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cofmtton enemies of Christianity . But is it not rather singular that , after nearly two thousand years experience , no better reason for its perpetuity can be pointed out ? Yet it is a good argument considered as argnmentum ad hominem , for Mf . Gilchrist seems to
regard it as a relic of the ark , transmitted thence to the school of John , and preserved , after the Christian dispensation , as an heirloom in the faithful family of the Baptists , and now solemnly bequeathed to Mr , Noah Jones , doubtless on account of
the holy patriarch whose name he has the good fortune to bear . Mr . JoneSj ifc is hoped , will not be so ungrateful as to refuse the boon , though there be reason , from his late
controversy in the Repository , which he maintained so well , and for which every lover of the gospel feels obliged to him , to believe that he is not a young bird to be caught by chaff .
The public use of baptism , to distinguish between Unbelievers and those who believe in the gospel , is still more singular from a writer who , in his lecture , intimates , that usually it is too ostentatiously administered and ought to be more private . There
is another ground which is indeed omitted , and the omission of which I ascribe to Mr . Gilchrist s modesty and diffidence ; for this reason I will take the liberty to propose it by way of question , and if he will adopt it , instead of opposing , I will support him in my future communications on this subject . When the water of
baptism is now blessed by the minister , may it not become impregnated by some divine quality with which the penitence of the initiated on this occasion may be disposed to combine by some mysterious law of chemical affinities ? Pythagoras informs us , that truth lies in the bottom of the
well : why may not a virtue of this kind lie at the bottom of the consecrated water ? The circumstance of its being stagnant or impure , or of the cistern being" noisome , affords no presumption against the probability of some such divine infusion : for it
is supported by the broadest analogies of nature . Pearls lie buried in the mud of the ocean . The richest ore is embosomed and ingulfed in immense masses of gross earth which conceal and debase it . The most
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salubrious plants springton wild and shaggy heaths , and amidst inaccessible preci p ices ; and it is a frequent theme with the Eastern bards , that the rose flourishes best in the midst of thorns . Why then may not some Christian grace , some celestial charm ,
calculated to purify the soul and raise it from earth to heaven , blend with the weeds , the newts and the toads at the bottom of the baptismal pool , which the pious convert , on bein ^ pLunged , may discover and swallow ? If Mr . Gilchrist place the perpetuity
of baptism on these analogies , I should be ungrateful to appear any longer among anti-baptist writers ; for I love analogy . She is the handmaid that attends me in all my inquiries—the Ariadne , whose thread guides me in the labyrinth of error , whose fibres ,
spreading through the boundless constitution of nature , the frame of the human mind , and the various compositions of mimic art , serve as conductors to my thoughts , and cause them occasionally to sparkle with the electric fluid of truth . When ,
however , I consider that this ground is slippery , and that Mr . Gilchrist is not one of those who can make the worse appear the better reason , I recommend him , on second thought , to give tip the question . The practice of
baptizing by water , we are assured both by the example and precept of Christ , is foreign to Christianity , and therefore must , sooner or later , like water itself , glide away or evaporate from the Christian church ; and the more he and such writers meddle
with it , the more turbid and offensive must be the sediment which it will leave by their attempts to confine it . The time is not distent when even the very name will be known only as a blot in the pages of ecclesiastical history . J . JONES .
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608 Perpetuity of Baptism unsupported by Scripttf ? € .
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Sir , October U , 1826 . IN the Lectures lately published by the General Baptists , Mr . Gilchrist , p . 159 , charges with inconsistency those who reject one
institution of Christ , but receive another . He throws down the gauntlet and says , " I will undertake , if the opponents require it , to make out as strong a case for the non-perpetuity of the Lord ' s Supper , as ever they
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Oct. 2, 1826, page 608, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2553/page/36/
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