wished. For all Mr. R.'s positions and expressions the writer is not responsible. He is responsible only for what he defends; and, perhaps, before the close of these Letters he may, agreeably to what he formerly hinted, speak, though but briefly, to a few points on which he differs from the Historian of Baptism, on his authori. ties, errors of the press, &c.

In the former Letter, of your last Number, p. 36, the words, "but to return to Mr. R. and Mr. B." were not in order. They should have been placed here; a note also in the Number preceding that, was out of order, as the reader must have perceived.

Mr. B. "Yet this is the book to which I am sent for a full refutation of all that I have advanced on Infant Baptism." I am afraid very justly.

Mr. B. "The misstatements and gross misrepresentations of what Tertullian wrote on the subject of Baptism, can only be accounted for by the burry in which Mr. Robinson wrote, and must have been corrected had he lived to revise his work."

Here is something like a charge of wilfulness and design, and towards Tertullian on the subject of Baptism, as though Mr. R. had given a uniformly false statement of the design and end of Tertullian's treatise; qualified, indeed, with something of your Correspondent's smoothness and caudoar. And here, at the outset, I perceive, your Correspondent has confounded Mr. R.'s two works, one of which, at least, he had told us he had sought, and, by his own account, had read with such eagerness and fond expectation for information. Now Mr. R. did live to revise his work on Baptism, and brought it through the press himself. The Advertisement, prefixed by the editors, informs us, that he wrote very little during the last twelvemonth of his life, and that the whole of the volume, except the Preface and Recapitulation, was finished before that period. So that he lived long enough to revise his History of Baptism, and did revise it. It was for his Ecclesiastical Researches that the apology was made in the Preface to it. "It is to be lamented that these papers were not subjected to the last corrections of the Author's pen; and the candid reader will, we doubt not, make due allowance for the imperfec

tions of a posthumous work." Your Correspondent has been shewn before from this very posthumous work of Mr. Robinson's, what little thanks he would have got from that gentleman, had he lived, for his candour, in the case of St. Augustine; and see what a scrape it has got him into now! He has plainly confounded the two works.

As to the hurry in which the History of Baptism was written, here is another mistake through your Correspondent's excess of candour. For though I do not say Mr. R. was a faultless writer, I will say he was the furthest possible from a hurrying one. He had, no doubt, prepared some materials towards his History before he actually sate down to compose it, and he was seriously employed on it from the year 1781, to the year before his death, which was in 1790. A full account (from his own statement) of his proceeding in this business, is given in the Memoir of his Life and Writings, (p. 214,) published in 1796. The History, then, was the labour of many years, written with, perhaps, too much of aim, and by his intense application to it, the Author shortened his days. Every advantage that a man could wish for the prosecution of a learned work he possessed-retirement, leisure, access to some of the best libraries in the kingdom, and kind friends. It was undertaken before those strict orders were made by the senate, with respect to the use of books in the public library of the University of Cambridge. He lived in a village of but two miles' distance and, by the kindness of many learned members of the University, he procured any number of books, and at any time he wished; and he had them in the greatest abundance to his own house. He was also allowed the use of books from several college libraries. He was, besides, accommodated by Dr. Gifford, one of the librarians of the British Museum, with an apartment there for the purpose of consulting books and manuscripts, and for some time attended part of a week in every month. What use he made of these advantages, and what a hurry he made in his work, may be collected from two curious letters of his, printed in the above Memoirs, pp. 270, 323.

or Ecclesiastical Researches, quotes a passage from a very ancient Christian poet, which confirms and illustrates this. I cannot at present put my hand on it; but I will take an opportunity of throwing it into a note on some future occasion. In the meau time, the following extract from one of the earliest Greek Euchologies, is submitted to the consideration of your readers, as quoted by a learned divine of the Church of England, though for a purpose different from that for which I am introducing it here.

"Then the priest, holding the person upright, and looking to the East, (himself also looking the same way, is put in by the copyist, who knew it to be the sense,) saying, the servant of God is baptized in the name of the Father, Amen; and of the Son, Amen; and of the Holy Ghost, Amen." • Now it will be pretty clear that the person was bowed, and immersed in the same direction towards which they looked; and that the act of bowing towards the East, on the three distinct namings, was an act of adoration. And accordingly this confession was soou converted into a hymn.

The above divine adds, "the very same was to be acknowledged by the person baptized; for so in the Syriac order: Then turning towards the East, he saith, I, such a one, do confess and believe, and am baptized in thee, and in the Father, and in the Holy Ghost, now and for ever, Amen.'"

It does not appear, then, that there is any undoubted mistranslation, or gross misrepresentation of Tertullian, in the passage referred to above. †

Mr. B. "Thus be (Mr. R.) translates, norint petere Salutem, they

* Βαπτίζει αυτόν ὁ ἱερευς όρθιον αυτον κατεχων και βλεποντα κατ' ανατολάς, λέγων, Βαπτίζεται ο δούλος του Θεού εις όνομα του Πατρός, Αμην και του Υίου, Αμην και του αγίου Πνεύματος, Αμην. Notes and Observations upon some Passages of Scripture. By J. G., (Dr. J. Gregory,) a Master of Arts, of Christ Church, Oxford, p. 171, 1650.

It shall be admitted that Tertullian

himself nses the word in another sense,

viz. in reference to the dove sent forth,

or down from Noah's ark; demissa ex aren but the word admits of various

senses.

just know how to ask for salvation.”” With Mr. B.'s permission, and in justice to Mr. R., I beg leave to add what follows, ut petenti dedisse videaris, "that you may seem to have given to him that asketh." "Give to him that asketh," was the text urged before, for the purpose of giving baptism too indiscriminately and immaturely.

Your Correspondent, by help of a little dog-trot knowledge of his Latin Grammar, perceiving that norint is not the indicative mood, present tense, as grammarians speak, but apparently without any acquaintance with the correct use and application of mood and tense in the Latin tongue, (without which, however a gentleman may dogmatize, he is ill-qualified to criticize,) supposes Mr. Robinson translates the verb as an indicative. Now this appears to me a mistake. It is not, I apprehend, translated as an indicative mood: his translation is evidently elliptical, the full meaning of which is, " they may perhaps just know how, that you may seem to have given to him that asketh." As Mr. R. has translated it, the verb is put in the potential form, or perhaps the conjunctive, but not in the indicative. There is much ambiguity often in the use of mood and tense in the Latin tongue; the indicatives, potential and conjunctive, are often used very indeterminately, and may interchange without any impropriety: this at least is true in certain cases even of regular verbs; and whether this is or not one of those cases, I leave your critic to settle, if he can. Horace uses noris as a potential mood present tense, Od. L. iii. II. 1.18. Ut tamen noris, that you may know. So again, Noris nos, docti sumus. Epist. Where the commentators, Cupio, ut scias nos, that you may know us: though perhaps better and neater as a simple potential,

You perhaps may just know us; for Horace had a slight knowledge of him, as he says at the beginning of the Epistle, Notus mihi nomine tantum. Terence uses the different parts of the verb in the subjunctive, or potential form, generally, if not always; and it doth not appear to me that either he or Horace ever use it as an imperative. Even that passage in Juvenal, Norint alii, Sat. iii., which I know some construe as an imperative, may

be construed as a potential, and, I think, better.

But suppose Tertullian had used norint as an indicative mood, present tense, regular, and that Mr. R. had translated it as such, will Mr. B. prove that either Tertullian or Mr. Robinson would have been positively and necessarily wrong? Sanctius, the great Father of Latin grammar, has given examples of præter perf. potent. regular, used for future time, and among regular verbs, gives this very verb, norit, though it is a defective. As to irregular and defective verbs, your Correspondent, perhaps, understands enough of his grammar to know that irregular and defective verbs use potential form very much ad libitum: thus, Inquam, possim, velim, nolim, malim, oderim, meminerim, faxim, norim. This promiscuality, or indiscriminateness, is so common as to require no examples. These matters are noticed in our common grammars. Noverim or norim is more commonly put by writers of the best classical authority in the proper subjunctive form: yet nôrim for noverim is nearly the same contraction as faxim for fecerim; and exactly the same as ausim, I dare, for auserim. For ausim (according to the analogy of such defectives) cannot be a potential present, though it may be used as a potential, and even as an indicative present, as it is constantly. And will your Correspondent shew me why noverim or nôrim, being an irregular defective of the same form, should not follow the same analogy, or prove that it does not? I am far from being so certain, notwithstanding what I have said, as perhaps your Correspondent is, that norim, noris, &c., as frequently used by Plautus, Terence, Horace, is not sometimes in the present time.

Indeed, some grammarians might not be so certain as perhaps your critic is, that Tertullian does not use the word here in an indicative sense. He does sometimes use preter. pot. for indicative present. They might urge, too, perhaps with some plausibility, that Tertullian had been using here the imperative mood, veniant, let them come; fiant Christiani, let them be made Christians; and that he then goes off to the indicative mood, present time, "Quid festinat innocens

atas?" Why does an innocent age hasten, or, why is it in a hurry? "Norint, they know how, indeed," &c. And suppose that such grammarians should say, that order and grammar would better admit that form, will your Correspondent prove the contrary? As for myself, I own this question is put more for the purpose of asking another: By what authority, and with what grace does your Correspondent in this passage translate festinat, as though it were festinaret, why should they make haste? After charging Mr. R, with misrepresenting and grossly mistranslating Tertullian on the subject of Baptism, and producing only a single poor word, which he supposes to be in a wrong mood and tense, your good Correspondent does actually mistranslate Tertullian in the very same way, changing both mood and tense: a pretty piece of liberty!

Suppose, further, that some critic should insist that Tertullian has been corrupted here, (and that he has been much corrupted, must be, and is, admitted,) and that norint should be nôrant, or nôrunt, as used by him for present time. Tertullian often uses a potential for an indicative mood, and an indicative for a potential; and with respect to this very defective novi, he uses norat, cognorat, for novit or noscit, noverunt, for noverint, that is, norunt for norint, and nôsse, a line or two before our very passage; that is, past tenses for present, an indicative mood for a subjunctive, and a past infinitive for a present; and all this, it shall be admitted, according to good classical authority.

Now these things are thrown out cursorily, without an intention of laying any great stress on them; but they may go to shew, that a tense in such a writer might be misconceived, and yet a translator not be liable to the charge of "misrepresenting and grossly mistranslating" on the subject of Baptism; and that, after all, it is not so elear that Mr. R. has mistranslated, or, that if he has, it is but by a very slight shade of difference.

And here, Sir, to prevent your Correspondent from overrating his discoveries, permit me to observe, that it may be doubted whether Tertullian himself has used in this place a proper word, even if it is genuine. One of