Ephraim, Aaron, Phinehas, David, &c.; had, in his supreme and holy sovereignty, created this "new thing in the earth," to divide between parent and offspring; or whether mortals first presumed to do it.

In our Lord's first advent, he said, "I am come to set a man at variance against his father, and the daughter against her mother" (Matt. x. 35); but in the same chapter he ordains the blessing to be upon the house (ver. 13), and specially regards the little ones (ver. 42). He came not to contradict or to confound, but to manifest, and to illustrate the character of "The Lord God, the jealous God, visiting the sins of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation, and shewing mercy to thousands of such as love Him and keep his commandments (Exod. xx. 5, 6). He sent his messenger before his face, "to turn the heart of the fathers to their children, and the heart of the children to their fathers, lest he should come and smite the earth with a curse" (Mal. iv. 6). "My soul doth magnify the Lord, and my spirit hath rejoiced in God my Saviour; for he hath holpen his servant Israel, in remembrance of his mercy, as he spake to our fathers......To perform the mercy promised to our fathers, and to remember his holy covenant; the oath which he swore to our father Abraham" (Luke i. 46, 54, 55, 72, 73). "For the promise is to you and to your children, and to all that are afar off, whom the Lord our God shall call" (Acts ii. 39).

Hence the custom of the Christian church, to baptize infants, could not appear a prominent subject either of observation or record in those days; while, on the other hand, if it had not existed, it is inconceivable that the Jewish converts should have all remained silent spectators of the approved invalidity of circumcision in our church, and nothing in its place, as respected children. In such a case, their children, although sanctified and sealed under the Law, would have been degraded and put back to the condition of the heathen, under the Gospel,-and not one of them to speak of this? The earliest work in which infant baptism is treated of, is by Tertullian, who flourished during the latter part of the second and the first few years of the third century. He thought it allowable, but advised rather to defer it. We have nothing to do with what he allowed, or what he thought. He lived nearly two hundred years after Christ. Like ourselves, he fell into many grievous errors; and his mistakes were extensively deplorable. The matter of fact which his writings demonstrate is, the antiquity of the custom of infant baptism at the time he wrote. He no where speaks of it as a novelty; he knew not when it was first introduced, unless by Christ and his Apostles.

I repeat it again: Not the admission of believer's children to the outward and visible privileges of the church, but their exclusion therefrom, is the thing which requires to be proved; the grand innovation for which (if it ever were enacted) we have a right to demand the most explicit and ample warrant of Holy Writ, the fullest possible evidence of sacred and even of profane history. Some persons have indeed quoted "the new covenant," and the prophecy thereof, in Heb. viii. 8-12, and Jer. xxxi. 29-34; but let any one read it, and judge whether or no it be yet in force towards us, otherwise than as an object of faith, altogether irrespective of all outward and visible rites and ordinances. Else, teaching should be discontinued under the present dispensation.

Observe the miraculous events and indisputable coincidence of facts, in different places, and in the experience of many different parties, which God has vouchsafed to preserve for our perusal, in justification of the seeming alteration in his method, in extending the blessings of his church beyond the pale of the naturally born children of Abraham. Observe the care with which they are all handed down to us in Acts x. and elsewhere; and supported by innumerable passages, nay, by all the Epistles to the Gentile churches. And this alteration was not, strictly speaking, an innovation. From the beginning Divine Providence had held out her gracious invitation to every nation, kindred, or tongue, to which it could be offered without a certainty of aggravating their guilt. Probably even to Cain, before he was guilty of fratricide; for it has been said, upon the Hebrew text of Gen. iv. 7, that God said even to him, " If thou doest not well, the sin-offering croucheth at the door." Certainly to the Patriarch Job; to the mixed multitude, Exod. xii. 38; to the stranger, Deut. xxix. 11-15, &c. And from the time of Noah it was revealed that Japheth should be enlarged, and dwell in the tents of Shem, the father of Eber and Abraham; and from the days of Isaac it had been predicted, that when Edom should have the dominion he should break his brother's yoke from off his neck. The preaching of the Gospel to every creature, and the opening wide the pale of God's holy church to all the nations, was only apparently, and not really, an innovation upon former precedent, for this was ample; but the separation between parents and the fruit of their bodies, alike unknown in circumcision, in the passover, in all the dealings of God without one exception, if He had enacted it, would have been really "a new thing in the earth;" and where is the proof of it?

Strange! that no one can shew from holy Scripture the commencement of so enormous a deviation from the principles upon which all mankind had acted, and by which also God had been

pleased to regulate his conduct towards them for more than four thousand years;-passing strange that the consanguinity_of parent and offspring should have been broken, and that by Divine institution, as they say, and not one record of so anomalous a fact vouchsafed to us by Divine Wisdom! More than passing strange, that the anti-pædobaptist principle, which separates, between father and son, should have been first introduced, as they say, by the Son of the Father, and without notice or comment thereupon from the beginning of the Gospels to the end of the Apocalypse!

Having so far discussed the chief prejudice upon this vitally important question, and thrown the burden of proof upon them to whom it rightly belongs; I leave them to produce any text, if they can find one in the Bible, plainly and expressly forbiding the baptism of infants; and I proceed to examine the Scriptures upon the first institution of that holy means of free and unconditional grace.

The statute law of God upon baptism is most clearly expressed in Matt. xxviii. 19, "Go ye, therefore, AND MAKE DISCIPLES OF (margin, and original text) ALL NATIONS, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost."

In those days, when the church of God was nearly confined to one peculiar people, the family of one man (Jacob); of whom it was written of old, that they "should dwell alone, and not be reckoned among the nations" (Num. xxiii. 9); the most remarkable point in the above mandate must have been, that it applied to all "NATIONS." To us the expression is no less remarkable than to them, if we consider that more than half the human race die in infancy; and of those individuals who attain to adolescence we well know that only a few (according to the Scriptures) shall ultimately be "chosen," and therefore that only a few can now be expected to make a sincere profession of faith. For we see how this Divine ordinance consequently stands before us. Either it does, or it does not, apply to more than can be expected or believed to make sincere profession of faith in Christ Jesus. Those who deny baptism to infants, say it is applicable to none but sincere professors, of consistent life and conversation, and tried constancy. And what then becomes of the command to baptize all "nations?" They are reduced to a few individuals scattered through the world, or congregated here and there! Upon their own shewing and experience, the statute law of God is not, and cannot be, obeyed. Instead of nations, they baptize only a few individuals, and the commandment is as much ineffective as if it had never been issued. Do they dare so to limit the same word in other places? as in Psalm lxxxii. 8: "Arise, O God, judge

the earth, for thou shalt inherit all nations." Rev. xv. 4: "Who shall not fear thee, O Lord, and glorify thy name; for thou only art holy; for all nations shall come, and worship before thee." Psalm 1xxii. 11: "Yea, all kings shall fall down before him, all nations shall serve him." Matt. xxiv. 14: "And this Gospel of the kingdom shall be preached in all the world, for a witness to all nations, and then shall the end come." Matt. xxv. 32. "And before him shall be gathered all nations: and he shall separate them one from another, as a shepherd divideth the sheep from the goats." Acts xvii. 26: "God hath made of one blood all nations of men, for to dwell on all the face of the earth." Dare they in like manner to take away from the words. of the prophecy of Rev. xxi. 24, "And the nations of them which are saved shall walk in the light of it;" or xii. 5, "she brought forth a man child, who was to rule all nations with a rod of iron?"

Surely he has more than an ordinary share of immodesty who would restrict the word "nations," in any of those passages of God's word, to the select few of Anabaptist communicunts. Yet, unless we so restrict it, what becomes of their distinguishing tenet? "Let God be true, and every man a liar." We may not so restrict any text as to render Jesus Christ's Ordinances null and void.

But upon the strength of the case of the Ethiopian (Acts viii.), and upon the wording of the capital text above quoted (as it is found in our English Bibles), together with its parallel (Mark xvi. 15), it is objected, that the nations are in the first instance to be preached to, or taught; that the preaching or teaching should be to all nations, the baptism only to such as believe. I defer the consideration of the case in Acts xiii. because I believe there never was any difference upon the point to which alone it is obviously pertinent-namely, the conduct and order to be pursued by the church in the conviction, conversion, and subsequent baptism of adults. Let us keep to the point before us; and, bearing in our memory the foregoing observations, let us examine the other passages, as possibly or not possibly applicable to infants.

And, first, the capital text of Matt. xxviii. 19, which I have called the clearest declaration of this positive law, or Divine statute, for the enactment of Christian baptism: for, in regard to rites and ceremonies and positive ordinances, of whatever kind (inasmuch as their authority rests solely and exclusively upon the will of the Legislator), the letter of his statute is the only rule by which they should be understood and enforced. Now, in that text God commands the disciples of his Son Jesus Christ "to make disciples of all nations."

And what is a disciple? What were the disciples of our

Lord? Were they men well-informed in doctrine; skilled in the technicalities of theology; thoroughly conversant with the style and bearing of the professors of religion? or the opposite of all these? They were the opposite of all these. Simon Peter, Andrew, James the son of Zebedee, and John, were fishermen; Matthew was a publican; Judas Iscariot a thief; and the rest are supposed to have got their livelihood, as Peter had done, by fishing. Our Lord himself calls the seventy disciples vno (literally, "infants, not able yet to speak; or, as the same word is applied to an adult by Homer," an idiot "). They could not understand him; as it is written "These things understood not his disciples: (John xii. 16; Luke xviii. 34; Matt. xvi. 6, 12, &c. &c.; and in Matt. xv.); "Are ye also without understanding?" (ver. 10, 17); and, even after the resurrection, in Luke xxiv. 25, "O fools (avonro, idiots), and slow of heart to believe," &c.—an expression afterwards defined, and sealed as to its time, in verse 45, in which it says, "THEN opened He their understandings, that they might understand the Scriptures."

"A disciple," or learner, is nothing else than "an infant with its lesson before it." To make disciples of all the nations is, nothing else than to place them in that position (in that moral position) in which the lesson is placed before them, and they themselves obliged, under a penalty, to learn it.

The child may know nothing, yet every one in an infant school is 66 a disciple." The infant in one sense may be incapable of tuition, yet never, never was such a monster produced amongst us as an indocile infant-an infant wholly incapable of being taught. "Except ye become as little children, ye can in no wise enter the kingdom of God:" Except ye be docile, teachable (and that is UNTAUGHT); except ye be BABES, ye cannot enter here. "If any man think that he knoweth any thing, he knoweth nothing yet as he ought to know." Here are we all babes, infants-nay, even embryos, longing for breath, and not yet possessed of the air to breathe; earnest to be taught; earnest to believe, and only half-possessed of what to believe. (1 Cor. xiii. 9, &c. &c.) It is not that the child must first possess manly knowledge to believe; but that the man must possess infant docility before he can know God: and to know God is eternal life; to know God is to believe, and to believe is to know; and for both docility alone is requisite; or else Divine love hath limits, and the grace of God hath bounds.

It is not for the child to become a man, but for the man to become a child, that he may be "a disciple:" the book is open before him; he needs but the grace of willingness to learn. Infancy is the first and all-inclusive lesson of the Gospel of God to the pride of adult man.

It is replied, that infants absolutely cannot be taught—and this is the next point which I would discuss; for I grant that if