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C . % ) incidentally , and in a peculiar sense introduced , is not fully contradicted by Tertullian ' s most formal and complete account of Baptism in the above treatise , I have read it , I will confess , to very little purpose *
Once more : Suffer little children to come unto me , &c . Many Christian ladies would , no doubt , have been pleased , if Christ had baptized these children , and then have said to his
disciples , u Go ye , and do likewise 5 " but no such thing , as we have already seen ; and we have seen that no such custom was practised by the Catholic Church in the time of Tertullian .
Many other parallelisms between the writers of the New Testament and the other first Christian writers , might be thus easily brought together ; but by the assistance of the passages introduced in the last letter , the
reader may easily do this himself : and , I think , that gentlemen who are so fond of primitive antiquity , will allow , that this way of illustrating by synchronisms , or by the writings of men who were at least nearl y
contemporary , is a fair one . Of Irenoeus and Origeu , notice will be taken in the proper place . In connexion with this way of considering the apostolical and other first Christian writers , a few ideas on the
subject of tradition and apostolical authority present themselves . Mr . Wall says , " the apostolical writings are too obscure to found Infant Baptism upon , " Indeed ! Yet surely this obscurity , I must say , this total silence , on what we are told is a positive duty , enjoined on all Christian parents to the
end of the world , this is surely somewhat extraordinary , and in the writers themselves must have been highly criminal . If the apostles had the doctrine , they had it , as will be readily supposed , in command from their Master : and if the apostolical writings are , as we now have them , authentic ,
and yet they do not expressly enjoin this practice ; if they cannot afford to speak clearly and fully about it ; if , notwithstanding they dealt out a most sacred command , over and above their own writings , to be handed down ,
locked up like a jewel in a casket ; if all this can be supposed , how did they fulfil that injunction which we read of , to publish what they knew on the house-top > Then again , in reference to these apostolical fathers and Justin
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Martyr , all so nearly contemporary with the apostles and Tertullian , if > there had been any such tradition , they must have known it ; they must have acted upon it , which , so far as appears from their writings , they did not , but contrary to it . Indeed , in proportion to the obscurity in which it was left in the apostles' writings , they ought to have been the more explicit . The poor ladies too , who were so anxious for Infant Baptism in the time of the ungallant Tertullian , ought to have said , How durst you enjoin us not to baptize our babes , when you know there is an apostolical tradition authorizing it ? These fair heretics were Christians , and had been settled long 1 enough to
have heard of this tradition , and-apostolical authority ; they must have heard of it , had there been any ground for it ; still more certainly must the Catholic Church * Deference to
orthodoxy would lead many to this conclusion . With what face , then , could Tertullian , delivering at large the practice of that church with regard to Baptism , with all its concomitant ceremonies , and expressly mentioning the law for Baptism , which he does ,
- —with what face could he have given such directions ? This is not supposeable . We find nothing in Irenaeus , notwithstanding the curious passage most unfortunately quoted by Mr . Wall on Infant Baptism , about this tradition ; nothing in Cyprian , who
comes next to Tertullian , and has written much on the Rebaptization of Heretics , and something on the Baptism of Infants , yet Cyprian says nothing of this tradition : perhaps Jerome may ; certainly Augustine does ; and then all sails free and easy under
convoy of the civil magistrate : yet this brings us down to the end of the fourth or fifth century , and surely such testimony appearing then for the first time , comes too late to give credibility to the tradition . The assertion of these
persons could only be the matter of their opinion at best ; and their opinion is no ground for other people ' s faith : nay , for obvious reasons , the testimony of Jerojne and St .
Augustine is itself a strong presumption against the fact . Their cause certainly required some plea to hang upon 3 and tradition was the dead-lift to an argument which could find no other support *
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On Mr . BeUhanCs Censure of Mr . Robinsdn . * 6 QV
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Nov. 2, 1818, page 691, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2482/page/27/
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