BOOK THIRD.

Subjects of Baptism.

CHAPTER I.

SUBJECTS OF JOHN'S BAPTISM.

THE action called baptism, so far as judged convenient and necessary, has been ascertained. A miniature view, while it is more portable and convenient, may be as true and faithful to the original as one large as life. There is sometimes as much argument in a page as in a volume-in a sheet as in an octavo. The age of folios and quartos has passed away. Men of reflection know that many words and long sentences are not always arguments. In an age of books, like the present, a tract may be read while a treatise may be neglected; and, therefore, may be made more useful than a volume.

We now propose a miniature view of the subject of baptism, or the person that ought to be baptized. A million of pages could not convince a certain class of men on any subject to which they are already committed. They love to have it so: they will have it so; and, therefore, it is so. Our hopes generally terminate upon the uncommitted—the candid and the inquisitive for truth. For their sake, and with an almost single eye to their illumination and rescue from error, we select arguments and authorities, both as respects variety and number. To this class we now propound the question, Who of mankind have a right to receive the blessing of Christian baptism ?

Before tendering an answer to the important question, Who ought to be baptized, it will be expedient to inquire to what dispensation or institution of religion this solemn and significant ordinance belongs. Our most reformed standards of Protestantism affirm, with the Westminster Confession, that "baptism is an ordinance of the New Testament;" and, consequently, belonged not to the Patriarchal or Jewish institution of religion. This is

a very important decision of a very leading question bearing directly and forcibly on the great subject of investigation.

But we may be asked, What importance is attached to the fact that it is a New Testament ordinance? The fact that there is an Old and New Testament, an obsolete and an existing divine institution, is pregnant with very important results and bearings as respects both duty and privilege. A new Testament or a new Will makes a prior one of no binding influence or importance. Paul thus reasons in his letter to the Hebrews. His words are, "In that God saith, I will make a new institution, or testament, he hath made the first old;" that is, obsolete. Still, the Old Testament, being the mould or type of the New, may be of much value to us, even although it ceases to be binding. If the shell of an antediluvian fish increases our knowledge of physical nature, why may not the moulds and types of the Jews' religion, in which our Christian institution was once enveloped, increase our knowledge of that institution?

God has generally presented a picture to the eye as well as a word to the ear, in revealing his purposes and designs to the human race. To look into the Patriarchal and the Jewish institutions through the developments of the Christian religion, is, therefore, of much importance, both as respects the enlargement of our knowledge and the confirmation of our faith. To myself, as to many other students of the Bible, it is demonstrably evident that God has from the beginning of time been arranging the prominent characters and incidents in human history and the leading events of his own moral government and providence in such a way as to create faith in his testimony, and to illustrate and render more intelligible the mysteries of Christ and his gospel. To glance at a few of these, with a reference to the subject on hand, may not be without some interest and advantage to the inquirer after the proper subject of baptism.

Placing, then, before us the Jewish and Christian Scriptures, or the Oracles of God committed to the Jews and those committed to the Christians, we discover in them the following singular coincidences:-Each has its Adam, its constitution, its special community, its Mediator, its precepts, its promises, its privileges, its rewards, its punishments. Hence the frequency with which these are placed in contrast by the authors of the volume containing the Christian Scriptures.

In the apostolic writings we have two Adams contrasted-the

first and the second, the earthly and the heavenly. We fell in the first, we rise in the second. There are two chief covenantsthe first and the second, the old and the new; two MediatorsMoses of the first, and the Lord Messiah of the second; two communities-the Jewish and the Christian; two births-that of the flesh and that of the Spirit; two positive precepts-circumcision and baptism; two classes of promises-the one temporal, the other spiritual: two inheritances-one in Canaan and one in heaven.

But as the first existed for the sake of the second, and as the points of shadow and substance, of type and antitype, are numerous and various, the prominent characteristics, designs, and tendencies of these two divine institutions are set in order before us and pictured out in several conspicuous and remarkable persons, events, and circumstances. To these also we shall briefly allude as preparatory to a proper development of the question before us.

There are several public persons, such as Adam, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, with their families, made to stand in a double position to mankind-as natural progenitors of the race, and as typical or spiritual persons. Adam was the father and representative of the whole human race. From him we have all inherited both life and death. We all live because he lived; we die, because, as our representative, he sinned. His two sons, Cain and Abel, represent two seeds or races of men. Cain was à man and a murderer, and Abel was a saint and a martyr. Seth takes Abel's place, and his descendants remain for seventy generations, till the Messiah appears. Cain's offspring perished in the flood.

Abraham, of all the sons of Seth, was the most illustrious personage down to the times of the Messiah. He was constituted "the Father of the Faithful," and his faith the model faith of the family of God. He had two sons-one by nature and one by faith. The mother of the first was a slave of the last, a free woman. The two women represent the two covenants, and their two sons the two communities under them.* One of these sons was "born after the flesh,” the other “after the spirit," or by faith. Two families spring from these the Ishmaelites and the Israelites. But Isaac was the person from whom the promised

* Gal. iv.

Benefactor and Redeemer of the world was to come. "In Isaac shall thy seed be called." Isaac became a father: he has two sons, and only two-Esau and Jacob. Jacob is converted into Israel, while from Esau the Edomites descend. To Ishmae! Abraham gave a loaf of bread and a bottle of water; to Isaac, all his estate. To Esau God gave Mount Seir; to Israel, Canaan, for an inheritance.

It is worthy of remark that of these three most remarkable persons,-Adam, Abraham, and Isaac,-the first born sons were only born after the flesh, and lived after the flesh; while their second born sons were born after the Spirit, and lived according to the Spirit. 'Howbeit," said Paul, "that was not first which was spiritual, but that which is natural, and afterwards that which is spiritual." Of the first class were Cain, Ishmael, and Esau; of the second, Abel, Isaac, and Israel.

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Such were the original elements, the mystic alphabet of spiritual things, as time in its evolutions afterwards developed. The typical nation is created out of the flesh of Isaac, according to what God had said to Abraham-"In Isaac shall thy seed be called." Hence the fortunes of Jacob and his sons are spread out before us from that day until the Messiah is born, to the comparative obscuration and disparagement of every other nation and people.

They became "a nation, great, and mighty, and populous," and are placed under the special wing of Jehovah as their King. Their males are marked in the flesh by a special covenant entered into in the 99th of Abraham, one year before Isaac was born. Hence Isaac was born in circumcision.

While on their way from Egypt to Canaan, they are constituted into a holy nation, a kingdom of priests; not spiritually holy, indeed, but holy as respected the flesh. Hence the free use of the term holy in its application to that people. Their camp, their tabernacle, with all its furniture,—their priesthood, with all its appurtenances, as well as their persons, were separated, sanctified, or made holy to the Lord.

It is at Sinai that Moses appears as a mediator. It is there that the natural seed, the inheritance, and a special relation to God, are engrossed in one great politico-ecclesiastic institution. These three are now imbodied in one covenant and solemnly ratified.

The seed of Abraham had now multiplied into millions, but

the promised seed was not yet come. While the flesh of the Messiah is in the nation, it must continue under a theocracy. It must be under the special care and direction of God. Its institutions must all be mystic, while the Messiah is hid in the family of Abraham.

The new birth was represented by a “baptism into Moses, in the cloud, and in the sea.' The mystic manna, or 66 THE BREAD OF LIFE," was concealed under the covert of the manna that daily fell around their dwellings. The stricken Rock, whence issued a living stream, was to them Christ. The cloud which overshadowed them by day and illuminated them by night, which guided and protected them through the wilderness, was to them what the Holy Spirit is to Christians in all his influences through his word and ordinances. Their whole pilgrimage through the desert is a picturesque representation of human life under a remedial system. Death was shadowed forth in their Jordan, and heaven itself in their Canaan. The things that happened unto them happened unto them for types, and they are written for our admonition, upon whom the ends of the world" (the consummation of that dispensation) "have come.

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The long-promised and joyfully anticipated hour arrives-the "fulness of time" has come-the proper offspring of the woman appears. His harbinger anticipates him by a few months. In proper time he announces his appearance. He proclaims the acceptable year of the Lord, and prepares a people for his reign. He commences in the bosom of the Jewish church. He strikes at their cardinal errors, in theory and practice. He says, "Think not to say you have Abraham for your father." He repudiates all reliance upon the flesh. "God," said he, can raise, of these inanimate stones, sons to Abraham." "Reform," continues he, "for the REIGN OF HEAVEN approaches." He assures his countrymen that the day of excision and destruction was nigh to all them that trusted in the flesh. To use his own words, "the axe” then lay at the root of every barren tree. The fatal blow was about to be inflicted upon them, that would convert them into fuel. He announces, in very intelligible words, that his immediate successor, whose way he was preparing, would immerse the people in fire and in the Holy Spirit. They should all be immersed into their respective tenets. Those who received the Messiah should be immersed into the Holy Spirit ; and those who did not would be cast into fire: for so the con