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mediate descent or adoption, infants included? But if the system of the Baptists is Scriptural, and infants are not to be baptized, then the inspired penmen have used a word calculated to deceive both Jews and Greeks. This is not to be admitted!!

We shall now adduce a few other texts, from the New Testament, on this point.

In the Acts of the Apostles, where we find what Mr. Booth and Baptist writers generally call "the law of baptism" carried out in the practice of the apostles, the word Oikos occurs twenty-three times, and is always the word used where families are spoken of as having been baptized. Chap. xi, 12-14, the angel said to Cornelius, "Call for Simon, whose surname is Peter, who shall tell thee words whereby thou, and all thy house, (oikos,) shall be saved." See Acts xvi, 15, 31, 34. And in the eighteenth chapter it is used in a way calculated to show that Luke did not consider it as much like

OLKLα as the " English word brothers" is like "brethren." Seventh and eighth verses, "And he departed thence, and entered into a certain man's house (oikia) named Justus, one that worshipped God, whose house (oikia) joined hard to the synagogue." And when he speaks in the next verse of a family, he drops the word which he had used twice in the seventh verse, and adopts the word which is used in all the cases where family baptism is spoken of. "And Crispus, the chief ruler of the synagogue, believed on the Lord, with all his house (oikos :)

and many of the Corinthians hearing, believed and were baptized." In Heb. xi, 7, it is said that "Noah prepared an ark to the saving of his house," (okos.) We know that Noah and his family only are meant in this passage.

Having already consumed more time on these words than I could well spare to a single point in the controversy, I must bring this part of the general argument to a close. My only apology to the reader, for having said so much on it, is found in the confident air with which Mr. B. denounced this criticism of my "editor," as he calls him. I cannot do better than close this article in the words of Mr. Taylor: "The natural import of the term oikos, family, includes children of all ages. In proof I offer you fifty examples; if fifty are not sufficient, I offer a hundred; if a hundred is not sufficient, two hundred; if two hundred are not sufficient, four hundred. I affirm that oLKOÇ VERY OFTEN expresses the presence of infants. Of this I offer you fifty examples, and if you admit classical instances, fifty more. I tell you also, that somewhat more than three hundred instances have been examined, and have proved perfectly satisfactory."-Concluding Facts, &c., pp. 13, 14.

The intelligent reader can now judge whether I have built upon mere presumption," as Mr. B. says I have, (in maintaining "infant baptism" from the cases of household or family baptism recorded in the oracles of God,) or whether I have built upon the solid foundation of immutable truth and incontrovertible facts. To all, to every

candid parent in the land, I would address myYour" children's "advocate must

self, and say, be yours."

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Before I proceed to the review of Mr. B.'s letters relative to the "mode of baptism," allow me a remark upon the closing paragraph of his eleventh letter. He says, "I will not sum up what I have written, lest you should think of my summary as I do of yours." This is in keeping with his first reason, for not being willing to engage in an oral discussion with me. If he had summed up what he had said in his letters, his readers could have seen more easily how small a portion of my argument he had even attempted to answer. But I forget myself when I talk about arguments for Pedobaptist views. Mr. B. says, "there are none in the wide compass of creation." But our readers will not

believe this. They will give the word of God its plain, unsophisticated meaning, when their sight is not obscured by the dust raised by those who "darken counsel." And knowing, as the public do, that the term children means infants as well as larger children; and knowing also, that in any given district of country a majority of families have infants or young children in them, they naturally conclude that there must have been infants in some of those families baptized by the apostles.

We shall now proceed to notice some things in the remaining ten letters, in which Mr. B. notices the "MODE OF BAPTISM."

He begins, on page 51, with the same fancy

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(which we replied to in the former argument) about the distinction between moral and positive institutions, and the explicit and "minutely defined" directions for the observance of the latter. He says, "To me it is most obvious that a positive institution must be minutely defined by the lawgiver, and obeyed to the very letter by the subject, or else it can be of no service whatever." Observe, reader! "minutely defined." He refers to Leviticus xiv, where the ceremony of cleansing a leper is detailed. Why did he not quote a little more of the ceremony than the dipping of the finger of the priest" in the oil? If he had, the reader would have seen a case corroborating our views of the mode of baptism. For, although the leprous man washed his clothes and his person in water before he was presented at the door of the tabernacle of the congregation, yet this he did himself in private; but when THE PRIEST, the minister of God, went to perform the purification, or cleansing of the leper, both the BLOOD and OIL WERE SPRINKLED, and in the same manner was a leprous house to be cleansed. See verses 6-9, 11, 16, 19, 51.

As I had asked for "detailed, explicit directions about the manner of performing the positive institutes" of circumcision and the Lord's supper, Mr. B. seems to feel bound to give them, and sets himself at work to furnish the explicit directions in both those cases. On the institute of circumcision, he says, "Read Gen. xvii, 11. I hope you will not suppose that any thing would

have passed for circumcision, except what is there required." I wish Mr. B. had more frequently given the words of the passages he refers to, and this he might have done (by leaving out some of his many complaints) without increasing the number of pages in his reply. Then his letters would have had in them fewer of the words of man, and more of the words of God. This by the way. As he did not give the reader the words of the law of circumcision, I shall have to do it; here they are: "And ye shall circumcise the flesh of your foreskin; and it shall be a token of the covenant betwixt me and you." Here are what he calls "explicit directions," a "minutely defined," positive institute. Does the reader see any explicitness in the directions? Do they say who is to perform the rite? Perhaps Mr. B. will say the father was to be priest in the case. Very good. Then none other was qualified to perform it, for he says, "the law must be obeyed to the very letter;" but then this will be opposed to the facts. For although Abraham performed the rite for Ishmael and the men of his house, verse 23, yet it is evident from verse 24 that he was not the operator in his own case. It is again far more evident, from Exod. iv, 25, and Luke i, 59, that neither Moses nor Zacharias performed the rite upon their sons, although the fathers were present in each case. I suppose, candid reader, you will hardly receive views that contradict facts. So it seems this law does not "minutely define" who was to be the operator in keeping

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