Common Sense Applied to Religion; Or, The Bible and the People

by Catharine Esther Beecher

Thus the Baptists are separated on the question of the mode of administering the rite of admission to this Church.

The Presbyterians and Congregationalists separate on the question of appointing the officers of this organization.

The Methodists are an offset from the Episcopal Church, with reference chiefly to modes of bringing men into their Church.

All agree that it is "regenerate persons" alone who are fully members of this organization.

There are diversities of opinion as to the relation of baptized children to this body, but none allow them to be admitted to its distinctive ordinance except they profess to be "regenerated."

It is a matter for interesting conjecture as to the probable results on Christendom had the theory of Pelagius been established by pope, emperor, and councils instead of that of Augustine.

In that case we may suppose that the efforts and energies of the churches, instead of to these rites and forms, would have been mainly directed to the right training of the human mind in obedience to all the physical, domestic, social, and moral laws of the Creator.

Instead of instituting two standards of right and wrong, the "common" and the "evangelical," as is now so generally done, children would have been taught that all that was just, honorable, benevolent, and lovely in their feelings and conduct was as acceptable and right to God as it is to men. Their parents, instead of that sense of helpless inability resulting from the belief that their little ones could feel and do nothing but sin until new mental powers were given, and that the gift was bestowed by the rule of sovereign "election," would have felt that every successful effort to cultivate all lovely and right habits and feelings was advancing their offspring nearer to God and their heavenly home, and that, when their wisdom failed, the promise of "the Comforter" was given to encourage them in this great work.

Thus they would expect their children to become "new creatures in Christ Jesus" by the combined influence of the heavenly and earthly parents gradually transforming their ignorance and selfishness to knowledge and benevolence.

That the theory of Augustine, originally established in the Christian churches by pains and penalties, is still sustained there by such influences, is apparent from these facts.