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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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48 * 4 Anti-baptists in principle , Pcedo-baptists in practice .
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ANTI-BAPTISTS IN PRINCIPLE , P ^ OO-BAPTISTS IN PRACTICE .
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To the Editor of the JMunthly Repository .
SIR , Permit me to point out , through the medium of your impartial Repository 9 what has long appeared an inconsistency in the conduct of some very respectable Unitarian ministers , with regard to infant baptism . I do it I am
sure , not from any invidious motive , but in the hope , that if I jean wrong in my conclusions , some of your correspondents will condescend lo set me right . It is not my intention to discuss the question of baptism , or directly
to reflect on any particular . view of it . When any person has studied it and made up his mind , whether it be to discard it altogether as a practice not belonging to our times and circumstances , or that it is still to be performed
on adults , or on infants , as a Christian duty , in either case every man will feel justified in fallowing the honest convictions of his own mind . But some who believe the first of these
dositions , still practise infant baptism , and others practise it who allow that there is no direct authority for so doing in the New Testament . Now is it not strange to hear gentlemen urging on their hearers , with all the cogency of argument , the duty and necessity jnf free inquiry , of discarding all human aiithotity and inventions in matters of religion , and of
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making genuine scripture alone the rule of Christian faith and practice , as the only means of freeing Christianity from its many corruptions , and of restoring it
to its primitive purity and power , who are yet found sanctioning the practice of infant baptism , which t'hey themselves allow is not enjoined by the Christian scriptures ? A practice which in the opinion of many competent judges , has done more towards corrupting
Christianity , and of continuing those corruptions , than many other causes which are assigned . Take one example : original sin and infant baptism are so associated in the minds of the multitude , that the evil effects of the former , it is
conceived , can only be removed by the purifying influence of the latter ; and that should an infant die before it is baptized , its salvation is endangered for want of the performance of that unmeaning
ceremony ; this practice therefore is favourable to error and to superstition . Scripture baptism wasa public profession of a believer ' s repentance and , faith in Christ , and was the voluntary act of the party .
But infants are mere machines and utterly incapable of every prerequisite to baptism . A learned writer on this subject justly observes , " It subverts the very base of the Christian church , by giving those the name who have wot
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pears . Such is the defence of O&lrin , barbarovs Calvin , as Roibert Robinson once called the
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Geneva Reformer , ofT account of the injured Servetus . Your ' s , N . L . T .
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Sept. 2, 1808, page 484, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2396/page/28/
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