for which it was instituted, we have done all that is required of us; but when we employ it to other ends, the least that can be said of us is, we are wise above what is written. Zeal may animate us; but even zeal, when it does not follow knowledge, will misguide us.

General and vague as this description of the law of baptism is, it is sufficient for all the ends, for which we produce it: however, it may serve to elucidate our meaning, if we be more explicit.

We affirm, then, that baptism is not a church ordinance, that it is not naturally, necessarily, and actually connected with church fellowship, and consequently that the doctrine of initiating into the christian church by baptism is a confused association of ideas, derived from masters whose disciples it is no honour to be.

Baptism, we allow, is a positive institute ofthe New Testament, and ought to be practised till the second coming of our Lord Jesus Christ; but, that it is not a New Testament church ordinance is clear, for it was administered several years before the Jewish economy was dissolved, and consequently before there were any such congregated societies in the world as we call christian churches. When John the Baptist came first preaching and baptizing, Jesus, who afterward founded the chris tian church, lived a private life at Nazareth; he did not enter on his ministry till the death of John, and he did not dissolve the Jewish ecclesiastical state till his own death. People were baptized all this time on a general profession of faith in the Mes

siah, and repentance towards God. This notion of baptism was preserved after the resurrection of Christ, and after christian churches had been congregated by his order, as appears by the baptism of the Eunuch, who indeed made a profession of faith, but was not associated to any particular christian church.

Much has been said, in pretended proof of the place of baptism, concerning the order of Christ's words in that commission to baptise, which he gave his apostles; it is recorded in the last chapter of Matthew: but, if this trite method of reasoning amounted to argument, we might form one thus. Christ instituted the Lord's supper before his death. Christ made baptism a positive christian institute after his resurrection. Therefore the Lord's supper ought to be received before we are baptized.

In a word, the law of christian baptism is, that believers in Christ should publickly avow their faith in him, and their resolution to obey him, by being baptized; and the proper time for this is after believing and before admission to fellowship: however, as there was no original and actual, so there is no natural and necessary connection between baptism and fellowship. Baptism was an initiation into the profession of christianity at large, not into the practice of it in any particular church.

This is the law, and, we think, the whole law of baptism, and we plead this law in favour of the right of unbaptized believers to the Lord's supper, for two plain and obvious reasons. 1. A command to perform one duty is not a prohibition of

another duty. Keep the sabbath-day holy is one command, and honour thy father is another: but, as there is no necessary connection between the two, a breach of the first does not release from an obligation to the last. Baptism and the Lord's supper are both commanded; but a law to perform one does not prohibit the observance of the other: the unbaptized believer's way to the Lord's table is therefore clear. 2. It is remarkable, that this positive law of baptism is not enforced by any penalties, and herein it differs from all other positive institutes. By what right then do we affix to the breach of it such a severe penalty as exclusion from church fellowship? After all, our candidates neither deny the right of Christ to give laws, nor that he hath given the law of baptism, nor that they are bound to obey it; their error lies in an innocent mistake concerning the proper subject, and the right mode of administering it. There is no penalty affixed to this mistake, and one law is not a prohibition or repeal of another law.

Fourthly we argue for the right of our candidates from the law of gifts. When Jesus Christ ascended to heaven, he gave gifts unto men for the work of the ministry, and for the edifying of the general body of christians. To one he gave a discerning of spirits, to another divers kinds of tongues, one had a gift of psalmody, another a doctrine, and another an interpretation, and when the whole church came together into one place, all these gifts were directed to the publick edification. It is the opinion of some, that all these spiritual

gifts have been continued in the church in some degree ever since, and it is the thankful acknowledgment of all, that a part of them have been perpetuated to this day. Whatever general gifts men receive from God, they receive under a natural obligation of employing and improving them, of im proving them for themselves, and employing them for the benefit of others; and whatever special ecclesiastical abilities good men receive from Christ the lord of the church, they receive both under a general obligation to use them, and under a special scriptural law to employ them in the church for the edification of the body.

Some unbaptized believers have received out of the fulness of Christ spiritual abilities; one hath a gift of psalmody, another a comprehensive knowledge of christian theology, and an aptitude to teach it to others, a third excels in spiritual discernment, and so on; and we have four remarks to make on their case.

1. The want of baptism does not incapacitate these men. The vigour of mental operations is not impaired by this defect. Neither fancy, judgment, memory, penetration, freedom of speech, courage, nor any other excellence, that goes into the composition of a spiritual gift, is annihilated or debilitated on that account; so that they are sufficient to the work of edifying the body of Christ.

2. There is no express law in the New Testament, no prohibition against the use of these abilities on account of the imperfection of baptism,

no precedent of exclusion, no trace or distant hint of any such thing.

3. There is an express law given to persons, who have spiritual gifts, to make use of them. They are not only given to every man to profit withal, but a positive command is issued, that they should employ them in the church for general advantage. Call all these abilities of unbaptized believers one talent, if you please, and suppose the baptist bro ther to have two, it will yet follow, that the one talent should not be hid in a napkin, but put to use, that, when the Lord comes, he may receive his own with improvements.

4. Christian societies cannot regularly employ these gifts among themselves, unless they admit the persons, who have them, to fellowship. An unbaptized believer, having spiritual abilities, would not proceed regularly, if he were to begin by demanding of the church a right to exercise his gifts among them for the publick benefit, according to Christ's command. He should first demand fellowship. In such a case a people would reason justly if they allowed, that such a man had a right to exercise his abilities in the church; that the church was obliged by law to allow and direct the exercise; that they had no jurisdiction except over their own members, and consequently that right to exercise spiritual gifts included in itself right to church fellowship. The law, that obliges the candidate to exercise his gifts in the church, and the law, that commands the church to employ him and to direct the exercise, both include in them