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"You think

who, as Bunyan says, may not see it their duty to jump with them." A candid Baptist friend once said to me, "It would not do for us to admit infant baptism." "Why?" said I. His reply was, “ We would be like farmers who cut off their corn while it is young." "Thank you for your candour," was my reply. that if all the children were baptized in infancy, there would be no corn gathered into the Baptist garner in adult age." I have often wondered why the baptism of children should so disturb our "differing brethren." But I perceive, in Mr. B.'s Sermon, p. 26, a little light on this point: he says, "It is a positive evil." Why so? Look, reader, lower down on the same page, and you will see. Because by it "thousands who are brought to the knowledge of the truth" are led to refuse "believers' baptism." This, to be sure, is a sore evil; but, happily, not so much to the convert as to those who would proselyte him, by teazing him about "believers' baptism." A man goes on in sin, his baptized neighbour never reproves him or talks seriously to him about the "salvation" of his precious soul; he goes to a Pedobaptist meeting; is awakened and converted to Godreturns home-soon has a visit from his neighbour. He wonders what has brought his friend so early to see him.

Neighbour. I wish to have a little conversation with you.

Convert. Certainly.

Neighbour. I was pleased to hear that you

have "found grace" at the

you to tell me your experience.

meeting; I wish

The convert proceeds to detail his experience. Neighbour. "Very good;" "a gospel experi.99 66 very much like my own ;” now all you

rience,"

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want is one thing."

Convert. Pray, neighbour, what is that? I am happy in God; "believing, I rejoice with joy unspeakable." I am not conscious of wanting any thing but "more grace." What do you mean?

Neighbour. Why-why-the "Master says," "Believe and be baptized."

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Convert. O, is that what you mean? On that subject I have no concern. I was baptized in infancy; and I now have the thing signified, i. e., "the renewing of the Holy Ghost,❞—just as the Jewish children received the seal of the covenant in childhood, and at adult age became "circumcised in heart."

Neighbour. Well, but you must obey the "commandment."

Convert. Neighbour, my parents were Christians, and you cannot show me a commandment, or a precedent, for baptizing the children of Christian parents at adult age. And moreover, I cannot join a church whose confession of faith I do not believe; and I could not receive believers' baptism, if I wished it, without joining your church.

I cannot find those words in this form in the New Testament. They remind me of the old coloured man's text-"The Lord says, Be baptized in much water."

Neighbour. Why, friend, as for the confession of faith, you need not mind that, for one of our elders said, "He would not give the confession of faith room in his saddle-bags." And again, we hold nearly the same doctrines those do among whom you found the Lord; as you may find from our preaching. We may differ a little about falling from grace; but that is not much, you know."

Convert. Well, friend, I cannot judge so much what men believe in our day from their preaching as from their confessions of faith.

Neighbour. I wish you well, neighbour. Fare

well.

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Convert. I wish you the same; for I trust, as St. Paul says, we have been both baptized by one Spirit into Christ.”

They part, and he who would have " compassed sea and land" to make a proselyte of his neighbour, says, as he walks mournfully home, filled with disappointment and chagrin, "IT IS A POSITIVE EVIL" that my neighbour was baptized in infancy.

We have seen, candid reader, in the course of this argument,

1. God has but one church, and never had more. Christ was the angel that was with the church" in the wilderness, and they tempted Christ," 1 Cor. x, 9.

2. In that church, the right of infants to membership was admitted for two thousand years. 3. That right never was done away by any "statute of repeal.”

4. The only two general covenants that God ever made with man, he made with Adam in the garden of Eden,*—THE COVENANT OF WORKS, which was broken; and the COVENANT OF GRACE IN CHRIST.

5. This covenant of GRACE was the same that was confirmed to Abraham, (four hundred and thirty years before the giving of the law,) of which circumcision was then made the seal and sign.

6. This covenant recognised the right of children to membership, and admitted them to the sign of the covenant.

7. This covenant was fully developed under the gospel dispensation, when Christ became visibly "the minister of the covenant."

8. Under the gospel, the children of the Jews were not rejected, because none were broken off. from "the true olive," except for "unbelief," of which Jewish infants were incapable.

9. Christ encouraged the reception of children in his name, and blessed them; and put no clause in the commission of the apostles, to change the order which had existed, with regard to children, for thousands of years.

10. They all, being Jews, would so under stand the commission as to admit the children, unless forbidden so to do.

11. The baptism of families was practised in the days of the apostles, and it is unreason

*I am happy to find this view borne out by the old Philadelphia Baptist Confession of Faith, printed by Benjamin Franklin in 1742, pp. 72–74.

able to suppose there were no infants among them.

12. The church practised it for at least twelve hundred years without opposition, except from Tertullian and the Petrobrusians; who opposed it on different grounds from those on which our Baptist friends oppose it.

13. If it had been an innovation upon "gospel order," or a departure from the "original pattern," some Baptist, surely, would have raised his voice against it, in twelve centuries.

An innovation of the kind could not have been introduced without a spirited controversy; the existence of which controversy no Baptist has ever been able to show.

14. And finally, that the Waldenses, those opposers of the corruptions of the Romish Church, were generally Pedobaptists.

In concluding this part of the general argument, we say, He who takes the Baptist view of this subject has to suppose, on the contrary, that when the gospel dispensation was opened, a dispensation of larger promises and increased privileges and liberality, the right of infants to membership was taken away; and that this took place without one hint or reason being given for it; without any single mention of it in the apostolic writings. Nay, that instead of such notice and explanation, a mode of expression was adopted under the "new economy," similar to that used before; calculated to convey the idea that parents and children stood in their old relation, notwithstanding the supposed painful

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