acts of ours, can or ought to discharge them. If we refuse to admit the believers in question into church fellowship, they owe us none of the moral duties, which belong to that condition, and it would be unreasonable in us to require them. When they build places of worship, support ministers, use hospitality, provide utensils for the celebration of ordinances, contribute toward maintaining the poor and relieving the sick members of the church, they do nothing but their duty, if they themselves be members; but, if they be denied the benefit of membership, all these are works of supererogation. Now we argue, that God hath connected in the holy scriptures duty with benefit, and that, having enjoined the duties on all believers, he intended all believers should reap the benefit of performing them. The Lord's supper is both a duty and a benefit; Christ requires all his disciples to partake of the Lord's supper; but, if we deny them the benefit, we discharge them from the duty; and the same may be said of all other church duties and benefits. Now, as we pretend to no authority to release from duty, how is it possible we should claim an authority to deprive of benefit?

Many of these duties are moral duties, of natural and immutable obligation; and such is the absolute necessity of obedience to them, that, when a man is so circumstanced as to be obliged either to omit a moral duty or a positive precept, the latter is in all cases to give way to the former. If obedience to positive precepts must subside to make room for obedience to moral precepts, how

is it possible to conceive, that innocent ignorance of a positive precept should become a release from moral obligations; and such are many of the duties of church fellowship.

Waiving for the present a multitude of arguments fairly and honestly deducible from scripture source, such as the law of positive institutes, and others, the sum of what we have said from the oracles of God is this. God, a being possessed of all possible perfections, is the author of christianity, the founder and friend of the christian church. He displayed the magnificence of his perfections in framing the whole, and continues to display it in governing every part. The same attributes, that pervade and direct all his natural empire, constitute and guide his moral dominion in the church. His wisdom leaves difficulties and obstacles, to us as immoveable as the decrees of fate; but he leaves them to excite and improve our mental abilities and moral excellencies, which he intends we should employ in diminishing them. His perfect justice never disqualifies without a crime. His benevolence produces the greatest social good. His love of holiness distinguishes the righteous from the wicked, and his patience and compassion bear with imperfections, both of knowledge and virtue: hence we have inferred, that the admitting of an unbaptized believer to church fellowship is, ON THE PRINCIPLES OF CHRISTIANITY, a wise, a just, a benevolent, a holy, a humane action.

We have gone further; we have examined many EXPRESS LAWS, given in writing by Jesus Christ

to his church for the more easy administration of justice in it. There are laws of exclusion; but unbaptized believers are not in the list. There are laws of toleration, which actually include their case. There is a law of baptism; but this does not repeal any other law, nor prohibit the observance of any other positive institute. There is a law for the exercise of gifts, in which the incorporation of some is included; and there is the law of constitution, which authorizes the incorporation of all good men. We have examined, finally, the law of release and deprivation, and we have thence inferred that the interests of morality, and the pleasures of christianity, if not diminished by excluding these persons, would, however, be greatly promoted by admitting them. We do not presume to have exhausted the subject; there remain many more reasons for the practice, which we have been defending; but these are satisfactory to us, and, we think, they deserve consideration by our brethren: however, the writer of this does not mean to lengthen out the controversy; and, he hopes, should any think proper to deny all he has affirmed, no offence will be taken at his future silence. He would not seem to slight the admonitions of any good man; but, on this article, his judgment is settled; he has only to add, Grace. be with all them, that love our Lord Jesus Christ in sincerity!

CONCLUSION.

We will, then, close this subject with a few remarks once for all. Impartial justice obliges us to declare, that all our congregations, whether they tolerate infant baptism in their own communities or not, are warm friends to civil and religious liberty, and to universal toleration in a state. Even in popery, that worst of all pretended christianity, they distinguish the religion from the civil polity incorporated with it, and would tolerate the former, while they execrate the latter, as men and as Britons.

An apology, too, ought to be made for their refusing to tolerate infant baptism in their own churches. Sprinkling is so different from dipping, the incorporating of infants by sprinkling into the christian church is so incompatible with the nature of a rational religion to be received and professed on a conviction of the truth and excellence of it; the new testament is so utterly unacquainted with infant sprinkling, the arguments brought to support it are so weak and far-fetched, the concessions of learned divines are so numerous, and the mischiefs attending it so notorious, that they may well be excused for their aversion to it.

Again Christ's right of legislation is so clear, the perfection of the scriptures so fully ascertained, the dipping of adults on their own personal profession of faith and repentance so plain, the honour put upon this institution by the example of Jesus Christ so conspicuous, the pleasure enjoyed

by large congregations in hearing persons profess faith and repentance so refined, and the heart-felt satisfaction of conscientiously adminstering and receiving this ordinance so invigorating, heightened too by a consciousness of disinterested motives, capable of suffering the cross and despising the shame of popular ridicule and censure;-all these are so forcible, that we must not be too severe on the men, who, in the transports of their zeal, considering themselves as the only defenders of this part of primitive religion, hold infant sprinkling in abhorrence, and refuse to tolerate it in their churches.

Further: The whole denomination has, through successive ages, been misrepresented, and treated with more partiality and rigour than any other nonconformists. They were generally nicknamed anabaptists, or people who baptized twice, because they baptized some people once, who had been sprinkled in infancy, which sprinkling in their opinion was no baptism at all. Orthodox writers against heresy always took care to put anabaptists into the list of most pestilent hereticks, because they exploded that impenetrable jargon, which the schools had incorporated with christianity. Writers on church government abused them as fomenters of anarchy, enemies to monarchy, and abettors of republicansim, because they detested despotism, and denied the authority of civil magistrates over conscience in matters of religion. Ecclesiastical historians affirmed, they were atheists, antinomians and libertines, because