Crosby's History of the English Baptists preserves the opinion of Sir John Floyer, the physician, that immersion at baptism was of great value in a sanitary point of view, and that its discontinuance, about the year 1600, had been attended with ill effects on the physical condition of the population. Dealing with the question purely in a professional sense, he declared his belief that the English would return to the practice of immersion, when the medical faculty or the science of physic had plainly proved to them by experiment the safety and utility of cold bathing. "They did great injury to their own children and all posterity, who first introduced the alteration of this truly ancient ceremony of immersion, and were the occasion of a degenerate, sickly, tender race ever since. Instead of prejudicing the health of their children, immersion would prevent many hereditary diseases if it were still practised." He tells, in support of his belief, that he had been assured by a man, eighty years old, whose father lived while immersion was still the practice, that parents at the baptism would ask the priest to dip well in the water that part of the child in which any disease used to afflict themselves, to prevent its descending to their posterity. And it had long been a proverbial saying among old people, if any one complained of pain in their limbs, that "surely that limb had not been dipt in the font." Immersion, however, was far otherwise regarded in quarters where professional animus of another kind militated against its revival by the powerful dissenting body of the Baptists. Baxter vehemently and exaggeratedly denounced it as a breach of the Sixth Commandment, which says, "Thou shalt not kill;" and called on the civil magistrate to interfere for its prevention, to save the lives of the lieges. "Covetous physicians," he thought, should not be much against the Anabaptists; for "catarrhs and obstructions, which are the two great fountains of most mortal diseases in man's body, could scarce have a more notable means to produce them where they are not, or to increase them where they are. Apoplexies, lethargies, palsies, and all comatous diseases, would be promoted by it"—and then comes a long string of terrible maladies that would follow on the dipping. "In a word, it is good for nothing but to despatch men out of the world that are troublesome, and to ranken churchyards." Again: "If murder be a sin, then dipping ordinarily in cold water over head in England is a sin. And if those that would make it men's religion to murder themselves, and urge it on their consciences as their duty, are not to be suffered in a commonwealth, any more than highway murderers; then judge how these Anabaptists, that teach the necessity of such dippings, are to be suffered." Had Baxter lived in these cold water days, tubbing would probably have taught him a little more toleration.
BISHOP KENNET ON LATE REPENTANCE.
Doctor, afterwards Bishop, Kennet preached the funeral sermon of the first Duke of Devonshire in 1707. The sentiments of the sermon gave much umbrage; people complained that the preacher "had built a bridge to heaven for men of wit and parts, but excluded the duller part of mankind from any chance of passing it." The complaint was founded on this passage, in speaking of a late repentance: "This rarely happens but in men of distinguished sense and judgment. Ordinary abilities may be altogether sunk by a long vicious course of life; the duller flame is easily extinguished. The meaner sinful wretches are commonly given up to a reprobate mind, and die as stupidly as they lived; while the nobler and brighter parts have an advantage of understanding the worth of their souls before they resign them. If they are allowed the benefit of sickness, they commonly awake out of their dream of sin, and reflect, and look upwards. They acknowledge an infinite being; they feel their own immortal part; they recollect and relish the Holy Scriptures; they call for the elders of the church; they think what to answer at a judgment-seat. Not that God is a respecter of persons; but the difference is in men; and the more intelligent the nature is, the more susceptible of divine grace." The successor to the deceased Duke did not think ill of the sermon; and recommended Kennet to the Deanery of Peterborough, which he obtained in 1707.
A MAL APROPOS QUOTATION.
In one of the debates in the House of Lords, on the war with France in 1794, a speaker quoted the following lines from Bishop Porteous' Poem on War:—
"One murder makes a villain,
Millions a hero! Princes are privileged
To kill, and numbers sanctify the crime.
Ah! why will kings forget that they are men,
And men that they are brethren? Why delight
In human sacrifice? Why burst the ties
Of nature, that should knit their souls together
In one soft bond of amity and love?
They yet still breathe destruction, still go on,
Inhumanly ingenious to find out
New pains for life; new terrors for the grave;
Artifices of Death! Still monarchs dream
Of universal empire growing up
From universal ruin. Blast the design,
Great God of Hosts! nor let Thy creatures fall
Unpitied victims at Ambition's shrine."
The Bishop, who was present, and who generally voted with the Ministry, was asked by an independent nobleman, if he were really the author of the lines that had been quoted. The Bishop replied, "Yes, my Lord; but—they were not composed for the present war."
CHARLES II. ON SERMON-READING.
The practice of reading sermons, now so prevalent, was reproved by Charles II., in the following ordinance on the subject, issued by the Chancellor of the University of Cambridge:—
"Vice-Chancellor and Gentlemen,—Whereas his Majesty is informed, that the practice of reading sermons is generally taken up by the preachers before the University, and therefore continues even before himself; his Majesty hath commanded me to signify to you his pleasure, that the said practice, which took its beginning from the disorders of the late times, be wholly laid aside; and that the said preachers deliver their sermons, both in Latin and English, by memory without book; as being a way of preaching which his Majesty judgeth most agreeable to the use of foreign Churches, to the custom of the University heretofore, and to the nature of that holy exercise. And that his Majesty's command in these premises may be duly regarded and observed, his further pleasure is, that the names of all such ecclesiastical persons as shall continue the present supine and slothful way of preaching, be from time to time signified to me by the Vice-Chancellor for the time being, on pain of his Majesty's displeasure. October 8, 1674.