Imágenes de páginas
PDF
EPUB

By these means, the general state of female society has been greatly ameliorated wherever christianity has maintained its ground. In our own country especially, these advantages have been long and eminently enjoyed, and are now identified with the ordinary laws and general man

signed them. But under the reciprocal, making the duties Bild influence of christianity and claims of both commensumankind learn that muscular rate, and their several interests strength can never justify op- coexistent and inseparable. pression, nor furnish a plea for degrading females from their proper rank, or depriving them of those inalienable rights to which they are naturally entitled. It allows that the sexes were designed for different spheres of duty and usefulness, and concedes a relative superiority to the husband, as master of the fa-ners of the community. In many mily. But at the same time it cases indeed, they fail to produce maintains, that females have the any considerable degree of dosame right to judge for them-mestic happiness, in the absence selves, to follow the dictates of of real personal religion, the eftheir own conscience, to dispose fects of which on the female of their own time and persons character, when chosen in early and property, to form such con- life, are uniformly beneficial. But nections in life as they may think the common aspect of society, fit, consistently with prudence under the mild radiance of the and virtue, and to share alike in gospel, is by no means an unimall the rights and immunities, portant proof of its moral excelcivil and religious, personal and lence, and divine authority. This relative, which human institu- fact alone should silence the retions and Divine Providence may proaches of infidelity, and secure confer. Thus christian females, an advocate for the christian instead of being concealed from cause in every patriot and phithe public eye, or denied the lanthropist. It should at least pleasures of mental cultivation awaken in the bosom of the Briand social converse, possess in tish fair a sentiment of ardent these respects every advantage; gratitude to the Author of so and, like the first disciples of our benign a system, and inspire Lord, can assemble in the same them with a steady and wellsanctuary, engage in the same directed zeal for its wider extent devotions, unite in the same com- and universal predominance. munion, have their names eurolled in the same record, and be recognized and esteemed as equal partakers of the same privileges. The christian law indeed presupposes a legal subordination in the social economy, when it commands wives to submit themselves to their own husbands. But it denies to husbands a right to tyrannize, when it commands them to love their wives, and be not bitter against them. It ren ders the relation indeed perfectly

Harlow, November, 1822.

T. F.

Extract of a Letter from the Rev.
R. Hall, Sen. of Arnsby, dated
July 9, 1785, to the Rev. Dr.
Ryland.

"I have been much worse since you were here, than ever you saw me, and in some respects, than I ever remember to have been. Thursday week was a happy day to my mind; but

[ocr errors]
[ocr errors]

Having obtained help of God I continue to this day.' Yesterday I had greater pain than before, but had some solemn sweetness from these words, Rev. xix. 26, On his head were many crowns.' After sermon two men and a woman spoke their experience before the church, with entire ac

my wife and all about me expected it to be my last. A fit with a violent fever, which lasted all day, so affected me, that I had no knowledge nor recollection of any thing which I said, or which was said to me, But what passed through my mind is deeply impressed there, and it terminated in three things;-thank-ceptance. But whether I shall fulness to God for long, and vast, and various favours; a desire now to depart, and be with Christ; and the idea, that I now could be well spared by all, the church, my family, and friends. I thought of all with regularity joined with supplication, but I did not want to see any one. have since been better, and continne so, but exceedingly feeble and sinking. Our people are alarmed, and do not seem willing to part yet, if the Lord please to spare. They in a manner insist on my applying to a physician, which I am inclined to do. Pray for me, that my faith fail not. O brother, Christ has been a good master, and a dear friend to me. Cleave to him, and act for him, while you are able; and the Lord grant encouragement and success."

From the same to Dr. Ryland.
July 30, 1787.

be able to baptize them next Lord's day is uncertain. On the preceding Sabbath a good young man, as we think, was constrained to stop, and with many tears to tell me of his soul's being set at liberty. I hope he will ere long follow the Lord in his ordiInance, which he was convinced was his duty. Some others are expected. May the Lord enable them to go forward with resolution, crying, Hinder me not,' and keep us all near himself! O brother! what a vast quantity of bitters will a little of God sweeten!"

"I am yet in a state of confinement; my leg is very painful. My daughter has been very ill these last nine days. It has been a singularly trying time. I have been distressed for my dear wife, but she has been supported under all her fatigue beyond expectation. God has been very good indeed to us amidst it all. I had a painful but delightful time yesterday week, in standing to preach from Acts xxvi. 22,

Letter from the Rev. Mr. Newton to a Baptist Minister. June 5, 1787.

DEAR SIR,

I am sorry to return a negative to any thing you ask, yet I must with respect to the meeting-house at Moulton. My connections among the Dissenters brought so many things of this kind in my way when I first came to London, and the wants of the poor and distressed in this city and neighbourhood are so many and great, that for some years past I have uniformly declined taking any concern in applications for places of worship. To build such places is doubtless a necessary and good work, but non omnia possumus omnes. Many more persons and families in trying situations occur to me than

appear, when weighed in the scales of the sanctuary against these things! Let us not be weary in well doing, for in due season we shall reap, if we faint not.

We love you, Mr. and Mrs. Trinder, Dent, Wykes, and all our old friends at N. Pray tell them so, as they come in your

JOHN NEWTON.

REPLY TO A REVIEWER.

MR. EDITOR,

In a review of a recent republication in defence of Infant Bap

I can attend to, and to such as these I must confine myself; and therefore that I might give no offence by a supposed partiality, I have been obliged to dismiss my friends who have called on me when collecting for buildings, all alike, with good words and good wishes. If I should get any thing by occasionally men-way, and assure yourself that I tioning the case in company, I write and mean with an emphawill let you know; but it is sis, when I subscribe myself more than I expect, as every Your very affectionate friend body in the line of my connecand brother, tions is in a manner overdone. loften think of you, and I think of you as burdened, but I know there is a mighty arm near to support you, and to sanctify all your trials. The Lord will do you good by them, both as a christian and as a minister. When the shepherd is much exercised, it is usually well for the flock.fism, "originally published more 2 Cor. i. 3-6. And some of than forty years ago," by Mr. our afflictions perhaps befal us Bottomley of Scarborough, confor the sake of our people, that tained in the Evangelical Magawe may be reminded and enabled zine for December, p. 484, is a to speak to their feelings, by passage which you will permit what we feel ourselves. In this me respectfully to notice. "The way the tongue of the learned is venerable Author" is cited by the acquired, and skill to speak a Reviewer as stating in his Preword in season to the weary. face, that "of late years he has Settle it in your heart, my friend, been much gratified in reading that the Lord does all well, all accounts of the baptisms of men for the best. Believe it now, and women in heathen lands, by and in due time you shall plainly various missionaries from the see it, and praise him equally for London, Moravian, Wesleyan, giving and for taking away. and Church of England Societies. He well knows that such missionaries would not oppose the baptism of such infants of baptized persons as were as incapable of re jecting, as they were of believing and professing the gospel. But he has not yet read in any Baptist Reports of any households being baptized. In the reports of apostolic missions and bap tisms, all who read the acts of the apostles must have read such specifications."

Time is short, and the nature of our employment while it lasts is well suited to raise our thoughts above the little concerns of such a life as this, to fill us with great ideas, to inspire us with great aims, to animate us with great prospects;-the love of Christ; the worth of souls; the honour of being instrumental in their recovery; and a glorious endless state of happiness. How light must our present sufferings

I beg to reply.

1. That it is highly probable that the Baptist Missionaries have baptized many households, though they may not think proper to exhibit the circumstance to their fellow-christians, as containing an argument for their practice. 2. That, if it would afford the venerable Author any gratification to read from the pen of a Baptist of households baptized, I can assure him that not so far from Scarborough as the fields of missionary labour, I myself (though somewhat younger than the first edition of Mr. B.'s pamphlet) have baptized at different times per

sons who composed seventeen whole households, i. e. husbands and wives having no children, and parents and children where there have been no infants,-all · professing the faith of Christ.

3. That Mr. B,'s argument may thus be reversed: That in reading Pædobaptist reports, we often meet with the baptisms of infants, as well as of adults; but in the " in the "specifications" of the apostles, though they speak of the baptism of several thousands of adults, they no where mention the baptism of even infant.

Newcastle upon Tyne.

Juvenile Department.

BAPTISMAL FONTS.

R. P.

one

importance whether the water in which it is performed, be contained in a place prepared by nature or by art.*

At a very early period of the gospel places were built, distinct from those for public worship, in which fonts were made for this purpose. Eusebius, describing the church of Paulinus at Tyre, says, that when the artist had finished that famous structure, and completed its internal decorations, he commenced the build

than natural ones; and that, if the mode and the subject of bap. FONS, or font, means a spring tism be what the scriptures diof water, and by a natural tran-rect they should be, it is of no sition may be used to denote a stream, a rill, a brook, or a running water. This term was by the fathers of the primitive church applied to the lake, river, or stream, in which converts to the christian faith were baptized, in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. As the gospel extended, and the number of its converts increased, artificial fonts were used in the room of natural ones; yet, as in all inhabited countries, places are to be found in which baptism, according to the apostolic plan, might be administered, it is probable that the use of artificial fonts was not so much a matter of necessity, as a departure from the simplicity of christian baptism. It must, however, be admitted, that artificial fonts in many instances may be more convenient

ing annexed to it, which was chiefly for the use of such per sons as needed purgation by ablution with water and the Holy

*CAMDEN, in his Brittania, mentions a font of greenish stone, in a church at Bridkirk in Cumberland, sufficiently There is an Engraving of this font, with capacious for immersing the adult. the Teutonick characters on it, in Gough's Edition.

Ghost. Cyril, bishop of Jerusalem, in describing a fout, represents it as a separate building, which had its porch, or anteroom, where the catechumens delivered their renunciation of Satan, and their confession of faith in the Son of God; and also its apartment where baptism was administered.

Augustine also intimates that fonts originally contained apartments for the use of males and females. Baptism's being by immersion rendered it necessary to have a large reservoir, or font, to contain the water for that purpose. Some of the buildings thus erected were so capacious, that councils have held their sittings in them. They were also used as schools, where catechumens received instruction previously to their being baptized; from which circumstance, and from the benefit supposed to be received by this sacrament, the font was called Divine illumination.

person; and a double unction we are told was every where used in the celebration of this ordinance, one preceding its administration, and the other following it. The persons admitted into the church by baptism, in addition to the superstitions which already prevailed, were afterwards obliged to appear for seven days clothed in white garments.

When christianity became more general, great difficulty was experienced among christians because there were so few baptisteries; and they were in consequence allowed to be erected at the discretion of the bishop in many parochial churches.

In the twelfth century, Thurston, archbishop of York, founded a monastery near Rippon in Yorkshire, and named it ad fontes, or monasterium de fontibus; and in the thirteenth century, the abbot of the house, John de fontibus, was bishop of Ely. Baptisteries were usually dedicated to John the Baptist, and were called St. John ad fontes. It appears that infant baptism was duced into the church by a misunderstanding of the words of our Lord, Except a man be born of water and of the Spirit, he cannot

intro

The word baptistery comprehended the whole of the building, including the dressing-rooms and other apartments; but font was used to signify the receptacle for the baptismal water. The learned are generally agreed that anciently there was but one bap-enter into the kingdom of God. tistery in a city, and that the It was thought that water in this churches possessing them were passage is to be understood licalled baptismal churches, in terally, and that if any one died which baptism was administered without baptism, whether infant with lighted tapers by the bishop, or adult, he could not be saved. and by the presbyters commis- This made parents anxious about sioned by him for that purpose, the safety of their children; and during the vigils of Easter and therefore if they were afflicted, Whitsuntide. Yet in cases of ur- and in danger of death, they pregent necessity, and in such only, sented them to the bishop to be a dispensation was granted for baptized. When this practice performing this rite at other times. was adopted by professing chrisIn some places salt was used as tians in general, the necessity for a symbol of purity and wisdom, spacious fonts ceased, and smaller and with this view was thrown ones were substituted in their into the mouth of the baptized room...

« AnteriorContinuar »