walk. The mass of the inhabitants of the countries called Christian are presented to my view as persons, who might indeed have belonged to any of the Apostolic churches; but who would have been put away from among them; and who therefore are not now to be received by a Christian Church, without evidence of their repentance. That the Apostles would consider the mass of the inhabitants of Christendom as professing Christians, I am the more persuaded, when I consider the several passages in which they have predicted the overspreading corruptions, that should prevail in the last days, contrary to Christian truth and Christian practice. I cannot persuade myself that when Paul for instance (2 Tim. iii. 1-5.) describes the awful characters of ungodliness that should appear in men, he intends to intimate any unusual or extraordinary corruption of human nature, manifesting itself in heathens. In those who professed not the faith of Christ, neither Paul nor Timothy would ever look for other characters than he there enumerates. But surely the extracrdinary circumstance he intends to mark is this-that men professing the faith of Christ should be such as he describes in that passage.

I can have no doubt that, if he were now in this country, he would deal with the mass of such professors as with professors of Christianity; and that he would accordingly prove against them, from the Apostolic writings, the inconsistencies with which they are chargeable; as he brought forward against the unbelieving Jews the writings of Moses and the Prophets;—what he never did against the Gentiles. Now, as sure as I am that he would testify against them as false professors of Christianity, so sure must I be that he would not baptize any of them, who (receiving his rebukes and exhortations and instructions) should appear to be brought to repentance. For this would be to call them then to take upon them a profession, which he would allow they had from their childhood made.

Again according to the Baptist principles, the Judaizing teachers who wanted to impose circumcision on the Gentile converts to Christianity, were chargeable with an error and departure from Apostolic principles, more striking than any which the Apostles censure them for; and yet this was passed by without any animadversion. It will be allowed by all that these teachers would have had circumcised, not only the adult disciples, but their youngest children; and this on the ground of their conversion to the faith of the Messiah. Now, if we suppose, according to the Baptist principles, that in the Apostolic churches the infant children of the adult members were not considered as belonging to the Church, there would be in this matter a radical opposition between these Judaizing teachers and the Apostles, which however is not taken the slightest notice of it. They are only reproved as imposing a burdensome and needless yoke upon the disciples. No candid and intelligent Baptist will question but these men were Pædo-baptists; yet the Gentile converts are not warned against that practice as erroneous.

Indeed I think it is plain that all the Jewish proselytes to Christianity, in professing to believe that Jesus was the Messiah in whom were fulfilled all the law and the prophets, did not consider their religion changed. But what a striking change would it have been,

if they were no longer to consider their children as of the same religious community with themselves.

As to those who will still urge the incapability of infants to know or do any thing, that should qualify them to be members of Christ's kingdom, or warrant us to consider them as of his visible body; it is to be feared that they need to be reminded of that solemn truth, that unless they receive his kingdom even as an infant, they shall not enter into it. An infant is as well qualified as they ever can be to be blessed by its King, and is as capable of being saved by Him and of receiving eternal life at his hands.

I have already mentioned the Apostolic exhortation to Christian parents to bring up their children in the nurture and admonition of the Lord. Now, supposing that Baptism was practised in the Apostolic churches according to the Baptist principles, I confess I cannot account for the absolute silence of the Apostles upon this subject in all their writings. I know few matters, in which the Churches would have been more likely to need admonition and instruction than this;-admonition, for instance, either against unwarrantable precipitancy or unwarrantable delay in having their children acknowledged as professors of Christianity by baptism. And yet amidst so many and so minute admonitions and reproofs and instructions addressed to various Churches by various Apostles, and to the overseers of Churches, we find not a trace upon this subject. Nor do we find the remotest hint of such a class of persons, as must have been numerous according to the Baptist principles ;children growing up in a professional assent to the Christian instructions they received from their parents, but as yet not acknowledged to be professors of Christianity;-a middle class between professed unbelievers and professed believers.

I have heard it said that this is drawing an inference from the silence of Scripture, which that silence does not warrant. But the objection is made by those who do not, or will not understand the argument. I do not argue from the mere silence of the Scriptures, that the thing about which they are silent was or was not. But this

I say, that so far as it is probable, from the nature of any thing, that if it were so or so, the Scriptures would not be silent about it, so far is their silence upon it a probable argument that the thing was not so. Now it appears to me that Baptism, upon the Baptist principles, is such a thing; and from the silence of Scripture on the subject, I cannot but see a confirmed probability that these principles are false.

And it is vain to say that what the Scriptures relate of the Baptism of adult believers is sufficient, and shews that there is not that silence of which I speak. For every instance of adult baptism related in the Bible is an instance-not of the baptism of one brought up from childhood in the profession of Christianity-but of one who had never before professed Christianity. So that there is that absolute silence on the subject, which I have asserted-so far as the Baptist principles are concerned in it.

The Baptists are fond of challenging others to produce scriptural precept or example for the baptism of infants: and in order to make

out their position that there is no scriptural example for it, they take it for granted that in all the instances, in which we read of entire households being baptized by the Apostles, there were none in these houses but adults. But waving this;-I may more confidently challenge them to produce either scriptural precept or scriptural example of adult baptism, under such circumstances as they practise it and desire to impose it on others;-the baptism of an adult person, who has never professedly been of any other than the Christian faith.

Again:-pado-baptism, or the baptism of the children of Christian proselytes, was confessedly practised very early in the Churches. We have decisive historical proof that little more than 100 years after the death of the Apostles it was of general practice in them all, wherever baptism was practised at all: and that they were at that time wholly strangers to the idea of its not having been practised by the Apostles. Now I do not argue at all from the practice of the early churches, as if it had the least authority to decide what is right. But I take that historical fact; and I say that it is scarcely to be accounted for on the supposition that the Baptist principles are scriptural. For, on this supposition, there was going on in each of the Apostolic churches a thing of constant practice, which would have kept up a continued testimony against the introduction of pædobaptism. Not only were the offspring of the disciples not baptized in early childhood; but they were baptized as they grew up-as many of them as made a credible profession of believing in Christ. say that, supposing this to have been the case in the first churches, I cannot conceive how the practice of pædo-baptism should first have been introduced;-and not only so, but the very tradition forgotten that the contrary practice had prevailed a hundred years before.

I

Whatever church we may suppose it first to have been introduced in, there must have been in that church, and in all other churches, a known practice contrary to its introduction;-a practice of that nature, that it could not have been lost sight of at the time that it was laid aside. We know the solicitude with which believing parents, bringing up their children in the nurture and admonition of the Lord, would watch the period of adolescence, when their profession of the Christian doctrines, in which they were instructed, would be sufficient to have them acknowledged as professors of Christianity, and receive the ordinance of baptism. And am I to suppose that any church of a sudden laid aside this practice altogether, and adopted the contrary one of baptizing all the children-even the youngest infants-of their proselytes; and that all the other churches followed their example; and that, before the generation could be extinct in which this great innovation was introduced, it was forgotten that it was an innovation? It seems to me a very improbable supposition and I think I can shew that any corruption of doctrine or practice, which did creep into the churches, was of a nature not at all parallel to this, but essentially different.

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Finally-the Baptist principles seem to me to involve questions of inextricable perplexity. For instance

1. How soon are children, brought up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord, to be baptized?

2. Who are qualified and authorised to baptize?

The Baptists assert that their adult baptism is a rite of divine institution, and of universal obligation on Christians. But they acknowledge that it commenced-or (as they will say) was revived—a very few centuries ago. How then did it commence? Of necessity, by some unbaptized person baptizing another: and if this be not allowable, they are none of them duly baptized to the present day. Let any candid mind compare such a farcical proceeding, with the arguments by which they enforce the importance of the rite; and then say whether the inconsistency of the matter would not be ludicrous, if its consequences were not so awful.

3. If the profession of any of them after their baptism prove insincere, are they to be re-baptized on their repentance?

4. Those who (like many in this country) have been baptized indeed when adults, but in an evidently unconverted state and by men evidently unconverted, are they to be baptized again upon their conversion? It would be easy to shew that the principles of the Baptists necessarily lead to the affirmative of both these questions; however they shrink from it in their practice.

AN ESSAY

ON THE

DIVINE AUTHORITY OF THE APOSTOLIC TRADITIONS;

THE

NATURE AND LIMITS OF SCRIPTURAL FORBEARANCE;

AND OTHER SUBJECTS,

CONNECTED WITH

THE WALK OF CHRISTIAN CHURCHES.

ADDRESSED TO THE SERIOUS ATTENTION OF ALL THOSE WHO BELIEVE

THE APOSTOLIC GOSPEL.

Cæterum hanc admonitionem esse temporalem et localem, nostris institutis non accommodatam, recte, ut opinor, monent eruditi. Nempe hæc publica admonitio non potest habere locum nisi in cœtu minore ne speciem quidem auctoritatis civilis præ se ferente, seque ipsum e Christi præceptis liberrime gubernante. In statum ecclesiæ externum et civilem, qui apud nos est, hæc disciplinæ christianæ pars parum convenit.-ROSENMULLERI Scholia in Matt. c. xviii, v. 17.

[First Published 1807.]

INTRODUCTION.

I HAVE addressed the following pages to those, who believe the APOSTOLIC GOSPEL. They alone are competent judges of the subject, or immediately concerned in it. If any one ask, what I mean by the APOSTOLIC GOSPEL, or that Gospel of Christ which the Apostles testified; I refer him to their writings. I refer him to those passages in the Acts of the Apostles, where we have on record the testimonies they delivered. Paul, for instance, addressing his Jewish brethren in the synagogue at Antioch, and declaring to them the glad tidings concerning Jesus of Nazareth as the Messiah, of whom all the prophets spake, sums up those glad tidings in the following words-Be it known unto you therefore, men and brethren, that through this Jesus is preached unto you the forgiveness of sins. And