by no
means lost its hold of the mind; which is in a great measure
owing to the magic influence of imaginary sacred words. Such
terms as 'elements,' 'holy mysteries,' have a strange effect in
causing men to feel as though it would be sacrilegious and
presumptuous to open their eyes, and view those divine
institutions in the light of Scripture.

"But the imagination, that the application of the ordinance of
baptism to unconscious infants is a divinely appointed medium
of grace to them, is so incompatible with real facts, that a
philanthropic Christian, who looks around, and has his heart
affected by the real state of society, even in this country, if
he could at that moment be brought closely to reconsider this
opinion, which, at other moments, when facts are forgotten,
raise delightful feelings in his mind, could not but have his
eyes open to the fallacy:--the illusion would vanish at once.
If baptism were a divinely appointed medium of spiritual good
to the minds of infants, then its beneficial tendency must
appear in the development of children in Christian countries.
If this manifestly appeared to be the case, all controversy
would be at an end. But do the instructors of youth discover
it? Has the warmest advocate for the practice of baptizing
children ever ventured such an assertion? And if infants grow
up, believe, and are baptized, is it conceivable that their
heavenly lot will be at all worse than that of those who were
baptized in their infancy; or that, if they die unbaptized,
without any fault of their own, they will in any wise suffer
for the omission? Now if all these questions be answered in
the negative, as undoubtedly they must, what becomes of the
imaginary paradise of blessings and privileges to which baptism
is to introduce the millions of our infants? Why should the
holy Lord God, our Saviour, be represented as mocking his
church by promises of mysterious, pompous nothings?" pp. 65-69.

Thus it is that this author remonstrates with the members of his own
communion. But does he neglect to extend the application of the argument
to other Paedobaptists? The reader shall be put in possession of the
means of judging.

"But if the Church of England rests this practice on such
insufficient grounds, how do the Paedobaptist Congregationali