as has already been proved, to persons who had not received christian baptism. If it be replied, that though all Christians originally communicated, yet from the period of the Pentecost, at least, they were all previously initiated by immersion, the inquiry returns, were they baptized on account of the necessary connection of that appointment with the eucharist, or purely in deference to the apostolic injunction? To assert the former would be palpably begging the question; and if the latter is affirmed, we reply, that as they practised as they did, in deference to the will of God, so our Pædobaptist brethren, in declining the practice which we adopt, regulate their conduct by the same principle.

The shew of conformity to apostolic precedent is with the advocates of strict communion, and nothing more; the substance and reality are with us. Their conformity is to the letter, ours to the spirit; theirs circumstantial and incidental, ours radical and essential. In withholding the signs from those who are in possession of the thing signified, in refusing to communicate the symbols of the great sacrifice to those who are equally with themselves sprinkled by its blood and sharers of its efficacy, in dividing the regenerate into two classes, believers and communicants,

and confining the Church to the narrow limits of a sect, they have violated more maxims of antiquity, and receded further from the example of the Apostles, than any class of Christians on record.

We live in a mutable world, and the diversity of sentiment which has arisen in the christian church on the subject of baptism, has placed things in a new situation, and has given birth to à case which can be determined only by an appeal to the general principles of the gospel, and to those injunctions in particular, which are designed to regulate the conduct of Christians, whose judgment in points of secondary moment differ. These we shall have occasion to discuss in another part of this treatise, where it will, we trust, be satisfactorily shewn that we are furnished with a clue fully sufficient for our guidance: and when we consider the impossibility of comprehending in any code whatever, every possible combination of future occurrences and events, we shall perceive the necessity of having recourse to those large and comprehensive maxims, which the prospective wisdom of the Father of lights, and the Author of revelation, has abundantly supplied.

Were it not that more are capable of number

ing arguments, than of weighing them, the mention of the following might be omitted. The signification of the two positive ordinances of the gospel are urged in proof of the necessity of baptism preceding the Lord's supper. The first, we are reminded by our opponents, is styled by theologians the sacrament of regeneration, or of initiation; the second, the sacrament of nutrition.* To argue from metaphors is rarely a conclusive mode of reasoning, but if it were, the regenerate state of our Pædobaptist brethren would surely afford a much better reason for admitting them to the sacrament of nutrition, than their misconception of a particular command for prohibiting them, unless we chuse to affirm that the shadow is of more importance than the substance, or that

we

* "In submitting to baptism," says Mr. Booth, " ave an emblem of our union and communion with Jesus Christ, as our great representative, in his death, burial, and resurrection. And as in baptism we profess to have renewed spiritual life; so in communicating at the Lord's table, we have the emblem of that heavenly food by which we live, by which we grow, and by virtue of which we hope to live for ever. Hence theological writers have often called baptism the sacrament of regeneration, or of initiation, and the Lord's supper the sacrament of nutrition.”—Booth's Apology.

the sacrament of nutrition is not intended to nourish.

Their actual possession of spiritual life, in consequence of their union to the head of the Church, necessarily implies a title to every christian privilege, by which such a life is cherished and maintained, unless there were an express prohibition to the contrary; nor is it to be doubted that the acknowledgment of Pædobaptists, as Christians, implies a competence to enter into the full import of the rites commemorative of our Lord's death and passion. To consider the Lord's supper, however, as a mere commemoration of that event, is to entertain a very inadequate view of it. If we credit St. Paul, it is also a federal rite, in which in token of our reconciliation with God, we eat and drink in his presence: it is a feast upon a sacrifice, by which we become partakers at the altar, not less really, though in a manner more elevated and spiritual, than those who under the ancient economy presented their offerings in the temple. In this ordinance, the cup is a spiritual participation of the blood, the bread of the body of the crucified Saviour:* and as our Pædobaptist brethren are allowed to be in covenant with

1 Corinthians xi. 16.

God, their title to every federal rite follows of course, unless it is barred by some clear unequivocal declaration of scripture; instead of which we meet with nothing on the opposite side but precarious conjectures, and remote analogies.

Our opponents are extremely fond of representing baptism under the New Testament, as essential as circumcision under the old, inferring from thence that no unbaptized person is admissible to the eucharist, for the same reason that none who was not circumcised, was permitted to partake of the paschal feast. But besides that is to reason from analogy, a practice against which, when applied to the discussion of positive institutes, they on other occasions earnestly protest, the analogy fails in the most essential points. Circumcision is expressly stated as a necessary condition of admission to the passover: a similar statement respecting baptism will decide the controversy. The neglect of circumcision, which could proceed from nothing but presumptuous impiety, incurred the sentence of excision; that soul shall be cut off from the people. Whatever may be meant beside by that commination, it will not be doubted that it included the entire forfeiture of the advantages of that peculiar covenant, which God was pleased to establish with the Is