passage is so great and decisive, that the compilers of our Liturgy have inserted it in the office for the Baptism of Infants, and have commented upon it in the following terms:

"Ye hear in this Gospel the words of our Saviour Christ, that he commanded the children to be brought unto him, how he blamed those that would have kept them from him, how he exhorteth all men to follow their innocency. Ye perceive how, by his outward gesture and deed, he declared his good will toward them, for he embraced them in his arms, he laid his hands upon them, and blessed them.”

I shall begin with the above passage of Scripture, because it is best known, it being adopted by our Church as a strong reason for Pædobaptism, and because, in expatiating upon it, and in shewing its connexion with the practice for which I am now contending, I shall be enabled to introduce to the notice of the reader some important observations, which will greatly facilitate his conception of the arguments which are to follow : moreover, in answering the objections of our opponents to this specific point of the question, I shall have a favourable opportunity of removing some of those difficulties, which are apt to perplex such persons as have not been particularly induced to investigate this subject.

The first objection which the Baptists urge

against the argument which we deduce from this passage is, that the parents of the infants here spoken of were not believers.

Now I think they were believers; and this I infer from their conduct: they bring their infants to our Lord to receive his blessing: this argues their conviction of His divine character. He offers himself to the Jews as their expected Messiah; some believed in him, and many rejected him is it conceivable, that any who questioned the truth of his pretensions and his miracles, would bring their children to receive the benediction of a person whom they regarded as an impostor? The very act of presenting their children to our Lord to receive the imposition of his hands and the benediction of his lips, is a most affecting and decisive proof that they were firmly convinced that he was the Messiah, and therefore, in the strictest sense of the word, they were believers.

The next point which our opponents challenge us to prove is, that the children above spoken of were infants. And here the pertinacity of our opponents compels me to trespass upon the reader's attention while I indulge in a few etymological criticisms. The word here rendered little children is, in the original Greek, the diminutive from was, which signifies a child. That they are really infants who are here spoken of, we may also infer from the expression employed in St. Matthew's

Gospel, when the wise men of the East first found

(το παιδίον)

our Saviour,--" They saw" (To Taidíov)

"the

young child," then unquestionably an infant. It is objected in the third place, that the words "suffer the little children to come unto me," are

to be understood exclusively of those who were then brought to Christ. This interpretation of the passage is directly contradicted by the expressions of St. Luke, who, in his account of this manifestation of our Lord's peculiar regard for little children, whom he here expressly calls infants, says, But Jesus (προσ καλεσάμενος αυτα) "after having called them," (quum pueros advocasset, as Beza has it,) "said, suffer little children to come unto me." Now to make our Saviour's words properly applicable to these individual infants, is to render his gracious command perfectly needless; for what necessity is there for bidding his disciples to suffer those to come unto him, who were already with him? Supposing, even, that Christ had simply called them, and that they had not yet been presented to him, who can imagine that it was necessary to give any further direction to his disciples to suffer those to come unto him whom he had but just then called to him? It is therefore of infants in general, and not of those particular infants only, that he spake. "If," says Bishop Taylor," we regard the precept, it cannot be supposed to expire in the persons of those little

ones which were then brought, for they were come already, and though they were tacitly reproved who offered to hinder them, yet the children were present; and therefore it must relate to others, to all infants, that they should for ever be brought to Christ. And this is also to be gathered from TOUSTOV, (of such,) not TsTwv, (of these ;) for these are but a few, but the kingdom of God is of such as these who are now brought; children make up a great portion of it, and the other portion is made up by such who become like to these. And if the transcript belong to the kingdom, it were strange if the exemplar should not: if none can enter but they who are like children, it must be certain that nothing can hinder the children. And lastly, if we regard the doctrine which Christ established upon this action, it will finish the argument into a certain conclusion; Whosoever shall not receive the kingdom of God as a little child, shall not enter therein;' receive it as a little child receives it, that is, with innocence and without any let or hinderance."

True it is, that the first interpretation of the words coming to him signifies by way of bodily approach, whilst he was corporeally present on earth; and so, indeed, these infants might and did come to him: but how was their being such as the kingdom of God consisted of, a reason for their being suffered to come? For, if there were

any force in that reason, then, by the same argument, none but such as the kingdom of God consisted of should have been suffered to come to Christ. But this is as contrary to practice as it is to reason. It is contrary to practice, since

there were suffered to come to him such as the kingdom of God ought not to consist of; those, for example, who sought our Lord's death and destruction. And it is contrary to reason also; for, how should our Saviour by his preaching have converted such as were not of his kingdom, considered according to their present state, if they might not have been suffered to come to him? Nor can it mean a declaration of a capacity for glory; since how could the disciples, or men, or even demons, prevent them from coming there, if they belonged to that kingdom?

Now then, I appeal to common reason whether or no there is not here that which the Antipædobaptists so strenuously demand,-viz. a fair and clear scriptural ground for Infant Baptism. If children may come to Christ, and must, by the command of Christ, be suffered thus to approach him, and there be no other way that we are acquainted with of coming to him but by baptism, what can be more plain than that, in enjoining that they should be permitted to come to him, he commanded that they should be suffered to be baptized, and forbade that they should be