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Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. The text has not been manually corrected and should not be relied on to be an accurate representation of the item.
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i&g , not the giving instructions , feat admitting persons into the number of professed disciples ( or of £ uch a . 9 were to be trained up to the knowledge and practice of Christianity as soon as they
should be capable of it ) by an outward rite . Instruction may infbrttiy may convince , may produce a cordial assent to a truth proposed . But our Saviour required more than this . He insisted upon it that those who believed in him should acknowledge him " before men $ * and it appears to me that the great
reason for which he instituted baptism * and laid the stress upon it which he does in Mark xvi . 16 . was that 5 by submitting to it ^ n open profession of faith in him was made . If so , then does it not follow , that > whatever persons might be in conviction and belief , they were not arid could not be entered among the regular and openly ^ -professed followers o £ Christ till they had submitted to it ? So thatj according to the very passage quoted by
& T . ( John iv * l . ) they were made disciples as to conviction and belief by instruction , but were afterwards baptized for the purpose of an open public profession ? And yet , after all , it appears , from Matth . xxviii . 20 * that much , remained to be done in the way of instruction after baptism ; that is , that , after tiaving openly acknowledged the authority of the Master , they were to be fully taught his sacred lessons . Now it is readily allowed , that the instruction , the knowledge by which faith was produced , supposes that the subjects of it were adults ; and it cannot be denied that the first converts to Christianity were *
&nd rmist have been adults ; but then it is contended , that the command , * Enter on the list of disciples' * ( that is , by an external rite ) sufficiently warrants the administration of baptism to infants . Wherever this is done , as an expression of the wish of parents that their child may be a real Christian as soon as it is capable of becoming-such , and as a solemn engagement on their part to do whatever they are able that it may in fact befcome such ; and in this view it is imagined , that the mention ** of a book , of entering names in it , and of the engagements t ) f parents , " was by no means irrelevant to the matter in dispute . If the external rite admits into the number of professed
disciples those 111 whom instruction has produced fcuth , it ma y ^ 1 think , be applied with equal propriety to those who are not indeed at present capable of eith er , if it be used as a token of the solemn engagement of parents to do their utmost that they may be trained up by instruction to faith and all the fruits of it as soon as they shall become capable of them . As to this part of the subject , then , I confess , I am not aware that the ground I have taken i £ not quite tenable . My reason for expressing myself upon it with diffidence was , that I know of no one who has piiMicly maintained the opinion I have espoused * and
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defence of" Thoughts bn Baptism ?* 659
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Dec. 2, 1806, page 659, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct1731/page/43/
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