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any dispensation, regarded or called "dedication." Neither dedicate nor dedication, though often occurring in the Bible, is once found in the sacred scriptures applied to persons, but always to things. Can parents dedicate their children to the Lord? In what way? By what authority?

The dedication of children as soon as born, is of equal authority with the Roman custom of making saints of very great sinners so soon after their death as their faults are forgotten, Can the ceremony of giving a name to a child change its position to God, his church, or the human race? And if so, by what authority?

"We are bound," says the Doctor, "to bring our infant seed in the arms of faith and love, and present them before the Lord, in that ordinance which is at once a seal of God's covenant with his people."*

If infant baptism or affusion be a seal of a covenant, where is it so stated, and what is the covenant into which children enter, and what does baptism seal to them? These are questions which Dr. Miller, I am sure, never can answer with any rational or scriptural authority. God affixes no seal to blank covenants, nor to any covenant he does not make good. What do the infant seed of Pedobaptists show or possess of covenanted mercies not enjoyed by others?

But the Doctor says, "We have no doubt that the visible church" [who ever saw an invisible church?] "is made up not only of those who personally profess the true religion, but also of their children.”+ His reasons for this faith are-1st. "Because in all Jehovah's covenants with his professing people, from the earliest ages and states of society, their infant seed have been included." Page 15.

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Query-Are they born into it, or circumcised into it, or baptized into it? If they are born into it, then natural birth is the door into both the church and the world. They enter both at once. But if circumcision was the door, or baptism the door, then Adam, Abel, Enoch, Noah, Melchisedec, nor any saint, for two thousand and eighty-three years, ever got into the church. The Doctor's hypothesis is a lusus naturæ, or a lusus mentis, or a rank delusion. cumcision was the door into the church, or it was not. If the door into the church, then no one entered it for two thousand and eightythree years. If it was not, then baptism being, according to the Doctor, its substitute, is not the door. The Doctor's logic or theology must fail, or, perhaps, both, to extricate him out of this dilemma. The covenants made with Adam, Noah, and one of those made * Page 15. + Page 15.

with Abraham, had respect to their whole seed, good and bad. But no such covenant could, by any possibility, be an ecclesiastic one. Because an ecclesiastic covenant, as the term imports, respects those selected, or called out, and a covenant that takes all a man's seed, as did that with Adam, Noah, and the covenant of circumcision made with Abraham twenty-four years after the "covenant concerning Christ," never could be a church covenant. Hence the facts of the Bible, and its technical terms, alike with common sense, excommunicate the Doctor's reasonings beyond the pale of reason and philosophy.

But there is another radical aberration in the Doctor's mind, as it appears to me, on the subject of "covenants made with professing people." If the covenant be made with professsing people as such, then, they can have no issue, no covenanted issue I mean, but a professing issue. Hence the covenant with Abraham concerning his spiritual seed-a covenant made with him as a spiritual and not as a natural father, twenty-four years before the covenant in the flesh, recognizes no children but those of faith: so Paul taught me to reason when he said "If you be Christ's," you Jews or Gentiles, "THEN are you Abraham's seed, and heirs according to the covenant," alias, promise. This settles the matter, as it appears to me, till the day of judgment. Now, unless Dr. Miller can show that whether Christ's or not, Jews are the seed of Abraham according to the covenant before confirmed, (eis Christon,) in reference to Christ, then he must acknowledge that this his fundamental hypothesis is but a brilliant fancy, a splendid sophism playing round the galleries of the imagination, but entering not into the sanctuary of reason and sacred truth.

The 2nd reason assigned in proof that the visible church is made up of professors and their fleshly offspring, is-"The close and endearing connection between parents and children,”—“a strong argument in favor of the church membership of the infant seed of believers."-"Can it be, my dear friends," says the Doctor, in arguing this case, "that when the stem is in the church, the branch is out of it!" If this be not carnalizing the church of Christ, I ask what would constitute that offence against him who said-"Unless a man be born again," "born of water and of Spirit," "born from above," he cannot enter into the kingdom of God. "If any man be in Christ he is a new creature." If the stem be in the church, that is the flesh of the parents, then the branch from the flesh must also be in it. But if the stem be the spirit or new man, then the branch cannot be the flesh of the child, but its spirit. Can any one imagine a greater confusion of ideas in the mind of a learned sage, than ap

pears in such reasonings. It is the perversity of a fallacious and unscriptural system that compels a literary gentleman, a learned father in the Presbyterial Israel, to speak such incongruous things.Again, if "the close and endearing connection" between parents and children be a strong argument that infants should be baptized and brought in through natural affection for them; would it not be quite as good logic to argue as follows-"The close and endearing connection" between husband and wife, being one flesh, "is a strong argument in favor of the church membership of the wife of a Christian husband." And in the same bold style of proof we would askCan it be, my dear friends, that when the head is in the church the body should be out of it? And is not "the husband the head over his wife as Christ is the head of the church." If Mr. Miller's 2nd argument be a sound one, it will behoove that owing to the "close and endearing connection between husbands and wives, that when the husband or the wife is in the church, the other party ought to be a church member also. If Mr. Miller repudiates this view, he repudiates his own reasoning.

In the present essay we have not space to respond to the other reasons which Dr. Miller alleges in proof of his favorite dogma.— We must reserve the remainder of them for another tract. The elaborate researches and efforts on the part of those learned advocates of this ancient tradition, furnish very strong arguments against their position. They affirm in all their standards, that "baptism is an ordinance of the New Testament and ordained by Jesus Christ" himself. Why, then, in the face of this very just and correct annunciation of their faith, go to Moses and Abraham to find a foundation for an ordinance of Jesus Christ? Are solemn Christian ordinances to be established by remote abstract and philosophical reasonings, instead of positive precepts? Positive institutions require positive enactments, and cannot be established by mere inferential reasonings. This is an oracle as ancient as those of sacrifice, the altar, and the priest. Could any one have introduced circumcision by inferential reasoning, or change circumcision from blood to water, from cutting the flesh to wetting the face? He that believes this will not find it difficult to believe in transubstantiation or any other metamorphosis of Patriarchal, Jewish, or Christian institutions. A. C.

REFORMATION.-No. VI.

In the view of the present overture for reformation, the great errors of Protestant parties have been, 1st, that in their zeal for doctrinal truth, they have, in their confessions, gone too much into detail; and 2dly, that they have insensibly engrafted mere matters of opinion into these formularies of belief. The first error is a violation of the just liberty of private judgment, being an unauthorized prescription and dictation in matters not essential to a saving faith. The second error is directly incompatible with the other great truth, that there should be one evangelical or gospel faith. It is to these departures from the two great truths of Protestantism, which, in their just relations with each other, can alone secure unity, by reconciling law with liberty, and faith with opinion, that we may refer the discord and dissension that have prevailed.

No just distinction whatever would seem to have been drawn by the religious world between fact and theory; faith and opinion; doctrine and speculation; law and expediency. And they would appear to have been, until recently, ignorant of the truth, that men never will agree except in generals. Each party has been constantly seeking to induce an exact conformity to the minute peculiarities of its own creed, and no one has been willing to regard these as secondary to the great truths of Christianity. But it is a vain attempt, as experience has fully shown, to endeavor to effect a perfect agreement among men in matters of opinion, or even in those minutiae of Christian doctrine with which reason has often as much to do as faith.There may be unity in regard to the simple gospel facts; to the grand fundamental truth of Christianity; to the divinely appointed means of salvation; to the one great object of worship; to the one source of spiritual light and truth; to the one cementing principle of mutual love which pervades and animates the body of Christ. But how preposterous it is to expect uniformity of opinion in a world like this, where the minds of men are as diverse as the leaves of the forest!—a world in which no two states can have the same political government; no two families the same regulations; no two individuals the same tastes and habits!

And how undesirable such an uniformity if it could be even effected! How evident it is, that the infinite diversity of nature every where around us, is the very source of beauty and delight! It is by the opposition of things which have yet some common points of SERIES III.-VOL. V.

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agreement; by those charming contrasts constantly held in subjection to one pervading principle, that variety is reconciled with order, and diversity with unity. There could, indeed, be no beauty in nature without these endless diversities; and nature, in this respect, is but a type of human society, whether political or religious. Both have proceeded from God, and both possess the same characteristics. As well might we desire to have but a single note in music, as one opinion in religion. As well might we desire to see the whole earth, and the heavens, clothed in drab, as to have every one to conform to the sentiments of any single party in Christendom. Where would be, then, the free comparison of sentiment, and the delightful interchange of thought? Where the charm of new discovery, and the progressive enlargement of mind? Where the doubt, that, betraying the weakness of human judgment, represses intellectual pride; and where the mutual forbearance which strengthens mutual love? He who has ordained that no two human faces shall be perfectly alike, and that their features shall yet agree in general character, has also instituted that diversity of mind which admits, in the same manner, of an essential unity. These differences must in both cases be permitted; for we might as well try to make all faces alike, as all minds alike. They are also, in both cases, equally desirable, as the source of pleasing contrasts and varied harmonies, and as both the means, and the occasion of the development of human nature in all its varied relations.

But while we thus dwell upon the importance of the great truth that there must be allowed in religion a just liberty of opinion, let no one suppose that we use the word opinion in the confused and improper sense in which it is so often employed in religious discussions; or that we would, in any respect, compromise or undervalue the true faith of the gospel. It is just as necessary that we should have an immoveable basis of thought, as that we should have liberty to think. It is as essential to unity that there should be a universal faith, as it is to diversity that there should be an individual opinion. The other great truth is, therefore, that the Christian community should be united together by a common belief, which shall fully embrace the gospel, and secure a just conformity to the divine will.

To adopt this truth alone, and prescribe a formula of faith to men, while interdicting at the same time all liberty of thought, would be regarded as arbitrary dictation. To admit, on the other hand, an unlimited freedom in matters of religion, would be latitudinarianism. It is a nice matter to adjust the relations of these two

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