for the remission of sins, and ye shall receive the gift of the Holy Ghost. Acts ii. 33. Now where there is no law there is no right or interest, and where there is no promise there is no privilege; but here is divine law and divine promise; and when by the grace of God, this order of things meets in any soul, as it does in all the lawful subjects for baptism, there is much profit with it every way, because of the oracles of God that are given therewith. But there is no such parallel for infant sprinkling, as there is no such law for it, nor promises to it, and so no such profit attached to it; and it is therefore by the conferment of the name and the forming a plea for christians without truth in the iuward, parts by the Holy Spirit, Psalm li. 6. John viii. 37. and without Christ by faith, Eph. ii. 12. unprofitable many ways, because it is not given in one single oracle of God. For if we take it to the scriptures for a character, the only one it can have from them is,a sought out invention contrary to uprightness, Eccles. vii. 29. If we consider it a representation, there is no truth in it, nor authority for it, for it cannot represent any spirituality about the unconscious infant; nor is there any given authority to conclude that it represents any vital godliness that it ever will have, for such is an untold secret with God only; and the Lord has no where authorized his New Testament ordinances to be personally ministered upon one person or order of persons, to represent the true and spiritual New Testament religion of another person, or persons. Natural birth gave the Jewish infants right to circumcision, and circumcision to all the promised immunities of that economy. But nothing of this can in truth be said of the natural birth, or of the sprinkling of infants, relative to the eternal blessings of the everlasting gospel and covenant of salvation. For the regeneration birth of the soul, of God, and to God, by the power of the Holy Spirit only, gives right to baptism, and all the promised blessings of the gospel, as the true antitype of the Jewish figure. If we call infant sprinkling a profession of Christ in distinction from, and as an elevation of them above the heathen and heathenism, then it is all false and without any foundation in truth, for infants can profess nothing, nor is there one promise of interest in Christ that can be claimed for them therein, whereby for them justly to wear such a pre

tention, for that is all governed alone by the evidence of, as many as the Lord our God shall call; and the word of God reckons no one in distinction from a heathen man, without the faith and truth of Christ, Mat. xviii. 17. If we call it a dedication, then it may be justly asked, who hath required it? for there is not a word for it in all the word of God as an ordinance. Nor is it harmless, and therefore to be allowed as a matter of indifference, claiming liberty; because it is a carnal, antichrist substitute in the place of God's own New Testament ordinance. It is a piece of false piety like that of the Jews, who would not go into the judgment hall lest they should be defiled; while they chose the release of a common thief rather than not have Christ crucified out of their way. For it is in the gratification and pious figure of religious flesh without the Spirit, an open hostility against that scripture order as altogether hateful, which says when they believed Philip preaching the things concerning the kingdom of God, and the name of Jesus Christ, they were baptized both men and women, Acts viii. 12, there not being an infant named or thought of in the baptism; and its chief aim is that that more lovely order to carnal flesh hypocrisy and pride, may in the course of time be established altogether that without believing all infants may be sprinkled, scripture baptism be crucified by the very pious hands which dedicate by sprinkling, and there be no believing men and women baptized at all. word of sacred writ be our only authority, standard, and rule, this must be wrong, and will have no place in the church of Christ, when he shall drive all pious deism out. If we call infant sprinkling a mode of instruction, then the question is, who have ever been instructed to profit in godliness by it, and in what way? while thousands have been instructed by means thereof, to determine themselves christians while dead in sin and buried in the lusts of the flesh and of the world. If we call it a means to bring children to Christ, what children are there who are really brought to Christ by it? And what difference for the better is there now or for eternity between a sprinkled infant and one that is not sprinkled? No man loves his children more than I do mine, or feel more prayerful concern for their welfare, but the heavens forbid that

If the

I should so much mock God as to impose such a cheat upon them in the name of a godly ordinance.

7. In the economy of circumcision, the man child that was not circumcised, was to be cut off from the people of that economy. Gen. xvii. 14. And how will this apply to infant sprinkling? Does sprinkling unite the infant to, and interest it with, the saints of God in the covenant blessings of eternal life? And does the omission of sprinkling bar the infant at any time, in whole or in part, or in any way, from all or any of those blessings? Ignorant and blind superstition, and perhaps something in man worse than both, have said, and do now say as much. And our brother Irons, flatly contradicting the great doctrines he preaches, must mean something of this—or what does he mean, when he reckons those who do not sprinkle infants to be worse than sea monsters? If it be not in this, then wherein lieth our worse than monstrous ? Our streets are flooded with the wickedness of those who were sprinkled when infants, while many are mercifully called savingly to know the Lord, who were never sprinkled. This shews that infant sprinkling cannot stand in the New Testament, as in the place of circumcision in the Old. And as we have plenty of woeful proof that it does not regenerate the infant, to say nothing of the sacred word, nor ensure the regeneration of it, nor make it in part a bible christian, nor help it in one bible step towards it; and as the omission of it does not hinder the outstretching of the saving arm of the Lord upon the not sprinkled, and as the sprinkled do not, by any virtue thereof, worship and fear the Lord any more than those do by nature who are not sprinkled-what, on the fair reading of any one passage in the whole scriptures, does sprinkling infants do? What godly end has it to answer? And what place does it fill for spiritual good? And how can it be reconciled with, or be made to mean anything consistent with the doctrines of a settled covenant, a determined and particular mediationship, a completed, particular, and eternal redemption— the all-divine, unconditional, and personal regeneration of the chosen, by the eternal Spirit-and the salvation of all the foreknown church of God, by distinguishing, free, omnipotent, determined, and eternal favour-while the whole world of infants are born into the world alike,

without any mark of difference for human discrimination? For infant sprinkling to be consistent with itself, it must be universal, because there is no differance to distinguish subjects; and then it must be contrary to the bible statements, and the operative displays of the salvation favour of God; and so to be consistent, we must drop infant sprinkling altogether, as irreconcilable with any one truth in the vital and Spirit-wrought religion of the New Testament.

We have been charged with making too much of water, and too little of the Spirit's work, in believers' baptism; but we do not baptize in much water, to make people christians, or anything else in the renewing of the heart for the kingdom of God; but, as in the Lord's commanded way, publicly, gratefully, and obediently, on their own profession, to declare them so, to the honour and praise of the God of all grace, who in his love, wisdom, and power, hath made them so. We ask, who makes most of the water, and less of the Spirit's work in that ordinance-we, who require a testimony of the Spirit's regeneration of the soul as a qualification for baptism, holding baptism as a declarative ordinance of obedience to God, by faith in our Lord Jesus Christ, in hope of eternal life by the Spirit's witness of adoption-or those who sprinkle infants, and attach great importance to it, without such work of the Spirit being even considered to be done at all, and without any one known personal promise to such infants in the flesh, that such divine work will ever be wrought in them at all; while without that all is death, though sprinkled as many times as there are stars in the heavens, or drops of water in the great seas? And we would again ask, who makes most of the water, and least of the Spirit's work-we who reckon no man a monster because he does not baptize, nor because he is not baptized in much water-or he who reckons us worse than sea monsters because we cannot sprinkle a little water on the face of unintelligent infants, in the name of God, until we have his word to do so?

8. Having observed in seven particulars that circumcision is no authority and can afford no sort of fair argument for the sprinkling of infants-I would just in a word or two observe, that in one point, infant sprinkling and circumcision do agree and that is, in the making a fair shew in the flesh, and the avoiding of

suffering persecution for the cross of Christ. Gal. vi. 12. When circumcision, with all other types of that economy, had by the death of Christ no longer any divine authority, many people liked it because they could, apart from its own economy, make something of a fair show out of it for the flesh; and those who, contrary to the mind of the Spirit, still observed it, moved very respectably thereby much the same as is now the case with infant sprinkling, which has not one text in God's word to support it, and never had. For it is corruption's own offspring, is pleasing to the flesh, is of the world, and the world loves its own accordingly; because that is their own way of being christians without Christ ; that standing for every thing without any thing of the Spirit. And it throws a kind of cloak over many other things, which without it, would be so seen as to be much more offensive. And so the sprinkling minister is all that the more respectable, and less subject to persecution for the cross of Christ, because the Pope, and church of Rome, the kings, queens, and the nobility of nations, together with the rulers of national synagogues, all hold infant sprinkling with a high hand, and have established it by law. And therefore it is accordingly a shocking thing not to sprinkle infants; and we may well be reckoned worse than sea monsters, because for the want of one word for it from the mouth of God, together with the impossibility of reconciling it with the Spirit of truth in general, and the spiritual origin, nature, and character of all true godliness for the kingdom of God on earth, or in heaven, we cannot do it; even as those who could not circumcise without divine authority, and who did according to the mind of the Spirit in sacred text, discard it as a thing of nought; but who had to suffer persecution for the cross of Christ thereby; as we are by many reckoned the worst of all people, for no other cause than because mercy hath made us bible baptists, and would not let us be popish sprinklers!

But to conclude on this subject-I am no enemy to infants, nor to the salvation of infants dying in their infancy, as I have stated in my "Thoughts on Heaven ;" for my belief is, that they are taken away as the chosen of God, from the evil to come. But my opposition is to the putting an unmeaning ceremony upon them,