"Let a man so look upon us as the ministers of Christ, and the dispensers SECOND EDITION, REVISED AND CORRECTED. no BALTIMORE: HEDIAN AND O'BRIEN. 82 BALTIMORE STREET. C1263.7.16 Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1843, BY FRANCIS PATRICK KENRICK, In the Clerk's Office of the District Court for the Eastern District of -A PREFACE. MANY years ago, when I was a missionary in Kentucky, where much discussion about baptism took place, especially between Baptists and Methodists, I was invited by a Baptist minister named Clack, to occupy his pulpit in Bloomfield, with a view to treat of immersion and infant baptism, which a Methodist preacher had a short time previously discussed. I thought proper to decline the offer; but I took occasion to preach on those subjects, on four successive Sundays in the Cathedral of Bardstown, and afterwards published the substance of those discourses. About nine years ago, I gave to the public a short treatise on baptism, formed in a great measure of the same materials, adding, however, a special inquiry into the use of water as its necessary element, which is denied by "the Friends," among whom I then resided in Philadelphia. The edition. of this work being exhausted, I have revised and corrected it, making some additions, and omitting some things which do not come into controversy. The importance of the subject should engage the serious attention of all belivers in revelation. Baptism has always been regarded as the initiatory rite of Christianity, so that |