_Mr. K._ I cannot agree with you, Mr. M., in putting circumcision on the same level with the Sabbath.
_Mr. M._ I myself see a resemblance in the changes made in the two cases. I have no wish to proselyte you to my views. I have only answered your polite inquiries.
_Mr. K._ O, I know that; we shall be good friends still; but I see no grounds for baptizing children on the faith of their parents.
_Mr. M._ We look at the thing from different points of view. I see it as clearly as I see that the church of God is essentially the same in all ages, with its variety of forms. This matter of children's baptism is with me a spiritual thing, and is independent of dispensations. You know that a river may have, in one district of the earth through which it flows, one name, and in another district another name, while it is the same river. Now, the divine recognition of believers' children, as standing in a special covenanted relation with God, is the headspring of infant dedication by the use of a rite. The object of this recognition is, that He may have a godly seed. God does not perpetuate religion directly by natural descent, it is true, but he seeks to promote it by descent from a pious parentage, and he therefore endows that parentage with special privileges and promises. The inclusion of children with their believing parents has been the great means of perpetuating religion in the earth. It is a stream which washed the shores of Judaism under the name of circumcision; now it washes the shores of the Gentiles under the name of baptism. For the Saviour or the apostles to have reäppointed infant dedication, with the use of the cotemporary initiating ordinance, would, to my mind, be as superfluous as for the allied powers to have agreed that the Danube should still run through Austria.
_Mr. K._ Your principle of interpretation, Mr. M., has brought in all the darkness which has covered the earth in the Romish apostacy. There will be no end to human inventions in religion, if this principle prevails.
_Mr. M._ But, my dear sir, there certainly has been an end at the very beginning; for what inventions in Protestant worship have non-prelatical Pædobaptists made? Surely that practice has not been prolific of superstitions. I often hear this alleged, Mr. K., and we are called Romish and Popish because we baptize infants. But will it not be best for Christian sects to allow each other entire liberty of conscience, and not accuse each other of tendencies to Romanism, when all are zealously Protestant? Here is a piece, which I cut from a newspaper lately, which describes the baptism by immersion of some females and others, one Sabbath in January, the thermometer below zero, a place being cut through the ice for the purpose, and a boy watching with a pole to keep the floating ice from the opening. Shall I call this Romish, superstitious, fanatical? Shall I say, How can we, consistently with such practices among Protestants, say anything about the doctrine of penances? No. I prefer to think that those who do these things are as good Protestants as myself, and I will not impeach their rigid adherence to their belief, by imputing Romish tendencies to their modes of worship and their ordinances; for no people are further from Romanism in their principles than they (unless it be some of us Pædobaptists, Mrs. Kelly).