those who feel their interest in decimating the property of their neighbours, can easily assign sufficient causes why the primitive ministers waived that lucrative privilege: * while they maintain on solid grounds the antiquity of paying tithes, as prior to the Mosaic system -prior to circumcision t-and, were it not for what some of our learned opposers have said, I should have boldly added, prior to the proselyte baptism. But I am aware that antediluvian, and almost paradisiacal antiquity, is claimed for that rabbinical rite. That our opponents may see whose weapons they use, when attacking us after the manner of Mr. Cleaveland and others, I will transcribe a few lines from a nameless Roman Catholic author. The writer to whom I advert, when addressing Protestants, defies their opposition in the following words. "You cannot show one positive argument against the invocation of saints, either from scripture or from fathers; not one against the doctrine of the real presence, transubstantiation, veneration of images upon account of their representations; not one against the number of sacraments; not one to prove communion under both kinds to be indispensable; or that children dying without baptism are saved. In a word, you cannot show one positive argument against any one doctrine of our church, if you state it right: all you can say, is, It does not appear to us out of scripture; it does not appear to us from antiquity. Show us, you say, your authentic records, your deeds of gift, your revelation, and we will believe: as if an uninterrupted possession were not sufficient."-I will now present the reader with this Popish objection, as expressed by Mr. West, and with part of the answer which he returns. Thus then my author: Cavil: "We have brought never * See Mr. Bingham's Orig. Eccles. b. v. chap. v. § 2. + Gen. xiv. 20; Heb. vii. 4, 6, 9. ‡ Vindicat. of Bishop of Condom's Exp. of Doct. of Cath. Church, p. 111, 112. a positive scripture, that says, There is no such place as purgatory; and a huge outcry is on such occasions taken up against our negative way of arguing against a doctrine that they positively profess....Truly, on their part it lies to have given us positive and express scripture for purgatory, that would impose it on us as a positive article of faith.... It seems absurd to provoke to positive express scripture against every chimera that may come into men's heads a thousand years after the scriptures were writ; for so, if any man should assert, especially if many should agree to it, that Mahomet is a true prophet, or that the moon was a mill-stone, or whatever else can be supposed more unlikely; I am bound to subscribe to it, except I can bring particular, positive, express scripture against it."*-Thus also Mr. Vincent Alsop: "Amongst all the crafty devices of the devil to induce our grand-mother Eve to eat of the tree of knowledge; and of all the weak excuses of Eve for eating of that tree, I wonder this was not thought on; That it was not contrary to any express law of God. For (Gen. ii. 16, 17,) God commanded the MAN, saying, Of every tree of the garden THOU mayest freely eat; but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat.' But it seems the devil had not learnt the sophistry to evade the precept, because the express law was given to the man, and not to the woman....It had been impossible that all negatives should be expressed, Thou shalt not stand upon thy head; Thou shalt not wear a fool's coat; Thou shalt not play at dice, or cards, in the worship of God: but thus [by pleading the want of an express prohibition] he [Dr. Goodman] thinks he has made good provision for a safe conformity to the ceremonies; because it is not said, Thou shalt not use the cross in baptism; Thou shalt not use cream, oil, spittle; Thou shalt not conjure out the devil. At which backdoor came in all the superstitious fopperies of Rome. * Morning Exercise against Popery, p. 830. And with this passport we may travel all over the world`; from Rome to the Porte, from thence amongst the Tartars and Chinese, and conform to all; for perhaps we shall not meet with one constitution that contradicts. an express law of scripture."* Reflect. VII. Many were the positive rites ordained by Jehovah, in the ancient Jewish church; some of which were intended for the people at large, and others for particular characters among them. There is not, however, that I remember, a single instance of any ritual service designed for persons of a particular description; and of those persons, whether priests, Levites, or others, being under a necessity of inferring their interest in that service by a chain of reasoning from remote principles. No, the persons whose duty it was to regard the rite, were plainly described, as well as the manner of performing it; so that the most ignorant among them, as far as we can perceive, were at no loss in that respect. Nor have we any reason to think that the positive laws of the New Testament are less easy to be understood, than those of the Jewish economy. Dr. Owen, however, seems to have been of this opinion when he said, "Every thing in scripture is so plain as that the meanest believer may understand all that belongs unto his duty, or is necessary unto his happiness....There ...There can be no instance given of any obscure place or passage in the scripture, concerning which a man may rationally suppose or conjecture, that there is any doctrinal truth requiring our obedience contained in it, which is not elsewhere explained.”† Thus also Mr. W. Bennet: "What is the rule of all instituted worship?-The revealed will of God only; who hath given us a full discovery thereof, in all things * Sober Enquiry, p. 345, 346. + Ways and Means of Understand. Mind of God, p. 176, 185. VOL. I. Ꮓ necessary for our faith and practice, by his written word."* To imagine, therefore, that the first positive rite of religious worship in the Christian church, is left in so vague a state as Pædobaptism supposes, is not only contrary to the analogy of divine proceedings in similar cases, but renders it morally impossible for the bulk of Christians to discern the real grounds on which the ordinance is administered. For, doubtless, a great majority of those who profess Christianity, are quite incapable of entering into several subjects, the discussion of which is found so necessary by learned men, in order to establish the right of infants to baptism. On this plan of proceeding, a plain unlettered man, with the New Testament only in his hand, though sincerely desirous of learning from his Lord what baptism is, and to whom it belongs, is not furnished with sufficient documents to form a conclusion. No; he must study the records of Moses, and well understand the covenant made with Abraham, as the father of the Jewish nation. Stranger still! he must, according to the opinion of many, become a disciple of those who are the humble pupils of Jewish rabbies-of those learned authors who, being well versed in the writings of Maimonides, and in the volumes of the Talmud, imagine themselves to have imported into the Christian church a great stock of intelligence concerning the mind of Christ, relative to the proper subjects of baptism. For it is thence only he is able to learn, that the children of proselytes were baptized along with their parents, when admitted members of the Jewish church; and thence also he must infer, that our Lord condescended to borrow of his enemies an important ordinance of religious worship for his own disciples.-Nor is this all: He must study the antiquated rite of circumcision; he must know to whom * View of Relig. Worship, quest. viii. See Preface, p. 1-6. it belonged, and the reasons why: then he must compare it with baptism, in this, that, and the other particular; after which he must draw a genuine inference, respecting the point in hand.-Nor has he yet performed the arduous task. For, as the New Testament says nothing expressly about the object of his enquiry, he must sift the meaning of several passages in sacred writ that say not a word about it, in order to find that infants, of a certain description, are entitled to baptism. For instance: He must consider 1 Cor. vii. 14, in a very particular manner. Here he must settle what is meant by the word sanctified, and by the term holy. He must accurately distinguish between the holiness attributed to the child, and the sanctification ascribed to the unbelieving parent; so as to give the infant a right, which the parent has not, in a positive institution of Jesus Christ. When all this is duly performed, he must fortify his mind against the objections to which this finespun theory is liable. He must enquire, for example, so as to satisfy his own conscience, Why, when our Lord gave commision to teach and baptize why, when his apostles required a profession of faith from those whom they did baptize, no exception was made in favour of infants: and, by a train of reasoning, he must at last infer, that, so far as appears, they meant what they never said, nor ever did.* Such is the roundabout logical labour which the ploughman has to perform, if he would not pin his faith on the sleeve of the learned. But if, on the other hand, we consider positive precepts and apostolic examples as the only rule of administering baptism; if we consider evangelists and apostles as recording, plainly recording, all that our Lord meant us to know concerning this institution; the labour of the * So the Papists are justly charged by Mr. Hurst, with representing Peter as thinking one thing, and writing another. Morning Exercise against Popery, p. 55. |