diminished administration, which might be expected from such an origin; when a society, or when individuals, are led to renounce the baptism of the Holy Scriptures, and to repeat the ordinance under a form of their own; when they refuse the pledge of God's special regard for the posterity of his people, and banish from their families an ordinance which expressly includes them, without any exception. I am sometimes told that such persons, and such only, are baptized Christians. This is language, my friends, to which I give place by subjection, no, not for an hour. Your principles and your practice, and somewhat also of your manner of speaking with regard to the ordinance of baptism, are quite opposite, as you have already seen, to every view which I have been able to take of the meaning of the Holy Scriptures.

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"I regard many of you as saints, and faithful in Christ Jesus. Your Antipædobaptism is to me a cause of no small regret. But for yourselves I entertain sincere affection and esteem, which I trust may last, till, in time, or in eternity, we shall be favoured of God with unlimited agreement.

"To enquirers I beg leave to offer one advice; Take a little time to your enquiry." You that have heard the evidence, "must have observed that in every view of the question the field of discussion is pretty extensive. I do not think that the subject is in itself difficult, but it admits of numerous illustrations; and the controversy which has arisen from it has been made difficult, partly by early superstition, and partly by modern ingenuity and zeal. I have been sometimes accused of endeavouring to perplex and to confound enquirers. If I ever do, it must be very wrong.

"I hope" I am addressing many here "whose faith is established on the subject of this my" evidence. "Christian parents, give thanks to God for the baptism of your families. Christian children, give thanks for the baptism of your infancy. Christian pastors, remember with daily solicitude the little ones you have baptized. Forget them not in dispensing the Lord's Supper, that ordinance which is not dispensed to a believer and his house. Tell them the meaning of that service, and invite them, by the symbols of his love, to taste

and see that the Lord is good. Warn them of the consequence of neglecting the great salvation.

"Let no man trust in the observance of ordinances for the salvation of his own soul, or of the souls of others. Many desire to have their children baptized, that they may not be reproached as Pagans, who show no desire that either themselves or their children should obtain mercy of the Lord, or live in his fear and service. We entreat such to consider that the doctrine of Scripture is, 'Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved, and thine house.' Many also are disposed to think themselves Christians, because they were baptized in their infancy, and have received what is commonly called a Christian education. Had you received the love of the truth that you might be saved, and were you now cleaving with purpose of heart to the Lord, we should rejoice in your baptism as verified to you in your actual enjoyment of spiritual blessings. But if you imagine that any ordinance can operate as a charm, and be relied on as a ground of hope to the exclusion of the Saviour, you are altogether strangers to the very meaning of Christianity. Children, taught of God, shall never suffer for the sins of their parents; and therefore their comfort need not depend on the motives from which their baptism was originally dispensed. On the other hand, unless the children, even of believing parents, shall come, in the event of their arriving at years capable of it, to embrace the faith of Christ themselves, they have no privilege of their own; for in no case can men become sons of God from carnal descent. If, like Ishmael, they rise to mock or persecute those that are born after the Spirit, or be profane persons, as Esau, who, for one morsel of meat, sold his birth-right, they must be cast out of the family of Abraham and of God. The privilege of the parents, in having had them baptized in their infancy, cannot in this case be of any service to them. What is said of circumcision and the law, may be justly applied to baptism and the gospel. 'Circumcision verily profiteth, if thou keep the law: but if thou be a breaker of the law, circumcision is made uncircumcision.'*

* Rom. ii. 25.

EIGHTH WITNESS.

I, the EIGHTH WITNESS, have been deputed by eleven of my brethren, to come forward in the great cause now pending before this Court. I wish it clearly to be understood that they have authorized me to declare, that the evidence I am about to give will be in unison with their opinions, and that they are willing to be considered as speaking through me. In sending me before you, they were pleased to observe, that they are satisfied that I shall make “ a direct appeal to divine revelation and authentic history;" that my statements will be "fair and accurate;" my "criticisms learned and solid;" my "reasonings, manly and conclusive;" and that, throughout my evidence, I shall "display the spirit and manners of the gentleman and the Christian;" and it pleased them to flatter me by saying, that their chief motive in sending me here was, that my testimony might be circulated to the extent that they were confident its merits would deserve. This premised, I shall proceed.

"From the exactest observations, it appears, that of those who are born into the world, scarce a third part attain to the age even of one year. Thousands of infants every day languish under grievous distempers; are tortured, convulsed, and in piteous agonies give up the ghost. This at first seems a very strange dispensation; hardly reconcileable with the wisdom and justice, much less with the goodness and mercy, of God!-It is scarce possible not to ask — How comes it to pass that millions of harmless babes, in whose frame is displayed such infinite skill, who are formed with capacities of such exalted attainments, both intellectual and moral; with capacities of a happiness ever-growing and everlasting, in the knowledge, imitation, and enjoyment of God;-how comes it to pass that they only thus glance

upon the coasts of life; are just brought into the world with exquisite pains, moan away a few weeks of misery and disease upon it, and then, in terrible convulsions, fall victims to death? - What light has God cast upon this dark scene of his providence? Has he left it quite covered with impenetrable clouds? And, where the interest and comfort of so great a part of his intelligent creation are deeply concerned, has he given no intimations which may be a solid ground of hope? It can never be supposed.

"There are four dispensations under which religion has principally subsisted since the fall, viz., the dispensation of the light of nature, the Abrahamic, the Mosaic, and the Christian. Now each of these casts some light upon this awful scene, and administers some hope as to suffering and dying infants. Let it then be enquired --

"First, What judgment doth reason, or the LIGHT OF NATURE, pass upon their case? There are but two ways in which reason can account for this procedure of providence, viz., by supposing these suffering infants to have existed in some former state; or that they will exist in some future.

Platonic philosophy taught, that they existed and misbehaved in a former state of being;" and are punished "for evils done there; and it seems to have been an opinion not uncommon amongst the Jews in the days of our Saviour. Concerning the man that was born blind,' the disciples therefore ask him, 'Master, who did sin, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?' But this pre-existence of infants, being a matter of absolute uncertainty, unsupported by any solid or probable grounds, reason derives its principal satisfaction from the supposition of their existence in a state after death. There the Almighty Rewarder can give them pleasures and entertainments abundantly to counterbalance the sufferings of their present state.

"This is what reason, I say, surmises and hopes, but cannot certainly conclude. It wants some revelation, some promise from God, to give stability and vigour to these wavering hopes; and under all the conflicts and pains which he sees his dying child suffer, the pious parent has nothing,

from the light of nature, whereon to trust, but the uncovenanted goodness and mercy of God. Now, were it not, in these circumstances, a most desirable thing that God would give us some revelation or promise concerning our infants? Some covenant to assure us that they are the objects of his favour and peculiar regard; and that as they suffer and die in this world, so they shall be raised again to life and happiness in the other? Was not, I ask, some such covenant, revelation, or promise, concerning our infants, what nature greatly wanted, wished for, and desired?

"There is a very rational and just sense, in which God may be said to establish his covenant with INFANTS. For Scripture expressly says, that he established his covenant, even with the cattle and the fowl; solemnly engaging no more to drown them by a flood. Is there any thing strange, then, or unreasonable in God's establishing his covenant with infants; solemnly engaging to pour his Spirit and blessing on them. Or, that the evils they suffer in consequence of Adam's sin shall be removed, and amply recompensed through the righteousness of Christ? Most surely not at all.

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SATION.

Secondly. This we see done in the ABRAHAMIC DISPENFor as God's covenant transactions with Abraham was the foundation, or charter of the church, which in after ages he intended to gather, and to erect amongst men; so he here gives pious parents an express promise and revelation concerning their infants. He promises to be a God to Abraham and to his seed; and takes his infants into covenant, together with himself; commanding the token of the covenant to be solemnly affixed to them, as a standing testimony or sign that Jehovah was their God. †

"Now, when the Almighty covenants and promises to be the God of these infants, what does it imply? Undoubtedly something great, viz. that he will be, in a peculiar manner, their guardian and benefactor; and that if they died in their infant state, before any transgression had put them out * Gen. ix. 9, 10, 11, 12, 13.

+ See Gen. xvii. 7—14.