The purpose you aim to accomplish can be effectually secured by a different resolution to that introduced yesterday; if you will stay and hear what the brethren may say about the appointment of a large committee to take up this subject before I lay your resignation before them, I shall feel much gratified. I again say, I look upon your proposed withdrawal with deep sorrow, and must say, I cannot bring myself to believe that on such grounds you can be justified in taking so serious a step.
Dr. Ryerson did attend the Conference as suggested, after which he wrote to Dr. Wood:—
I listened with delight and hope to the observations and recommendations which you made. I anticipated happy results from the appointment of the very large committee which you nominated, and which might be considered as representing the sentiments and feelings of the Conference. But from the lengthened meeting of that committee, in the evening, it was clear that no disposition existed to modify the power of ministers to expel persons from the Church for non-attendance at a meeting which, in the 12th section, chap. 1st, page 47, of our own Discipline, taken from the writings of Mr. Wesley, is declared to be "prudential," even among Methodists—that thus the highest and most awful penalty that the Church can inflict—a penalty analagous to capital punishment in the administration of civil law—is to be executed upon members of the Church for the omission of what our own Discipline does not exalt to the rank of a "prudential" means of grace among Christians,—only among Methodists.
It was also clear that views of baptism prevailed (I cannot say how widely) at variance with the 17th Article of Faith in our Discipline,[139] and altogether opposite to those set forth by Mr. Wesley in his sermons and in his Treatise on Baptism.
But that for which I was not prepared (which I supposed to have been settled, and which I therefore assumed), was the obviously prevalent opinion against the Church membership of children baptized by our ministry. It will be recollected that I had not proposed any other condition or mode of admitting persons into our Church from without, than that which already exists amongst us; but I urged in behalf of both parents and children, the practical recognition of the rights and claims of children who were admitted and acknowledged as members of the Church by baptism, as implied in our Form of Baptism, and according to our Catechism, and according to what the Conference unanimously declared at Hamilton, in 1853, our Church holds to be among the privileges of baptized persons,—namely, that "they are made members of the visible Church of Christ." Persons cannot, of course, be members of the "visible" Church of Christ without becoming members of some visible branch or section of it; and it is not pretended that children baptized by our ministry are members of any other visible portion of the Church of Christ than the Wesleyan. To deny, therefore, that the baptized children of our people are members of our Church, and that they should be acknowledged as such, and as such be impressed with their obligations and privileges, and as such be prepared for, and brought into, the spiritual communion and fellowship of the Church, on coming to the years of accountability, is, it appears to me, to make the Sacrament of Baptism a nullity, and to disfranchise thousands of children of divinely chartered rights and privileges. Mr. Wesley, in his Treatise on Baptism, in stating the third benefit of baptism, remarks:—
By baptism we are admitted into the Church, and consequently made members of Christ, its Head. The Jews were admitted into the Church by circumcision, so are the Christians by baptism.
Mr. Wesley, speaking of the proper subjects of baptism, says:
If infants are capable of making a covenant, and were and still are under the evangelical covenant, then they have a right to baptism, which is the entering seal thereof. But infants are capable of making a covenant, and were and still are under the evangelical covenant.
The custom of nations and common reason of mankind prove that infants may enter into a covenant, and may be obliged by compacts made by others in their name, and receive advantage by them. But we have stronger proof than this, even God's own word: "Ye stand this day all of you before the Lord,—your captains, with all the men of Israel; your little ones, your wives, and the stranger,—that thou shouldst enter into covenant with the Lord thy God."—Deut. xxix. 10-12. Now, God would never have made a covenant with little children, if they had not been capable of it. It is not said children only, but little children, the Hebrew word properly signifying infants. And these may be still, as they were of old, obliged to perform, in aftertime, what they are not capable of performing at the time of their entering into that obligation.
The infants of believers, the true children of faithful Abraham, always were under the Gospel covenant. They were included in it, they had a right to it, and to the seal of it; as an infant heir has a right to his estate, though he cannot yet have actual possession.—Vol. x., English Edition, pp. 193, 194. Vol. vi., American Edition, pp. 16, 17.