to contravene the important fact that Infant Baptism was the uniform, universal, undisputed practice of the whole Christian church from the apostolic age; and therefore that it is a rite of apostolical institution, and of course of permanent and universal obligation'.

I am, &c.

The number of those who rejected water baptism altogether appears to have been very inconsiderable in the earliest ages. The Valentinians were accused of substituting various superstitious rites in the room of baptism. Quintilla, a female preacher at Carthage, opposed water baptism; in reply to whom Tertullian wrote his Treatise upon Baptism. Austin, who was once a Manichce, reports that they maintain that water baptism does nobody any good: but Cyril of Alexandria inti mates that they had a substitute of their own. The Bishop of Hippo mentions one or two other inconsiderable sects who denied water baptism and the resurrection. See Wall on Infant Baptism, part ii, chap. v.

LETTER V.

Concerning the Mode of Baptism: whether by Immersion, Pouring, or Sprinkling. Different senses of the word BAPTIZE. Adults when baptized immersed themselves. Baptism into the name of a person not an act of worship.

DEAR SIR,

I TRUST that

TRUST that upon the strong ground of historic evidence I may now consider you as fully convinced of two facts. In the first place, that it is in the highest degree incredible that the baptism of the descendants of baptized persons should ever have become the universal practice of the Christian church in the primitive age, if it had not been instituted by the Apostles. And, secondly, that if the Apostles had decided that the adult descendants only of baptized Christians should be admitted to baptism, it would have been morally impossible that infant baptism should have become the universal undisputed practice of the church in the short interval of a hundred years, and that this great change should have taken place quietly and silently, without exciting the least attention, or creating the smallest discussion: from which

important premises the grand conclusion follows by clear and irresistible necessity; that infant baptism is an apostolical institution, perpetually and universally obligatory upon the Christian church. In the application of this rite to infants, the Christian church was unanimous for upwards of a thousand years; for, whatever might be the private opinion of a few individuals, it was upwards of a thousand years after the apostolic age before any sect or body of Christians arose which distinguished themselves from the great body of professing Christians by denying baptism to infants. And to this day the whole Christian church in every quarter of the world, however divided upon other topics of faith, or practice, is unanimous, with comparatively very few exceptions, in administering this ordinance to the infant descendants of baptized Christians.

We now proceed in course to consider the MODE of administering the rite of baptism: whether by immersion, affusion, or sprinkling. Our Antipædobaptist brethren are, I believe, unani

• The Petrobrusians, a sect which rose in the twelfth cen tury, are the first body of Christians who agreed in denying water baptism to infants; and the reason they assigned was, that infants were incapable of salvation, to which they asserted that faith was necessary as well as baptism, and therefore that baptism was useless. Wall on Infant Baptism, part ii, chap, vii. sect. 5.

mous in asserting the indispensable necessity of immersion they maintain that the word baptism necessarily signifies immersion, and no other mode of applying water: and they plead the universal practice of the primitive church. Those of them who allow the existence of Jewish proselyte baptism argue from the example of the Jews, who in this particular were exceedingly atrict: and many of them are not sparing in their sarcasms of what they call infant sprinkling, as though it were little better than a burlesque upon the ordinance as it was instituted by Christ. Notwithstanding, however, this formidable array of argument and ridicule, I flatter myself that before I come to the conclusion of this Letter, I shall convince you that the mode of baptism is left wholly to the discretion of the parties concerned, that the validity of baptism was never conceived to depend upon the quantity of water employed, and that the mode of baptizing practised by the Antipædobaptists of the present day is not only inconvenient, not to say indecorous, but also that it is unauthorized either by the Scripture or by the practice of the primitive and apostolic church.

1. In the first place, I am very ready to concede that the word baptism in its primitive sense in classic authors signifies immersion; and that to baptize is to immerge, or dip. Polybius, de

scribing a sea-fight between the Carthaginians and the Romans in which the latter were beaten, says, the Carthaginians baptized, i. e. sunk many of the Roman boats. And Plutarch speaking of Otho says, that he was baptized, or overwhelmed; in debt.

2. The word, however, does not universally express immersion in the earliest writers, but sometimes signifies being wetted, or, covered with water by affusion. Aristotle represents the coast as baptized by the flowing of the sea. And the plentiful pouring of water upon the wood by the priests of Baal, in obedience to the directions of Elijah, is called by Origen baptizing the wood'.:

3. In the New Testament the word baptize is used for washing only, and that, where the application of water is by partial affusion merely, and not by complete immersion.

Luke xi. 37, 38. "A certain Pharisee besought him to dine with him; and he went in and sat down at meat: and when the Pharisee saw it he

Polyb. Hist. lib. i. Plutarch. in Galb.

< See Walker on the Doctrine of Baptism, who produces a cloud of witnesses to this sense of the word from Lexicographers, Divines, and Grammarians. Towgood on Dipping, &c. p. 253. 1 Kings xviii. 33. Origen's Comment. in Joan. p. 116. See Gale against Wall, p. 116, 117. Wall's Reply to Gale, p. 94. Aristot. de Mirab. Auscult. apud Gale, p. 116.