Reformed believed that some infants are actually damned; because obnoxious to reprobation must mean actual reprobation, as obnoxous to original sin, includes its actual existence. The answer is, that in both cases the word means exposed to; for they held that original sin came on infants as a punishment of Adam's transgression. By Adam's sin, infants were exposed to original sin, which actually came upon them; but does it follow from this, that every thing else to which they are exposed by Adam's sin actually comes upon them? Van Mastricht expressly, and without contradicting himself, states the contrary. He says that while these Reformati, the Calvinists, believed that original sin did come upon all who were exposed to it, concerning the sentence of reprobation, though they could not but admit that infants were exposed to it, as proper subjects, if God pleased, of election and reprobation, yet, that he did elect the children of believers they fully believed, but whether he did elect, or passed by the children of unbelievers, as the Bible taught nothing on the subject, they left them in the hands of God. Van Mastricht does testify as we represented, and he does not testify as the reviewer represents; neither does he contradict himself; and if he had, we hope the reviewer will not insist that what a man asserts in one place is not true, because he contradicts it in another.

The articles of the synod of Dort, which it was as relevant to appeal to in evidence of what was the received opinion of the synod, as it was irrelevant in the reviewer to appeal to the private opinions of members to prove it, do not include the doctrine of infant damnation. The reviewer admits, "We do not find the doctrine expressed." No, nor was it in any form received by the synod, as a doctrine of the Bible. According to the reviewer, the synod would not even permit the doctrine to be discussed; and when the deputies were permitted to lay in their sentiments on the subject, a majority of the deputation did not avow the doctrine, which, to the reviewer, is conclusive evidence that they believed it. It may be so. But did the synod itself receive a doctrine, which they would not allow to be discussed, and which only a minority in an unofficial form avowed?

The thirty nine articles of the church of England do not contain the doctrine of infant damnation. Again, the reviewer travels out of the record, in quest of parole testimony. He thinks the framers of the articles believed in infant damnation, and that the phrase, "none can enter the kingdom of God, except he be regenerate and born anew of water and the Holy Ghost," meant, according to the common interpretation, "that baptism by water was essential to constitute a living member of Christ's holy church." But has he forgotten that the Lutherans charged the Calvinists with denying that John iii. 5, meant baptism, and made it essential to salvation? Calvin on the phrase, "born of water and the spirit," says

:

"As if he had said, By the Spirit, who, in the ablution and purification of the souls of the faithful, performs the office of water. Nor is this a novel mode of expression for it perfectly corresponds with that declaration of John the Baptist: He that cometh after me, shall baptise with the Holy Ghost and with fire."* As to baptise with the Holy Spirit and with fire, therefore, is to confer the Holy Spirit, who, in regeneration, has the office and nature of fire; so to be born of water and of the Spirit is no other than to receive that influence of the Spirit, which does in the soul what water does on the body. I know that others give a different interpretation, but I have no doubt that this is the genuine sense; because the intention of Christ is simply to teach that all must be divested of their own nature, who aspire to the kingdom of heaven."

"It is further evident that their notion ought to be exploded, because it adjudges all unbaptised persons to eternal death. Let us suppose their tenet to be admitted, and baptism to be administered to adults alone: what, will they say, will become of a youth who is rightly instructed in the first principles of piety, if he desires to be baptised, but, contrary to the expectation of all around, happens to be snatched away by sudden death? The Lord's promise is clear; 'Whosoever believeth on the Son, shall not come into condemnation ;' but is passed from death unto life!' We are nowhere informed of his having condemned one who had not yet been baptised.

"Moreover, they sentence all infants to eternal death, by denying them baptism, which, according to their own confession, is necessary to salvation. Let them see now, how well they agree with the language of Christ, which adjudges the kingdom of heaven to little children." Vol. iii. pp. 374, 375.

Does not the reviewer know the high estimation in which Calvin was held in England, at the time the thirty nine articles were formed? By what authority then does he insist, contrary to the testimony of the Lutherans and Van Mastricht, that the phrase, born of water and the Spirit, was intended to teach the necessity of baptism to salvation? If some did understand it so, many did not; and it is not the received doctrine of the articles.

The Westminster Assembly's confession, adopted by the synod at Cambridge, does not contain the doctrine of infant damnation. The reviewer admits, that the words may have an interpretation put upon them which will make them prove nothing. He is right, and it is the very interpretation which Calvin himself, according to his exposition of John iii. 5, might put upon thern; and which the Reformati, (Calvinists) did put upon them, believing that infants of believers were certainly elected, and as to the children of unbelievers, as the Bible revealed nothing, they believed nothing, but left them to the merciful disposal of God. It is the meaning which Dickinson did, and Calvinists now do, give to the phrase, elect infants, and which the words themselves show was the meaning which the assembly put upon them. For, "the others, not elected," are spoken of, not as being infants, but adults, who may be called by the ministry of the word and by the Spirit, and yet never truly come to Christ, and therefore cannot be saved. It proves that the assembly believed that some infants are certainly elected and saved, and could not tell but all were. therefore neither teach nor imply infant damnation. European witnesses, to prove that infant damnation

• Matt, iii. 11.

The articles So much for has been the

↑ John iii. 18. v. 24.

received doctrine of the churches denominated Calvinistic. While in respect to New England and the United States, not a creed has been found, not an approved author has been quoted, not an individual has been named,* as teaching the doctrine, amid the thousands of false accusations. In no solitary instance, has the accusation of teaching the doctrine of infant damnation been fastened on creed or approved author. Who the accusers are, who have represented Calvinists as so debased and brutified as to believe infant damnation, and so cowardly as to be afraid to avow it, we now know; and having called upon them for proof of these injurious accusations, and they, having taken time, ransacked libraries, and importuned friends probably on both sides of the Atlantic-have at length discovered and confessed, that they cannot prove what they have asserted, and knew when they made the accusations that they could not prove them. One man only in all America have they found who taught the doctrine, and he a poet, a theological poet, whose Day of Doom,' once so popular, and "which many aged persons with whom we are acquainted can still repeat, though they may not have met with a copy since they were in leading strings,' is all the palliation the reviewer finds of his enormity, in charging the whole Calvinistic body of New England, and the United States, with believing the doctrine of infant damnation.

6

And what is the inference from all this, which the reviewer and his friends have drawn? Why, that I am guilty of falsehood -convicted in the teeth-and, like the witnesses, cast down in the streets of the great city, dead, never again to move a pen, or open eye or lip, while shouts of victory long and loud rise up around me, without sympathy enough to check merriment and the sending of gifts. Thus Unitarian reviewers gain, and thus they celebrate their victories.

Here I might stop, but that it is evident that the reviewer supposes I have, in my note and its vindication, made pretensions to an acquaintance with authors which I do not possess, and have denied, ignorantly or wilfully, that they teach what he has abundantly proved that they do teach. I am not surprised that his friends, who read with partial feelings, or even that my own friends, who read without a vivid recollection of the whole controversy, should apprehend that the reviewer has fairly established one point at least against me. But this depends altogether on the question, whether I have denied the point which the reviewer has established; or whether it is, or ever has been, (only as he has chosen to suppose it so,) a point at issue in this controversy.

I have never claimed to be the organ of my party, nor made pretensions to great learning, nor set up for infallibility-attributes with which the reviewer, it seems, delights to clothe me, as the victim is decked with garlands, to render my downfall the more

* Michael Wigglesworth always excepted.

conspicuous, and his victory the more splendid. I volunteered to defend myself and the Calvinistic part of the community from unquestionable, and now proved and admitted slander. have made any mistakes, it will give me pleasure to retract them, when they shall be perceived. If the reviewer chooses to ascribe them to unworthy motives, rather than to the liability to mistake incident to all controversial writings, he has my permission.

To understand the subject, it will be needful to refresh the memory both of the reviewer and the reader with the first review of my note, to which my three letters are a reply, and which, in his reply to my three letters, (contained in his volume taken from the Christian Examiner,) he has suppressed. In that suppressed review, he interprets my note as saying, that "the doctrine of infant damnation has not been maintained in any respectable Calvinistic book which Dr. B. may reasonably be supposed to have seen or heard of, though he has been, for thirty years, conversant with Calvinistic writers the most approved." He then proceeds to quote his authors, European and American. In my reply, I did not controvert the construction given to my note, because the proofs adduced by the reviewer did not render it necessary. He produced extracts from approved authors, which, as he supposed, contained the doctrine, and with which my note, as he interpreted it, implied a professed acquaintance. I showed that the extracts given from Calvin, Turrettin, Edwards, Bellamy, Gale, Boston, &c., do not teach infant damnation. The reviewer has since admitted that all which the extracts say on original sin, and which, if italics and capitals indicate anything, constituted his chief reliance, are nothing to the purpose, and, though urgently challenged, he has declined the attempt to show how predestination proves it, but left these authors to speak for themselves. I have shown that predestination does not include the doctrine of infant damnation. Of course, every passage quoted from Calvin, and Turrettin, and Edwards, and Bellamy, and Gale, and Boston, is an utter failure. In respect to Twiss and Gill, I showed that they are not approved authors in the sense of the note. The whole attempt, therefore, in the first review, to convict me of ignorance or misrepresentation failed, of which the omission to republish it, when so necessary to a fair exhibition of the controversy, implies a full consciousness. Still, in his reply to my three letters, the reviewer goes on referring to my note, as if extending its pretensions to accurate knowledge, not only to all the writers he at first quoted, but to all which had since been looked up, perhaps on both sides of the Atlantic. It has now, therefore, become necessary to give the fair interpretation of the note. The language is:

"Having passed the age of fifty, and been conversant for thirty years with the most approved Calvinistic writers, and personally acquainted with many of

the most distinguished Calvinistic divines, in New England, and in the middle and southern and western States, I must say that I have never seen or heard of any book which contained such a sentiment, nor a man, minister or layman, who believed or taught it. And I feel authorized to say, that Calvinists, as a body, are as far from teaching the doctrine of infant damnation, as any of those who falsely accuse them."

By most approved authors, I ought in fairness to be understood to mean, primarily at least, if not exclusively, the most approved authors of my own school, whose expositions of the doctrines of original sin and predestination reject both the sentiment and the phraseology on which the reviewer at first relied as evidence in the case. The exigences of my argument would also indicate that the most approved writers, in my mind when the note was written, must have been the most approved writers of New England. For it was myself, and the Calvinists of Boston and New England, who came especially in contact with Unitarians, and were slandered by them as holding to infant damnation. To show that Calvinists two hundred years ago did not teach the doctrine might not have been conclusive: For it might have been said, You reject some things which the Reformers believed, and, for aught we can tell, you may believe what they rejected.' It was, therefore, immediately and logically and almost exclusively relevant to appeal, in refutation of an existing calumny, to our own most approved authors.

If, then, the language of my note would possibly bear a more extended construction, environed as it is by these circumstances, it does not adrnit of it; for an author is not to be understood to mean all which it is possible to attach to his language, but what, from the circumstances of the case, he ought reasonably to be supposed to mean. But if you take the language of the note itself, and press out its entire possible meaning, it begins and ends with American writers. "Having been conversant with the most approved Calvinistic writers and most distinguished divines-of New England, and in the middle and southern and western States-" Now if I should be refused the privilege of being understood as referring to the most approved writers of New England, and the meaning should be extended in respect to writers, as it is in respect to men, to the middle and southern and western States, still, by grammatical construction, as well as the force of circumstances, the writers referred to are exclusively those of the United States. Yet the reviewer quotes a long list of European writers, in evidence of my ignorance and falsehood, as if I had made the express declaration that I had read all the Calvinistic writers of the whole world, who are, or ever were at any time most approved; and that, to my certain knowledge, no approved Calvinistic writer does, or ever did, teach that infants are damned. He is obliged to set up, as the language of my note, what it does not say or mean, before, by any possibility, he can bring me