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chistical lectures , addressed to professing Christians , full of remonstrances and reasonings with people whose baptism had been delayed ; when it app ears , too , that in the school state of Alexandria , no less than in the
church member-state of Jerusalem , the discipline was adapted only to persons teachable and taught ? Mr . Robinson , after one or two observations on the vague sense of the word salus 9 ( safety or salvation , ) irrelevant there , and perhaps more ingenious than just , speaking of Austin ' s asserting that the Baptism of Infants
was a custom / ' very properly adds , " so far it might be right in some sense , as it referred to the backsettiers ; but when he affirmed it was
derived from the apostles , he was wrong , for it was not a custom in any part of the world . " There , at least , appears no evidence , from what we have already stated , that Infant Baptism is once alluded to for more than
two hundred years after Christ , and that when first mentioned , as already has been shewn , it is opposed ; and , under these circumstances , to talk of the universality of Infant Baptism , must surely be a very great misnomer . But at all events , Infant Baptism
was a seed of great promise ; and when sown in a good soil , it would of necessity take deep root , and soon make an ample spread . The damning nature of Original Sin , ( and St . Austine ' s doctrine , involved infants , and his work on Baptism turns entirely
upon it , ) which absolutely required the baptismal water to wash it away , would give great currency to the practice , and would render those whp denied it odious and frightful ; the establishing of it by law , both through the wide extent of the Greek and Roman Church , which soon took
place ; its suitableness to the purposes of despotical governments and religious houses , all over the Eastern and Western empire ; these , with other corresponding , coetaneous causes , will readily account for the great extent of the practice ; and from the time that the civil magistrate undertook its protection , it would neither be safe nor
prudent ( for it would have answered no good purpose ) to oppose it , nor was it even practicable . Thus en ^ enraged and authorized it would nestle , as it were , in the Usages of the
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dark ages , till eventually , like the insidious bird we read of , it dislodged the former occupants , and deposited its own productions in their room . And , while speaking of infants and primitive antiquity , I am reminded of a remarkable charge , brought against the primitive Christians , of infanticide . This being made within the period just alluded to , it was repelled by tKfe various apologists ; and this surely was the time , had Infant Baptism been
then practised , for them to have replied , " No ! we do not kill our _ children , though we baptize them in water , and we know how to perform that without the least injury . " On the contrary , one of them uses this language— " we charge yon with killing them with cold , with starvation , by
wild beasts , and with drowning them by a slower death in water . We , ( men , ) you say , sacrifice and initiate by killing infants . " Ad Nationes , Lib . i . Some of these words , ( they are Tertullian ' s , ) I know , are forced into
the question about Infant Baptism . But , in my humble opinion , they have nothing to do with it . Farther : Could the existence of apostolical authority for Infant Baptism be proved , this would be but one part of a long argument ; the other , and no less difficult , would remain to pr ^ ye its obligation , for in matters of cet&faiony , we read that the apostles were liable to be mistaken . But a proof , most decisive I think , will be found in-Justin Martyr , that no such practice was known in his time , and that no such authority existed . In his Apology addressed to the'Roman Emperor , written in behalf of the Christians , * he gives a most minute account of their baptism , its prerequisites , its mode , its subjects , wfth every circumstance attending- its
performance , and consequent upon it : he professes to adulterate , to keep back nothing , yet he says nothing of infants and tradition ; every thing relates to persons first instructed , and voluntarily taking up a profession , 111 contradiction to the first birth by
gene-? Apol . pro Christ . I . 5 , Sect . 79 , &e . Quod universa tenet ecclesia , nee couciliis institutmti , sed semper reteitfum e&t non nisi auctoritato apostoliea traditfim rectissime creditor . I . 4 . De It apt . contra Dontttsitas . Cap . xxiii . xxiv .
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On Mr . Belshanis Censure of Mt . Robinsoft . 605
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Nov. 2, 1818, page 695, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2482/page/31/
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