On this page
-
Text (2)
-
Untitled Article
-
Untitled Article
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.
-
-
Transcript
-
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.
Additionally, when viewing full transcripts, extracted text may not be in the same order as the original document.
Untitled Article
On Mr * Belshams " Plea for Infant Baptism " ( Continued from Vol . XIII . p . 571 . ) Sir , FTT 1 HE interloquium , like other in-1 truders , has , I perceive , been too prattling and prolix ; and your readers ,
like the person intruded oh , have a right to complain . They might , indeed , have been forewarned , that they would always have the remedy in their oWn hands ; that when the letters grew tedious , they might readily pass to the ii&fct article in your Repository . Thus the door may be effectually barred against any intruder .
But this interlocutory part , though entered upon somewhat indiscreetly , must not be left too abruptly . For , though , on one side , the probabilities in favour of Adult Baptism , to the exclusion of I nfant , are accompanied with
so much evidence , as to amount , in my judgment , to almost a moral certainty , yet , oh the other , there occur some objections , which may seem to require a little adjustment . Before , then , we resume the subject of Mr . BelshanVs Censure of Mr . Robinson , I beg leave to submit two or thtfefe moi * e ideas to thq iitttulgence of yoiW freadfettk
Untitled Article
It may , then , and has been , aske % unless we admit Apostolical authority , how can we account for n practice that was so common ? And how for the obscurity in which its origin is involved ?
There are several previous questions which might be here proposed , but they shall be reserved for a sort of postscript . In the mean time , with the evidence already before us , we must be permitted to consider Infant Baptism not as a divine * but human
institution ; and since the civil magistrate has adopted it for state purposes , it may be considered as other civil ordinances , and as other doctrines which have derived much support from the civil authority , so as to have become
very popular . And it may , then , be asked , has any strange thing happened to Infant Baptism ? Any thing more extraordinary than what has occurred to other affairs , which have been mere human contrivances , which have been involved in the vicissitudes of the
world , depending on causes which are latent , and which , perhaps , never can be known , and liable to human contingences ?—For example : Universities are the great luminaries of modern Europe . Like the sun in the firmament , they spread their
influence , and , as objects of vision , are contemplated to a very remote distance . They are appealed to as the oracles of literature ; their practices have thfe force of laws ; and their authority is founded on ancient prescriptions and immemorial usages . But will any one say , at what precise period these
magical institutions took their rise ? They sprung up in various points of the political horizon , ( the most ancient in the most obscure , ) and in an atmosphere full of mists . The fact is , at whatever period we first consider them , we are obliged to consider them , not as being then first created , but as being previously in-existence . * Prior to the vervr
* II n ' est pas possible de fixer par des dates—precises les conmienceniens soil de P university de Paris en general , soit des parties qui la component , des magistrats , qui la g'ouverneut , des priucipaux attribute qui la caracteriseut . Les recherches snr tons
les points lie wetient en aiicitti facon a Unc origine claire et determinee : et les premieres mentions que Port fencarilre danfe les liiontimens histoiiques , ri * eiUdonti ^ O Jjetit point 1 ft creation , et P eta"biifi « &tmftt 7 Wi * eti soli-
Untitled Article
$ 2 On Mr . Bel shanks Plea for Infant Baptism "
Untitled Article
extensive establishment to their opinions in France , by amalgamating the Protestaftts and the Jews under anew Unitarian priesthood , combined by the same Presbyterian discipline . This bold innovation , for which Villers and
others were employed to propitiate the public mind , though suspended , is probably not abandoned , and may yvt be realized by the representatives of the French nation . It is felt that the people of France cannot be drilled ascain i"to Roman Catholic opinions ;
that an order of public instructors and a system of social religion are necessary to regularity , to probity , to domestic comfort , to convenient education , to piety , and to the decorous consecration of burials , marriages and deaths ; and it has been thought that the form of Christianity- least exposed
to the shafts of ridicule ^ which in that cotintry have been so often directed against the absurdities of Catholic superstition , is that which was revived by Mariano Socini . *' Appendix to the 86 th Vol . of the Monthly Review , from May to August , 18 IS , p . 528 .
-
-
Citation
-
Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Jan. 2, 1819, page 32, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct1768/page/32/
-