Mr. K. The apostles, who changed the Sabbath from the seventh to the first day, knew the mind of Christ.
Mr. M. And so the men, who first practised infant baptism, knew the minds of the inspired apostles, and they knew the mind of Christ. But to go a step further back, the only ground for inferring that the Sabbath is rightly changed from the seventh to the first day of the week, is the incidental mention of Christ's meeting his assembled disciples a few times after his resurrection on the first day. On that slight ground we are all content to rest our present observance of the Sabbath. Now, I say that the mention of the baptism of households eight times, in one form and another, is as good a warrant for infant baptism, as those two or three Sabbath-evening meetings were for the institution of the Lord's-day Sabbath.
Mr. K. I cannot agree with you, Mr. M., in putting circumcision on the same level with the Sabbath.
Mr. M. I myself see a resemblance in the changes made in the two cases. I have no wish to proselyte you to my views. I have only answered your polite inquiries.
Mr. K. O, I know that; we shall be good friends still; but I see no grounds for baptizing children on the faith of their parents.
Mr. M. We look at the thing from different points of view. I see it as clearly as I see that the church of God is essentially the same in all ages, with its variety of forms. This matter of children's baptism is with me a spiritual thing, and is independent of dispensations. You know that a river may have, in one district of the earth through which it flows, one name, and in another district another name, while it is the same river. Now, the divine recognition of believers' children, as standing in a special covenanted relation with God, is the headspring of infant dedication by the use of a rite. The object of this recognition is, that He may have a godly seed. God does not perpetuate religion directly by natural descent, it is true, but he seeks to promote it by descent from a pious parentage, and he therefore endows that parentage with special privileges and promises. The inclusion of children with their believing parents has been the great means of perpetuating religion in the earth. It is a stream which washed the shores of Judaism under the name of circumcision; now it washes the shores of the Gentiles under the name of baptism. For the Saviour or the apostles to have reäppointed infant dedication, with the use of the cotemporary initiating ordinance, would, to my mind, be as superfluous as for the allied powers to have agreed that the Danube should still run through Austria.
Mr. K. Your principle of interpretation, Mr. M., has brought in all the darkness which has covered the earth in the Romish apostacy. There will be no end to human inventions in religion, if this principle prevails.
Mr. M. But, my dear sir, there certainly has been an end at the very beginning; for what inventions in Protestant worship have non-prelatical Pædobaptists made? Surely that practice has not been prolific of superstitions. I often hear this alleged, Mr. K., and we are called Romish and Popish because we baptize infants. But will it not be best for Christian sects to allow each other entire liberty of conscience, and not accuse each other of tendencies to Romanism, when all are zealously Protestant? Here is a piece, which I cut from a newspaper lately, which describes the baptism by immersion of some females and others, one Sabbath in January, the thermometer below zero, a place being cut through the ice for the purpose, and a boy watching with a pole to keep the floating ice from the opening. Shall I call this Romish, superstitious, fanatical? Shall I say, How can we, consistently with such practices among Protestants, say anything about the doctrine of penances? No. I prefer to think that those who do these things are as good Protestants as myself, and I will not impeach their rigid adherence to their belief, by imputing Romish tendencies to their modes of worship and their ordinances; for no people are further from Romanism in their principles than they (unless it be some of us Pædobaptists, Mrs. Kelly).
Mr. K. Well, there is no quarrelling with you; but let me say that when another sect sees you employing an ordinance which has no warrant in the Bible,—sprinkling water upon people, on proper subjects and improper subjects for baptism, when we know that the word baptize means to immerse, and that believers only are properly baptized,—how can we be silent? Would you be silent if Episcopalians should set up Latin prayers, or the confessional; or the Methodists turn their love-feasts into the old Passover?
Mr. M. We must tolerate the mistakes and errors of those who, in the main, are confessedly good, and are conscientious in what we deem their errors. When the noble array of great and good men in the Episcopal Low Church, and among the Methodists, fall into such mistakes as you have specified, there will be opportunity for other Christians to express themselves. But you are rather rhetorical in your reasoning, to compare the practice of infant baptism by Owen, and Watts, and Doddridge, and Leighton, and Baxter, and all like them, with Latin prayers and a return to the Passover.