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Digitized by the Internet Archive 
 
 in 2011 with funding from 
 
 Princeton Theological Seminary Library 
 
 http://www.archive.org/details/dissertationons 
 
DISSERTATION 
 
 ON THE 
 
 SCRIPTURAL AUTHORITY, 
 
 NATURE, AND USES, 
 
 INFANT BAPTISM, 
 
 By RALPH ^VVARDLAW, D. D. 
 
 jFfrst American 32toftfon. 
 
 BOSTON: 
 
 PUBLISHED BY PEIRCE AND PARKER, 
 
 No. 9 CornhiJl. 
 
 NEW YORK :- H. C. SLEIGHT. 
 
 Clinton Hall. 
 
 1832. 
 
Art 
 
 '■ . 
 PREFACE. 
 
 
 E. 
 
 So long ago as the year 1807, T published " Three Lec- 
 tures on Romans iv. 9 — 2">. designed chiefly to illustrate 
 the nature of the Abrahamic Covenant, and its connec- 
 tion with Infant Baptism , with an Appendix, on the 
 Mode of Baptism." — It was my first publication : and, 
 after the lapse of seventeen years, I have seen very little 
 reason to alter or to modify the general principles of that 
 work. — A Review of it appeared, in the end of the same 
 year, from the pen of the late Mr. Archibald Maclean of 
 Edinburgh, a man held in just estimation, not by his own 
 party only, but by all who knew him, for natural acute- 
 ness of intellect, close application to the study of the scrip- 
 tures, and general consistency of character. I was satis- 
 fied that my main positions were unshaken by the objec- 
 tions of counter-reasonings of the reviewer; and the 
 chief consideration that prevented me from then reply- 
 ing was, the time that it would necessarily occupy, which, 
 I thought, might, on the whole, be more profitably em- 
 ployed. I am not now sure, whether this was a correct 
 judgment. 
 
 A desire has repeatedly been expressed to me for the 
 republication of these lectures. I could not, however, 
 think of publishing them again in the same form. The 
 great business of an expositor, I am fully aware, ought to 
 be, to give a clear view of the scope, or main design, of 
 the writer whom he expounds, and to show how his rea- 
 sonings establish, and his illustrations elucidate, the point 
 of which he treats. All matter that is not immediately 
 
IV PREFACE. 
 
 relevant for this end, ought to be either omitted entirely, 
 or very sparingly introduced ; — if touched, not dwelt up- 
 on. The reason why this principle was departed fioin in 
 the lectures, was one which I then thought, and still 
 think, sufficient to justify the deviation. It is obvious, 
 that the same principles, which a writer lays down, as the 
 foundation of the conclusions which it is his object to 
 establish, may often, with equal fairness, be made the ba- 
 sis of other conclusions, besides those which are at the 
 time in his view ; and principles settled by Divine authori- 
 ty it is, on this account, as well as for the sake of the in- 
 ferences actually deduced from them, of the highest con- 
 sequence to ascertain. We then have at least determi- 
 nate premises; and have only to show how they bear us 
 out in our deductions. Now, it may happen, that at the 
 very time when a minister, in the regular course of ex- 
 position, arrives at a particular passage, the minds of fel- 
 low-christians, in his own religious connections, or more 
 extensively, may be occupied and agitated by subjects 
 which, though not immediately connected with the doc- 
 tine which it is the writer's direct object to establish, may 
 yet have a very intimate connection with the facts and 
 principles brought forward by him for its confirmation. 
 In such circumstances, it is surely warrantable for that 
 minister, whilst he shows how these principles bear upon 
 the writer's immediate object, to lay hold of them for a 
 separate purpose, and, even, at some length, to dwell on 
 the particular subject respecting which he f'els it to be 
 of consequence to settle the minds ot his hearers. The 
 only proper question, in such a case, would be, whether 
 the principles were fairly stated, and whether the conclu- 
 sions from them were legitimately deduced. Such was 
 precisely the state of things, when the lectures in ques- 
 tion were delivered. But I am sensible, that the same 
 reason which justified, the introduction, at the lime, of 
 discussions on the Abrahamic covenant and infant bap- 
 tism, to a length so disproportionate in illustrating the 
 fourth chapter of the Epistle to the Romans, would hardly 
 justify the republication of the lectures at a distant peri- 
 od, when the principles can be taken by themselves, and 
 the argument separated entirely from that of the Epistle. 
 
PREFACE. V 
 
 I have been led to make these remarks by an observation 
 of Mr. Maclean, in the introduction of* his review, very 
 much fitted to prejudice the mind of his reader, — namely, 
 that " lie finds my main design to be, to support infant 
 baptism, and that from two chapters, (.lorn. iv. and Gal. 
 iii.) where it is never once mentioned, i.or does it appear 
 in the least degree to have entered into the mind or view of 
 the sacred writer." — But Mr. Maclean does not accuse me 
 of overlooking the object of the apostle, or of failing to 
 show how that object is made out from his premises: — 
 and the sole question with him ought to have been, 
 whether the same premises which authorized the one 
 conclusion, were or were not legitimately applied to the 
 establishment of the other. 
 
 The work which is now presented to the public may 
 be considered as a substitute for that part of the former 
 which immediately regarded the subject of the Abrahamic 
 covenant and baptism. It is, however, in almost all re- 
 spects, a new work. The discussions are cleared from 
 all the foreign matter, with which they were unavoidably 
 associated by the passages on which the lectures were 
 founded. The reasonings are, by this means, rendered 
 more distinct and consecutive. The subject is treated 
 more at large, in all its parts, and especially in some 
 which before were hardly, if at all, touched upon. To 
 the whole train of argument and arrangement has been 
 given, such as, it is hoped, may render it plain and easily 
 followed, and may serve to free the subject of it from 
 some portion at least of the confusion and difficulty in 
 which, to not a lew minds, it has always appeared to be 
 involved. Some of the leading objections, moreover, 
 have been met, and, to my own satisfaction at least, ex- 
 posed — and what is said, in the third section, of the uses 
 of infant baptism, is wholly new. 
 
 It may be thought, that the necessity of publishing at 
 all was superceded by the late able work of my esteemed 
 frit ud and colleague, Mr. Ewingr. The larger proportion of 
 his Essay, however, as the circumstances which gave rise 
 to it might have led us to anticipate, relates to the mode 
 of baptism ; and, although this is treated with a measure 
 of originality, and of classical and biblical learning, high- 
 
VI PREFACE. 
 
 ly creditable to its author, — there still seemed to he room 
 left for a fuller aud more systematic discussion of the oth- 
 er great branch of the controversy, — the sub;e«ts of the 
 ordinance, — which is touched in the Essay indeed, and 
 touched with the same ability, but which is not the pro- 
 fessed object of the writer to treat extensively. This part 
 of the field the circumstances 1 ha*e before stated had 
 long determined me to occupy anew, previously to the 
 publication of Mr. Ewing's work ; and my determination 
 was quickened to action by the appearance of an antago- 
 nist to him, and to the late Dr. Dwig'nt, and to myself. I 
 refer to the work of the Rev. F. A. Cox, of Hackney, put 
 forth with the ponderous and appaling title — "On Baptism : 
 chiefly in Reply to the Etymological Positions of the Rev. 
 Greville Ewing, in his ' Essay on Haptism :' the Po'ernic 
 Discussions of the Rev. Timothy Dwight, S. T. D., L. 
 L. D., in his Work, entitled, ' Theology ;' aud the Infer- 
 ential Reasonings of the Rev. Ralph VVardlaw, D. D. in 
 his Lectures on the Abrahamic Covenant." — In some of 
 the advertisements of this work, the first part of the title, 
 I observe, has undergone an alteration , and, instead of 
 the " etymological positions,*' we have the " etymological 
 novelties" o( Mr. Ewing : and it is surely, in the annals of 
 controversy, a somewhat curious circumstance, that an 
 opponent should fjrmally announce, in his title-page, a 
 reply to precisely that part of the work he sets himself to 
 oppose, which its author had declared to be unconnected 
 with the course and conclusiveness of his argument: for 
 thus Mr. Ewing had expressed himself: — " Such is my 
 attempt to analyze @uitto) and its related words. If any 
 shali reject it (I dare say many will); in that case, they 
 will of course disallow my theory for illustrating the ori- 
 gin, and the connection of the various meanings of those 
 words. But they will not be able, thereby, to set aside 
 the meanings themselves. These must still be tried by 
 the force of the examples which may be produced in sup- 
 port of each by itself. Although I shall, in what follows, 
 refer my theory to the derivation of the terms, for the 
 sake of showing how well it tallies with the application 
 of them in the examples in which they occur ; I shall, in 
 no case, use an argument, in support of their meanings 
 
PREFACE. Vll 
 
 which shall rest on that theory." — To announce a formal 
 reply to what an author has thus previously intimated to 
 be unessential to his argument, a speculation of which 
 entire omission leaves its force untouched ; — to produce 
 upon the reader's mind, by the very phraseology of a title- 
 page, the impression, that that is the pith and substance 
 of a work, and what chiefly calls for notice and exposure, 
 which the writer himself announces lie will not make the 
 basis of a single proof; — and then, to confirm this false 
 impression and prejudice, by applying ridicule, as the 
 test of truth, to what, even were it overturned, would not, 
 by its removal, affect, in the slightest degree, a single 
 conclusion ; — may be a convenient ruse dt guerre, — but 
 it is neither ingenuous nor manly. It is very easy how- 
 ever, and that adds to the convenience. — VVhatever di- 
 versity of opinion may subsist on some unessential points, 
 Mr. Cox's assault has, in my judgment, left the main po- 
 sitions, on which Mr. Ewings argument rests in their lull 
 strength. 
 
 Although the appearance of Mr. Cox's strictures has- 
 tened the fulfilment of a previous intention, the following 
 pages are not to be considered as a reply to his work. 
 They are not a formal reply to anyone. I follow the 
 tram of ntty own argument, and take notice of the objec- 
 tions of others, as they come in my way. And I trust it 
 will be found, I have not shrunk from meeting my oppo- 
 nents (or rather, let me say, the opponents, the conscien- 
 tious opponents, of the views I advocate) — fully and fair- 
 ly, in the main points of their strength. — I have had oc- 
 casion, once or twice, to allude to the strictures of the 
 Rev. Mr. Birt, of Birmingham, on a sermon by my excel- 
 lent friend, the Rev. H. F. Burder, of Hackney, a neigh- 
 bor and fellow laborer of Mr. Cox; — and 1 gladly em- 
 brace the opportunity of saying, that although there may 
 be one or two minor statements in that sermon in which 
 I may not thoroughly acquiesce, it appears to me distin- 
 guished by the clearness and cogency and comprehensive 
 brevity of its reasonings, as well as by tne piety and 
 Christian meekness of its spirit; and to remain Imle, if 
 tt all affected, in its general principles, by the animad- 
 versions of his opponent. — I have now and then referred 
 
Viii PREFACE. 
 
 to, and quoted, other publications. But indeed these are 
 now, on both sides,' so numerous, that I have found it bet- 
 ter not to cumber myself by looking into many, and so 
 exposing myself to the temptation of introducing matter, 
 either quite extraneous, or but remotely connected with 
 my argument. 
 
 It has been my endeavor to adhere to the Latin maxim, 
 " Suaviter in modo, fortiter in re," familiarly rendered in 
 English " Soft words and hard arguments." Whether I 
 have succeeded or failed, the reader must judge. If oc- 
 casionally I may have expressed myself (of which, how- 
 ever, I am not conscious) with becoming asperity, may I 
 find forgiveness of Him, who has said, " The servant of 
 the Lord must not strive, but be gentle unto all men." — 
 To his blessing I humbly commend this part of my labors, 
 in the conviction, — a conviction that has gained strength 
 by every new examination of the subject, — that the cause 
 is his, and that its opponents, however plausible their 
 scheme may be rendered, (and it is admitted, in some of 
 its points, to be susceptible of great plausibility) have not 
 a foot-breadth of solid scriptural ground to stand upon. 
 
 R. W. 
 
 Glasgow, > * 
 
 lZth January, 1825. ] 
 
is 
 
 *6 
 
 INTRODUCTORY 
 
 OBSERVATIONS. 
 
 Some are disposed to deprecate all such discussions as 
 the one on which I am now entering, under the common 
 designation of unprofitable controversy. That it is con- 
 troversy, I admit; — that it is unprofitable controversy, I 
 deny. If I thought it so, I trust I should have grace to 
 abstain from it. But I think otherwise, for the following 
 reasons : — 
 
 In the first place : As a psedobaptist, I am accustomed, 
 along with my brethren of the persuasion, to administer 
 the ordinance of baptism, as occasions present themselves, 
 both privately and publicly, to the infant children of be- 
 lievers ; and we are countenanced in so doing by our 
 churches and congregations. Now every thing that we 
 do, as professed subjects of the Lord Jesus, ought to be 
 done, not blindly, or in mere conformity to custom, but 
 from a scriptural and enlightened conviction of duty. To 
 call any institution an ordinance of God, and persist in 
 adherence to it, without knowing either its import, or the 
 reason of observing it, is unworthy a professor of that 
 religion, which enjoins nothing but what is "reasonable 
 service." 
 
 Secondly: In consequence of the universality of the 
 practice of infant baptism, and the consequent frequency 
 of the abuse and prostitution of the ordinance, believers 
 themselves are in no small danger of attending to it as a 
 mere matter of course, without due consideration, either 
 of the nature of the rite, the grounds on which the ad- 
 ministration of it to their children rests, or the parental 
 obligations, so deep and so solemn, that are inseparably 
 connected with it. 
 
 Thirdly : I see no reason whatever, why paedobaptists 
 should feel the slightest disposition to evade the question, 
 or the most distant fear, — although on both sides there 
 may be minute points of difficulty, — to meet it fully, fairly, 
 and openly, in all its great general bearings. — There has 
 2 
 
X INTRODUCTORY OBSERVATIONS 
 
 sometimes appeared to me, to be too much, on the part of 
 paedobaptists, of a disposition to stand upon the defensive 
 merely ; — too much of the mere natation of the conclu- 
 siveness of arguments used on the side of their opponents, 
 and too little of the direct enforcement of positive evi- 
 dence on their own ; — too much of the shield, and too 
 little of the sword: — I mean, of course, " the sword of 
 the Spirit." 
 
 Fourthly: There are too many, especially of the young, 
 who, in the outset of their Christian profession, have not 
 their minds directed at all to the subject. It is an unex- 
 amined point. And these persons, when, in this state of 
 want of knowledge and information, they happen to fall 
 in with a baptist friend, a baptist book, or a baptist argu- 
 ment, feel themselves unprepared to meet what is new 
 and startling; their minds are in danger of being imme- 
 diately unsettled, and of hastily adopting what is presented 
 to them wilh no little plausibility, and possibly too with 
 much imposing confidence. — I invite the attention of my 
 young Christian readers, — not fearing, that if we are only 
 enabled to come to the subject without the heat of party 
 opinionativeness, in a cool, composed, and reasonable 
 frame of spirit, and especially in humble dependence on 
 Divine teaching, we shall be led into all truth, and estab- 
 lished in the due observance of every scriptural institu- 
 tion. 
 
 Fifthly : The discussion does not exclusively regard 
 a particular instituted observance ; it involves principles 
 and topics, such as are very closely connected with the 
 right understanding of a large proportion of the Old Tes- 
 tament scriptures, and of those parts of the New of which 
 the reasonings and illustrations are founded upon the Old; 
 and also with just views of the Divine procedure towards 
 the church, from the beginning to the end of its history. 
 — This must have been apparent to every person of the 
 slightest discernment, that has bestowed any attention 
 upon the controversy. There is a certain style of speak- 
 ing and writing regarding the Old and New Dispensations, 
 and the two revelations respectively connected with them, 
 by which, in general, the supporters of the opposite sides 
 of it may be readily distinguished. And this gives an 
 importance to the argument, beyond its direct conclusions 
 respecting the single ordinance which forms its more im- 
 mediate subject. 
 
INTRODUCTORY OBSERVATIONS. XI 
 
 Lastly : I am satisfied, that the argument respecting 
 the validity of infant baptism is far from being so difficult 
 and formidable, as, from the numberiess pamphlets and 
 volumes that have been written upon either side of the 
 question, many are ready, without further inquiry, to sup- 
 pose. They shrink from approaching the subject, under 
 the apprehension, (not altogether unnatural,) that if such 
 a mass of controversy must be gone through in order to 
 bring their minds to a settlement, it is a hopeless case. 
 They will not venture into the flood ; it is frothy and tur- 
 bulent, and troublesome to pass, and they have little cer- 
 tainty of finding solid footing beyond it. They heave a 
 desponding sigh; and, as the easiest at least, if not the 
 best and safest way to dispose of the subject, they dismiss 
 it with the trite and indolent remark, that, "much, it 
 seems, may be said on both sides." — And it is true, that 
 a vast deal has been said on both sides ; much more, in 
 ray apprehension, than enough : much that is needlessly 
 abstruse, — much that is very irreJevant, — much that has 
 only involved the combatants in clouds of " learned dust," 
 which has served to blind the eyes of common and unlet- 
 tered men, and almost at times, I fear, to blind their own. 
 
 Nothing can be easier, on such a subject, especially now, 
 when we have so much criticism about it made up by oth- 
 ers and ready to our hand, than even for the veriest scio- 
 list to make a mighty parade of learning . — nothing I 
 say, can be easier, — unless indeed it be, speaking with 
 great positiveness and dogmatism — a figure of speech, 
 'which, on all subjects, has been too much resorted to, as 
 a substitute for the lack of argument. — On no subject, it 
 is granted, — and especially, on no subject that involves 
 the obligations of conscience towards God, are we to al- 
 low ourselves to be determined by the weight of names 
 and of human authority. " He that judgeth us is the 
 Lord ;" and " What saith the Lord?" ought to be our sole 
 inquiry. — But although our opinions and practice are not 
 to be decided by names; yet the manner of our treating any 
 subject not only may be, but ought to be, not a little affected 
 by them. And when 1 think of the names of high eminence, 
 both tor intellect and for piety, both for scholarship and for 
 integrity, that are ranged on both sides of the present con- 
 troversy, I cannot but consider pertness and dogmatism as 
 indications, not of vigor of judgment, but of the imbecil- 
 
Xll INTRODUCTORY OBSERVATIONS. 
 
 ity of self-conceit. — If, through infirmity and corruption, 
 I should, in any part of my argument, be found guilty of 
 these evils, or of the appearance of them, 1 have thus pro- 
 nounced a previous verdict against myself. — My aim, how- 
 ever shall be, to avoid them, and to state my views and rea- 
 sonings, although with decision and firmness, (because to 
 this I do believe them, bona fide, to be entitled,) yet with 
 becoming simplicity, self-diffidence, and charity. 
 
 I am not about to bewilder the reader's mind by multi- 
 farious and protracted discussions, — by entering at large 
 into all the topics that have been forced into connection 
 with this subject. It has long been my conviction, from 
 observation of the writings of others, and from any little 
 experience I have myself had in controversy, that in con- 
 ducting an argument, the principal difficulty consists, not 
 in finding what to say, but in knowing what not to say. 
 The resolution to say all that can be said, has often led 
 to the introduction of a great deal of matter, that, if not 
 altogether irrelevant, is yet but remotely and by slight as- 
 sociation connected with the point in debate, and, being 
 redundant, is enfeebling to the conclusion aimed at. 
 There may be self-denial at times in using the prun- 
 ing-knife ; but it is necessary to a vigorous fructifi- 
 cation. A skilful gardener, who wishes his tree to bear 
 well, will lop off freely its green wood, and never think of 
 encumbering the wall by training in every shoot that 
 sprouts in the luxuriance of vegetation. He may some- 
 times be at a loss, which to cut, and which to spare; he 
 must exercise his discretion : but he will never hesitate 
 to cut, when to spare promises no produce. Branches 
 that yield no fruit themselves will mar the productiveness 
 of others. — The present argument has assumed much of 
 the appearance of intricate complexity and difficulty: for 
 which both sides of it are in some degree answerable 
 My present object is to simplify, — to divest the subject, 
 as much as possible, of its multiplied encumbrances, and 
 to present it in an easy intelligible form, and with as 
 much brevity as its own nature, and the previous state of 
 the controversy, will admit. 
 
 One ground of objection I must anticipate, and en- 
 deavor to remove, because it is frequently and confidently 
 urged against all inferential conclusions, and all reason- 
 ings indeed together, on such a subject. It is alledged, 
 that the case is one which does not admit of a process q£ 
 
INTRODUCTORY OBSERVATIONS. Xlll 
 
 reasoning ; — one with which argument and inference have 
 nothing to do. The ordinance of baptism, both in itself 
 and in regard to the subjects of it, is a positive institute ; 
 and a positive institute cannot be established by reason- 
 ing, but requires, to warrant its observance, explicit terms 
 of institution. 
 
 In reply to this view of the matter, let it be considered, 
 in the first place; — If any thing can be made out from 
 the word of God, as having Divine authority to support it, 
 it is surely our duty to obey, whatever may have been the 
 mode of arriving at the conclusion. Only make the sup- 
 position that we can show such authority for any prac- 
 tice ; — we certainly can never consider ourselves as at 
 liberty to decline compliance, because the point has not 
 been made out exactly in the way which we had pre- 
 viously determined to be the only legitimate and right 
 way. This ought to be self-evident. The man who 
 questions it, (with whatever assurance he may express 
 himself,) betrays a secret want of confidence in his own 
 views. He hypothetically admits that the practice has 
 the support of divine authority ; and yet declines compli- 
 ance, because the intimation of God's will has not been 
 conveyed in a manner according with his taste, and his 
 preconceptions of propriety. He prefers his own judg- 
 ment to that of God, and presumptuously refuses the sub- 
 stance of authority on account of the mode in which its 
 requirements has been expressed ! The simple and only 
 question is What saith the scripture ? not In what way 
 does the scripture say it ? It is not ours, in this or in any 
 thing else, to prescribe to God. 
 
 Secondly : Those who make the objection may be fair- 
 ly called to consider, how far the principle of it, if con- 
 sistently applied and followed out, will necessarily carry 
 them. — I am not going to take up the ground which by 
 some paedobaptists has been assumed, that, on the princi- 
 ple of the objection, we have no direct and explicit au- 
 thority for the admission of women to the Lord's table ; — 
 because this has always appeared to me ground hardly con- 
 sistent with manly fairness and candor, and calculated to 
 enfeeble rather than to strengthen, to expose to a sneer, 
 rather than recommend to acceptance, the cause it is 
 meant to support. I have in my view a case of much high- 
 er crder, not inferior in importance to the question of in- 
 fant-baptism itself; — I mean the sanctiji cation of the first 
 *2 
 
XIV INTRODUCTORY OBSERVATIONS. 
 
 day of the week as the Christian sabbath. — The observance 
 of a sabbath, — the consecration of a part of our time to the 
 worship of God and to spiritual purposes, is not a merely 
 positive, but a moral duty. But the proportion of time, 
 and the particular day, are positive. It seems, however, 
 impossible to ascertain the change of the day from the 
 seventh to the first, and the consecration of the whole day 
 to the Lord, without a process of induction, in many re- 
 spects resembling that which is employed to vindicate the 
 authority of paedobaptism. I am myself, it is true, of 
 opinion, with some eminent critics and expositors, that 
 in the ninth and tenth verses of the fourth chapter of the 
 Epistle to the Hebrews, we have direct intimation and 
 express authority for the change : — " There remaineth 
 therefore a sabbatism,* (or the keeping of a sabbath) to 
 the people of God : for he that is entered into his rest, he 
 also hath ceased from his own works as God did from 
 his." But the establishment of this depends upon a pro- 
 cess of reasoning ; of reasoning too, which has never yet 
 occurred to the minds, or settled the convictions, of the 
 great majority of Christians : and I am free to say, that al- 
 though I am perfectly satisfied as to the meaning of the 
 passage, as an intended and explicit declaration of the 
 change of the sabbath, yet, had it not been accompanied 
 with the commentary of facts in the recorded practice of 
 apostolic times, we could not with confidence have found- 
 ed our observance of the first day of the week on its exclu- 
 sive authority. Even from the facts alluded to, we can 
 only ascertain that on that d;iy the disciples were accus- 
 tomed to meet together for the worship of God, and the 
 other sacred exercises of Christian fellowship. But the 
 sanctifi cation of the entire day, as a day of " holy resting" 
 from secular engagements, and of spiritual occupation and 
 preparation for eternity, must be made out on other 
 grounds. That it can be made out, and that most satis- 
 factorily, I am thoroughly convinced ; and I tremble for 
 the interests of personal and social religion, in the indi- 
 vidual mind, and in the Christian society, where this con- 
 
 *The word in the original of this -verse, rendered hy our trans- 
 lators rest, is <T'x&(i>j.Ti7y.oc, being- different trorn the word so transla- 
 ted throughout the whole of the preceding- and subsequent context, 
 — which is avxTrxuTt;. Into the illustration of this interesting sub- 
 ject, or the discussion of the controversies connected with it, I 
 cannot enter here. 
 
INTRODUCTORY OBSERVATIONS. XV 
 
 viction has begun to give way. Yet I am persuaded that 
 no antipaedobaptist can set about proving the obligation 
 of the sabbath, without adopting principles of reasoning, 
 if not identically the same, certainly very closely analo- 
 gous to those which he is accustomed to controvert, as 
 inadmissible, when applied in support of infant baptism. 
 
 Thirdly : 1 hope to be able immediately to show, that 
 the requisition, on the part of our baptist brethren, of a 
 positive precept for our practice, is unfair ; and that we 
 are rather entitled to require such explicit authority from 
 them. If we can succeed in establishing the previous ex- 
 istence of the connexion of children with their parents, 
 under the same " covenant of promise" with that which 
 constitutes the ground of fellowship in the Christian 
 church ; — if, I say, we can succeed in this, then we have 
 a title to demand an explicit statute of repeal. Explicit 
 authority for relinquishing a. practice, is quite as indispen- 
 sable as explicit authority for commencing one. But more 
 of this by and by. 
 
 I must still further premise, because on all controvert- 
 ed topics I feel the essential benefit of clearing my ground 
 as to the principles of reasoning; — that the question {5 
 not at all about adult baptism, or about the necessity, to 
 the baptism of adults, of a profession of the faith. On 
 this, baptists and psedobaptists are of one mind. When, 
 therefore, the former adduce, in opposition to infant bap- 
 tism, those passages of the New Testament in which the 
 subject is the baptism of adults, and from them insist on 
 the universal necessity of understanding and faith, on the 
 part of the recipients of the ordinance, to its legitimate 
 administration, they do nothing at all to the purpose. 
 They are guilty of a sophism. They bring infants into 
 their conclusion, whilst they are not in the premises. 
 The illusion is very much of the same kind with one 
 which abounds in the writings of Unitarians, who hive an 
 inveterate habit of adducing passages to prove that Christ 
 is not God, which only prove that he is man ; — as if to prove 
 his humanity, (the point in which we noree with them, and 
 which we are quite as desirous to establish as themselves,) 
 were to disprove his divinity, (the point in which we dif- 
 fer from them, and which is not in the least degree affect- 
 ed by the evidence of his real humanity.) Antipoedohap- 
 tists seem to be chargeable with the sn.me description of 
 fallacy, when they think to disprove infant baptism by 
 
XVI INTRODUCTORY OBSERVATIONS. 
 
 proving adult baptism. Instead of establishing their own 
 view of the subject on which we differ from them, they 
 only establish (a thing quite unnecessary) a point on 
 which we are perfectly agrend. — This observation nar- 
 rows the limits of the field of argument; bringing the 
 subject of dispute (which is always very desirable) into 
 smaller compass. — No one, I trust, will take groundless 
 offence at my having named a class of theologians whom 
 I consider as subverters of the gospel of Christ, in con- 
 nection with those whom, notwithstanding our differences 
 in sentiment and practice, I esteem, and love, and honor, 
 as brethren in the faith. I have not compared the men — 
 God forbid ! I have not compared their views of divine 
 truth. All that I have done has been, to point out the 
 nature of one fallacy in argument, by comparing it with 
 another of a simi-lar description. 
 
 I have only further to observe, that, if the general views 
 which I am about to present on this subject shall be fairly 
 established from scripture, it is foolish to allow our minds 
 to be easily startled and shaken by particular difficulties 
 which may be suggested and urged, as to what would be 
 right practice in certain supposed cases. Nothing can 
 be easier than thus to perplex and puzzle the mind ; and 
 the mournfully prevalent abuse of the practice of infant 
 baptism has given rise to cases of apparent difficulty, re- 
 specting which there may be hesitation and diversity of 
 opinion, even amongst those who are of one mind as to 
 leading principles. Were it a becoming mode of argu- 
 ing, there are puzzles to be found for baptists, as well a& 
 psedobaptists ; although it may readily be admitted,, with- 
 out the smallest disparagement to the cause of the latter, 
 that the abuse just referred to has given their brethren 
 who are opposed to them, no inconsiderable advantage for 
 the invention of casuistical questions. 
 
 That indiscriminate admission to the ordinances of 
 Christ which is involved in the very idea of a national re- 
 ligion, has produced, or at least maintained, a very gen- 
 eral ignorance, or gross misunderstanding, of their true 
 nature : — and I would entreat any whose minds may have 
 been startled on the subject of infant baptism by the gre- 
 vious prostitution and abuse of it, and the various absurd 
 notions entertained respecting it, to consider, that the 
 other ordinance has been equally abused and prostituted ; 
 and that to suffer this, in either case,, to shake their con- 
 
INTRODUCTORY OBSERVATIONS. XV11 
 
 victions and unsettle their practice, is the indication of a 
 weak mind, in which feeling has the ascendency over 
 judgment, and which is incapable of discriminating be- 
 tween the precepts of God and the corruptions of them by 
 men. The possibility, or even the existence, of particu- 
 lar cases of difficulty should never be allowed to lake our 
 minds off from the great general principles, when these 
 have been satisfactorily established from the word of God. 
 There are few of the doctrines of that word, however 
 clearly revealed, to which objections have not occasionally 
 been offered that may perplex our minds and " give us 
 pause :" — but are we at once to renounce the faith, be- 
 cause, on some of its articles, a puzzling question may be 
 put to us by a subtle adversary ? 
 
 Our baptist brethren are abundantly ready to impute 
 our views and practice to the power of educational prej- 
 udice, and of prevailing custom, which, when once intro- 
 duced, goes on without consideration or inquiry, — and to 
 assume, with rather more than enough at times of a happy- 
 self-complacency, the certain rectitude of their principles, 
 — laying them down as settled points, and in, conversation, 
 familiarly adducing the sentiments of those who differ 
 from them, amongst their common-places of illustration, 
 when speaking of the inveteracy of early prepossessions 
 and habitual associations of ideas, and "astonished with 
 an exceeding great astonishment" at the dimness which 
 on this subject rests upon the vision of minds that are oth- 
 erwise clear-sighted and intelligent. " My persuasion is," 
 says Mr. Cox, " that the popular fading is theirs, the ar- 
 gument ours. If an evidence of the latter were requisite, 
 it might in part be deduced from the striking facts, that 
 not only have the best paedobaptist writers made us repeat- 
 ed and most important concessions, while many, if not a 
 majority, of their living teachers, constantly admit one 
 half at least of our arguments for the mode of baptism : 
 but their churches contain vast numbers of theoretic bap- 
 tists, who have discernment enough to appreciate the force 
 of evidence, but not piety enough to pursue the path of 
 duty."* Now this, it will not be denied, is somewhat 
 provoking. That the " popular feeling" is ours, we do 
 not deny ; that in a vast number of instances it is ignor- 
 ant/;/ ours, we believe and regret; while the circumstan- 
 ces in which paedobaptism has been placed leave us at no 
 
 * Pref. to his Reply to Ewinj, Dwi^ht and Wardlasv. 
 
XVlll INTRODUCTORY OBSERVATIONS. 
 
 loss to account for the fact. But that we have none of the 
 argument, we cannot quite so readily concede ; and we 
 feel ourselves warranted to say, that the reasoning of Mr. 
 Cox. to which the preface is prefixed that contains the 
 preceding extract, ought to have been of a much firmer, 
 more coherent, and more conclusive texture, to have war- 
 ranted this lofty style. As to the Christian charity of the 
 allegation in the close of the extract, 1 leave the reader to 
 judge of it ; simply reminding Mr. Cox, that the charity 
 which Paul so beautifully eulogises has for one of its fea- 
 tures, that it " thinketh no evil." — That there may in our 
 churches be some such hypocrites as he describes, is very 
 possible ; — and let them take the reproof, and act ac- 
 cordingly : but his " vast numbers" only show us, that 
 there are other figures besides arithmetical ones, by which 
 the process of multiplication can be effected. — We cer- 
 tainly are not quite ready to submit to the alternative 
 which is here imposed upon us, by which the whole mul- 
 titude of pasdobaptist professors is divided into two class- 
 es, — those who have discernment enough to appreciate 
 the force of evidence, but not piety enough to pursue the 
 path of duty," — and those who have " piety enougb to 
 pursue the path of duty, but not discernment enough to 
 appreciate the force of evidence." We have the presump- 
 tion to fancy, that a person may have both discernment 
 and piety, and yet be a psedobaptist. — We desire, how- 
 ever, to be sensible of our danger. It is perfectly right 
 that we should be reminded of it. We are in danger of 
 doing, without thought, what our fore-fathers have done 
 before us. Dissenters from established articles of faith, 
 and nonconformists to established usages, are generally 
 better acquainted with their principles than those from 
 whom they differ. They are bound to assign a reason for 
 leaving the beaten track ; whilst those who follow it are 
 apt to think enough that it is beaten, and to move indo- 
 lently forward. But the danger is not confined to one 
 side. \\\ proportion to the respective numbers of baptist 
 and psedobaptht families , perhaps there may be found as 
 many who hold their views from education, in the one 
 communion, as in the other. And moreover, while the 
 deceitfulness of our hearts should put us on our guard, 
 on the one hand, against adhering to any practice from 
 the mere force of custom ; it ought, on the other, to make 
 us jealous of the charms of novelty lest we should too 
 readily renounce a principle of aq observance, from fond- 
 
INTRODUCTORY OBSERVATIONS. XIX 
 
 ness of change, or from the secret, though unavowed 
 wish, to obtain a reputation for unusual candor. 
 
 Baptists and paedobaptists ought surely to yield to each 
 other the claim of mutual sincerity. The refusal of this, 
 while it springs from that self-sufficient confidence in our 
 own judgment, which questions the possibility of others 
 not seeing as we see, is, at the same time, highly incon- 
 sistent with the charity before referred to, " which think- 
 eth no evil." And whilst the suspicion itself harbored in 
 the mind, is a violation of the Saviour's law of love ; the 
 expression of such suspicion, in words or in conduct, 
 tends to provoke a temper not less opposed to the spirit 
 of that law, the passion of proud resentment and indig- 
 nant disdain. — Surely fellow-christians know, how little 
 need there is to stir one another's corruption. They sin 
 deeply against Christ when they do so. And all expres- 
 sions of contempt and bitterness have this effect, as well 
 as the insinuated suspicion of insincerity. The whole of 
 such treatment, besides, has the tendency to frustrate the 
 very end which, in all our discussions, ought to be kept in 
 view : for its effect is, to shut the eyes against the light 
 of truth, and to summon up into action every principle 
 that can resist conviction. " No doubt ye are the people, 
 and wisdom shall die with yon ; but I have understanding 
 as well as you, I am not inferior to you,"* — is the lan- 
 guage which all such treatment, and especially the dis- 
 play of self-sufficiency and scorn, naturally prompts us, 
 with a return of similar feelings, to employ. And there 
 can be no state of mind more unfavorable than this to the 
 discovery and reception of truth. 
 
 Thinking ourselves right, and thinking those who dif- 
 fer from us wrong, are expressions of equivalent import : 
 and if we feel the spirit of genuine brotherly love, we can- 
 not but be desirous that our fellow-christiansshould discern 
 and relinquish what are, in our apprehension, their errors. 
 But let us beware of putting any thing in the room of 
 Christ. Let us beware of refusing to acknowledge, in 
 the character of " brethren beloved," any who give evi- 
 dence that " Christ has received them." To a believer's 
 mind, there is something inexpressibly awful, in the idea of 
 his affections being confined w ithin narrower limits than the 
 love of Jesus ; — of any consideration being a bar against 
 admission into his heart, that does not exclude from the 
 
 * Job xii. 2, 3. 
 
XX INTRODUCTORY OBSERVATIONS. 
 
 heart of bis Divine Master ; — of any being refused a part 
 in his prayer for the household of faith, who are subjects 
 of the Saviour's intercession within the vail ! 
 
 Pitiably dreary must be the mind of that man, who can 
 look round on the wide world, and count his dozen or 
 his score, whom alone he can salute as brethren, or expect 
 to accompany to heaven! — Far from me and from my 
 Christian friends be that self-sufficient bigotry, which 
 freezes the fountain of love, and keeps the heart cold un- 
 der the melting beams of the sun of righteousness ! — 
 While we seek the Spirit of Christ for the discernment 
 of truth and duty, and for enabling us, meekly, but firm- 
 ly, to adhere to what we deem his revealed will ; let us, 
 on the point before us, and on other similar particulars, 
 bear with diversity of judgment in those who " hold the 
 the head," and who give evidence, in their general char- 
 acter, that they do not resist or trifle with the authority of 
 the same Lord — " both theirs and ours." 
 
 " Grace be with all them that love our Lord Jesus 
 Christ in sincerity !" — whose love to him is not the 
 faithless profession of lying lips, nor the lukewarm fic- 
 kleness of a heart divided between him and the world, — 
 but unfeigned, supreme, and constant ; — regarding its ob- 
 ject, in his true character, as the Divine and only Saviour ; 
 and evincing its reality by a life of holy obedience and un- 
 reserved submission to his will, by a desire to know and 
 to follow, in every thing, the light of his word ! 
 
 Under the influence of such feelings as these, I desire 
 to pursue the present discussion. I shall divide my ar- 
 gument into three general heads, and shall allot to each 
 a distinct section :— r- 
 
 I. The divinely instituted practice, previously to the 
 New Testament dispensation, and the absence of all ev- 
 idence authorizing a departure from that practice under it. 
 
 II. Evidence of the fact, that, instead of such depar- 
 ture being authorized, the children of converts to the 
 faith of the gospel were actually baptized along with their 
 parents, in the time of the apostles : — 
 
 III. The important truths and duties which the bap- 
 tism of infants exhibits, and impresses upon our minds; 
 and the perfect consistency of the administration of this 
 ordinance to them with all that the Bible teaches us re- 
 specting them, as subjects of salvation, and of the kingdom 
 of heaven. 
 

 SECTION I. 
 
 In this section, we are to consider the divinely in- 
 stituted PRACTICE PREVIOUSLY TO THE NEW TESTAMENT 
 DISPENSATION, AND THE ABSENCE OF ALL EVIDENCE 
 AUTHORIZING A DEPARTURE FROM THIS PRACTICE UNDER 
 IT. 
 
 We state our argument thus : — Before the coming of 
 Christ, the covenant of grace had been revealed ; and 
 under that covenant there existed a divinely instituted 
 connection between children and their parents ; the sign 
 and seal of the blessings of the covenant was, by divine 
 appointment, administered to children ; and there can be 
 produced no satisfactory evidence of this connection having 
 been done away. 
 
 It is not my purpose to enter very largely into the 
 wide field which these propositions, directly and indirectly, 
 embrace. I shall endeavor, as briefly as I can, to estab- 
 lish the following points : — 1. That the covenant of pro- 
 mise made by God with Abraham was, in substance, the 
 new covenant, — the covenant of grace, — the same cove- 
 nant which, under a fuller, and clearer, and simpler dis- 
 covery of it, forms now the basis of the Christian church : 
 — and, 2. That the ordinance of circumcision, was con- 
 nected with the Abrahamic covenant, in this view of it 
 
 1. Of the first of these two propositions, that the cove- 
 nant made with Abraham was the gospel covenant, the 
 proof is, or ought to be, very short. It is the plain and 
 positive declaration of an inspired apostle. The reader 
 will find it in the third chapter of the Epistle to the Gala- 
 2 
 
14 SECTION I. 
 
 tians, the 17th and 18th verses : — " And this I say, that 
 the covenant which was confirmed before of God in Christ, 
 the law, which was four hundred and thirty years after, 
 cannot disannul, that it should make the promise of God 
 of no effect. For if the inheritance be of the law, it is no 
 more of promise ; but God gave it to Abraham by pro- 
 mise." — I have never, I confess, been able to fancy to 
 myself anything plainer than this; and though much has 
 been said and written calculated to involve the subject in 
 mystery, here it stands as plain as ever. The covenant 
 spoken of in these words toas not the law, or Sinatic cove- 
 nant ; for it existed four hundred and thirty years before 
 it, and was not at all disannulled or set aside by it: — it 
 was a covenant of promise, as opposed, in the apostle's 
 reasoning, to anything resting on the conditions of law : 
 — it was " confirmed before of God in Christ," — an ex- 
 pression which, translate it as you will, can be naturally 
 applied to no other covenant but one : — and believers in 
 Christ, under the New Testament dispensation, are de- 
 clared, in the concluding verse of the same chapter, to 
 be " heirs according to the promise" of that covenant. 
 Take the three expressions, in the 16th, the 18th, and 
 the 29th verses in connection, (for there is nothing in 
 the intermediate statement and reasonings to disjoin them, 
 but only links that bring them together) and this will be 
 strikingly apparent : — " Now to Abraham and his seed 
 were the promises made :" — " If the inheritance be of the 
 law, it is no more of promise; but God gave it to Abra- 
 ham by promise :" — " And if ye be Christ's, then are ye 
 Abraham's seed, and heirs according to the 'promise." — 
 Heirs of what? Of the inheritance promised, in the 
 covenant, to Abraham and his seed. The covenant, 
 therefore, contained the promise of the heavenly or eter- 
 nal inheritance. But it contained no such thing, except 
 as couched under the promise of the earthly, the tempo- 
 ral, the typical inheritance. Both the earthly and the 
 heavenly, then, were the subjects of promise ; and of both 
 alike it is affirmed, that they were obtained and held, not 
 by law, but by faith in the promise. Had it been other- 
 wise, the type would have failed in one of the most im- 
 portant and interesting points of resemblance. — The same 
 
SECTION I. 15 
 
 Jesson is taught with no less plainness and decision, in 
 Rom. iv. 13, 14. " For the promise, that he should be 
 the heir of the world, was not to Abraham, or to his seed, 
 through the law, but through the righteousnes of Faith. 
 For if they who are of the law be heirs, faith is made 
 void, and the promise made of none effect." — It is need- 
 less to enlarge on the particular phrase here used, " the 
 promise that he should be the heir of the world." It 
 holds the same place in the reasoning in this passage, 
 that the simpler designation " the inheritance" docs, in 
 the epistle to the Galatians. It will be admitted to in- 
 clude the promise of the earthly Canaan; — for the literal 
 terms of the covenant specified it, and it alone ; and it 
 were strange if the inheritance specifically mentioned in 
 the terms of the covenant, should not be meant at all 
 when the promise of the covenant is spoken of : and there 
 can be as little doubt that in the apostle's reasoning the 
 heavenly inheritance is assumed to be also included, since 
 it is respecting it that his inferences and conclusions are 
 drawn. — The covenant, then, which was " confirmed of 
 God in Christ," — which preceded the law by 430 years, 
 and was entirely independent of it, — which was found- 
 ed in free promise, in opposition to legal conditions, — 
 and which contained amongst its promises that of the 
 heavenly inheritance, of which New Testament believers 
 are heirs ; — this covenant must be in substance the 
 same with the gospel, or the covenant of grace. 
 
 2. Our second proposition, and one of primary impor- 
 tance in the present discussion, is, that the rite of cir- 
 cumcision was connected with this covenant, as a cove- 
 nant of spiritual blessings. I have dwelt the more briefly 
 on the first, because the discussion of the second will serve 
 further to illustrate and confirm it. 
 
 This second proposition appears to me as evident, as 
 the terms of a plain historical narrative can make it. The 
 following is the account of the matter in the book of Gen- 
 esis : — " And when Abram was ninety years old and nine, 
 the Lord appeared to Abram, and said unto him, I am 
 the Almighty God ; walk before me, and be thou perfect. 
 And I will make my covenant between me and thee, and 
 will multiply thee exceedingly. And Abram fell on his 
 face : and God talked with him, saying, As for me, be- 
 
16 SECTION I. 
 
 hold, my covenant is with thee, and thou shalt be a father 
 of many nations. Neither shall thy name any more be 
 called Abram ; but thy name shall be Abraham : for a 
 father of many nations have I made thee. And I will 
 make thee exceeding fruitful, and I will make nations 
 of thee, and kings shall come out of thee. And I will 
 establish my covenant between me and thee, and thy 
 seed after thee, in their generations, for an everlasting 
 covenant, to be a God unto thee, and to thy seed after 
 thee. And I will give unto thee, and to thy seed after 
 thee, the land wherein thou art a stranger, all the land of 
 Canaan, for an everlasting possession ; and I will be their 
 God. And God said unto Abraham, Thou shalt keep my 
 covenant therefore, thou, and thy seed after thee, in their 
 generations. This is my covenant, which ye shall keep 
 between me and you, and thy seed after thee ; Every 
 man-child among you shall be circumcised. And ye shall 
 circumcise the flesh of your foreskin ; and it shall be a 
 token of the covenant betwixt me and you." Gen. xvii. 
 1—11. 
 
 JSuch are the terms of the covenant to which the ordi- 
 nance of circumcision was annexed, and which we affirm 
 to be in substance the covenant of grace. — There are two 
 theories of explanation, by which our baptist brethren 
 have attempted to evade the conclusion to which this 
 would lead. To each of these I must beg the reader's 
 attention. 
 
 I. The first of the two, and the more ordinary one, is 
 that which alleges, that the covenant made with Abraham 
 consisted properly of two distinct covenants, the one a 
 covenant of temporal promises, the other of spiritual; 
 the former having reference to the natural, and the latter 
 to the spiritual seed of Abraham; and that it was with 
 the former, and not with the latter, that circumcision was 
 connected. 
 
 On this representation of the case let it be observed, 
 
 In the first place, that no such distinction appears on 
 thejace of the narrative. Circumcision is enjoined, 'as 
 the token of -' the covenant," considered as comprehend^ 
 ing all the blessings enumerated as pertaining to it. It is 
 not said, that circumcision was to be the token of that 
 
SECTION I. 17 
 
 part of the covenant, that engaged for temporal blessings 
 to Abraham's fleshy seed ; but of the covenant throughout, 
 as exhibited in the above passage. There is nothing 
 whatever in the simple statement of the history, not even 
 the most remote insinuation, that warrants the introduc- 
 tion of the distinction in question. 
 
 Secondly: No such distinction is any where discerni- 
 ble in the apostle's reasoning. It is neither directly made, 
 nor even incidentally alluded to. The blessings of the 
 covenant in general, all its blessings, temporal and spirit- 
 ual, and especially the two inheritances, the earthly and 
 the heavenly, the typical and the typified, are there re- 
 presented as alike given by promise, as obtained and held 
 by the same seed, on the same ground. Gal. ii;. 15, 16. 
 "Brethren, I speak after the manner of men : though it 
 be but a man's covenant, vet, if it be confirmed, no man 
 disannulled, or addeth thereto. Now to Abraham and 
 his seed were the promises made : he saith not, And to 
 seeds, as of many, but as of one, and to thy seed, which is 
 Christ." — What we have at present to notice is, not the 
 promises themselves, or the seed to whom they were made, 
 but the simple fact, stated in terms the most plain, and 
 unequivocal, that " the promises" of the covenant, without 
 any hinted discrimination, were made to the same seed on 
 the same ground. 
 
 Thirdly : The rite of circumcision itself is admitted by 
 our baptist brethren in general, to be significant of spir- 
 itual blessings : — who, indeed, that attentively reads 
 either Old or New Testament, can question it? It is sig- 
 nificant, according to a writer on that side of the contro- 
 versy, of " cleansing from sin" — and "not only of the 
 purity of moral holiness, but also of the cleansing from 
 the guilt of sin in justification." And agreeably to this 
 spiritual import of the rite, we so frequently read of the 
 " circumcision of the heart," with other equivalent 
 phrases ; which the apostle finely explains, when he says, 
 " He is not a Jew who is one outwardly, neither is that 
 circumcision which is outward in the flesh ; but he is a 
 Jew who is one inwardly, and circumcision is that of the 
 heart, in the spirit and not in the letter ; whose praise is 
 not of men, but of God." — Now it is not easy to perceive, 
 2* 
 
18 SECTION I. 
 
 with what propriety, or consistency, a sign, admitted to 
 be significant of the highest spiritual blessings, should be 
 made the seal, or the token, of a covenant of temporal 
 promises and temporal blessings alone. — Consistency 
 seems to require, either that the spiritual signification of 
 circumcision should be given up, or that the covenant, of 
 which it was the appointed token, should be allowed to 
 have contained spiritual as well as temporal promises. 
 
 Fourthly : Circumcision is most expressly pronounced 
 by the apostle, to have been a sign and a seal of spiritual 
 blessings, and especially of that first blessing of the gos- 
 pel covenant, justification by faith: — " Abraham," says 
 he, " received the sign of circumcision, a seal of the 
 righteousness of the faith which he had being yet uncir- 
 cumcised ; that he might be the father of all them that 
 believe, though they be not circumcised, that righteous- 
 ness might be imputed unto them also :" — the meaning 
 of which words evidently is, not that the sign of circum- 
 cision was to Abraham the seal of his own personal jus- 
 tification, — for this would be incompatible with subse- 
 quent trial, and with his " giving diligence," like other 
 believers, '*' to make his calling and election sure," — inas- 
 much as it is impossible to arrive at a greater degree of 
 certainty, than that which is given by the sealed testimo- 
 ny of God ; — but rather, that it was the seal of that cove- 
 nant, according to whose provisions, all sinners, believing 
 as he believed, were, like him, to be justified by faith. — 
 To this covenant, according to the apostle, circumcision 
 was annexed. 
 
 Fifthly : The temporal half of the covenant is suppos- 
 ed, by those who hold this distinction, to have been the 
 same with the law or Sinai Covenant, which was entered 
 into 430 years after with the people of Israel, the natural 
 descendants of Abraham. — Now I must beg the reader to 
 observe, how greatly this view mars the force, and invali- 
 dates the conclusiveness, of the apostle's argument, with 
 regard to the ground of Abraham's justification. — His 
 leading design, in those parts of his epistles to the Ro- 
 mans and to the Galatians where this subject is treated 
 of, is to prove, for the establishment of Jewish and Gen- 
 tile believers, for the conviction of his unbelieving coun- 
 
SECTION I. 19 
 
 trymen, and for the refutation of false teachers, the doc- 
 trine of justification by grace, as having been, from the 
 beginning, the doctrine of the word of God. He selects, 
 as an instance to his purpose, the case of Abraham. He 
 shows that this patriarch, in whom the Jews were wont 
 to glory, was himself justified, not by the law, but on the 
 footing of a covenant which was made four hundred and 
 thirty years belore it. Now, if this covenant be consider- 
 ed as entirely distinct from the law, the argument is per- 
 spicuous and conclusive. But it requires no great meas- 
 ure of penetration to perceive, how much its force and de- 
 cisiveness are impaired by the view which I am opposing; 
 according to which, the law, instead of being 430 years 
 after this covenant, and altogether distinct from it, was in 
 fact co-eval with it, and formed one of its branches. I 
 appeal to every candid and discerning mind, if this does 
 not introduce confusion and feebleness into the apostle's 
 reasoning. Surely, without some further explanations 
 and distinctions, which he has not thought it necessary 
 to introduce, it cannot be deemed a very appropriate or 
 satisfactory inference, — that Abraham could not be justi- 
 fied by the law, because he was justified on the footing of 
 a covenant of which the law was apart. 
 
 II. The second of the two theories of explanation, by 
 which our baptist brethren parry the conclusion, deduci- 
 ble from the annexation of the rite of circumcision to a 
 covenant of spiritual promises and blessings, is, distin- 
 guishing the different appearances of God to Abraham, 
 recorded, respectively, in the twelfth, the fifteenth, and 
 the seventeenth chapters of the book of Genesis, and re- 
 presenting them as having been, not repetitions of the 
 same covenant, in different forms, under different circum- 
 stances, and with different degrees of enlargement and 
 particularity of detail, but so many distinct covenants. — 
 That which was made first, and which is contained in the 
 twelfth chapter, is conceived to be the one referred to in 
 the apostle's reasoning, as having been 430 years before 
 the law, because, upon calculation, this time corresponds 
 with the date of it, and, consequently, of it only. This is 
 admitted to be the gospel covenant, containing the specific 
 promise, " In thee shall all the families of the earth be 
 
20 SECTION I. 
 
 blessed." That, on the contrary, of which we have so 
 particular an account in the seventeenth chapter, is con- 
 ceived to be a covenant of temporal blessings only, and 
 to bear relation solely to the fleshly seed or natural off- 
 spring of Abraham. To this covenant, it is alleged, 
 circumcision was annexed, and not to the former ; and 
 it is it that is denominated "the covenant of circumcis- 
 ion." 
 
 This is the view adopted by the late Mr. Archibald 
 Maclean in his Review of my Lectures on the Abraham- 
 ic Covenant. In his previous publications, he had avow- 
 ed and argued upon the other. Whether, when he adopt- 
 ed this new theory, he had at all felt his former ground 
 insecure, I will not presume to say. But although Mr. 
 Cox, in his late Treatise, pronounces the Review a " mas- 
 terly performance," and adopts, on the subject now before 
 us, the ground on which it proceeds, it does, I confess, 
 appear to me to be ground far less tenable than even the 
 former. If the former was sand, this is quicksand. 
 
 The following is the brief record of the transaction in 
 the twelfth chapter : " Now the Lord had said unto 
 Abram, get thee out of thy country, and from thy kindred, 
 and from thy father's house, unto a land that I will show 
 thee : and I will make of thee a great nation, and I will 
 bless thee, and make thy name great ; and thou shalt be 
 a blessing: and I will bless them that bless thee, and 
 curse him that curseth thee : and in thee shall all families 
 of the earth be blessed." I have formerly quoted the 
 terms of the covenant of circumcision in the seventeenth 
 chapter. It ought to require no more than the simple 
 reading of the two passages together, to satisfy any un- 
 prejudiced mind, that the latter, though not containing 
 the precise words which are alleged to be the gospel pro- 
 mise, is yet but an amplification of the former : — especial- 
 ly when it is considered, that the covenant recorded in 
 the fifteenth chapter, on the statement of which the apos- 
 tle founds his principal argument for the justification of 
 Abraham by faith without the deeds of the law, does not 
 contain the promise, on which so. much stress is laid, that 
 " in him and in his seed should all the families of the 
 earth be blessed." It contains no more than the assurance 
 
SECTION I. 21 
 
 of the increase of his seed: — "He brought him forth 
 abroad, and said, Look now toward heaven, and tell the 
 stars, if thou be able to number them : and he said unto 
 him, so shall thy seed be. And he believed the Lord, 
 and he counted it to him for righteousness." Gen. xv. 5, 
 6. The gospel, then, must have been involved in the 
 promise thus given and believed : — for it will not surely 
 be disputed, that it was by the faith of the gospel that 
 Abraham was justified. 
 
 But what most of all surprises me, in regard to this hy- 
 pothesis, is, that that covenant which is supposed to be a 
 covenant of temporal blessings only, to the natural off- 
 spring of Abraham, should be the very covenant of which 
 the terms are most distinctly, and most frequently quoted, 
 in the New Testament, with a spiritual interpretation. 
 That Mr. Maclean should have been guilty of this over- 
 sight, affords, I fear, only one exemplification amongst 
 many, of a defect to which even the acutest and most 
 vigorous minds are liable, the unconsciously blinding in- 
 fluence of attachment to system. — But let me bring a proof 
 or two of my position : — 
 
 1. Gen. xvii. 4, 5. " As for me, behold my covenant 
 is with thee, and thou shalt be a father of many nations. 
 Neither shall thy name be called any more Abram, but 
 thy name shall be Abraham; {ox a father of many nations 
 have Imade thee." — It was not, a priori, probable, that the 
 memorable circumstance, of the divinely intimated change 
 of the patriarch's name, should have been associated with 
 any covenant inferior to that which contained the best 
 and highest blessings ; which God here, as in many oth- 
 er places, appropriately designates " my covenant." — Ac- 
 cordingly, the very promise in the above verses is most 
 expressly applied, by the apostle, to the spiritual seed of 
 Abraham as the father of the faithful, — the spiritual father 
 of believers in all nations: — Rom. iv. 16, 17. "There- 
 fore it is of faith, that it might be by grace ; to the end 
 the promise might be sure to all the seed, not to that only 
 which is of the law, but to that also which is of the faith 
 of Abraham, ivho is the father of us all, (as it is written, 
 I have made thee a father of many nations" ) &c. — Noth- 
 ing can be more explicit than this. 
 
22 
 
 SECTION 
 
 2. "And 1 will establish my covenant between me and 
 thee, and thy seed after thee, in their generations, to be a 
 God, to thee and to thy seed after thee." 
 
 As to this promise, which certainly sounds very like 
 one of the "exceeding great and precious promises" of 
 the new covenant, it is of essential consequence first of all 
 to notice, that in whatever sense God promises here to be 
 a God to Abraham, he promises, in the same sense, to be 
 a God to his seed. The promise is one. No hint is ever 
 given of his being the God of Abraham in one sense, and 
 the God of his seed in another. — Now who are the seed 
 to whom Jehovah thus engages to be a God ? Surely the 
 seed specified in the preceding terms of the covenant. 
 And who are they? Have we not the answer given us 
 by inspired authority, in the apostle's interpretation of the 
 words — " Thou shalt be a father of wany nations." If 
 this means, as Paul teaches us, his being the spiritual fa- 
 ther of believers in all nations, then must not these be the 
 seed of Abraham to whom he promises to be a God ? — If 
 objections are brought to this, they ought, I think, to be 
 brought against the apostle. 
 
 The New Testament interpretation of the promise it- 
 self " I will be a God to thee," " I will be thy God," is 
 in perfect accordance with this view of the seed to whom 
 the promise is made. — Jehovah has been the God of his 
 people, in every age, upon the same ground ; and that 
 ground is intimated by our Lord Jesus Christ to be their 
 connection with him, when he says to Mary Magdalene, 
 after his resurrection, " Go, tell my disciples, I ascend 
 u to my father and your father, to my God and your God." 
 John xx. 17. — The full import of the interesting de- 
 signation may appear from the following passages of 
 scripture : — 
 
 In Matt. xxii. 31, 32. Jesus concludes his reply to the 
 Sadducees, respecting the resurrection and a future state, 
 with these words, in evidence of his doctrine : — " But as 
 touching the resurrection of the dead, have ye not read 
 that, which was spoken to you by God, saying, I am the 
 God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of 
 Jacob ? God is not the God of the dead, but of the liv- 
 ing." — From this passage it is evident, without entering 
 
SECTION I. 23 
 
 into any discussion of the nature and extent of the entire 
 argument, that, as their God, continuing and declaring 
 himself such long after their decease, he had received 
 their spirits to blessedness with himself, and also, as the 
 resurrection of the dead was the subject in question, that 
 he was to raise their bodies from the grave, — to "show 
 them the path of life," — to put them in possession of those 
 " pleasures which are at his right hand for evermore;" 
 and so to fulfil to them the promise of " everlasting inher- 
 itance." 
 
 Compare with this passage, Heb. xi. 13 — 16. " These 
 all died in faith, not having received the promises, but 
 having seen them afar off, and were persuaded of them, 
 and embraced them, and confessed that they were stran- 
 gers and pilgrims on the earth. For they that say such 
 things declare plainly that they seek a country. And 
 truly, if they had been mindful of that country from 
 whence they came out, they might have had opportunity 
 to have returned : but now they desire a better country, 
 that is, an heavenly : wherefore God is not ashamed to be 
 called their God ; for he hath prepared f« >r them a city." 
 The faith, and hope, and desire, of the patriarchs, are 
 here represented as having for their object the heavenly 
 country. This they expected to receive from God as 
 their God, according to the promise of his covenant ; and 
 we are assured, that as their God he would not disappoint 
 their most enlarged and elevated hopes, founded as they 
 were on his own word. " God is not ashamed to be call- 
 ed their God, for he hath prepared for them a city." Can 
 any inference be more simple or direct from such a pas- 
 sage, than that God would have been ashamed to be called 
 their God, had he not provided for them such a city, as is 
 here referred to, the city which hath foundations, whose 
 builder and maker he himself is," ver 10. — that he would 
 have been ashamed to represent himself in so endearing 
 a relation to them, had the title been accompanied with 
 the bestowment of a mere earthiy inheritance — a temporal 
 blessing only ; had he prepared for them anything that 
 would have fallen short of their hopes, and failed to satisfy 
 the utmost extent of their desires 1 The title and the 
 gift would have been incongruous ; as when a man raise§ 
 
24 
 
 SECTION I. 
 
 our expectations by high professions of friendship, and 
 then puts off with a comparative trifle. His gifts are more 
 worthy of himself, and of the relations which he has gra- 
 ciously assumed, and revealed himself as sustaining, to- 
 wards his people. 
 
 This promise, indeed, " I will by thy God," is often 
 expressed as a principal one amongst the engagements of 
 the new covenant, and, has ever been acknowledged and 
 felt by his people, as " the fulness of the blessing of the 
 Gospel of Christ." In evidence of this, the reader may 
 consult the following passages of the Old and New Tes- 
 tament scriptures j and, if he is well acquainted with his 
 Bible, he will be able to add to them many more. Jer. 
 xxxi. 33. xxxii. 38—40. Ezek. xxxiv. 23, 24, 30, 31. 
 xxxvi. 25—28. xxxvii. 27. Heb. viii. 10. 2 Cor. vi. 16 
 —18. 
 
 It is no valid objection to this, that God is'so often spo- 
 ken of as the God of the nation of Israel ; and that, 
 in assuming this relation to them, as a nation, he repre- 
 sents himself as remembering his covenant with their fa- 
 thers. Exod. vi. 4 — 8. Lev. xxvi. 12. &c. — It should be 
 recollected, that the nation of Israel, springing from 
 Abraham, in the line of Isaac and Jacob, was the Church 
 of God. Now God has been the God of his church, col- 
 lectively considered, and regarded as containing the true 
 Isreal, in the same sense, in all ages. I will not multiply 
 passages in proof of this. Let the following, from the 
 prophecies of Isaiah, serve as a specimen. Any reader, 
 who is familiar with his Bible, will be able to add parallels 
 to an almost indefinite extent. Isa. xliii. 1 — 7. "But 
 now, saith the Lord that created thee, O Jacob, and he 
 that formed thee, O Israel, fear not : for I have redeem- 
 ed thee, I have called thee by thy name ; thou art mine. 
 When thou passest through the waters, I will be with 
 thee; and through the rivers, they shall not overflow 
 thee : when thou walkest through the fire, thou shalt not 
 be burnt ; neither shall the flame kindle upon thee. For 
 I am the Lord THY GOD, the Holy One of Israel, thy 
 Saviour : I gave Egypt for thy ransom, Ethiopia and Seba 
 for thee. Since thou wast precious in my sight, thou hast 
 been honorable, and I have loved thee : therefore will I 
 
SECTION I. 25 
 
 give men for thee, and people for thy life. Fear not ; 
 for I am with thee : I will bring thy seed from the east, 
 and gather thee from the west ; I will say to the north, 
 give up ; and to the south, keep not back : bring my sons 
 from far, and thy daughters from the ends of the earth : 
 even every one that is called by my name : for I have 
 created him for my glory, I have formed him ; yea, I have 
 made him." In these verses, is a reference to what 
 God had done, in manifestation of his love to his people, 
 and of the value he set upon them ; and there are, at the 
 same time, promises of what he was to do for them in fu- 
 ture times : — yet he speaks of himself as bearing the same 
 relation to them all along — from the beginning to the end 
 — when he "gave Egypt for their ransom," and when, in 
 the latter days, he " brings his sons from far, and his 
 daughters from the ends of the earth :" — " I am Jehovah 
 thy God, the Holy One of Israel, thy Saviour." 
 
 It is worthy of particular notice, that the appearance of 
 Jehovah to Abraham recorded in the seventeenth chapter 
 of Genesis, is the only occasion on ichich this promise is 
 made to the patriarch. It is not to be found either in the 
 twelfth, or in the fifteenth, or subsequently in the twenty- 
 second. If, therefore, the covenant in the seventeenth 
 chapter was a covenant of temporal promises only, then 
 this promise was never made to Abraham at all in its 
 spiritual meaning ; in that meaning which alone gave it 
 real worth, in which alone it is applicable to the follow- 
 ers of Abraham's faith, and in which the New Testament 
 scriptures explain and make so much of it ! Is this credi- 
 ble, — is this possible? 
 
 3. " And I will give unto thee, and to thy seed after 
 thee, the land wherein thou art a stranger, all the land of 
 Canaan, for an everlasting possession." — The question is 
 not, whether this is a promise of the earthly Canaan. No 
 one, I presume, ever questioned that. But is it a promise 
 of the earthly Canaan only ? That the promise of the 
 temporal inheritance does, in one or other or all of its 
 occurrences, include under it the promise of the eternal, 
 must be very evident from this one consideration, that if 
 it be not so, the eternal inheritance was never, so far as 
 appears, promised at all. Yet it was upon the ground, 
 3 
 
2b SECTION I. 
 
 certainly, of such promises as are actually recorded, that 
 Abraham and the other believing patriarchs looked for the 
 heavenly country. That they did look for it, we know ; 
 and it is equally sure, from the apostle's language in the 
 eleventh chapter of the Hebrews, formerly quoted — that 
 they founded their expectations on divine promise : — 
 " By faith Abraham sojourned in the land of promise, as 
 in a strange country, dwelling in tabernacles with Isaac 
 and Jacob, the heirs with him of the same promise : for," 
 — on the ground of that promise surely — " he looked for 
 a city which hath foundations, whose builder and maker 
 is God." Heb. xi. 9, 10. The hope of the heavenly Ca- 
 naan, then, was founded on the promise of the earthly, 
 understood as typical, and comprehensive of higher bles- 
 sings than the literal terms imported ; and, at the same 
 time, on the promise, " I will be thy God," which also, as 
 we have seen, included spiritual and eternal blessings. — 
 Indeed the whole of the gospel revelation was then, and 
 for ages afterwards, under the vail of figurative language, 
 and of typical rites, objects, and events. To have given, 
 in clear and explicit terms, the full promise of the eternal 
 inheritance, would not have been consistent with the di- 
 vine scheme of gradual development, nor with the fact of 
 "life and immortality being brought to light by Jesus 
 Christ." But that the premise ivas given, is manifest 
 from the apostolic representation, and from his saying 
 elsewhere, respecting those patriarchs who, though they 
 " sojourned," in the land of Canaan, received "no inheri- 
 tance in it, no not so much as to set their foot on," that 
 on their following each other, by (jeath, to heaven, 
 " through faith and patience they inherited the primises." 
 — I might show the spiritual meaning of the phraseology 
 in Gen. xvii. in some other particulars ; but I am desi- 
 rous to confine myself to such as are expressly interpreted 
 in the New Testament scriptures. 
 
 From these considerations, it appears to me " passing 
 strange," that this should be the covenant (supposing it a 
 distinct one from the rest) selected for degradation to a 
 mere covenant of temporal promises to the natural off- 
 spring ! The promises which it contains are evidently 
 the same in substance with those given at previous appear- 
 
SECTION I. 27 
 
 ances, only more amply unfolded : and that there is not the 
 least necessity for considering every sucessive appearance 
 as a distinct covenant, Mr. Maclean himself may be cited 
 as authority : for, after intimating the propriety of follow- 
 ing what he alleges to be the scriptural representation of 
 the case, and taking up the communications recorded in 
 the 12th, 15th, and 17th chapters of Genesis, as so many 
 distinct covenants, he yet admits that the covenant con- 
 firmed by oath in the twenty-second chapter, at a period 
 still later, was in substance the same as that in the twelfth, 
 the earliest of ail. But if we are warranted in consider- 
 ing the earliest and the latest as the same, we cannot 
 surely be very far wrong in so considering the others that 
 were intermediate. 
 
 It was with this covenant, then, which the apostle so 
 explicitly declares to have been the covenant of grace, 
 " confirmed before of God in Christ," — that the rite of 
 circumcision was connected. — There are some, however, 
 of our Baptist brethren, who readily admit the spiritual 
 nature of the Abrahamic covenant, but declare themselves 
 incapable of perceiving the legitimacy and conclusiveness 
 of the inference we deduce from it, and therefore regard 
 all our reasonings in support of it, so far as the subject of 
 baptism is concerned, as thrown away. — This has always 
 appeared to me very surprising. If the connection be- 
 tween parents and children, recognised in that ordinance, 
 had belonged only to the old or Sinai covenant, and if the 
 ordinance of circumcision, instead of being " of the fa- 
 thers" had been exclusively " of Moses " pertaining sole- 
 ly to that temporary dispensation of which he was the 
 mediator, — we should then have seen a good reason why 
 both the connection itself, and the ordinance that marked 
 it, should have ceased together, when the dispensation 
 came to a close with which they were associated. — But if 
 circumcision was " not of Moses, but of the fathers;" — if 
 it originally pertained to a covenant that never " decay- 
 eth or waxeth old ;" and if, under that covenant, children 
 were connected with their parents in the application of 
 the sign and seal ; — then we must insist upon it, that the 
 burden of proof rests upon our opponents. They demand 
 of us express precept for our practice, We are better en- 
 
28 SECTION I. 
 
 titled to demand of (hem express precept for theirs. If 
 the covenant made with Abraham be indeed God's ever- 
 lasting covenant of grace, — and if the sign and seal of this 
 covenant was administered by God's command to the 
 children of those who professed the faith of Abraham, 
 and to them in their turn became, as it had been to him, 
 a " seal of the righteousness of faith" — (and who can deny 
 that it was such to Isaac and Jacob, the " heirs with him 
 of the same promise?" and if to them, why not to other 
 believers?) — if these things, I say, be so, — then where, 
 we ask, is any change in the constitution of the covenant 
 in this respect pointed out ? When were children exclud- 
 ed, and by what law ? Let an express repealing statute 
 be shown us, and we will immediately relinquish our 
 practice. The alteration of an old constitution, or the 
 setting aside of an old law, as was formerly hinted, re- 
 quires an express precept, as much as the appointment of 
 a constitution or law entirely new. To speak of the abo- 
 lition, tacit or express, of the old economy, the Mosaic 
 dispensation, is nothing to the purpose : because the apos- 
 tle assures us, that the covenant of circumcision, so far 
 from being a part of the law, and partaking of its tempo- 
 rary and evanescent nature, was a covenant which exist- 
 ed long before it, which could not be disannulled either 
 by its introduction or its cessation, but which continues to 
 this day. — By confounding this covenant with the law, 
 and including any part of its gracious provisions in " that 
 which decayed, and waxed old, and vanished away," you 
 set the law " against the promises of God," and throw in- 
 to confusion and inconclusiveness the simple and beautiful 
 reasoning of the apostle. — That the particular rite is 
 changed we have abundant evidence ; and satisfactory 
 reasons for the change might be assigned.* But of any 
 
 * Besides its import as denoting- the " putting off the. body of the sins of 
 the flesh." circumcision was, in all probabilily. intended as a sign that the 
 seed, in whom all nations were to be blessed, should come from the loins of 
 Abraham. Of this it was a significant emblem and remembrancer. The 
 promise of the Messiah was restricted to the line of descent by Isaac. Jn 
 this line, therefore, it became a memorial of the promise that Messiah should 
 be made flesh amongst them. And I doubt not that, in other lines also of 
 descent from Ahraham, this rite, originally, by the command of God, ad- 
 ministered to all his family, had its influence, in a general [way, in 
 preserving the idea and expectation of the promised seed, If this be well 
 
SECTION I. 
 
 29 
 
 alteration as to the admission of children with their pa- 
 rents to the sign and seal and blessing of the covenant, 
 we are destitute o( evidence entirely. Nothing whatever 
 can be produced in the form of a direct repeal ; and as to 
 the inferential reasoning which has been employed to set 
 aside the previously existing connection, we shall have 
 occasion to examine it in the next section of this trea- 
 tise. 
 
 I am aware, indeed, how frequently and how confident- 
 ly it has been alleged, that the words of institution, as 
 they have been improperly called (I say improperly, be- 
 cause baptism was not at that time first instituted, but had 
 been practised before,) involved a repeal, by declaring 
 that none are to be baptized but such as are capable of 
 being taught. The well known words are : " Go ye, 
 therefore, and teach (or disciple) all nations, baptizing 
 them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and 
 of the Holy Ghost : teaching them to observe all things 
 whatsoever I have commanded you." Matt, xxviii. 19, 
 20. 
 
 The reply to this is simple and satisfactory; although 
 I am sufficiently aware, how strongly a certain habit of 
 mind, in viewing a particular passage, tends to prevent 
 the clear perception of the validity of any reasoning, di- 
 rected against the sense ihus habitually and systematically 
 affixed to it. — Suppose the ordinance of circumcision had 
 been to continue, and the command had run in these 
 terms, — " Go ye, therefore, and disciple all nations, cir- 
 cularising them in the name of the Father, and of the 
 Son, and of the Holy Ghost: teaching them to observe 
 all things," &,c. Had such language been used, we 
 should have known that children were to be the subjects 
 of the prescribed rite, as well as their parents: the pre- 
 viously existing practice would have ascertained this. 
 Now, should we have been sensible, even with this knowl- 
 edge, of the smallest impropriety, or inconsistency in the 
 
 founded, we at once perceive a good reason why circumcision should be 
 abolished iclien this seed came , and why another rite should be substituted 
 in its place, which continued to signify as expressively, or more so, the 
 " putting off the body of the sins of the flesh," while it was not at all signifi- 
 cant of that part of the meaning of the former symbol, which had now re- 
 ceived its fulfilment. 
 
 3* 
 
30 SECTION I. 
 
 use of such language? Would it have appeared to us, in 
 even the slightest degree, contradictory or incongruous? 
 Would it have been understood by the apostles, as neces- 
 sarily excluding children? Would they certainly have 
 inferred from it, that although the same rite was to contin- 
 ue, there was to be a change in the subjects of it ? — that 
 none now were to be circumcised but those who were ca- 
 pable of immediate instruction in the will of Christ, and 
 practical compliance with it? No: there is nothing in 
 the terms of the commission that could at all have led 
 them to such a conclusion. They would, without hesita- 
 tion, have gone on to circumcise children with their pa- 
 rents as formerly, teaching the parents the mind and will 
 of Christ, and charging them to instruct their rising off- 
 spring. And if a commission to circumcise, given in these 
 terms, would not have been understood as necessarily ex- 
 cluding children, it can never be shown that a commis- 
 sion in the same terms to baptize must have been so un- 
 derstood. The practical evidence that the apostles actu- 
 ally did not so understand it, will be afterwards consider- 
 ed. — In the mean time, permit me to observe, we have, 
 in a parallel passage of scripture, most satisfactory evi- 
 dence of the justness of these remaiks. I refer to Gal. v. 
 2 — 5. "Behold, I Paul say unto you, that if ye be cir- 
 cumcised, Christ shall profit you nothing. For I testify 
 again to every man that is circumcised, that he is a 
 debtor to do the whole law. Christ is become of no effect 
 unto you, whosoever of you are justified by the law; ye 
 are fallen from grace." — In the 27th verse of the third 
 chapter of the same Epistle, the apostle says : — " For as 
 many of you as have been baptized unto Jesns Christ (or, 
 "ye, whosoever have been baptized unto Jesus Christ") 
 have put on Christ." From this expression it has been 
 very confidently argued, that adults only were baptized, 
 because of" putting on Christ" adults only were capable. 
 — Now, let this principle of interpretation, or of inference, 
 be applied to the passage quoted from the fifth chapter. 
 It is an address to adults : — it expresses things of which 
 adults only were capable. Are we, then, to infer from 
 this, that adults only were circumcised? We certainly 
 oe^lit, on the same principle on which we infer, from the 
 
SECTION I. 31 
 
 other, that adults alone were baptized. There is precise- 
 ly the same ground in the former case, as there is in the 
 latter. Yet we know, that in the latter the inference 
 would be contrary to fact ; for nothing can be more cer- 
 tain than that, when Gentile converts were circumcised, it 
 was, in conformity with Jewish practice, along with their 
 children. A principle of criticism, therefore, which, appli- 
 ed in one case, leads to a conclusion at variance with 
 known facts, cannot with any fairness, nay, cannot with- 
 out the risk, and more than the risk, of mistake and 
 error, be applied in another. — The truth is, that the strict 
 application of such a principle to language of this general 
 kind, wculd lead us into innumerable absurdities. 
 
 I may here, by the way, take notice of a difficulty 
 which has been suggested, from the passage which I have 
 just quoted, in regard to the import of circumcision, and 
 its identity under the one dispensation with baptism under 
 the other. IJow, it has been asked, should circumcision 
 exclude from the grace and blessings of the gospel cove- 
 nant, if it was connected with that covenant, and signifi- 
 ed the same thing with baptism?* — But the moment we 
 recollect to what desciption of doctrine the apostle is here 
 opposing himself, the solution of the difficulty is at once 
 apparent. It is the doctrine of those who taught the Gentile 
 brethren, that " except they were circumcised after the man- 
 ner of Moses, they could not be saved;'' — that" it was neces- 
 sary," namely, to their salvation, " to circumcise them, and 
 to command them to keep the law of Moses." Acts xv. 
 1, 5, 24. — Now when, in such a connection, the apostle 
 says, " If ye be circumcised, Christ shall profit you noth- 
 ing," it is equivalent to his saying, " If ye embrace this 
 doctrine, Christ shall profit you nothing." This is clear 
 from the circumstance, that being circumcised in the one 
 verse corresponds to " being justified by the law" in the 
 other : in the one he says, " If ye be circumcised, Christ 
 shall profit you nothing ;" — in the other, " Christ is be- 
 come of no effect unto you, whosoever of you arejustif- 
 ed by the la?v." — He reminds them, therefore, that if they 
 embraced this doctrine, they renounced the grace of the 
 
 * See Maclean, Rev. p. 21. 
 
32 SECTION I. 
 
 gospel ; and that if they persisted in seeking justification 
 by circumcision and the law, they should bear in mind 
 what the law required of them in order to their attaining 
 their end ; — that nothing would suffice short of their 
 " doing the whole law," yielding to it a sinless obedience. 
 — That such is the import of the phrase " if ye be circum- 
 cised '," is further evident from the case of Abraham and 
 the original circumcision. Abraham was circumcised : 
 but surely " Christ" did not therefore " profit him noth- 
 ing ;" — " he did not fall from grace." So far from it, 
 that his circumcision was the seal to him of the righteous- 
 ness, not of works, but of faith — not of law, but of grace. 
 — The Gentile Christians " being circumcised," there- 
 fore, was not 'their mere submission to the rite, but their 
 dependence up it, in connection with the law of Moses, 
 for justification : and no person, acquainted with the 
 spirit of the apostle's writings on this subject, will ques- 
 tion the position, that, in similar circumstances, he would 
 have said the very same thing of baptism, that he says of 
 circumcision. He who now trusts for acceptance to his 
 baptism, as effectually falls from Christ and from grace, 
 as he who trusted of old to his circumcision. 
 
 Before closing this section/ 1 may offer a few further 
 strictures on the reasonings of some of the opponents of 
 psedobuptism, on one of the leading topics discussed in it, 
 — the true nature of the covenant of circumcision, and 
 the import of the rite as connected with it ; strictures, 
 which I have reserved for this place, in order to avoid 
 giving a disproportionate extension to one of the links in 
 the chain of my own argument, by which the reader 
 might have been in danger of losing sight of the connec- 
 tion. They will, however, serve to give further confirm- 
 ation to the general principles which it has been my en- 
 deavor to establish. 
 
 Of the covenant in Gen. xvii. Mr. Maclean thus writes, 
 contrasting it with the promise in the 12th chapter : 
 " The first promise made to Abraham, Gen. xii. 3. is 
 termed ' the covenant which was confirmed before of 
 God in Christ/ Gal. iii. 17. and contained a promise of 
 blessing all nations, i. e. all Abraham's spiritual or be- 
 lieving seed of Jews and Gentiles. But the covenant of 
 
SECTION F. 33 
 
 circumcision did not include the Gentiles, but was a pe- 
 culiar covenant with the natural posterity of Abraham, 
 who were to receive the token of it in their flesh in infan- 
 cy, as a people separated unto God from all others, and 
 of whom Messiah was to spring. Christian baptism, 
 therefore, is not founded on the covenant of circumcision, 
 which was peculiar to the natural seed of Abraham : but on 
 that covenant which extends the blessing of Abraham to 
 his spiritual seed of all nations. Accordingly, when the 
 ancient covenant of promise came to be actually ratifiedin 
 the blood of Christ, the peculiar covenant of circumcision 
 with the fleshly seed of Abraham was set aside, and bap- 
 tism was appointed to be administered to all, whether 
 Jews or Gentiles, who appeared to be his spiritual seed 
 by faith in Christ, but to none else." Review p. 104. I 
 must here be permitted again to marvel, at the dimness 
 of vision, and the confusion of ideas, which the admission 
 of a false principle, and attachment to an erroneous sys- 
 tem, can produce in even the acutest and most discern- 
 ing minds. The promise of blessing to " all nations" is 
 in the above extract admitted to mean, of blessing to " all 
 /ibralunn's spiritual or believing seed of Jews unci Gen- 
 tiles ;" and yet that covenant is affirmed " not to have in- 
 eluded the Gentiles" but to have been "a peculiar cove- 
 nant with the natural posterity of Abraham" the very 
 terms of which are expressly applied by the apostle him- 
 self to the M spiritual seed of all nations," for thus, as we 
 have seen, he explains the promise " a father of many na- 
 tions have I made thee." — "Christian baptism," says Mr. 
 M'L. " is not founded in the covenant of circumcision." 
 True; if the covenant of circumcision was indeed only a 
 covenant of temporal blessings, peculiar to the natural 
 offspring of Abraham. In that case, it was " set aside;" 
 and Christian baptism does belong to a different covenant 
 from that to which circumcision was annexed. But if, on 
 the contrary, we have succeeded in showing, that the 
 " covenant of circumcision" was indeed a covenant of 
 spiritual as well as temporal blessings to the spiritual seed 
 of Abraham, then have we not here Mr. Maclean's con- 
 cession, that, instead of being " set aside," it still contin- 
 ues, and that Christian baptism is founded in it, and holds 
 
34 SECTION I. 
 
 a similar place now, in connection with the same cove- 
 nant, to that held of old by circumcision ? This shows 
 how much depends on a right view of the covenant in 
 Gen. xvii. with which circumcision was connected. 
 
 But the amiable and excellent author of " i:ugenio 
 and epenetus," takes quite a different view of this cove- 
 nant of circumcision from Mr. Maclean. Pie admits its 
 spirituality : and when circumcision is denominated "the 
 token of the covenant," he considers the phrase of equiva- 
 lent import with that other phrase used by the apostle, 
 "a seal of the righteousness of faith." — " It was," says 
 he, " the token of a covenant made with Abraham (( as a 
 believer, and essentially connected with that righteousness 
 which was imputed to him by faith. Hence the recollec- 
 tion of this covenant brought along with it the recollec- 
 tion of that faith in connection with which it was formed. 
 And whatever could be properly denominated a token of 
 a covenant founded on a righteousness imputed by faith, 
 might, with equal propriety, be termed a sea!, or standing 
 memorial of that righteousness of faith with which this 
 covenant was connected." Page 55. — I perfectly concur 
 with Mr. lnnes in the view which he gives, and in support 
 of which he, in my opinion, successfully argues, of the 
 meaning of the phrase " a seal to the righteousness of 
 faith !" as signifying, not a seal of the individual of per- 
 sonal justification, but a seal or symbolical certification, and 
 standing memorial, ofthe grand doctrine of justification by 
 faith, — of which the justification of Abraham was, both to 
 Jew and Gentile, the pattern or exemplar. But this doc- 
 trine belongs to the new and everlasting covenant, and 
 constitutes its fundamental article. Mr. Maclean, in the 
 passage above cited, by affirming the connection of circum- 
 cision with the temporal covenant only, indirectly admits 
 that, if it had been connected with the other, there would 
 have been some ground for the inferences diawn by us as 
 to Christian baptism ; — for he makes the difference be- 
 tween circumcision and baptism to consist in the former 
 being connected with the old, and temporary covenant 
 and the latter with the new, spiritual, and everlasting one. 
 — Mr. Innes, on the contrary, connects circumcision with 
 the spiritual covenant, that covenant according to which 
 
SECTION I. 35 
 
 Abraham and all believers since have been justified by 
 faith. But he is one of those referred to above, who, 
 granting the premises, do not perceive the legitimacy of 
 the conclusion. — Baptists have sometimes said to paedo- 
 baptists, "You cannot be right; you differ so much 
 amonst yourselves in your views of the subject?" They 
 had as well be quiet on that score. It is but " foolish 
 talking," on both sides. Our sole inquiry should be after 
 truth and duty. If one view of a subject be true, it is not 
 the less true that another has been held. 
 
 Mr. Cox embraces Mr. Maclean's second view of the 
 covenant of circumcision. Whether he ever held the first 
 I cannot say. But surely, never was there published to 
 the world a statement more thoroughly at issue, in every 
 point, with that of the apostle, than the following. After 
 quoting the terms of the covenant, in Gen. xvii.2 — 14, — 
 for which see the preceding pages, — he thus comments: 
 — " Let a person unbiassed by any previous system, put 
 into ordinary language the blessings covenanted in the 
 above recited paragraph ; let him impartially state its en- 
 tire import. Would he not inevitably give the following 
 interpretation 1 Circumcision was the sign of a covenant 
 with Abraham and his posterity, denoting that it was the 
 divine purpose to increase his family to a remarkable de- 
 gree, that they should become a great nation, and even be 
 diffused far over the face of the earth ; to manifest a pe- 
 auliar and unalterable regard to his family as their God, 
 by the ample fulfilment of the agreement which he now 
 condescended to form with their illustrious ancestor, and 
 which stipulated their extraordinary multiplication; — and 
 to give them Canaan for an inheritance. All persons, 
 however attached to the family, whether as children or 
 servants, were to undergo the prescribed rite, in order to 
 distinguish them from the surrounding nations, and to 
 evince that they belonged to the people whom God had 
 especially chosen. This token of association with Abra- 
 ham, and participation of his privileges, was, it appears, 
 bestowed, irrespectively of personal character, conduct, 
 or faith ; for the purchased slave received it as well as the 
 home-born child, whether a believer in the God of Abra- 
 ham or not, and simply as a part of his domestic estab- 
 
36 SECTION I. 
 
 ment. But though they were to undergo the painful rite, 
 the promise of inheritance was restricted to the posterity 
 of the individual who stood as their federal representative, 
 and who, by this ordinance, were separated and distin- 
 guished from all the Gentile nations."* 
 
 Now, with regard to the nature and amount of the bles- 
 sings covenanted in the passage in question, 1 must be al- 
 lowed to prefer, as my interpreters, our Lord and his 
 apostles, to Mr. Cox. They were surely " unbiassed by 
 any previous system ;" and we have seen how very differ- 
 ent from his are the views which they hold forth. 
 Mr. Cox appears to adopt, as his principle of interpreta- 
 tion, the sense which any reader, taking up the passage, 
 without any previous knowledge at all, would naturally 
 attach to its phraseology. But the slightest reflection 
 must satisfy him, that this is far from being a legitimate 
 principle. In interpreting the Old Testament, the New, 
 wherever it gives us direction, is our surest guide. Mr. 
 Cox's ignorant reader might no doubt understand Abra- 
 ham's being " a father of many nations," literally ; — but 
 if the apostle Paul interprets it spiritually, which are we 
 to follow? He would consider the " land of Canaan" as 
 signifying the country, on earth so denominated, and no 
 more; but if Paul explains the promise of Canaan as ex- 
 clusive of " the better country, even the heavenly," the 
 promise of which is not to be found at all, unless under 
 this form, — and if, as he tells us, the patiiarchs them- 
 selves so understood it, and founded their hopes upon it 
 accordingly, which authority is to decide? — What idea 
 might be affixed, by such a supposed reader, to the other 
 promise, " I will be a God to thee and to thy seed after 
 thee," is not perhaps so easily determined. But what- 
 ever it might be, the same question would still present 
 itself; a question, the reply to which admits of no hesita- 
 tion. 
 
 It will not surely be denied, that circumcision could 
 not be intended for a purpose which it never answered. 
 "The promise of the inheritance." says Mr. C. " was re- 
 stricted to the posterity of the individual who stood as 
 
 * Essay 131, 132. 
 
SECTION I. 37 
 
 their federal representative, who by this ordinance, were 
 separated and distinguished from all the Gentile nations." 
 He should have added that it was restricted to this pos- 
 terity, in a particular li^e of descent, namely, by Isaac. 
 Now by the very circumstance of circumcision having 
 been administered to so many others besides Isaac, it fail- 
 ed to serve the purpose thus assigned to it ; it was no dis- 
 tinction of Abraham's posterity by Isaac; but was com- 
 mon to them with other tribes and nations, sprung from 
 the same stock, and yet having no part in the promise of 
 the earthly inheritance. Might not this circumstance have 
 suggested to Mr. Cox's mind, that, connecting circumcis- 
 ion with the covenant of redemption, there was, in its ad- 
 ministration to others besides Isaac, an intimation intend- 
 ed, that although, to serve particular purposes in the di- 
 vine economy, the " covenant was established with him" 
 yet its best blessings, were not to be confined to one por- 
 tion of Abraham's family, or even to his posterity at 
 large, but were to extend to others also; — an intimation 
 which continued to be given in the admission, by circum- 
 cision, to the church of God, of all Gentile proselytes pro- 
 fessing the faith of Abraham. 
 
 That circumcision was administered to all the adult 
 domestics of Abraham, without regard to any profession 
 of the fiith of their master, but " simply as a part of his 
 domestic establishment," is a gratuitous assumption, need- 
 ful, it may be, to the support of the baptist system, but of 
 which there is no proof beyond the brevity of the history. 
 There is not even this. All the proof that really exists 
 is proof of the contrary. When Jehovah himself gives 
 the character of his servant, as one whom he " knew to 
 command his children and household after him, that 
 they should keep the " way of the Lord, to do justice and 
 judgment," we must be permitted to consider it as a slan- 
 der upon the father of the faithful, to suppose that there 
 were any in his household uninstructed in the knowledge 
 and fear of God ; and if we are to judge of the rest by the 
 specimen we have in the history, — Eliezer of Damascus, 
 and Hagar the Egyptian, it will be no unfavorable esti- 
 mate we shall form of the character of the inmates of his 
 4 
 
38 
 
 SECTION I. 
 
 family. Let us not judge of the " friend of God" by the 
 example of a West India slaveholder.* 
 
 Mr Cox conceives, and very confidently says, that it is 
 my " first and great mistake respecting the covenant it- 
 self, that perplexes the whole subject, pollutes all the sub- 
 sequent reasonings, and confounds together things which 
 essentially differ. " — I agree with him, that if my view of 
 the covenant of circumcision be a mistaken one, it must 
 necessarily invalidate and overthrow the reasonings found- 
 ed upon it. But it unfortunately happens, that the reason- 
 ings both of Mr. Cox and Mr. Maclean have settled me 
 more firmly in the conviction, that the mistake and con- 
 fusion are on their side, not on mine. — Mr. Cox denies 
 the truth of my position, that circumcision " was a sign 
 of the blessings bestowed in justification ; representing 
 the taking away of sin, both in its guilt and its pollution ; 
 that is, representing the two great blessings of justification 
 and sanctification." " Will Dr. W." says he " or any 
 of his brethren, have the goodness to point out the phra- 
 ses, which represent the two great blessings of justifica- 
 tion and sanctification ? Here is not only a general state- 
 ment of the existence of a covenant between God and 
 Abraham, but a specification of the design of that cove- 
 nant, and the blessings of which it gave assurance to that 
 eminent servant of God. Is justification mentioned? 
 Is sanctification mentioned V The reader, who has at- 
 tended to the view before given, from the new Testament, 
 of the promises of the covenant referred to, — the cove- 
 nant of circumcision in the seventeenth chapter of Gen- 
 esis, — will be at no loss for an answer to these questions. 
 I know of no writer, indeed, unless it be Mr. Cox himself, 
 who hesitates to admit the spiritual signification of the 
 rite of cicumcision ; and that fie really denies it, I have 
 found it difficult to persuade myself, in the face of those 
 expressions of scripture, which occur so frequently and 
 with which his mind is familiar : — such as, " Circumcise 
 the foreskin of your heart ;" — " All the seed of Israel are 
 uncircumcised in heart;" — " Circumcision is that of the 
 
 * T.et not the illusion be offensive to any one. I make it, becarse I have 
 sometimes heard the one ease adduced on the baptist side ol the question, 
 in illustration of the other. 
 
SECTION I. 39 
 
 heart, in the spirit and not in the letter ;" — " We are the 
 circumcision, who worship God in the spirit;" — " In 
 whom also ye are circumcised with the circumcision made 
 without hands, in putting off the body of the sins of the 
 flesh, by the circumcision of Christ," — &,c. &c. — Strange 
 as would have been the dcniai, in opposition 10 such phra- 
 seology, of the spiritual import of circumcision, yet had 
 Mr. Cox been able to maintain it, it would have been con- 
 sistent with his view of the covenant with which the rite 
 was connected, as a covenant " solely of temporal bless- 
 ings :" and, startled as I was, on finding him questioning 
 whether circumcision at all represented spiritual blessings, 
 I really thought I bad found him in the first baptist whom 
 I had known consistent with himself upon this point. 
 But " nil fuit unquam tarn impar sibi." — He says, " I have 
 already shown that the covenant of circumcision included 
 solely temporal blessings, and that the rite was instituted 
 to distinguish the Jew.-, from the other nations, and to show 
 their title to the land of Canaan."* Nad Mr. Cox, I say, 
 been able, in the face of his Bible, to adhere to this sim- 
 ple view of the rite, his system, respecting the covenant 
 to which it was annexed, might at least, have been consis- 
 tent with itself. But it will not do. After quoting the 
 Apostle's expression, respecting Abraham, — " he received 
 the sign of circumcision, a seal of the righteousness of 
 the faith which he had being yet uncircumcised," — he 
 says : " This language surely represents it as a token of 
 his acceptance as a believer; — a seal of his justification, 
 before, he was circumcised ; — a public pledge that his faith 
 was imputed to him for righteousnpss, or that God accept- 
 ed his faith ; and an exhibition of the doctrine that their 
 faith should be imputed in a similar manner to all subse- 
 quent believers. Thus it involved essentially a personal 
 reference, while it represented a general truth /" And 
 again, in remarking on my sentiment, that, whatever cir- 
 cumcision signified and sealed to Abraham, it must have 
 signified and sealed also to Isaac and Jacob, the heirs 
 with him of the sirne promise : — " Undoubtedly Isaac and 
 Jacob were co-heirs with Abraham, and circumcision in- 
 
 * Page 137. 
 
40 SECTION I. 
 
 dicated to them what it did to all his posterity; for in- 
 deed there is no reason for this discrimination in fivor of 
 these eminent patriarchs; that is, it indicated to them 
 their heirship by hirth of the temporal promises, and their 
 equal participation by faith of the spiritual blessings !•' 
 From these premises, the following strange anomalies 
 may be directly deduced: — 
 
 1. The covenant to which circumcision was annexed, 
 as its token, contained promises exclusively of temporal 
 blessings; and yet circumcision was to Abraham, person- 
 ally, the seal or pledge of his possessing the first of spirit- 
 ual blessings, — justification by faith : — 
 
 2. The covenant of circumcision contained nothing in 
 it of the " two great blessings of justification and sanctifi- 
 cation," — and the rite was instituted simply "to distinguish 
 the Jews from other nations, and to show their title to the 
 land of Canaan :" yet circumcision, connected as it was 
 with this temporal covenant only, " represented the gen- 
 eral truth" of justification by faith ; being " an exhibition 
 of the doctrine that their faith should be imputed in a sim- 
 ilar manner to all subsequent believers," — and " indicat- 
 ing to Isaac and Jacob, and to all the posterity of Abra- 
 ham, their equal participation by faith of the spiritual bless- 
 ings :"— 
 
 3. Abraham obtained his justification, and all the bless- 
 ings of salvation connected with it, on the ground of the 
 Gospel covenant, or covenant of grace ; yet the sign which 
 he received, and by which these precious blessings were 
 pledged to him, had no connection at all with that cove- 
 nant, on the around of which he obtained them : — and be- 
 lievers in all ages are designated " the circumcision," al- 
 though the right, from which they obtain the designation, 
 not only was not spiritual in itself, (which no rite can be) 
 but did not even signify any of those peculiar blessings by 
 which they are distinguished, nor bear any relation to the 
 covenant whose promises are fulfilled in the bestowment 
 of them ! 
 
 Nor are the sentiments of Mr. Maclean on this subject 
 more self-consistent than those of Mr. Cox. — He consid- 
 ers (as we have before seen) the covenant, of which we 
 have the record in Gen. xii. as essentially distinct from 
 
SECTION f. 41 
 
 lhat in Gen. xvii. The former alone he regards as the 
 gospel covenant, the latter as containing exclusively prom- 
 ises of temporal blessings to Abraham and his natural off- 
 spring. But he has not only the difficulty to contend with, 
 how it should come to pass that the token annexed to a 
 covenant of temporal promises, should be, to Abraham 
 himself, the seal of the blessings of the higher and better 
 covenant; — his system is embarrassed with another diffi- 
 culty. He admits that "both circumcision, and the tem- 
 poral promises to which it was annexed, had also a mys- 
 tical or typical sense :" that " circumcision and what per- 
 tained to it had both a tetter and a spirit, or a literal sense 
 in relation to the fleshy seed of Abraham, and a mystical 
 or typical sense in reference to his spiritual seed."* — Now, 
 without pressing on this acute writer, the inconsistency of 
 reasoning in support of the second of his successive theo- 
 ries, in terms that are applicable only to thejirst, — 1 would 
 merely observe : It is here admitted that the covenant in 
 Gen. xvii. contains promises; — that these promises have 
 a mystical or spiritual sense, as well as a literal and tem- 
 poral ; — and that circumcision, the token of this covenant, 
 has a similar spiritual as well as literal meaning : — I have 
 then to ask — Are the blessings contained in this covenant 
 to be considered as promised in the mystical or spiritual 
 sense, as well as in the literal and temporal ? If they be ; 
 then does it not become, bona fide, a covenant of spirit- 
 ual as well as of temporal promises ; only that, in the for- 
 mer sense, the promises are made in reference to the spi- 
 ritual seed, and in the latter to the natural? — and does 
 not circumcision, as annexed to such a covenant, and itself 
 possessing a mystical as well as a literal meaning, become 
 the token of the covenant in its spiritual as well as its tem- 
 poral import? And does not this effectually subvert the 
 distinction contended for between the different covenants 
 (as they are alleged to have been) with Abraham? — es-. 
 pecially when three tiling formerly adverted to are recol- 
 lected ;— -first, tint the faith by which Abraham is declar- 
 ed to have been justified is the faith of one of the promi- 
 ses in the covenant of circumcision, namely, that of the 
 
 * Review, pages 22 ; 23, tt passim. 
 
42 SECTION I. 
 
 multiplication of his seed — See Gen. xv. 5, 6 : secondly, 
 that believers in all ages are represented as being heirs ac- 
 cording to another of its promises, namely, that of the in- 
 heritance of Canaan ; for under no other form is the prom- 
 ise of the " better country" ever given in the divine com- 
 munications with Abraham ; See as before, Gal. iii. 18 — 
 29 : — and thirdly, that another still, a third of its promises, 
 and one of which so much is made in the New Testa- 
 ment, — that of Jehovah being " his God and the God of 
 his seed," is nowhere to be found at all, in any covenant 
 with Abraham, except here. 
 
 I have before referred to various modes of expression 
 in scripture which clearly ehow the spiritual import of the 
 rite of circumcision. 1 might have noticed more partic- 
 ularly, as not only a proof of this, but also of baptism and 
 circumcision being substantially significant of the same 
 things — (v\ith the exception of the latter having contained 
 a pledge of the coming of Messiah out of the loins of 
 Abraham, which pledge of course ceased to be necessary 
 when the event had taken place,) — the language of the 
 Apostle Paul, in Col. ii. 11, 12. " In whom also ye are 
 circumcised with the circumcision made without hands, 
 in putting off the body of the sins of the flesh, by the cir- 
 cumcision of Christ : having been buried with him in bap- 
 tism, wherein also ye are risen with him, through the faith 
 of the operation of God, who hath raised him from the 
 dead." — The more I consider this passage, I am the more 
 convinced, that it warrants our considering baptism as 
 the Christian circinncision. The inquiry ought not to be, 
 " Is it possible to interpret the language otherwise ?" — 
 but, " Is this its most natural meaning ?" I think it is, 
 because otherwise there is a feeble tautology ; the " cir- 
 cumcision made without hands," and the " circinncision 
 of Christ," being made of the very same import; — as if 
 the apostle had said — " Ye are circumcised with the cir- 
 cumcision of the heart, in putting off the body of the sins 
 of the flesh, by the circumcision of the heart," &-c. : — 
 and further, because the connection between the two ver- 
 ses leads to this interpretation : — " having been buried 
 with him in baptism," being added in explanation of the 
 preceding phrase, " putting off the body of the sins of the 
 
SECTION I. 43 
 
 flesh by the circumcision of Christ." And the fact that 
 baptism corresponds to circumcision, in denoting the "put- 
 ting off the body of the sins of the flesh," goes to con- 
 firm this interpretation. "His meaning is,'' says Mr. Ew- 
 ing, " that, as they were blessed with regeneration, which 
 was the blessing signified by their baptism, they stood in 
 no need of circumcision, since regeneration is the circum- 
 cision made without hands, that is, the circumcision of 
 the heart, so often spoken of both in the Old and New 
 Testament. Now, this reasoning is inconclusive, and the 
 very language in which it is expressed is unintelligible, 
 not only unless the ordinance of baptism under the reign 
 of Christ, and the ordinance of circumcision which was 
 observed before his coining, (both equally done with hands) 
 signify the same thing, but unless the one has come in 
 the room of the other." 
 
 I have formerly (page 3G.) stated my conviction that 
 the promises of the "covenant of circumcision," consid- 
 ered as including both temporal and spiritual blessings, 
 were made, the one and the other alike, to the same seed, 
 on the same ground ; — and that there is no distinction re- 
 cognized, either in the narrative or in the reasonings of 
 the Apostle, between the two kinds of promises, as if the 
 one had been made to the natural seed, and the other to 
 the spiritual. — I believe both to have been made, (because 
 the Apostle, by speaking of the promises of the covenant 
 indiscriminately, in effect says so,) to the spiritual seed ; 
 whilst there was, at the same time, a primary respect to 
 the natural offspring, amongst whose successive genera- 
 tions that seed was, by divinely appointed means, and es- 
 pecially parental instruction, to be raised up. 
 
 Had Mr. Cox understood my positions, or at all attend- 
 ed to them, he could never have written as follows : — 
 " The statement, that both promises are bestowed on the 
 same seed and on the same footing, is equally erroneous. 
 Dr. Wardlaw will never, surely, attempt to prove that all 
 the seed of Abraham according to the flesh were parta- 
 kers of salvation — that they were all justified and sancti- 
 fied ! If the promises of the covenant of circumcision 
 were temporal, they were fulfilled ; if they are supposed 
 
44 SECTION I. 
 
 to have been spiritual, they were not accomplished."* — 
 To the same purpose he elsewhere quotes Mr. Kinghorn 
 as saying — " Surely none will maintain that God engaged 
 to bestow special spiritual blessings on all the natural seed 
 of Abraham ; for this was not the fact in any age; and 
 we cannot imagine the covenant intended to point out 
 what was not fulfilled."! — This way of representing the 
 case is very common with Baptists : but they are charge- 
 able in it with a glaring oversight. They forget, that to 
 " all the natural seed of Abraham," even in the line of 
 Isaac, the temporal promises were not fulfilled, any more 
 than the spiritual. They forget, that for nearly five hun- 
 dred years from the time of the promise, not a soul of 
 Abraham's posterity inherited a foot-breadth of Canaan ; 
 and that now, for more than seventeen centuries, it has 
 been given to the Gentiles, the seed of the father of the 
 faithful being utterly dispossessed of it. — So far am I from 
 fancying the covenant " intended to point out what was 
 not fulfilled," that I do not see any satisfactory ground on 
 which the faithfulness of God to the promises of the cov- 
 enant, -whether temporal or spiritual, can be fully and clear- 
 ly vindicated, but that which the Apostle takes up, that 
 "ikey are not all Israel who are of Hsraei." — Let us rec- 
 ollect the occasion on which he introduces this distinction. 
 He supposes the objection might be made to his state- 
 ments, respecting the casting oft of the Jewish people for 
 their unbelief and rejection of the Messiah, that it would 
 be a violation of the divine promises, which were made to 
 Abiaham and his posterity. When he first mentions this 
 difficulty, he does not give the solution of it, but only re- 
 jects, with indignation, every possibility of God's failing 
 in his word : — " For what if some did not believe? shall 
 their unbelief make the faithfulness of God without effect ? 
 God forbid : yea, let God be true, though every man should 
 be a liar," Horn. iii. 3, 4. — But he afterwards resumes the 
 subject, and states the principle on which the divine ve- 
 racity is cleared of impeachment. Having expressed, in 
 the beginning of the ninth chapter of the same epistle, 
 " his great heaviness and continual sorrow of heart for 
 
 * Fa-es 14,3. 114. t Poge 133. 
 
SECTION I. 45 
 
 his brethren, his kinsmen according to the flesh," antici° 
 pating no doubt the impending judgments of God, and 
 their ejection from his church, he adds, veises (5 — 8, "Not 
 as though the word of God hath taken none effect; for 
 they are not all Israel, who are of Israel : neither because 
 they are the seed of Abraham are they all children ; but 
 in Isaac shall thy seed be called : that is, they who are 
 the children of the flesh, these are not the children of God, 
 but the children of the promise are counted for the seed." — 
 It is evident, that in this ground of vindication, the prin- 
 ciple is assumed, that the promises of a faithful God must 
 be fulfilled, in the sense, and to the extent, in which they 
 were made. Had the promises been made to all the nat- 
 ural posterity of Abraham as such, — then to all of them, 
 as such, they must have been verified ; and the " casting 
 ofT" of the unbelieving Jews from the privileges of the 
 church, and from the possession of the earthly inheritance, 
 would, the Apostle tacitly admits, have been at variance 
 with the truth of God. But the distinction which he in- 
 troduces reconciles the facts with the promises, showing 
 that their accomplishment extends to all to whom they 
 were originally made. 
 
 If it should be objected to this, that the spiritual seed 
 have been deprived of the earthly Canaan as well as the 
 natural offspring, and that therefore, the promises, in their 
 temporal sense, have not been fulfilled to the former uni- 
 versally, any more than to the latter ; — I answer, first, that 
 the difficulty attaches to both sides of the present ques- 
 tion, and therefore ought not to be vehemently urged by 
 the one or the other against its opposite ; — and secondly , 
 that the simplest principle of solution seems to be, that 
 believers, since the coming ot Christ, are " inheritors of 
 the promises," in the same sense in which Abraham, Isaao 
 and Jacob themselves were, in which Moses and Aaron 
 were, in which all the saints were, previously to the actual 
 possession of Canaan. If the instances that preceded its 
 occupation be not valid exceptions, neither are those which 
 hwefoltuice'l it,— or rather, perhaps, I should say, which 
 intervene between its forfeiture and its re-occupation. In-. 
 dividual Jews, who are biought to the knowledge of 
 Christ, come to be heirs of the promises in their higher 
 
46 SECTION I. 
 
 sense, the less blessing being absorbed, as it were, in the 
 greater, till " the Deliverer shall come to Zion, and turn 
 away ungodliness from Jacob." Not, however, that the 
 temporal promise is, to the people of God, done away 
 Godliness has " the promise of the life that now is," as 
 well as of " that which is to come," and those who "seek 
 first the kingdom of God and his righteousness/' have; the 
 assurance that " all these tilings" — namely, the needful 
 blessings of this life, — " shall be made unto them." 
 
 These observations, respecting the seed, to whom the 
 temporal inheritance was promised as well as the eternal, 
 are in full harmony with the ground on which, according 
 to the statements of scripture, the earthly Canaan was ob- 
 tained, and held, and lost. It was obtained by faith; by 
 faith it was held ; and it was lost by unbelief. 
 
 1. What was the reason why the race that came out of 
 Egypt by Moses did not enter Canaan ? — what wis the 
 cause of their exclusion 1 — It was unbelief; — unbelief of 
 the promises of God to their fathers ; which promises, as 
 we have already seen, contained the gospel, in the state 
 of its revelation at the time. This is plainly declared, 
 Heb. iii. 18, 19. "To whom sware he that they should 
 not enter into his rest, but to them who believed not ? So 
 we see, that they could not enter in because of unbelief:" 
 and chap. iv. 2. " For unto us was the gospel preached 
 as well as unto them : but the word preached did not profit 
 them, not being mixed with faith in them that heard it." — 
 The unbelief, thus imputed to this proscribed generation, 
 was not unbelief of the statements of those who had been 
 sent to search the land. For if, ir/the representation giv- 
 en by these, there was any material difference between 
 Caleb and Joshua ,on the one hand, and the remaining ten 
 on the other, certainly, as far as respected human testi- 
 mony, Israelites could not have been greatly to blame, for 
 receiving the declaration of ten in preference to that of 
 two. But it was unbelief of the declarations and promises 
 of God, made by Him to their fathers, respecting that 
 land ; and, consequently, distrust of his veracity, and his 
 power, accompanied with rebellious complaints and mur- 
 mu rings. It. amounted to a rejection of the word of God 
 and the promises of his covenant, — a rejection of God him- 
 
SECTION I. 47 
 
 self as the God of their fathers, Abraham, Isaac, and Ja- 
 cob. It was a denial of his faithfulness, not in the prom- 
 ise of Canaan only, but in all the promises respecting the 
 seed of Abraham, connected with it, and dependent up- 
 on its fulfilment. These " sinners against their own souls" 
 were, doubtless, unbelieving and proud despisers of all 
 that the God of their fathers had engaged by covenant to 
 do, — of the accomplishment of which their own deliver- 
 ance, by signs and wonders, from Egyptian bondage, was 
 a prelude and a pledge. They were unbelievers of the 
 Gospel, as then revealed in the promises of the covenant 
 made with Abraham. 
 
 2. It is true, that the Israelites are spoken of as con- 
 tinuing to hold the land of Canaan in possession through 
 obedience. But by this obedience we must understand 
 the obedience of faith. I say, we must so understand it, 
 not because it is necessary to the making out of our pre- 
 sent argument, but because the principles laid down by 
 the Apostle, respecting the possession of the inheritance, 
 indispensably require it. " If the inheritance, be of the 
 law," he says, " it is no more of promise:" — " if they 
 who are of the law be heirs, faith is made void, and the 
 promise made of no effect." — These expressions stand in 
 perfect opposition to the idea of the land of Canaan ever 
 being held on the ground of law, or as the merited reward 
 of legal obedience. And there are, accordingly, many 
 passages, in which the obedience required of Israel is de- 
 scribed as being much more than mere outward subjec- 
 tion ; as being nothing le^ss than inward spiritual princi- 
 ple, manifested in external conduct ; that is, in ether 
 words, the obedience of faith. Let the reader, who is 
 desirous to ascertain the truth of this or the contrary, 
 consult Deut. x. 12 — 22. and vi. 1 — 19 : and, as illustra- 
 tive of the reasons of Divine judgments and of restora- 
 tion from them, the whole of the thirtieth chapter of the 
 same book. — If any choose to say, that their obedience 
 was the condition of their continuing to enjoy the prom- 
 ised blessings, my approving or disapproving of the ex- 
 pression, (which is ambiguous, and therefore improper) 
 depends on the meaning which it is intended to bear. If 
 by condition be meant meritorious ground or procuring 
 
48 SECTION I. 
 
 cause, I decidedly object to the statement, as contradic- 
 tory of the Apostle's. But if by obedience being {he con- 
 dition of enjoying the blessing, nothing more is intended, 
 than its being essentially requisite, a sine qua non ; then 
 the expression conveys an important truth, — a truth as 
 applicable to us as to them : — for there is no enjoying 
 the blessings, of any kind, which God has promised but in 
 the way of obedience to his commandments, under the 
 influence of " iaith working by love." It is equally a 
 truth that " by grace we are saved," and that " without 
 holiness no man shall see the Lord ;" — that " eternal life 
 is the gift of God," and yet that we must " seek for glory, 
 honor, and immortality, by a patient continuance in well 
 doing." 
 
 3. The reason why the Jews were at length, with such 
 awful judgments, cast out from the land of promise, cor- 
 responds with these views. It was unbelief- — rejection of 
 the person and Gospel of the Son of God. — " Because of 
 unbelief they were broken off," says Paul, " and thou 
 standest by faith" — Rom xi. 20. Moses, many hundred 
 years before, had denounced curses upon them if they 
 should be disobedient. These curses were fulfilled on ac- 
 count of their unbelief. And this shows us what kind of 
 disobedience was the ground of his denunciations, deliv- 
 ered in the name of the God of truth. — See the following 
 passages : Luke xix. 41 — 44. Matt, xxiii. 34 — 39. 1 
 Thess. ii. 15, 16. Acts iii. 23, &c. 
 
 Thus it appears, that the promise of the inheritance 
 was originally through faith; that it was as professors of 
 Abraham's faith that the Israelites entered on the pos- 
 session of Canaan ; that the possession was continued 
 through the obedience of faith ; and that on account of 
 their disobedience — disobedience springing from unbelief 
 and including it — judgments were threatened and inflict- 
 ed ; that by faith the inheritance was obtained ; that by 
 faith it was held, and that by unbelief it vyas lost. 
 
 I have said, that, whilst trie promises of the covenant 
 with Abiaham were made to the patriarch and his spirit- 
 ual seed, there was in them at the same time a primary 
 respect to his natural offspring, among whose successive 
 generations that seed was to be raised up. This obser- 
 
SECTION r. 
 
 49 
 
 ration is of essential consequence to our present subject; 
 and I have yet seen no reason to shrink from the position. 
 The following is the argument of my former publication, 
 referred to in the preface, in support of it. 
 
 It has been said, that ' if spiritual blessings were prom- 
 ised, in that covenant, to the fleshly seed as such, then it 
 behoved all the fleshly seed to possess them, and to be sav- 
 ed ; which is contrary to fact, and therefore inconsistent 
 with the faithfulness of God.' Those who make this ob- 
 jection, conceive the temporal promise to have been made 
 to the fleshly seed, and the spiritual promise to the spirit- 
 ual seed. It ought to be remembered, however, that, the 
 reasoning which holds good as to the spiritual promise, is, 
 in point of fact, equally conclusive as to the temporal. 
 'If the land of Canaan, and its temporal blessings, were 
 promised by God to the fleshly seed of Abraham as such, 
 then it behoved all the fleshly seed to inherit and enjoy 
 them, which is contrary to fact, and therefore inconsistent 
 with the faithful nes of God.' The truth is, as I have at- 
 tempted to show, that neither the one promise nor the oth- 
 er was made to the fleshly seed, merely as such; and that 
 the principle, ' they are not all Israel who are of Israel,' 
 is the only principle, on which the Divine faithfulness can 
 be, in either case, vindicated and maintained. ' What if 
 some did not believe ? Shall their unbelief make the 
 faithfulness of God of no effect ? God forbid.' 
 
 This view is by no means at variance with the idea of 
 that primary respect, of which I now speak, as being had, 
 in the promise, to the natural offspring ; a respect, not 
 merely primary according to the order of time, but accord- 
 ing to a peculiarity of regard, and according to what may 
 be termed the natural course of things. — That any peculiar 
 regard or favor is shown to children on account of their pa- 
 rents, is by many strongly denied ; as being inconsistent 
 with the freedom of Divine grace. But that God does show 
 such regard to children, for the sake of their parents, we 
 find both intimated and exemplified, in many parts of the 
 scripture history. God represents himself* as ' visiting 
 the iniquities of the fathers upon the children, unto the 
 
 * Exod. xx. 5, 6. 
 
50 SECTION I. 
 
 third and fourth generation of them that hate him, and 
 showing mercy unto thousands (of generations) of them 
 that love him and keep his commandments.' Now, with- 
 out entering into any discussion of the precise or full 
 meaning of these expressions, I would merely remark, 
 that the latter surely cannot be considered, as less consis- 
 tent with the freedom of mercy, than the former with the 
 strictness of justice. — There is an expression also used 
 by Paul, respecting the Jews in their present state of un- 
 belief, which appears to me inexplicable, except on some 
 such principle : — ' As touching the election,' says he, 
 \they are beloved for the father's sakcs.'* If a peculiar- 
 ity of regard is not, in these words, expressed towards 
 the natural ' seed of Abraham, God's friend,' for the sake 
 of him, and of their other godly fathers, with whom Je- 
 hovah established his covenant, I am at a loss to imagine 
 what meaning the expression can have. 
 
 Besides : in the idea suggested there is nothing incon- 
 sistent with the free operation of Divine grace ; because 
 this grace, in its various blessings, being conveyed to sin- 
 ners by means, it is quite according to the natural order 
 of things, that it should accompany those means, and flow 
 with them, as it were, in the same channel. If, therefore, 
 the knowledge of God, the means by which the blessings 
 of salvation come to be enjoyed, was appointed to be con- 
 veyed from generation to generation, we must suppose the 
 blessings to be conveyed along with it, and the convey- 
 ance of the blessings to be the grand design of the con- 
 veyance of the knowledge. There is no other design, 
 which we can imagine God to have had. And, therefore, 
 although the grace of God is not imparted by fleshly birth, 
 all being 'conceived in sin, and brought forth in iniquity ;' 
 yet, that when God's people are attentive to the means ap- 
 pointed, this grace should appear descending through their 
 generations, cannot at all be matter of wonder. If God 
 has been pleased to make the promises of his covenant, 
 with a primary reference to the generations of his people, 
 as the line in which, by the communication of the knowl- 
 edge of his name, the blessings of his grace should flow, 
 
 * Rom. xi. 28. 
 
SECTION I. 51 
 
 (though not to the exclusion of others from being, in his 
 sovereign pleasure, brought within the bond of his cove- 
 nant ;) and if, in the token of his covenant, he has given 
 his people encouragement, to indulge the believing expec- 
 tation, of his mercy being imparted, through the use of 
 appointed means, to their offspring, as well as to them- 
 selves; it becomes a very serious matter, to treat this en- 
 couragement, which regards the dearest and most inter- 
 esting of all concerns, to a believing parent's heart with 
 indifference or neglect. 
 
 That the promise had a primary respect to the fleshly 
 seed of believing Abraham, implying as its first import, 
 not indeed that alt his fleshly seed should be saved, but 
 that amongst them there should be a seed to serve the 
 Lord, may, I think, be established from the following pas- 
 sages of the word of God. 
 
 I. Gen. xviii. 17 — 19. ' And the Lord said, shall 1 hide 
 from Abraham that thing which I do; seeing that Abra- 
 ham shall become a great and mighty nation, and all the 
 nations of the earth shall be blessed in him ? For I know 
 him, that he will command his children and his household 
 after him, and they shall keep the way of the Lord, to do 
 justice and judgment; that the Lord may bring upon 
 Abraham that which he hath spoken of him.' 
 
 The most inattentive reader wiil perceive, that, in this 
 passage, the character given of Abraham is connected 
 with the fulfilment of God's promise to him. It is equal- 
 ly obvious, that the authoritative instruction of his family 
 could have no influence in accomplishing the promise of a 
 carnal, but of a spiritual seed. His acting in the man- 
 ner described was the means, by which God verified his 
 word ; giving him such a seed, from among his natural 
 offspring, by the communication of the knowledge of God 
 to his family, and from them downwards, through successive 
 generations. By this means, God ' brought upon Abra- 
 ham that which he had spoken of him ; proving ' a God 
 to hirn, and to his seed after him in their generations.' 
 And in the same manner, 'the generation of the upright' 
 continued to be 'blessed' — ' God's righteousness being to 
 children's children, to such as keep his covenant, and re- 
 membered his commandments to do them.' 
 
62 
 
 SECTION r. 
 
 II. Rom. xi. 1. ■ I say then, hath God cast away his 
 people ? God forbid ! For I also am an Israelite, cf the 
 seed of Abraham, of the tribe of Benjamin.' — The Apos- 
 tle here begins to prove, that God had not cast off his peo- 
 ple. And what is the first consideration, which he sug- 
 gests? That he himself, whom God had blessed with 
 salvation, was a descendant of Abraham, after the flesh. 
 For, that he speaks of fleshly descent, is plain, from his 
 mentioning ' the tribe of Benjamin,' along with the ' seed 
 of Abraham.' 
 
 Two things may be observed from this passage. 1st. 
 If there had not been such a primary respect to the fleshly 
 seed, as I am endeavoring to establish ; the salvation of 
 one belonging to the fleshly seed, could never, with pro- 
 priety, have been adduced, as any peculiar or appropri- 
 ate evidence, that ' God had not cast away his people.' 
 The salvation of a Gentile would have been quite as much 
 to the purpose ; the ' election' among the Gentiles being 
 the people of God, as well as among the Jews. And the 
 Apostle might have quoted the case of Cornelius, or of 
 the Philippian jailor, with as much conclusive effect, as 
 his own. 2dly. It seems equally evident, that, while there 
 was a primary respect to the natural seed of those to whom 
 the promises were made, these promises never implied, 
 that all who should descend from them, by fleshly birth, 
 should partake of the blessings. For of this, the salvation 
 of an individual, or of' a remnant according to the elec- 
 tion of grace,' however numerous, would have been a 
 proof totally inconclusive. 
 
 III. Jer. xxxi. 31—33. Heb. viii. 8—10. ' Behold the 
 days come, saith the Lord, that I will make a new cove- 
 nant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah ; 
 not according to the covenant that I made with their fa- 
 thers, &-c. For this is the covenant which I will make 
 with the house of Israel,' &lc. — When we consider what 
 is so often repeated in the New Testament, respecting 
 the gospel, or new covenant, as being ' to the Jew first,' 
 the meaning of these passages appears sufficiently obvious. 
 They represent the new covenant as made with the same 
 people, with whom the old was made, — i the house of Is- 
 rael/ — the natural seed of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, 
 
SECTION 
 
 5:3 
 
 And this was fulfilled, when to them first, God, having 
 raised up his Son Jesus, sent him to bless them, in turn- 
 ing away every one of them from their iniquities,' Acts, 
 iii. 26. These words immediately follow an address of 
 the Apostle Peter, to the unbelieving Jews, which appears 
 to put this matter beyond a doubt: ' Ye are the children 
 of the prophets, says he, and of the covenant which God 
 made with our fathers, saying unto Abraham, And in thy 
 seed shall all the families of the earth be blessed/ From 
 this arises the encouraging declaration immediately add- 
 ed, ' Unto you first? &c. If there had been, in the prom- 
 ises, no such primary reference, of peculiar regard, to the 
 fleshly seed, 1 am at a loss to conceive, in what sense the 
 Jews here addressed, who had no relation to Abraham 
 but that of carnal descent, could be denominated the child- 
 ren of the covenant made with the fathers, not as con- 
 taining the promise of temporal blessings only, but the 
 promise of the glorious gospel of the blessed God. — 'To 
 them (says the apostle, in the ninth chapter of the epistle 
 to the Romans, speaking of his ' kinsmen according to 
 the flesh,') 'to them pertained the adoption, and the glo- 
 ry, and the covenants, and the giving of the law, and the 
 service of God, and the promises.' 
 
 If this primary respect to the fleshly seed be admitted, 
 it is all that I desire to establish in behalf of the carnal 
 relation." 
 
 Mr. Maclean's strictures on this reasoning have only 
 served to establish me in the conviction of its truth. He 
 first " freely admits, that the promises made to Abraham 
 had a primary respect to his natural offspring." "But," 
 he adds, ; ' on this subject we must distinguish Abraham's 
 natural offspring into the children of the flesh and the 
 children of the proinise, and also the promises themselves 
 into temporal and spiritual:" — and from the laying down 
 of this usual distinction, any reader that has the slightest 
 portion of s gacity, and of acquaintance with this contro- 
 versy, might anticipate the manner in which it is applied. 
 — The sagacity of the same reader, however, may enable 
 him to perceive, that the whole of my argument and illus- 
 tration regarded the primary respect of the spiritual prom-* 
 *5 
 
 % 
 
54 SECTION I. 
 
 ises to the fleshly seed. I should have been doing a very 
 useless thing indeed, had I set myself to prove the prima- 
 ry reference to this seed of the temporal promises : (or I 
 should have been proving what no one questioned. Now, 
 what I have contended for, Mr. Maclean in substance ad- 
 mits : " As to the spiritual promises which are included 
 in the blessing of Abraham, such as justification, the pro- 
 mise of the Spirit, the true adoption of sons, &lc. these 
 had also & primary, though not a peculiar or exclusive re- 
 spect to Abraham's natural offspring. That they had not 
 an exclusive respect to them, is clear from the very words 
 of the covenant with Abraham on which the Apostle's ar- 
 gument is founded, viz. ' In thee,' or 'in thy seed, shall 
 all the nations of the earth be blessed,' which includes 
 Gentiles as well as Jews, Gal. iii. 8, 14, 16, 17, 28 ; and 
 with this the facts recorded in the accomplishment of that 
 promise fully agree."* 
 
 These positions he proceeds to establish, much in the 
 same way as I have myself done above. And when he 
 subjoins, " Thus the spiritual promises had a primay re- 
 spect to the natural offspring of Abraham : but as the 
 bulk of that nation rejected Christ when he came, and 
 persecuted his followers, neither their being the circum- 
 cised seed of Abraham, nor their national relation to God 
 by the Sinai covenant, could entitle them to the privileges 
 of the free sons and heirs ; and so they were, like the 
 bond-woman and her son, cast out of God's house :" — he 
 says what I heartily subscribe to. The distinctions made 
 are essential to my own argument. 
 
 Mr. Maclean labors hard with the passage Rom. xi. 28. 
 " As touching the election, they are beloved for the fath- 
 ers' sakes." — After stating his objection to its being un- 
 derstood as implying any regard, in the bestowment of 
 spiritual blessings, to the character of their godly pro- 
 genitors, — namely, the apparent inconsistency of such a 
 sentiment with the freedom of grace, — he proceeds to say 
 — " I apprehend, therefore, that when the Apostle says, 
 ' As concerning the election, they are beloved for the fath- 
 ers' sakes,' he means, for the sake of that which God 
 
 * Review, p. 88 ; 89. 
 
SECTION 1. 
 
 55 
 
 promised to their fathers. The promise to Abraham was, 
 * In thee.' or * in thy seed, shall all the nations of the 
 earth be blessed.' Gen. xii. 3, xxii. IS. This, the Apos- 
 tle informs us, was the covenant which was confirmed be- 
 fore of God in Christ, and in which the gospel was be- 
 fore preached to Abraham ; and he explains this seed in 
 whom the nations were to be blessed, and to whom the 
 promises were made, to be Christ." Gal. iii. 8, 16, 17.* 
 
 This view of the passage is liable to the following ob- 
 jections : — 
 
 1. Mr. Maclean understands 'the election' as meaning 
 the persons elected; and the pronoun they as having these 
 persons for its antecedent, — " they, (i. e. the election,) 
 are beloved for the fathers' sakes." But the structure of 
 the entire verse will hardly admit of this : — " As concern- 
 ing the gospel, they are enemies for your sakes ; but as 
 touching the election, they are beloved for the fathers' 
 sakes." — It seems evident, that the pronoun " they," in 
 the two clauses of the verse, has the same antecedent. It 
 relates to the race of the Jews, — not the then existing gen- 
 eration, but ■the race generally, considered as the offspring 
 of the ancient fathers. The same mode of expression 
 occurs in all the preceding context — where the Apostle, 
 speaking of the future restoration of Israel, says — " And 
 they also, if they abide not still in unbelief, shall be graft- 
 ed in ; for God is able to graft them in again," &,c. ver- 
 ses 23 — 27. Although the pronoun them appears to refer 
 to the branches which were then broken off, yet the real 
 reference is, not to the generation then in being, but only 
 to the same people or race, at a distant period, considered 
 as retaining its identity in its continued connection with 
 the same original root or stock. 
 
 It appears to me evident, that, in the verse under con- 
 sideration, things and persons are respectively set in con- 
 trast : — " as concerning the gospel" — " as touching the 
 election :" — " enemies for your sakes" — " beloved for 
 the fathers' sakes." — " The election," therefore, means, 
 I think, not the persons chosen, but the Dirinc choice. 
 The word as used in both senses in the preceding part ol 
 
 * Review, p. 92, 93. 
 
56 SECTION I. 
 
 the same chapter ; and this acceptation of it here accords 
 with the verse which follows ; — " for the gifts and calling 
 of God are without repentance :" which in effect is the 
 same assaying, the Divine choice is without repentance. 
 
 2. That the sense affixed by Mr. Maclean to the phrase, 
 "for the fathers' sakes" is not the natural one, is evident 
 from his own admission in the following words, which 
 conclude the paragraph of which I have cited the begin- 
 ning : — "So that whatever temporal blessings and out- 
 ward privileges were promised to, or conferred on, the na- 
 tion of Israel, for the fathers' sakes, vet the spiritual 
 blessings of redemption which were peculiar to the elect 
 among them, are promised and bestowed only for chiust's 
 sake." — This is as much as to say, that if the phrase, " for 
 the fathers' sakes," had been used in regard to temporal 
 blessings, it might have been allowed to mean what it plain- 
 ly and simply expresses: — but tha* as the Apostle is here 
 speaking of the restoration of Israel to the church of God, 
 and of tneir spiritual salvation, it must signify, not what 
 it plainly expresses, but " for Christ's sake." This is ar- 
 bitrary. Is there any inconsistency in holding, that, whilst 
 all the blessings of salvation are bestowed in free mercy 
 for Christ's sake, yet, in conferring them on any of the 
 posterity of his servants, the God of grace may have a 
 regard to the previous objects of his love, and, in blessing 
 the offspring, gratify, as it were, an ancient affection to the 
 fathers ? And is not this in perfect harmony with the lan- 
 guage, so frequent in scripture, which represents the love 
 of God to the fathers as terminating upon ihe children : — 
 " The Lord had a delight in thy fathers, to love them, 
 and he chose their seed after them, even you above all 
 people, as it is this day — circumcise therefore the foreskin 
 of your heart, and be no more stiff-necked."* 
 
 3. The promise quoted by Mr. Maclean, namely, "In 
 thee," or " in thy seed shall all nations of the earth be 
 blessed," affords no ground whatever for the inference of 
 a special or primary regard to the election among the 
 J<:ivs. That promise relates alike to the Gentiles and to 
 the natural offspring of Abraham : and any obligations on 
 
 * Deut. x. 15, 16. 
 
SECTION I. 57 
 
 the part of God to fulfil a promise relative to all nations, 
 was not at all to the purpose of the Apostle's argument. 
 The election among the Gentiles were as much beloved 
 for the sake of this promise, as the election among the 
 Jews. It left no room for a " how much more" on behalf 
 of the latter. If there was any primary respect in it at 
 all, it was rather to the world at large than to the offspring 
 of Abraham: and so the Apostle interprets it when he 
 says — " And the scripture, foreseeing that God would jus- 
 tify the heathen through faith, preached before the gos- 
 pel unto Abraham, saying, In thee shall all nations be 
 blessed." Gal. iii. 8. But that a peculiarity of regard to 
 the " seed of Abraham, God's friend," is intended to be 
 expressed, is as clear as words can make it; and an ex- 
 planation that takes away the ground of this, cannot be 
 the true one. 
 
 4. It ought to be observed, that the promise, "In thy 
 seed shall all nations be blessed," is, according to the 
 Apostle, " the gospel" as preached to Abraham. If, there- 
 fore, " for the fathers' sakes" means for the sake of that 
 promise, it means for the sake of the gospel. What, then, 
 are we to make of the text 1 " as concerning the gospel, 
 they are enemies for your sakes ; but as touching the 
 election, they are beloved for the gospel's sake !" How 
 entirely does this destroy the antithesis, and subvert the 
 argument of the passage ! 
 
 5. It is very unfair in Mr. Maclean, to introduce the 
 word merely into the argument, a word which is neither 
 the Apostle's nor mine : — " If they were thus beloved 
 merely for the sake of the godliness of their fathers ; Ish- 
 mael and Esau with their posterities, and, at any rate, the 
 whole nation of Israel, must have had an equal claim to 
 this peculiarity of divine regard ; for they all sprung from 
 the same godly fathers." Who has ever said they were 
 beloved merely for the sake of their fathers ? who ever 
 
 thought so ? As to what is said of " Ishmael and Esau, 
 
 with their posterities," I have only to say, let the reader 
 look at the text cited a little ago, where Moses says to the 
 Jewish people, " God had a delight in thy fathers to love 
 them, and he chose their seed after them, even you above 
 all people." Is there or is there not, any connection ititi- 
 
58 SECTION I. 
 
 mated here, between the choice of the seed, and the de- 
 light in the fathers? If there be, (and who can question 
 it ?) the answer to the objection lies not with me — name- 
 ly, why God did not choose Ishmael and Esau with their 
 posterities, on account of the same delight. The fact 
 that it was otherwise is all in our favor : for, seeing the 
 connection between the delight and the choice, as between 
 a cause and its effect, is so unequivocally intimated, it 
 follows, that there is inconsistency between gracious sov- 
 ereignty in the choice of the seed, and a regard of love 
 in it, at the same time, to the fathers. 
 
 Mr. M iclean further objects, that, " as the promises 
 made to Abraham hid a primary respect to his natural 
 offspring, it follows from this, that they can have no such 
 respect to the natural offspring of Gentile believers, for 
 this plain reason, that they cannot have two primary re- 
 spects."* — But the objection is more specious than solid. 
 The spiritual seed amongst the posterity of /\braham, and 
 the spiritual seed amongst the Gentiles, are not two spirit- 
 ual seeds. They are one seed, of which Abraham is the 
 spiritual father. The primary respect for which I con- 
 tend, was not, if I may so speak, concentrated in Abra- 
 ham personally. It descended with the possession of his 
 faith ; every follower of that faith sharing in it, and deriv- 
 ing from it his encouragement in making known God's 
 "testimony and law" to his children, that they too might 
 " set their hope in God.'' When a Gentile received the 
 faith of Abraham, and united himself to the Israelitish 
 church, the circumcision of his children along with him 
 shotted, that, amongst other privileges, he became a par- 
 taker in this primary respect of the promises to the natu- 
 ral offspring. At the fulness of time, the Gentiles, be- 
 lieving the gospel, and received into the church, became 
 the people of God. The blessing of Abraham came up- 
 on them. They became partakers and heirs of the prom- 
 ises : — and the continuance among them of the primary 
 respect to the natural offspring no more constitutes two 
 primary respects, than their reception into the church pro- 
 duced two peoples of God, or two spiritual seeds of Abra- 
 ham. 
 
 * Review, p. 93, 94. 
 
SECTION II 
 
 In the preceding section, I have endeavored to show, 
 that the covenant made with Abraham was the gospel cov- 
 enant, the covenant of grace, under which we live, and 
 which is the basis of the New Testament church : — that 
 the ordinance of circumcision was attached to that cove- 
 nant, and, as the eign of its blessings and the seal of its 
 promises, was, by divine command, administered to chil- 
 dren : — that, although there is abundant evideuce of a 
 change in the rite or ordinance, there is none whatever of 
 any such change in its administration, as excludes chil- 
 dren from being any longer the legitimate subjects of its 
 observance: — and that, therefore, whilst our baptist friends 
 call upon us for the production of express precept, author- 
 izing the baptism of children, we are better entitled to 
 require the production of such precept from them, repeal- 
 ing and setting aside the ancient injunction and practice, 
 which existed under the same covenant, and, not belong- 
 ing to the old economy, the dispensation of Moses, did 
 not necessarily cease when that economy " waxed old, and 
 vanished away." 
 
 The excellence of any process of reasoning consists in 
 its successfully eliciting and establishing truth. The phi- 
 losopher who contrives an experiment, or a course of ex- 
 periments, by which a controverted point in science may 
 be satisfactorily settled, should certainly be regarded with 
 gratitude. If any brother philosopher should have form- 
 ed to himself certain principles and rules, according to 
 which all scientific inquiries and experiments ought to be 
 conducted, and should not only refuse to be satisfied by 
 the experiments, but even so much as to examine them, 
 because the process has not been in perfect agreement 
 with his pre-ordained regulations, he would justly be rep- 
 
60 
 
 SECTION II. 
 
 rimanded as unreasonable, as a bigot to modes and forms, 
 and an enemy to knowledge, unless it lias been attained 
 by a particular route. No man has any title to complain 
 of any mode of discussion, or of the sources from which 
 arguments are drawn, if he is conducted by them to true 
 conclusions and right principles. — I refer, in these re- 
 marks, to the exception, so generally and so strongly ta- 
 ken by our baptist brethren, against all reasonings in sup- 
 port of a New Testament practice, drawn from the Old 
 Testament scriptures. It has even been said, that " those 
 who attempt to prove infant baptism from the Abrahamic 
 covenant, follow the same course as those who try to 
 prove the propriety of the alliance between the church 
 and the world. Many subtle arguments, which may per- 
 plex, are also brought forward on this subject from the 
 Old Testament ; but if any one attends to the nature of 
 the kingdom of Christ, and to the apostolic instructions 
 and examples, the truth appears clear and " manifest."* — 
 It does so : but why ? — because the arguments drawn from 
 the Old Testament, in support of the alliance between 
 church and state, have been deduced from a perverse 
 misapplication to the conduct of other nations, of the pe- 
 culiarities of the Jewish people ; peculiarities, which were 
 such as no other nation can be authorized to apply to 
 themselves, unless they can show, that like Israel of old, 
 they have been singled out by Jehovah for special purpo- 
 ses, that they have been taken into the same peculiar re- 
 lation to himself, and have been endowed with the same 
 peculiar privileges. There never has been a divinely au- 
 thorized national church but one. If it could be shown, 
 that we found our argument for infant baptism on any of 
 the peculiarities of that constitution ; that we build our 
 reasonings upon the specialities of the old and temporary 
 covenant ; that we would bind the consciences of Chris- 
 tians by what was purely and exclusively Mosaic ; — there 
 might be some justice in the above comparison. But it is 
 not so. The argument drawn from the Abrahamic cove- 
 nant, is founded on the very consideration, that it is not 
 
 * Mr Haldane's Reasons of a Change in Sentiment and Practice in the 
 Subject of Baptism, p. 93. 
 
SECTION II. 61 
 
 exclusively Mosaic ; thnt, on the contrary, it existed cen- 
 turies before the Sinaitic constitution, and was entirely 
 independent of it; that it is the covenant of grace; and 
 that, in arguing from it, we do not argue from one 
 eovenatit to another, hut from the same covenant in dif- 
 ferent states of its progressive revelation. — The only ques- 
 tion with regard to any argument ought to be, Is it scrip- 
 tural? — not, From which of the two Testaments has it 
 been drawn ? If both be scriptuie, it may be as scriptu- 
 ral when drawn from the one as from the other: and if 
 it be scriptural, it is valid ; for " all scripture is given by 
 inspiration of God." There is a glorious and beautiful 
 harmony in Divine revelation. If my argument from Mo- 
 ses makes him inconsistent with Paul, 1 must be in the 
 wrong; but if another's argument from Paul makes him 
 inconsistent with Moses, he must be equally in the wrong. 
 That system is the right one, which harmonizes the dif- 
 ferent discoveries of the Divine mind, and shows the con- 
 sistency of scripture with itself. 
 
 It has been alleged, moreover, as a general reply to the 
 strain of reasoning in the preceding section, that, in re- 
 gard to infant biptism, the Neio Testament is silent ; — 
 and this silence alone is sufficient to set it aside. The pas- 
 sage usually quoted in support of this sentiment, — quoted 
 by men of sense and discrimination, and reiterated by 
 men of neither, — is Heb. vii. 14. " For it is evident, that 
 our Lord sprang out-of Judith; of which tribe Moses spoke 
 nothing concerning priesthood." — I have been surprised, I 
 confess, at the citation of this text f>r such a purpose. 
 The two cases are essentially different. In the first place, 
 the express command of God confined the priesthood in 
 Israel to a particular tribe, — the tribe of Levi. The in- 
 trusion of others was unhtll owed presumption, and pun- 
 ished with deith. The phnse, therefore, "Moses spake 
 nothing," evidently means m >r?, in this connection, than 
 mere silence; — namely ^ that the law which restricted the 
 priesthood to the tribe of Levi, was a law ei:c'usive of all 
 others, — so that, by this limiting and excluding statute, 
 Judah h id nothing to do with the priesthood. When our 
 brethren shtll have made out, from scripture, as exclusive 
 a law for believer baptism, as the law which confined 
 6 
 
SECTION II. 
 
 the priesthood to the tribe of Levi, they will have done 
 something to the purpose. Their argument will then 
 bear some resemblance in validity to that of the apostle. 
 But until they shall have done this, their reference to such 
 a passage will continue a mere begging of the question. — 
 Secondly, We deny the truth of the affirmation, that the 
 New Testament is silent on the subject. We think it con- 
 tains intimations of the connection of children with their 
 parents, in the promises of the covenant, and the blessings 
 of the kingdom of heaven, and also ol the apostolic prac- 
 tice in regard to their baptism, exactly such as the circum- 
 stances of the case might have led us to expect. 
 
 I must again repeat, that proofs of the fact of adult or 
 believer baptism, are nothing to the purpose ; because 
 they are proofs of what nobody disputes. The question 
 stands thus : — Our baptist brethren adduce passages on 
 their side of the controversy, in which persons are said to 
 have " believed and been baptized" — to have been " bapti- 
 zed both men and women" — to have "gladly received the 
 word and been baptized " &,c. But we, on our part, say, 
 these passages prove what to us requires no proof. They 
 prove adults to have been baptized on a profession of the 
 faith— but they do not cfa'sprove the baptism of the chil- 
 dren of proselytes. Yes, say the baptists, they do disprove 
 it; for, as to the baptism of any besides the believing 
 adults themselves, the scriptures are silent. They " speak 
 nothing" concerning the baptism of infants : therefore 
 infants ought not to be baptized. Now, this is what we 
 deny- It is precisely here that we are at issue. We say, 
 they are not silent. We affirm, in the terms of the sec- 
 ond of our three propositions, that there is abundant 
 
 EVIDENC : OF THE FACT. THAT, INSTEAD OF ANY CHANGE, 
 EXCLUSIVE OF CHILDREN, HAVING TAKEN PLACE UNDER 
 THE NEW TESTAMENT DISPENSATION, THE CHILDREN OF 
 CONVERTS TO THE FAITH OF THE GOSPEL WERE ACTUALLY 
 BAPTIZED ALONG WITH THEIR PARENTS, IN THE TIME OP 
 THE APOSTLES AND THE APOSTOLIC CHURCHES. To the 
 
 establishment of this proposition I now proceed. I shall 
 state and illustrate a series of observations, all hearing us 
 forward towards our conclusion, and some of them in my 
 apprehension, sufficient of themselves, to settle it. 
 
SECTION II. 
 
 I. It is very common, to speak of the Old and New 
 Testament churches, as if they were quite distinct from 
 each other; as if, when the latter was introduced, the 
 former had heen entirely removed, and succeeded by 
 something totally new. But this is far from being the 
 style in which the matter is represented, either in the Old 
 Testament scriptures, or in the New. In both, the ancient 
 church is spoken of, not as annihilated, and succeeded 
 by another, but as visited, comforted, purified, raised up, 
 and gloriously restored from decline and corruption. If 
 in some passages the idea of complete renovation appears 
 to be suggested, we need not be surprised that such lan- 
 guage should be applied to a change in the state of the 
 church so remarkable, — to a revival so eminently glorious. 
 The prosperity of the church in the latter days is repre- 
 sented by the " creation of new heavens and a new earth, 
 so that the former should not be remembered, nor come 
 into mind." — If such language is employed to elevate our 
 conceptions and anticipations of that blessed era, we 
 might surely expect terms somewhat similar to be used, 
 in reference to the time when " God was to be manifest- 
 ed in the flesh," " a light to lighten the Gentiles, and the 
 glory of his people Israel." 
 
 The fact is, that when the prophets of the Old Testa- 
 ment predict the calling of the Gentiles at the fulness of 
 time, they represent them as brought in to the previously 
 existing church, although in its renovated and remodelled 
 state : — and when the prophets of the New Testament 
 foretell the restoration of the Jews, it is under the idea of 
 being brought in again to the same church from which, 
 on account of their unbelief, they had been ejected. I 
 might multiply passages in proof of these positions. I 
 shall content myself with two or three as a specimen. 
 
 The first is Isaiah xlix. 20 — 22, where Zion, or the 
 church is represented as complaining of the loss of her 
 children, in prospect of the casting off of so great a mul- 
 titude of the ancient people of God ; and she is comfort- 
 ed and cheered with the assurance of an abundant in- 
 crease from another quarter : — " The children which thou 
 shalt have, after thou hast lost the other, shall say again 
 in thine ears, The place is too strait for me : give place 
 
64 SECTION II. 
 
 to me that I may dwell. Then shalt thou say in thine 
 heart, Who hath begotten me these, seeing I have lost my 
 children, and am desolate, a captive, and removing to and 
 fro? and who hath brought np these? Behold, I was 
 left alone ; these, where had they been ? Thus saith the 
 Lord God, Behold, I will lift np mine hand ;o the Gen- 
 tiles, and set up my standard to the people : and they 
 shall bring thy sons in their arms, and thy daughters shall 
 be carried upon their shoulders." 
 
 Of the next passage, Amos ix. 11, 12, we have an in- 
 spired interpretation, in perfect harmony with the princi- 
 ple we are endeavoring to establish : — " In that day will I 
 raise up the tabernacle of David that is fallen, and close 
 up the breaches thereof; and I will raise up his ruins, 
 and I will build it as in the days of old : That they may 
 possess the remnant of Edom, and of all the heathen, which 
 are called by my name, saith the Lord that doeth this." 
 How is this prediction explained in the New Testament? 
 How was the tabernacle of David to be raised up? How 
 was the remnant of Edom and of all the heathen to be 
 possessed by the ancient church ? The answer is, by the 
 bringing in of the Gentiles into the church of Christ : — 
 Acts xv. 14 — 17. "Simeon hath declared how God at 
 the first did visit the Gentiles, to take out of them a peo- 
 ple for his name. And to this agree the words of the 
 prophets ; as it is written, After this I will return, and 
 will build again the tabernacle of David, which is fallen 
 down; and I will build again the ruins thereof, and I will 
 set it up; that the residue of men might seek after the 
 Loid, and all the Gentiles, upon whom my name i^> called, 
 saith the Lord, who doeth all these things." The atten- 
 tive reader of the Ol 1 Testament prophecies will be at 
 no loss to add to these quotations many more. 
 
 The only other passage 1 shall at present adduce is a 
 very decisive one. from the New Testament, Rom. xi. 23, 
 24 " And they also, if they abide not still in unbelief, 
 shall be grafted in : for God is able to graft them in again. 
 For if thou wert cut out of the olive-tree, which is wild 
 by nature, and wert grafted contrary to nature into a good 
 olive-tree ; how much more shall these, which be the nat- 
 ural branches, be grafted into their own olive-tren ?" Were 
 the Old and New Testament churches entirely different, 
 
SECTION II. 65 
 
 having no substantial points in common, it is not easy to 
 see with what propriety the Jews, in being brought into 
 the latter, can be said to be grafted into their own olive- 
 tree — grafted in again, that is into the same olive-tree 
 from which they had been cut off. — Mr. Maclean indeed 
 argues, that, by this tree cannot be meant the national 
 church of Israel, because into that church the believing 
 Gentiles were not grafted. But does not the reader at 
 once perceive that, upon the same principle, it might be 
 said, it cannot mean the New Testament church, because 
 from that church the unbelieving Jews were not cut off? 
 And if it was neither the Old Testament church, nor the 
 New Testament church, what church was it? Is it not 
 very clear, that the believing Gentiles were grafted into 
 the same stock, from which the unbelieving Jews were 
 broken off? and if they were grafted into the same stock, 
 they certainly became branches of the same tree — bran- 
 ches, occupying the place of those that had been cut away. 
 The tree is not represented as cut clown, or rooted up ; 
 but as having " some of the branches broken off," verse 17. 
 If some were broken off, the rest surely remained ; and 
 when the branches of the wild-olive were engrafted, the 
 tree continued. It is not a new tree planted, but an old 
 tree, mutilated by the cutting off a number of its bran- 
 ches, and filled up with grafts upon the lopped boughs : 
 *' Thou wilt say then, the branches were broken off that 
 I might be grafted in: well; because of unbelief they 
 were broken off, and thou standest by faith. Be not high- 
 minded, but fear." The branches that were broken off 
 were the unbelieving Jews ; — those that remained were 
 the spiritual members of the ancient church, and such as 
 received the testimony of Jesus previously to the time of 
 judicial excision ;— and those that were added, in the room 
 of the cast-away,, were the converted Gentiles. It is true, 
 there was an overturning of the national form of the 
 church. Its constitution was remodelled. And the Gen- 
 tiles were introduced, though not into the national church 
 of Israel, yet into the church of the living God in its re- 
 modelled state : and I can imagine nothing clearer, than 
 that when the unbelieving Jews are represented as, at a 
 period yet future, to be li grafted in again to their owa 
 *6 
 
66 SECTION II. 
 
 olive-tree," the figure means their being reintroduced to- 
 the same church, though under a new form, from which 
 their ancestors were ejected. I have nowhere represent- 
 ed their being " grafted in again" as signifying their be- 
 ing " put into their former Jewish church state;" but on- 
 ly their being restored to the church of God, in its New 
 Testament form. — It should be recollected, that the church 
 which had Abraham, and Isaac, and Jacob for its original 
 stock — (we might go even further back, but this is the 
 point of time to the Apostle's reasonings usually refer) — 
 that this church existed for more than four centuries be- 
 fore its national constitution was formally organized at 
 Sinai. The natural offspring of these patriarchs, along 
 with proselytes from among the Gentiles, formed all along 
 the visible church of God ; at times indeed in a state of 
 fearful corruption, but still containing in it his true spi- 
 ritual people, until " the time of restoration." Then " the 
 wicked were to be shaken out of it." Those " children 
 of the stock of Abraham" who were not his children by 
 faith, though, on account of their fleshly connection with 
 him, denominated " the natural branches," were to be 
 cut off; and Gentiles, becoming by faith children of Abra- 
 ham, were to be grafted in, in their room, and to "par- 
 take of the root and fatness of the olive-tree ;" — that is, 
 to share in the special and enlarged privileges of the 
 church, of which Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob were the 
 original stock ; which was rooted in the covenant made 
 with these patriarchs ; and which, though varying its form 
 and external constitution and aspect, has been substan- 
 tially the same from the beginning. I might venture to 
 say, that the whole style of prophetic representation of 
 that which was to come, proceeds upon the principle of 
 the substantial identity of the church ; — and with this the 
 language of the New Testament writers agrees. — I have 
 before referred to the terms in which the prophets describe 
 the church as, at the fulness of time, to be visited, re- 
 stored, and purified. It is ridiculous to speak of this as 
 if it meant its entire annihilation, and the substitution of 
 another in its room. Some of the passages are very re- 
 markable. Let one suffice. Speaking of the coming of 
 the Messiah, the " Messenger of the covenant," the proph- 
 
SECTION II. 67 
 
 et Malachi says, chap. iii. 2, 3. — " But who may abide the 
 day of his coming? and who shall stand when he appear- 
 eth 1 for he is like a refiner's fire, and like fullers' soap : 
 And he shall sit as a refiner and purifier of silver ; and 
 he shall purify the sons of Levi, and purge them as gold 
 and silver, that they may offer unto the Lord an offering 
 in righteousness." This purification of his church was 
 effected, by casting out the wicked in wrath, and by bring- 
 ing the remnant through the fire, in mercy : See the sub- 
 sequent verses, and Zech. xiii. 8, 9. — When the prophet 
 adds, "Then shall the offering of Judah and Jerusalem 
 be pleasant unto the Lord, as in the days of old and as in 
 former years," — there can be no doubt that he refers to 
 the spiritual worship of the New Testament church. But 
 this is not the worship of a church entirely new, but of 
 the old church renovated and purified ; — and it is com- 
 pared, in its acceptableness, to that of the church in for- 
 mer times, in the purest and best periods of her ancient 
 history. — When the Gentiles are brought in to the church 
 of Christ, they are described as having been previously 
 " aliens from the commonwealth of Israel," but as now 
 " no longer strangers and foreigners, but fellow-citizens 
 with the saints, and of the household of God." Eph. ii. 
 1*2. 19. 
 
 But it would be endless to dilate. Enough has been 
 said in support of my first position. 
 
 II. My second is, that we ought to bear in mind, what 
 was the previous state of things in regard to children, and 
 their connection with their parents in the application of 
 the sign and seal of the covenant. — What this was, I need 
 not repeat. I merely remind the reader of it. The con- 
 nection, and the symbolical recognition of it, existed not 
 only amongst Jewish families themselves, but extended to 
 the case of Gentiles professing the faith of Abraham, — 
 proselytes to Judaism. A head of a family was received 
 into the community of Israel, with his household. When 
 I say, with his household, I mean his infant children, and 
 such of the adults as professed the same faith with himself. 
 I make this restriction, because the notion which some 
 have entertained, that adults in a family were, upon the 
 conversion of the head, compelled, upon pain of death, to 
 
68 SECTION II. 
 
 go over with him to the new religion, is so revolting to 
 every principle of justice and reason, involving the es- 
 tablishment, by divine authority, of a system of per>ecu- 
 tion unto death tor conscience sake. — that I cannot as- 
 sent to it; nor do I conceive that there is any thing in 
 the record, that may not be fairly explained, without the 
 admission of a supposition so monstrous. But on this I 
 must not here insist.* What I wish the reader now to 
 
 * When any interpretation of a divine law proceeds on a supposition,, 
 that is diametrically at variance with the grand moral principles ul the Bi- 
 ble, and the divinely sanctioned rights oi conscience, I feel myself war- 
 ranted, in not merely suspecting-, but concluding-, that it involves some mis- 
 take. The auihor of *' Eugenia and Bpenetus," previously to the publi- 
 cation of that work, submitted to me. a> a friend, some parts of the manu- 
 script, requesting my remarks I offered a few strictures in reply. These 
 are repeatedly referred to in die work, though, in conformity with my re- 
 sire, without the mention of my name, which, a^ the remarks were but brief 
 and hasty, I did not wish at the time to be introduced. 1 have now no ob- 
 jections to avow myself the writer of the following paragraph, at p. 85 of 
 those '■ Conversations," designed to illustrate, by a parallel case, what I 
 conceive to be the true spirit of the injunction that " all the males" ot Gen- 
 tile proselytes should be circumcised, before these proselytes themselves 
 could be admitted to eat the passover. — " Suppose the government of any 
 country to enact a law, that all foreigners desiious of settling in the country 
 as subjects, should, in order to their enjoying the privileges of subjects, 
 have a particular marK affixed in their forehead or right hand Apply ibis 
 enactment to the case of the head of a family having, let us say, twenty 
 adults. Suppose four of these are un willing to receive the necessary mark : 
 would it be at all rational interpretation of the l.iw, that therefore he could 
 leave these four, and setile in the country with the remaining sixteen, who 
 were willing to accompany him on the prescribed condition ? The obliga- 
 tion arising from such a law would never be interpreted as amounting to — 
 1 You must have a mark affixed to the body of ei erv adult, as well as every 
 infant, now in your family. You cannot settle in the county, if but one of 
 these refuses to submit to this mark, not even on the ground of that one be- 
 ing excluded and left behind.' It would be understood as amounting only 
 to this — • No one who does not receive this mark must come with you ; for 
 none such can r>e admitted to the privileges o? subjects ' — The application 
 of this to circumcision is obvious. When all the members of a man's fam- 
 ily are required to be circumcised, on the head of the family pas-ing into 
 the communion of Israel, all that is implied appears to be, that, as many as 
 passe I with him into this communion, and became partakers with him of it^ 
 privileges, must have tins mark put upon them.'"' 
 
 The parallelism of this illustrative case appears from the very reason as- 
 signed for the injunction — " For nn unciratmased person shall eat thereof/" 
 If the declared object of the law is perfectly attained, without the monstrous 
 supposition adverted to in the text, of every adult member of a household 
 being compelled, upon pain of death, to follow the faith of its head, are we 
 not fairly warranted lo conceive the supposition erroneous ?— " In the sup- 
 posed parallel case," says Mr. Innes. in reply, " of a person enjoying, on 
 certain conditions, the privileges of a particular community, there is one 
 very important point omitted, viz. that it was an essential part ol the law, 
 
SECTION II. by 
 
 bear in mind, is simply this — that the connection of chil- 
 dren with their parents, of which I have been speaking, 
 existed of old, and was interwoven with all the thoughts, 
 and feelings, and practices of the ancient church. It had 
 place in the reception of proselytes. It pervaded and 
 characterized the entire style and language of their sa- 
 cred books. The connection of this observation with 
 our argument will appear immediately when we have re- 
 marked, 
 
 III. In the third place, — The language of the proph- 
 ets, in looking forward to New Testament times, appears 
 to assume, or even to affirm, the continuance in those 
 times of the same connection that existed of old. 
 
 Jeremiah, speaking of the blessedness of the house of 
 Israel, when they shall turn to the Lord in the latter days, 
 says, in the the name ol Jehovah : — " I will gather them 
 out of all countries whither I have driven them in mine 
 anger, and in my fury, and in great wrath ; and I will 
 bring them again unto this place, and I will cause them 
 to dwell safely : And they shall be my people, and I will 
 be their God. And I will give them one heart, and one 
 way, that they may fear me for ever, for the good of them, 
 and of their children after them : And I will make an 
 everlasting covenant with them, that I will not turn away 
 
 that if any one of a mairs family did not receive the mark he was to be 
 cut off, i. e, lo be put to deaili. The case al'eged supposes, that it was an 
 optional thing in the members of the family to submit to the prescribed mark 
 or noi ; and tha' if an) - of them did not, they might leave the family, while 
 the head of it was not to blame. Now this is a case totally different from 
 the institution of circumcision. According to it, a man was deeply crimi- 
 nal it he had not all Ins miles circumcised. Such as were n<>t so, were not 
 authorized to separate from h m, but were commanded to be put to death." 
 — I need not say much in answer to tins, because it is only a re-affirmation 
 of his interpretation of the l.iw. Granting that being '' cut off from his peo- 
 ple" means b*-ing put to death ; as the design of the law was to prevent 
 any nncircnmcised person from partaking of the pnssover or being a mem- 
 ber of the Israelii ish community, which was the church of (iod, the punish- 
 ment 1 understand lo applv lo -ueh as should presume, without circumcis- 
 ion, to intrude themselves into th ■ congregation of the Lord. This is evi- 
 dent, from the nature of the case ; from the original law, lhat " every un- 
 circumcised manchild should be cut off from his people," — which manifest- 
 ly signifies every manchild found in connection with the congregation of Is- 
 rael, — the very phrase ' from his people" implying this ; and from the fact 
 of the judgments of Go;l being denounced against Israel by lbs prophets, 
 for having, amongst other evils, brought strangers uncircumclsed in heart 
 and uncircumcised in fle.sh : to be in his sanctuary, lo pollute it." 
 
70 section ir. 
 
 from them, to do them good ; but I will put my fear in 
 their hearts, that they shall not depart from me."* — I can- 
 not readily imagine any consistent interpolation of this 
 passage, if it does not contain a promise ot spiritual bles- 
 sing to the offspring of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, now 
 in a state of dispersion, and likewise to their children af- 
 ter them, ic their generations ; or, as the prophet Ezekiel 
 expresses it (chap, xxxvii. 2o.) " to their children, and to 
 their children's children, for ever." And, as this lan- 
 guage respecting t le Jews is used in prospect of their 
 union with the Gentiles in the New Testament church, 
 when they shall acknowledge Jesus to be the Christ ; it 
 follows, that the terms employed concerning them are de- 
 scriptive ot the state and privileges of all the subjects of 
 the new covenant, Gentiles as well as Jews. The pas- 
 sage, then, as referring to gospel times, seems to contain 
 an intimation, that the same connection should then con- 
 tinue between the people of God and their offspring, 
 which had existed from the days of Abraham. 
 
 The prophet Isaiah, predicting the glory of the church 
 in the latter days, gives the following, among other dec- 
 larations, of the blessedness of God's people : — " They 
 shall not labor in vain, nor bring forth for trouble : lor 
 they are the seed of the blessed of the Lord , and their off- 
 spring with the?/!." Isa. Jxv. 2#. They are " the seed 
 of the blessed of the Lord," that is, as I apprehend, the 
 spiritual seed of the fathers, Abraham, Isaac, aud Jacob, 
 who were peculiarly the blessed of the Lord ; — " and 
 their offspring with them ;" that is, connected with them 
 in the promise of the covenant, as in the days when it 
 was made with these blessed of the Lord, and partaking 
 with them of his blessing. This appears to be assigned 
 as the reason of their " not bringing forth for trouble," 
 — the blessing of the Lord resting on the offspring in con- 
 nection with their parents. 
 
 In replying to any argument, candor always requires, 
 that we bear in remembrance the pn cise point which it 
 is intended to establish. The above passages are adduc- 
 ed, simply to show, that the prophets, in anticipating the 
 spiritual times of the New Testament church, employ Ian- 
 * Jer. xxxii. 37— U). 
 
SECTION II. 71 
 
 guage such as indicates the future continuance of the con- 
 nection between parents and children which formerly 
 subsisted. The proper way of answering them, there- 
 fore, is, to show that they do not, in any degree, warrant 
 or countenance such an inference. I say, in any degree. 
 It is not enough to show that they are not, in themselves, 
 and apart from all other proof, conclusive. It would be 
 a very foolish way of disproving the strength of a chain, 
 to take up any particular link, and show that it was not 
 at the extremity, and had not an immediate connection 
 with the final point of fixture. Each link, however re- 
 mote, has a connection with that point, as real and as ne- 
 cessary, though not so immediate, as the last. Each in 
 its own proper place, by its junction with that which pre- 
 cedes and that which follows it, contributes to the continu- 
 ity and strength of the chain. And so does each argu- 
 ment, in a series of proofs, conduct to a conclusion. If 
 each bears legitimately its own proportion of inference, 
 this is all that should be expected from it. To reply to it, 
 by showing that U does not bear more, that it is not in it- 
 self conclusive as to the ultimate point, is not candid. 
 Thus, in answer to the above passages, it has been said, 
 " We want direct proof, that the ' good' promised in them 
 to the people of God and 'their children after them,' in- 
 cludes their baptism while infants." This is banter, not 
 argument. The sole question should be, Do the passages 
 give any countenance to the inference, that the connec- 
 tion between parents and children, which subsisted from 
 the institution of the covenant with Abraham, and char- 
 acterized the ancient dispensations, was to continue under 
 the new? If the negative of this precise point is not 
 made oui, the passages are not fairly met, but evaded. — 
 It has been further said, " We want positive proof that 
 their children mean flair infant children." But this too 
 is little better than evasion. There can be no question, 
 that in the promise of the original covenant, " I will be 
 a God to thee, and to thy seed after thee in their gener- 
 ations," infant children were included ; for the token of 
 the covenant was applied to thern at eight days old : — this 
 was the connection between parents and children which 
 existed anciently, and which was familiar to the Israel- 
 
72 SECTION II. 
 
 ites ; and the question is, as before, whether the above, 
 and other similar passages, do or do not contain any in- 
 timation that, in the predicted New Testament period of 
 the church, the same thing was to continue. — I am satis- 
 fied they do, — the attempt to explain them away having 
 confirmed the conviction. 
 
 TV. I go on now to remark, in the fourth place, that 
 the language of the New Testament intimates the contin- 
 uance ol the same connection ; and intimates it exactly 
 in such a way as, from the previous state of things, might 
 have naturally been expected. 
 
 It is of essential importance, in interpreting the New 
 Testament, that we should keep in mind the state of 
 things preceding it. The reason is obvious. It is surely 
 natural to expect, that its language should be affected by 
 these existing circumstances ; and the import of the ex- 
 pressions used we shall be unable, in many instances, 
 correctly to appreciate, unless we take into our view a 
 reference, in the mind of the writers, to what already ex* 
 isted and was familiarly known, and the existence and 
 familinr knowledge of which rendered greater enlarge- 
 ment, and minuteness, and precision, unnecessary. This 
 is a principle so obvious, and its influence so natural and 
 unavoidable, that, with the man who should question the 
 the admission of it as a legitimate cannon of interpreta- 
 tion, I should consider reasoning as thrown away. The 
 strongest consideration alledged against it, we shall have 
 occasion to notice by and by. 
 
 I have before observed, how the burden of proof lies on 
 the side of the opponents of infant baptism. They seek 
 a precept in positive terms — Let the infant children of 
 proselytes to the faith of the gospel be baptized with their 
 parents. Bui we demand a precept in similar positive 
 terms — Let the children of proselytes be no longer admit- 
 ted, as formerly, to the sign and seal of the blessings of 
 the covenant of God. — We call for the production of an 
 express declaration, that such admission is inconsistent 
 with the spirituality of the new dispensation. But no 
 such thing is ever said : no hint of such a thing is ever 
 given. So far from it, that let us mark in general terms, 
 how the case stands. — After finding the connection in 
 
SECTION II. 85 
 
 question pervading the Old Testament, in the manner we 
 have st .ted ; — the children of the professed people of 
 God circumcised with their parents ; and the children of 
 Gentile proselytes to the faith of Abraham introduced 
 with their children, by the same rite, to the privileges of 
 the ancient church ; — we then come forward to the his- 
 tory of the new dispensation. If this previous state of 
 things were really inconsistent with its spiritual nature, 
 it seems not unreasonable to expect that the language on 
 this point should be plain and decisive. But what is the 
 fact ? Instead of plain and decisive intimations of this in- 
 consistency, and of the necessary discontinuance of the 
 practice, we meet with language in perfect accordance 
 with the previous state of things: precisely sucli as wri- 
 ters whose minds were habitu »ted to it would naturally 
 use, and such as readers in similar circumstances could 
 not understand in any other way than one. — " They 
 brought young children to him, that he should touch 
 them; and his disciples rebuked those that brought 
 them. But when Jesus saw it he was much displeased, 
 and said unto them, Suffer the little children to come 
 unto me, and forbid them not, for of such is the king- 
 dom of God. Verily I say unto you, Whosoever shall 
 not receive the kingdom of God as a little child, he 
 shall not enter therein. And he took them up in hi* 
 arms, put his hands upon them, and blessed them :" — 
 "Jesus said unto him, This day is salvation come to this 
 house : forasmuch as he also is a son of Abraham :" — 
 " Then Peter said unto them, Repent, and be baptized 
 every one of you, for the remission of sins ; and ye 
 shall receive the gift of the Holy Ghost: — for the prom- 
 ise is to you, and to your children, and to all that are afar 
 off, e*en as many as the Lord our God shall call :" — " A 
 certain woman, named Lydia, a seller of purple, of the 
 city ofThyatira, who worshipped God, heard us : — whose 
 heart the Lord opened, that she attended to those things 
 which were spoken of Paul. And when she was bap- 
 tized, and her household, she besought us," &,c. — " They 
 said unto him, Believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou 
 shall be saved, and thy house : and they spake unto hirn 
 the word of the Lord, and to all that were in his house : — 
 7 
 
CO SECTION II. 
 
 and he was baptized, he and all his, straightway :"— " I 
 baptized alsothe household of Stephanas :" — " The unbe- 
 lieving husband is sanctified by the believing wife, and 
 the unbelieving wife is sanctified by the believing hus- 
 band , — else were your children unclean ; but now are 
 they holy."* — It is not on one or another of these texts, 
 taken separately, that I am resting my argument under 
 this particular. It is on the intimation which, when ta- 
 ken together, they so clearly afford, of the continuance 
 of the same state of things, in regard to families, as for- 
 merly. I profess myself unable to account for the lan- 
 guage, on any thing like easy and natural principles of 
 interpretation, unless upon this hypothesis. The unnat- 
 ural straining which is employed, to get rid of some of 
 the passages, we shall see immediately. — But, before 
 leaving this particular, I must take notice of a highly in- 
 genious, and, at first view, very. plausible and imposing 
 light, in which the objection has been placed to the mode 
 of reasoning in general from the previous state of things, 
 and of the minds of the Jews in reference to it. " By 
 the same kind of reasoning," it is alleged, " it might, 
 with equal plausibility, be proved, that the kingdom of 
 Christ is a kingdom of tl is world. It might be argued, 
 That though the kingdom of ancient Israel was a worldly 
 kingdom, including their carnal seed, it was the kingdom 
 of God : that the prophecies relating to the kingdom of 
 Messiah frequently represent it as a worldly monarchy, 
 like the kingdom of Israel under the reigns of David and 
 Solomon : — that the Jews in general interpreted these 
 prophecies of a worldly kingdom ; their minds were ha- 
 bituated to this idea, and it was an idea deeply rooted in 
 their hearts: They must therefore have understood John 
 the baptist, or Christ and his apostles, when preaching 
 that kingdom, in a sense consistent with their previous 
 views, as intimating a continuance of the same worldly 
 kingdom as formerly, but now to be restored to Israel, 
 and raised to a higher pitch of worldly power and pros- 
 perity than ever."t 
 
 * Mark x 13—16, Luke xix. 9. Acts ii. 39. xvi. 14, 15 and 31, 33. 1 Cor. 
 i. 16. 1 Cor. vi.. 14. 
 t Maclean's Rev. pp. 119, 120. 
 
SECTION II. 
 
 87 
 
 Now, ingenious and plausible as this mode of put.ing 
 the question may seem, it is more than fallacious. 1 am 
 sincerely obliged to the writer tor it, because it serves to 
 set my argument in a still clearer liultt, and to give it ad- 
 ditional lorce and conclusiveness. It is admitted that the 
 minds of the Jews were habituated to the expectation of 
 a worldly kingdom, and that the idea was deeply rooted 
 in their hearts. Let the passages, then, b- pointed out, 
 in which John the baptist, or Christ and his a postks, act- 
 ed or spoke in a manner that harmonized with this ex- 
 pectation, and was calculated to countenance and to 
 cherish, instead of unsettling and doing it away. The 
 cases will then be parallel. But it is very far otherwise. 
 Instead of parallelism, there is contrast. The whole 
 conduct and discourse of our Lord are framed, as if for 
 the very purpose of opposing their worldly and unscrip- 
 turaJ conceptions. Every thing about him was fitted to 
 put such conceptions down, and to thwart, and mortify, 
 and wither the hopes arising out of them, liis whole 
 preaching when lie proclaimed that the kingdom of 
 heaven was at hand, was pointedly directed against the 
 prevailing ideas ol iis nature. The very first sentence of 
 his sermon on the mount was enough to dissipate them 
 for ever — " Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the 
 kingdom of heaven :" and the whole description of char- 
 acter which follows has the same tendency. It is all 
 spiritual, opposed to every worldly principle, to every 
 carnal and earthly expectation. — Of the same description 
 in his first address to INicodemus, intimating the necessity 
 of a spiritual birth, in all the subjects of his kingdom — 
 "Verily, verily, I say unto thee, except a man be born 
 again, he cannot see the kingdom of God." — And how 
 flatly and explicitly does he contradict what he knew to 
 be the views and hopes of the Pharisees, when they asked 
 him " when the kingdom of God should come" — " The 
 kingdom of God," said he, " cometh not with outward 
 show : neither shall they say, Lo here, or Lo there ; for 
 behold the kingdom of God is within you." — All this is 
 in harmony too with the " good confession" which he 
 subsequently witnessed before Pontius Pilate," f My 
 kingdom is not of this world." — In fact the very exist- 
 
5>S SECTION II. 
 
 ence of these false preconceptions makes him studious, as 
 it were, to avoid whatever might encourage them, and to 
 embrace every opportunity of exposing and warning a- 
 gainst them. This is what might have been expected. — 
 And I have only to request the candid reader, to consider 
 the marked difference between the two cases ; and to 
 put the question to his own mind, whether, if the continu- 
 ance of the pre-existing connection between children and 
 parents had been inconsistent with the spirituality of his 
 kingdom, lie, who showed himself so jealous of that spir- 
 ituality, and set himself so decidedly against the carnal 
 views and expectations of his deluded countrymen, would 
 not have acted, in regard to it, upon the same principle, 
 and have avoided whatever was fitted to countenance and 
 confirm erroneous preconceptions? 
 
 V. Having taken this general view of the passages, let 
 me now in the fifth place, request the reader's attention 
 to two or three of them separately. 
 
 Acts it. 38, 39. " Then Peter said, Repent, and be 
 baptized every one of you, in the name of Jesus Christ, 
 for the remission of sins; and ye shall receive the gift of 
 the Holy Ghost. For the promise is to you, and to your 
 children, and to ali that are afar off, even as many as the 
 Lord our God shall call." 
 
 These words were addressed by a Jew to fellow Jews. 
 How would such an audience understand them? When 
 they heard of a promise to thtm and to their chi/Jreii, 
 could their minds fail, on such an occasion, to go back to 
 the promise of the covenant made with their fathers, and 
 declared t>» be to them and to their seed after them? 
 And in that case, there was but one sense in which the 
 hearers of Peter could understand ihe designation " your 
 children." Yet it is on the ground of the promise made 
 to them and to their children, that the apostle founds his 
 assurance of "the gift of the Holy Ghost :" and this gift 
 another apostle (Paul) denominates " the blessing of A- 
 braham," — or declares it at least to be included in that 
 blessing. Gal. iii. 14. — Recollect, then, that the minds 
 of Peter's auditors were habituated to the idea of the con- 
 nection of their children with themselves in the promise 
 of the covenant. The idea was deeply and familiarly set- 
 
SECTION 
 
 89 
 
 tied in their minds and hearts. It is unreasonable, then, 
 to say, that they must have understood Peter's words, — 
 the words of Divine promise to themselves and to their 
 children — addressed to them by an inspired prophet, — 
 in a sense consistent with that which they were accus- 
 tomed to affix to similar modes of expression, when used 
 of old to their fathers, — and consistent with all their pre- 
 vious habits of thought ? And if they did so understand 
 them, they must have conceived of them as assuming, and 
 intimating, the continuance of the same connection. — 
 Are we then to suppose, that this "holy man of God, 
 speaking as he was moved by the Holy Ghost," would, 
 without explanation or restriction, at the very " beginning 
 of the gospel," in his first address to his countrymen, 
 when a right impression was of so much consequence — 
 employ expressions, that were fitted to convey to their 
 minds a false and worldly view of the nature of the Mes- 
 siah's kingdom ? 
 
 Mark x. 13 — 16. " And they brought young children 
 to him, that he should touch them ; and his disciples re- 
 buked those that brought them. But when Jesus saw it, 
 he was much displeased, and said unto them, Suffer the 
 little children to come unto me, and forbid them not : 
 for of such is the kingdom of God. Verily I say unto 
 you, Whosoever shall not receive the kingdom of God as 
 a little child, he shall not enter therein. And he took 
 them up in his arms, put his hands upon them, and bless- 
 ed them." 
 
 " The kingdom of heaven" is the New Testament 
 church, — the spiritual kingdom of Christ, begun on earth, 
 and perfected in heaven, — the gospel dispensation, in- 
 cluding both its state in this world, and its state in the 
 world to come. This comprehensive view of the designa- 
 tion readily accounts for its being sometimes applied to 
 the church below, and at other times to heaven itself. It 
 is the same kingdom, in the two great stages of its pro- 
 gress. — Of this kingdom, young children (Pgtyot, infants) 
 are here most explicitly declared to be subjects — partak- 
 ers of its piivileges and blessings. — If (as some allege) 
 the phrase " of such" means of persons possessing the dis- 
 positions of children, it means this, beyond all question, 
 *7 
 
yU SECTION II. 
 
 inclusively of the children themselves. If not, the reasons 
 for receiving them would have been as applicable to 
 lambs, or doves, as to children : — besides, that the words 
 which follow ascertain their being included, — "Whoso- 
 ever shall not receive the kingdom of God as a little child, 
 (i. e. surely as a little child receives it,) he shall in no 
 case enter therein." — The Sovereign ot this kingdom, 
 then, distinctly recognise* little childien amongst his sub- 
 jects ; and he is "much displeased" with those who 
 would have prevented their being brought to him tor his 
 blessing. Recollect, then> reader, the previous state of 
 things ; and let me ask you, is this at all like the lan- 
 guage of exclusion ? Is ii not, on the contrary, language, 
 which teaches us, that such little children are capable of 
 possessing the blessings of his kingdom, and that a large 
 proportion of those who shall glorify and enjoy him in 
 heaven consists of such ? — Am I then to believe, that 
 whilst Jesus makes this interesting declaration, pronoun- 
 cing them objects of his tender love, subjects of his spir- 
 itual kingdom, and partakers of its blessings, he, at the 
 same time, cuts off all such from any external sign of 
 connection with the kingdom he was establishing ? — that 
 he declares them partakers of the blessings of the prom- 
 ise, and yet forbids the outward token of such participa- 
 tion to be any longer administered to them? — that he re- 
 ceives them, with the melting eye of benignity and kind- 
 ness, and acknowledges their intimate connection with 
 him, and yet excludes them from every external indica- 
 tion of such connection, leaving them no mark or token 
 of the love he so emphatically expresses for them ? — I 
 must have proof of this, more explicit and satisfactory 
 than any I have yet seen, before I can believe it. The 
 words of Christ appear to me very plainly to warrant the 
 inference, or even to involve a declaration, that, as the 
 great promise of the covenant made with the fathers was 
 now receiving its accomplishment, it was still to include, 
 according to its original constitution, the people of God 
 and their seed. The persons by whom these children 
 were brought to Jesus, professed, in the very act of bring- 
 ing them, their faith in him, and the value they set on his 
 blessing. 
 
SECTION II. 91 
 
 If it shall be objected, that salvation is not confined to 
 the seed of believers, — 1 gladly admit the fact. 1 delight 
 in the conviction of the salvation of all that die in infan- 
 cy, though it would be foreign to my purpose to enlarge 
 here on the grounds of this conviction. Let one obser- 
 vation suffice. I see God actually taking of the offspring 
 of ungodly men, and calling them by his grace, in their 
 adult years ; and, resting on this matter of fact, I can see 
 nothing to hinder his taking also, as the objects of his 
 sovereign mercy, such of their offspring as die in infancy. 
 I am not, however, to forget, that God's sovereign deal- 
 ing in the case of others, is not to be considered as inter- 
 ferring with his special promises to his people; and that 
 the administration of ordinances must run in the line of 
 the Divine promise and prescription. We have no title, 
 whatever God's sovereignty may do, to go beyond or out 
 of the course of these. The appropriation of the promise 
 and seal of the covenant to the line of descent from Abra- 
 ham by Isaac, was not such as to preclude the gracious 
 admission of proselytes from among the Gentiles.* 
 
 * The following' contrast between the baptist and paedobaptist systems, 
 in regard to the state and prospects of dying infants, is from the S'rictures of 
 Mr. Birt.on Mr. H. F. Murder's Sermon. It evinces a degree of unfairness 
 towards many at least of his paedobaptist brethren, which I should not have 
 expected from such a quarter. .Surely Mr. B. knew, or ought to have 
 known, that many of ihem held the same sentiments with himself as to the 
 salvation of all who die in infancy, and were sensible of no inconsistency 
 between these sentiments and their principles and practice as paedobaptists. 
 He should, therefore, have been ashamed to write in terms so unqualified 
 as the following, however strongly he might be templed to hold up to exe- 
 cration the narrow-minded exclusiveness of the system of his opponents : — 
 "The baptists, wilh grateful confidence, esteem all children who die in in- 
 fancy to be equally and certainly saved, without any distinction 5 whilst 
 paedobaptism. wilh ^.yartiil, gloomy, and awful aspect, makes a privileged 
 order among dying babes — placing a comparatively small number in a state 
 of regeneration, and a very few others in the covenant of grace 5 leaving 
 the vast and incalculable majority destitute of those blessings, which are 
 essentially necessary to their future and"*eernal felicity. Who thai im- 
 partially considers this subject, can avoid being thankful, that the Bible 
 does not lead him to so awful a conclusion, and that he is not by divine au- 
 thority connected wilh a practice, the implications of which an- so truly ap- 
 palling?" — 1 unite, with my whole heart, in the thankfulness thus fervently 
 expressed, that " the Bible does not lead me to so awful a conclusion." — 
 But it is not the man who has 'impartially, it is the man who has very par- 
 tially indeed, considered the subject, that can represent paedobaptism as 
 involving any such appalling implications. 
 
 %• As the subject of ihis note is one of very deep interest, I shrill be ex- 
 cused for referring the reader, for some additional observations respecting 
 
92 
 
 SECTION II. 
 
 Luke xix. 9. " Jesus said unto him, This day is Sal- 
 vation come to this house, ibr-so-much as he also is 
 a son of Abraham :" — Acts xvi. J5. " When she was 
 baptized, and her household :" — Acts xvi. 31, 3:$. " Be- 
 lieve in the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved, 
 and thy house:" — "He was baptized, he and all his, 
 straightway :" — 1 Cor. i. 16. " 1 baptized also the house- 
 hold of Stephanas." 
 
 These passages relating to families, I take of course 
 together. The general argument from them, arising 
 from the continuance of a phraseology corresponding to 
 the previous state of things, I have consideied under the 
 preceding particular. As to that view of the argument, 
 I feel no anxiety about the question, whether thete were 
 infant children in those families or not. As the passages, 
 however, have been the occasion of no small controversy, 
 a few additional observations are indispensable. 
 
 In the first place, then, there is one point of fact unde- 
 niably clear, namely, that the apostles baptized households, 
 or families. As to this there can be no question. — It 
 should be noticed, too, that a man's house (otxog) most 
 properly means his children, his offspring, his descend- 
 ants, — and is generally used to denote these even exclu- 
 sively. I refer the reader to the following instances,, 
 which he may consult. Ruth iv. 12. 1 Kings xiv. 10 — 
 14. xvi. 3. xxi. 22. I Tim. iii. 4, &.c. 
 
 Secondly : To an unprejudiced reader of the New Tes- 
 tament, it must, I think, be equally clear, that the bap- 
 tism of families is mentioned in a way that indicates its 
 being no extraordinary occurrence, — but a thing of 
 course. This is remarkably the case as to Lydia. " The 
 Lord opened her heart, that she attended to the things 
 which were spoken by Paul. " And when she was bap- 
 tized and. her family, she besought us, saying, If ye have 
 
 it, to my Reply to a letter by the Rev John Pirt of Manchester, on some 
 passages in this Dissertation ; in the first Edition of which T had, by an in- 
 advertency, about which a great deal more ado was made than its import- 
 ance justified, put the son for the faiher, having- written under the impres- 
 sion that the Rev. John Bin of Manchester was the writer of the Strictures 
 on Mr. Murder's Sermon, whereas the tiue author was the Rev. Tsaiah Birl, 
 of Birmingham. The part of my reply, which relates to the subject of the- 
 above note, will be found in the introductory observations, to which I- agafa 
 request the reader's attention. 
 
SECTION II. 93 
 
 judged me to be faithful to the Lord, come into my house 
 and abide there." I cannot but consider any person un- 
 reasonable, who will not admit, that the mode of expres- 
 sion here is one which would naturally be used respect- 
 ing a thing that was customary. And it is worthy of no- 
 tice, moreover, that the baptism of her family is immedi- 
 ately connected in the record with her own reception of 
 truth ; and that upon her own faithfulness to the Lord she 
 founds her plea for their coming under her roo!. — Simi- 
 lar remarks might be made as to the case of the Philippi- 
 an jailor, whe " was baptized, he and all his straightway." 
 Thirdly : — Having ihus the unquestionable fact of the 
 baptism of families, — a fact according with the ancient 
 practice of the circumcision of families — and supported 
 by the use of a word that properly detrotes a man's chil- 
 dren or offspring, — we are warranted to assume, that such 
 was the usual practice, unless our baptist brethren can 
 show, that the cases of Lydia, the jailor, and Stephanas, 
 were in the circumstances of them extraordinary, and 
 therefore not fair specimens of what was customary. — 
 Here is the turning point on this part of the argument. 
 If they cannot make out this, — or if they cannot make it 
 out without unnatural straining and inadmissible suppo- 
 sitions, our ground is firm. 
 
 Let us then, in the, fourth place, examine a little the 
 principles on which they endeavor to set aside the in- 
 ference from the examples in question — " We really," 
 they allege, "cannot help its appearing unnatural, to sup- 
 pose that there were no little children in those families; 
 we have to do only with the fact ; and in each of the ca- 
 ses, we have clear evidence that there were none." — 
 What then is this evidence ? 
 
 First, it has been said, there were no children in the 
 family of Lydia ; for when Paul and Silas were released 
 from their imprisonment, "they entered into the house 
 of Lvdia; and when they had seen the brethren, they 
 comforted them, and departed." We are here informed, 
 it is alleged, that the family of Lydia were " brethren," 
 who were capable of being "comforted" by Paul and Si- 
 las at their departure. Now, let the reader observe the 
 wonderfully slender ground on which this argument rests. 
 
94 
 
 SECTION II. 
 
 It is simply this, "They saw these brethren in the house of 
 Lydia, — therefore they were Lydia's family — and Lydia's 
 family only !" Surely, compared with this, " t he spider's 
 most attenuated thread, is rope, is eanle." The reader, 
 to he sure, must he quite aware, how preposterously ab- 
 surd it is to suppose, that any person should ever come 
 into a m in's house, except the members of his own fami- 
 ly ! and especially when a common friend is there, about 
 to take a last farewell, whom none ot course could have 
 any wish to see! Seriously, is it inconceivable that the 
 converts at Philippi should have met in the house of 
 Lydia ? It is ver) improbable, that they should have been 
 there at a season so interesting, — waiting the result, and 
 engaged in prayer for the suffering preachers of the word,, 
 like those who met for tins exercise, in the house of John 
 Mark, on behalf of Peter ? — or that they should have con- 
 vened there for the purpose of taking farewell of Paul 
 and Silas? — Let the reader further observe, what an im- 
 probable and heartless supposition is involved in this ar- 
 gument ; — a supposition which no one surely would wil- 
 lingly admit, unless necessitated by an expiess declara- 
 tion : — namely, that Lydia and her family were the only 
 converts, except the jailor and his, made during Paul's 
 stay at Philippi. But this is not only contrary to all 
 probability; it is opposed to obvious fact. The history is 
 very brief; and the particular incidents selected for de- 
 tail are only a few out of many, distinguished by the pe- 
 culiarity of their circumstances or consequences. Some- 
 times nothing is recorded at all, but the fact of the preach- 
 ers having visited the countries, although we afterwards 
 learn, incidentally, that they had met with much success. 
 Thus in Acts xviii. 23. we are informed, that Paul " went 
 over the countries of Galatia and Phrvgia in order, 
 strrno-theninar all the disriufrs :" yet all that is said of 
 these countries before, is, " When they had gone through- 
 out Phrygia and the legion of Galatia." Acts xvi. 6. — 
 Are we then to suppose, that Paul and his associates re- 
 mained at Philippi " many days" (verses 12. IS.) at a 
 time, too, when God was so remarkably blessing the la- 
 bors of his servants, " always," as the apostle himself 
 expresses it, " causing them to triumph in Christ, aud 
 
SECTION II. 95 
 
 making manifest the savor of his knowledge by them in 
 every place ;" and that the entire product of their preach- 
 ing lor that time in the chief city of Macedonia, was one 
 family ? — for the jailor's was at the close of their .stay, 
 and arose from very peculiar circumstances. I refrain 
 from saving what I think, of the argument that requires 
 such a supposition to support it. — But still further. From 
 the manner in which the apostles writes to the church at 
 Philippi, it appears evidently to have been, from the first, 
 a numerous and flourishing one. Let the reader consult 
 the following passages of that epistle — chap. i. 4 — 7. i. 
 30. ii. i% iv. 3. iv. 15, 16. — or, if he please, peruse the 
 whole ; and draw the inference for himself, whether the 
 apostle had seen no more fruit of his labors, when there, 
 than the members of two families! 
 
 Equally futile are the proofs adduced, that there were 
 no infant children in the households of the jailor, and of 
 Stephanas : — namely, that respecting the former it is 
 said, Paul " spoke the word of the Lord to all that were 
 in his house," — which supposes them all capable of under- 
 standing and receiving what he spoke : — and respecting 
 the latter, that they " addicted themselves to the minis- 
 try of the saints." 1 Cor. xvi. 15., which shows them to 
 have been all capable of feeling and practising Christian 
 benevolence. The simple answer to this is, that such 
 general expressions are perfectly common, both in con- 
 versation and in writing. When we ascribe to a family 
 any thing of which infants are universally understood to 
 be incapable, we never think of making a formal excep- 
 tion of them. I should reckon the man foolish, who 
 should conclude from my saying, " I spoke to the whole 
 family, — to all in the house," — or " They area very benev- 
 olent family ; they lay themselves out for doing good," — 
 that I was certainly speakingofa family in which there were 
 no infant children. When Joshua says, "As for me and 
 my house, we will serve the Lord" does any one ever 
 think of inferring, that his family could not contain any 
 infants, because infants were incapable of serving the 
 Lord? Yet the inference would be as legitimate in this 
 case, as in either of the others: and it may not be amiss 
 for our baptist brethren, to make it the subject of a little 
 
9G SECTION II. 
 
 self-examination, by what principle is it that they are led 
 to such a conclusion in the one case, when they never 
 think of it in the other? what is the precise difl'eience in 
 the state of their minds, when they read the loth verse 
 of the twenty-fourth chapter of Joshua, and w-bi*u they 
 read the 34th verse of the sixteenth chapter of the Acts, 
 or the 16th verse of the sixteenth chapter ot the first epis- 
 tle to the Corinthians? — 
 
 Let us only consider for a moment, into what ridicu- 
 lous absurdities we should be be led, by the general a- 
 doption of such a principle of criticism. — Tin; children 
 of Israel weie commanded, in preparing the p.issover, to 
 "take a lamb for a house, according to the " number of 
 the souls." Are we to infer from this, that they number- 
 ed the mouths of sucking infants? — or that there were no 
 such infants at that time in the families of Israel ? — They 
 were enjoined to eat it, " with their loins girt, and their 
 shoes on their feet, and their staff in their hand.'' Chil- 
 dren could not do this ; therefore we conclude again that 
 there were none ; — and the conclusion is irresistibly con- 
 firmed, by the testimony of the Psalmist respecting the 
 passage through the Red Sea, — for they went through the 
 flood, he says, " on foot ;" which infants certainly were in- 
 capable of doing. When the paralytic Eneas was cuted by 
 Peter, it is said, " all that dwelt in Lydda and Saron saw 
 him, and turned to the Lord ;" — from which, amongst other 
 inferences, it will follow, that these places presented the 
 singular anomaly, of a population without infants! — Paul 
 writes to the Thessalonians, that " if any would not work, 
 neither, should he eat :" — were the babes of Thessalonica, 
 then to be left to starve, because they were incapable of 
 earning, or of being willing to earn, their daily bread 1 — 
 Let no baptist say indignantly, "This is ridiculous, — it is 
 making a joke of the matter." Let him recollect, that 
 the materials of the joke are furnished by his own friends. 
 Let the argument (if it must have a name to which it has 
 no title) he withdrawn, and there will be no room left 
 for the juke. I am only ashamed indeed of beinij obliged 
 to treat it so seriously. It is not worth the ammunition. 
 
 VI. I add, as a sixth general observation, the extreme 
 improbability, that a change, which must have been felt 
 
SECTION II. 97 
 
 so important by those whose minds had been all along 
 habituated to the connection of their children with them- 
 selves in the covenant of promise, should have taken 
 place, without the slightest recorded symptom of opposi- 
 tion or demurring. 
 
 We know the strength of attachment to ancient institu- 
 tions, feLt and manifested by the Jewish converts to the 
 faith of the gospel, — their extreme reluctance to part even 
 with those observances which belonged exclusively to 
 that system of shadows, of which the body was Chri>t. — 
 They were still " zealous for the law ;" and they show- 
 ed their zeal by their indignation at Paul, for having, as 
 they had been informed, taught their countrymen that 
 they should not " circumcise their children, neither walk 
 after the customs." Is it likely, then, nay is it at all 
 conceivable, on the supposition of the new system entirely 
 excluding children from its appropriate rites, that not a 
 hint should appear of anyone having been startled by the 
 change, — that not a system should have discovered itself 
 of any disposition to object or complain? — Nay more — 
 that none of the bitter adversaries of the Christian scheme 
 should ever have cavilled at this, or founded upon it any 
 part of their disputatious opposition ! — That to Jewish 
 eyes it must have appeared an innovation of no trifling, 
 magnitude, will not be questioned by any one, who duly 
 considers how strongly the connection, supposed to be 
 disannulled, was sanctioned in their minds, by the sacred 
 provisions of God's covenant with their venerated fathers, 
 Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob ; — how firmly it was settled in 
 their practice, not only by the regular circumcision of 
 their own offspring, but also by the admission of Gentiies 
 by families into the communion of Israel ; and how in- 
 timately it was incorporated with all their most favorite 
 and cherished conceptions. — Considering therefore, the 
 attachment of the believing Jews to ancient practices on 
 the one hand, and the eagerness of their unbelieving 
 countrymen, on the other, to avail themselves of every 
 possible ground of objection, — the circumstance of no op- 
 position having been made to such a change, and no ap- 
 peal rested upon it against the Christian doctrine, and 
 the claims of Jesus of Nazareth, when it might have been 
 8 
 
98 SECTION II. 
 
 done with so much plausibility and effect, — is in my 
 mind a proof, of no inconsiderable weight, that no such 
 change had actually been introduced. 
 
 VII. Another remarkable circumstance, akin to the 
 preceding, is, — that when the judaizing teachers insisted 
 on the Gentile converts submitting to circumcision, — al- 
 though there can be no doubt that this \vasdone,jn every 
 case, in connection with their children ; — yet, when the 
 doctrine and practice of these perverters of the gospel 
 came to be discussed in the assembly of the apostles and 
 elders and brethren at Jerusalem, no notice whatsoever is 
 taken of the inconsistency with the spirituality of the new 
 dispensation, of administering any sign to children, on 
 the admission of their parents into the Christian common- 
 wealth, — or of treating them as if they continued to have 
 any connection at all with their parents, in reference to 
 the blessings of the covenant, or of the church of God. — 
 Now, surely, if such connection really was inconsistent 
 with the spirituality of the gospel and the New Testa- 
 ment church, it must have been an error of no trifling 
 moment ; and it is reasonable to conclude, that, upon an 
 occasion which brought the subject so immediately and 
 formally under notice, some disapproval should have been 
 intimated and recorded, of the error itself, and the prac- 
 tice founded upon it : and the absence of all such intima- 
 tion is a collateral evidence, that there was no such in- 
 consistency, and that children were to be held, and treat- 
 ed, as sustaining the same covenant relation to their pa- 
 rents as formerly. — I hope I am clearly understood. — 
 When these judaizing teachers insisted on the circum- 
 cision of Gentile proselytes to the faith and profession of 
 the gospel, they doubtless administered the rite according 
 to the instituted and universal practice, — the children be- 
 ing circumcised with the parent. But if this covenant 
 relation of parent and child had, under the gospel, been 
 abolished, as being inconsistent with its spiritual nature, 
 it is Inrdly conceivable, that, on such an occasion, on so 
 natural and fair an opportunity, no notice whatever should 
 be taken of such abolition, and of such inconsistency. 
 This, 1 say, forms an additional corroborative indication 
 
SECTION II. 99 
 
 of the continuance in this respect, of the former state of 
 things. 
 
 VIII. Let it be further considered, that we have no 
 recorded instance of the baptism of any person, grown to 
 manhood, that had been born of Jewish converts, or of 
 Gentile proselytes to the faith of Christ ; — nor have we, in 
 any of the apostolic epistles to the churches, the remotest 
 allusion, in the form of direction, or of warning, to the 
 reception of such children by baptism into the Christian 
 church, upon their professing the faith in which they had 
 been brought up. 
 
 To every mind that duly considers the case, this must 
 appear a very remarkable circumstance. The class of 
 individuals alluded to must have been a very numerous 
 one indeed, and one too, exceedingly important and in- 
 teresting. But although, in the epistles to the churches, 
 instructions, various and minute, are given, on points con- 
 nected with their order, and purity, and increase, on some 
 of which inquiries had been made by them at the apos- 
 tles, ue have nothing, in any shape whatever, on this 
 subject. 
 
 "I have heard it alleged," says Mr. Walker,* "that 
 this is drawing an inference from the silence of scripture, 
 which that silence does not warrant. But the objection 
 is made by those who do not, or will not, understand the ar- 
 gument. I do not argue from the mere silence, of the 
 Scriptures, that the t hi rig about which they are silent, was, 
 or was not. But this I say, that so far as it is probable, from 
 the nature of any thing, that if it were so or so, the scrip- 
 tures would be silent about it, so far is their silence about 
 it a probable argument that it was not so. Now, it ap- 
 pears to me, that baptism, upon the baptist principles, is 
 such a thing; and from the silence of scripture on the sub- 
 ject, I cannot but see a confirmed probability that these 
 principles are false. — And it is vain to say, that what the 
 scriptures relate of the baptism of adult believers is suffi- 
 cient, and shows that there is not that silence of which I 
 speak. For every instance of adult baptism recorded in 
 the Bible is an instance — not of the baptism of one brought 
 up from childhood in the profession of Christianity — but of 
 one who had never before professed Christianity. So 
 * Thoughts on Baptism, &c. 
 
100 SECTION II. 
 
 that there is that absolute silence on the subject which I 
 have asserted — so far as the baptist principles are con- 
 cerned in it." 
 
 Our baptist brethren present us, in support of their 
 system, with instances of the baptism of adults. They 
 would do something more to their purpose, if they could 
 produce one or two examples of the baptism of suck adults 
 as those mentioned. These would be in point. But 
 nothing of the kind is to be found ; — nothing in the form 
 either of fact, or allusion, or advice, or precept. And 
 the simplest explanation, and one in every respect suffi- 
 cient and satisfactory, of the total absence of every thing 
 of the sort, is the supposition of what so many other proofs 
 concur to establish, — that the children of the converts 
 who composed the churches had been baptized with their 
 parents, on these parents entering as disciples into the 
 fellowship of the New Testament church. 
 
 JX. This supposition, let it be further noticed, is in 
 coincidence with the fact, of children being addressed in 
 the apostolic epistle to the churches of Christ. Thus in 
 Ephes. vi. 1. "Children, obey your parents in the Lord, 
 for this is right." Col. iii. 20. " Children, obey your pa- 
 rents in all things ; for this is well-pleasing unto the Lord." 
 
 That such preceptive intimations of the Lord's will are 
 not to be understood as addressed merely to those adult 
 members of families, who were at the same time mem- 
 bers of churches, but as including children from their 
 earliest capability of instruction and admonition, should 
 be admitted by every candid mind that considers their 
 connection with the injunctions, which immediately fol- 
 low, to parents : — " And ye fathers, provoke not your chil- 
 dren to wrath ; but bring them up in the nurture and ad- 
 monition of the Lord." — " Fathers, provoke not your chil- 
 dren to anger, lest they be discouraged." The duties of 
 parents, in the bringing up of their children in the nur- 
 ture and admonition of the Lord, commence with the first 
 dawn of reason, and must keep pace with the gradual 
 opening of the mind ; — and it is a part of this duty, to 
 point out to their children, as early as they are capable of 
 understanding, the above commands of the Lord as address- 
 ed to them; to show them how the Lord, the Head of the 
 
SECTION II. 101 
 
 Church, the good Shepherd, who "gathers the lambs in 
 his arms and carries them in his bosom," the kind and 
 condescending Saviour, who said, " Suffer the little chil- 
 dren to come unto me, and forbid them not for of such 
 is the kingdom of heaven," — how He in these words tells 
 them their duty, and shows them the motives, — motives 
 of grateful love to himself, — by which they should be in- 
 fluenced in the fulfilling of it. Do our baptist brethren 
 wait till their children are members of churches, before 
 they venture to put their finger on the passages we have 
 quoted, and say, " This is addressed to you?" If they 
 do not, they act inconsistently with their principles; for 
 if the words were not originally addressed to the young 
 children of the parents in the churches, neither are they 
 now : — and yet if they do, they discharge their parental 
 trust, as it appears to me, in a very defective and unscrip- 
 tural manner. Of many of them whom I know, and es- 
 teem, and love, I am persuaded better things. Yet every 
 baptist, who, in the christian tuition of his family, opens 
 his Bible, and points out to his little interesting charge, 
 the words " Children, obey your parents in the Lord ; for 
 this is right," — and tenderly incu.cates the duty by the 
 motives that are involved in the " nurture and admonition 
 of the Lord," — tacitly admits by his practice that young 
 children were addressed by the apostles, — and that, not 
 merely as members of families, but, since the epistles were 
 directed to churches, as in some way connected, by vir- 
 tue of their relation to their parents, with the little chris- 
 tian communities to which the apostles wrote. And this 
 is in perfect harmony with the baptism of families, and 
 with all the preceding particulars ; — and in harmony too 
 with all the directions given as to the treatment of chil- 
 dren in the Old Testament Scriptures, when their cove- 
 nant relation to their parents, and their connection with 
 the community of the people of God, are not questioned. 
 
 X. The circumstances of the early history of the 
 church, after the apostolic age are unaccountable on anti- 
 paBdobaptist principles. 
 
 The advocates of these principles allege, that the first 
 writer by whom infant-baptism is expressly mentioned, is 
 Tertuliian, who lived in the beginning of the third cen- 
 *8 
 
102 SECTION II. 
 
 tury, a hundred years and more after the apostolic age : — 
 and he, says Mr. Cox, " in fact condemns it !" Em- 
 phasis is thus laid on tho peculiar opinion of this father. 
 But the question before us is not one of opinion but ofjact. 
 Tertullian was remarkable for singular and extravagant 
 opinions. " He was endowed," says Mosheim, " with a 
 great genius, but seemed deficient in point of judgment. 
 His piety was warm and vigorous, but, at the same time, 
 melancholy and austere. His learning was extensive 
 and profound; and yet his credulity and superstition were 
 such as might have been expected from the darkest igno- 
 rance. And with respect to his reasonings, they had 
 more of that subtlety that dazzles the imagination, than 
 of that solidity that brings light and conviction to the 
 mind." — On the particular subject before us, he not only 
 advised the delay of baptism in the case of infants, but 
 also of unmarried persons. Will our baptist brethren ad- 
 mit the inference as to the latter, which they draw so com- 
 placently as to the former? The truth is, that, as to both 
 the legitimate inference is the very contrary. The very 
 advice to delay, or, if you will, the condemnation of bap- 
 tism in infancy (though these two are from being the same, 
 and the former alone properly belongs to Tertullian) is a 
 conclusive evidence of the previous existence of the prac- 
 tice. This is the point. The opinion is nothing to the 
 purpose. It has no authority. If our baptist friends 
 think it has, let them do the good old father justice, 
 and follow it fully. — His condemning the practice of bap- 
 tizing infants, so far from being in their favor, militates 
 against them. It not only proves its previous existence; 
 it proves more. It proves that it was no innovation. When 
 a. man condemns a practice, he is naturally desirous to 
 support his peculiar views by the strongest arguments. 
 Could Tertullian, therefore, have shown, that the prac- 
 tice was of recent origin ; that it had been introduced in 
 his own day, or even at any time subsequent to the lives 
 of the apostles ; we have every reason to believe, he would 
 have availed himself of a ground so obvious, and so con- 
 clusive. It proves still further, that the baptism of in- 
 fants was the general practice of the church in Tertulli- 
 an's time. His opinion is his own. It is that of a dis- 
 
SECTION II. 103 
 
 sentient from the universal body of professing Christians. 
 He never pretends to say, that any part of the church had 
 held or acted upon it. Of his opinion and advice, then 
 we may say, Valeant quantum valere possunt. But the 
 total absence of any attempt to suppott and recommend 
 them, by appeal to the practice of the church in apostolic 
 times, or of any part of the church at any intervening pe- 
 riod between those times and his own, certainly goes far 
 to prove the mutter of fact , with which alone we have to 
 do, — that infant-baptism was the original and universal 
 practice." 
 
 Origen, who was contemporary with Tertullian, ex- 
 pressly declares infant-baptism to have been the constant 
 usage of the church from the apostles. He says, "The 
 baptism of the church is given for the forgiveness of sins: 
 but why are infants, by the usage of the church, baptized, 
 if there is nothing in them that needs forgiveness?" 
 
 Further, he says, ' Infants are baptized for the remis- 
 sion of sins ; for none is free from pollution, though his 
 life be but the length of one day upon the earth. And it 
 is for that reason, because by baptism the pollution of our 
 birth is taken away, that infants arc baptized' 
 
 Again, he observes, ' The church had from the apostles 
 an order to give baptism to infants ; for they, to tvhom 
 the Divine mysteries were committed, knew that there 
 was in all persons the natural pollution of sin, which must 
 be done away by water and the Spirit.' 
 
 " Now, as Origen, in these passages, argues from infant- 
 baptism to prove original sin, we may conclude it was an 
 uncontroverted usage of the church : for otherwise, he 
 could not with propriety have used it as an argument to es- 
 tablish another point."* 
 
 This remark is judicious and strong. The reader will 
 also bear in mind, that it is solely with matter of fact 
 that we are at present concerned, and not with the partic- 
 ular opinions of fathers, whether right or wrong. 
 
 "Cyprian, who wrote about 150 years after the apostles, 
 gives a fuller testimony to this fact" (of the baptism of 
 
 * Sermons on the Mode and Subjects of Baptism, &c. By Joseph Lath- 
 rop, D. D. New England. 
 
104 
 
 SECTION II. 
 
 infants being the nncontroverted usage of the church). 
 *' In his time, a question was started by one Fidus, not 
 whether infants might be baptized, but whether baptism 
 ought not to be given them on the eighth day, according 
 to the law of circumcision ? This question was proposed 
 to a council of sixty-six bishops, convened at Carthage, 
 who unanimously resolved, that the baptism of infants 
 ought not to he deferred to the eighth day, but might be giv- 
 en them at any time before. And a large letter to this 
 purpose, containing the reasons of the resolve, was writ- 
 ten and signed by Cyprian, in the name of the council. 
 Now if infant baptism had been a usage lately in- 
 troduced, some or all of these ministers must have known 
 its recent origin. And if so, it was very strange that not 
 one of them intimated any scruple about it. Whether 
 infants should be baptized, seems not to have been at all 
 a question ; but only whether their baptism needed to be 
 deferred till the eighth day, which, without hesitancy, was 
 determined in the negative.* 
 
 "Austin, about 300 years after the apostles, had a con- 
 troversy with Pelagius about original sin ; and to prove 
 it, he frequently urges infant baptism, demanding why in- 
 fants are baptized for the remission of sins, if they have 
 none? Pelagius, though greatly puzzled with the argu- 
 ment, yet never pretends that infant baptism was an un- 
 scriptural innovation, or a partial usage in the church ; 
 which, had it been true, a man of his very extensive ac- 
 quaintance with the world must have known : and had he 
 known it, he doubtless would have said it, when he found 
 himself embarrassed with the argument.! But, far from 
 
 * Ibid. 
 
 t Mr. M i I ner justly deduces the same inference from the instance of Coe- 
 lestius, the supporter of the Pelagian heresy in Africa, in the beginning of 
 the fifth century. — " He was accused of denying original sin ; and when he 
 was pressed with the custom of die church in baptizing infants, as a proof 
 of her belief in all ages that infants needed redemption, he declared that 
 they had no need of remission, and yet ought to be baptized, lhat they 
 might be sanctified in Christ." — ''On being asked, whether he had not as- 
 serted, that infants are born in the state in which Adam was before trans- 
 gression, all that could be obtained from him was, that infants needed bap- 
 tism, and ought to be baptized.*'— The first of two inferences drawn, in a 
 note, from this case, is : That the right of baptizing infants was allowed on 
 all sides to have been of apostolical and primitive authority. It is impossi- 
 ble lhat men so shrewd and learned as Coslestius and his master would not 
 have objected to the novelty of infant baptism, had it been a novelty."-— 
 Chap. III. Cent. V, 
 
SECTION II. 105 
 
 intimating any such thing, when some charged upon him 
 the denial of infant baptism, as a consequence of his opin- 
 ion, lie disavows the consequence, and complains that he 
 had been slanderously represented as denying baptism to 
 infants. He asks, ' Who can be so impious, as to hinder 
 infants from being baptized, and born again in Christ.' 
 And, citing those words, ' Except one be born of water 
 and of the Spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of 
 God,' he says, who can be so impious as to refuse to an in- 
 fant, of whatever acre, the common redemption of man- 
 kind ? And many other expressions he uses, which plain- 
 ly suppose, that infant baptism had been practised univer- 
 sally, and time out of mind."* 
 
 This last citation shows, whence the application origi- 
 nated of the term regeneration to baptism , namely, from 
 our Lord's language, " Except a man be born of mater, 
 and of the Spirit." The phrase, " born of water," very 
 naturally accounts for the early application of the terms 
 significant of the spiritual change, to the external symbol. 
 The phraseology indeed gives no counten nice to the un- 
 scriptural and irrational figment of baptismal regeneration, 
 any more than the declaration, "This is my body," gives 
 to iniusubstantiatioij, or the red presence. Ii may show 
 us, however, whence the foolish and pernicious fincy 
 arose , and at all events, it explains the early use of sim- 
 ilar phraseology, by the Christian writers, in regard to bap- 
 tism. — The phraseology of PHagius, in the preceding 
 quotation, appears to have come down current from an 
 earlier age. — " Irenasus, who wrote about sixty-seven years 
 after the apostles, and was born, it is said, before the 
 death of St. John, and was acquainted with Polycarp, 
 who was John's disciple, says concerning Christ, lie c one 
 to save all persons by himself, who by him are regenerated 
 unto God, infants, little ones, youths, and elderly persons." 
 — That by being " regenerated unto God" he means be* 
 ing baptized, candor, I think, ought to admit, when the 
 expression is compared with that of Pelagius, and when 
 the explanation of Irenasus himself is considered—" When 
 Christ gave his disciples the com mat. d at regenerating 
 unto God, he said. Go., teach all nations, baptizing them," 
 * Ibid. 
 
106 
 
 SECTION II. 
 
 &c. Now, our baptist brethren themselves being judges, 
 infants are incapable of being " regenerated unto God" 
 by means of human instruction. So far as the agency of 
 man is concerned, they could only be partakers of the 
 external sign. 
 
 "Justin Martyr, who wrote about forty years after the 
 apostolic age, says, ' We have not received the carnal but 
 the spiritual circumcision by baptism — And it is enjoined 
 to all persons to receive it in the same way.' Here he 
 plainly considers baptism as succeeding in the place of 
 circumcision, and consequently as being designed for in- 
 fants, as thai was : which opinion he could not easily have 
 fallen into, if the apostles had universally, both in doc- 
 trine and practice rejected infants. In one of his apolo- 
 gies for the Christians, he says, ' Several persons among 
 us, of sixty and seventy years old, who were made disci- 
 ples to Christ from their childhood, do continue uncor- 
 rupt.' Made disciples. He uses the same word which 
 is used in the commission, Disciple all nations, baptizing 
 them. If they were made disciples, they were doubtless 
 baptized."* 
 
 Does the reader marvel that infint bap tism should 
 not be spoken of more frequently, and in more direct and 
 explicit terms, during the tirst century after the apostles? 
 Let him only suppose the (incontroverted universality of 
 the practice from the beginning, and his wonder will 
 cease. That which goes on as the understood and estab- 
 lished usage, ii is quite natural to expect should be but 
 seldom spoken of, and, when it is, only in the way of in- 
 direct and incidental allusion. Circumcision is never al- 
 luded to for more than a century and a half after its in- 
 stitution, when an occurrence in the history, the violation 
 of Jacob's daughter, the proposal of marriage with her 
 by the prince of Shechem, and the artful revenge of the 
 patriarch's sons, leads to the incidental mention of it ; — 
 and from that time, it is never noticed again for nearly 
 two centuries and a half, till the circumcision of the 
 younger son of Moses by his mother Zipporah. — The case 
 is similar, during the first century after the apostles, with 
 regard to infant baptism. It is occasionally alluded to, in 
 terms, on which, we are not disposed to deny, au adver- 
 * Ibid, 
 
SECTION II. 107 
 
 sary, now that it has come to be controverted, may plau- 
 sibly put another construction ; and the first that speaks 
 of it in plain language, and by its proper name, is the first 
 that questions and objects to it. And on what grounds 
 does he object 1 Not that the practice was without apos- 
 tolic authority ; — not that it was a recent and unscriptural 
 innovation ; — not even that it was only partially observed 
 in the church : — no; he never hints any such things as 
 these. His objections proceed, chiefly, on a superstitious 
 notion he had come to attach to the rite, on which he 
 founds a proposal for the delay of its admir istration ; — a 
 proposal, including not merely infants, but unmarried per- 
 sons, and having precisely the same authority as to both, 
 — the authority, that is, of Tertuliian's fanciful singular- 
 ity. 
 
 " Curcellaeus remarks," says Mr. Cox, " The baptism 
 of infants in the first two centuries after Christ, was al- 
 together unknown." But of what amount is the gratis 
 dictum of Curcellaeus, or of any man 1 With regard to 
 the first of these two centuries, which we may denominate 
 the apostolic century, we claim the privilege, w hatever 
 Curcellaeus may remark, of forming our own judgment 
 from the apostolic records themselves, till other and high- 
 er authority be produced. And as to the second; even 
 supposing we were wrong in our interpretation of Justin 
 Martyr and Irenaeus, — what are we to make of Tertullian 
 and Origen in the beginning of the third ? According to 
 the remark of Curcellaeus the practice of infant baptism 
 was " altogether unknown" till after the beginning of this 
 century : which amounts to the same thing as saying, that 
 these fathers witnessed its introduction, and were aware 
 of its being a practice totally new and unheard of before ! 
 How then comes Tertullian to assume its previous exis- 
 tence, without the remotest hint of its novelty or its par- 
 tial extent ? And how comes Origen to speak of it as the 
 " usage of the church," and received as " an order from 
 the apostles?" — And how comes it, I ask further, that no 
 baptist has ever been able to discover, and to point out, 
 the time when infant baptism was introduced — to trace 
 the practice to any origin on this side of the apostolic age? 
 Had nothing of the kind existed originally, then there 
 
108 SECTION II. 
 
 was, from the first, throughout all the churches, a stand- 
 ing practical testimony against it. Yet not the slightest 
 vestige is to be found, by which its introduction into the 
 Christian church, and its early and universal reception, 
 can be traced. The time of Tertullian was the time, not 
 when it began to be practised ', but only to be questioned; 
 and questioned, not as unauthorized and unlawful, but, on 
 certain grounds of the author's own, as generally (for he 
 admits of exceptions) inexpedient. — It has been said, in- 
 deed, that about the end of the second century, an opin- 
 ion began to prevail, of the necessity of baptism to salva- 
 tion ; that parents naturally took the alarm for the salvation 
 of their children; and that hence arose infant baptism. 
 Now, it is very convenient to find a fact in history, on 
 which we can found a plausible hypothesis. But we must 
 still distinguish between the hypothesis and the fact. The 
 latter is history, the former is fancy alone, and conjecture. 
 And, if we are to deal in theory and hypothesis at all, to 
 me it appears, in the present case, an incomparably more 
 natural and reasonable conjecture, that the opinion arose 
 from the practice, than that the practice arose from the 
 opinion. If about the end of the second century, " pa- 
 rents took the alarm for the salvation of their children," 
 and had them, on this account, baptized, then the whole 
 Christian church must have previously, for nearly two hun- 
 dred years, believed in the salvation of their children with- 
 out baptism. Now, when we have hypothesis on both sides, 
 that is most entitled to credit which is simplest and most 
 natural. The question therefore is, (since no historian 
 has recorded this alarm of parents, as the origin of infant 
 baptism,) whether is it most likely, that the universal 
 practice of the baptism of infants should have led the 
 minds of men to connect their baptism with their salvation, 
 and thus to fall into the opinion of its necessity, and the 
 danger of omitting it ; or whether, in opposition to the 
 previous conviction of two centuries, the opinion came 
 first to be entertained, and the baptism of infants to be 
 founded upon it, and to have become almost instantane- 
 ously universal? — I must honestly say, that I can enter- 
 tain but a low estimate of that man's perspicacity, or 
 candor, that can hesitate between these two suppositions. 
 
SECTION II. 109 
 
 A similar remark may be made, respecting certain oth- 
 er practices which were early introduced into the church, 
 and which our antipaedobaptist brethren are very fond of 
 quoting, as on the same footing with infant baptism : — the 
 early practice, for example, of administering the Lord's 
 Supper to infants. The previous existence of the admis- 
 sion of infants to one Christian ordinance, affords a very 
 natural origin for the practice of introducing them to 
 another. The one might very readily be grafted upon the 
 other, whereas it is very far from being so easily account- 
 ed for, that both should have taken place so early, and the 
 former so universally, without the least opposition or 
 noise. 
 
 XI. I have only one other particular to add to this se- 
 ries. It is the remarkable fact, of the entire absence, so 
 far as my recollection serves me, of any thing resembling 
 the baptism of households or families, in the accounts of 
 the propagation of the gospel by our baptist brethren. 
 That the apostles baptized families, no believer of the 
 scripture history can doubt; and we have seen, that the 
 manner in which such baptisms are recorded, or referred 
 to, indicates that it was no extraordinary thing. Now it 
 surely is an extraordinary thing, that in the journals and 
 periodical accounts of baptist missions in heathen coun- 
 tries, we should never meet with any thing of the kind. 
 I question, whether, in the thirty years of the history of 
 the baptist mission in India, there is to be found a single 
 instance of the baptism of a household. When do we 
 find a baptist missionary saying, " When she was baptized 
 and her family" — or, " I baptized the family of Krishnoo," 
 or any other convert? We have the baptism of individu- 
 als ; but nothing corresponding to the apostolic baptism of 
 families. This fact is a strong corroborative proof, that 
 there is some difference between their practice and that 
 of the apostles. If the practice of both were the same, 
 there might surely be expected some little correspondence 
 in the facts connected with it. 
 
 Let me, in concluding this section, entreat the reader 
 
 to take all these things together, calmly, dispassionately, 
 
 candidly. — I have endeavored to show, that the Old and 
 
 New Testament churches, though different in their con- 
 
 9 
 
110 SECTION II. 
 
 Stitutioual forms, and in the degree of their spirituality, 
 are most clearly and distinctly represented, both by 
 prophets under the former, and apostles under the latter 
 dispensation, as substantially the same: — that the con- 
 nection of children with their parents, in the promises of 
 the covenant, and in the application of its sign and seal, 
 existed under the Patriarchal and Mosaic dispensations, 
 was interwoven with all the thoughts and feelings and 
 practices of the Old Testament church, and pervaded and 
 characterized the entire style and language of their sa- 
 cred books : — that the prophets, in their inspired predic- 
 tions relative to the New Testament times, employ lan- 
 guage, such as directly affirms, or evidently implies and 
 assumes, the continuance of the same connection under 
 the approaching reign of the Messiah : — that, on coming 
 forward to the New Testament records themselves, so far 
 from finding any direct repeal, or even any indirect inti- 
 mation of change in the previous state of things, we find 
 language in perfect accordance with it, exactly such as, on 
 the supposition of its continuance, we might, a priori, 
 hare expected the writers to use ; instead of an express 
 declaration that children were no longer to be admitted 
 to the seal of the covenant, and acknowledged as visible 
 subjects of the reign of Christ, we have Christ himself 
 saying, " Suffer the little children to come unto rne, and 
 forbid them not ; for of such is the kingdom of God ;" 
 we have the apostles, in the very outset and establishment 
 of that kingdom, declaring to Jews, without explan- 
 ation or comment, " The promise is unto you and unto 
 your children ;" and we have the unquestioned fact of 
 the baptism of families, recorded in terms such as indi- 
 cate its having been, not an extraordinary, but a custom- 
 ary thing, on the professed faith of the head : — that it is 
 exceedingly improbable, that a change of such magnitude 
 and importance as the entire exclusion of children from 
 the place they were accustomed to hold, should have been 
 introduced without the slightest recorded symptom of op- 
 position or demurring amongst the Jewish converts, ten- 
 acious as they showed themselves of the established usa- 
 ges, or of objection and cavil on the part of those who lay 
 at the catch for whatever they could get hold of against 
 
SECTION II. Ill 
 
 the new system : — thai, so far from this, when the Judaiz- 
 ing teachers insisted on the necessity of the Gentile 
 converts submitting to circumcision, which must of course 
 have been administered to their children as well as to 
 themselves, no notice whatever is taken by the apostles 
 and elders assembled at Jerusalem, of the inconsistency 
 with the spiritual nature of the new dispensation of ad- 
 ministering to children, on the admission of their parents 
 to the Christian church, any sign of covenant connection 
 with them, — although an inconsistency so great as, in the 
 opinion of our baptist brethren, to amount to a subversion 
 of the spirituality of Messiah's kingdom : — that we have 
 no recorded instance of the baptism of any adult that had 
 been born of baptized proselytes, Jewish or Gentile, to 
 the faith of Christ — although this class of persons must, 
 on the antipaedobaptist hypothesis, have been very nu- 
 merous indeed : — that in the apostolic epistles to the 
 churches, children are expressly addressed, not merely 
 adults, but such as were yet to be " brought up in the 
 nuture and admonition of the Lord ;" and, although the 
 spiritual training of them is especially devolved upon their 
 parents, yet their being so addressed shows that they were 
 considered by the writers as having connection with the 
 Christian community : that the circumstances of the early 
 history of the church, after the time of the apostles, do not 
 admi: of a satisfactory explanation on baptist principles, — 
 whilst they are in perfect harmony with the supposition 
 cf paedobaptism having been the original practice, — this 
 most simply accounting for other facts, rather than being 
 accounted for by them : — and that the entire absence, in 
 the history of the propagation of the gospel by antipaedo- 
 baptists, of any thing resembling the baptism of families 
 which we find in apostolic times, should lead our breth- 
 ren more than to suspect a difference between their views 
 and practice, and those of the first preachers of the king- 
 dom of Christ. — I say, let the reader take all these things 
 together ; let him connect them with the argument of the 
 preceding section ; and let him form his own conclusion. 
 Nothing could be easier, than to blow trumpets, and to 
 make a flourish, and to shout and vaunt with the tri- 
 umphant confidence of victory. But it is not victory that 
 
112 SECTION II. 
 
 should be our object, but solely the discovery of truth and 
 duty. — I prefer no claims to originality, in almost a single 
 statement or argument I have advanced. If I have suc- 
 ceeded in bringing old arguments into a well connected 
 and luminous form, it is all that 1 have aimed at. Truth 
 does not suffer by time ; nor is a good old argument at all 
 the worse for iis age. I can only say for myself, coolly 
 and deliberately, and with perfect sincerity, that the more 
 I have considered this case, I have ever felt my ground 
 the firmer. Whether I may have conveyed the same im- 
 pression to the minds of my readers, I cannot tell. It is 
 certainly my prayer to God that I may, because I believe 
 the conclusion, which I have been endeavoring to estab- 
 lish, has the sanction and authority of his word. 
 
SECTION III. 
 
 It has often been asked by antipaedobaptists, What are 
 the uses of infant-baptism ? What good ends are answer- 
 ed by it? And their own reply to the question may be 
 given in the words of Mr. Birt ;* " It is, on every ground 
 hitherto taken for its support, a cause that in this world 
 produces no effect — a means connected with no end — a 
 cloud that affords no rain — a tree that yields no fruit." — 
 This representation, I hope to show, has a great deal 
 more in it of boldness, than of truth. 
 
 It ought first to be observed, however, that with regard 
 to all such questions as the one so often put and so con- 
 fidently answered, there is obviously a previous question, 
 namely, that which we have been considering in the pre- 
 ceding sections, Is it, or is it not, a divine institution ? 
 If it be once shown to possess the authority of the su- 
 preme Lawgiver, it will not be disputed, that our first and 
 immediate duty is compliance. What he appoints, it is 
 ours to observe. Questions of a similar kind might have 
 been asked respecting circumcision. Multitudes of those 
 to whom that rite was administered died in infancy : of 
 what use was it to them ? Multitudes who lived till man- 
 hood, never obtained the blessings of the temporal inheri- 
 tence ; what was the benefit of it to them ? — Eut it is not 
 with questions of this nature that we have, in the first in- 
 stance, to do. Our ffrst inquiry should be, What is God's 
 will 1 not Why is it his will ? 
 
 Still however we freely admit, it is reasonable to expect 
 that there should be some uses apparent of whatever the 
 God of infinite wisdom enjoins : — and on the present oc- 
 casion, we feel no difficulty in meeting the inquiry. Of 
 baptism as administered to infants we are at no loss to 
 * Strictures, p. 10. 
 
 *9 
 
114 SECTION III. 
 
 point out uses, which we conceive to be of no trivial mag- 
 nitude. We shall endeavor to show these by considering 
 it in the two following lights : — 1. As a memorial of 
 
 FUNDAMENTAL TRUTHS '. 2. As A REMEMBRANCER OF 
 
 IMPORTANT DUTIES, AND AN ENCOURAGEMENT TO THEIR 
 PERFORMANCE. 
 
 I. In considering infant-baptism in the former of these 
 views, as a memorial of fundamental truths, it becomes 
 necessary to take some notice, in the first place, of the 
 general signification of the rite itself. It appears, 
 then, to me very evident, that the emblematic significance 
 of baptism is to be found in the purifying nature of the 
 element employed in it, — in the cleansing virtue of water. 
 Almost every instance in which the ordinance is spoken 
 of, or alluded to, with any intimation of its meaning, 
 might be adduced in proof of this. The following passa- 
 ges are but a specimen of many : Acts xxii. 16. " And 
 now, why tarriest thou? Arise and be baptized, and wash 
 away thy sins, calling on the name of the Lord." Eph. 
 v. 25, 20. "Christ loved the church, and gave himself 
 for it, that he might sanctify and cleanse it by the wash- 
 ing of water, through the word ; that he might present it 
 to himself a glorious church, not having spot or wrinkle 
 or any such thing, but that it should be holy and without 
 blemish." In this latter passage, spiritual purification is 
 no doubt intended ; but it contains such an allusion to 
 the ordinance of baptism with water, as leads us to con- 
 clude, that this spiritual purification is what it is designed 
 principally to represent. — A similar allusion there seems 
 to be in Tit. iii. 5. " Not by works of righteousness 
 which we have done, but according to his mercy he saved 
 us, by the washing of regeneration, and renewing of the 
 Holy Ghost." 
 
 From these and other passages it appears, that baptism, 
 by the emblem of the cleansing virtue of water, denotes 
 the removal of sin, in its guilt, and in its pollution. Of 
 such allusions, indeed, the scriptures are full. And sure- 
 ly, that view which is most frequently exhibited to our 
 attention, and which both on the subject of justification 
 and sanctification, imparts, if I may so speak, a peculiar 
 figurative complexion to the current language of scrip- 
 
SECTION III. 115 
 
 ture, I am warranted to consider as at least the principal, 
 if not even the exclusive import of the institution. 
 
 But according to the views of our baptist brethren, 
 washing, or cleansing, so far from being the exclusive, is 
 not even the principal, but only a secondary meaning of 
 the rite. — Whilst the general tenor of the language of 
 scripture, as well as a number of particular passages, 
 seems to place its symbolical meaning in the nature of the 
 element employed, it is by them placed principally, and by 
 some of them indeed, as would appear from their in inner 
 of expressing themselves, almost solely, in the mode, in 
 which that element is used. 
 
 The passages referred to by them, in support of this 
 notion, are the two following : Rom. vi. 3, 4. " Know ye 
 not, that so many of us as were baptized into Jesus Christ 
 were baptized into his death ? Therefore we are buried 
 with him by baptism into death ; that like as Christ was 
 raised up from the dead by the glory of the Father, even 
 so we also should walk in newness of life." Col. ii. 12. 
 " Buried with him in baptism, wherein also ye are risen 
 with him, through the faith of the operation of God who 
 hath raised him from the dead." — In these passages, our 
 brethren conceive, there is an obvious reference to the 
 mode of baptism by immersion. The apostle represents 
 this ordinance, to use the language of Mr. Maclean, in 
 his commission, page 137, as "exhibiting the death, bu- 
 rial and resurrection of Christ, together with the Chris- 
 tian's communion with, and conformity to him therein." 
 The baptized person's communion with Christ in his 
 death and burial, is represented by his being laid under 
 the water ; and his communion with him in his resurrec- 
 tion, by his being raised out of it. 
 
 Two things may just be noticed here, before proceed- 
 ing to the explanation of the passages. The first is, that 
 it is obviously incorrect, to speak of the ordinance as 
 " exhibiting the death of Christ," as well as his burial and 
 resurrection ; for whatever resemblance fancy may imag- 
 ine to the two latter, there is surely no representation of 
 the former. The death can only be considered as impli- 
 ed in the burial. — The second is, (what has been largely 
 shown by others.*) that even to the burial and resurrec- 
 
 *See particularly Mr. E wing's late Essay. 
 
116 SECTION III. 
 
 tion of Christ, the immersion of a body under water, and 
 its immersion from it, bear but a very indistinct and re- 
 mote resemblance. The mind may easily indeed habitu- 
 ate itself to the idea of likeness, between being let down 
 under earth and raised out of it, and being let down un- 
 der water and raised out of it. But where is the likeness, 
 between the latter of these and the carrying of a body, by 
 a lateral door into a cavern hewn out of a rock, and that 
 body reviving, and coming forth by the same door? — 
 which were the real circumstances of the burial and res- 
 urrection of the Saviour. I confess this resemblance, on 
 which so much stress is laid by our baptist brethren, has 
 always appeared to me but a far fetched fancy. I shall 
 say nothing stronger, lest I should possibly be in the 
 wrong in so considering it. Of one thing, however, 1 
 must express my firm conviction, namely, that any allu- 
 sion at all to the mode of baptism, is in no respect neces- 
 sary to the right and easy understanding of the passages 
 in question. And if this can be shown, it will follow of 
 course that they fjrm but a flimsy foundation for the su- 
 perstructure, of sentiment and practice, that has been 
 reared upon them. Lot it nor be said, that other paedo- 
 baptists have thought differently, have admitted an allu- 
 sion, and endeavored to expl tin it in other ways. I can- 
 not help that. I state my own views, and wish them to 
 be tried, not by comparison with those of others, but by 
 the test of the Bible. It is a puny and pitiful way of 
 carrying on a controversy, to prowl about amongst differ- 
 ent writers on the same side of the question, for the pur- 
 pose of detecting, and setting forth in contrasted columns, 
 every little discrepancy between them ; with the view, 
 covert or avowed, of drawing the reader to the conclusion, 
 that they cannot be right who so differ from one another. 
 Our baptist friends are rather too fond of this attempt to 
 divide us against ourselves. Yet were it altogether an 
 honorable description of warfare, it is one in which we 
 might venture on competition, without despairing of suc- 
 cess. 
 
 With regard to the passages in question, Mr. Maclean, 
 the eminent baptist writer referred to a little ago, well ex- 
 plains their spiritual meaning to he — " That, by a gra- 
 
SECTION III. 117 
 
 cious constitution, Christ sustained the persons of all the 
 elect, in his dying and rising again ; that they were so 
 comprehended in, and accounted one with him, as to have 
 died in his death, been buried in his burial, and raised 
 again in his resurrection."* This I take to be the true 
 principle of interpretation for the whole context of the 
 passage in Rom. vi. But that this blessed truth, (with 
 which, as the same writer justly observes, the scriptures 
 abound,) is "signified to believers in their baptism, 
 wherein the death, burial, and resurrection of Christ are 
 re-acted, in a figure, upon their own persons," — the lan- 
 guage employed does not seem, either necessarily or natu- 
 rally, to imply. 
 
 To be " baptized into Christ" is to be baptized into 
 the faith of him as the Messiah ; — into the faith of his di- 
 vine mission, character, and work. To be " baptized in- 
 to his death" is to be baptized into the faith of death, in 
 the view of which the gospel gives of it, as the death of a 
 surety or substitute, making atonement for the sins of 
 those for whom he died. — Now, by being thus " baptized 
 into his death, says the apostle, we are " buried with 
 him." The simple meaning of this expression evidently 
 is, that by being baptized into the faith of his death, as 
 the death of our surety and substitute, we become par- 
 takers with him in it. When the apostle, pursuing his 
 beautiful illustration of the spiritual connection of believ- 
 ers with Christ, and the practical obligations thence aris- 
 ing, says in the eighth verse, " Now if we be dead with 
 Christ, we believe that we shall also live with him," he 
 uses a phrase of equivalent import with the one before us. 
 To be dead with Christ, and to be buried with Christ, are 
 the same thing. The latter of the two phrases appears 
 to be used in the fourth verse, chiefly for the sake of 
 completing the apostle's figure. As it was necessary, in 
 order to Christ's rising, that he should be laid in the 
 grave; so, in the figure, it is necessary that we should be 
 viewed as buried with him, in order to our rising with him 
 to newness of life : — 
 
 " Ours the cross, the grave, the skies." 
 
 The simple meaning is this : — Since, in our being bap- 
 
 * Commission, page 140. 
 
118 SECTION III. 
 
 tized into Jesus Christ, we were baptized into his drath,-~ 
 into the faith of his death as the death of a surety ; wc 
 may be considered as, by faith, partaking with him in his 
 death, — as buried with him; and that, with the special 
 end of our rising w : th him, in a spiritual resembl nice to 
 his resurrection, and " walking in newness of life." Now 
 it is quite obvious, that the argument of the apostle has 
 not the remotest connection with the mode of baptism. 
 There is not the most distant occasion for the supposition 
 of any such allusion, in order to render the passage intel- 
 ligible ; nor does the allusion, when supposed, impart to 
 it any addition of force or propriety. The meaning does 
 not, in the least degree, depend on the manner of per- 
 forming the ceremony : it turns entirely on its being bap- 
 tism into Christ's death. Provided it was this, it makes 
 not the smallest differeiice to the apostle's statement, or 
 argument, or conclusion, whether we suppose it to have 
 been by immersion, by pouring, or by sprinkling. 
 
 The same observations apply, with at least equal, if not 
 greater force, to the parallel passage — Col. ii. 12. Be- 
 lievers are there said to be "risen as well as buried with 
 Christ in baptism." — They were not baptized into the 
 faith of Christ's death alone, as the death of their surety ; 
 they were baptized also into the faith of his resurrection, 
 as the resurrection of their surety. And as, by the form- 
 er, they became, in virtue of their connection with him 
 as a surety, partakers with him in his death ; so, by the 
 latter, they became, in the same way, partakers with him 
 also in his resurrection. Being baptized into the faith 
 of both, they had, by faith, fellowship or union with him 
 in both. How is it, accordingly, that they are said to 
 be " risen with him ?" It is " through the faith of the 
 operation of God who raised him from the dead;" that 
 is, through the faith of his resurrection, effected by the 
 operation, or mighty power, of God. — Their being " risen 
 with him in baptism" does not, therefore, refer to any 
 emblematic representation of a resurrection in the mode 
 of the ordinance ; but to their being one with him in 
 his resurrection, through faith in him as the surety of 
 sinners. And in this view they might, with perfect 
 
SECTION III. 119 
 
 propriety, be said to be risen with him in baptism, what- 
 ever was the mode oi its administration, provided only it 
 was baptism into the fait k of his resurrection. 
 
 It has indeed been alleged, that, in whatever sense be- 
 lievers are said to be buried and risen with Christ, they 
 could not be represented as so buried and risen in baptism, 
 unless there were, in that ordinance, some representation 
 of that burial and resurrection. — I observe in reply : 1st. 
 Although the expression in Col. ii. 1*2., is " buried with 
 him in baptism" {Ev no ^unTiOf.iazi ;) yet in Rom. vi. 4., 
 it is different — " buried with him by baptism into his 
 death," (Aia rov (jamiafuaTog eig top finvarov aviov;) 
 which does not at all imply any such similitude in the ordi- 
 nance, but directs the attention to that into which they 
 were baptized; which, indeed, as I have noticed, is the 
 point on which the whole reasoning turns. — 2dly. Al- 
 though it was, strictly speaking, in believing, that these 
 converts became partakers with Christ in his death and 
 resurrection ; yet it is not unusual to speak of things as tak- 
 ing place in baptism which properly took place by Jaith, 
 because baptism was the first public declaration of the 
 faith of the converts, and of their belonging to the body 
 of Christ. It is on the same principle, that they are spo- 
 ken of as in baptism " washing away their sins," and 
 " putting on Christ." — 3dly. In Rom. vi.. the language 
 of the whole passage is figurative. The same principle 
 of interpretation, according to which the expression "bur- 
 ied xoith Christ" is explained as referring to the represen- 
 tation of interment by the immersion of the body under 
 water, should lead us also to understand the phrase which 
 immediately follows, "planted together in the likeness of 
 his death" as referring to an emblematic representation 
 of planting — which accordingly some have stretched their 
 fancy to make out : or the phrase " crucified with him," 
 to some similar exhibition of crucifixion. 
 
 Being myself thoroughly convinced, that the signifi- 
 cance and appropriateness ot the rite arise from the 
 cleansing nature of the element employed, and not from 
 the mode of its application, I am disposed to consider the 
 mode as of comparatively inferior importance. It is in 
 the application of water, as the emblem of the purifying 
 
120 SECTION III. 
 
 influence of the Spirit of truth, that the ordinance prop- 
 erly consists. A baptist brother may smile at me when I 
 say, that on this ground I have no hesitation in admitting 
 immersion to be valid baptism : and if it be a brotherly 
 smile, I have no objection to return it. But if it be the 
 smile of implied derision, which if turned into words, 
 would say — " A great concession truly ! admit immersion 
 to be valid baptism ! why, immersion alone is baptism : — 
 it is the only scriptural mode ; — it is the only meaning of 
 the original word; — it is the only representation of the 
 death, and burial, and resurrection of Christ:" — I could 
 return it on quite sufficient grounds, if derision were a 
 brotherly feeling; but I would not icish to do it, because 
 Christian charity forbids me. 
 
 Although it is somewhat foreign to my main object, to 
 pursue the discussion of the mode to any great length, 
 yet I cannot pass it over without a few remarks. Others 
 have successfully shown, by a detail of learned criticism, 
 the consistency of the practice of paedobaptists with the 
 usages of classical Greek writers. My present remarks 
 shall be for the unlearned ; being designed to show, that 
 there is no occasion to go beyond the plain intimations of 
 the Bible itself, for a satisfactory settlement of the point 
 in dispute. 
 
 Even were it to be admitted, that immersion is the origi- 
 nal or primary import of the word baptism — (which is only 
 the Greek word Anglicised) — yet every one at all versant 
 in languages is aware, that it is not by tracing back a word 
 to its earliest etymology, that its actual meaning is to be 
 ascertained, in particular applications of it, at subsequent 
 periods in the history of the tongue to which it belongs. 
 Even in our own language, we should run ourselves into 
 innumerable mistakes and absurdities, by the adoption of 
 such a test of the import of terms. The sole inquiry ought 
 to be, — not, what is the strict, original, etymological sense 
 of the word ; but, what is the sense in ichich it is used by 
 the scripture writers ? And it has long appeared to me, 
 that the reading, and comparing with each other, of such 
 texts as the following, should be enough to satisfy any 
 candid man, that sprinkling and pouring, so far from be- 
 ing without the countenance of these writers in their use 
 
SECTION III. 
 
 121 
 
 of the term, are uniformly recognized by them, in their 
 incidental explanations of it, as its true and proper coun- 
 terparts ; and should therefore lead the deriders of infant- 
 sprinkling, (as even the least of our opponents have 
 learned from their superiors, sneeringly to designate our 
 practice) to consider, on what and on whom their con- 
 tempt must ultimately fall. 
 
 Mark vii. 3, 4. " For the Pharisees, and all the Jews, 
 except they wash their hands oft eat not, holding the tra- 
 dition of the elders. And when they come from the mar- 
 ket, except they wash they eat not. And many other 
 things there be, which they have received to hold, as the 
 washing (/jwrrr robot's, baptisms,) of cups and pots, brazen 
 vessels, and of tables." — Do our brethren really believe, 
 that the couches on which ths Jews reclined at their meals, 
 — (which are meant by the word rendered improperly in 
 the latter of these verses tables) were immersed, or plung- 
 ed entirely under water ? Is this likely in itself; espe- 
 cially where water was seldom so abiii.dant as to be lav- 
 ishly expended ? And is it not much more reasonable to 
 suppose, that in adding to the extent of the law of purifi- 
 cation, the legal mode of purification should still be re- 
 tained ; and that the cleansing was similar to that pre- 
 scribed, Num. xix. 18. " A clean person shall take hys- 
 sop and dip it in the water, and sprinkle it upon the tent, 
 and upon all the vessels?" — At any rate, whatever be 
 supposed as to the " pots, and cups, and brazen vessels, " 
 it surely requires the prejudice of system, to fancy the 
 immersion of the beds or couches. 
 
 In Meb. ix. 10., the apostle says of the ancient dispen- 
 sation, that it " stood only in meats and drinks and diverse 
 washings, and carnal ordinances " — The word rendered 
 washings is (junTin^taru (baptisms ;) under which are cer- 
 tainly to be included all the various modes of ceremonial 
 purification, or clausing, that were enjoined under the 
 law. The principal and most frequent of these was 
 sprinkling. The cases in which the bathing of the bodjr 
 was prescribed are no doubt also intended ; but it is 
 enough (or my purpose, if the expression is admitted to 
 comprehend other modes of purifying. 
 
 1 Cor. x. 2. " They were all baptized into Moses in the 
 10 
 
122 SECTION III. 
 
 cloud and in the sea." — Are our brethren not sensible of 
 the straining that is necessary to make out immersion bap- 
 tism here? — of the absolute ridiculousness ol the conceit 
 (1 cannot view it any other light) that the Israelites were 
 baptized, by having the cloud over them, and the waters 
 of the sea on either side of them? [ can cot help the 
 mind that has brought itself to fancy this quite simple and 
 natural. A dry baptism ! without the contact at ail of 
 the baptismal element, in any way ! Would our brethren 
 consider a man duly baptized, by his being placed between 
 two cisterns of water, with a third over his head ? 
 
 When the baptism of the iloly Spirit, signified by bap- 
 tism with water, is spoken of, it is almost invariably asso- 
 ciated with the idea of pouring out, or effusion; — and it 
 is surely not unreasonable to conclude, that there should 
 be a correspondence between the emblematic rite and that 
 which it represents; nor is the charge of inconsiderate 
 presumption destitute of ground, against those who in- 
 dulge themselves in ridicule and mockery of this corres- 
 pondence. — As a specimen of the language of the scrip- 
 tures, let. the following passages suffice. Isa. xliv. 3. " I 
 will pour writer on him that is thirsty, and floods on the 
 dry ground . I will pour my Spirit upon thy seed, and 
 my blessing upon thine offspring :" — Joel ii. 28, 29. quot- 
 ed as fulfilled, Acts ii. 17, 13. " It shall come to pass 
 afterward, that I will pour oi.t my Spirit upon all flesh, 
 and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, your 
 old men shall dream dreams, and your young men shall see 
 visions: and also upon the servants and upon the hand- 
 maidens in those days will I pour out my Spirit : ' Acts 
 ii. 31. " Therefore, being by the right hand of God ex- 
 alted, and having recened of the Father the promise of 
 the Holy Ghost, he hath skid forth (iuy/£, poured out) 
 this, which ye now see and hear:" — Tit. lii. 5, 6. Not 
 by works of righteousness which we have done, but ac- 
 cording to his mercy he saved us, by the washing of re- 
 generation and renewing of the Holy Ghost, which he 
 shed (iiiyti, poured out) on us abundantly, through Jesus 
 Christ our Saviour." 
 
 That this pouring nut of the Spirit was the same as 
 the baptism of the Spirit, we have an authority which my 
 
SECTION III. 123 
 
 reader, I hope, will deem satisfactory — the express and 
 pointed testimony of an inspire! apostle. In giving his 
 account of the effect of his mission to the household of 
 Cornelius, I'eter says, " And as I beg>n to speak, the Ho- 
 ly Ghost felt on thrm, as on us at the beginning. Then 
 remembered I the word of the I^ord, how that he said, 
 John indeed baptized with water, but ye shall be baptized 
 with the Holy Ghost:' Acts xi. 15, 16. That the Spirit 
 falling upon these converts, is equivalent to his being 
 poured out upon them, appears from comparing this ac- 
 count of Peter with the narrative itself of the event : As 
 Peter began to speak, the Holy Ghost fell on all them who 
 heard I lie word. And they of the circumcision were as- 
 tonished, as many as came with Peter, because that on 
 the Gentiles also was pound out the gift of the Holy 
 Ghost." — Look, then, reader, at Peter's words. The Ho- 
 ly Spirit was poured out, and Peter called to mind the 
 promise, which cf course he considered as being then 
 fulfilled — "Ye shall be baptized with the Holy Spirit." 
 According to Peter, then, baptism was effected by pouring 
 out. Till better authority be produced^ I desire to bow 
 to this. The argument, I am aware, is very simple, and 
 may be contemned as being an unlearned one ; — but my 
 very object is to show, that learning is not necessary to 
 determine the question, in what, sense a writer uses a 
 particular woid, when that writer himself favors us with 
 his own explanation. This is done here, in terms as ex- 
 plicit as it is possible to devise. And when Peter himself 
 tells me that he did consider effusion as baptism, it is not 
 the learning of all the etymologists in Europe that will 
 persuade me, against his own word, that it was impossible 
 he should. 
 
 I have said, it is surely not unreasonable to suppose, 
 that baptism with water, which represents baptism with 
 the Spirit, should bear an analogy to it in this particu- 
 lar. The language, accordingly, of the subsequent part 
 of the same narrative, most naturally leads to the con- 
 clusion, (so naturally, indeed, that T might almost say it 
 directly expresses it,) that such was the fact, — that the 
 converts, on whom the Spirit had fallen, were not con- 
 ducted to a river, or elsewhere, where they might be 
 
124 SECTION III. 
 
 conveniently immersed, but that water was brought, and 
 that they were baptized immediately. uj;on the spot. Pe- 
 ter said, " Who can forbid water, that these should not be 
 baptized ?" an expression which the ear itself of every 
 candid reader at once interprets to his mind, as intima- 
 ting the apostle's desire that water should be brought. 
 All assenting, he commanded them to he " baptized in 
 the name of the Lord Jesus." It was immediately done; 
 and they " prayed him to tarry with them certain days." 
 
 I only further remark, that the same authority, name- 
 ly, that of scripture itself, warrants me so explicitly, to 
 consider sprinkling, or pouring, as sufficiently expressive 
 of washing or cleansing from pollution, that I have no ref- 
 erence to pay to any affirmations to the contrary. Let 
 the following examples be attended to: — Ezek. xxxvi. 25. 
 " Then will I sprinkle clean water upon you, and ye shall 
 be clean ; from all your filthiness and from all your idols 
 will I cleanse you." Sprinkling is here represented as 
 having the effect of cleansing: — Psal. li. 7. " Purge me 
 with hyssop, and 7 shall be clean; wash me, and 1 shall 
 be whiter than snow. " The hyssop was used for sprink- 
 ling either water or blood, or both, upon the person to be 
 ceremonially purified ; so that here too sprinkling is held 
 sufficient for cleaning. — So it is also in Heb. ix. 13, 14. 
 u For if the blood of bulls and of goats, and the ashes of 
 an heifer, sprinkling the unclean, sanctifieth to the puri- 
 fying (y.adoicjoiTjTu) of the flesh; how much more shall 
 the blood of Christ, who, through the eternal Spirit, of- 
 fered himself without spot unto God, purge" (-/Mdacjiei, 
 purify or cleanse) " your conscience from dead works, to 
 serve the living God ?" The blood of Christ is, with the 
 same allusion to its cleansing virtue called the blood of 
 sprinkling. — Isa. lii. 15. So shall he sprinkle many na- 
 tions ." that is, " with his atoning blood, and by the 
 pouringf out of his Spirit as purifying water ; of which," 
 (adds Mr. Scott, and it belongs to our baptist brethren to 
 show how unreasonably) " baptism should be the outward 
 and visible sign." — Surely such passages of scripture as 
 these ought at least to rescue sprinkling and pouring from 
 the misphiced and pitiful ridicule, which has so often 
 been directed against them by the abettors of immersion. 
 
SECTION III. 125 
 
 It is, I repeat, in the application of water as a cleansing 
 clement, that the appropriateness of the rite consists. 
 Were this admitted, 1 should not be disposed, as I have 
 before hinted, to consider the mode of its application as 
 essen'ial to the validity of the ordinance. I must, how- 
 ever, declare my conviction, that, whilst I have produced 
 decisive instances of baptism, in the phraseology of the 
 New Testament, being equivalent to tffusion, I have never 
 yet seen an instance established, of its necessarily or cer- 
 tainly signifying immersion* I have already said, that it 
 is not by etymology, but by usage, that this point can be 
 fairly determined ; and the attempts made to determine 
 it by usage, from the New Testament, in favor of immer- 
 sion, have ever appeared to me entire failures. Two or 
 three brief remarks shall suffice on some of the modes of 
 reasoning. 
 
 The argument from etymology has been supported by 
 the observation, that, in most of its occurrences, the verb 
 is connected with the preposition EN — tv vdoscv, — tv 
 jivtvpazt ayio), — &c. — in water, — in the Holy Spirit, 
 &,c. — It is truly surprising, that so much stress should be 
 laid on the frequently vague import of a Greek preposi- 
 tion. This preposition (ev) is necessarily rendered with 
 in many of its occurrences. Of this many instances 
 might be quoted. I shall content myself with one, be- 
 cause it bears an immediate relation to the present sub- 
 ject. In Heb. ix. 22. it is said, " almost all things are by 
 the law purged (or purified **9*§i£st*/) with blood (EN^aT/) 
 and without shedding of blood is no remission." — Now 
 these purification^ with blood were effected by sprinkling ; 
 and to render the phrase here " in blood," would be ab- 
 surb. Our baptist friends are sufficiently aware of this 
 frequent signification of the preposition. And yet, this 
 being the case, the use of it in the present instance de- 
 termines nothing ; because, before it can be made out that 
 the preposition should be rendered in it must be previous- 
 ly proved that the verb signifies exclusively to immerse — 
 
 *The reader will therefore perceive, that when I say I can admit immer- 
 sion to be valid baptism, I do not mean that it has been administered ac- 
 cording- to the mode practised by the apostle-*. All that I mean is, that if 
 baptism has already been administered by immersion. I should not reckon 
 it necessary to administer it again by effusion or sprinkling. 
 
 *10 
 
126 SECTION III. 
 
 the propriety of the one translation obviously depending 
 upon the establishment of the other. — Nor is this all. 
 We have, in the very case before us, the clearest evidence 
 of the fallacy of the criticism : for, as we have seen a lit- 
 tle ago, the promise "Ye shall be baptized EN muipxTi uyn," 
 was verified by the pouring out of this Spirit upon the 
 disciples. — To be immersed, or plunged, in the Holy 
 Ghost and in fire, are expressions not merely harsh and 
 grating to the ear, — 1 should not rest much upon that, be- 
 cause there are few or no modes of speech, to which both 
 the ear and the mind may not, by custom, become habitu- 
 ated and reconciled ; — but they are expressions in direct 
 opposition to the invariable representations of scripture 
 respecting the gift of the spirit. — Mr. Cox asks, " What 
 reason can be assigned, if pouring be the proper method 
 of administering baptism, for the constant use of a term 
 in the New Testament, which, every critic admits, signi- 
 fies immersion, and which even Mr. Ewing allows to 
 mean immersion as much as pouring; and the entire 
 omission of all those Greek words which contain, in their 
 primary, or general application, the sense of effusion or 
 pouring? Either of the following verbs/' says he, " might 
 have answered the purpose; 0ikxu> jacio, ix^ta eflfundo,, 
 imx'^cD infundo > iK^vvue eflfundo, mraxu* eflfundo, irgoo-%ui ad- 
 fundo : they are moreover all made use of in the writings 
 of the apostles, and yet they are never applied to in the 
 ordinance of baptism. The same may be affirmed of 
 £xvn£w I sprinkle."* — But this is either inconsiderate, or 
 uncandid. It is true, that such terms do not happen to 
 be used with immediate application to the ordinance of 
 baptism, because ,/2«t<t/£« is the appropriate term, the vox 
 signata, for that ordinance. But to insinuate that they 
 are never used as equivalent to baptism, is to insinuate 
 what is most untrue. Either «£«» or <k£w» (to pour 
 out) is uniformly employed, as has been already no- 
 ticed, to express the baptism of the Spirit. They on 
 whom the Spirit teas poured out are most explicitly af- 
 firmed to have been baptized ivith the Spirit. There is 
 no getting over this. The /Sajrwsr^* is effected by the 
 nc%vT t {. Tt will never be alledged that *#/?* signifies tcy 
 * Cox 0:1 Baptism, p. 47. 
 
SECTION III, 127 
 
 immerse, yet the apostle Peter declares the vi%v:rts to have 
 been the accomplishment of the promise, &i7r<rw6jj<r&r6e. — 
 As to the verb g«m£«, 1 shall only observe, that amongst 
 the " dners washings" {{h.wrmy.an*., baptisms) of the old 
 dispensation, referred to Heb. ix. 10. must surely be in- 
 cluded all the various modes of Jewish purification, and 
 consequently the gnw/uuvnt, or sprinklings, which were 
 the most numerous. The passages, moreover, formerly 
 cited, show, that, in scripture phraseology, sprinkling is 
 equivalent to washing or cleansing. 
 
 Equally uncertain, as to the conclusion deducible from 
 them, are the expressions, that John baptized "mi Jor- 
 dan," " in the river of Jordan" — iV to> U^uvx— «v t« ie$<f*yj» 
 7ror*.y.a> : — Matth. iii. 6. Mark i. 5. Such expressions are 
 inconclusive, for this obvious reason, that they are equally 
 suitable, on the supposition of pouring having been the 
 mode of baptism, as on that of immersion. Had John 
 stood in the water, however shallow, or had he stood in 
 the bed of the river at the water's edge, and poured the 
 water on those who came to him for baptism, — the histo- 
 rian not only might have used the same expression with 
 propriety, but could hardly have used another. — An argu- 
 ment, then, is brought from the use of a particular prepo- 
 sition, to fix the verb to one of two alleged meanings : — 
 but if the preposition may be used with equal propriety, 
 whichsoever of the meanings be affixed to the verb, it is 
 needless to say that the use of it determines neither. — 
 The truth is, that our baptist friends have their own sense 
 of the verb previously fixed in their minds ; and, instead 
 of ascertaining the sense of the verb by the use of the 
 preposition, they determine the sense of the preposition 
 from its connection with the verb. 
 
 This will be further evident, from the sense affixed by 
 some of them to another preposition, on one occasion at 
 least used in connection with /Wn^a, — the preposition \ns. 
 It is said, Mark i. 9. " Jesus came from Nazareth of 
 Galilee, and was baptized of John," ejs rev 'kgdayav. This, 
 is, by some antipaedobaptists, translated into Jordan ; and 
 is considered as settling the point, because being " bap- 
 tized to or towards Jordan" is nonsense. And non- 
 sense no doubt it is. But the remark settles no point 
 
128 SECTION III. 
 
 whatever, unless it be the inconsideration or prejudice of 
 such critics. They surely know, that, in such connec- 
 tions «s not unusually has the signification of at. So it is 
 correctly rendered in Acts viii. 40. " Philip was found 
 at Azotus." Acts xxv. J5. " About whom, when 1 was 
 at Jerusalem," &c. ; and in other places. The phrase 
 does not signify that the persons baptized were plunged 
 «? tov lcgfxvM into the Jordan ; but simply that the baptized 
 and the baptizer were at, or, if you will, in Jordan, when 
 the rite was administered. Nothing is determinately af- 
 firmed by it of the mode of its administration. — If it be 
 alledged, that in the instances quoted as examples of u; 
 signifying at, the persons were at the places mentioned 
 certainly so as to be in them ; — granting the truth of the 
 criticism, the utmost that can be deduced from it is what 
 I have just mentioned, that the parties were in Jordan 
 when the ceremony was performed. But the phrase 
 might be used with perfect propriety upon the supposition 
 of their having been only on the margin or bank of the 
 river. 
 
 "In remarking upon Matth. iii. 16." says Mr. Cox, 
 Mr. Ewing expresses himself thus: — " I suppose no man 
 upon earth who can read tmtk wbvc -xrro tov v£a.<ros, imagines it 
 to be any thing else than ' he went up straightway from 
 the water.' It is presumable, notwithstanding the hos- 
 tility against Dr. Campbell, that he was at least able to 
 read the words recited ; and yet he imagined them to 
 mean ' he no sooner arose out of the water.' Vossius, 
 Venema, Doddridge, and a thousand others, were cer- 
 tainly able to read these words, and yet they imagined 
 them to have a meaning different from the interpretation 
 of our Glasgow friend, and conformable to that of the 
 Principal of Marischall College, and of almost all the 
 critics, both baptist and paedobaptist."* 
 
 Now the man who names three critics, and refers to 
 the rest by thousands, should be sure of his correctness 
 at least in his small sample. 1 happen not to have Vos- 
 sius and Venema by me ; but I have just looked into 
 Doddridge, and find his translation in harmony, not with 
 
 * Page 87. 
 
SECTION III. 129 
 
 Dr. Campbell's, but with Mr. Ewing's!* It is — " And 
 after Jesus was baptized, as soon as he ascended out of 
 the water to the bank of Jordan." This needs no com- 
 ment. Are we to consider this as a specimen of the care 
 of Mr. Cox in consulting his authorities, or of his candor 
 and correctness in referring to them? — It is indeed quite 
 unnecessary to go through a thousand critics, to asceitain 
 the meaning of the phrases *«t*#mw» m TowTwg, and avx&tm» 
 iltto (or m) vcquf*TQs We need not go beyond the New 
 Testament, for in it we have the clearest and mo.«t ex- 
 plicit proof that they are phrases totally unconnected with 
 the act of baptizing. In Acts viii. 38,39. it is said, 
 " They went down both into the water, both Philip and 
 the Eunuch, and he baptized him. And when they were 
 come up out of the water, the Spirit of the Lord caught 
 away Philip, that the Eunuch saw him no more." — Noth- 
 ing can be clearer than t his. The act of baptizing is 
 something quite distinct from either the going down into 
 the water, or the corning up out of it. If these two phra- 
 ses had any reference at all to the mode of baptism, it 
 would follow, that Philip was immersed under the water, 
 and emerged out of it, as well as the Eunuch ; which no 
 one supposes. The plain meaning is, that Philip and the 
 Eunuch descended together from the chariot to, or if you 
 will into the water ; that, when they had so descended, 
 Philip baptized the Eunuch, but in what way, not a hint 
 is given ; and that, this being done, they ascended togeth- 
 er again out of, or from, the water. Both went down, and 
 both came up, but one only was baptized. I cannot imagine 
 
 * I have been lold ihat this is not correct, inasmuch as Doddridge renders 
 the preposition as Dr. Campbell does, out of— noi as Mr. Ewinnr does, from. 
 But ihe objection is that of superficial readers. Mr. Cox's affirmation is, 
 that Vossius. V enema, and Doddridge imagined the words — hot die prepo- 
 sition by itself, hut the whole phrase — to "havi; a mkaning'' different 
 from the interpretation of Mr. Ewing, and conformable to dial ot Dr Camp- 
 bell. — Now ii is of the meaning, accordingly, that 1 speak, in denying the 
 accuracy of the statement The mere verbal rendering ol the preposition 
 is nothing. Dr. Campbell's translation is a baptist < ne, evidently repre- 
 senting the phrase as signifying emerging fiim under the water, — and it is 
 astonishing that he or any critic should have pvpt so understood it— Dr. 
 Doddridge's translation, is as lar as Mr. Ewing's from being in harmony 
 with this. The only diffierei.ee is, that Mr. Ewi.ig's does not directly con- 
 vey the idea— (though neither does it exclude it) of ih<- person baptized 
 Laving been standing ta tlie water when the rite was administered, which 
 Dr. Doddridge's does. 
 
130 SECTION III. 
 
 that our baptist friends should not perceive, how entirely 
 the plain statement of the historian, in this passage, sets 
 aside the whole of their argument derived from ihe modes 
 of expression employed — going flown into and coming up 
 out of, the water ; the one being so clearly previous, and 
 the other subsequent, to the act of baptizing. — I partake 
 with Mr. Ewiug in his astonishment that any man should 
 ever have thought otherwise: — and 1 think I may add, 
 that a baptist should ever have thought otherwise is 
 "passing strange." I have been accustomed to understand 
 that our friends consider the subject or recipient of the 
 ordinance as passive, — not going down under the water, 
 and coming up out of it, himself, but being laid under it, 
 and raised out of it, by another. But the **«&> and the 
 *vt& express actions of the baptized person himself, and 
 are quite distinct from his being baptized. 
 
 I have dwelt a great deal longer on the subject of the 
 mode of baptism than was my original intention. The 
 remarks made are intended to show, from the plain state- 
 ments of the New Testament itself, that baptism was 
 performed by sprinkling or pouring, and that there is no 
 necessity for any learned appeal to other authorities. This 
 appeal has been made by psedobaptists, and made, in my 
 judgment, with success. They do not deny, that the 
 verbs @x7rrm and fi*7rnfa signify to dip or immerse ; but they 
 do deny, that this is their only signification, and that it is 
 their signification when they are used by the sacred wri- 
 ters. In insisting that immersion is the sole signification 
 of the verbs, baptists appear to me to discover a lamenta- 
 ble deficiency of critical candor ; to be much more inge- 
 nious than ingenuous ; and sometimes, without perceiving 
 it, to employ a sophistry, of which the conclusions, even 
 if they were sound, are nothing to their purpose. — For 
 example: Mr. Cox is somewhat testy with Mr. Ewing for 
 referring to the use of 0xm» in application to Nebuchad- 
 nezzar, Dan. iv. 33. " His body was wet (or wetted) 
 " with the dew of heaven." This is at least the twentieth 
 time, Mr. Cox alleges, that this instance has been produc- 
 ed in the controversy. But the question is, not how often 
 it has been produced, but how often it has been refuted. 
 If it has not been fairly met and set aside, it is not fre« 
 
SECTION nr. 131 
 
 quency of repetition that will deprive it of its force. 
 There is no term of prescription that changes truth into 
 falsehood : or in the course of which an argument becomes 
 weak, that once had strength. It is not repetition for 
 twenty times, nor lor twenty times twenty, that can ever im- 
 pair it. On the contrary, the longer it stands unrepelled, it 
 gets stronger and stronger. — Let us see, then, what Mr. 
 Cox makes of this case. He thinks the ordinary reply sat- 
 isfactory, " That a body exposed to eastern dews would be 
 as wet as if plunged in water :" but considering the passage 
 as " meriting a little more detailed explanation," he goes 
 on to observe : — " The verb here is used in the passive 
 voice, in the second aorist, and the indicative mood, imply- 
 ing consequently that the action was past and indefinite as 
 to time. It does not imply the manner in which the effect 
 was produced, but the effect itself; not the mode by which 
 the body of the king was wetted, but its condition, as re- 
 sulting from exposure to the dews of heaven. Suppose, 
 by way of illustration, we select another word, and put 
 it into the same voice and tense ; as, tfa*fa urn aw ; 'he 
 was hurt by you.' It is obvious, that this representation 
 might refer to an injury done long ago, and would 
 predicate nothing of the manner in which it was inflict- 
 ed : it simply expresses the fact and the condition of in- 
 jury which resulted."* — Now what is the amount of all 
 this? Twenty times twenty have we poor psedobaptists 
 been told, that there is no room for reasoning, that the 
 idea of immersion is in the very words Qu.7rTu> and fiim^u- 
 that immersion baptism is consequently a tautology, and 
 baptism by pouring a contradiction. And yet here, on 
 Mr. Cox's own showing, is an instance, in which B-ivru 
 "predicates nothing of the manner." It does not denote 
 immersion: it does not denote being wet as the effect of 
 immersion! — Suppose we admit that it signifies the state 
 of being wet: still it cannot be denied, that it signifies 
 this state, as the result, not of plunging, but of the very 
 gentlest of possible affusions. Ejijttu, is used, and expres- 
 ses nothing of immersion — " not the mode," — to use Mr. 
 Cox's own words, — " by which the body of the king was 
 wetted !" I have only to ask Mr. Cox, whether he would 
 
 * Pages 40, 41. 
 
132 SECTION III. 
 
 consider a person duly baptized, if water were were pour- 
 ed upon him till lie were, thoroughly wetted. If he would 
 then what would become of the favorite idea of the em- 
 blematic representation, in baptism, of a burial and res- 
 urrection ? 
 
 Considering, then, as I have repeatedly mentioned, the 
 emblematic import of baptism, to be derived from the 
 cleansing or purifying nature of the element employed, 
 not from the mode of its application, although affusion 
 appears to have the decided countenance of the New 
 Testament scriptures ; I proceed to illustrate my first po- 
 sition, — that baptism, and that baptism administered to 
 infants, is a standing visible memorial, in the church, 
 OF important truths. 
 
 Baptism itself, whether administered to infants or to 
 adults, is a permanent remembrancer of guilt and pollu- 
 tion, — of the consequent necessity of cleansing from both, 
 — and of the means provided for such cleansing, the blood 
 and Spirit of Christ. But, on these general views of the 
 import of the ordinance, it is not needful for me to dwell. 
 There are additional truths brought to mind, by the ad- 
 ministration of the ordinance to children, which it is more 
 to my present purpose to notice. 
 
 1. Infant baptism contains a constant memorial of 
 original sin. — of the corruption of our nature being not 
 merely contracted but inherent. Every time it is admin- 
 istered to an infant, it emblematically reminds all who 
 witness it, of the truth expressed by the Psalmist, "Be- 
 hold I was shapen in iniquity, and in sin did my mother 
 conceive me." And this doctrine of original corruption, 
 of which infant baptism is a standing practical recogni- 
 tion, is one of fundamental importance ; one, I am satis- 
 fied, to inadequate Conceptions and impressions of which 
 may be traced all the principal perversions of the gospel. 
 In proportion to its relative importance in the system of 
 Divine truth, is it of consequence that it should not be al- 
 lowed to slip out of mind. The baptism of every child 
 brings it to view, and impresses it. If in any case it 
 should be otherwise, the fault is not in the ordinance, but 
 in the power of custom, and in the stupidity and careless- 
 
SECTION III. 133 
 
 ness of spectators, of parents, of ministers. It teaches, 
 very simply, but very significantly, that, even from the 
 womb, children are the subjects of pollution ; that they 
 stand in need of a participation in the pardon of the orig- 
 inal apostasy, and of purification from the inherent de- 
 pravity of their nature, in order to their entering heaven, 
 and seeing God. — The impression of such truths is of the 
 very highest importance, especially to parents, in fixing 
 the principles on which their children are to be trained 
 and instructed, and in directing their practical application. 
 Let not an institution, then, which serves to sustain the 
 remembrance and impression of such truths, be repre- 
 sented as destitute of use. 
 
 That infant baptism contains a practical testimony, 
 from the Divine author of the institution, to the necessity 
 of regeneration, is a very different thing from its being 
 regeneration itself, or invariably accompanied by it in its 
 infant subject. The doctrine of baptismal regeneration 
 is, in many respects, as pernicious in its tendencies, as it is 
 absurd on principles of reason, and destitute of foundation 
 in scripture. It is an abuse, for which, as for many oth- 
 ers, the ordinance itself is not responsible. The only 
 wonder is, that any man of common sense should ever 
 have maintained it. 
 
 It is a doctrine of the church of Rome, and it harmo- 
 nizes well with the innumerable absurdities of that anti- 
 christian communion. It is contained also in the articles 
 and baptismal service of the church of England, consti- 
 tuting one of the remnants of popery, of which there are 
 too many in the constitution and ceremonies of our Epis- 
 copalean Establishment. I am aware, indeed, that, on 
 the present subject, the sense in which the terms employed 
 are to be understood has been the ground of very vehe- 
 ment controversy ; but their simple and prima facie mean- 
 ing i*, without question, favorable to this foolish and 
 mischievous tenet. — But when Mr. Birt represents " the 
 majority of predobaptists in general as believing in bap- 
 tism! regeneration, '' he writes, to say the least of it un- 
 guardedly. He ought to have explained, that, in making 
 this statement he included papists ; of whom, I am well 
 11 
 
134 SECTION III. 
 
 persuaded, not one in a hundred of his readers would ever 
 think, in a discussion of the psedobaptist controversy.* 
 
 2. Whilst infant baptism reminds us of the humbling 
 doctrine of original depravity, it brings before our minds 
 a truth of a different kind, — eminently cheering and en- 
 couraging, — namely, that little children are not incapable 
 of being subjects of the spiritual kingdom of Jesus Christ, 
 and participating in its blessings. — I need not set about 
 proving this ; because their capability is granted by bap- 
 tists themselves : — they are admitted to have even been 
 pronounced by Christ visible subjects of his kingdom. 
 On that beautiful passage, Mark x. 13 — 16. Mr. Maclean 
 says, " Here are children brought to Christ, declared of 
 his kingdom, and blessed, and thus becoming visible sub- 
 jects; yet we read nothing of their baptism." With the 
 latter clause we have at present no concern. Far be it from 
 us to deny, that infants may be acknowledged to be of 
 the kingdom of God, without baptizing them.'' Far be it 
 from us to pass any such sentence of exclusion against 
 the children of our baptist brethren, however much we 
 may think their parents mistaken. We do not consider 
 the outward rite as thus essential to salvation. But this 
 we say, that if infants are capable subjects of the king- 
 dom, and are pronounced such by the Lord himself, there 
 is surely no contradiction or incongruity in infant baptism; 
 that is, in the application of the sign to those who are 
 admitted to be capable of the thing signified. There is 
 certainly nothing in this that can warrant the scorn and 
 ridicule with which it has been assailed. To admit an 
 infant to be a " visible subject" of the spiritual kingdom, 
 and to laugh at the application to such an infant of the 
 rite which signifies the peculiar blessings of that kingdom, 
 and talk of it as a " solemn farce," does not seem to indi- 
 cate great consistency of thought or feeling. 
 
 Let it not be said, the ground of ridicule is, that infants 
 are incapable of that faith, which the New Testament 
 affirms to be necessary to baptism, and of which baptism 
 is the profession. It has often been remarked, and it has 
 
 * On this point, the reader is again referred to my Reply to the Letter 
 of Mr. Birt of Manchester — pages 14—17. 
 
SECTION III. 135 
 
 never been satisfactorily answered, that this mode of rea- 
 soning if valid for the exclusion of infants from baptism, 
 roust be equally valid for their exclusion from salvation. 
 If it be a correct syllogism — Believing is necessary to 
 baptism; infants are incapable of believing: therefore, 
 no infants ought to be baptized ; — then the following must 
 be correct too — Believing is necessary to salvation : infants 
 are incapable of believing : therefore infants cannot be 
 saved. — Mr. Cox and our baptist friends may be angry at 
 the twentieth repetition of this too. But it is simply im- 
 possible to get rid of the second conclusion, if the first 
 be sound. When it is said, " lie that bclieoeth and is bap- 
 tized shall be saved : he that believeth not shall be con- 
 demned ;" it is very manifest, from the nature of the 
 thina, and from the charge in the preceding verse, " Go, 
 preach the gospel to every creature," — that the language 
 refers to all of mankind in general to whom the gospel 
 tould be preached ; that is, to adults, who were capable 
 of heating and understanding what was said. — It is one 
 of those cases, in which baptists themselves are constrain- 
 ed to have recourse to the ground of general language. 
 They apply this principle to that part of the verse that 
 connects salvation with faith, because, if they took this 
 strictly and universally, it would inevitably exclude in- 
 fants from being saved. Have we not reason, then, to 
 complain of want of candor, when they will not allow the 
 application of the same principle of interpretation to that 
 clause which connects baptism with faith ? The connec- 
 tion of both with faith is stated in the same sentence, in 
 the same unqualified terms; and the same principle of 
 explanation which warrants or condemns the one infer- 
 ence, must equally warrant or condemn the other. 
 
 I am strongly inclined to agree with those, who regard 
 the children of believers in the light of disciples. If 
 their parents do their duty, they surely are such. It is 
 quite impossible for us to say, how soon the Holy Spirit 
 may begin his secret operations in the soul of a child, un- 
 der spiritual training, and the subject of believing prayer. 
 And until the principles which are instilled into the 
 child's mind by early tuition, recommended by a godly 
 example, and impressed by affectionate and faithful ad- 
 
136 SECTION III. 
 
 monition, are either avowedly rejected, or are shown to 
 be professed without influence on the heart and life, — 
 how can we be entitled to say, that they are not disciples? 
 They are learners; and, as far as we can judge, lambs of 
 the flock of the "good shepherd." Indications of the 
 contrary may present themselves, sometimes earlier, and 
 sometimes later : but in forming our estimate, we must 
 make allowances for the peculiarities of childhood; and 
 not foolishly look for the same manifestation of the power 
 of the truth, in a babe, which we expect in a full-grown 
 man. 
 
 On the question, Are the baptized children of believers 
 church members 1 — various opinions have been entertain- 
 ed. I shall state, with diffidence, my own. 
 
 In the first place : — Baptism, it seems evident from the 
 New Testament, is not to be regarded as a social or church 
 ordinance. It did not, when administered to adults, in- 
 troduce the persons baptized to connection with any par- 
 ticular church, or society of Christians. They were sim- 
 ply baptized into the faith of Christ, and the general fel- 
 lowship of the gospel. We have one clear and decisive 
 exemplification of this, in the case of the eunuch of Ethi- 
 opia. He was baptized by Philip in the desert, when on 
 a journey, where there was, of course, no church ; nor 
 was there any, where the eunuch was going. His bap- 
 tism, therefore, merely recognized him as a professed dis- 
 ciple of Jesus, without constituting him a member of any 
 particular Christian church. And so it was with others. 
 The converts, when baptized, "joined themselves, " 
 wherever they had an opportunity, "to the disciples;" 
 but their baptism was administered to them, simply on a 
 profession of their faith ; it was previous to such union, 
 and formed no part of the services of the church, with 
 which they might subsequently unite. 
 
 Secondly : This being the case, I am disposed to re- 
 gard the children of believers as disciples, in a situation 
 somewhat analogous to the one described. They have 
 been baptized ; they have become the subjects of spiritual 
 instruction, — of " the nurture and admonition of the 
 Lord ;" and they are in training for the full fellowship of 
 the people of God, in all the ordinances of his house. — If, 
 
SECTION III. 137 
 
 on growing up, they do not hold the truth, in the know- 
 ledge of which they have been instructed, and on the 
 principles of which they have been " nurtured and ad- 
 monished ;" — they must be treated accordingly; — they 
 cannot be admitted to the communion of the church. If, 
 on the contrary, they " abide in the truth," " holding fast 
 the faithful word as they have been taught," then they are 
 at liberty to unite in fellowship, wherever their judgment 
 and conscience, on examination of the word of God, may 
 direct them. — I do not go so far as to speak of their be- 
 ing separated from the church at any particular age, by a 
 formal sentence of exclusion, when they do not give evi- 
 dence of the reception and influence of the gospel : for 
 the reason just assigned, that their baptism has not consti- 
 tuted them properly members of a particular society, but 
 only disciples of Christ, under training for the duties and 
 enjoyments of his kingdom. — I feel confirmed in this view 
 of the case, by the consideration, that, when the apostle 
 Paul, in any of his epistles, addresses himself to the chil- 
 dren of the believers, — whilst by so doing he recognizes 
 them as sustaining a relation to the Christian community, 
 he yet does not commit the instruction and training of 
 them to the church, or to the pastors of the church, but 
 enjoins it upon the parents, as a matter as yet of private 
 and domestic concern.* Eph. vi. 1 — 4. 
 
 3. Before proceeding to the duties which this ordinance 
 brings to mind, and enforces, I must notice one other 
 highly important doctrine, — which it is beautifully cal- 
 culated to impress. — When our blessed Redeemer took 
 the little children in his arms and said, " Of such is the 
 kingdom of heaven," — he added solemnly to his disci- 
 ples, " Verily I say unto you, whosoever shall not receive 
 the kingdom of God as a little child, he shall not enter 
 therein." — When an infant receives the blessings of the 
 kingdom, it is gratuitously ; not as the reward of works 
 of righteousness ; not in the exercise of high-minded self- 
 
 *J was not aware, when I was led, by my own reflection, to adopt the 
 view which I have given in the text of the church-membership of the chil- 
 dren of believers, that it was in perfect coincidence with that given by the 
 late Dr. Dwight, in the 157th Sermon of his Thkoi.ogy. 1 leave the read- 
 er lo consult it for himself. I had not looked into the work, on this sub- 
 ject, till after my own manuscript was ready for the press. 
 
 *1X 
 
138 SECTION III. 
 
 confidence. So must it be with you, says the Saviour, the 
 Lord of the kingdom. You must be "justified freely by 
 the grace of God ," you must own yourselves undeserv- 
 ing, and receive all as a gift ; whatever you have done, 
 you must come for the blessings of my kingdom, as if 
 you had done nothing, and receive them as little children. 
 This was levelled at the spiritual pride and self-righteous- 
 ness of the Pharisees, against which he, on other occa- 
 sions also, warns his disciples. — The man who receives 
 the kingdom, must receive it on the same terms as the 
 child; — not for a life of virtue, — not for his faith, his re- 
 pentance, his obedience, as if these could merit any thing 
 from God. He must, as to his title to its blessings, be 
 divested of every thing. — Now this is one of the essential 
 articles of gospel truth ; one of the immutable laws of the 
 kingdom ; one of the indispensable characters of its genu- 
 ine subjects. And this truth is constantly exhibited, 
 and affectingly impressed, in infant baptism. Every time 
 the ordinance is administered to a child, all who witness 
 it may be considered as having the words of Christ sym- 
 bolically repeated in their hearing — " Verily I say unto 
 you, whosoever shall not receive the kingdom of heaven 
 as a little child, he shall not enter therein." It is not 
 the fault of the ordinance, but of its administrator and 
 witnesses, if such impressions are not made. 
 
 These are lessons for all, — lessons of essential conse- 
 quence ; and the wisdom of God has not only revealed 
 and oft repeated them in his word, but has also embodied 
 them in emblematic institutions, which serve as visible 
 memorials of them in his church, to all generations. 
 Such are both baptism and the Lord's supper. And the 
 former, when, according to God's appointment, adminis- 
 tered to infants, contains a constantly renewed intimation 
 of the delightful truth, that whilst they are the subjects of 
 guilt, and pollution, and curse, in consequence of the 
 original apostasy, they are, at the same time, through Je- 
 sus Christ, partakers of the blessings of the kingdom of 
 mercy. 
 
 II. Having considered infant baptism as a memorial 
 of fundamental truths, let me now proceed to view it as a 
 remembrancer of important duties, and an encouragement 
 to their performance. 
 
SECTION III. 139 
 
 I shall, on this part of my subject, offer a few brief 
 remarks on the duties of parents, of children, and of 
 churches. 
 
 1. The ordinance is inseparably connected, and all 
 Christian parents ought so to regard it, with the incum- 
 bent duty of " bringing up their children in the nur- 
 ture and admonition of the Lord." If this connection is 
 lost sight of, — if it is not contemplated at the time, and is 
 practically disregarded afterwards, the ordinance becomes 
 nothing better than a useless ceremony, and an idle and 
 profane mockery of its Divine author. — Much has been 
 said, and said sometimes very loosely, by psedobaptists, of 
 the rights and privileges of infants, and the impropriety 
 of abridging their privileges, and abstracting their rights, 
 in refusing them baptism. But I would have it seriously 
 considered, that the right and the privilege are not worth 
 the contending for, unless the ordinance be connected 
 with parental instruction, discipline and prayer. It is 
 evident, that the pouring of a little water on an infant's 
 face, can, in itself, do it no good ; and as little would the 
 immersion of its whole body. The mere external recog- 
 nition of its connection with the Christian community, 
 can be of no benefit, except as associated with subsequent 
 training, for the performance of the duties, and the en- 
 joyment of the blessings of that community. The profit 
 to the child must be through the medium of the parent : 
 and it has long appeared to me, that it is to the parent, 
 rather than to the child, that infant baptism is, in 
 the first instance, to be reckoned a privilege. It is an 
 ordinance, in which there is brought before the minds of 
 pious parents, a pleasing and animating recognition of 
 the covenant promises of God to them and to their off- 
 spring, which form so great an encouragement to them in 
 the discharge of duty, and in looking, by prayer, for the 
 divine blessing upon the objects of their tender love. 
 That multitudes who have their children baptized never 
 think of the ordinance in 'any such such light, and are 
 quite regardless of the obligations which, I will not say it 
 imposes, but which it implies, and brings to mind, — is a 
 melancholy truth. And I would earnestly admonish those 
 
140 SECTION III. 
 
 parents, of the guilt they are contracting, by their solemn 
 mockery of heaven, in the careless profanation of a Di- 
 vine institution. The abuse is awfully extensive ; and it 
 is one of the evils which we owe, not entirely indeed, but 
 in a very great degree, to the nationalizing of Christianity 
 by its incorporation with our civil polity, and the conse- 
 quent universality of its profession. The abuse has af- 
 forded a great advantage to the adversaries of infant bap- 
 tism ; but there is both weakness and unfairness in hav- 
 ing recourse to it. It shows a mind incapable of distin- 
 guishing between the precepts of God and the perversions 
 of them by men. The Lord's supper, from the same 
 cause, has been as extensively perverted and abused as 
 infant baptism. But, while we regret and mourn the 
 prostitution of any ordinance of God, this can never be a 
 valid reason for our neglecting its legitimate and scrip- 
 tural use. I am fully persuaded of the truth of the re- 
 mark, that if infant baptism had not been so much abus- 
 ed, it would not have been so much opposed. 
 
 Let it not be said, that parents may have a sufficiently 
 strong feeling of their duty to their children, and may 
 fulfil that duty equally well with others, although they do 
 not see the scripture authority for their baptism. I do 
 not deny, that a baptist may be exemplary in the Chris- 
 tian tuition of his family, and that many a paedobaptist 
 may be very much the contrary. But this is not the 
 question. I can conceive of a Christian, from certain 
 conscientious but unscriptural and groundless scruples, 
 living for successive years in the neglect of the ordinance 
 of the Lord's supper, and yet, to all appearance, influ- 
 enced as much as others, in his general character, by the 
 habitual remembrance of his Redeemer. We should nev- 
 re infer from such a case, that the ordinance was useless. 
 Neither ought we in the other. If God has given promi- 
 ses to his people and their seed, promises fitted to stimu- 
 late believing parents to the fulfilment of their sacred 
 trust, and has instituted an ordinance in which these 
 promises are recognized and pledged to them, it does not 
 become us to neglect the gracious and pleasing rite, on 
 the ground that we can keep the promises sufficiently 
 well in mind without it. It is kind in that God who 
 
SECTION III. 141 
 
 "knoweth our frame, ' ; not only to give us his word, but 
 to embody, as it were, that word to our senses, to confirm 
 it to our faith, and to impress it upon our memories and 
 hearts, by significant outward institutions. " Q,uam enim 
 suave piis animis," says Calvin very beautifully, " non 
 verbo tantum, sed oculari etiam spectnculo. certiores 
 fieri, tantum se gratios apud patrem ccelestem obtinere, ut 
 posteritas sua illi curae sit." " How pleasing to the minds 
 of the godly, not merely to have a verbal assurance, but to 
 have it certified to them, by visible signs, that the grace 
 of their heavenly Father is so great, as to extend, not to 
 themselves only, but to their offspring !" — If Christian pa- 
 rents do not feel, as they ought, the practical encourage- 
 ment to duty which the ordinance, as a recognition of 
 Divine promise, presents, and do not act accordingly, 
 (and all of us must be sensible of criminal deficiency) — 
 the fault lies, not with the institution, or with its author, 
 but with their own want of taith, and of right disposition. 
 We consider baptism, as an ordinance for believers and 
 their children. I am aware, indeed, that I do not express 
 the sentiment of oil paedobaptists, when I say, that the 
 administration of it to children ought to be confined to 
 those of believers only ; meaning of course, by the desig- 
 nation, such as we have reason, at the time, to acknow- 
 ledge as believers. In regard to adults, there is an obvi- 
 ous difference between the ground of title to the reception 
 of baptism, and the ground of warrant for its administra- 
 tion. The former is sincere and genuine faith ; the lat- 
 ter is the profession of faith, uncontradicted by any cir- 
 cumstance which deprives it of credibility. When Philip 
 had "preached Jesus" to the eunuch of Ethiopia, and the 
 latter said, " What doth hinder me to be baptized ?" the 
 reply expressed, in very simple and explicit terms, the 
 ground of right to the ordinance — "If thou believest with 
 all thy heart" (that is, if thou really and in earnest be- 
 lievest) " thou mayest." — But it was not according to any 
 secret " discernment of spirits," that baptism was admin- 
 istered ; and mistakes might be made respecting the 
 genuineness of the profession. When the same Philip, 
 in the city of Samaria, " preached the things concerning 
 the kingdom o( God, and the name of Jesus Christ," Simon 
 
142 
 
 SECTION III. 
 
 Magus was amongst those who professed to receive his 
 testimony : and on this profession he was baptized. — ■ 
 Here, then, appears the distinction, between the right to 
 baptism, and the warrant for its administration. Simon 
 Magus had not the same right to baptism as the Ethiopian 
 eunuch; for, instead of" believing with all his heart," it 
 appeared afterwards that he was still " in the gall of bit- 
 terness and the bond of iniquity :" but, in both cases, 
 Philip was equally warrantable in administering the or- 
 dinance; at least, we have no ground to presume, that 
 there were any circumstances in Simon's profession, 
 which ought to have destroyed its credit, and which would 
 have justified Philip in refusing to baptize him. 
 
 I am not aware, from any facts or principles in the 
 New Testament, of any profession of faith being suffi- 
 cient for admission to baptism, that is not sufficient for 
 admission to the Lord's supper, and the full fellowship of 
 the church of Christ. Baptism was not administered to 
 aduJts on a mere declaration of willingness to be instruc- 
 ted, but on a profession of faith in the testimony deliver- 
 ed. Although the statements of the history are very 
 brief, — so brief, as occasionally to produce oversights and 
 hasty conclusions, — I do not recollect any exception to 
 this representation. When the profession of faith was 
 made, upon hearing the gospel, and witnessing its accom- 
 panying evidence, it was, in the judgment of charity,, 
 supposed to be sincere, — to be " with all the heart :" nor 
 am I aware of the existence, in apostolic times, of any 
 such anamolous descriptions of persons, as those who 
 were baptized, but were not admitted to church-fellow- 
 ship. The three thousand who, on the day of Pentecost,. 
 " gladly received Peter's word, were baptized ; and the 
 same day" they were " added to the church." — " John's 
 baptism" may be considered as debatable ground, and, 
 therefore, I shall not enter upon it ; but I ask for an in- 
 stance, subsequently to the commencement of apostolic 
 preaching, and the first formation of a church, of a per- 
 son making a profession of faith which was sufficient for 
 his admission to baptism, and yet not sufficient for his re- 
 ception to other Christian ordinances. I know of none. 
 The genuineness of the profession, made at baptism, was 
 
SECTION III. 143 
 
 tried in the church, not in an intervening period between 
 baptism and admission to the church. — Now the same 
 principles which the New Testament teaches me to apply 
 to the baptism of adults, it of course prescribes for the 
 baptism of their children. As I should not conceive my- 
 self warranted to baptize an adult, on any profession of 
 faith which would not warrant my receiving him to the 
 table of the Lord ; — neither do I consider it right and 
 scriptural, to baptize the child of any man, on a profes- 
 sion that would not justify his admission into the church. 
 I can think of no principle, which, as a rule of practice, 
 is definite and intelligible, but this. I am well auare of 
 the different sentiments entertained, and the different 
 course pursued, by many (I might, I fear, say, by most) 
 of my psedobaptist brethren in the south, 1 cannot but 
 think them very far in the wrong: — and I have never 
 been able to find any thing like fixed and precise ground 
 amongst them, on this subject. Some place the warrant 
 for baptizing, in a willingness to be instructed ; some, in 
 a general profession of Christianity, and of faith in the 
 Bible; others, in the attendance of the party applying for 
 it at church, and bringing his family with him, so as to 
 put them in the way of good ; while others still, I believe, 
 go so far as to concur with the established church of 
 England, and administer it to all who apply, considering 
 it as the privilege of the child, without regard to the pro- 
 fession and character of the parent at all. Now, in all 
 this, there is an undefined and unsettled laxity, which 
 appears to me highly pernicious in its practical conse- 
 quences ; and which, moreover, tends to weaken, and 
 even, if followed fairly out, to overthrow, the whole of the 
 argument for infant baptism that is founded on the cove- 
 nant relation, so distinctly recognized in scripture, be- 
 tween parent and child. — Let me not be misunderstood. 
 1 do not say that I would not baptize the child of any 
 man, who is not a member of a church, or who floes not 
 immediately join one. What I *ay is, that I would not 
 baptize, where I could not conscientiously receive to 
 communion on the same profession of faith. — f h;>ve be- 
 fore noticed the extent to which the lax administration 
 and abuse of the ordinance prevails : — and I should re- 
 
144 SECTION III. 
 
 joice to see my dissenting brethren setting their counte* 
 nance and their practice decidedly against it. 
 
 The chief ground on which a looser principle than the 
 one I have assumed, has been usually vindicated by our 
 southern brethren, has been derived from the practice of 
 the Jewish Church in regard to circumcision. All chil- 
 dren that were Jews by birth, it is alleged, were indiscrim- 
 inately admitted to the prescribed ordinance, their parents 
 professing faith in the God of Abraham, and no evidence 
 being required at the time of the genuineness of that 
 profession: and we should proceed on a similar principle 
 in regard to baptism. — The legitimacy of this conclusion, 
 however, appears to me to be much more than question- 
 able. Those who act upon it would do well to consider, 
 how far, if fairly carried out, it will lead them. All the 
 parents, who had their children circumcised, were them- 
 selves admitted to the passover, and other institutions of 
 the Jewish church. If, therefore, the alleged parallelism 
 in the one case justifies the admission of children to bap- 
 tism to the same extent to which they were admitted to 
 circumcision, it must equally justify the admission of their 
 parents to the Lord's Supper, and all the institutions of 
 Christian fellowship. I do not see how this inference can 
 be evaded. It will not do to say, that there is not the 
 same established parallelism between the Passover and the 
 Lord's supper, as there is between circumcision and bap- 
 tism. For supposing this to be true, my argument does 
 not rest on any such parallelism. It would be the same, 
 though there were no resemblance at all between the two 
 former institutions. It rests simply on the fact of the ad- 
 mission to the ordinances, whatever they might b^, which 
 formed the outward distinction of the Jews, as the pro- 
 fessors of faith in the God of Abraham, and of such 
 Gentile proselytes as adopted that faith — the admission to 
 these ordinances of all parents whose children were ad- 
 mitted to the initiatory rite of circumcision. Let an in- 
 stance be pointed out of a parent, whose child was admitted 
 to circumcision, while he himself was not to all the ordi- 
 nances of the Jewish church. If no such instance can 
 be produced, let the parallelism be fairly followed on both 
 sides. Admit to the ordinances for adults all the parent* 
 
SECTION III. 145 
 
 whose infant offspring yon admit to the ordinance for 
 children. — This is precisely what I contend for. It was 
 what was actually done then: it is what; in my judgment, 
 ought to he done now. — Tne great and essential difference 
 lies in this, — that the New Testament state of the church 
 is uniformly represented, both by prophetic intimations, 
 and by apostolic instructions, as iireuded of G >d to be a 
 state of greater purity and spirituality of communion than 
 had previously existed. The Jewish church was national. 
 When the new dispensation was introduced, it was no 
 longer to be so. lis constitution was to be remodelled. 
 The wicked were to be shaken out of it. It was to be 
 revived and purified. It was not to consist of nations, 
 but of individuals of all nations, separated from the world 
 by the grace of God. It is evident from the addresses of 
 the different inspired Epistles," what manner of persons" 
 they were who ought to have been received and retained 
 as members of churches, associates in the worship, and 
 sharers of the privileges, of the new state of things. 
 They are " beloved of God, called stints," Rom. i. 7. 
 " sanctified in Christ Jesus,'' I Cor. i. 2. "saints and 
 faithlnl in Christ Jesus," Eph. i. I. such as had " obtain- 
 ed like precious laith with the apostles," 2 Pet. i. I, &c. 
 That persons ot a different description did find their way 
 into the communion of the saints, on a false profession of 
 the f ith, is ton true. But then the churches are bl fined, 
 and severely reprimanded, for retaining such persons in 
 their fellowship, alter they had, by their conduct, discov- 
 ered their true character. See particularly the Epistles 
 to the Corinthians, and those in the Book of Revel ition 
 to t lie seven churches of the lesser Asia. — My argument, 
 therefore, which is a very simple, and, as it appears to me, 
 a very conclusive one, stands thus. In the national church 
 of Israel, all pare its whose children are circu incised, 
 were themselves admitted to the Passover and lire other 
 ordinances of that communion. This was accordant with 
 the constitution of the church at that time. The same 
 principle applies in the Church of Chris*. All p rents, 
 whose children are admitted to baptism, should themselves 
 be admissible to the Lord's supper, and the other social 
 ordinances of its communion. But, whi.e the principle 
 12 
 
146 SECTION III. 
 
 in both cases is the same, there is, in the latter of the 
 two cases, a restriction in the application of it, corres- 
 ponding to the superior purity of New Testament fellow- 
 ship. We are not authorized to receive into communion 
 any individuals, respecting whom we have not reason to 
 believe that " Christ has received them ;" and if, after 
 their reception, we discover that we have been mistaken 
 in our judgment of their profession, we are bound to sep- 
 arate them from the church. And of those whom we are 
 not warranted, by the laws of Christ, to receive, and to 
 retain in communion, we are not, in my opinion warranted 
 to baptize the children. The procedure of those who act 
 otherwise appears to me to be consistent neither with 
 Jewish nor with Christian principles. If we are to pro- 
 ceed at all according to the former, let us give them their 
 full extent of application, and have national churches at 
 once. But if we cannot admit of these, in a " kingdom 
 which is not of this world," let us not apply the old prin- 
 ciples of communion, in a partial and inconsistent way, to 
 the New Testament church. — All national establishments, 
 under the Christian dispensation, instead of deriving any 
 scriptural authority from the Constitution of the Jewish 
 church, are utterly subversive of the declared will of God, 
 in regard to the purer and more select and spiritual com- 
 munion of New Testament times. And I cannot but 
 regret, when any of my dissenting brethren adopt and 
 act upon principles that have the same unhappy ten- 
 dency. 
 
 One evil resulting from that prevailing abuse in the ad- 
 ministration of infant baptism, to which I have repeatedly 
 alluded, is, its promoting the thoughtlessness of parents, 
 as to the connection between the ordinance and their duty. 
 — " I know him," said the God of Abraham, "that he 
 will command his children and his household after him, 
 and they shall keep the way of the Lord, to do justice and 
 judgment: that the Lord may bung upon Abraham that 
 which he hath spoken of him." — Gen. xviii. 19. — I do 
 not enter here into the illustration of parental duties, and 
 of the manner in which they ought to be fulfilled. But 
 I press upon Christian parents the example of the father 
 of the faithful, as an instance in which the discharge of 
 
SECTION III. 147 
 
 duty is connected with the fulfilment of promise. All 
 the promises of God, indeed, are intended to operate, not 
 as inducements to indolence, but as stimulants to activity. 
 The assurance, that " it is God who worketh in us both 
 to will and to do, of his good pleasure," is not to encour- 
 age us to expect spiritual progress without the use of 
 means : but to excite us to " work out our own salvation," 
 in the diligent employment of these means, " with fear 
 and trembling." — Abraham's bringing up his family in 
 the fear of the Lord is connected, in the above quoted 
 passage, with the Lord's " bringing upon him that which 
 he had spoken of him." But how could it contribute to 
 this? On the promise of a fleshly seed, I have before 
 said, it could have no conceivable influence. But on that 
 of a spiritual seed, " a seed to serve the Lord," its influ- 
 ence is immediate and apparent. The means are suited 
 to the end, — the cause to the effect. Jehovah begins the 
 fulfilment of his promise, to make him the spiritual " fath- 
 er of many nations," and " to be a God to him and his 
 seed after him," by Abraham's own instrumentality, in 
 thejeligious training of his family ; and in this way " race 
 unto race" was made to " praise him" and "one genera- 
 tion to tell of his wonderful works to another :" — lor "he 
 established a testimony in Jacob, and appointed a law in 
 Israel, which he commanded our fathers that they should 
 make them known unto their children, that the generation 
 to come might know them, and the children which should 
 be born, who should arise and declare them unto their 
 children , that they might set their hope in God, and not 
 forget the works of the Lord, but keep his command- 
 ments." — It is still by the agency of parents, that God 
 fulfils his word. It is while they " bring up their chil- 
 dren in the nurture and admonition of the Lord ;" that 
 he " pours out his Spirit upon their seed and his blessing 
 upon their offspring," so that ^-hey "grow up as among 
 the grass, and as willows by the water courses:" and if 
 we are looking for the blessing apart from the discharge 
 of the duty, we are not exercising commanded confidence, 
 but guilty of unwarranted ami irrational presumption. 
 
 Christian parents, — the charge intrusted to you is one, 
 the most momentous and interesting that can be imagined 
 t 
 
148 SECTION HI. 
 
 by the human mind. It is the charge of immortal souls. 
 Every child, when horn into the world, enters upon an 
 existence that is never to terminate, upon a short and pre- 
 carious lite on earth, which must he succeeded by eternal 
 blessedness, or eternal woe. How solemn the consider- 
 ation !— And with regard to your own children, to you is 
 committed the sacred trust, of imparting to them that 
 knowledge, which, through the blessing of God, shall 
 make them " wise unto salvation." These lights, lighted 
 for eternity, it is yours to feed with holy oil from the sanc- 
 tuary of God, that they may burn, with pure and lovely 
 radiance, before the throne above. — These never-dying 
 plants, it is yours to rear and to cherish, bringing down 
 upon them, by your prayers, the dews and rains of heav- 
 en, that so they may flourish and bear fruit f<«r ever, in 
 the paradise of God. — The language of the " Heavenly 
 Father" to every Christian parent, is that of Pharaoh's 
 daughter to the mother ot Moses, " Take this child, and 
 nurse it for me." O forget not the sacred obligation. 
 Let it be engraven on your hearts, "as with a pen of iron 
 and the point of a diamond." You love your children. 
 They are dear to you as the apple of your eye, — precious 
 as your own souls. What is there that you would not 
 part with, to secure their well-being? And are not their 
 eternal interests first in your thoughts, and first in your 
 desires for them ? If you feel as Christians, they are, — 
 they must be. Let them, then, be first in your prayers, 
 and first in your exertions. Seek to impress early on their 
 hearts a sense of the unspeakable importance of eternal 
 things. Teach them the knowledge and fear of the Lord, 
 when you sit in ihe house, and when you walk by the 
 way ; never with the repulsive austerity of a master, but 
 with all the engaging tenderness of parental love. Let 
 no prospect of temporal advantage induce you, to expose 
 their souls to unnecessary hazards, from the snares and 
 temptations of a deceitful world. Let no corporeal at- 
 tractions, and no mental accomplishments, however grat- 
 ifying they may lawfully be, appropriate that peculiar joy, 
 which, in the hearts of godly parents, must ever be re- 
 served for "seeing their children walking in truth." — 
 Set your hearts, with intense and unquenchable desire, 
 
SECTION III. 149 
 
 on the salvation of your offspring. Ask it of God with 
 the fervor and importunity of faith. Show the sincerity 
 of your prayers, by unwearied attention to the use of ne- 
 cessary means : — and I doubt not, you will have the bless- 
 edness of seeing, amongst your offspring, a seed arise to 
 serve the Lord. 
 
 If in any case there should be an apparent failure of 
 the blessing, there is a call to much searching of heart, 
 and close investigation of the whole process of training. 
 It is surely safer, to question our own fidelity to duty, than 
 God's fidelity to promise. Are you sure, that the salva- 
 tion of your children has engaged your- desires, with a 
 fervor and a constancy proportioned to his infinite impor- 
 tance ? — Have you pursued this object with sufficient 
 seriousness, as " the one think needful" to your parental 
 happiness? — While you have been teaching the truths of 
 God, have you been careful to " walk before you house 
 in a perfect way," exemplifying, in your whole deport- 
 ment, their holy, heavenly influence ? — Have you, in no 
 measure, been guilty of sacrificing the souls of your chil- 
 dren to their temporal interests? — Have your efforts, and 
 your prayers been engaged about this object, with any 
 thing like a proportion to its unutterable magnitude? — 
 Have your exertions beeii believing exertions,^-your 
 prayers, the prayers of faith ? — or has there not been, in 
 both, a lamentable deficiency of firm, and simple-hearted, 
 and practical confidence in God? 
 
 May the "God of the families of Israel" impress, more 
 deeply than ever, upon your minds, the duty enjoined up- 
 on you ! Let the baptism of your own children, and every 
 baptism you are called to witness, remind you of your ob- 
 ligations, and bring you to your knees, with tears of con- 
 scious short-coming, and of earnest entreaty for grace to 
 fulfil them ! 
 
 2. To the children of godly parents, I would briefly 
 but affectionately say : — You enjoy, or you have enjoyed, 
 a most precious privilege, — a blessing for which you can- 
 not be sufficiently thankful. But the privilege may, like 
 every other, be abused or neglected, and the blessing, by 
 this means, converted to a curse. Every favor of heaven 
 heightens the responsibility of those on whom it is con- 
 *12 
 
150 SECTION III. 
 
 ferred, and, through the perversity of the human heart, 
 exposes to the danger of augmented guilt ; responsibility 
 being according to privilege, [f your parents considered 
 aright what they were doing, when they presented you to 
 the Lord in the ordinance of baptism, it was not, with 
 them, a season of thoughtless merriment, on the giving of 
 a name to their child ; but a time of tender feeling, of 
 serious reflection, of solicitous anticipation, of solemn 
 prayer. They brought you in faith to Jesus. They im- 
 plored his blessing upon you. They felt the weight of 
 the sacred trust. They placed believing reliance on the 
 divine promises. They resolved that you should be 
 trained in the fear of the Lord, — in his " nurture and ad- 
 monition ;" and they looked, with earnest desire, for the 
 grace of God, to enable them to fulfil their resolution. 
 I speak not of vows made by them in your name ; and 
 far less, of god-fathers and god-mothers, stepping in be- 
 tween you and your parents, and taking upon themselves 
 a gratuitous responsibility in your behalf; because 1 find 
 none of these things in my Bible, and regard them, along 
 with some other practices, as inventions of men, — human 
 appendages to a simple institution. But at your baptism, 
 your parents had before them an impressive remembran- 
 cer of the obligations, on their part, arising from the 
 promises of God's covenant ; they avowed their sense of 
 these obligations, and their determination, in the strength 
 of grace, to fulfil them ; and, if they have acted in con- 
 sistency with the professions then made, and with the de- 
 sign of the ordinance, they have brought you up as 
 young disciples of the Saviour, instructing you in his 
 truth, and affectionately admonishing you in his name. 
 They have sought, on your behalf, the guidance of the 
 "good Shepherd," who "gathers the lambs in his arms 
 and carries thern in his bosom," that under his gracious 
 eye you might be induced to " follow the footsteps of the 
 flock." 
 
 Have you, then, my young friends, improved and prof- 
 ited by your connection with your parents, and the privi- 
 leges thence arising ? Have you entered into their de- 
 sires? — have you valued the promises and blessings of 
 God's covenant? — have you sought, that the emblematic 
 
SECTION III. 151 
 
 import of your baptism may be realized in your experi- 
 ence 1 — and that your names may be found, with those 
 of your parents, in the Lamb's book of life? O beware 
 of " forsaking the guide of your youth, and forgetting the 
 covenant of your God," else, to use his own expression, 
 "you shall know his breach of promise," and " bring up- 
 on yourselves a curse, and not a blessing." Remember 
 the warnings, " To whom much is given, of them will 
 much be required:" — "The servant that knew his 
 Lord's will, and did commit things worthy of stripes, 
 shall be beaten with many stripes." — " Thou, Caperna- 
 um, which art exalted unto heaven, shalt be brought 
 down to he'l ; for if the mighty works which have been 
 done in thee had been done in Sodom, it would have con- 
 tinued unto this day. But I say unto you, it shall be 
 more tolerable for the land of Sodom in the day of 
 judgment than for thee !" 
 
 If you have received, in the love of it, the " instruction 
 of wisdom," the duty of walking in fellowship with the 
 church of Christ, in all his ordinances, ought to be seri- 
 ously pondered by you. It is true, that "except a man 
 be born again, he cannot enter into the kingdom of 
 God :" he cannot be received into it above, and is not a 
 fit member of it below. But, in the case of children, 
 brought up in " the nurture and admonition of the Lord," 
 the change which is thus expressed may often be, nay, 
 often is, imperceptible in its first commencements, and 
 gradual in its subsequent progress, — so that time and cir- 
 cumstances cannot be specified. This is what, from the 
 nature of the case, we might reasonably anticipate. I do 
 not say, there is such a thing as hereditary grace : but, 
 as the grace of God, in its various blessings, is conveyed 
 to sinners by means, it quite accords with the natural or- 
 der of things, that it should accompany those means, and 
 flow, as it were, in the same channel with them. So 
 that, if the knowledge of God, the great mean by which 
 the blessings of salvation come to be enjoyed, was ap- 
 pointed to be conveyed from generation to generation, we 
 must suppose the blessings to be conveyed along with it, 
 and the conveyance of the blessings to be the grand de- 
 sign of the conveyance of the knowledge. There is no 
 
15*2 SECTION III. 
 
 other design, which we can imagine God to have had, in 
 such appointment. And, therefore, although his grace is 
 not imparted by fleshly birth; yet that, when his people 
 are attentive to the means appointed, this grace should 
 appear descending through their generations, cannot at all 
 be matter of wonder. — Not that, in religious education, 
 there is freedom from danger. .Beware, my young 
 friends, of thinking so. The natural deprarity of our 
 hearts has infused danger into every thing. The danger 
 here is imminent. It is that of growing up in the form 
 of godliness, without its power; in profession, without 
 real principle ; in outward virtue, without inward piety. 
 Beware of this danger. But let not the jealous d»;ead of 
 it carry you to the extreme, of keeping back from those 
 ordinances, which you know it to be the duty of all to 
 observe, who believe in Christ, and fear God. If you are 
 conscious of this faith an4 fear, and of \our need of all 
 the instituted means of stability and growth, neglect not 
 those institutions, which are designed for the spiritual 
 improvement of the disciples. Nothing ought to be more 
 delightful to the churches of Christ and their pastors, than 
 the admission amongst them of the children of the mem: 
 bers, the fruits of the Divine blessing on parental duty. 
 
 Some may belong to parents, who had them baptized 
 in their infancy as a mere matter of form, in compliance 
 with national custom, making them like others, giving 
 them their name, and fancying that their being christen- 
 ed made them Christians of course. But, if the profes- 
 sion of Christianity made by your parents has been care- 
 less and worldly, destitute of spirituality and of scriptural 
 evidence, I have only to say beware of following it.— Some 
 have perplexed themselves with the question, whether, in 
 such circumstances, they ought not to be re-baptized; 
 and antippedobaptists are apt to feel a kind of triumphant 
 self-complacency in such difficulties, and to urge them on 
 weak consciences in their most puzzling forms. But 
 nothing can be more unfair. Even if the difficulty were 
 ever so perplexing, it could not, in the least degree, affect 
 the conclusiveness of our general argument. A difficul- 
 ty, which has resulted from the abuse of an ordinance, 
 can never be fairly urged against the proper and legiti- 
 
SECTION III. 153 
 
 mate use of it. — Our baptist friends suppose, that adult 
 baptism only was the original practice of the New Testa- 
 ment churches, and, consequently, that it early gave 
 place, to the practice of infant baptism in rrnety-niue hun- 
 dreths of the Christian community. It is allowable for the 
 sake of argument to suppose the case reversed. Suppose, 
 then, infant baptism to have been the original practice, 
 and to have been early renounced by ninety-nine hun- 
 dreths of professing Christians, the remaining hundredth 
 alone retaining the custom: — suppose, that, when, Chris- 
 tianity came to be incorporated with the kingdoms of this 
 world, adult instead of infant baptism had been the pre- 
 vailing usage; and th it as free an admission of adults to 
 baptism had taken place, as there is now of parents to the 
 baptism of their children, whilst the small minority (the 
 paedobaptists) were conscientiously scruple as to the pro- 
 fession and character of those whose children they bap- 
 tized : — it is not difficult to conceive how many perplex- 
 ing cases, and puzzling questions must have arisen from 
 this stale of things, to those of antipaedobaptist dissen- 
 ters from the established church, who did not approve of 
 its nationality, and separated from its unavoidable cor- 
 ruption. And these cases and questions the paedobaptist 
 minority would have had the same ground for pressing 
 upon them, as they now have for pressing upon paedobap- 
 tists those which have resulted from the actually existing 
 circumstances. But it would have been as unfair in the 
 one case as it is in the other. The great matter is, to as- 
 certain scriptural principles; and then, when any case of 
 difficulty is suggested, to make it our simple inquiry, What 
 line of practice will be most consistent with those princi- 
 ples? Rven if, in some little points, we should continue 
 at a loss, we are not to renounce a practice which we are 
 satisfied rests on the broad basis of scriptural authority, 
 merely because, in consequence of abuses, questions can 
 be framed by a subtle, adversary, which may carry iu them 
 a practical difficulty. 
 
 Simon Magus was baptized on his professing the faith, 
 although it afterward appeared he was still "in the gall 
 of bitterness, and bond of iniquity." Suppose that 
 the rebuke of Peter had taken hold of his conscience, 
 
154 SECTION III. 
 
 tha^ he had been brought to true repentance, that the 
 " thought of his heart had been forgiven him," and that 
 he had renewed his profession, in sincerity and right un- 
 derstanding; would it have been necessary to baptize 
 him again? or would not a believing recognition of his 
 former baptism have been enough? — When our baptist 
 brethren themselves are disappointed in the profession of 
 any one whom they have admitted to the ordinance, and 
 are constrained to disown him, and to separate him from 
 their fellowship ; — if their dealings with him, and the dis- 
 cipline of the house of God, should subsequently bring 
 him to a right mind, and he should acknowledge his 
 former profession to have been without a proper spiritual 
 understanding and feeling of the truth ; — would they 
 reckon it their duty to baptize; him anew ? — Even if the 
 fault had in part lain with the elder by whom the person 
 had been baptized, — if he had been chargeable with 
 lightness and haste, — would they reckon re-baptism nec- 
 essary ? — It is possible, that different individuals amongst 
 them may be disposed to answer this question differently ; — 
 and, in like manner, it is possible, that some paedobapiists 
 may hold one opinion, and some another, as to the pro- 
 priety of re-baptizing those children, when they come to 
 maturity and profess the faith, whose parents, at the time 
 of their baptism, were living without God ; — (a point of 
 fact, however, it may be observed, in all cases of delicate, 
 in many of difficult, and in some of impossible determina- 
 tion :) — but no ground of objection to the views either of 
 baptists or of psedobaptists could be more futile. — For my 
 own part, my young friends, I see little cause for your 
 distressing yourselves upon the subject. When your pa- 
 rents had the ordinance administered to you, it ou^ht to 
 have been understood by them. If they understood it 
 not, or did not properly consider its import, and its con- 
 nection with their duty, and did not act according to the 
 obligations and the encouragements recognized in it; 
 they were to be blamed, and you were" to be pitied. But 
 the meaning of the ordinance was not thereby altered ; 
 and, if you arc now satisfied of the sc?'iptural ground for 
 infant baptism, any suspicion or conviction of the want 
 of faith in your parents can no more be a valid reason for 
 
section in. 155 
 
 your being re-baptized, than the suspicion, or conviction, 
 of the inadequacy of a previous profession, would be a 
 vaiid reason to the believer in adult baptism only, for re- 
 baptizing an adult, who should come to make that pro- 
 fession in earnest, which he had before made with care- 
 lessness or insincerity. In either case, the recognition 
 of the ordinance, with a right understanding and an hon- 
 est heart, should be considered as sufficient. The bap- 
 tism of children, on the professed faith of their parents, 
 stands, in this respect, on precisely the same footing, as 
 the baptism of an adult upon his own profession. An 
 adult may himself be baptized on a profession that is 
 hollow-hearted and thoughtless ; and a parent may have 
 his children baptized on such profession : — both the bap- 
 tized adult and the parent may afterwards be brought un- 
 der the saving power of the truth : — and, in these circum- 
 stances, whatever it would be right to do in the one case, 
 it would be right to do in the other. If it would be right 
 to re-baptize the adult, it would be right to re-baptize the 
 children of the parent; if no necessity would be felt for 
 this in the case of the adult, neither is there such neces- 
 sity in the case of the children. The adult and the pa- 
 rent would both recognize what before they had overlook- 
 ed or disregarded — the spiritual import of the rite, — and 
 show the sincerity of their new profession, by acting. ac- 
 cording to it in their respective circumstances. And the 
 very same principle extends to the child of a careless pa- 
 rent, when that child is brought to know the Lord, and to 
 possess the blessings which the ordinance represents. 
 
 3. With regard to the duty of churches in reference to 
 the children of the members, there is little said in the 
 scriptures, and I shall not therefore enlarge. That 
 they ought to feel an interest in the rising generation, 
 cannot be questioned. The interest ought to be lively 
 and tender. But the different ways in which this inter- 
 est should practically express itself, are not authoritative- 
 ly prescribed, being, like some other matters, left to dis- 
 cretion. 
 
 When the apostle, in his epistles, addressing himself 
 to the churches, introduces the subject of the instruction 
 and spiritual care of children, it is evident, that he de- 
 Tolves the important charge, not upon the associated body 
 
156 SECTION III. 
 
 of believers, but on the parents amongst them to whom 
 the children belonged. The very address, it is true, to 
 children^ as connected with the community of God's peo- 
 ple, testifies the interest felt in them by the apostle him- 
 self, and contains a virtual admonition to the churches, 
 to take care that they were not neglected. By connect- 
 ing this with the immediately subjoined ch..rge to pa- 
 rents, we are naturally led to the conclusion, that the 
 principal way in which the care of the churches for the 
 spiritual interest of the children connected with them 
 ought to show itself, is their seeing to it that the parents 
 discharge their duty faitliiully. The parents have, by 
 apostolic authority, as well as by the dictate of nature, 
 the immediate charge of the children ; and the church, 
 by the same Divine authority, has the immediate oversight 
 of the parents. The discipline of the churches ought 
 certainly to be considered as extending to every descrip- 
 tion of sin. 'J ne violation, or neglect, of the parental 
 trust, is a sin, of which cognizance ought to be taken, as 
 Well as of others. If parents, who are members of a 
 church, are allowed to go on in such violation and neg- 
 lect, the church is chargeable with an omission of duty. 
 " Bung up your children in the nurture and admonition 
 of the Lord," is as plain and explicit a command, as 
 "Thou shah not steal,' or "Thou shalt not take the 
 name of the Lord thy God in vain " The violation of 
 the one may not be of so easy detection, as that of the 
 others There may even, in certain cases, be circum- 
 stances of delicacy and difficulty, that require any cogniz- 
 ance of parental conduct to be gone about with great 
 prudence, and cautious discrimination. But the princi- 
 ple of discipline is, in bo'h cases, the same. We must 
 not all »w sin to be' committed, and persisted in, without 
 endeavoring, by scriptural means, to bring the offender to 
 repentance. And, surely, there is no sin which it is of 
 more consequence to have corrected by repentance, than 
 one wiiic'i affects the best interest of the rising generation, 
 and thus tends deeply to injure the prosperity of the 
 church, an I the cause and glory of Christ. If undmifulness 
 to p rents, on the part of children, would be a proper sub- 
 ject of ecclesiastical reprehension, so surely should the 
 
SECTION III. 
 
 157 
 
 neglect of children, on the part of parents. If the man 
 who, in temporal things, " provides not for his own, and 
 especially for those of his own house," is to be treated as 
 one who " has denied the faith, and is worse than an in- 
 fidel ;" can we hesitate, in so regarding the man, who 
 leaves his children destitute, as far as his influence is 
 concerned, of "the meat which endureth unto life eter- 
 nal?" No parent can do this, that deserves the name of 
 Christian ; and no such parent, therefore, should be a 
 member of any Christian church. There may be various 
 degrees of the sin ; and each case must be dealt with ac- 
 cording to its own peculiar circumstances. But I am 
 verily persuaded, there is " utterly a fault amongst us," 
 upon this subject. The pastors of the churches ought to 
 feel it their duty, in public and in private, to press upon 
 parents ihe fulfilment of their trust, and upon children the 
 improvement of their privileges ; — to ascertain, by domi- 
 ciliary visits, the state of domestic instruction, and, with 
 affectionate fidelity, to commend or admonish according- 
 ly ; — and, by occasional or stated meetings, of a more 
 public kind, — of the children, for example, in different 
 districts of local residence, to stimulate both children and 
 parents, and provoke the one and the other, respectively, 
 to a holy emulation. And, in the use of all such means, 
 the deacons and members of churches should show all 
 possible countenance to the pastors, aid them to the full 
 extent of their power, and " by love serve one another." 
 
 I conclude with one general caulion. — Let all beware 
 of trusting, in any measure, for their salvation, to any 
 outward observance. The Jews, who trusted and gloried 
 in their circumcision, mistook and perverted its design, 
 to the dishonor of Abraham, and of the God of Abraham, 
 and to their own everlasting perdition. You have been 
 baptized. As to the present view of the matter, it is of no 
 consequence whether by sprinkling or immersion, wheth- 
 er in infancy or adult years : if you fancy yourselves Chris- 
 tians because you have been baptized, you are in the same 
 fatal error in which the Jews were, who imagined them- 
 selves the children of Abraham and of God, because they 
 were circumcised. Be not deceived. Those Jews per- 
 ished without remedy, notwithstanding their circumcis* 
 13 
 
158 SECTION III. 
 
 ion, who refused to " submit themselves unto the right- 
 eousness of God," of which, when properly understood, 
 it was the sign and the seal. So must all, without reme- 
 dy, perish, notwithstanding their baptism and their other 
 outward privileges, who are not " born again" by be- 
 ing made partakers of like precious faith with Abra- 
 ham. Circumcision could not save the one ; neither can 
 baptism save the other. Mere natural descent from A- 
 braham could not save the one ; neither can mere natu- 
 ral relation to godly parents save the other. All the va- 
 riety of external privilege and observance could not save 
 the one; — outward connection with the purest church on 
 earth, and the most punctilious attendance upon all its 
 institutions, cannot save the other. " He was not a Jew 
 who was one outwardly, neither was that circumcision 
 which was outward in the flesh ; but he was a Jew who 
 was one inwardly, and circumcision was that of the 
 heart, in the spirit, and not in the letter, whose praise is 
 not of men, but of God." He is not a Christian, who is 
 one outwardly ; neither is that baptism which is outward 
 in the flesh ; but he is a Christian, who is one inwardly, 
 and baptism is that of the heart, in the spirit and not in 
 the letter, whose piaise is not of men, but of God. " In 
 Christ Jesus neither circumcision availeth any thing, no? 
 uncircumcision, but a new creation."* 
 
 * Roro. ii. 28, 29. Gal, vi. 15. 
 
HENRY'S COMMENTARY, 
 
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 The Stereotype Edition of " An Exposition of the 
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 A.M. With the. Life of the Author; By the !< ev. 
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 The type upon which this work printed, is large, clear, 
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 To a Family, this work is a treasure. Its vivid illus- 
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2 
 
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 "A characteristic of this Exposition of a more impor- 
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•