natural propagation, but by spiritual regeneration: they are not born of blood.' Grace runs not in the blood: piety is not hereditary. Religious parents propagate corruption, not regeneration. Were the conveyances of grace natural, good parents would not be so ill suited with children as sometimes they are. No person then whatsoever has the gracious privilege of adoption by the first birth. 'They are not born of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man;' that is, no man, by the utmost improvement of nature, can raise himself up to this privilege of adoption, and be the author and efficient cause of his own regeneration. Man, in all his capacities, is too weak to produce the work of regeneration in himself. They, says a learned writer, who, by the influence of the highest rational principles, live most exactly according to the rule of rational nature, that is, of unregenerate morality, are the persons here described. God alone is the prime efficient cause of regeneration: he works upon the understanding by illumination, and upon the will by sanctification: 'Which were born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God.'

"A believer's spiritual life is derived from Christ, who by his spirit communicates a quickening virtue to all his members; 'because he lives, they shall live also.' See how Christ binds up their life together with his own! As if he had said, 'Whilst there is vital sap in the root, you that are the branches in me shall not wither and die.'

"All worship ought to be voluntary, as voluntary is opposed to constrained; but it must not be voluntary, as voluntary is opposed to instituted or appointed; God doth no more approve of that worship we give him according to our will, than he doth approve of our neglect of that which is according to his own will. But man, vain man, likes any way of worshipping God which is of his own framing, much better than that which is of God's own appointing.

"Paul expostulates with those of the Colossians who were willing to subject themselves to the observation of the old Jewish rites and ceremonies; and argues thus, If you profess yourselves in your baptism to be spiritually dead with

Christ, and to be freed by his death from the Levitical ordinances, why are ye subject to those ordinances? all which observances were to perish necessarily with the very using: and whereas they were set off with a specious shew of wisdom, as if they were voluntary services and free-will offerings to God, he acknowledges, they had indeed a shew of wisdom, but nothing of spiritual piety and devotion in them. Such as do by baptism profess themselves to be dead with Christ' to the ceremonial law, may certainly conclude that the Jewish ceremonies have now no more power over them, or that they ought to yield themselves to the observation of them; If ye be dead with Christ, why are ye subject to ordinances?' Though God approveth and accepteth willing worship, yet not will-worship, what fair shew soever it may seem to have, either of wisdom, humility, or of mortification. Whatever is the product of our fancies, is a very fornication in religion, and an abomination in the sight of God, how pleasing soever it may be in the sight of men. And yet, men are most forward to that service of God which is of man's finding out and setting up; man likes it better to worship a God of his own making, than to worship the God that made him: and likes any way of worshipping God which is of his own framing, more than that which is of God's appointing. Ah! wretched heart of man, which, whilst it seems very zealous to worship and honour God, hath not zeal to do it in any other way than in that which reflects the highest dishonour upon him.

"In John v. 43, our Lord says, 'I am come in my father's name, and ye received me not: if another shall come in his own name, him ye will receive.' As much as to say, You are incredulous to none but me; every deceiver, every cheat, that has but wit or wickedness enough to tell you, The Lord hath sent him, is believed by you; but though I come in my Father's name, shewing a commission signed and sealed by him, and doing those works which none but God can do, yet you receive me not. Oh, unreasonable infidelity !—

"The apostle Paul, in 1 Cor. vii. 12, 13, resolves the case that the husband and wife, according to the intent and end

of marriage, ought to cohabit and dwell together; and he assigns the reason for it, because the unbelieving or infidel wife is sanctified to the believing or Christian husband. How sanctified? Not in her nature, but in her use; so that they might lawfully cohabit and converse together; being by marriage made one flesh with him or her that is holy: ' and for your children," says he; they are not seminally unclean, like the children of the heathen, but federally holy. How are they holy? Not with an inherent, internal, personal holiness; for the holiest man's child is born in sin, and by nature a child of wrath; but with an external, relative, and federal holiness: they are not common and unclean, like the children of infidels, but fit to be partakers of the privileges of the church, to be admitted into covenant with God, as belonging to his holy people; else were your children unclean, but now are they holy.' He does not say, Hence were your children bastards, but now are they legitimate, as the enemies of infant baptism, those duri infantum patres (those cruel and unfeeling parents) would make him speak; but else were they unclean, that is heathen children, not to be owned as an holy seed, and therefore not be admitted into covenant with God, as belonging to his holy people.Although the word holy be used above five hundred times in the New Testament, yet it never once signifies legitimacy, but is always used for a state of separation to God: therefore to make it signify so here, is a bold practising upon Scripture, a racking and wresting of the Word of God, to maintain a private opinion, to make the text speak what they would have, and not what the apostle intends. But the argument for infant baptism from this text runs thus; If the holy seed among the Jews were therefore to be circumcised, and made federally holy, by receiving the sign of the covenant, and being admitted into the number of God's holy people, because they were seminally holy; for the root being holy, the branches were also holy; then, by like reason, the holy seed of Christians ought to be admitted to baptism, and receive the sign of the Christian covenant, the laver of regeneration, and so be entered into the society of the Christian church.

THIRD WITNESS.

I, the THIRD WITNESS, in compliance with the request, and in deference to the judgment, of the President, Secretary, and Members of the Salop District Committee of the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, present myself before you, my Lord, and Gentlemen of the Jury, to give my testimony in such a manner as I may think best adapted to the Plaintiff's cause, i. e. for the good of the community at large.

"At the time that Almighty God first selected the Jews for his peculiar people, he instituted the rite of circumcision, whereby they were to be admitted into covenant with him. This institution was designed not only for an outward and visible mark, to distinguish those who professed their belief in the true God; but at the same time for a memorial, to remind them of his covenant; and for a monument, to incite them to perform their part of the covenant; and for a token that God would perform his part.

"This institution, which was designed for the Jews as the chosen people of God, was extended to those strangers also who became proselytes to the true faith. But in addition to this, another ceremony was appointed by the Jews themselves, derived, as they imagined, from the law of Moses, and certainly stamped with the sanction of high antiquity. Proud of their own peculiar sanctity as the elect people of God, and regarding all the rest of mankind as in a state of uncleanness, they would not admit converts into their church without washing, to denote their being cleansed from their natural impurity. Proselytes, thus purified and admitted into the Jewish church by baptism, were said to be regenerated, or born again: nor was this a mere empty appellation; but, being considered dead to their former relations, they

became entitled to rights and privileges from which by nature they were excluded.

"The duration of God's covenant with the Jews being limited, the rite of circumcision was of course limited, and was to cease upon the completion of God's promise in the sending of Christ. God had now accomplished his covenant with Abraham, by sending that seed of Abraham, in whom all the nations of the earth were to be blessed. And as there was no longer to be any distinction in favour of the Jews, the children of Abraham, above the other nations of the world, the outward mark of distinction was no longer useful. God was now to show no respect unto persons, to the circumcised or to the uncircumcised; but in every nation, among the Gentiles, as well as among the Jews, he that feared God, and worked righteousness, was equally to be accepted with Him.

66 But upon the introduction of the new covenant in Christ, God was pleased to institute a new ceremony, whereby mankind at large were to be admitted into covenant with Him, as the Jews had been by the rite of circumcision. For this purpose Christ adopted baptism, which had been consecrated by his brethren after the flesh to a similar use, and ordained it, as the rite by which those who believed in him should be admitted to the privileges of his religion. 'He kept the ceremony,' says Bishop Taylor, that they who were led only by outward things, might be the better called in, and easier enticed into the religion, when they entered by a ceremony, which their nation always used in the like cases; and therefore without change of the outward act, he put into it a new spirit, and gave it a new grace and a proper efficacy: he sublimed it to higher ends, and adorned it with stars of heaven; he made it to signify greater mysteries, to convey greater blessings, to consign the bigger promises, to cleanse deeper than the skin, and to carry proselytes farther than the gates of the institution. For so he was pleased to do in the other sacrament: he took the ceremony which he found ready in the custom of the Jews, where the Majordomo, after the paschal supper, gave bread and wine to every