Mrs. John Roscoe (addressing her husband).—"I think you must now give up the point; for who can fairly stand against such plain and powerful arguments?"
Mr. Roscoe.—"But the doctrine is no less dangerous than anti-scriptural; and when we reflect on the tendency which the human mind discovers to derive consolation from any source of relief, however vague or imaginary, we cannot evince too much ardour in exploding the fatal delusion. In this country there are multitudes of baptized persons who discover, at no period of their life, any other proofs that they have been regenerated than what the parish register supplies. If these persons, who have grown up in a state of ignorance of Christianity, corrupt in morals and in manners, are told by their clergyman that when they were baptized they were made inheritors of the kingdom of heaven, will they not easily lull the disquietude of their consciences to sleep, and flatter themselves with the hope of final salvation, even while they continue the servants, if not the slaves of sin? Will they, if warned to flee from the wrath to come, apprehend any danger, seeing they are taught to believe that they are already the children of God? O fatal delusion! a delusion no less dangerous to the morals than it is to the final happiness of man, because it leads him to ascribe the origin of his religious character to a ceremonial act performed on him at a period when he knew it not, rather than to his repentance towards God and faith in the Lord Jesus Christ; and teaches him that he may become a glorified spirit in another world, even though he lives and he is a sceptic or a blasphemer. Thus a little cold water taken from a font, and falling from the holy hands of a regularly ordained priest, imparts such a mysterious sanctity to the subject whom it touches, as to render any moral or spiritual meetness for the inheritance of the saints in light quite unnecessary. How wonderful!"
It was amusing to watch the movements of Mrs. John Roscoe during these discussions, and gratifying to hear her occasional observations. She would sit sometimes as patient as a judge when listening to the evidence on some grave charge against a prisoner at the bar, and at other times she was as restless and fidgety as a juryman anxious to deliver the verdict, that he might get home to his dinner as quickly as possible. In general, she held a very tight rein over her excursive spirit, out of respect to the two principal disputants; but occasionally it would drop from her grasp, and then she was off at a tangent.
"I think," said she, "a man's bump of credulity must be larger than his head who would tell me, with decorous gravity, that he really has faith to believe such an ecclesiastical dogma."
This remark somewhat disconcerted, though it did not displease her husband, who rather liked to see her display her cleverness, but he soon recovered himself, and addressing his brother, he said:—
"But these are the consequences which you deduce from the doctrine, rather than consequences which necessarily follow from its admission. When the child is baptized we pray that he may lead the rest of his life according to this beginning; which presupposes the possibility that he may not. If he do not, he forfeits his baptismal rights, and relapses into a state of condemnation and guilt."
Mr. Roscoe.—"Then I presume that, by his relapse into a state of condemnation and guilt, he places himself in a moral condition similar to the condition in which he would have stood if he had never been baptized?"
Rev. Mr. Roscoe.—"Exactly so."
Mr. Roscoe.—"As a state of guilt and condemnation implies, on the part of man, depravity and alienation from God, must he not undergo some moral change in his disposition, his principles, and his taste, before he can loathe himself on account of his impurities, or be fitted to dwell in the immediate presence of a holy God; as we read that 'without holiness no man shall see the Lord?'"