opposed to all reasonings of this kind, and is an eternal barrier to such encroachments, if men who call themselves christians would only bow to his authority; yet clergy and laity in the National church, and ministers and people amongst the dissenters, run away with the notion, that infant baptism is a scriptural ordinance, whilst the slightest inquiry would prove it to be an invention of men. We have hardly opened the gospels, before we reach a passage that at once sets a seal of reprobation on all claims to favour on the ground of Hereditary religion. We have John the Baptist, in his own stern and uncompromising language, crying aloud, "think not to say within yourselves, we have Abraham to our father-every tree which bringeth not forth good fruit is hewn down, and cast into the fire." What is this but describing the New dispensation as standing on quite different ground from the Old? Not on pedigree, but on performance; not on being born a Jew, but on bringing forth fruits meet for repentance. And we find no passage elsewhere that either qualifies or contradicts this statement. It is the same as if John had said, Religion is now more than ever a personal, rather than a National thing; individual piety must form the ground of acceptance. And both our Lord and his Apostles, in order to remove this propensity to trust in the merits of their forefathers, repeatedly assured the Jews, that if they looked back to that quarter as a means of favour, they sadly miscalculated:-"Your fathers killed the prophets, and ye are their children; fill ye up then the measure of your fathers; which of the prophets have not your fathers persecuted and they have slain them who shewed before of the coming of the Just One." So that if the Jew had anything to expect in a hereditary way, it was rather wrath and indignation, than approval or acceptance. Even John's baptism was a baptism of repentance, consequently one in which infants could have no share: infants are wholly incapable of repentance, therefore John could not have received them, nor do we find any who presented them. Blind as the Jews were in many things, they were too rational to bring infants to John's baptism. And when little children were brought to Jesus Christ, we are expressly informed it was not to be baptized, (for Jesus himself baptized none,) but that he might bless them; and bless them he did, with all the condescension of a Saviour.

Should any one say, that infants may have faith, who can tell? We answer, how can faith subsist without knowledge, and when do infants display this knowledge? Is there any knowledge but what is communicated? have they faith intuitively? where is the instance? Till these questions are answered, all such suppositions are idle. If God cannot save infants without faith, then it is a pity they have it not; but who affirms this? do the Scriptures say so? nowhere. God does not save adults without faith, that is clearly asserted, because they are capable of it; but it is never said he deals so with infants. Away then with all those weak and foolish fears, as to the danger of infants dying without baptism: as baptism alone cannot save them, so neither does the want of it procure their condemnation. It would be strange if it did. God deals with his creatures rationally, and not in the way our superstitious notions would suggest; and as infant sprinkling does not secure a child's salvation, so neither does it secure a child's holiness. In fact, it secures nothing, except a blind or a wilful disobedience to a divine command. "Go ye therefore, and teach all nations, baptizing them," says the Saviour, and therefore you go and baptize an unteachable child. If baptized infants, the moment they ceased to be infants, and began to speak, spoke only in the language of prayer and faith, and if ever after, during their whole lives, they adorned the doctrine of God their Saviour, it would be something for the argument. But do baptized infants do this, and if they did, should we attribute it to their baptism, and to that only? In that case it would appear as if baptism wrought in the manner of a charm, or that there was something miraculous in it. But we need not argue on a case that

never occurs.

certain persons Yes, of certain Besides, what is

Some say it is affirmed in Scripture of that they were sanctified from the womb. persons, but not of infants in general. meant by sanctified ?" not surely, made holy, for this would be absurd as applied to infants; the word means set apart to the service of God by divine purpose or intention, and that is true of a few, such as Jeremiah, and others. But those whom John baptized confessed their sins. Do infants confess? can they? No: and hence the clumsy contrivance of sponsors or godfathers to do it for them. Of which order of persons we have not a single word in the New Testament, though you will see enough

in the ritual of the church of England. And as to the Independents and Methodists, we suppose they are ashamed of that awkward machinery, and therefore they do not use it. No one mode of baptism will serve for another; we must either have the Scriptural mode or none. It is a presumptuous thing to substitute man's inventions for Christ's injunctions. The ceremonial baptisms of the Jews could not serve for John's baptism, and John's baptism could not serve for Christ's; so in regard to the subject, infant baptism will not serve for believers' baptism. Christ's commission enjoins disciples, and none others, to be baptized, and infants are not disciples; it enjoins believers to be baptized, and infants are not believers. The specification of women in Acts viii. 12, and the silence respecting infants in the same passage are very significant, when coupled together. Why particularize women, and at the same time omit all mention of infants? Here was the finest opportunity in the world to set the whole question at rest by the addition of a single word, yet the Holy Spirit adds it not, the sacred writer inserts it not; why? because the thing would have opposed the commission, and have been absurd in itself.

But the advocates for infant sprinkling say, surely the households of Lydia, the jailor, and others contained infants. How do they know that? where is the proof? there are many families that contain no infants. Walk through a street, enter every house, in how many will you find not a single infant. Before you can reason on a fact, you must prove the fact; but that you can never do in this case, and for a plain reason, the Scriptures are silent, and the silence of Scripture is a true silence, from which nothing on either side of a question can be inferred. But though the Scriptures say nothing of these households as containing infants, and therefore no one can prove their presence, yet by reference to other passages, it is not difficult to prove their absence, for characters or actions are applied to those households as such, which shew that they could not include infants. Indeed, even in common life, how usual it is to say that such a friend. and his family dined with me yesterday, never meaning, of course, the infants in the family. Supposing then, that such were the language used here, and that infants might belong to these households, after all, it signifies nothing, for the commission shuts them out from baptism, and therefore they could not be baptized. Let us always

observe the limitations which common sense requires in forms of speech, and we shall never be at a loss to define them justly. There is, in fact, no recorded instance of infant baptism in the New Testament; and had it been the regular practice in the Apostles times, it surely would have been mentioned somewhere, even were it incidentally, but neither incidentally nor by implication can we trace any such thing. When Paul says, " Children obey your parents in the Lord," who does not see that he cannot mean infants, to whom such an admonition would be addressed in vain, but those junior members of the christian church, who were capable of reflection, and who might require to be reminded that the law of Christ by no means exempts any from the performance of filial or other relative duties. Some stress has been laid on that passage which says, "Else were your children unclean, but now are they holy," but absurdly, since the use of the term unclean, as opposed to holy, plainly proves that it is not gospel holiness that is here meant, but ceremonial sanctification; in other words, the holiness that arises from a lawfully constituted marriage, that is, legitimacy. Nor is there a syllable said about baptism in the whole

context.

It has been supposed that baptism and the Lord's Supper came in the room of circumcision and the passover, but erroneously. The Lord's Supper did not come in the room of the passover, but Christ himself did, "Christ, our passover, was sacrificed for us." Baptism did not come in the room of circumcision, for it came in before circumcision was abolished. That which came in the room of the outward circumcision, was the circumcision "made without hands;" in other words, the circumcision in heart, came in the room of the circumcision of Moses. Christian ordinances do not come in the room of Jewish ordinances, otherwise every Jewish ordinance must have had its substitute as well as these two, but we read or hear of no such thing.

Our opponents will say, if the children of believers are not baptized, then the privileges of the Jewish church were greater than those of the christian. To which we answer, circumcision was an observance, but it was no privilege: baptism also is a duty, and a solemn one, but we should not think of applying the term privilege to it. It is a privilege to be a child of God, it is a duty to act as a child of God ought. But we might as well complain

that christians have no earthly Canaan; no sabbatic year; no jubilee. Let it be remembered too, that whether it was a privilege or not, males only were subjected to circumcision, and the penalty of omitting it was death, while baptism is plainly intended for both sexes, and is a public act of submission to the Redeemer, who died for us.

It will naturally be enquired, How then did infant baptism originate, if there be neither precept nor example in Scripture to warrant it? To this we reply, that it is enough if Scripture gives no countenance to the practice; we need enquire no further; we are not bound to wade through the dark and stagnant pools of antiquity in search of it. But the probable origin appears to be this; An erroneous opinion arose in or before Austin's time, that unbaptized children were liable to everlasting punishment. An opinion like this gaining ground would be very likely to alarm the minds of ignorant and superstitious parents, who would earnestly solicit that their children might receive so valuable a rite, so essential, as they supposed, to their future safety. Let it be observed, that Austin lived about the beginning of the fifth century, by which time many corruptions and false doctrines had crept into the church.

Those who go by rubrics and traditions, must conform to whatever their ecclesiastical rulers ordain; but those who make the Bible their only rule of faith and practice, will always know the rule of their obedience. Traditions, Councils, and Fathers, are of no authority with such.

At this day, when members of the Roman communion are reproached with following the doctrines of men, they usually retort by saying," What better are you who practice infant sprinkling ?" That National churches should frame to themselves ceremonies to suit their own carnal ideas, is not surprising; but that the Independents and Methodists should, without a shadow of Scripture authority, despise this ancient commandment of the Lord, and hold it in derision, thus provoking the Lord to jealousy, is equally strange and lamentable. While they thus continue boldly to violate a plain injunction of Christ, the National church may well claim them as holding kindred views, although they differ about church government in some particulars. Hereditary religion, and Hereditary privileges, can never be in accordance with christianity, inasmuch as they are evidently a return to Judaism. But, until we see more regard paid to the divine authority,