powers, such a control over nature, or such a foresight of future contingencies, as shall be sufficient to accredit and establish his mission.

He who refuses to submit to the guidance of persons thus attested and accredited, must be considered as virtually renouncing the revelation imparted, and, as the necessary consequence, forfeiting his interest in its blessings. On these grounds it is not difficult to perceive that a primitive convert, or rather pretended convert, who, without doubting that baptism, in the way in which we practise it, formed a part of the apostolic commission, had refused compliance, would have been deemed unworthy christian communion, not on account of any specific connexion betwixt the two ordinances, but on account of his evincing a spirit totally repugnant to the mind of Christ. By rejecting the only authority established upon earth for the direction of conscience, and the termination of doubts and controversies, he would, undoubtedly, have been repelled as a contumacious schismatic. But what imaginable resemblance is there betwixt such a mode of procedure, and the conduct of our pædobaptist brethren, who oppose no legitimate authority, impeach no part of the apostolic testimony, but mistaking (in our judgement at least) its import in one particular, decline a practice which many of them would be the first to comply with, were they once convinced it was the dictate of duty, and the will of heaven? In the one case, we perceive open rebellion, in the other,

involuntary error; in the one, the pride which opposes itself to the dictates of inspired wisdom, in the other, a specimen (an humbling one it is true) of that infirmity, in consequence of which we all see but in part, and know but in part. Since whatever degree of prejudice or inattention we may be disposed to impute to the abettors of infant sprinkling, the principles on which they proceed are essentially different from those which could alone have occasioned the introduction of that practice in apostolic times, we are at a loss to conceive the propriety of classing them together, or of animadverting upon them with equal severity. The apostles would have repelled from their communion men, who, while they professed to be followers of Christ, refused submission to his inspired messengers; in other words, they would have rejected some of the worst of men: therefore, say our opponents, we feel ourselves justified in excluding multitudes whom we acknowledge to be the best. I am at a loss whether most to admire the logic, the equity, or the modesty of such a conclusion.

Besides, this reasoning from precedent is of so flexible a nature that it may with equal ease be employed in a contrary direction, and be turned to the annoyance of our opponents. As it is an acknowledged fact, that in primitive times all the faithful were admitted to an equality of participation in every christian privilege; to repel the great majority of them on account of an error, acknow

ledged not to be fundamental, is at once a wide departure from the apostolic example, and a palpable contradiction to the very words employed in its first institution; "drink ye all of it; do this in remembrance of me:" words addressed, as has already been proved, to persons who had not received christian baptism. If it be replied, that though all christians originally communicated, yet from the period of the Pentecost, at least, they were all previously initiated by immersion, the inquiry returns, were they baptized on account of the necessary connexion of that appointment with the eucharist, or purely in deference to the apostolic injunction? To assert the former would be palpably begging the question; and if the latter is affirmed, we reply, that as they practised as they did, in deference to the will of God, so our pædobaptist brethren, in declining the practice which we adopt, regulate their conduct by the same principle.

The shew of conformity to apostolic precedent is with the advocates of strict communion, and nothing more; the substance and reality are with us. Their conformity is to the letter, ours to the spirit; theirs circumstantial and incidental, ours radical and essential. In withholding the signs from those who are in possession of the thing signified, in refusing to communicate the symbols of the great sacrifice to those who are equally with themselves sprinkled by its blood and sharers of its efficacy, in dividing the regenerate into two classes, believers and communicants, and confining

the church to the narrow limits of a sect, they have violated more maxims of antiquity, and receded further from the example of the apostles, than any class of christians on record.

We live in a mutable world, and the diversity of sentiment which has arisen in the christian church on the subject of baptism, has placed things in a new situation, and has given birth to a case which can be determined only by an appeal to the general principles of the gospel, and to those injunctions in particular, which are designed to regulate the conduct of christians, whose judgement in points of secondary moment differs. These we shall have occasion to discuss in another part of this treatise, where it will, we trust, be satisfactorily shewn that we are furnished with a clue fully sufficient for our guidance: and when we consider the impossibility of comprehending, in any code whatever, every possible combination of future occurrences and events, we shall perceive the necessity of having recourse to those large and comprehensive maxims, which the prospective wisdom of the Father of lights, and the Author of revelation has abundantly supplied.

Were it not that more are capable of numbering arguments, than of weighing them, the mention of the following might be omitted. The significations of the two positive ordinances of the gospel are urged in proof of the necessity of baptism preceding the Lord's supper. The first, we are reminded by our opponents, is styled by theologians

the sacrament of regeneration, or of initiation; the second, the sacrament of nutrition.* To argue from metaphors is rarely a conclusive mode of reasoning; but if it were, the regenerate state of our pædobaptist brethren would surely afford a much better reason for admitting them to the sacrament of nutrition, than their misconception of a particular command for prohibiting them, unless we choose to affirm that the shadow is of more importance than the substance, or that the sacrament of nutrition is not intended to nourish.

Their actual possession of spiritual life, in consequence of their union to the Head of the church, necessarily implies a title to every christian privilege, by which such a life is cherished and maintained, unless there were an express prohibition to the contrary; nor is it to be doubted that the acknowledgment of pædobaptists, as christians, implies a competence to enter into the full import of the rites commemorative of our Lord's death and passion. To consider the Lord's supper, however, as a mere commemoration of that event, is to entertain a very inadequate view of it. If we

*

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"In submitting to baptism," says Mr. Booth, we have an emblem of our union and communion with Jesus Christ, as our great Representative, in his death, burial, and resurrection. And as in baptism we profess to have renewed spiritual life, so in communicating at the Lord's table, we have the emblems of that heavenly food by which we live, by which we grow, and by virtue of which we hope to live for ever. Hence theological writers have often called baptism the sacrament of regeneration, or of initiation, and the Lord's supper the sacrament of nutrition.”Booth's Apology.