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was never , under any qualification , instituted by Christ , and that the command on which Baptism is generally supposed to rest , is a mere metaphor or figure of speech . How this extraordinary theory differs frcnn the Quaker hypothesis is for Dr . Jones to determine . It may be convenient to consider the Doctor ' s positions successively in the order of the summary given by him in Jiis reply to Mr . Gilchrist ' s
animadver-. The 1 st then of these positions is , that John assured the people ( a lapse of three months has matured the " intimation " spoken of in the Doctor ' s first paper into
a full " assurance" ) , that he was not the Messiah , because he baptized with water , while his successor was to baptize with Ci wind and nre . " This I unhesitatingly deny . John does not assign his baptizing with water as either the cause or
criterion of his not being the Messiah . His declaration is merely affirmative : and though he may assert that Christ will baptize with " wind and fire , " he does not assert , or necessarily imply , that Christ will not also institute a literal
water-baptism . Any implication supposed to be contained in John ' s declaration can only amount to evidence of a secondary kind , authorizing merely a primd facie inference liable to be rebutted by contrary evidence of a higher nature , and which consequently shrinks
into nothing on the establishment , by direct proof , of the historical fact , that baptism was afterwards actually instituted by Christ in its literal sense . But the Doctor in his 2 nd postion advances a step further , and asserts y ( authority he gives none , ) that his assumed " test" was in conformity with the
expectatious of the Jews . Does lie then hope to persuade his readers that the people who , upon witnessing John ' s administration of water-baptism , < mused in their hearts whether he were the Christ or not , " Luke iii . 15 , ever dreamed of that rite being a criterion that the individual practising it was not the [ Messiah ? And what does the Doctor say to those Priests and Levites , who being sent to
inquire concerning John , asked him , " Why ( niptizest thou thin , if thou be not the Christ ? " John i . 25 . This trifling disagreement , however , of his assertion with the evidence on the subject , the Doctor gets over hy an appeal to ; i higher tribunal—to Analogy * tc As the wisdom of Heaven thought fit to prepare the Jew . s
for the arrival of their expected Christ by the divine mission of his forerunner , the same divine wisdom further thought proper to authorize this forerunner to signalize 4 the advent of his principal hy an external baptism , subordinate to and symbolical of that diviner baptism which the Messiah himself was to admiimtcr .
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As then Christ superseded his herald , so his baptism by nobler elements superseded the office of John , which was ' baptism by water . Now these comparisons may be all very striking and correct , provided the facts implied in them be independently established : but until " as" and
" so" acquire respectively the force of because and therefore , hypothetical similes can prove nothing . From these similes , however , which the Doctor ' s prudence prevents him from calling more than the "drift" of John ' s statement , I pass to the declaration of Jesus , of which , notwithstanding its vaunted explicitness , the
Doctor gives us , under the disguise of an apparent quotation , a gratuitous paraphrase , in which our Lord ' s general expression " all righteousness" is qualified down into " all righteous institutions . " Without this qualification , the passage , as interpreted by Dr . Jones , might , by proving too much , prove nothing . But in his inference from ihe words of Jesus
" to fulfil all righteousness , is not the Doctor deceiving himself and his readers with a mere ambiguity of language ? What else is his assertion that " to fulfil a rite or ordinance which pointed to the Messiah was to answer the end of it by complying with it , and then substituting
the reality for the shadow" ? Or does our philologist mean to maintain that the fulfilment of an ordinance necessarily and in all cases implies its abolition * Was it then by superseding and putting an end to the statutes and judgments of the Lord , " that Solomon was to obtain the
prosperity held out to him by David as the consequence of his fulfilling- those statutes and judgments ? 1 Chron . xxii . 13 . Similar questions may also be asked in respect to the following passages : Acts xiii . 22 ; Romans ii . 27 ; Gal . v . 1 G >
and vi . 2 ; Col . iv . 17 , and James ii * 8 . Rut I tread on tender ground in pretending even to remind a person of Dr . Jones ' s philological acquirements , that the ordinary and primary sense of fulfilling a command or institution ( as exemplified by most of the passages just referred to ) is simply to obey or comply
with its requisitions ; and that though the term " fulfil" may sometimes carry with it the secondary idea of superseding and putting an end to the thing fulfilled , yet before that extended signification can be assumed in any particular instance ,
some specific ground must be shewn ior its adoption . The primary meaning as distinguished from , and even opposed to , the occasional secondary sense , is aptly illustrated by the declaration of Christ , Matt . v . 17 : " Think not that I am come
to destroy the law , or the prophets : I am not come to destroy , but to fulfil" or rather , " not to subvert , but to ratify S' rendered by Dr . Campbell , whose judicious note on the pansage lias a considerable bearing on the immediate subject of my
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Dec. 2, 1826, page 2, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct1716/page/2/
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