ace, in consequence of
the imagined occult connexion between the 'elements' and the
grace of the ordinance, they have, with something like a
pretence of reason, expected that their children might thereby
be made members of Christ, children of God, and heirs of the
kingdom of heaven. They are persuaded that it is consistent
with truth to speak of baptism for infants as 'the washing of
regeneration,' the laver of regeneration--the well-spring of
divine life, &c., &c., and that in this matter they rightly
exercise Christian submission in following 'the sacramental
host of God's elect.' But the Independents have no pretence of
the kind for this application of a holy ordinance to infants.
They expect their children to derive no benefit from it, other
than what they would derive through their prayers, and from
the blessing of God in bringing them up in the nurture and
admonition of the Lord. They renounce all deference to catholic
authority in matters of religion and conscience, and profess to
believe that all the light which the case requires is to be
found in the Scriptures, and that it is dangerous to follow any
other. They have also no more right to use the argument drawn
from the baptism of households, than they have that drawn from
circumcision: they are both founded on the same principle--an
assumption that the doors of the Christian visible church
have been opened by our Lord himself to the unconscious and
unconverted, in diametrical opposition to the principles on
which they found their opposition to the established church.
Surely it cannot be, that wise master-builders should much
longer employ themselves in daubing this papal wall with
untempered mortar." p. 39-92.
We are decidedly of opinion that whoever may take upon himself to reply
seriously to these statements, will find the undertaking to be neither
quite easy nor very agreeable. It may not be improper to state that this
is a new and somewhat enlarged edition of a work, published several
years ago, by the same author.
Dr. Judson's sermon, which is also a reprint, is perspicuous, elaborate,
and irrefragable.
1. _The Management of Bees, with a Description of the Ladies' Safety
Hive: with Forty Illustrative Engravings._ By SAMUEL BAGSTER, JUN.,
pp. 244. Bagster.
2. _Spiritual Honey from Natural Hives; or Meditati
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