mitted to a participation in the privi leges of the gospel. Again, (Colos sians ii. 11, 12,) speaking of our Saviour, "in whom also ye are circumcised with the circumcision made without hands, in putting off the body of the sins of the flesh, by the circumcision of Christ; buried with him in baptism, wherein also ye are risen with him, through the faith of the operation of God, who hath raised him from the dead." Wherever baptism is alluded to, the resurrection of our Lord from the dead will always be found in connexion with it.

But after all, though, probably those whom St. Peter was addressing had been well instructed in the nature and importance of the rite, he takes care to tell them that the baptism by the resurrection of Jesus Christ, of which the saving of the family of Noah in the ark was a type, that this baptism did not consist in "the putting away of the

filth of the flesh"-an expression of which we cannot so well perceive the force, as none among ourselves practice the numerous lustrations which were so general among the Jews at that time. He tells them, that baptism did not consist in the mere immersion taken singly, which we suppose was the usual mode of performing the rite, but in "the answer of a good conscience toward God." In the very earliest times,-I say the very earliest,-every person who offered himself for baptism was, without hesitation, baptized; because it was not imagined that any, with the prospect of calamities that awaited him, who acknowledged himself to be a Christian, would voluntarily throw himself in the way of those dangers, except he really were sincere in his purpose. But a little later, about the time we may suppose this epistle to have been written, when the Christians in different places had

formed themselves into societies, such new securities were introduced for the well-being of the community, as occasion might render requisite. Among others, there was this: on a person's applying to be admitted into the infant church, questions were proposed to him calculated to ascertain what his real feelings were. He might, if his acquaintance with the habits of the new sect were derived (as may frequently have been the case) from mere report, he might think that to become a Christian and be baptized, was, in fact, nothing more than to go through a certain number of forms, just as attended initiation into many of the rites of paganism; or, to take an illustration nearer home, just as are observable in the ceremonies previous to admission into the secret societies of our own time, which never have any visible effect on the conduct of the initiated, nor are ever expected to have any. To

remove these and other erroneous impressions, the elders of the church, with that grave and earnest simplicity which is invariably found in company with a true sense of the duty imposed, inquired of the supposed convert whether he really was honest in his intentions; whether he had a thorough conviction of the truth of the religion he was desirous of professing; and whether, in pursuance of such conviction, he was ready, on the instant, "to renounce the devil and all his works," to overturn whose empire Jesus Christ came into the world; to renounce also "the vain pomp and glory of the world," with which the pure and undefiled religion of the humble Jesus had nothing in unison, "with all covetous desires of the same, and the carnal desires of the flesh, so that he would not follow nor be led by them"-if he hesitated to give consent to these,—to á heart wedded to the vanities of life

severe and repulsive conditions, he was rejected; but if he received them with a warm and hearty spirit, appealing to heaven for the sincerity of his assurances, thus returning "the answer of a good conscience toward God," he was joyfully, and with thankfulness to the Almighty for this mercy, received into the ranks of the faithful. The apostle Peter is alluding to this practice, and puts his brethren in mind, that baptism consists not in the mere outward ceremony which attended their introduction, but in that purification of the heart which they had voluntarily undertaken to attempt, and to promote which the first supplies of grace had been vouchsafed them, in the very instant of their initiation. In process of time, as Christianity extended wider, and one generation appeared to succeed to the spiritual inheritance of another, the practice of infant baptism came into general, almost universal