weight in modern times. He appeals to no authority. This was about a hundred years after the apostolic age; a period not so long as that which. has elapsed since the Revolution; and in which many aged men must be living, who could remember the generation which succeeded that of the Apostles. So that any remarkable change in the practice of the church in a case so important as. that of the subjects of baptism, must have been easily recollected, and would no doubt have given rise to an animated controversy. Is it indeed conceivable, is it possible,-that the Apostles should have instituted the baptismal rite, should have. enjoined its permanency, and should have limited the application of it to those believers only who were come to years of discretion, and who made a verbal profession of their Christian faith,—and that in less than a century, we may almost say half a century, (for we may reasonably suppose that the generation which succeeded the Apostles would adhere to their institution,) the whole Christian church, diffused as it then was through every part of the known world, should agree with one consent to abandon the institution of the Apostles, and to adopt a practice unscriptural, unauthorized, unprofitable, and as its opposers say ridiculous and absurd? And what is most extraordinary, could such an important change as this take place in

total silence? Were the men who rent the churchasunder, and excommunicated one another upon the trifling question whether the annual festival of our Lord's resurrection should be observed on the day of the full moon or the Sunday after, totally indifferent about a question at least of equal importance, whether christian baptism should be. administered to infants or to adults only? Was there no body of Christians so attached to the doctrine of the Apostles as to distinguish themselves by a faithful adherence to the primitive apostolic rite? Was there no church in the East or West, in Europe, Asia, or Africa, which entered its protest against the anti-christian innovation of infant baptism? Was there no individual learned or unlearned who exerted his powers in defence of the primitive apostolic rite? What must our Baptist brethren think of their early predecessors in the church? In modern times they are constantly upon the alert: and not a champion marches into the field in defence of infant baptism, but his challenge is immediately accepted, and some hero from the opposite camp instantly volunteers his services to defend the cause which he espouses. What then can they think of the Christians of the primitive age, who suffered this gross corruption of infant baptism to enter and prevail in the church, without making the least ef

fort to oppose its progress? Surely they must be the most indifferent to truth, the most indolent and criminal of the human race.

And so indeed they would be, had their conduct been such as I have represented, and as upon this hypothesis it must have been. But far be this imputation from them. The early Christians were alive to every change: they were inclined to discuss every subject; and to lay stress upon the merest trifles. Irenæus, who lived before Tertul lian, wrote five books upon the many heresies with which the church was infested in that early age: and Epiphanius and Philaster in the fourth century add a great number to the catalogue of Irenæus, some of which are of the most frivolous nature. If therefore infant baptism had been an

f Epiphanius, bishop of Salamis, reckons eighty heresics, twenty before Christ and sixty afterwards. Philaster, bishop of Brixia, his contemporary, enumerated one hundred and fifty-six heresies: twenty-eight before Christ, and one hundred and twenty-eight afterwards. Some of these were curious. One was the heresy of maintaining the existence of more than one inhabited world. Another heresy was that of giving heathen names to the constellations. But the most remarkable and the most offensive of all was that of the Rhetorians, who maintained that "heretics might be honest men, and that God was not offended by diversities of opinion on theological subjects." This most dangerous and pestilential heresy attracted, as well as it might, the severest anathemas of the orthodox church. See Lardner's History of Heretics, book i. sect. 5.

innovation, it would have been marked as such; it would have been repelled with indignation, and stigmatized with the most opprobrious epithets. But the contrary was fact. Infant baptism passed in silence from generation to generation, and was practised by the universal church, because it was originally an apostolical institution known and acknowledged to be such like that of the Lord's day, though not inserted in the Memoirs of the Apostles. As such we now receive it and adhere to it: nor is it possible to conceive of any evidence more satisfactory and decisive. Let those who deny the conclusion explain the facts with equal probability upon some other hypothesis: till then, I adhere to the conclusion that Infant Baptism is a rite derived from the Apostles, and obligatory upon the Christian Church to the end of time.

LETTER III.

The testimony of Origen, Cyprian, Gregory Nazianzen, Pelagius, Celestius, Augustine, and Jerome. -Reflections.

THE

DEAR SIR,

HE testimony of Tertullian alone, had we no additional or collateral evidence, appears to me quite sufficient to prove that the baptism of the infant descendants of baptized Christians was the general and undisputed practice of the Christian Church at the close of the second century; and the more so, because his testimony is incidental and indirect, and the practice was contrary to his own judgment. But if infant baptism was the undisputed practice within a century after the apostolic age, it follows by direct and necessary consequence, that it was the practice and injunction of the Apostles themselves. For, if the apostolic institution had been limited to proselyte or to adult baptism, it is a moral impossibility that in the course of a century the practice of the universal church should have been so totally changed, in so material an article, without exciting the