and teaching — both of them — are contemporaneous with the discipling, and are the means by which the discipling is effected, and yet we are commanded to disciple unconscious babes ! It might have been expected that a difficulty would have been seen in discipling infants because of their incapacity of being taught, and because of this being as necessary and as contemporaneous a part of discipling as is the baptizing. But no difficulty is felt because either of these equally contemporaneous parts of discipling may be done just when we can ! Not in contradiction, but in solution of this problem, if a problem I durst designate anything in the way of infant baptism, we are as confidently assured as if the pen of inspiration had expressly written it, that rebellion against one command, or incapacity of obedience to one command, constitutes no unfitness for the practical regard of another ! And when wo say that consistency on the part of our opponents demands not only that we allow the baptism of those known to be ungodly, but that we allow persons to give themselves to the Lord's people who we know do not give themselves to the Lord, and to come to the Lord's table, although we know them to be without God and without hope, it is deemed sufficient to reply to these abominations which are the legitimate result of an interpretation of the commission erroneously maintained to be grammatical and necessary, that apostolic practice allows and demands the first, but forbids the rest ! Our opponents can, therefore, most complacently speak respecting infants whose parents or guardians will bring them, of their capability to receive baptism as justifying its administration ! Sometimes the teaching of them to observe all things Christ has commanded is omitted as a part of discipling ; and where a writer iindeviatingly teaches that discipling is by and in baptism, he is, at least, consistent with himself. Dr. H. maintains both, or sometimes, on some account, omits to mention the more important part, which our Saviour — if the view of our opponents on discipling be correct — has but mentioned last ! Dr. H. professes to disciple infants on a more extensive scale than his friend Dr. Wardlaw, because he holds the unlimited character of the commission. But the discipling begins vdth the baptizing — of which who will complain who believes that Christ has taught to disciple by baptizing and teaching (although of intervening years or moments between the baptizing and the teaching, if each be equally an action contemporaneous with discipling, something mi'^ht be said) — and is completed when, through success in instructing, the subjects are'become " Christians" or " saints." How this is accordant with the discipling of infftnta by baptism, or by baptism and teaching, with the making of any infant into APPENDIX. 629^ a disciple, I have yet to learn. Also according to this interpretation of the commission, it teaches no duty beyond that of making Christians, the teaching to observe all things being not for the instruction of Christians, but, along with baptizing, for the making of infants and all others into Christians, if we may possibly except a portion of infants who unhappily have not godly parents or guardians, and of adults, who in and through their ungodliness refuse to be baptized, or would receive it scornfully ; and although "them' ' after teaching has the same antecedent as ' 'them' ' after baptizing, and includes the very same persons. Dr. H. does not explicitly state that the same characters, according to the grammatical and literal interpretation of this commission — which we have a right to " expect to be clear, distinct, and express, saying neither more nor less than is intended" — as are exempted in the baptizing are also exempted in the teaching. Dr. H. thus shelters himself in the supposed literal and grammatical command to baptize and teach everybody : " The command certainly enjoins no more than we are able to perform" (p. 4). " That we cannot baptize some is no reason for our exclusion of others. As to the limitation of the word baptize to those who are taught, we have, according to the letter of this commission, no more right to limit the command to baptize to those who are taught, than we have to limit the command to teach to those who are baptized" (p. 4). Here and elsewhere Dr. H. appears to forget that teaching is included in discipling. So certainly have our translators considered it to be included in discipling that they have given this word alone as the translation of matheteuo. But if the subsequent clauses of the commission record but the means by which the discipling is to be accomplished, they exclude infants from the discipling, because they are incapable of being taught to obsei-ve Christ's commands. Nor does the fact that infants are capable of being baptized constitute a fraction of evidence that infants ought to be baptized, although it is true that i/we are commanded to baptize them it is our duty, since God by such a precept would not have enjoined an impossibility. But why do our opponents entertain no doubts on the duty of baptizing infants, when the supposed command of discipling them is an acknowledged impossi- bility, if discipling is by and in baptizing and teaching ? Do they expect every Greek scholar, and every reader of the original translated into his own tongue, to know that this commission, " clear, distinct, and express, saying neither more nor less than is intended," commands us to disciple everybody, infant or adult, by and in baptizing and teaching, baptizing as many as we can, but with certain exceptions, and teaching as many as we can ; baptizing whether we can teach them or not, and teaching to observe all Christ's commands, with some exceptions, whether we do or can baptize or not ? Can all, save some obtuse and bigoted Baptists, and certain erratic Pasdobap- tists, see baptizing into the name of Deity and teaching to observe all Christ'3 commands, united to discipling so as to constitute its essence, but separable from each other according to pleasure, caprice, or possibility in ourselves or in others ? Our opponents believe in a precept to disciple by baptizing and teaching, which it is supposed enables them to disciple infants, and authorizes them to baptize whom they can, to baptize infants brought to them for baptism respecting whose Christian instruction by baptizer, parent, or guardian, they have no more guarantee or knowledge, should life be spa,red, than they have that the baptized child will live to be capable of receiving Christian instruction ! They believe it evident from Christ's clear, distinct, and express commission, "that to baptize an infant is just as much the duty of the church, and a duty resting on the same authority as to teach a Hindoo" (p. 6). If this is the fact, what exceptions to baptizing are possible? But also, according to Dr. H., we are taught by Christ " that every church ought to disciple hij baptizing and teaching to the utmost extent of its ability — that for this purpose it ought to receive as disciples or learners, under training and instruction for all the privileges of its fellowship, the children of its members, all other children who are placed under its care, and all adults who apply for its instructions, or are willing to receive them — that all such persons tmder instruction, as disciples, ought to he received, and designated^ hy the rite of baptism" fiJe;jZi/, p. 120). The italics are his. He immediately adds : "I apprehend no persons will deny the propriety of receiving all children, and all adult applicants, to such a course of discipleship by teaching." On this I may remark, that the receiving of persons as disciples to a course o/disciple- SHIP is to me incomprehensible, and that the possibility of discipling infants by baptizing and teaching I have yet to learn. Before the maintained contemporaneoxis actions of baptizing and teaching can be accomplished, infancy will have passed away ; yea, before these actions equally contemporaneous with discipling can commence, infancy has ceased. No infant can be made a Christian, as that word is used in the oracles of God. No infant, though capable of baptism, is capable of understanding the gospel of the grace of God. Whether discipling is by teaching, or by baptizing and teaching, infants are excluded. That discipling is by receiving as a disciple, 630 APPENDIX. whether it bo an applicant or one brought, or one sought, is a novelty in discipling which, notwithstanding the desire to preserve the baptism of infants, few will accept. And, assuredly, if this is discipling, the apostles must have greatly misunderstood their mission, and endured trials in the course they mistakingly pursued unspeakably beyond the intentions of their Lord and Saviour. If I receive as disciples, I must regard the discipling as already accomplished, and not as future, whether the subjects be infants, children, or adults. It appears too, from the above, that notwithstanding his eloquent opposition to our regarding of Christ's commission as a command to make disciples, or believers, and on what to us is a credible profession of this faith baptizing them. Dr. H. maintains that by baptism persons ought to be " designated" " as disciples." Infants and adults " as disciples ought to be received and designated by the rite of baptism !" We have supposed authority from Christ's words to receive as discijples by haptism, and to designate as disciples by this rite infants and adults, as this is maintained to be the teaching of the commission ; but to suppose that the teaching of the commission is that we are to make disciples, believers, or Christians, that we are to baptize these, or those who make what we deem a credible profession of their faith in Christ, and that we are to teach these to observe all things whatsoever Christ has commanded, is so fearfully heterodox, and involves siich an evident breach of literality and syntax in the interpretation of the commission as to demand for its speedy extermination a calling forth of all the learning, ingenuity, and devotion possessed by the most worthy and eminent Psedobaptists ! If our opponents would attach a right import to the command to make disciples, they would save themselves from much confusion, blundering and dishonour. It is certain that our Saviour, by this precept, meant that His disciples should convert men to the faith of the gospel, should make men Christians. But if He meant simply that His disciples should make persons learners in the lowest degree. He could not, either in the disciphng, or the baptizing, or the teaching to observe, &c., have reference to infants. Admit any import of the word disciple, and maintain that this is the command of the commission to bo carried out by baptizing into the name of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, and by teaching to observe all things Christ has commanded, and you exclude infants from the whole passage. The passage, as interpreted by Dr. H., contains but one command, and this is to disciple. The remainder of the passage is a record of actions maintained to be contemporaneous with the discipling, and the accomplishment of discipling ; demanded to be contemporaneous because the participles are in the present tense, so that, if the discipling begins at the age of eight days, when, or indeed previously, the baptism may take place, and ends at the age of fourteen years, when the child has become a Christian, the baptizing, an action to be performed on the body and not on the mind, which is contemporaneous with the discipling, should, it would seem, be carried on FOR FOURTEEN TEARS SAVE EIGHT DAYS, and the oontemporancous teaching, by which, along with the baptizing, the discipling is accomplished, sliould begin at the same age of eight days, and be carried on for the same length of time ! And where the act of discipling is accomplished in a longer or shorter time, the baptizing and teaching, being equally contemporaneous with discipling, and being its accomplishment, should occupy to the same extent a longer or shorter space ! Is this the requirement of grammar, and consequently have we for it " no doubtful inference," no " precarious authority ?" Indeed, as the teachingto observe all things whatsoever Christ has enjoined is to be continued to the end of life, may not the next discovery be that grammar demands the baptizing to be continued till death do part the baptized and the administrator ? Is not this confirmed, moreover, by our inability to search the heart, and to know with certainty when any one becomes really a disciple of Christ? It is impossible for error to be consistent. But we may be astonished that error, leading to the contradictions, if not absurdities, involved in the defence of infant baptism, should have in enlightened and pious men an adherence so tenacious. It is understood and maintained by our present opponent — who instructs us that in the commission teaching them to observe all things ichatsoevcr Christ has commanded, "them" has " all the nations " for its antecedent, and includes every idolater and infidel, as well as every infant — that we are not to teach to idolaters and infidels, to infants and the unconverted, an observance of the Lord's Supper. This wfis partaken of by the disciples of Christ, by believers, by Christians. To apostolic practice our opponent hero appeals, as proving how they understood the Lord's will, and as teaching our duty. Oar view of apostolic practice is, that it contains the same basis o« Christ's U<) commission for baptism and the Lord's Supper. It leads not to the dishonouring of one ordinance and a duly honouring of the other. If " baptizing them" and " teaching them to observe all" Christ's commands, in Christ's commission embrace the same person? and include all persons in all nations, and if the refusal to obey ono comman<^ APPENDIX. 631 is no reason why we should hinder obedience to any other, Peter not only might on the day of Pentecost have baptized, had it been possible, those who refused to repent, but he might afterwards have said to Simon Magus that if he would not repent he would stiU with his permission receive him with others to the Lord's Supper. Simon had some exalted conceptions of Christianity. Ho might not have received the eucharist scornfully. Dr. H. here appeals to the Acts and Epistles of the apostles, and secures the purity of the professing church, but, as I think, contradicts the correctness of his own exposition of the commission. Let Dr. H. produce from the Acts and Epistles of the ajiostles an instance of the disciples of Christ being commanded to repent and believe the gospel. Simon, whom Peter exhorted to repent, was not then regarded as a disciple of Christ. Disciples are exhorted to cleave to the Lord, to continue in the faith, to be steadfast and fruitful, and to abide in Christ. Dr. H. pleads for order in regard to the Lord's Supper, while he interprets the commission as requiring us to teach the observance of baptism by infants and any generation of vipers ! As they who of old rejected the worship of God, became worshippers of their own inventions, or of the works of their own hands, so they who have rejected Christ's order in the three clauses and commands of His commission, adopt an order of their own invention, an order as varied and contradictory as might be expected if God in this matter from the love of their own inventions had given them over to a reprobate or undiscerning mind. According to Dr. H. the commission is to make disciples, that is, learners, and they are to be made by and in baptizing and teaching. And for the purpose of thus ma'king discij^les. that is, learners, the church ought to receive as disci2^les, or learners, under training for membership, all the children of church members, all other children placed under the church's care, with all adults applying for instruction or willing to be instructed ; that is, all the nations whom Christ has commanded to be discipled and to be baptized! (See jRejijZj/, p. 120). Speaking of children, he says that baptism properly constitutes persons " disciples of Christ" (pp. 125, 126). It is not, however, being baptized that makes persons " disciples;" it is, we are told, being "learners." And thus, "all children placed by their parents under the instruction of the church, as the childreu in oiu- Sabbath schools, and the children of all persons regularly attending the public ordinances of religion (if the pastor do his duty) are 'disciples' in the sense of 'learners'" (p. 126). What a comforting reflection that we may hope in regard to so many that Christ's purpose in the commission is accomplished ! We can only regret that His accomplished purpose accomplishes not a meetness either for the kingdom of glory, or the chiu'ch of Christ on earth ! To speak more seriously, I believe the iuitiaiion of infants and children, of all applicants, .and all that are willing, excepting those who would receive baptism scornfully, as disciples of Clu-isf by baptism, is as far from Christ's commission as the east is from the west ; and that instead of our having a commission cfiually to baptize and to disciple all nations, that is, a commission to disciple and baptize the children of chiu'ch members and others committed to the church's care, and all adults who apply or are willing to be baptized, excepting those who would receive the ordinance scornfully, I believe in a commission referring to a world dead in trespasses and sins, who are alienated from all holiness, who are living in hatred of God and rebellion against Him, who may scoi'n His commands and may be persecuting His people. The com- mission in enjoining to make disciples, the discipling being first mentioned, and intended to precede the baptizing, enjoins a course intended and calculated to effect in these a repentance of sin and faith in the Lord Jesus, to accomplish a revolution of mind, a renovation of heart and life, a translation from the power of Satan into the kingdom of God's dear Son, and finally to secure an inheritance among the sanctified and saved in imfading gloiy. The tendency of error in the interpretation of one passage of Scripture is not only to inconsistency with the instruction of other portions of Scripture, but to inconsistency with ourselves in reference to this one misinterpreted passage. This characterizes Dr. H.'s representations of the commission, of which, in conclusion, although at the expense of some repetition, we will take notice. They are widely different, if not clearly contradictory. Yet he can forcibly say respecting an opponent, " He can translate the verse under examination two difi'erent waj's, and make both of them agree wibh his ' common sense construction.' To me, however, a man who can translate the same words two different ways, appears to soar far above the region of common sense as well as common syntax, and to become a conjurer instead of a grammarian" (Reply, p. 41). He, however, represents the " clear, distinct, and express" commission of Christ, by the literal and grammatical con>truction of which he pledges himself to abide, as, 1, a commission to bapii/.c indiscriminately all persons (p. 17), old and young, infants and adults, " unbeUovers or unconverted men, or ia ghort any persons whatsoever" (p. 1.5), In accordance with this supposed commissiODi 632 APPENDIX. it is maintainecl tkat "tlio apostles commanded all persons indiscriminately to be baptized." His representation of the commission as a command to baptize all within the limits of possibility, he may deem to include the expression of a necessary limitation which common sense teaches to be often required and understood, and not as another representation. But, 2, ho represents this " clear, distinct, and express" commission, which says " neither more nor less than is intended," as teaching' us to " baptize all oj)j)l!C(nifs whatsoever, j)rovi(?c(? the application does not appear to be made scoffingly and profanely, for that would be a manifest desecration of the service, and all children offered by their parents, guardians, or others who may have the care of them" (p. 8). If this is the meaning of Christ's commission, or if it is a commission to baptize all ichom there is a rcasoiiahld prospect of teaching, instead of being clear, distinct, and express, it is difficult for me to conceive that any writer, inspired or uninspired, ever expressed himself so bunglingly and obscurely. This baptizing of all applicants with certain exceptions, and all children with certain exceptions, is more- over, the same as baptizing "any persons whatsoever!" They who maintain this "interpret the commission in its widest sense, and most literally explain ' all the nations'" (p. 8) ! All the nations equally includes infants and adults, believing and unbelieving parents, the children of one and the children of the other, the converted and the unconverted, and these it is whom within the range of possibility we are commanded to disciple, that is, we are commanded to baptize and teach to observe whatever Christ has commanded, literally all ages, characters, and individuals in the world. And bai^tism for all these within the range of possibility is the same as baptism to "designate those who are brought under Christian instruction preparatory to their admission into the fellowship of the church" (vol. xv, p. 109) ! And the latter class includes infants. If we are to baptize as many as we can in order to their being thereby discipled, or in order to effect without delay one part of their discipleship, ought we not to baptize if possible those intending to enter gin palaces and brothels, as well as those who are contemplating the fellowship of the church ? But Dr. H. can Bay — Mr. Ewing " distinctly advocates a more extensive baptism than I am prepared to defend ; for as I make no difference between the adults in a believer's or an unbeliever's family, I could baptize only such as make a personal application, while he would forbear only on their being ' so rebellious as to refuse the ordinance' " (Reply, pp. 81, 82). He who has a supposed commission to baptize all indiscriminately, can " baptize only such as make a personal application !" As the word "them" after baptizing has all nations for its antecedent, and derives from this its "breadth of meaning," it embraces exactly the same persons, and consequently — although not expressly thus taught by Dr. Halley — we may gramma- tically and literally interpret the commission as a commission to disciple all applicants who ajipear not to apply scoffingly and p)rofanely, and all children offered hy parents and guardians, along ^cith orphans and foundlings under their charge! He conscientiously shrinks from the baptizing of children without the leave of parents and guardians, but he can dispense with the concurrence of most of the subjects of baptism. Coercion he repudiates in the administration of baptism, but only in reference to those come to years of discretion. There is no interpolating of the commission by inserting the words, "children offered by their parents," &c., and there is no limitation of "any persons whatsoever" when instead of this we Bay applicants with some exceptions, and the children of these with some others! This is not a "limitation" and " not an amendment of the original commis- Bion!" "The literal interpretation of this commission," "the plain grammar of the only commission," which teaches us to baptize all within the limits of possibility, teaches all this, and more also ! For, 3, this clear, explicit, and express commission teaches us to administer "baptism to all applicants" (p. 71). Indeed our Saviour's forerunner, "John, administered baptism without rootriction to all applicants" (p. 20). Here, however, Dr. H. is advocating a baptizing of the ungodly in opposition to a confining of baptism to those beUevcd to be converted ; and he may mean only that the want of apparent conversion is no disqualification in an applicant for baptism. Admin- istering baptism to all persons, infants or adults, is, however, just the same thing as administering baptism to all applicants ! Hence, says Dr. H., "Adhering to the literality of the commission, we admit no exceptions, either in the baptizing or in the teaching, regarding the extent of our ability as the only limit of our obedience. I must, however, observe, before I leave the commission, that if I have mistaken its terms, and given it too large a construction in conceding baptism to all applicants, it does not follow," &c. (p. 71). By what rule of syntax, by whose grammar or dictionary, or by what use in Greek writers, panta cthne is proved to have the strict meaning of "all applicants," Dr. H. does not inform us. Nor does he explain or prove how a commission to baptize all applicants is a commission to baptize infants, who neither make nor APPENDIX. 633 authorize an application, nor are conscious of any application being made for them. He speaks, however, of all applicants, of all ap]3licants with even more numerous exceptions, and of all individuals of every ag-e, as if each of these vras precisely and certainly the same. He proceeds from one to another as if in this there was no change of position, no use of altered terms, sa,ve those clearly synonymous. To affix no "limit to the commission," and to allow no " discrimination to the administrator" is just the same thing as either to baptize " all applicants," or all applicants with three classes of exceptions, constituting the great bulk of ma.nkind ! And while the extent of disciiDling reaches to the universality of Divine grace, the extent of baptizing, which reaches, as we are taught, just as far, excepts the vast majority of mankind ! Also, if the subjects of discipling are " all applicants," we must neither send abroad, nor anywhere preach the gospel without application. To how many, ignorant, apathetic, and wif^ked, we have no message ! Besides, the rendering of ethiie by applicants is as distinct and distant from its real meaning as if we were to render it Ethiopians, or English. In the commission is a comma,nd to go and to disciple. This going to all nations, to every creature is not made dependent on an application from men. An introducing of the idea of application, whilst foreign to the passage, tends to contravene God's clearest will. There is not, i^robably, a Pradobaptist in existence who will deny that the com- mand to go and make disciples of all the nations much resembles, if it is not coincident with, the command to go into all the world and preach the gospel to every creature. How would it read. Preach the gospel to every applicant ! That repentance and remission of sins should be preached in His name among all applicants ! And instead of " the Gentiles Cton ethnonj, unto whom now I send thee," supx)oso that we read, The applicants, or, The Gentile applicants, unto whom now I send thee ! Yet any one of these three distinct and differing representations of the commission Dr. H. adduces at pleasure as his standpoint, and exposition of " the great law of Chris- tian baptism." This commission ho sometimes represents as one enjoined act, namely, discipling, to be effected by baptizing into the name, &c., and teaching to observe, &c., the baptizing and teaching being contemporaneous with the discipling, although we may baptize those we cannot teach, and may teach those wo cannot baptize, and may disciple before teaching, but not without designation by baptism ; and sometimes he speaks of the discipling as being effected by baptism ; and on one occasion he speaks of the commission as if it contained three distinct parts, saying, " To any part of the commission, the discipling, the baptizing, or the teaching, I know only one limitation, and that is, the want of ability to execute it" (p. 6). Thus have we from Dr. H. five or six differing expositions of the commission. He speaks of baptism in all the following varied ways, and possibly in several others. He speaks of it as " a sign of external privilege (baptism is nothing else)" (vol. xv, p. 52), Baptism and circumcision " were external signs of their respective forms of the covenant" (p. 52). " Baptism is the sign of this covenant relation" (p. 52). He speaks of its resemblance to circumcision as a rite of separation, or appropriation to God, and a " ceremony of purification" (p. 55) ; a sign of "the inward clea,nsing of the Spirit" in washing v.dth water (p. 56) ; " the proper recognition of a member of Cfhrist's kingdom," " the only way in which infancy can be brought to" Christ (p. G4) ; the recognizing of a subject of the kingdom of heaven ; and he says, " what is baptism more than a sign of tlie blessings of the evangelical covenant, in which the parties baptized are supposed to be interested" (p. 65) ? Dr. H. is not hero maintaining that baptism demands this. He adds, "I have expressed an opinion that we have no scriptural authority to require any other interest in the covenant than is implied in its general adaptation to the applicants" (p. 65) ; and while lecturing those who, he supposes, would " invent a new ritual of recognition, by which we may, after our own manner, receive an infant in the name of a disciple," he says, " I do the very thing by water which Christ did by the imposition of hands. The substance is the same, although the form be altered" (pp. 65, 66). Again, " the language of the gospel teaches that baptized persons, and no others are recognized as being in the kingdom of heaven" (p. 66) ; " the ground which I occupy" is, that "every learner, under the teaching of the church, should be recognized by baptism as a scholar or disciple" (p. 108) ; baptism is a significant emblem of sacred truth, a sign of Christian truth, " a rite by which applicants were recognized as disciples in the sense of learners" (p. 120). In its origin it was "only a recognition on the part of a Christian teacher of a disciple or learner brought under religious instruction by a form which represented the purifying virtue of the truth in which he was to be instructed" (pp. 392, 393) ; it had " its place as an appropriate registration of the learners of Christian doctrine ;" and we must " beware of the beginning of this evil" of departing from its "making a register of learners" (p. 394). Baptism is "the designation of persons iinder religious instruction" (p. 104). But " baptism was, i^ QU APPENDIX. the first instance, enjoined upon every proselyte" (vol. x, p. 68). "To be bom of water was the external sign, the outward and visible baptism ; to be born of the Spirit, the inward and spiritual ablution;" baptism is "the badg-e of a disciple" (p. 120) ; " the visible sign" of the new birth (p. 183). John's " baptism appears like the act of a teacher admitting a learner to a service symbolic of the purifying influence of his doctrine" fUcj-ily,^- 7). Baptism is "a symbol of the cleansing influence of that doctrine in which " the baptized" " were to be instructed" (p. 23) ; " a sign of what they ought to be, and by siibmitting to the gospel what they really would be" (p. 55). '•Baptism is nothing else than a sign of external privilege" (p. 158) ; it should " be administered with reference, not to the present character of the person as a disciple already acknowledged, but to the instruction which he would receive from the teacher. I am bound to attempt to disciple every applicant whom I baptize ;" * I recommondnot "baptiism with any other intention than that of making disciples" (p. 158). Baptism is " the initiatory rite of the church," " the sign of disciplcship," " the sign of purification," " the emblem of the cleansing of the heart," " the visible sign of the new birth" (p. 198) . I cheerfully admit the truthfulness of some of these representations of baptism ; while I believe that no man can reconcile the whole with one another or with God's word. I should also deem it as outrageous to regard every Independent as holding all the views of Dr. Halley, as to regard every Baptist as holding all the views of Dr. Carson. My object in this Appendix having been to shew the futility of endeavours to prove that infants have any place in the commission of Christ, I have but little animadverted on the indiscriminate baptizing of the godly and ungodly, a practice which I believe to be altogether unscriptural, and anti-christian. I honour Dr. Halley for desiring and attempting to rest the baptism of infants on a Divine precept, although the attempt has involved siich an advocacy of baptizing those known to be ungodly as would, I trow, have shocked Pa3dobaptist Congregationalists of a former and, in some respects, less latitudinarian ago to an interdiction of his lucubra- tions from among Congregational Lectures, if these had then existed. Nor do I suppose that the most indiscriminate and unexceptional baptism can be separated from an adherence to Dr. H.'s supposed grammar and literality of the commission. Yet as I regard the recently promulgated dogma of the pope's infallibility to be worthy of every previous popish dogma, so do I regard indiscriminate baptizing as worthy of other and previous Pasdobaptist advocacy of infant baptism. I trust that what I have now written will prove that it is not they who make disciples by the preaching of the gospel, who immerse those disciples and teach them to observe all things whatsoever Christ has commanded, that " have a sort of hydraulic apparatus for extracting spiritual life out of cold water ;" but that it is rather they who make disciples by baptism, and thus disciple either infants or adults. I trust also that the reader can now judge whether or not it is the Baptists who overlook "broad features, and peddle with details," whose conduct "looks uncommonly like the proverbial attempt to repel the Atlantic with a broom." * If Dr. H. does not here speak of baptism (however oinjosed to his many other representations of it) as distinct from discipling, and as that which may pi'eccde discipling, I misunderstand iiiin. And it Pa'dobaptists — instead of baptizing every infant brought to them, or every infant of a professing jiarent, wliether or not there is a jirobability of ever seeing the child again — would confine baptism to such as would afterwards receive instruction from the teacher, to those whom the administrator would c(;r#(i(H/i/ "attempt to disciple,'' infant baptism at a quick pace would become beautifully small. I may here state what should earlier have been recorded, that all extracts from the Congregational Lectures axe from the Cheai) Edition, so far as it extends ; and that my quotations from Dr. W. Smith's Bib. Die, under the article Baptism, have in his work the signature E. H. B. INDEX OF AUTHOES. A Bai^st, 521. A Baptist Reviewer, 494. Ahdias, Ai^os. His. of (Apoc), 428. Acts of St. Thomas (Apoc), 427. Adair, 258. Adam, T., 26. Addington, Dr. S., 71, 103, 113, 121, 140, 145, 153, 160, 204, 220, 222, 225, 237, 291, 332, 367, 436. Ainsworth, E., 447. H., 571. Alcorn, J., 21. Aldis, J., 122. Alexander, Dr. Arch., 433. 442, 465, 494. Dr. J. A., 41, 55, 63, 79, 84, 90, 606. Dr. W. L., 45, 64, 78, 214, 295, 377, 407, 419. Alford, Dean, 11, 17, 22, 23, 46, 65, 83, 93, 96, 109, 119, 130, 132, 142, 150, 160, 213, 297, 348, 370, 522, 574, 583, 606. Allen, Dr. Hugh, 194. Allix, Dr. P., 572. Allon, H., 262, 469. Alsop, V.,258, 261, 269, 551. Ames, Dr. W., 566. Ambrose, 418, 562. An Anonymous Baptist, 292, 293. Anderson, A., 221. W., 293. Dr. W., 527. Anglican Church, 357, 365, 517. Angus, Dr. J., 143, 232, 585. Annotated Paragraph Bible, 77, 90, 104, 127, 140. Anselm, Abp., 569. Apocrtjphal Gospels, 427,428. Argyle, Duke of, 232. Arnold, Dr. T., 310. Arthur, W., v, 45, 392. Articles of Angl. Ch., 282. Edward 6th, 499. Assembly of Divines, 7, 84, 139. Assembly's Confession of Faith, 79, 357, 523. Directory for the Public Wor ship of God, 524. Larger Catechism, 357, 523. Shorter Catechism, 357, 524. Augustine, 455, 456,465, 486, 498, 511, 666. Author of " Christianity not founded on Argument," 405. " Dr. Hoolcwell," 30. — • "■ Ecce Deus," 42. . — " ^cee Homo," 307, 308, Author of "Facts Opposed to Fiction," 440, 568. ^^ Popery Confuted by Papists," 493. " The Footsteps of St. Paul," 76. " Schism," xiv. " The Snake in the Grass," 258. Bagster's Comp>rehensive Bible, 114. Baillie, J.. 293. Ball. Dr. G. H., 327, 393, 470. Baines, E., xii. Balsamon, T., 499. Bannerman, Dr. J., 490, 526, 529, 530, 590, 591, 622. Baptist Magazine, 249. Barclay, E., 173, 373, 417. Barff, C, 71. Barker, J. C, 414. Barlow, Bp., 404, 488. Barnabas, 422. Barnes, Dr. A., 10, 20, 42, 65, 70, 73, 76, 91, 109, 110, 113, 118, 130, 134, 136, 142, 156, 239, 350, 361, 362, 415, 607. Baronius, C, 437. Barrett, A. C, 113, 122, 159. Barrow, Dr. (I.), 26, 102, 103, 364. Dr., 109. Earth, Dr. C. G., 14, 73, 110, 129, 149, 150, 585. Basil, 418, 431, 465, 498. Basnage, J., 278, 429, 450, 451. Bates, W., 482, 487. Baumgarten, Dr. M., 64, 78, 84, 90, 607. Crusius, Dr. L. P. 0., 413, 439, 485. Baxter, J. A., 285. E., 7, 8, 19, 26, 27, 57, 70, 78, 89, 94, 99, 119, 121, 127, 131, 1.33, 134, 136, 138, 146, 160, 180, 181, 191, 230, 237, 240, 269, 270, 271, 289, 294, 303, 304, 328, 332, 333, 347, 348, 354, 360, 361, 385, 392, 403, 416, 417, 421, 456, 511, 513, 514, 525, 527, 539, 546, 561, 566, 576, 622, 623. Beard, C, and Dr. J. B., 447. Dr. J. B., 358. Beattie, Dr. J., 527. Beazley, J., 307. Beausobre and Lenfant, 7, 99. Beckmann, F., 27. Bede, 499. Beecher, Dr. H. W., 46, 47, 85, 174, 175, 214, 331, 415, 536. Beith, Dr. A., 10, 20, 573, 636 INDEX OP AUTHORS. Belfrage, Dr. H., 326, 3G8, 369. Bellarmine, E. P. R., 396. Bengel, J. A., 7, 18, 29, 58, 101, 117, 121, 128, 138, 360, 410, G07. Bennet, W., 248, 560. Bennett, Dr. J., 34, 62, 70, 77, 96, 166, 227, 280, 431, 432, 440, 443, 451, 458, 465, 467, 490, 491, 607. Benson, Dr. G., 7, 34, 77, 90. J., 28, 127. Berengarius, 360. Best, J., 317, 522. Bevan, J. G., 113. Beza, T., 121, 133, 237, 566, 568. Bickersteth, E., 8, 21, 34, 60, 75, 103, 128, 140, 224, 268, 282, 294, 314, 319, 360, 380, 413, 566, 598. Billroth, Dr. G., 117, 154. Bindseil, 367. Bing-ham, J., 449, 450, 457, 465, 482, 569. Binney, T., 312, 374, 611. Blackley and Hawes, 14, 45, 66, 76, 113, 120, 130, 135, 213, 230. Blackie, W. G., 11, 75, 349. Blackstone, Sir W., 263. Blake, T., 237, 294. Bland, Dr. M., 9, 40. Bliss,G., 59, 134, 139, 161. Bloomfield, Dr. S. T., 11, 17, 20, 43, 63, 90, 96, 106, 114, 117, 121, 129, 132, 133, 134, 141, 161, 370, 489, 606. Blunt, J. J., 62, 141,296. Boardman, Dr. G. D., 104, 105. W. E., 50 Brown, Dr. D., 14, 45, 107, 172, 607. Dr. J., 44, 85, 107, 130, 141, 369, 407, 574. — J., 8, 77, 103, 112, 555, 556. J. Baldwin, 313. 160, 349, 384, Browne, Bp., 12, 44, 358, 409, 573. Biicer, 582. Buckner, Dr., 504. Buck, C, 387, 466. Buddeus, J. F., 385, 420, 517, 566. Bulling'er, 582. Bunsen, Dr. C. C. J., 44, 283, 370, 406, 452, 451, 463, 469, 497, 501, 502. Burder, J.. 39. Dr. H. P., 568. Burditt, T., 346, 348. Burgess, Dr. C, 572, 573. Burkitt, W.. 7, 28, 58, 76, 102, 174. Burnet, Bp., 8, 2G, 30, 58, 119, 138, 402, 419, 457, 465, 485, 520. J., 153, 278, 312, 349, 362, 533. Boguo and Bennett, Drs., 486. Bogue, Dr. D., 326, 533. Bohemius, Johannes, 500. Bona, Cardinal, 481. Bonar, Dr. H., 1, 444, 513, 580. Bonner, Bp., 409. Book of Common Prayer, 281-286. Booth, A., 145, 146, 157, 1.5S, 165, 166, 175, 193, 214, 215, 222, 2-30, 257, 258, 269 270, 277, 278, 279, 384, 385, 391, 392, 403, 412, 418, 419, 420, 421, 441, 449, 4.50, 470, 498, 505, 526, 527, 546, 547, 553, 554, 557-562, 563, 564, 572, 580, 581. Boothroyd, Dr. B., 28, 35. Bosanquet, E, 104. Bossuet, Bp., 405, 503. Boston, T., 9, 28, 59, 73, 90, 101, 128, 238 283, 291, 293, 295, 346, 347, 359, 360, 410, 542, 543, 605. Bouchier, Barton, 91, 607. Bowring, T., 00, 67. Bradbury, T., 269, 278, 421, 546, 566. Brandt, 498, 566. Brecon, T., 238. Bretschneidei*, K. G., 350, 486. Brewer, Dr. E. C, 11, 369. Brewster, J., 9. Brock, Dr. W., 297. Bromley, S., 8. Brooke, Lord, 213, 561. Brown, Dr. A. M,, 156, 251, 333, 377. Burns, Dr. Islay, 60, 459. Burton, Dr. E., 10, 38, 63, 90, 109, 113, 136, 141, 142, 143, 482. Bushnell, Dr. H., 188, 244, 245, 274, 304, 305, 440. Butterworth, J., 575. Buttman, Dr. P., 603, 619. Caesar, Julius, 4.59. Caird, Dr. J., 554. Cairns, Lord, 576. Calamy, Dr. E., 363, 420, 525. Calmet, A., 8, 30. Calovius, A., 158. Calvin, J., 25, 46, 89, 111, 126, 155, 269, 283, 358, 402, 517. Camerarius, J,. 157. Campbell, Dr. A., 153, 545. Dr. G., 29. Dr. J., 10, 40, 64, 73, 370, 555, 564, 565. Candlish, Dr. R. S., 528. Capito, W., 486. Carey, Dr. J., 4.35, 447. Eustace, 583 Carson, Dr. A., 80, 83, 86, 147, 1.52, 154, 161. 181, 290, 295, 337, 341, 400, 433, 4.58, 513, 533, 611, 612. Cary, H., 441. Caryl, J., 419. Cassander, G., 360. CasseU's Bib. Die, 194. Pop. Edu., 94. Catechism., Anglican, 281-283. Presbyterian, 264. Cattenburgh, E.," 20, 212, 486. Cave, Dr. W., 102, 436, 451. Cawdrey, 403. Cellarius, 404. Chalmers, Dr. T., 80, 97, 104, 141, 268, 323. Chambers, 468, 489. :!mier, 420, 509, 569. Chain. ck, S,, 268, 384, 418, 419, 569, INDEX OF AUTHORS. 637 Chemnitz, M., 420, 450, 569. Chillingworth, W., 385, 407, 508, 557. Christian Witness, 251. Chrysostom, 380, 424, 517. Chrystal, J., 447, 497, 583. Clagett, Dr. W., 457, 458, 470. Clarke, Dr. A., 8, 29, 59, 75, 79, 84, 90, 104, 117, 121, 127, 133, 191, 367, 425, 444, 4A5, 574, 599, 600, 608. Dr. S., 8, 19, 20, 31, 101, 112, 117, 126, 194, 364, 365, 607. Clarkson, D., 613. Claude, Jean, 155, 418, 464. Clayton, G., 379, 380, 533. Cleaveland, 224, 314. Clement (Apoa. Father), '425, 426. ■ ■ of Alexandria, 431, 442-444, 465, 512. Clowes, F., vii. Cobbin, I., 29, 61, 77, 79, 106, 117, 127,133, 134, 161, 360, 586. Cocceiua, J., 358. Colin, Dr. Von, 363, 490. Coleman, L., 10, 20, 160, 213, 230, 281, 295, 389, 440, 488. 494. Colenso, Dr. .T. W., 59. Coleridge, S. T., 91, 92, 132, 213, 388, 411, 493. Collings, J., 418. ColHnson, J., 422, 445. CoUyer, Dr. W. B., 377. Columesius, Paulus, 360. Conder, E. E., 14, 45, 297, 304, 312, 313, 577, 578, 585, 688, 604, 607. J., 35, 36, 62, 112, 347, 368, 413. Congregational " Declaration of Faith," 407, 536. Contemporary Review, 419, 420. Conybeare and Howson, 76, 92, 122, 134, 135, 371, 607. Cooke, Dr. W., 49, 67, 154, 211, 262, 316, 370, 417, 600. Cooper, Basil H., 130, 229, 296, 309, 370, Corrodi, 417. Cotton, J., 26, 247, 269, 571. Couard, Dr. Clir. Ludu., 410. Coureyer, 410, 490. Cox, Dr. F. A., 86, 152, 253,437, 454. Coxe, N., 212. 213. Craik, H., 392. Cramp, Dr. J. M., 3, 86, 147, 166, 215, 297, 334, 378, 389, 428, 452, 453, 482, 484, 497, 585. Cranmer, Abp., 285. Craps, J., 19, 76, 77, 80, 160, 161, 179, 210, 380, 421, 543, 544, 585, 591, 599. Cruden, A., 269. Camming, Dr. J., 11, 40, 118. Cunningham, Dr. W., 293, 375, 376, 414, 627, 528, 574. Curcellffius, S., 468, 499, 569. Cyprian, 68, 442, 470, 511. Cyril, 568. Daille, Jean, 405, 505. Dale, E. W., 268, 333, 399. Dalton, Vf., 117, 141, 163, 367. Danvers, Col., 396. Danzius, 279. Davenant, Bp., 100. Davenport, J. R., 269. Davidson, Dr. D., 9, 39, 75, 108, 116, 129, 133, 360, 608. Dr. S., 20, 64, 310. Davis, S., 49. De Courcy, 258. Do la Roque, 402, 500. Devrar, Principal, 36. De Wette, 83, 414. DeyUngius, S., 278, 449, 566. Dibdin, W., 286. Dick, Dr. T., 9, 10, 63, 64, 73, 75, 79, 93, 264,-345,358. Dieterieus, 157. Diogenes, Laertius, 391, Dionysius, 426, 427, 510. Doane, Bp., 44. Doddridge, Dr. P., 8, 17. 27, 58, 70, 90, 94, 102, 112, 113, 117, i20, 121, 126, 127, 131, 133, 134, 136, 139, 143, 160, 161, 174, 226, 240, 264, 279, 363, 364, 405, 420, 421, 423, 431, 437, 457, 487, 513, 568, 584, 607, 608. Doderlein, 406, 434, 435. Dods, M., 428. Dodwell, W., 9, 30, 75, 90, 103, 367, 437, 520. Doedes, Dr. J. J., 49, 135, 160, 444, 513. Dollinger, Dr. J. I., 65, 141, 359. Donaldson, Dr. J., 46, 436, 442. Dr. J. W., 603. Donnegan, Dr. J., 602, 603. Dorner, Dr. J. A., 411. Douglas, A. F., 347, 574, James (of Cavers), 502, 503. Doutrin, 362. Drevy, J., 334. Dupin, Dr. L. E., 425, 426, 437, 444, 445. Du Veil, Dr. C. M., 360. Dwight, Dr. T., 29, 77, 89, 138, 289, 311, 360, 404, 548, 568. Eadie, Dr. J., 11, 36, 94, 110, 131, 263, 293, 361, 482, 604. Ebrard, Dr. J. H. A., 12, 136, 368, 411. Echard, L., 7, 57. Edict of 1547, by Charles V, 410. Edwards, Dr. J., 385,554, 555. Pe., 30, 59, 93, 101, 231,405,569. Pres., 7, 59, 98, 99, 219, 2.39, 309, 359. W. S.,10. ElUcott, Bp., 109, 120, 130, 132, 134, 166, 576. Ellis, Dr. J., 418. W., 447. Ellys, T., 464. Elsley, J., 20, 31, 32, 607. Ely, J., 60, 137. Emphatic Diaglott, 607. Eney. Metrop., 367, 499. English Independent, 246. 638 INDEX OF AUTHOES. Englhh Reformers, 25, 100, 126, 357, 520. Entick, John, 447. Episcopius, S., 2,5, .500. Erasmus, D., 3G0, 402, 459. Erskine and Fisher, 274, 355, 356, 525. Erskine, Dr. J., 7, 58, 138, 1.59, 213, 219, 220, 229, 230, 2G8, 209, 359. Etheridge, J. W., 9. Ethiopic Version, 137. Eusebius, P., 443, 483. Evangelical Magazine, 62. Evans, Dr. B., 179. Jon., 569 Ewing, Greville, 137, 153, 154,206,243,531, 533. Fairbairn, Dr. P., 12, 44, 50, 110, 118, 120, 142, 272, 277, 372, 414, 528, 591, 604. Family Treasury, 39, 40, 64. Farrar, J., 194, 296, 417, 538, .5.39. Fawcott, Dr. J., 179. J. (of Carlisle), 9. Fellows, J., 583. Field, Dr., 403, 506. Finch, T., 123, 323. Fisher, E., 521. Fisher and Erskine, 28. Flavel, J., 366, 605. Fletcher, J., 21, 214, 334, 393, 433,456,465, 466, 475, 508, 510, 556, 604. J. (of Madeley), 59,90. Fleury, C, 481. Foote, Dr. J., 11, 171, 380, 407. Forbes, Dr. J., 108, 142. Ford, J. E., 297. Forester, Orlando, 325. Formey, J. H. S., 498. Foster, John, v. Eraser, D., -529. Freeman, Dr., 404. French, N., 405. Fuller, T., 403. Fyfe, Dr. E. A., 190, 191, 193, 221, 222, 230, 231, 262, 419, 582, 586. Gale, Dr. J., 147, 256, 257, 437, 439. Gall, James, 511. Gallandius,A.,428. Gamble, H. J., viii, 85, 91, 124, 141, 156, 210, 211, 217, 218, 240, 255, 286, 296, 308, 333, 348, 388, 473, 532, 581, 582, 586, 587 Gardner, Dr. J., 12, 41, 194, 503. Gasparin, Count de, 143, 421. Gataker, T., 128. Gaussen, Dr. L., 21. Gee, J., 229. Gerloch, Dr. S., 38. Gesenius, Dr. F. H. W., 413. Gibbons, Dr. S., 29. Gibbs, G., 244, 284, 285, 435, 453, 463, 464, 543, 568, 569. Gieseler, J. K. L., 10, 11, 481, 485. GilfiUan, G., 528. Gill, Dr. J., 137, 494. Gilpin, W., 7, 57, 79, 89, 100. Gisbomc, T., 103. Glas. J., 220, 290, 363. Glassius, S., .571,572. Glyde, J., .33, 34, 60, 77, 143, 144, 367, 368. Godwin, Dr. B., 513. Prof. J. H., 10, 20, 67, 68, 129, 288, 352, 374. Gomarus, F., 27, 449. Goode, W., 297. Goodman, Dr., 165, 249, 457. Goodwin, Dr. T., 99, 231, 269, 359, 404. Bp., 46, 350. Goold, Dr. W. H., 226. Gouldburn, Dean, 485. Govett, E., 408. Grabe, Dr. J. E., 438. Grant, Brewin, 131. Green, Dr. S. G., 261, 336, 3.37, 594, 612, 615, 616. Greenfield, W., 603, 604. Greenhill, W., 442. Gregory (Nazianzen), 424. of Nyssa, 548. VII, 569. Grey, Dr. H., 309. Grose, F., 499. Grosvenor, Dr. B., 28, 112, 117, 294, 295. Grotius, H., 7, 25, 32, 89, 101, 360, 446, 485, 598. Guericke, Dr. H. E. F., 311, 413, 4.55, 481, 485, 486. Guyse, Dr. J., 112, 113. Guthrie,Dr. T., 77, 528. J., 42, 43, &8, 67. Hackspanius, T., 157. Hagenbach, Dr. K. E.,406, 440,474,484,485. Hahu, Prof. Aug., 367, 406, 485. Haldane, A., 425. J. H., 392, 515. Hall, Arch., 155, 247, 271, 231, 421. Bp., 7, 100, 605. Newman, 415, .591. - Eobcrt, 458. • T. D., 460. Halley, Dr. E., 6, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 21, 23, 49, 53, 54, 55, 67, 69, 74, 79, 80, 81, 82, 80, 87, 88, 94, 95, 97, 114, 118, 119, 122-125, 131, 143, 144, 146, 166-173, 175, 177, 190. 193, 201-203, 204, 205, 206-208, 225, 239, 243, 250, 259, 260, 260, 267, 268, 275-277, 285, 286, 300, 301, 320, 321, 324, .340-344, 349, 350, 356, 381, 382, 397-399, 424, 429, 430, 4.34, 438, 440, 442, 418, 461, 462, 466, 477, 478-480, 493, 494, 527, 532, 544, 548, 563, 573, 574, 588, 589, 590, 591, 600-634. Hammond, Dr. H., 28, 57, 112, 121, 213, 272, 568. Hanbury, B., 570. Hanna, Dr. W., 11, 32, 68, 105, 114, 212, 2,55, 309, 314, 330, 376, 377, 390, 416, 432, 500, 514, 528. Hare, Archd., 327, 518. INDEX OF AUTHORS. 639 Harris, Dr. J., 10, 40, 41, 231, 232, 261, 264, 296 311. Harrison, J.'c, 578, 579. Harvey, Wigan, 436. Hase, Dr. C, 490. Hastings, H. J., 518. Hawes. (See Blackley and Hawes). Hawker, Dr. E., 89, 101, 155, 278, 347. Hebden, Dr. S., 440. Heber, Bp., 31, 367. HamUton, Dr. E. W., 580. Hegesippus, 474. Heidegger, J. H., 247, 404. Heidelberg Catechism, 365. Heineecius, J. G., 261. Henry, M., 8, 20, 27, 28, 58, 75,89, 100, 127, 131, 133, ;139, 145, 190, 229, 237, 247, 273, 294, "366, 380, 464, 526, 546, 553, 561, 566, 568, 584. Hermas, 423. Hervey, J., 161. Herzog, Dr. J., 504. Hester, G., 441. Heubner, J. L., 38. Heugli, Dr. H., 554, 570. He\vitson, A., 296, 604. Hewlett, J., 129, 413. Hey, Dr. J., 11, 21, 246, 247, 255, 409, 417. 454, 455, 607. HiU, Dr. G., 9, .34, 117, 414, 428. Hinds, Bp., 10, 39, 40, 174, 370, 438, 489, Hinton, I. T., 424, 452, 545, 546. ■ J. H., 249, 334. Hippolytus, 469. History of Nonconformity, 285. Hoadley, Bp., 509. Hodge, Dr. C, 40, 106, 114, 120, 129, 131, 370, 414. Prof. A. A., 45, 60, 70, 111, 118, 226. 227, 228, 301, 302, 354-, 355, 384, 455. 456, 525, 526. Hodgson, Dr. R., 9, 62, 91. Hoffman, Dr. C, 62, 85, 310, 396. Hofling, Dr., 406, 490. Holland, Dr., 500. Holmes, Dr. T.. 444, 445. Homberck, J. F.. 109. Homes, Dr. N., 269. Honoratus, 444. Hook, Doan, 380, 481, 489. Hooker, Dr. R., 71, 364. 573, 699. Hoornbeek, J.,26,98. Hopkins, Ep., 418. Horace, Q. F., 441. Home, T. H.. 60, 274. Horsey, J., 224, 569.' Horton, T. G., 380. Howe, J., 57, 138, 143, 160, 310, 379. Howell, R. B. C, 432. Howson and Conybeare. (See Conybeare). Hubmeyer, B., 585. Hudson, T. H., 137, 586. Hughes, Abp., 414. Dr., 420. ■ •T.,310. Humphrey, Dr. W. G., 44, 62, 109. Hard, Dr. W., 366, 418, 488. Hyatt, J., 229. Ignatius, 424. Imperial Dictionary. 511. Innes, Dr. W., 114, 151, 152, 382. Innocent. Ill, 569. Irenseus, 433-441. Ivimey, J., 510. Jackson, 395. Jacobi, Dr. J., 113, 289, 406, 496. James, J. A., 60, 78, 98, 230, 311, 349, .362, 382, 573. Jamieson, Dr. E., 11, 81, 98, 372, 486. Jarrom, J., 161. Jennings, Dr. D., 568. Jerome, 354, 483. Johnson, G. B., 295, 344. - Dr. S., 21. Johnstone, F., 281,'.511, 554. Jones, W., 572. Jortin, Dr. J., 513. Josephus, F., 11. Jowett, Prof. B., 394. Judson, Dr. A., 339. Justin (Martyr), 428-433. — ^ (Roman Historian), 459. Justinianus, 157. Kahnis, Dr. F. A., 475, 493, 503. Kaiser, Dr. G. P. C, 406. Keach, B., 214, 262, 378. Keith, Dr. A., 406, 407, Kelly, J., xii, 80, 600. Kem'ick, Bp., 413. Kidd, Dr. J., 258, 263. King, Dr. D., .555. Kitto, Dr. J., 10, 17, 36, 65, 72, 75, 76, 93, 121, 131, 156, 174, 280, 281, 348, 349, 368, 454, 490, 502. Kling, Dr. C. F., 626. Kuapp, Dr. G. C 9, 20, 36, 64, 106, 120, 129, 140, 144. 160, 311, 406, 432, 464. KnatchbuU, Sir. N., 138, 568, 569. Knight, T., 411. KnUl, R., 533. Knowles, Sheridan, 421. Koppe, Dr. J. B., 129. Krehl, 13. Kuinoel, Dr. C. T., 62. Kurtz, Prof. J. H., 302, 4^7, 481, 486. Laertius, 431. Lampe, F. A., 465. Landon, E. H., 481. Lange, Dr. J. P., 12, 37, 38, 92, 174, 274, 348 Dr. Lobegott, 410, 503. Lardner, Dr. N., 32, 278, 509. Lathrop, Dr. 455. Lawson, J. P., 10. T., 3. Lgchler, Dr. G. V., 65, 489. Le Clcrc, 30, 4.39. Lehmann, W. G., 392, 640 INDEX OF AUTHORS. Leibnitz, G. W., 289, 412, 413, 502. Leigh, E., 30, 138, 403, 5G9, 603, 604. Loighton, Abp., 139, 140, 247. Leland, Dr. J., 405. Lewin, T., 77. Leyden Professors, 288, 347. Library, of Bib. Lit., 77,90. Libosus, 458. Liddell and Scott, 483, 602, 603. Liddon, Canon, 473, 474, 521, 538. Lightfoot, Dr. J., 273, 274, 277, 587. Limboreli, P., 25, 58, 57, 83, 84, 101, 486. Lindner, Dr., 410. Lindsay, Dr. W., 370. Lingard, Dr. J., 410. Linton, H., 120, 129, 132. Lipman, Rabbi, 571, 572. Lisco, Dr. F. G., 38. Li^ssan, E. de, 173. Littleton, Dr. A., 447. Litton, E. A., 409. Livermore, A. A., 39, 117, Livingston, J., 349. Locke, J., 121, 126, 248, 310. Luther, M., 3, 126, 283, 857, 402, 510, 582. Lutz, 36, 155. Lyttleton, Lord, 325, 518, 520. M., F., 12, 45. M'AIl, Dr., 326. Macbride, Dr. J. D., 39. Macealla, Dr. W. L., 214, 394, 567. Macallan, D., 61, 62, 152, 264, 388, 401, 503, 504, 505, 519, 520, 533, 547, 5-48. Maccovius, J., 26. Macdonald, G., 591. M'Lean, A., 51, 85, 86, 93, 114, 154, 158, 178, 179, 191, 192, 205, 221, 261, 296, 321, 389, 390, 509. M'Leod, Dr., 72. Dr. A., 411, 577. Macknight, Dr. J., 9, 30, 77, 90, 101, 113, 117, 121, 127, 131, 133, 135, 160, 161, 174. Macmahon, J. H., 469. M'Neile, Dean, 409. M'Crie, Dr. T., 62, 213. Magdeburrj Centurlntors, 403, 500. Maiian, Prof. M., 67, 482, 497. Malham, J., 30. Manly, J. G., 39, 60, 70, 76, 94, 96, 191, 228, 229, 232, 247, 254, 260. 309, 332, 369, 370, 407, 409, 570. Mann, Bp., 77, 96. Isaac, 453, 493. Matthies, 486. Maurice, M.. 237. J. F. D., 361. 402, 517 389. 543. 155, 248. 102, 139, Mayo, Dr., 418, 505, 557. Means, J. C, 327, 354, 469. Melancthon, P., 157, 403, .507, 508. Melito, 441. Mellor, Dr. E., v, 389. Mends, H., 569. Menno, 582. Menzel, W., 485. Meyer, 38, 83, 84, 135, 362, 413, 485. Miall, J. G., 63, Millar, 420. Miller, Dr. S., 310, 380, 424. Milman, Dean, 247, 476, 477. Milner, J., 57, 92. Milton, John, 173, 362. Mimpriss, R., 10, 35. Moberly, Bp., 109. Molyneux, C, 65. Montgomery, R.,411. Monthly Review, 432, 440. Morell, Dr. T.,455. Morison, Dr. James, 607, 626. Dp. John, 11, 64, 105, 142, 144, 295, 301, 308, 317, 326, 349, 374, 375, 415, 416, 515. of IGlmarnock, 308. Morris, A. J., 373. Morrison, T., 70, 79, 85, 91, 96. Morus, Dr. S. F. N., 406. Moshoim, Dr. J. L., 387, 422, 423, 425, 426, 427, 428, 442. 443, 458, 459, 482, 487, 488, 491, 492, 499. Moult, C, 71. Moulton, Prof. W. F., 615. Mudge, W., 379, 520. Mullens, Dr. J., 389. Miinscher, Dr. W.,440. Murdoek, Dr. J., 423. Miirsell, J., 296. Musculus, 158. National Cyclopaedia, 35. Neal, 379. D.. 457. Manton, Dr. T., 102. Marshall, S., 403, 418. A., 581. Martin, S., 604. Martindale, M., 8, 90, 405. Martyr, P., 237, 271. Masti-icht, P., 100, 419. Mather, Dr. C, 247. Matthiaj, A. H,, 6, 594, Cll, 612, 615. Neander, Dr. J. A. W., 9, 43, 44, 63, 85, 92, 109, 113, 129. 130, 141, 156, 286, 368, 388, 408, 409, 435, 439, 456, 457, 468, 481, 496, 497, 507, 548, 54.9. Newcome, Abp., 19, 28. 178 \New England. Synod, 570. 290' [Newton, J., 75, 90, 404, 405, 419. I Sir Isaac, 507. Nicodemus, Gospel of (Apoc)., 427. Noel, Hon. B. ^Y., 596, 616, 617, 624, 625. Noesselt, Dr. J. A., 445. North British Review, v, vi, 181, 289, 374, 407, 408, 454, 503, 514, 522. Notes on the Four Gospels. (See F. M.), Olshausen and his Contin., 11, 36, 63, 85, 92, 106, 113, 122, 129, 131, 156, 213, 367, 410, 431, 503. (Ecolampadius, J., 404. INDEX OF AUTHORS. 641 Origen, 431, 458-468. Oswald, Dr. J. A., 135. Owen, Dr. J., 7, 27, 32, 49, 67, 96, 99, 100, 139, 204, 247, 248, 255, 320, 364, 384, 390, 418, 419, 421, 457, 465, 498, 505, 509, 515, 554, 560, 562, 568, 572. Dr. J. J., 14, 41, 370. James, 229, 420, 421, 562. Oxford Divine, 405, 406. Oxford Divines, 503. Oxford Tracts, 408, 435, 441, 445, 446, 458. Paley, Archd., 404. Palmer, S., 27, 403. W., 413. Parffius, D., 237. Parker, Dr. J., 359. Parkhurst, J., 603. Parry, T., 103, 104. Parsons, E. (of Leeds), 515. Pascal, B., 500, 577. Paterson, A. S., 9, 63, 136, 490, Patrick, Pp., 29, 89, 100. Payne, Dr. W., 229, 466. Dr. G., 33. 59. Pearce, S., 179. Peile, Dr. T. W., 107, 120, 135, 284. PengiUy, R., x, 410, 411, 453, 454, 542, 543, 568. Petavius, D., 438. Philip, 269. PhUpot, J., 499. Philps, A. D., 293, 294. Pierce, J., 386, 418, 449, 450. Pike, J. G., 257. Pirie, A., 7, 128, 469. Piscator, 13, 157. Pitman, J. R., 34. Plumptre, Prof. E. H., 275. Plutarch, 431. Polycarp, 424. Pond, Professor E. A., 424. Poole, M., and Contin., 9, 20, 28, 32, 58, 76, 90, 128, 139, 155, 174, 405, 410, 464, 607. Porteus, Pp., 32, 421. Povah, Dr. R., 32, 57, 365. Powell, T., 373. Prayer-Booh, Anglican, 281-286. Prescott, P., 351. President of the Council of Trent, 409. Pressense, Dr. E. de, 230, 248, 277, 314, 350, 359, 413. Prideaux, Pp., 410, 569. Pridham, A., 106, 128. Priestley, Dr. J., 237, 386. Prime, Dr. S. I., 349. Primitive Church Mag., 274, 454. Pryce, E. S.,311. PuUeyn, R., 548. Punshon, W. M., 359. Quenstedius, J. A., 450. Raffles, Dr. T., 604. Raleigh, Dr. A., 600. Rathband, 237. Read, James, v. Redford, Dr. G., 231. Rees, Dr. A., 29, 30, 59, 102, 363. Reeves, W., 508. Reinhard, Dr. F. V„ 406-^ Reynolds, Prof. H. R., xii. Rheinwald, 486, 487. Richardson, Dr. C, 263. Riddle, J. E., 442, 444, 458, 482, 487. Ridgley, Dr. N., 365, 423. Rieger, 38, 372. ■! Rigaltius, N., 25, 99,359, 411, 454. Ripley, Prof. H. J., 3, 122, 350. Rippon, Dr. J., ix. Rivetus, A., 569. Roberts, Dr. A., 435, 436, 442, 456. W., 246, 310. Robertson, F. W., 10, 110, 118, 122, 354. W., 414. Robinson, 568 Dr. E., 4, 121, 129, 603, 604. Dr. J., 9 — R., 453, 457, 468, 511, 512, 608. (The Puritan), 570, 571. Rogers, D., J. G., 313. Rosenmuller, Dr. J. G., 138. Rossler, 440. Roy, Francis de, 360. Rush, Dr., 572. Russel's, T., English Beformers, 25, 100, 126, 357, 358. Russen, D., 57, 283, 294. Rutherford, James, 42, 286, 564. S., 237, 359. Ryland, Dr. J., 410, 411. J., 424, 426. Ryle, J. C, 46, 161, 407, 413, 507, 520. Salmatius, C, 360, 385, 406, 486, 498, 503, 504. Salmero, 157, 509. Sanders, Dr., 411. Sanderson, Bp., 404, 547. Saurin, J., 26, 107, 138, 405. Scaliger, J. J., 437. Schaff, Dr. P., 268, 377, 415, 435, 451, 463, 482, 483, 495, 557, 579, 590. Schleiermacher, Dr. F. E. D., 309, 406. Schmid, C, 109. Schleusner, J. F., 89, 102, 117, 121, 139, 603, 607. Schotanus, Chris., 418. Schrevelius, C, 603. Scott, A., 33, 250, 272. Dr. John, 100, 117, 119, 126,127, 138, 139, 364, 518. T., 8, 19, 32, 58, 59, 70, 75, 83, 90, 362, 128, 101, 120, 127, 132, 133, 139, 268, 366, 367, 608. Sears, Pres., 437, 451. Semisch, Dr. C, 432. Semler, Dr. J. S., 432. Sherlock, Pp., 231, 258, 271, 333. 642 INDEX OF AUTHORS. Short, C, 249, 274, 275, 458. Shrewsbury, W. J., 113, 154, 204, 308, 328 370, 417, 539. Shuttleworth, Bp., 109. Sibree, J., vi, 143, 144, 368, 577. Simeon, C, 28. Smith, Dr. (U.S.), 414, 504. — Dr. J. P., 9, 39, 108, 116, 301, 334, 370, 371, 384, 463, 493. Dr. W., 12, 20, 68, 76, 80, 90, 91, 96, 118, 120, 130, 133, 142, 263, 323, 376! 395, 435, 44G, 447, 460. R. Thornlcy, 538. Society for Promoting Christian Know- ledge, 413. Socrates, 431. Sozomen, 483. Spangenberg, A. G., 37, 406. Spanheim, Dr. F., 227. Spurgeon, C. H., 1, 49, 181, 600. Stacey, Dr. J., 14, 21, 22, 23, 32, 33, 55, 66 69, 70, 73, 74, 79, 83, 85, 88, 89, 94, 95 110, 115, 118, 125, 126, 130, 131, 132, 133, 142, 143, 144, 147, 148, 149, 150, 151, 162, 164, 184, 194, 208, 210, 216, 223, 230, 265, 266, 273, 275, 283, 286, 301, 314, 315, 316, 317, 318, 319, 324, 338, 340, 352, 353, 356, 399, 421, 422, 431-434, 449, 466, 467, 475, 478, 538, 539-542, 576, 591-599, 612. Stack, Dr. J., 7, 57, 90. Stackhouse, Dean, 58. Stanhope, Dean, 102, 128. Stanley, Dean, 11, 44, 118, 152, 361, 388, 498. Stapferus, J. F., 403. Staphylus, F., 403, 404, Starcke, Dr., 406, 440. Steadman, Dr. W.,v. ■ T., 427, 583. Stebbing, Dr. H., 77, 360. Stuart, Prof. M., 13,103,136,214,280,411,433 Suarez, F., 157. Suicerus, J. C, 385, 406, 454, 498. Sumner, Abp., 11, 39, 64, 76, 82, 90, 322, 323, 368, 521. Superville, D. de, 405. Sutclifle, J., 29, 84. Synod, A Neiv England, 570. of Dort, 566. Synods of TonneinSfCastres, and. Charenton 405. Tait, Abp., 136. Taylor, Bp., 103, 112, 126, 174, 213, 258, 284, 285, 380, 386, 387, 404, 412, 418, 440, 464, 465, 489, 490, 498, 520, 521, 559 582 C., 7," 20, 29, 99, 112, 174, 362, 416, Dan, 49. Dr. W. Cooke, 13, 61, 77, 90, 367, 481, 482. — G. H., 60. Isaac, 442, 494, 495, 497. TcrGHCG 459 TertuUian, 1, 68, 393, 418, 442, 444-458, 465, 601. Thales, 391. The Arnhic Version, 137, 608. The British Quar. Revieio, 536. The Baptist Record, 76, 348. The Cambridge Platform, 9. The Catechism of Edwavd VI, 357. The Christian's Penny Magazine, 312. The Church, 297. The Church of England, 499, &c. The Church of Rome, 517, 542. The Congregational Platform; 9, The Council of Laodicea, 498. Trent, 517. Steele, E., 249. Steinmeyer, Dr., 411. Stennett, J., 71, 72, 281, 282. Dr. S., 71, 86, 181, 214, 220, 248, 249, 270, 273, 279, 280, 421, 422, 433, 436, 509, 510, 548, 553, 575, 576, 600, 609, 624. Stephanus, H., 89, 603, 604. Stevenson, W. F., 161. Prof. W. R., 603, 619. Stier, Dr. R., 10, 25, 36, 37, 73, 77, 85, 92, 155, 367. Stillingfleet, Bp., 258, 404. Stock, Dr. J., 21, 49, 97, 133, 324. Stokes, J., 499. Storr and Flatt, 36, 405. Stou-hton, Dr. J., 76, 231, 260, 310, 311, 369, 497. Stovcl, C, 19, 21, 22, 69, 97, 222, 232, 297, 323, 381, 384, 443, 444, 588. Stowell, Canon, 521. Dr. H. W., 268, 491. Strabo, Walafridus, 406, 498. Stratford, Bp., 420. Strong, W., 566. The Emphatic Diaglott, 607. The Ethiopic Version, 137. The Five Clergymen, 109. The Freeman, 147, 303, 416, ThelwaU, S., 446. The Morning Star (U.S.), 531. Theophilus (of Antioch), 431, 441. Theophylact, 126. The Patriot, 531. The Persian Version, 608. The Presbyterian Banner (U.S.), 531, The R. T. S.'s Ch. His., 482. The Syriac Version, 137, 607, 608. T]ie Vulgate Version, 137. Thiers, J., 360. Thiersch, Prof. H. W. J., 109, 230. Tholuck, Dr. F. A. G., 108, 109. Thomas, Dr. D., vi, 3, 42, 324, 354, 611. Thomson, Dr. H., 63. J. R., 313, 497. Thorn, W., 9, 35, 49, 61, 72, 107, 117, 118, 129, 175, 176, 177, 243, 306, 307, 314, 321, 325, 337, .338, 394, 395, 406, 533-536. Thorald, A. W., 413. Thysius, A., 569. iTillotson, Abp., 31, 57, 128, 136, 161, 363, I 420. INDEX OF AUTHOES. 643 TiUy, A., 334. ToUer, T., 373, 382. Tombes, J., 269, 486, 499. Toulmin, J., 400, 401. Towerson, Dr. 404. Towgood, M.,- 190, 204, 217, 370, 416, 468, 494, 536, 566, 569, 581, 591. Townsend, Dr. G., 493. Trapp, J., 8, 26, 58, 70, 120, 127, 133, 138 Trench, Abp., 344. Tricalet, 445. Trollope, W., 20, 39, 60, 104, 129, 136, 140, 607. TurnbiUl, Dr., 135, 136. Turretine, 7, 30, 213, 362, 421, 457, 465, 509, 569. Tweedie, Dr. W. K., 38, 39, 78, 106, 174, 411, 528, 529, 555. Twisse, Dr., 269. Tyndale, W., 357, 358. Ullman, Dr. C, 485. Ursin, Z., 347, 359. Valpy, Dr. E., 45, 66, 91, 107, 130, 607. Vasques, 157. Vatablus, 157. Vaughan, Dr. C. J., 44, 119, 358, 521. Dr. R., 46, 333, 417, 418, 422, 469. Velthuysius, 157. Venema, H., 25, 56, 99, 212, 219, 247, 268. 358, 385, 386, 410, 439, 454. Victor, Bp., 512. Virgil, 459. Vitringa, C, 99, 157, 158, 219, 269, 402,403, 499, 500, 559, 561. Vives, Ludovicus, 360, 406, 499. Vossins, G. J., 459. Waddington, Dr. G., 433, 434, 441, 442, 44i. Wake, Abp., 362, 363. Wakefield, G., 8, 149. Walford, W., 105. Walker, 404. W., 495. Wall, G., 75. Dr. W., 27, 126, 134, 136, 263, 264, 284, 296, 387, 403, 432, 434, 438, 439, 444, 446, 447, 459, 460, 461, 463, 474, 475, 488, 497, 498, 499, 506, 507, 510, 511, 522, 5^16, 561, 568. Wallace, D., 222, 333, 334. Warden, J., 269. Wardlaw, Dr. R., xiii, 20, 34, 62, 63,85,86,93, 96, 106, 132, 134, 146, 147, 171, 178, ISO, 187, 188, 189, 190, 197, 201, 210, 215, 222, 223, 224, 230, 232, 252, 295, 296, 297, 311, 350, 369, 373, 374, 378, 382, 896, 401, 404, 410, 417, 455, 514, 515, 516, 532, 533, 536, 567, 573, 581, 604. Waterland, Dr. D., 504, 518. Watson, R., 8, 17, 18, 20, 34, 35, 77, 84, 92, 104, 111, 128, 140, 283, 340, 353, 365, 380, 383, 507, 537. Watson, T., 469, 554. Watts, Dr. I., 7, 17, 20, 28, 57, 119, 120, 348, 363, 412, 561. Dr. W., 506. Wayland, Dr. F., 97, 329, 330, 331. Webster and Wilkinson, 4, 11, 17, 39, 63, 92, 122, 129, 369, 606. Webster, W., 5, 92, 601. Wells, Dr., 102. Welsh, Dr. D., 9, 60, 482. Wesley, J., 8, 29, 58, 79, 90, 103, 113, 117, 127, 132, 133, 136, 139, 160, 161, 380, 407, 522, 637, 606. Weslcyan 3Iissionary Notices, 538. West, 260, 261. Westlake, T., 498, 499, 569. Westminster Assembly, 237. Confession, 588. Wharton, H., 420. Whateley, Abp., S3, 132, 251, 322, 323, 371, 372, 393, 409, 521, 573, 600. Whitby, Dr. D., 7, 28, 59, 76, 83, 102, 128, 131, 133, 487. Whitefield, G., 60, 538. Wickham, J. A., 444. Wilkinson, G., 344. Willet, Dr. A., 357. WilHams, Dr. E., 6, 34, 190, 225, 226, 229, 238, 240, 247, 250, 251, 258, 263, 289, 294, 384, 385, 391, 419, 510, 511, 514, 532, 566, 569, 571. Dr. R., 487. John, 62. — T., 8, 30, 58, 129, 139. Wills, O, 403. Wilson, Bp., 106, 107, 133, 414, 520. Wilson, Prof. R., 13, 14, 41, 56, 65, 66, 71, 73, 78, 80, 82, 85, 93, 96, 97, 108, 115, 116, 119, 164, 172, 178, 185, 186, 223, 229, 240, 243, 253, 254, 293, 309, 346, 352, 399, 400, 432, 443, 475, 476, 483, 484, 505, 510, 525, 588-590. Winer, Dr. G. B., 63, 440, 486, 594. Wiseman, Dr., N., 503. Witsius, H., 57, 212, 362, 404, 569. Wolfius, J. C, 157. Wood, J. H., 510. Woods, Dr. L., 40, 73, 108, 128, 149, 154, 174, 176, 194, 206, 207, 311, 322, 331, 409, 424, 432, 495. Wordsworth, W., 40. Wotton, Dr. W., 4i5. Wright, M., 603, 604. Wycliffe, 25, 466. Wyeth, 258. Wynne, R., 7, 26, 57, 58, 101. Young, David, 86, 173, 193, 575, 577. ' Dr. D., 49, 311, 370. Zanchius, H., 347. Zeisius, 38. Zonaras, 499, 511. Ziiingle, U., 403, INDEX OF SUBJECTS. Abrahamic covenant or covenants no vindication of the baptism of infants, 181-222. Advantages or Evils of Infant Baptism, 515-554. Anglican Book of Common Prayer, 281-286, 379, 517-522, &g. Anglican Church, on the benefit of bap- tism, 517-522. Anglican Church, on the burial service, vi, 530. Apostolic baptisms after Christ's ascen- sion, 49-96. Apostolic baptizing during Christ's earthly sojourn, 19-21. Autous in the Commission in relation to ethne, 24-48, 593, 594, 601, 602, 611-613. Baptism by Christ's disciples after His ascension, 49-96. I by Christ's disciples before His crucifixion, 19-21, 610, 620, 621. by John the Baptist, 3-19, 622. -, express allusion to, in the though deprecated by the writer, left to be exposed and condemned by others, vii, 565. Baptismal regeneration, or discipleship, 323-327, 592-622. Baptist convictions on the evils or advan- tages of infant baptism, 542-554. Believer, disciple. Christian, and follower of Christ, used synonymously, 291-314, 602-610. Believers' baptism in the Assembly's Shorter Catechism, 375, 376. Birth and burial services commended, 552. Calvin's opinion on the efficacy of baptism, 517. Catechism of the Anglican Church on Baptism, 281-286, 520. Catechumens, 481-483, &c. Children in the Epistles not infants, 175-179. Gospels not spoken of as Epistles, 97-142. for the dead, 120-122 -, God's will on, not obscurely revealed, viii, x, 22, 601, &c in its nature and essence a confession and profession, 354-378 ■ into the body or church of Christ, 119, 120, &c. into Moses, 116-119 into the name of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, implies belief in and devotedness to Father, &c., and is inconsistent with infant and indis- criminate baptism, 24-48, 111-116, 589 590, 624-626. — — not the profession of the church, of the parents, guardians, or sponsors of the baptized ; but of the baptized 335-346. of John, that of those who con fossed sin and professed repentance 3-19, 622. ■ of, unto, or into repentance, 3-19. .. of vipers, of Pharisees and Sadducees known to bo ungodly, an unfounded supposition, 16-19, 331-351 ' of unconsciousness and coercion baptized, or as approved subjects of baptism, nor mentioned in any con- nection with baptism, 161-175. Christ's baptism by His disciples, 19-21, 610, 620, 621. Church of Christ non-existent before Christ's finished work of atonement, 224, 579, &c. not modelled after the Jewish nation or theocracy, 222-232. Church of England, on the benefits of infant baptism, 517-522. Church of God, Jewish, Mosaic, Abrahamic, Patriarchal, Noahic, Adamic, Ante- diluvian, or Postdiluvian, nnscriptui-al in phraseology and misleading in idea, 224, &c. , misleading and improper should be treated as a nullity, 392, 393 Baptismal regeneration as maintained by High Churchmen, and baptism as advocated by Broad Churchmen, phraseology in relation to the nation of Israel, or any people in any age, except an assembly of God' s professing people, or in relation to the whole to be finally gathered in glory, 224. Circumcision, covenant of, no justification of infant baptism, 193-215. Clearness to be expected in Christ's commission, 22, 601, &c. Commission of Christ, 21-48, 585-634. Commission of Christ, Grammar of the, 23, 24, 593-622. Communion of infants, though now less prevalent thantheir baptism, orig:inated nearljr or exactly at same time, 390-392, INDEX OF SUBJECTS. 645 Confession of sin essential to John's baptism, 3-19, 622. Confession, in the very nature of baptism, 354-378. Congregational sentiments on the benefits of infant baptism, 531-537. Connexion of infants and little children with a believing parent, an hypothesis constituting no foundation for their baptism, 183, 236-249. Controversy, not evil, but necessary, 556. Cornelius and his friends, baptism of, 79, 80. Covenant of grace with God through Jesus Christ, revealed first to the primeval sinners in Eden, and beginning with these our first parents, 215-222. Covenants with Abraham, 181-222. Credibility of profession, not our power to search the heart, admitted by many Pffidobaptists to be the requisite for membership and a reception of the Lord's Supper, 112, 125, &c. Crispus and other Corinthians, baptism of, 93, 94. De, the Greek participle, 16, 17. Dedication of infants not demanding nor justifying their baptism, 327-334. Delay of baptism after a credible pro- fession of faith unscriptural, 334-337, 342, 623, 624, &c. Disciple, believer, and Christian, words not of altered or dubious import because some having the name were insincere, 33, 291-297. Discipling to Christ effects under God a saving change as certainly as it is a fact that Christ came to save sinners, 21-48, 585-634. Discipling to Christ not effected by the act of baptizing, 23, 328-327, 592-600, 602-610 Discipling the world to Christ the great work of the apostles, 22-48, 111, &c. Divine authority ought ever to supersede the human, 555, 570, 574, &c. Eis metanoian, 3-19. Elementary knowledge, with faith — not advanced Christian experience — necessary to discipleship and baptism, 623, 624. Eminent piety and talent compatible with error, 346, 351. Ein, upon, the preposition in Acts ii, 38, 56. Essence of baptism, 354-378. Ethne, the supposed antecedent to aufous, 24, 593, 594, 611-613. Eunuch, baptism of the believing, 72, 73. Evils or Advantages of infant baptism, 515-554. Express reference to baptism in Scripture exclusively accordant with and corrob- orative of believers' baptism, 97-142. Faith in infants an i;nfounded hypothesis, 236-289. Federal holiness, on supposed, 154, 181. Female and male, one in Jesus, 390-392. Fidelity in the exposure of error a kindness to the erring, 554, 555, &c. Filial obligations, 551, &c. Grammar of the commission demands not that infants be included, 592-620. Greek Church, on the efficacy of baptism, 517, 568. Hereditary right to a Christian ordinance or status, to Christian privileges, or blessings, unscriptural, 232-249. Historic testimony to believers' baptism, 393-511. Holiness of the fii'st believers, and the cer- tainty of future believers and their holiness, as of the first fruit and lump, the root and branches, no evidence or encouragement of infant baptism, 145-147. Holiness or sanctification of an unbelieving partner, and of the children of a believing parent no qualification for baptism, or proof of its having been administered, 147-158. Human prudence not opposed to and sub- versive of Divine right, 385. Indiscriminate baptism to be deprecated, 115, 334-351, 597, &c. Infant communion, 378-389. — membership in the churches of Christ unauthorized, 297-314, 579, &c. Infant servants and disciples opposed to Scripture and reason, 290-297. Infant, varied meaning of, 511-513. Infants not able or oljligated to put on Christ, or to keep the law, 123-126. Infants not proved to be in any of the bap- tized households of Scripture, 80-94, 111-116. not spoken of in the baptized house- holds of Scripture, if these households included infants, any more than in the commands to disciple all nations, and to preach the gospel to every creature, 80-94, 111-116. Inspired historic testimony to believers' baptism, 393-421. Jailer and all his, baptism of, 86-93. Jewish proselyte baptism as a rule for Christian baptism, degrades Scripture, honours rabbinical tradition, and makes void God's word, 43. 48 271-281,560. ' Knowledge of the import of being baptized into Jesus Christ expected to charac- terize all the baptized, 97-111. Lambs never used in Scripture to desia'rate infants and little children, but to desig- nate the newly regenerate, 175-17£>, 646 INDEX OF SUBJECTS. Lord's Supper, baptism, and membership require the same character, 378-389. Lutheran belief on the efficacy and necessity of baptism, 517, 568. Lydia's baptism, 80-86. Matheteuo and mathetes, acknowledged import of, 602-610. Matheteuo, because meaning to disciple, and in Scripture to win to the faith of Christ, inapplicable to infants, 22-48 602, 603. Membership, baptism, and the Lord's Sup- per require the same qualifications, 378-389. Membership in Christian churches requires faith in Christ, 578, &c. Monumental character of baptism, 314-317. Nature of baptism, 354-378, &c. Number of Hymns on infant and believers' baptism in New Cong. Hymn Book, 553 One baptism, as one Lord, and one faith, 131, 132. Order in the commission, 23-48, 588, 589 591, 593, 598, 622-624. Psedobaptist records of baptisms, 71, 389. Participial government, 23-48, 588, 594, 595, 599, 613-622. Pentecostal baptism, 49-68, 621, 622. Presbyterian sentiments on the benefits of infant baptism, 522-531. Prevalence of infant baptism, most erroneously asserted, 451, &c. Profession, in the nature and essence of baptism, 354-378, 624-626. Prohibition of a positive institution (as the baptism of infants), if non-existent, is not its justification, 249-262. Proof, burden of, 513-515, &c. Proselyte Jewish baptism proved by none to have been in existence in apostolic times, admitted by many and most eminent Paodobaptists to have had a subsequent origin ; from the uncertain time of its commencement incapable of constituting a foundation for any Christian practice ; and from the con- demnatory character of its origin, and its necessarily taking us from the searching of God's oracles to the examination of rabbinical folly, deserv- ing of unmixed contempt as an authority for the baptism of infants, 43, 48, 271-281, 560, &c. Quoting from opponents approved by Pasdobaptists and Baptists, 573, 600. Reformed Continental churches on the efiicacy of baptism, 517. Eegoneration, or discipleship to Christ, not effected by baptism, 23, 323-327, 592-600, 602-610. Eegeneration signified in baptism, 354-378, 585-634. Repentance of sin professed by those whom John baptized, 3-19, 622. Repetition of baptism under special cir- cumstances of previous and improper administration, on, 392, 393. Roman Catholic idea of the efficacy of baptism, 517, 568. Samaritan believers, baptism of, 68-72. Saul, conversion and baptism of, 73-78, 623. Sealing, not in the act of baptizing, 262-270, &c. Searching of the heart not necessary to a reception to baptism, membership, or the Lord's Supper, 68-71, 335, 336, 343-345, &c. Signs, as badges, suppose the thing signified to be existing, or to be believed to exist, and not to have a future possible existence, 132, 317-323^ 334-351, 354-378. Sponsors for infants and little children, as authority for their baptism, unjustifi- able, 281-286, 563. Symbolical character of baptism, 317-323, &c. Talmudic study required by many Psedo- baptists for the justification of infant baptism, 43, 48, 271-281, 560. Three thousand, baptism of about, 49-68, 621, 622. Twelve men at Ephesus, baptism of about, 94-96. Uninspu-ed historic testimony to believers' baptism, 421-511. Universality in Rom. vi, 3 and Gal. iii, 27, condemnatory of any deviation from the baptism of professing believers, 98-111, 123-130. Varieties and contradictions of Psedo- baptists on the authority for infant baptism, 566-572. Wesleyan sentiments on the benefit of infant baptism, 537-542. Women's right to the Supper a contrast to that of infants to baptism, 390-392. INDEX OF SCRIPTURES. Genesis ii, 16, 17 261 iii, 15 190 iv, 4 308 ix, 9 180 ix, 15 183 xii, 1-3 182-222 xii, 7 182-222 xiii, 14-17 182-222 XV, 4-7, 13, 16, 18 183-222 xvii, 1-21 183-222 xvii, 11 580 xvii, 12 227 xvii, 23-27 212 xviii, 1-14 183 xviii, 18 222 xxii, 15-18 183 xxvi, 4 ......222 ■ xxviii, 14 222 xxsiv, 14, 15 212 xxxviii, 25 2G3 Exodus xiii, 19 116 xix, 6 157 —xxiv, 7 309 XXV, 40 654 Lev. V, 2 15G X, 1, 554,562 xviii, 5 187 XXV, 39-42 290,291 XXV, 41,42, 55 180 XXV, 47-55 290,291 Numbers iii, 28 309 xiv, 22-29 IIG Deu. iv,2 543 ■ iv,9 178 iv, 37 180 X, 16 191 xvii, 20 61 xxix, 10-12 180 xxix, 29 61, 250 xxx,2 61 1 Sam. XV 545 XV, 13, 14 561 IChr.xiv, 17 610 2Clir. xii, 7 61 XX, 13 309 Ezra ix, 2 157 X, 2, 3 151,152 Neh. ix, 2 157 - xii, 2, 3 152 Jobxxxi, 18 431 Psalm viii, 2 309 ix, 17 610 xxxvii, 26 180 li, 5 463 Iviii, 3 431 Ixvi, 18 610 Ixxii, 11, 17 610 Ixxxiv, 9 610 Ixxxvi, 9 610 Ixxxvii, 5 144 cxii, 1, 2 180 cxv, 1 56 14 61 cxvii, 1 610 cxxvii, 3 180 cxxxii, 12 61 Isaiah i, 12 543 iv, 3 220 .v, 1-7 227 viii, 20 ■ 250 XXV, 7 610 xxxv,8 220 xl. 11 176, 227, &c. xliv, 3 180 liii, 1 220 — Uv, 13 220 Ix, 220 ^Ixv, 23 179 Ixvi, 18 610 Jeremiah iv, 4 191 vii, 31 562 xxiii, 29 345 xxx,20 180 xxxi, 31-34 233 -, ■ xxxii, 39, 40 179,181, 233 Ezekiel xxxvii, 25 61 — xxxvii, 26 233 liv, 5-8 557 -liv, 9 220 Hoseav, 11 543 Hag. ii, 7 610 Zecli. viii, 4, 5 246 Mai. ii,15 180 648 INDEX OF SCRIPTUEES. Matthew ii,lG 558 iii, 1, 2 3 iii, 3 274 iii, 6 3 iii,8 5 iii, 9 253 iii, 11 8-17 V, 1, 13, 14 18 • V, 21 543 v,42 446 i. vii, 6 446 vii, 20 345 viii, 6, 8, 13 431 viii, 27 23, 616, 617 ix, 18, 27, 33, 35 23 . ix, 35 616 ix, 53 616 X, 1 596, x,21 176 x,34 599 X, 40-42 162, 596 . X, 42 294 xi, 12 171 xi, 29 599 xiii, 52 603,606-608 xiv, 21 558 . XV, 1-20 555 XV, 9 543 . XV, 38 558 xvii, 14 23,626 xvii, 18 431 xviii, 1-6 161 xviii, 3, 4 1G2, 298 xviii, 10, 14 161, 162 xix, 3 23, 616 xix, 13 558 xix, 13-15 162-175 . xix, 14 294-314 xix, 22 619 xix, 25 616 XX, 20 176 XX, 22 542 Luke i, 1-4 , ....558 i, 17 274 i, 54, 69 431 ii, 43 431 ii,45 619 iii, 3 3 — ■ — iv, 35 : 616 vi, 13-16 596 vi, 35 23, 616 vii, 29 171 279 -vii, 30 -viii, 51, 54 431 •ix, 1, 26 •ix, 47, ' X. 13.. ■X, 28.. .696 .162 .558 .187 X, 30 616 xii, 45 431 xii, 50 542 xiii, 7-9 • 227 xiv, 25-27 33 xiv, 26, 27, 33 292-297, 609 xvii, 1, 2 162 xviii, 15 558 xviii, 15-17 162-175,298-314 xxiii, 48 616 xxiv, 1 616 xxiv, 45-47 22 xxiv, 47 611 xxiv, 49 319 Johni, 7 274 i, 25 271, 275, 278, &c. iii, 3,5 599 iii, 3, 6 253 iii, 5 143, 144, 170, 171, 386, 473 iii, 16 187,188,189 iii, 22, 25,26 19 iii, 33 267 iv,l 603,620,621 iv, 1-3" 19 vi, 53 386 XXI, 15 431 y^^ QQ^ Ql^ QQ 59g viii, 31, 32 605 xxi, 19, 20 .616! xxi, 25 273-278 xxii, 16 616 xxiii, 4 543 xxiii, 24 348,349 xxiv, 9 610 xxiv, 14 610 xxvi, 8 616 xxvi, 19-25 605 xxvii, 25 61 xxvii, 57 294, 603, 606, 603 xxviii, 19 325,360. &c. xxviii, 19, 20 ...21-48, 294, 585-634 Mark i, 4 i,'l5 viii, 35 220 viii, 39 220 viii, 39,44 253 ix, 27, 28 609 ix, 28 294 xiii, 5, &c 609 xiv, 1-3 609 xv,8 596 xvii, 21 219 xviii, 17 609 xix, 38 603 XX, 21-23 22 xxi, 5 177 3 xxi, 12 609 3 xxi, 15 175,310, &c. 580 ?xi, 24 596, 609 vii, 1-23 555 viii, 34-38 596, 599, 600 Acts i, 1 658 X, 13-16 162-175,298-31-1 i, 5 314-317 xi, 17 610, i, 13, 14 391 xvi,15,16 21-48, 189, 369,377, 1,15, 596 585, &c. ! i, 15, 16 609 INDEX OF SCEIPTUEES. 649 Actau 392 ii, 1^ 314-317 ii, 31-46 382 ii, 37-42 ..49-68/369, 400, 587, 621, &c. ii, 38 3,5,38,327,328, 524 ii, 39 261 ii, 42, 47 391 iii, 13, 26 431 iv, 24-31 315 iv, 25, 27, 30 431 V, 11 230 V, 14 294,606 vi, 1 596 vii, 2,3 182 vii, 19 558 vii, 38 231, &c. viii, 3, 12 558 viii, 12, 13 68-72, 323, 328, 333, 400 viii, 16 4 viii, 26-38 72,73 viii, 27 616 viii, 38 446 ix, 1 606 ix, 1-18 73-78, 369, &c. ix, 1,26 596,609 X, 1-48 79,80 X, 14 151 X, 20 619 X, 28 156,253 X, 44-46 315-317 xi, 26 ... 33, 293-297, 596, 606, 608, 609 xiii, 24 2 xiii, 24, 25 278 — xiii, 32, 33 61 xiii, 52 596, 609 xiv, 16 610 xiv, 19 616 — xiv,21 603,606-608 viv, 22 596,608 xiv, 23 608 XV 144, 145, 212, 291-297 XV, 10 291-297 XV, 27 619 xvi, 1 610 xvi, 3 559 xvi, 13-15 80-86,325 xvi, 20 616 xvi, 29-40 86-93 xvi, 31 189 xvii, 30 580 xviii, 4-8 93,94 xviii, 27 119 xix, 4 3, 94-96 xix, 30 609 XX, 7 609 XX, 12 431 XX, 29, 30 618 XX, 30 609 XX, 31 618 XX, 37, 38 618 xxi, 4 610 xxi, 5 558 xxi, 16 294 xxi, 20, 21 559 xxii, 1-16 73-78 — — xxiij 4 ,,,,, , 658 Acts xxii, 16 74,542,618,623 xxiv, 11 616 xxiv, 17 619 XXV, 13 619 xxvi, 20 580 Romans i, 16 188 ii, 14 612 ii, 28,29 220 ii, 29 194,253 iv 180 iv, 2 194 iv, 3, 9-22 191 iv, 11 197, &c., 263,268 iv, 12 187, 220 V, 14, 15, 20 180 vi, 1-6 ., 97-111 vi, 2-4 5, 316, 331, 370, 400 vi, 3 5 vi, 3, 4 4, 542 vi, 16 294 ix, 6 187, 205, &c. ix, 6-8 220 xi 181 xi, 16 145-147 xi, 17, 19, 24 180 xii, 1 286 xiii, 14 126-132 xiv, 1 69 XV, 25 619 1 Cor, i, 13-17 111-116 iv, 14 619 vi, 11 159,323,598,623 vii, 14.. .147-158, 181, 206, 236, 24.3, 560 vii, 19 253 vii, 34 154 vii, 39 178 -sdii, 13 556 X, 1, 2 116-119 X, 2 5 X, 17 391 xi, 2 555 xi, 16 555 xi, 28 387, 391 xii, 13 5,119,120,302 xiv, 23 306 XV, 29 120-122 XV, 58 619 xvi, 1 6 xvi, 15 111-116 2 Cor. V, 17 599 vi, 2 580 vi, 17 156,598 vii, 1 154,159 X, 4, 5 301 Gal. 'iii, 7 ; 192 iii, 8 190, 191, 205, &c: iii, 9 187 iii, 14 191, 192 iii, 15 582 iii, 15, 16 199 iii, 16 187, 191 650 INDEX OF SCEIPTURES. Gal. iii, 17 211, 216,Titu8 ii, 10 iii, 26, 27 5, 122-130, 323, 328 ii, 14 iii, 27 302,400,542,586 ui, 28 390.392 iii, 29 187,190 iv, 19 177 iv, 23-30 220 iv, 28 205 V, 6 353 Ephesians 1,22,23 187 ii, 1 296 ii, 8 119 ii, 12 227 iv, 5 131,132,353 iv, 11 420 iv, 30 263 V, 1 176 V, 5 156 V, 6 253 v,26 159 v,27 226 vi, 1, 4 176-179 vi, 5-8 179 vi, 17, 18 23, 617 vi, 18-21 617 .832 .159 iii, 5 159, 160, 302, 321, 473 Heb.i, 5 562 ii, 16 220 iii, 16-19 116 vi, 2 135-137 vii, 14 562 vii, 22 180 viii, 5 191 viii, 6 180 viii, 7-13 191, 233, 234 ix, 10 135,137 X, 1 191 X, 12, 13 616 X, 16, 17 234 x,22 160,161 xii, 14 580 xii, 23 236 xiii, 4 155 xiii, 13 619 Phil.iii,3 194 Col. ii, 11, 12 132-135, 194-196 ii, 12 321, 328, 400, 542 ii, 17 180 iii, 12,13 618 iii, 16 617 iii, 18 178 iii, 20 176-179 ui, 22, 23 179 iii, 23 619 IThess. iv,3-5 154, 155 2Tliess. ii, 15 555 .iii, 10 387 James i, 3 . ii, 9 . iu, 1. iv, 8. .619 .619 .619 .159 1 Pe.i,4 6 - i, 22 159 - ii, 2 175, &c. - iii, 20,21 137-142 - iii, 21 321,328,331,400 V, 2, 3 618 1 Tim. i, 4 , i, 12 . .243 .619 iv, 4,5 151-157 ■ iv, 12 294,606 v,22 446 vi, 13 332 vi, 20 618 2 Tim. ii, 23 619 iii, 14 619 iii, 15 177,431 2 Pe. ii, 5. - iii, 9. .619 .580 IJohni, 7, 9 159 ii, 1 177 ii,12 177 ii,13 177 iii, 7, 18 177 iv, 4 177 v,21 177 V, 10, 11 267 3 John 4 177 Jude 18-23 618, 619 Rev. i, 5 iii, 3 vii, 3 ... xi, 15 ... xvii, 23 ..159 ..343 ..263 ..180 ..610 COEKECTIONS AND ADDITIONS. I deeply regret that a few mistakes were overlooked till the whole or a portion of the sheets were worked off. The orthography of a few proper names, as Gieseler, Schleiermacher, and some others, is in some places incorrect. I have endeavoured to make all correct in the Index. The taking of so many extracts from authors read during the course of a somewhat lengthened preparation, has unhapjiily led to a repetition of the extract in two or three instances ; as in the case of Dr. Gieseler, pp. 10, 11, Bp. Burnet, pp. 26, 30, and Dr. Doddridge, pp. 126, 127. In two instances the initials of Dr. C. J. Vaughan are transposed. At p. 23, line 41, read — infants cannot he the subjects of discipleship, nor are they the rightful, &c. At p. 126, line 19, read — ^Rom. xiii, 14, for Eom. xiv, 13. At p. 234, line 17, read — right, for rite. At p. 282, line 14, if I had at the time seen an edition of the Prayer-Book which I have since seen, I should have written : In the Book of Common Prayer I read that, such as are of ripe years the godfathers and godmothers are to present, but I read not of any sponsorial promises. For infants and those not able to answer for themselves, there is the promising of, &o. At p. 379, line 31, add — " in it" to the words " previously born." At p. 442, line 13 from the bottom, read — Ante-Nioene. At p. 443, line 1, for " been established partly to assist," read — " eventually con- templated, along with the instruction of converts and inquirers, the aiding of." This alteration I make partly for perspicuity's sake, because I believe that the school at Alexandria, and similar ones, in their origin, in their first catechumens, embraced only professed converts and such as were inquiring the way of salvation, while their subsequent condition was an expansion of the first and simple arrangement for instructing new converts and earnest inquirers previous to their baptism. Also in line 40, read — Poeda. for Pcedo. At p. 478, line 5 from the bottom, read — " Cong. Lee, vol. xv," before " pp. 78, 79." At p. 576, line 27, last word, read—" to" for " on." I might have made some pages of Additions on account of seeing repeatedly that which I had not before observed ; as, on John's baptism, Mr. Cobbin says that he "baptized the people with water, calling them to repentance, and making baptism their outward profession of it" (Ev. Syn., on Matt, iii, 11). Prof. Farrar says that it " was a declaration of repentance and renunciation of sin, and a profession of faith in the immediate revelation of the Messiah, and of trust in Him to take away sin" (Bib. and Theol, Die, Art. John the Bap.). But I forbear to proceed thus through tho work. BY THE SAME AUTHOR. HAND-BOOK ON CHRISTIAN BAPTISM. Demy 8vo, 624 pages, price 7s,6d. ABRIDGED HAND-BOOK ON CHRISTIAN BAPTISM. Price 6d. THE THEOLOGY OF THE COMMISSION ON THE SUBJECTS OF CHRISTIAN BAPTISM. Price ls.6d. AN APPEAL TO THE FRIENDS ON CHRISTIAN BAPTISM. Price ls.3d. LONDON : ELLIOT STOCK, PATEENOSTER ROW. ( '>!>-* hi '