was, from the first, throughout all the churches, a standing 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, indeed, that about the end of the second century, an opinion began to prevail, of the necessity of baptism to salvation; 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, 66 parents 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 hundred years, believed in the salvation of their children without 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 instantaneously universal?--I must honestly say, that I can entertain but a low estimate of that man's perspicacity, or candor, that can hesitate between these two suppositions.

A similar remark may be made, respecting certain other practices which were early introduced into the church, and which our antipædobaptist 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 admission 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 accounted 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 series. 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 countries, 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 individuals; but nothing corresponding to the apostolic baptisin 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

stitutional 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 connection 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 sacred books-that the prophets, in their inspired predictions relative to the New Testament times, employ language, 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 intimation 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, have 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 me, 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 explanation or comment, 66 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 indicate its having been, not an extraordinary, but a customary 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 opposition or demurring amongst the Jewish converts, tenacious as they showed themselves of the established usages, or of objection and cavil on the part of those who lay at the catch for whatever they could get hold of against

the new system :-that, so far from this, when the Judaizing 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 administering 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 antipædobaptist hypothesis, have been very numerous 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 admit of a satisfactory explanation on baptist principles,whilst they are in perfect harmony with the supposition of pædobaptism 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 antipædobaptists, of any thing resembling the baptism of families which we find in apostolic times, should lead our brethren more than to suspect a difference between their views and practice, and those of the first preachers of the kingdom 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 triumphant confidence of victory. But it is not victory that

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 succeeded in bringing old arguments into a well connected and luminous form, it is all that I have aimed at. Truth does not suffer by time; nor is a good old argument at all the worse for its 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 impression 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 establish, has the sanction and authority of his word.