in the spirit of the recipient. All that Taylor can make out is, that Baptism effects a potentiality in a potentiality, or a chalking of chalk to make white white.
Ib.
p. 210.
And if it be questioned by wise men whether the want of it do not occasion their eternal loss, and it is not questioned whether Baptism does them any hurt or no, then certainly to baptize them is the surer way without all peradventure.
Now this is the strongest argument of all against Infant Baptism, and that which alone weighed at one time with me, namely, that it supposes and most certainly encourages a belief concerning God, the most blasphemous and intolerable; and no human wit can express this more forcibly and affectingly than Taylor himself has done in his Letter to a Lady on Original Sin. It is too plain to be denied that the belief of the strict necessity of Infant Baptism, and the absolute universality of the practice did not commence till the dogma of original guilt had begun to despotize in the Church: while that remained uncertain and sporadic, Infant Baptism was so too; some did it, many did not.
as soon as Original Sin in the sense of actual guilt became the popular creed, then all did it
.