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To me it seems that a small part of the evidence which has been adduced, ought to convince any one of the truth of the proposition, that Abraham and his seed were divinely constituted a visible church of God. They have been shewn to have the oracles and ordinances of a visible church, the members and officers of a visible church, with the constitution and the express, inspired, and unequivocal name of a church. Under this last point, they have been shewn to have the worship of an ecclesiastical body, such as sacrifices and festivals, prayer and praise, reading, expounding and preaching, together with ecclesiastical implements and places for worship, such as the altar and pulpit, the tabernacle and temple, which latter is called, in the Old and New Testament, the house of prayer. Under this point, it was proved, moreover, that they had the discipline of a church, in respect of preclusion and exclusion, and that the scriptures attributed to them the character and condition of a visible church. The existence, therefore, of the Patriarchal or Old Testament church, is as certain as the existence of the Christian or New Testament church. And some of you are ready to say that if my remaining propositions are as irrefragably proved as this first one, then the conclusion in favour of infant-baptism is inevitable. We proceed then to

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PROPOSITION II.

THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH IS A BRANCH OF THE ABRAHAMIC CHURCH: OR, IN OTHER WORDS, THE JEWISH SOCIETY BEFORE CHRIST, AND THE CHRISTIAN SOCIETY AFTER CHRIST,

ARE ONE AND THE SAME CHURCH IN DIFFERENT ADMINISTRATIONS.

You will be at no loss to account for my calling the Christian church a branch of the Abrahamic, when you remember that this is the figure used by Paul on the same subject. The Jews he considers the natural branches which are now cut off, and the Gentiles he treats as foreign branches engrafted in their place. (a) As our proposition is scriptural, both in phraseology and doctrine, my Opponent, for the want of argument, falls into a rhetorical ecstacy, about the inferiority of a branch to the stock, and the consequent inferiority of the Christian to the Jewish church, if my language be correct. On this ground he says that I can "be put to silence by 66 every stripling who could ask the following question ; "Is not a branch inferior to the stem or trunk from "which it grows?"(b) I suppose my Opponent's strippling would hardly deny that the superiority of a branch to the trunk into which it is inserted, is the very reason why engrafting is generally practised. But the scriptures say, "behold the man whose name is The "BRANCH." "Behold I will raise unto David a right"""eous BRANCH." "And there shall come forth a rod "out of the stem of Jesse, and a BRANCH shall grow out

Rom. xi. 16—24.

(8) Mr. Campbell's Spurious Debate with me, p. 134.

"of his roots."(c) These passages evidently represent Immanuel as a branch of the stock of David, and David as a branch of the stem of Jesse. Now I will let my Opponent or his stripling say, whether Messiah the Branch was not greater than the stock of David, and whether David the branch was not greater than the stem of Jesse.

The proposition in hand is sufficiently guarded in respect of the sameness of the Jewish and Christian societies. It says nothing more than that they are the same church; and nothing more than ecclesiastical identity is intended. You know that that lofty tree has not changed its identity since it was a plant of a foot high. Each of my hearers believes that he has, at this moment, the same body with which he was born. The constant mutation of its constituent particles never makes you doubt your personal identity. The adjacent town of Washington(d) is governed by the same board of Trustees from its foundation to the present day, although, perhaps, not one individual remains of those who origiginally composed it. When the Baptist church claims. the Petrobrussian church, and the Waldensian church, and the Primitive church as belonging to their church, they must mean nothing more than that ecclesiastical identity which we say subsists between the Jewish and Christian societies. The change of administration can hardly make a greater difference between these, than the change of condition makes between the church militant and the church triumphant, which are nevertheless

(c) Zech. vi. 12. Jer. xxiii. 5. Is. xi. 1.

(d) The first two days of the debate were in a forest near the town.

the same church in different states; my Opponent to the contrary notwithstanding.(e) ̧

This view of ecclesiastical sameness, my Opponent considers" as absurd as to say, that the human body and the soul are one and the same thing," as if there were no difference between "flesh and spirit."(f) As the human soul and body, though distinct beings, do really form one person, they would afford a good illustration, if they did not exist simultaneously, but in succession, as do the Jewish and Christian churches. My Opponent's sophism concerning the supposed identity of a horse and an elephant, because they are both creatures ;(g) or, (if he would prefer it,) the identity of a quibbler, and a monkey, because they are both empty chatterers, would answer very well, provided he will first establish the doctrine of metempsychosis, a doctrine fully as correct as some which he holds at present.

On this subject the Appendix to my Opponent's spurious Debate with Mr. Walker(h) has several questions which it is convenient to answer.

"1. Are not a constitution, laws, ordinances, sub66 'jects, and privileges, the chief constituents of a

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The visible church is a visible society, acting as the consecrated depository of the oracles and ordinances of revealed religion.

2. Was the constitution that erected the Jewish "nation into a national church, the same as the New "Testament, or constitution of the Christian Church ?"

(e) Spur. Deb. with me. p. 198. g) Spur, Deb. with me. p. 83.

(f) Spur. Deb. with me. p. 155. (h) p. 195.

The Abrahamic covenant is the constitution of the visible church under the Jewish and Christian administrations.

"3. Were the laws that regulated the worship, "discipline, political economy, judicial proceedings, "and common intercourse of the Jews, the same as "those under which the disciples of Christ act ?"

It has been ably proved by Pedobaptists, and is maintained by Dr. Gill, the greatest Baptist that ever lived, that the political economy of the Jews was distinct from their ecclesiastical economy. But, in the present case, the one serves as a very convenient illustration of the other. As the national identity of Israel was not destroyed by the change of their government from judges to kings, so the ecclesiastical identity of God's people is not destroyed by the transfer of their privileges from Jews to Gentiles. After this transfer, the Baptists themselves must confess that the government of the church-general underwent many alterations, while the body remained the

same.

If I mistake not, the Baptists generally believe in opposition to us, that the government of the Apostolical churches was an Independent Congregationalism. This they probably admit gave place to a confederated parochial Episcopacy, or what is now called Presbyterianism, as early as the days of Ignatius and Polycarp.. And they cannot deny that Dioscesan Episcopacy, or full-blooded Prelacy, was the government of the same church, in the days of Cyprian and Augustine. Neither can they deny, that, at present, there is a great variety of laws and modes of discipline, in the various branches of the Baptist church, which in their view, do not

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