their ways from the ancient paths, to walk in paths in a way not cast up." The two apostacies so analogous, and the two returns so similar, may we not, friend Epaphras, like Jeremiah, say, the ancient gospel and the ancient order of things? So much for the origin, reason, and philosophy of the name. Now for the thing thus designated; for things are prior to names. You, have, indeed, given a fair representation of the thing first thus designated. As farther illustrative and confirmatory of this matter, I will ask of you the indulgence to read the following quotations from my debate with Mr. M'Calla, which occurred in the month following the date of the aforesaid letter. The capital and distinguishing article of the ancient gospel is discussed in several speeches in that debate; but the following specimens must suffice:- "To every believer, therefore, baptism is a formal and personal remission, or purgation of sins. The believer never has his sins formally washed away or remitted until he is baptized. The water has no efficacy but what God's appointment gives it, and he has made it sufficient for this purpose. The value and importance of baptism appears from this view of it. It also accounts for baptism being called the washing of regeneration. It shows us a good and valid reason for the despatch with which this ordinance was administered the primitive church. The believers did not lose a moment in obtaining the remission of their sins. Paul tarried three days after he believed, which was the longest delay recorded in the New Testament. The reason of this delay was the wonderful accompaniments of his conversion and preparation for the apostolic office. He was blind three days; scales fell from his eyes, he arose then forthwith and was baptized. The three thousand who first believed, on the selfsame day were baptized for the remission of their sins; yea, even the Jailor and his house would not wait till day-light, but the same hour of the night in which he believed he and all his were baptized " I say this view of baptism accounts for all these otherwise unaccountable circumstances. It was this view of baptism misapplied that originated infant baptism. The first errorists on this subject argued that if baptism was so necessary for the remis sion of sins, it should be administered to infants, whom they represented as in great need of it on account of their "original sin." Affectionate parents, believing their children to be guilty of "original sin," were easily persuaded to have their infants baptized for the remission of "original sin"-not for washing away sins actually committed. But of this again. "Faith in Christ is necessary to forgiveness of sins; therefore baptism without faith is an unmeaning ceremony. Even the Confession of Faith, or at least the Larger Catechism, Quest. 185, says that "baptism is a sign of remission of sins." How, then, can it be administered to those without faith? Is it to them "a sign and seal of engrafting into Christ, of remission of sins by his blood, and regeneration by his spirit," as the answer to this question declares? "Our argument from this topic is, that baptism, being ordained to be to a be liever a formal and personal remission of all his sins, cannot be administered to an infant without the greatest perversion and abuse of the nature and import of this ordinance. Indeed, why should an infant that never sinned-that, as Calvsnists say, is guilty only of "original sin," which is a unit, be baptized for the remission of sins?" In this extract it is used as an argument against infant baptism; but we desired to rouse the Baptist preachers then present to the importance of this view of christian immersion, and to induce them to preach it in that sense; and for that purpose to urge an immediate submission to it. Thus on page 143. "On this topic I would rally again. Its grand importance to all disciples will excuse me for being diffuse on this subject. Also its aspect to paidobaptism is such as to frown it out of the world. This Mr. M'Calla sees, and therefore he frowns contemptuously at it. Peter promised to three thousand Jews forgiveness on repentance and baptism. "What shall we do?" said they, in an agony of despair. "Repent and be baptized, every one of you, in the name of the Lord Jesus, for the remission of sins." The preposition eis here means in order to-in order to the remission of sins. Now I would say to any person or persons inquiring what they should do, just what Peter said "Repent and be baptized in the name of the Lord Jesus, in order to the remission of sins." "What God hath joined together let not man put asunder.' God hath, in the first opening of the new religion, associated repentance and baptism in order to remission of sins; and let him take heed to himself who preaches repentance m order to the forgiveness of sins without baptism in water, or who preaches baptism in order to forgiveness, without repentance or faith. We have already seen that Ananias preached baptism to one possessed of faith in order to the washing away of sins, so that we may safely say, that a believer unbaptized has not his sins washed away in a very important sense. If, as Paul affirms, ritus ii. 3-6. God our Saviour saved sinners, dia loutron paliggene sias, "by the washing of regeneration and the renewal of the Holy Spirit;" then, indeed, we may be bold to affirm, "Except a man be born of water and of the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God," and he only that believes and is baptized shall be saved. "My Baptist brethren, as well as the Paidobaptist brotherhood, I humbly conceive, require to be admonished on this point. You have been (some of you, no doubt,) too diffident in asserting this grand import of baptism, in urging an immediate submission to this sacred and gracious ordinance, lest your brethren should say that you make every thing of baptism-that you make it essential to salvation. Tell them you make nothing essential to salvation but the blood of Christ; but that God has made baptism essential to their formal forgiveness in this life-to their admission into his kingdom on earth. Tell them that God has made it essential to their happiness that they should have a pledge on his part, in this life-an assurance in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, of their actual pardon-of the remission of all their sins-and that this assurance is baptism. Tell the disciples to rise in haste and be baptized, and wash away their sins, calling on the name of the Lord." It was, indeed, impracticable to give it a more practical aspect in a controversy upon the true and ancient import of this institution; but this indicates the stress then laid upon this capital item. Remission of sins ever must be the burthen of any message which can be called glad tidings to a guilty and polluted world. Without this, any message called gospel, must be miscalled. Hence the ordinance with which actual and personal remission is connected, must be most conspicuous in any scheme worthy of the name of glad tidings to sinners. I then thought that the discovery of this matter, and giving it its original importance in the proclamation of mercy to a ruined world, was worthy to be designated the ancient gospel; not, indeed, as if the mere design and meaning of this institution, abstractly considered, was entitled to this honor; but its scriptural connexions with faith in the blood of Jesus, and repentance, or reformation towards God. Its connexion with the Holy Spirit, as the promised blessing to the subjects of the christian institution, was also asserted in the very next proposition in the aforesaid discussion, in the words following: "In the next place, under this head, all the promises connected with baptism are addressed to such as believe. Remission of sins, the promise of the Holy Spirit on the day of Pentecost, their participation in the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus Christ, and every other promise connected directly or indirectly with baptism, is given to such only as believe before they are baptized." Thus you will see that faith, repentance, baptism, remission of sins, and the Holy Spirit, were all regarded in this connexion from the very adoption of the name-ancient gospel. But the same arrangement, being so natural and so simple, has 'since that time occurred to many minds; and to some, perhaps, it has been as original as if it had never been before apprehended or taught either in word or writing: for how often do we all say, 'Such a thing is entirely new;' because, though we may have heard it a hundred times, it never struck us before in the same light. From all this we think we may infer that no important change in the import of this phrase has occurred since its first adoption. But to advance to your second objection. I own that it is possible to convert a proclamation into a theory, and to dwell so much upon names, definitions, and arrangements, as to lose sight of the things so named, defined, and arranged. And that now, since the preaching of the ancient gospel is got into so many hands, (and would to Heaven that there number were a thousand times more numerous than they are!) it is quite possible that it has been on many occasions held forth too much in the form of a new theory, and treated as the popular schools now treat the five points of Calvinism or Arminianism. That I may have given countenance to such a systematic arrangement of things from my former writings upon the subject, and from the notice of the sermon on the fifth point, I will cheerfully admit. Brother Scott, the first successful proclaimer of this ancient gospel, who was first appointed to the work of an Evangelist by the Mahoning churches in 1827, did, with all originality of manner, and with great success, not only proclaim faith, repentance, baptism, remis sion, &c. but did call upon believing penitents to be immediately baptized for the remission of sins; and did, instead of the anxious seats, mourning benches, and altars for prayer, of modern invention, substitute the water. What is called "a great revival," grew up under his auspices; and hundreds, instead of crowding up to altars to be prayed for, to mourning benches and anxious seats, did "come to the water," and were immersed for the remission of sins. His ardent manner and great success gave much eclat to the ancient gospel. Whether they who do the work of an Evangelist have not more reason and authority to say, 'Come to the waters,' than "Come to the mourning bench,' is a question not now to be discussed. But the theorizing on these six points-(for the sake of the five fingers it would be well to cut them down to five: say faith, repentance, baptism, remission, the Holy Spirit, for the present salvation and a new life issuing in eternal life subsequent to the resurrection of the just for future salvation)-1 say, this theorizing on these points no sensible proclaimer of the gospel ever attempted, only in so far as he found the minds of his audience polluted with the mystic faith, repentance, baptism, and Holy Spirit of the schools. To disabuse the public mind from confusion and error on these matters, is all that is designed, either in writing or speaking of them in this artificial order. That faith is faith, and not repentance; that repentance is repentance, and not immersion; that immersion is immersion, and not the Holy Spirit; and that the Holy Spirit is the Holy Spirit, and not conviction, nor conversion, nor fear, nor shame, nor terror, is all that is meant by these definitions. And as to order, it is no more than the reason of things. A man must believe before he repents or reforms; he must be a christian before he can have the spirit of a christian. The Lord made Adam before he breathed into his nostrils the spirit of life or gave him an inheritance. But, sir, when any doctrine is professed and taught by many, when any matter gets into many hands, some will misuse, abuse, and pervert it. This is unavoidable. We have always feared abuses and extremes. This was the very reason which occasioned our series of essays on the ancient gospel in 1828. We saw it spreading, and feared that in the warmth of great excitement, in the fervor of a burning zeal, or in the conflicts of discussion, at that time so frequent and general, the ancient gospel might be brought into discredit or retarded in its progress. To this cause is owing whatever of systematic aspect or theoretical details appeared in these essays, And, indeed, he knows but little of men and things, who has not learned to fear as much from the friends as from the enemies of any cause of much inter est to men. Be assured, my good sir, that we have no idea of substituting one theory for another, however true or superior in its speculative charac ter. A favorite saying of my correspondent T. W. is, that "the preaching of any theory is not the preaching of the gospel of Christ," and we have often directed the attention of our readers to it. Mean time I wait for, and solicit all your objections. Whatever is not ac cordant to the Oracles we will give up with all cheerfulness. In much esteem, EDITOR. TO A, CAMPBELL, Brother Campbell, I HAVE read with care your six numbers of Reviews of the three first numbers of Archippus, of which I am the author, and continue unshaken in the belief that it is the doctrine of the gospel that ungodly men and sinners are justified by faith without baptism; and that your opinion that penitent believers obtain the remission o their sins in immersion or baptism, is not the gospel doctrine. I regret that you should have manifested so much zeal to fix upon ine the opinion of a Jew's baptism and of a Gentile baptism; one for the remission of sins, and the other not for the remission of sins, seeing that I reject the doctrine of baptism for, or in order to, the remission of sin altogether, and maintain that there is but one' baptism as a gospel ordinance, and that God has but one plan or method of remitting the sins of Jews and Gentiles, and that is by faith. The essential point of difference between you and myself is suggested in the following question:-"Is, or is not, the free favor of God, by which he justifies a believing sinner, or remits his sin through the blood of Christ, suspended, according to the gospel, upon his being baptized in water?" You defend the affirmative, and I maintain the negative side of the question. Waving any notice for the present of the erroneous account you have given of my statements relative to the Novatians and other subjects, I will attend immediately to the question of the remission of sin by baptism, which is at issue between us. Truth is common property, and there are no envious rivalships in religious truth, unless it be perverted to sectarian and selfish purposes. Where there is a difference of sentiment on a religious subject, it ought never to excite unkind feelings, or generate a spirit of hostility to the disciples of Jesus Christ towards each other. There are many important things in which you and I agree, in reference to religion and the philosophy of mind, and in which we differ from others. We are so firmly established in the sentiment that there cannot be any religious knowledge in the world, in the present state of man, without a supernatural revelation in words, that we do not think it a debatable subject among those who understand, in any good degree, the powers and susceptibilities of their own minds. The agreement of our views of the powers of the human mind, in relation to religion, and of the necessity of a divine revelation in intelligible words and sentences, in order to the knowledge of divine things, may be collected from your debate with Mr. Owen, and other of your works, and from the volume I published in 1813, titled "The Philosophy of the Human Mind in respect to Religion; or a Demonstration that Religion entered the world by Revelation," and from other of my publications made since. Those who differ from us, deny that scriptural account of the total depravity of man;-they deny that man lost the knowledge of God by the fall; and they deny that God is an object of faith, in the scripture use of the term; and believe that the world by wisdom knew God. They make natural religion, or deism, the foundation of revealed religion! By this they, in a great measure, mystify the word of God, and run into the most palpable contradictions and mystical absurdities. What can we know of sin, as such, or its remission, without the word of God? And what is baptism, or any other ordinance of the gospel, without it? What effect of divine truth can baptism, or any other ordinance of the gospel, produce upon the mind, than what the |