LIBRARY OF THE THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY 
 
 PRINCETON, N. J. 
 
 Presented by 
 
 rr\r<3.\Alu\\c7^rr\ S\Arc7\n. 
 
 BV 811.5 .D167 
 Dana, Daniel, 
 Baptology 
 
l-ir>^^L^ 
 
 ^ '^Cc^, .^/>> 
 
BAPTOLOGY 
 
 MY BOOTMAKER AND I 
 
 ilToiJcs of i3a|)ti0m 
 
 BY 
 
 OLD STUDENT. 
 
 SECOIS"D EDITION. 
 
 "O foolish Galatians ! who hath hewitched.yonV— St. Paul. 
 " Give instruction to a wise man, and he will be yet wiser : 
 
 Teach a just man, and he will increase in learning."— Pz-or. ix. 9. 
 "Let me enti-eat you to study well the word of God on this subject.' 
 
 £icke7'steth. 
 
 NEW-YORK: 
 PUBLISHED BY H. B. DURAISTD, 
 
 11 BIBLE HOUSE. 
 
 1868. 
 
Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1S60, 
 
 By Daniel Dana, Jr., 
 
 In the Clerk's Office of the United States District Court fo the Southern District of 
 
 New York. 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 INTR0DUCTI01S-, 
 
 Page 
 The dust disturbed of a pulverized village 5 
 
 THE FIRST TALK. 
 
 ON MODES OF BAPTISM. 
 
 My Bootmaker in trouble — The Library — The Soul doctor — Ex- 
 citement about Modes of Baptism — Christians miserable be- 
 cause not immersed — John the Baptist — Henry Clay — ^A 
 seeming challenge made real 7 
 
 THE SECOND TALK. 
 
 JOHN THE BAPTIST. 
 
 The challenge declined — Clouds of witnesses — Ignorant sincerity 
 — John did not go into the river — Absurd ! — TVhat is it ? — 
 "Who was John the Baptist ? — Moses ? — And what did they to 
 the first and to the last High Priest? — Daniel Webster and 
 the Arithmetic of Heaven — Picture — Roman Catacombs — 
 Font 16 
 
 THE THIRD TALK. 
 
 PHILIP ASD THE EUXUCH. 
 
 Baptists bothered by the Catacombs — " Foolish Galatians " — Bad 
 Logic — Crotchety Fanaticism — Anabaptists — The Eunuch 
 reading Isaiah — ^Parkhurst and Murdock. 28 
 
 THE FOURTH TALK. 
 
 CHEEFLT ABOUT WORDS. 
 
 Baptize — Great men not secured against prejudice and perversion 
 — Questions easily asked — "Words of many meanings — Let, 
 •prevent, Lawyer, drink, travel, travail — Many modes — "Water 
 a symbol— St. Peter 34 
 
4 CONTENTS. 
 
 THE FIFTH TALK. 
 
 •mE WORD AUGUMENT. 
 
 Page 
 "Immersion and nothing else" — Imputed presumption — ^Forty 
 
 years — Certain knowledge — Hard and revolting work — A 
 quadruped not necessarily a horse — Israel where and how 
 Baptized — Pentecost — Baptizo ? — Greek enough — Christ's re- 
 buke — Baptisms of Cups, &c. — "Waterpots — St. Paul — " Di- 
 vers washings " — Dip, in the New Testament does not mean 
 Immersion 43 
 
 THE SIXTH TALK. 
 
 BAPTO. 
 
 " Actions speak louder than words " — Lament of the rich man — 
 Luke, xyi. 24 — Is this dip an immersion ? — John, xiii. 26 — 
 "Was this an immersion ? — Rev. xrx. 13 — This was a sprink- 
 ling — Anabaptist convulsions 50 
 
 THE SEVENTH TALK. 
 
 . THE WORD ARGUMENT. 
 
 A sigh of resignation — Decoys — Sunday processions — ^Perversions 
 — Impressions of the multitude — Never-forgotten texts — 
 Profane mockery — ^The laughers — Edged tools — Christian 
 love — Much water — Joh7i, iii, 23 — Many waters — Show of 
 language — Burials in the time and country of the Apostles — 
 Ignorance of Commentators — St. Paul — Graves of Christ and 
 of Lazurus — Spiritual death and burial 63 
 
INTEODTJCTION". 
 
 A VERY simple and homely fact may suffice to intro- 
 duce this little Essay to do good. It is a labor of love ; 
 and if so received, the laborer \yill be satisfied. In a 
 country village of the usual religious divisions, the Bap- 
 tists had produced an agitating sensation on their pecu- 
 liar views of the mode of baptism. From other denom- 
 inations, they had drawn several proselytes ; and others 
 they had rendered uncomfortable, by a violent agitation 
 of the modal questiou. Among these was my not 
 unintelligent ^lethodist boot-maker. From successive 
 talks with him, comes this little work ; — thus not un- 
 called for. 
 
 Always courteously respectful, boots in hand, he en- 
 ters my study with a less cheerful *' good morning" than 
 usual, and is invited to an arm-chair. 
 
6 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 His rueful countenance tells of a kindly spirit ill at 
 ease. His eyes glance around my library; and ttie 
 Talks herein recorded, for tke benefit of other like- 
 troubled spirits, begin as in the following pages. 
 
 f f 
 
THE FIRST TALK. 
 
 ON MODES OF BAPTISM. 
 
 My Bootmaker. "You have many books here." 
 
 I. "Some, certainly; yet more than fifty years of 
 gathering should have done better." 
 
 B. M. "A great many books, / think. Have you 
 read 'em all ?" 
 
 I. " Perhaps not all. Of all of them I know some- 
 thing, I believe ; and all about some of them, perhaps ; 
 but to know all about all of them, I may not pretend. 
 But why so strange a question from one so modest ?" 
 ■ B. M. " I beg your pardon, but I am in trouble of 
 mind, and was thinking that, perhaps, with all these 
 books, you might help me." 
 
 /. " A quite sufficient apology for your inquiry, my 
 good friend ; and as a soul-doctor, bound ' to minister to 
 minds diseased,' very gladly shall be done whatever may 
 be in my power in your case. But what can be dis- 
 turbing your mind ? I am wont to reckon you among 
 the happiest of the happy. Why are you not ?" 
 
 B. M. " Well, I suppose you know there is a good 
 deal of excitement among us about the right mode of 
 baptism." 
 
 /. " So is it said; and that it is disquieting the spirit- 
 
8 THE FIRST TALK. 
 
 ■ual peace of some, and acting not favorably on tlie usual 
 domestic and social tranquillity of our little town. But 
 that the unhappy influence had so far spread as to 
 include such as you I had not supposed. As a good 
 Methodist, what have you to do with the exciting con- 
 troversy ? Why allow it to trouble you ?" 
 
 B. M. "I think I should not have allowed it to 
 trouble me, or had any thing to do with the excite- 
 ment ; but my good Baptist neighbors have been inter- 
 esting themselves in our spiritual condition till myself 
 and family are really uncomfortable." 
 
 I. "So your good neighbors have succeeded, no 
 doubt to their own great satisfaction, in awakening 
 yourself and family to the danger of not having been 
 immersed when you made your profession of religion ? 
 That's the real source of your trouble, I suppose ?" 
 
 B. M. " Yes, that is it, I must confess." 
 
 I. " And without even blushing ! Well, indeed, we 
 are living in strange times, when even sensible people, 
 not only do and suffer such strange and unreasonable 
 things as to bring their good sense into serious question, 
 but even not seldom to derange their intellects, and 
 sometimes even to destroy their lives ! But rouse 
 yourself to your wonted sober-mindedness. Cast oft 
 the spell from your spirit, and tell me how they have 
 managed to disturb your faith so fearfully — those good 
 neighbors !" 
 
 B. M. " Well, they have brought to my house tracts 
 and books about immersion, to show that it is the only 
 Scriptural mode of baptism — the only mode mentioned 
 in the New Testament — that it only is baptism, and that 
 no intelligent and thoughtful person can be really satis- 
 fied without it." 
 
ON MODES OF BAPTISM. 9 
 
 /. "Indeed! that is really high ground to take for 
 the denunciation of the whole of Christendom for more 
 than fifteen centuries, and all but their own sect as now 
 existing ! Is that all ?" 
 
 B. M. " no ; they say that we can not be Christians 
 at all, if not immersed." 
 
 /. "And you have opened your doors and exposed 
 your family to such insanity of fanaticism ? Well may 
 you be thankful that your good wife, while certainly 
 not less sensible,' is much less excitable than you are." 
 
 B. M. "I think she is in no danger of being de- 
 ranged ; but she was very much shocked last night, 
 when the Baptist minister declared that he knew of 
 hundreds of conscientious professors who were very 
 miserable, because they had not been immersed when 
 they got religion." 
 
 /. "Well, indeed, she might be shocked. "Who 
 would not be shocked by such a declaration, that has 
 any feeling of pity for human misery, and especially for 
 that of the weak and ignorant ' babe-s in Christ ?' But 
 do you believe that strange declaration ? Do you really 
 believe that he does know of such hundreds?" 
 
 B. M. " There seems too much reason to believe it." 
 
 I. "He seems not fanatical, in temperament — is no 
 doubt a sinc-erely truthful man, who would not knowing- 
 ly misrepresent. And o?ie, at least, you know, that he 
 would rightfully reckon among the miserables?" 
 
 B. M. " Many more than one." 
 
 J. " Then, indeed, is there found an importance in the 
 question, which I had never supposed belonged to it, in 
 the estimation of any considerate and intelligent Chris- 
 tian outside of the Baptist boundaries ! To me, very 
 shocking is the thought, that if known to a single village 
 1* 
 
10 THE FIRST TALK. 
 
 preacher, that there are hundreds of believers unhappy be- 
 cause not having been baptized by immersion, there may 
 be hundreds of thousands^ in our whole country, thus mis- 
 erable for lack of knowledge ! — that sim^ple knowledge 
 of the Gospel which should effectually preclude all pos- 
 sibility of such misery from such a source ! How humil- 
 iating ! how lamentable !" 
 
 B.M.'^ What simple knowledge of the Gospel do you 
 mean, that should prevent such misery ?" 
 
 /. ''And does a Scripture-reading Christian ask such 
 a question ? Why, of course, I mean that true, childlike, 
 heart-knowledge, which has learned of Christ that 
 'mercy is better than sacrifice ;' — that ' love is the prin- 
 cipal thing;' — ^that 'circumcision is nothing, and that 
 uncircumcision is nothing,' where love is not; that 
 modes are nothing, where obedience of the heart and 
 spirit is not — where the soul-prayer of the penitent pub- 
 lican is not ; and that where this true evangelical obedi- 
 ence is, with a ' charity that never faileth,' — such as the 
 Good Samaritan's — no mistake or want of knowledge 
 about modes, or about any thing so comparatively unes- 
 sential, can ever be of so serious account as rightly to 
 disturb the spiritual peace of any true believer I In 
 short I allude to that knowledge of God, for the lack of 
 which ^people perish^ by folly, vice, crime, insanity and 
 suicide." 
 
 B.M. "But the Baptists say, belief and obedience 
 require baptism, which is nothing else than immersion." 
 
 L " And the strange fancy, that there may be truth 
 in a figment so extravagantly fanatical as the exclusion 
 of all the unimmersed from the fold of Christ, has dis- 
 turbed you^ as well as others?" 
 
 M, B. "Yes, that can't be denied. Their confident 
 
ON MODES OF BAPTISM. 11 
 
 manner of declaring the Bible all on their side, and the 
 great authorities they bring forward to support them, 
 have troubled me very much. Indeed, they have 
 almost driven me into the water ; as already they have 
 several of our people, and some from other congrega- 
 tions in this place, as you must know very well." 
 
 I. "Yes, I do know it quite well, and that so they 
 have profaned the Holy ISTame in which they had been 
 already baptized ! ' 0, foolish Galatians !' In astonish- 
 ment, so exclaimed St. Paul on a not unlike occasion : — 
 ' O foolish Gralatians ! who hath bewitched you ?' 
 
 " The Gralatian disciples, as you remember, had been 
 fanaticized into the vain belief that the Gospel of Christ 
 was not perfect and sufficient, but in connection with 
 the ceremonial law of Moses. False teachers had led 
 them away from the truth by boldly preaching the 
 necessity of a Jewish mode of entrance into the Chris- 
 tian Church. By ardent zealots for a mode the ' foolish 
 Galatians,' in their weakness, had allowed themselves to 
 be browbeaten from their true faith in the completeness 
 of the Gospel — 'the fulness of Christ,' as taught by the 
 Apostles. ' Do you discern any likeness between your 
 modern instance and this ancient one of the foolish 
 Galatians?" 
 
 B.M. "I don't know but I do." 
 
 I. " You certainly do. You can't help it. The like- 
 ness is too strong to allow of mistake. Be careful not 
 to forget the foolishness of the Galatians. And be not 
 less careful to feel and think kindly and charitably to- 
 ward your perverted brethren. Let the blame fall 
 where due; and that only in the just weight of Chris-- 
 tian charity. 'Even Peter was to be blamed,' for giv- 
 ing countenance to the zealots for circumcision. Nay, 
 
12 THE FIRST TALK. 
 
 Barnabas, 'the Son of Prophecy' and of Consolation,' 
 ' a good man, fall of the Holy Ghost and of faith,' to 
 the great grief of the faithful, ' was carried away with 
 their dissimulation' in this matter, ^ and walked not up- 
 rightly according to the truth of the Gospel.' How strange 
 of Barnabas ! As regards Peter, St. Paul says, ' I with- 
 stood him to the face, because he was to be blamed.' 
 He made a difference between his two fellow-apostles. 
 Peter was the leader in turning the back upon the uncir- 
 cumcised Gentile Christians, denying their true disciple- 
 ship, as do the Baptists towards the unimmersed. In 
 this matter, Peter's supremacy is not more to be contro- 
 verted than envied. So with St. Paul, let your charity 
 fail not. Be kind to all : to the perverted, and to the 
 perverters. Yet these, you may be allowed, with some 
 of St. Paul's honest indignation, 'to withstand to the 
 face,' and tell them in your own defence, and for their 
 good — if God will — that there is not a single case 
 OF baptism in the Kew Testament which can be 
 
 PBj^ED TO BE AFTER THEIR EXCLUSIVE MODE, BY IM- 
 MERSION." 
 
 B.M. "Is that so, indeed?" 
 
 Z "It is verily so, indeed and in truth. With the 
 noble Bereans, ' search the Scriptures, and you shall find 
 it so.' " (Acts, xvii. 10—) 
 
 B. M. " Well, I must say you surprise me very 
 much; for not only the Baptists, but many others, 
 always seem to me to speak of the baptism of our Lord 
 by John the Baptist, and of the Ethiopian eunuch by 
 Philip, as if no one every supposed them to have been 
 baptized in any other mode than by immersion, as the 
 Baptists now baptize ! I alwa3^s supposed so." 
 
 /. " It is no wonder, then, that you came so near the 
 
ON MODES OF BAPTISM. 13 
 
 river. The wonder is that you kept out of it. As we 
 may see hereafter, our Lord was not immersed ; and if 
 He had been, the mode of a Jewish ceremony — by the 
 founder of a temporary Jewish sect — as was John's bap- 
 tism, could have been of no binding authority — but with 
 foolish Gralatians — in the Christian Church. Your pre- 
 judice is, no doubt, a very common one, and a chief 
 instrument used by the Baptists in making proselytes." 
 
 B. M. " But are not men, not Baptists, sometimes 
 found to have preferred baptism by immersion, who can 
 hardly be supposed under the influence of mere preju- 
 dice ? Henry Clay, for an example ?" 
 
 I. " Henry Clay was not baptized by immersion. 
 It is a. sectarian slander. Often has it been said and 
 published, that Mr. Clay was immersed in a pond on his 
 estate, though more than once corrected by the clergy- 
 man who baptized him, and who, soon after, published 
 an account of the baptism, and that it was by pouring 
 water on the head, in the usual way of the Church, in 
 which Mr. Clay made his confession of Christ. Wi^ed 
 were the authors of this fable about Mr. Clay. Unfor- 
 tunate the deceived deceivers who propagate it. But 
 though your example will not hold, yet, as you intimate, 
 there have been, and are, no doubt, many men of high 
 intellect and great name whose preference has been in 
 favor of immersion, erroneously supposing it to be the 
 authorized and primitive mode. That these men were 
 above the influence of all prejudice, however, can never 
 be known, if even supposable ; for, in all ages, prejudices, 
 often the most preposterous, are known to have been 
 held by men of the highest mark for learning and intel- 
 lect. There may be no man without prejudices of some 
 sort. But this of yours must be removed to make room 
 
14: THE FIEST TALK. 
 
 for the return of your peace. But are you sure of being 
 quite willing to have it removed ? Willing as was Na- 
 thaniel, to learn that good might come out of Nazareth?'^ 
 
 B. M. " Certainly, more than willing to be satisfied 
 and at rest with regard to the mode of my baptism." 
 
 /. " Well, then, strive and pray that you may retain 
 what good sense you have left, that you may help me to 
 examine the question fairly and well ; and there is no 
 risk in promising you that you shall soon be radically 
 cured of the sickness of your soul, if its source be in the 
 TRode of a rite or sacrament. If you shall find it conven- 
 ient, come again to-morrow, and then we'll look into the 
 fancied strongholds of the Baptists on the banks of the 
 Jordan and in the wilderness of Gaza. And if there, in 
 either place, we find any certain proof of an immersion 
 after the manner of the Baptists, we will come out 
 frankly in their favor as being all right, and the rest of 
 Christendom all wrong, and always wrong. In the 
 mean time you may try, gently, your withstanding 
 forii^ula upon your good neighbor, the specially amia- 
 ble and solicitous 'Busy-body in other men's matters.' 
 But remember, in all charity, that he may be a very 
 good and pious man, although his small knowledge be 
 never so disproportionate to his much zeal. Then be 
 very gentle in withstanding him to the face. If he rail, 
 rail not thou. If reviled, revile not again. Bear and 
 forbear ; and when about to leave you, then, in the 
 kindly spirit and tones of fraternal love, say to him that, 
 when he can point out to you, in the New Testament, a 
 single well-defined, proven and unquestionable case of 
 Christian baptism by immersion, in the manner of his 
 sect, you will consent to be plunged by his minister, and 
 so confess that you had never before been baptized." 
 
ON MODES OF BAPTISM. 15 
 
 B. M. "It sliocks me to think of such a seeming chal- 
 lenge." 
 
 /. ''Shocking it might be, but for the perfect cer- 
 tainty that no such case can be found in Grod's Word. 
 The condition may put him upon the vain search, with 
 all the clerical aid he can procure ; and when found to 
 be in vain, I see not how they are to escape the ne- 
 cessity of somewhat lowering their too arrogant preten- 
 sions." 
 
 B. M. " Well, that will be something gained, if we 
 can induce them so to take the laboring oar." 
 
 L " Try it, you may with perfect safety ; and, if you 
 succeed, it may be something better than amusing to 
 see how they will run their boat into shallow water, if 
 not absolutely aground." 
 
 B. M. ''Of that, I have no hope. They will never 
 allow themselves to be in the wrong, I thiiik ; whatever 
 the evidence may be that they are." 
 
 /. "Perhaps not. They may not 'deserve to have 
 themselves convinced ;' but I am taking it for granted 
 that you deserve and desire to be ; and, as a soul-doctor, 
 I must endeavor to cure your soul-sickness, and I expect 
 you to observe my prescriptions." 
 
 B. M. "I will try to follow them.'' 
 
 I. "Do so, and with God's help, your cure is unques- 
 tionable. To-morrow I shall hope to be prepared to 
 render you some relief Will you come ?" 
 
 B. M. " Thank you. I will endeavor to." 
 
 And so my good Boot-maker retires with symptoms 
 of a heart less ill at ease, and of hopes of returning 
 health. 
 
THE SECOND TALK 
 
 JOHN" THE BAPTIST. 
 
 My Bootmaker. "Good morning, sir. By your 
 permission, I come for another talk." 
 
 /. " Good morning. Glad to see you. What of your 
 good neighbor ?" 
 
 B. M. " He seems very confident that you are entirely 
 wrong in asserting that the New Testament has no 
 provable case of baptism by immersion." 
 
 /. " Did he find one, and produce the proof ?" 
 
 B. M. " No ; he said such cases were too plenty and 
 plain to need proof; and he showed me a long list of 
 authors of different Churches, who testify that our Lord 
 was immersed, and that John's baptism was always by 
 immersion; that Philip baptized the Eunucli in the 
 same way ; and that it was the uniform practice." 
 
 /. " So, having declined your fair challenge, as not 
 worth his notice, he overwhelmed you with ' a cloud of 
 witnesses?' He made, of course, the great-sounding 
 titles and names of men ' wise above what is written,' to 
 testify against you by wresting Scripture from its true 
 meaning, and so extorting senses from it which the in- 
 spired writers could never have dreamed of; — the most 
 dangerous of false witnesses!" 
 
JOHN" THE BAPTIST. 17 
 
 B.M. "False witnesses?" 
 
 /. "Yes, tlie worst, as most injurious of false wit- 
 nesses, are they wlio falsify the Word of God, either 
 intentionally or ignorantly, by declaring it to say what 
 it does not say. Your neighbor is no doubt sincere in 
 the belief that his authorities are all right, and that I am 
 ignorant of them ; or very presumptuous in not submit- 
 ting to tbem. He probably said as much?" 
 
 B. M. " He did, indeed ; and nearly as you suppose. 
 He quoted one of them as saying, ' The idea of going 
 into a river for the purpose of baptizing in it by sprink- 
 ling on the face, or pouring on the head, is too absurd 
 to be entertained.' " 
 
 /. "And that is what he thinks not only a good 
 argument, but proof positive, that John baptized the 
 Messiah in the same mode that himself had been bap- 
 tized by his own minister ? 
 
 B. M. "I suppose so. He seemed quite satisfied that 
 it settled the question." 
 
 /. "Well, to pass now the fact that John did not go 
 into the river^ we shall see whom best the absurd boot 
 will fit. Absurd is not a hard word to say, and often 
 most easy, it seems, to such as know not its exact mean- 
 ing and so use it absurdly. Whatever is opposed to 
 manifest truth and common sense, may be declared 
 absurd. To say six and six make ten is absurd. 
 
 "As clearly inconsistent with reason, or the plain dic- 
 tates of common sense, in either matters of fact or of 
 doctrine, to allow the decision of any modern sect against 
 the teaching of the whole church universal for fifteen 
 hundred years would be manifestly absurd. 
 
 " To walk into a river to keep out of the wet would be 
 absurd ; but it would not be, in order to wash your feet 
 
18 THE SECOND TALK. 
 
 or your hands, or both. Nor would it be absurd, in a 
 hot day, for one to walk barefooted into a river to wash 
 his face, on the way from the field to his dinner. The 
 * idea,' then, so profanely flouted by your friend, is any 
 thing but absurd. Of that enough: — more than it 
 merits, but that the ahsurdities of your friend must be 
 exposed for your benefit. Though not yet quite done 
 with it, I hope you are satisfied in this case ?" 
 
 B.M. " Quite satisfied." 
 
 /. " But, in this matter of ' John the Baptizer,' it may 
 be well to begin at the beginning. Then, who was this 
 John?" 
 
 B.M. "He was the Forerunner of Christ, who had 
 been prophesied of by Isaiah and Malachi." 
 
 I. "Eight: not a disciple, or follower, but a forerun- 
 ner — a herald to proclaim His coming ; a pioneer to pre- 
 pare the way before Him. John was the 'greatest,' as 
 well as last, of the Jewish prophets, as being the har- 
 binger and the introducer of Christ to Israel ; yet the 
 least Christian prophet or teacher, whose ofiice it is to 
 proclaim, or preach, Christ crucified, risen, ascended 
 into heaven, is, in spiritual position, greater than John." 
 
 B.M. "Is that what is meant by John's being more 
 than a prophet, greatest of woman ,born, and yet less 
 than the least in the Kingdom of Heaven ?" 
 
 /. " Ko doubt such is the true meaning." 
 
 B. M. " Was not John a member of the priesthood ?" 
 
 /. " He was a son of a priest of the temple, and so 
 born to the priesthood ; but, being Divinely consecrated 
 from the womb to his high and holy office of Messiah's 
 herald, he seems not to have officiated in the Aaronic 
 priesthood. An even higher office was John's : it was 
 to bear witness to the people that Jesus was the Son of 
 
JOH^ THE BAPTIST. 19 
 
 God, and before the eyes of men as a Divinely commis- 
 sioned prophet, to manifest His consecration to the 
 Messiahship! Not that Christ needed consecration, — 
 God forbid ! — ^but the people needed the manifestation, 
 and the Levitical Law of Kighteousness needed to be 
 fulfilled." 
 
 B. M. "The Levitical law? Is that what our Lord 
 meant by the fulfilment of all righteousness?" 
 
 I. " Certainly ; for the moral law could not apply. 
 The original meaning of righteousness is, ' conformity 
 to the Divine Law.' So is it here employed by the 
 Saviour, by whom it was declared that, though it was 
 to pass away, it should first be all fulfilled. Until 
 * nailed to the cross' the old law remained in force, and 
 the successors of Moses and Aaron our Lord com- 
 manded to be honored and obeyed. On this divine 
 principle it was that He said to John, 'Thus it becometh 
 us to fulfil all righteousness.' With John, this reason 
 for his baptizing the Messiah was conclusive. He per- 
 ceives that, in this office, he is specially to testify to the 
 Jews and to the world that * The desire of all nations' 
 is 'come,' as a Great High-Priest, and as such must be 
 manifested to Israel as the Law of Eighteousness pre- 
 scribes." ' ^ 
 
 B,M, "And how is that?" 
 
 I. "As Moses was commanded to consecrate to the 
 Priesthood Aaron and his sons. God commanded 
 Moses to wash Aaron and his sons with water — and 
 he obeyed the command. * And Moses brought Aaron 
 and his sons, and washed them with water.' Moses was 
 a prophet, as was also John the Baptist. As Aaron, a 
 type of Christ, was set apart by Moses, to the typical 
 High -Priesthood, so was Christ, the real High-Priest, in 
 
20 THE SECOND TALK. 
 
 the fulfilment of tlie typical law of rigliteousness, set 
 apart or consecrated by John. As Aaron was washed, 
 or baptized, and anointed by Moses, so was Christ bap- 
 tized by John, and anointed by the Holy Spirit." 
 
 B. 31. " And what was the mode of the washing or 
 baptism of Aaron and his sons ?" 
 
 I. " Hear the Divine command ! ^ Thus shall thou do 
 unto ikejn to cleanse them : SPKINKLE tuaier of purifying 
 upon them.'' Such was the baptism of Aaron the type. 
 Why should that of the Great Antitype be different ? 
 can you tell me why ?" 
 
 B. M. "• Certainly I can not. But our Lord was bap- 
 tized in Jordan ?" 
 
 /. " Yes, and the Baptists think it absurd to go into a 
 river to be sprinkled. They might also think it absurd 
 for a man to walk into a river to ' kill a bird over run- 
 ning water ;' but as God had commanded it to be killed 
 over running water, He might not think it absurd that 
 in such wise He had been obeyed ; as often doubtless 
 He was obeyed. In consideration of our Lord's scrupu- 
 lous observance of all the requirements of the law, and of 
 His most solemn declaration that every jot and tittle of 
 it must be fulfilled, it is at least irreverent, and may be 
 profane, even to suppose that His washing, or baptism, 
 was not by sprinkling according to the ancient ritual I 
 What, then, must it be to teach, as an article of faith, 
 that He was immersed, contrary to the ancient ritual, 
 and in defiance of the utter silence on the subject of all 
 the Evangelists ? The Bible is full of illustrations of the 
 remark of a great and good man, that ' The very silences 
 of the Scripture are teaching.' " 
 
 B. M. " What are we taught by this silence of the 
 Evangelists?" 
 
JOHN THE BAPTIST. 21 
 
 I. "We are taught to 'search the Scriptures' then 
 existing — the Old Testament — for the meaning of our 
 Lord's reply to John's refusal to baptize Him; and 
 which so immediately satisfied John. There is no other 
 way of coming at the meaning of ^ thus it becometh us 
 to fulfil all righteousness,' than by first finding what 
 righteousness is referred to, and then how it w^as to be 
 fulfilled. And thus we learn that our great High-Priest 
 was sprinkled by John the prophet, as Aaron the High- 
 Priest had been by Moses the Prophet fifteen hundred 
 years before, in fulfillment of the righteousness — the 
 ritual of God — then Divinely established. Do you un- 
 derstand all this ?" 
 
 B. M. "I think I do. But what seems to me now as 
 strange as any thing about it is, that it all seems so new 
 to me. I seem to feel that I have been reading the 
 Scriptures with a veil upon them." 
 
 I. " Or, perhaps, backward, like the witch's prayer. 
 Kever mind. Let that pass — not, however, from your 
 memory, and without profit. It would take a large book 
 to hold all that neither you nor I know. We must 
 never think ourselves too old to learn. ' Neither you 
 nor I, sir,' said Daniel Webster to an anti-Trinitarian 
 friend, who had expressed surprise at seeing him come 
 out of a Trinitarian church, 'JSTeither you nor I, sir, 
 know any thing of the Arithmetic of Heaven,' so of 
 other things of heaven : we can know nothing that has 
 not been revealed. And we may not dare to assume 
 any thing to be revealed which has not been unmistak- 
 ably. So, certainly, has not been revealed the immer- 
 sion of our Lord. It may, therefore, be a sinful giving 
 place to the prejudice that there is even a shadow of 
 proof that He was plunged into the waters of the Jor- 
 
22 THE SECOND TALK. 
 
 dan. And now, radically to remove your last doubt, 
 take a reverent look at this little picture." 
 
 B.M. "APlCTUKE?" 
 
 I. " Aye, a picture. Be not afraid. It is not one of 
 the Scarlet Lady's. It is older by centuries than any 
 of her works of art ; nay, centuries older than her- 
 self." 
 
 B. M. " But what is it? and what about it? 
 
 I. " You see, of course, that it is a pictorial represent- 
 ation of a scene in which, besides others, men and an- 
 gels, looking on, two charactres are especially interested. 
 One stands in a transparent medium — evidently water — 
 which reaches the hips ; the other, on the outside, has 
 his hand over the head of the former. What do you 
 suppose it to represent ?" 
 
 B. 31, "From the presence of angels, I suppose it 
 must be a representation of something sacred." 
 
 I. " It is, indeed. It represents, and no doubt truth- 
 fully, the baptism of our Lord in Jordan, by ' John the 
 Baptizer!'" 
 
 B, M. "Is it possible? Then it is not absurd to go 
 into a river to be baptized by pouring or sprinkling. 
 But where does this picture come from?" 
 
 /. "It comes from the Catacombs of Rome. It is a 
 copy of one of 12,000 specimens of the earliest Chris- 
 tian art, already found in an underground city of the 
 dead, of a far greater extent than has any living city on 
 the face of the earth !" 
 
 B.M. ''What strange things you are telling me! 
 Not long since, in some paper, I read something of 
 the Catacombs ; but I concluded it a fiction that I was 
 reading." 
 
 /. " The Catacombs are no fiction. They are a yery 
 
JOHN THE BAPTIST. 23 
 
 solemn and most important reality. They tell things of 
 early Christian doctrines, sacraments, rites and usages 
 which can not fail to overthrow, from the foundation, 
 many a religious notion, .still held sacred, both in 
 modern Eome and in modern America. The Baptist 
 notion of entire and exclusive immersion, they place 
 among the foundation! ess fabrics of ' Foolish Galatians.' " 
 
 B. M. ''How? in what way?" 
 
 I. "Be patient, and you shall see. But first, as you 
 have no proper and truthful notion of the Catacombs, 
 that you may understand the validity of the testimony 
 borne by this little picture, I will try to enlighten you 
 on the subject." 
 
 B, M. " You will oblige me very much." 
 
 I. "Well, then, in the first place, we'll read, from 
 these two books upon the Catacombs, what was said, 
 three years ago, by an English author who had passed 
 some years in their examination ; and then what, three 
 hundred years ago, was said by an eminent Italian about 
 the same particular portion of this huge dominion of 
 sacred darkness. They both speak of one small section, 
 or ward, of the great city, as a specimen of the whole. 
 The place they describe is what is called, in modern 
 papal Eome, the ' Cemetery of Santa Priscilla.' It is 
 beneath a vineyard which, for ages, has occupied the 
 ground once covered with the gorgeous palaces of pagan 
 Eome; now, reduced to soil for grape culture. The 
 English traveller has been speaking of another exten- 
 sive cemetery, but ruinous and unsafe, ' remarkable for 
 the largest subterranean Church that has yet been found ; 
 also for a Mosaic vaulting in the roof of one of the 
 chapels, representing Daniel in the lion's den, and the 
 raising of Lazarus;' he speaks of this as not only 'far 
 
21 THE SECOND TALK. 
 
 more extensive,' but as safe to visit, and sajs, ' There 
 are several stories in it,' — that is, excavations above ex- 
 cavations of streets, chapels, etc., — ' and one of its galle- 
 ries is the longest and straightest I have ever met with 
 in the Catacombs. Some of the tombs are ornamented 
 with portraits of the deceased, executed with peculiar 
 force and expression. At the mouths of these may be 
 seen lamps, or other objects, that have never been dis- 
 turbed.' " 
 
 B, M. " How very wonderful ?" 
 
 I. " Hear, now, what was said of this same Cemetery 
 of Santa Priscilla some three hundred years ago, soon 
 after the mysteries of the long-forgotten Catacombs had 
 been opened, and when it was not imagined to be but a 
 fragment of the great dead city to which it belonged. 
 Speaking of Dion's account of the subterranean passages 
 made by the Jews in Jerusalem, as places of safety, on 
 their revolt against Hadrian, Baronius says: *'This de- 
 scription of Dion's of the -underground passages made by 
 the Jews, is also precisely applicable to the cemeteries 
 constructed at Eome, in the caverns of the Arenaria, 
 which were not only used for the purpose of burying 
 the dead, but likewise, in time of persecution, as a hid- 
 ing-place for Christians. Wonderful places are these ! 
 We have seen and often explored the Cemetery of Pris- 
 cilla, lately discovered and cleared on the Salarian Way, 
 at the third mile-stone from the city. This, from its ex- 
 tent and its many various paths, I call by no more ap- 
 propriate name than a subterranean city. From the 
 entrance onward opens out a principal street wider than 
 the rest. Others diverge from it at frequent intervals ; 
 these, again, are separated off into narrower ways and 
 blind alleys. Moreover, as is the case in cities, broader 
 
JOHN THE BAPTIST. 25 
 
 spaces open out in particular spots, each like a kind of 
 forum, for holding the sacred assemblies ; these are 
 adorned with images of the saints. The city was 
 amazed at discovering that she had in her suburbs 
 long-concealed towns, now filled only with sepulchres, 
 but once Christian colonies in days of persecution ; and 
 she then more fully understood what was read in docu- 
 ments, or seen in other cemeteries partially laid open. 
 From what she had read in these places in St. Jerome 
 or in Prudentius, she gazed upon them with lively 
 astonishment, when she beheld them with her own 
 eyes.' " 
 
 B, M. " How very strange !" 
 
 L " Yes, and how little^ thought Baronius, three hun- 
 dred years ago, of the much known now of the Cata- 
 combs ; and that the few images of the saints, of which 
 he speaks, belonged to a gallery, so to speak, of nine 
 hundred miles in extent, and containing unnumbered 
 pictures of the ' saints of all ages,' from Adam to the 
 last of the Apostles, with myriads of sacred scenes and 
 symbols, twelve thousand of which have been already 
 copied and published for the world's inspection and won- 
 der. At the Astor Library, go in and see the great 
 work — a cart-load of splendid volumes." 
 
 B. M. "Wonderful, indeed! And how like a new 
 revelation all this seems !" 
 
 /. "In these two small books, you may find small 
 copies of about a hundred of these ancient pictures. 
 You may take them home with you. Study them, and 
 show them to your family and friends, and let them 
 understand and be assured that this one of the baptism, 
 traced most likely by the hands of a martyr of the first 
 or second century, in a most solemn manner, explicitly 
 2 
 
26 THE SECOND TALK. 
 
 decides the question against the Baptists on the mode 
 of baptism. Bj the way, I now remember another tes- 
 timony found among those old true witnesses against 
 them, which may be more satisfactory to some minds 
 than even the picture of the baptism of our Lord by 
 John, for it tells of Christian baptism, and of nothing 
 else. It is a baptistery or font, in one of these under- 
 ground churches or chapels, cut out of the rock. Its 
 dimensions forbid all notions of adult immersion. Its 
 greatest diameter, with a like depth, is but two feet. 
 This, with its description and supposed history, you will 
 find in the great work on the Catecombs, in the Astor 
 Library." 
 
 B. If. "What can then be more certain than that the 
 Martyr Church did not baptize by immersion ?" 
 
 /. " JSTothing can be more certain. It is not extrava- 
 gant to suppose the Apostles Peter and Paul to have 
 administered the sacrament of baptism at this font, and 
 certainly not by immersion of the whole body of a grown 
 person. At any rate, there is not a doubt of this ancient 
 baptismal font being a work, if not of the first century, 
 certainly of the age of the pagan persecution, when there 
 could have been no departure from Apostolic primitive 
 usage. Entire immersion, then, is not after the primi- 
 tive mode of baptism." 
 
 B. M. "So it does seem, indeed." 
 
 L "So is it, indeed. This doubtless truthful record 
 in stone, with the accompanying unfading picture, bears 
 valid testimony against the Baptist platform, erected on 
 the unsubstantial basis of suppositions and iuferences, 
 and in opposition to the plain teachings of the Scrip- 
 tures, both of the Old Testament and the ISTew. But let 
 us take courage. I hope trustfully that the good time 
 
JOHN THE BAPTIST. 27 
 
 may not be far distant, when no Christian will dare or 
 desire to speak or write of things revealed, or of facts 
 recorded, by inspired men, otherwise than as the oracles 
 of God speak ; and surely not ' to add nnto,* or to ' take 
 away from,' the words of Divine revelation, lest the 
 threatened evils may befall him for such awful presump- 
 tion." (Eev. xxii. 18, 19.) 
 
THE THIED TALK 
 
 PHILIP AOT) THE EUNUCH. 
 
 /. "And what saj your Baptist neiglibors to the 
 argument against their exclusive theory, which is 
 drawn from the ancient Churches and Cemeteries of 
 the Martyrs?" 
 
 B. M. " It seems to bother them some ; but they say 
 there can be no mistake about Philip and the eunuch, 
 and to that case they stick like wax." 
 
 I. " That is a good figure enough, and no man has a 
 better right to it. But to what particular in the matter 
 of Phihp and the eunuch do they stick like wax .^" 
 
 B. M. " To their both going down into the water. 
 Last eveniog, one of them declared it a settled fact, that 
 in their own mode Philip baptized the eunuch." 
 
 I. " Did he say that both going down into the water 
 settles the question ?" 
 
 B. M. " Yes, he said so." 
 
 I. " Then, going into the water must mean going under 
 the water. Is that it ?" 
 
 B. M. " So they seem to understand it, and to think 
 it ought so to be understood by everybody." 
 
 /. " 0, foolish Galatians ! Then Philip the Baptizer, 
 as well as the baptized eunuch, went under the water 
 
PHILIP AND THE EUNUCH. 29 
 
 And does their minister plunge himself every time lie 
 plunges a convert ?" 
 
 B. If. (Laughing.) " Of course not." 
 
 Z "But logic, employed on sacred subjects, my friend, 
 is no laughing matter. And if both their logic and their 
 philology be correct, and in agreement with their theory, 
 then must their practice be opposed to both, unless their 
 ministers, as well as their converts, go "under the water. 
 Is not that so ?" 
 
 B. If. " So I should judge, certainly." * 
 
 L "And rightly would you so judge. For so it is, 
 if their words mean as they say, and their reasoning be 
 reasonable. By their works, then, let them show the 
 strong faith in words which so loudly they profess ; and 
 with his subject, let the plunger plunge himself, and 
 prove his sincerity in the meaning of inio as an honest 
 man should." 
 
 B. If. " Is it not likely, though, that Philip plunged 
 the eunuch ?" 
 
 /. " No, it is not; as you may soon see for yourself. 
 But it would be of no importance, any more than how 
 just before he had baptized Simon Magus, but for this 
 miserable modern strife about words. Before the out- 
 break of the Anabaptists in the sixteenth century, there 
 had been made no difficulty about either the mode or 
 the subject of baptism, except now and then by some 
 crotchety fanatic. The commanded form of sound and 
 solemn words, in the application of water, was alone pre- 
 scribed; -while of the mode there is no command, no 
 prescription whatsoever ; and as there is no word of God 
 for it, there should be none of man. But there is quite 
 another and clearer view to be taken of this matter : we 
 will, therefore, leave in the desert this quicksand plat- 
 
30 THE THIED TALK. 
 
 form of a system or theory, which spurns all others as 
 unchristian, and even * absurd,' and says to all but the 
 plunged, ' come not near to us, for we are holier than 
 you.' To learn how undesirable is such a spirit of ex- 
 clusion, read the sixty-fifth chapter of Isaiah. Did it 
 never strike you as remarkable, that the eunuch proposed 
 to be baptized by PhiHp, when, as appears in the record, 
 there had been no word between them on the subject?" 
 
 B. M. "I can't say that it ever did ; and yet now it 
 seems strange that it did not. Well, how came the 
 eunuch to know any thing about Christian baptism, if 
 Philip had not taught him ?" 
 
 /. ''He had been up to Jerusalem, you know; and, 
 besides, Philip had taught him about baptism before he 
 proposed to be baptized." 
 
 B. M. '^ The account in Acts does not say so ; and 
 only that ' Phihp opened his mouth, and began at the 
 same Scripture, and preached unto him Jesus.' " 
 
 /. "Yery true; but in 'preaching unto him Jesus,' 
 from that same Scripture which the eunuch was reading, 
 he must have preached of the Christian baptism, which 
 that same Scripture preaches prophetically." 
 
 B. M. '"'■ Does the prophet Isaiah speak of baptism ?" 
 
 /. " Certainly ; and in that same Scripture : the sec- 
 tion which the Ethiopian was reading in his chariot. 
 Take this Bible, and find it. You see it is divided into 
 sections, or parts, according to subjects. So were the 
 holy writings divided in the time of Philip, and more 
 than twelve hundred years after. Then, by a Eoman 
 Cardinal, they were divided into chapters, and yqtj 
 often to the injury of the sense. The section which the 
 eunuch was reading begins in the latter part of the fifty- 
 second chapter of Isaiah, at the thirteenth verse, as now 
 
PHILIP AND THE EUNUCH. 81 
 
 iivided, in our common Bible, and ends with, the fifty- 
 third chapter. It may have been specially transcribed 
 for him, on his tablets, by some Christian of Jerusalem ; 
 in the hope, and with a prayer, that it might call his at- 
 tention to the Gospel : for I suppose you know that the 
 New Testament had not then been written. He may 
 have had the whole of Isaiah or more ; or all of the Old 
 Testament ; but it was this same Scripture — this same 
 section — which he had read, when from it Philip ' preach- 
 ed unto him Jesus.' Eead it ; and see if you find any 
 thing from which Philip would be likely to preach to 
 him about baptism." 
 
 B. M, "Aye, I see already the text about baptism, I 
 suppose : ' So shall he sprinkle many nations.' " 
 
 I. "Yes, that's -it. Eead the whole section, and you 
 may plainly perceive it to be a definite and splendid 
 prophecy of the coming and office of Christ, and that it 
 necessarily begins as I have said." 
 
 B. M. " From such a text, Philip would hardly preach, 
 immersion to the eunuch, if, for any reason, he practised 
 it upon him. Yet that hoik going down into the luater^ and 
 coming up out of the loater^ still bothers me." 
 
 /. "No doubt it 'bothers' you, as so long you have 
 been accustomed to receive it as a proof of immersion, 
 and nothing else ; and I must relieve you of the hother 
 by a piece of criticism, which gladly would I spare you. 
 But before entering upon it, I must warn 3^ou not to al- 
 low it in the least to shake your faith in our excellent 
 and blessed English Bible, which is never in fault on 
 any of the great doctrines of Christ crucified on which 
 our hope of eternal salvation is founded. This remem- 
 ber, and be firmly assured of, and then it may do you 
 no harm to be informed that the original of this passage 
 
32 THE THIRD TALK. 
 
 might have been differently translated, and quite as lit- 
 erally and truly, and leaving on dry ground both Philip 
 and the eunuch. The Greek words, translated into and 
 out of. are often found in the New Testament translated 
 quite otherwise. The little word here rendered into^ is 
 found in the Greek New Testament more than sixteen 
 hundred times, with various classes of meanings ; and in. 
 our English New Testament it is translated in fifteen 
 different ways, always intended, of coarse, to be ren- 
 dered to suit the sense. In this case there is good au- 
 thority — the best that can be — for saying it is wrongly 
 rendered. The pious and excellent critic, Parkhurst, in 
 his Greek Dictionary of the New Testament, has given 
 various examples as rightly rendered ; but this of Philip 
 and the eunuch, going down into the water, is not among 
 them. The omission is significant. He did not think 
 the translation correct. Now, if authorities may be 
 weighed, this silence of Parkhurst may well balance the 
 loud assertions, with all their echoes, of the dogmatic 
 asserters, that the eunuch was immersed, because both 
 went down into the water. ' They did not go into the 
 water,' saj^s the expressive silence of Parkhurst, who 
 gives at^ with approbation, as the true translation of this 
 same Greek word in this very account of Philip's do- 
 ings in the desert: ' Philip was found at Azotus.' It is the 
 same word. ' They did not go into the water, nor come 
 up out ofi\\Q water,' says the old reliable Syriac version, 
 in the employment of other words literally translated by 
 the venerable Dr. Murdoch : ' They both went down to 
 the water,' and ' came up from the water.' Such is the 
 undoubtedly true translation. What think you of it?' 
 B. M. "I think it is a great pity it has not been so 
 translated in our New Testament." 
 
PHILIP AND THE EUNUCH. 33 
 
 L "So, doubtless, it should have been, and certainly 
 it would have been, had the great and good men who 
 gave us our English Bible been gifted with the prophetic 
 vision of a large and respectable sect working it into a 
 platform, from which to hurl denunciations and pro- 
 scriptions against all the rest of Christendom, to the 
 misery of the ignorant and to the danger of making 
 shipwreck of the faith of the feeble. !N"o such vision of 
 horror could have entered their pure minds." 
 
 B. M. " It is dreadful to think of the misery and mis- 
 chief that their fiery and bigoted zeal has caused, even 
 in our little town !" 
 
 I. " But you must never lose sight of the almost per- 
 fect certainty, that a very large portion of that fiery and 
 bigoted zeal may be also honest and sincere. One may 
 not always be able to speak kindly of this excluding 
 system ; but when I speak otherwise of their bitter sec- 
 tarianism, you must not understand me £is without char- 
 ity for the persons of the sect. Do not confound them. 
 Hereditary and educational prejudices are often found 
 in minds unable to resist them. Excellently good peo- 
 ple are many of them, in all the essentials of the Chris- 
 tian character. JSTot fewer, in proportion to their num- 
 bers, may be sincere Christians, as they honestly hold 
 Christianity, than are found in other great bodies of be- 
 lievers. "Greatly to their credit, many of them are good 
 and charitable, in spite of their bad and bigoted system, 
 in the origin of which they had no part. "We must 
 therefore love them, and pray for them, and do good to 
 them, while contending earnestly against their unchar- 
 itable, exclusive, and excluding system. Take this with 
 you, and come again for another talk when convenient." 
 
THE FOURTH TALK 
 
 CHIEFLY ABOUT WOEDS. 
 
 *' The age of words is passing awaj, as well as the impostures and de- 
 lusions to which they gave a species of sanction." — The Century. 
 
 "Words are the fool's counters, but the wise man's money." — Trench. 
 
 L " AxD wliat says your busy friend of tlie matter of 
 Philip and the eunuch ?" 
 
 B. M. " Well, I told him all I could recollect of your 
 lesson, and it seemed to disturb him. He made a poor, 
 and rather angry defence of his opinions, and^then said : 
 ' Well, after all it is of no consequence to argue about 
 particular cases of baptism, as the word itself always 
 means immersion, as almost every body says, and never 
 any thing else.' " 
 
 /. " His angry defence, and his wholesale appeals to 
 authority, may well be taken as masking a want of per- 
 fect satisfaction with his opinions. Perhaps he is pain- 
 fully conscious that they have no foundation in real, 
 true and accurate knowledge of the subject, and are 
 therefore of very little value." 
 
 B. M. " I reckon he is too opinionated to think so of 
 them." 
 
 /. "So much the worse for him, then. Por, well and 
 truly is it said, ' The soundest judgment would have no 
 
CHIEFLY ABOUT WORDS. 35 
 
 authoritj, if based on defective and insufficient knowl- 
 edge.' We may now proceed to weigh this groundless 
 opinion of the exclusive meaning of the word baptism." 
 
 B. M. " And to baptize, their books all say, means, 
 always, to immerse or plunge, all over under water, and 
 never any thing less." 
 
 I. " Yes, I am aware of that strange unity of error, 
 so mortifying to find even in the writings of men of high 
 character and extensive learning — men who must have 
 known, unless inscrutably deluded, that there is not a 
 place in the Bible where it can be shown, with certainty, 
 that the word baptism means entire immersion and 
 nothing else. From the perversions or delusions of 
 such men — in other things great and admirable — I have 
 sometimes had my confidence in all human judgment 
 shaken painfully. And then, that they have multitudes 
 of followers, even from the sensible classes, Bible in hand, 
 is strange, amazingly ! That, among the ignorant who 
 can not reason, the servile who dare not, and the bigots 
 who will not, such multitudes should be found, may not 
 reasonably be wondered at." 
 
 B. JI. '* Did I understand you to say that, in the Bible, 
 baptism never means immersion?" 
 
 /. '' That is not exactly as you should have under- 
 stood me ; but that there is no place in the Bible where 
 it can be shown to mean immersion a,nd nothing else." 
 
 B. M. " What, then, is the true meaning of the word 
 in the Bible?" 
 
 I. "A natural question for you to ask, not being yet 
 aware, I suppose, that it belongs to a very large class 
 of questions, more easily asked than answered." 
 
 B. M. (Smiling.) " The Baptists find no trouble in an- 
 swering it." 
 
36 THE FOURTH TALK. 
 
 I. " That's true enongli. Nor does your little boy in 
 giving more true answers to many like questions. Ask 
 him what a shoe is, and, as far as he knows, he will an- 
 swer you truly; but he will be sure not to include all 
 the seven different meanings of the word in Webster's 
 Dictionary." 
 
 B. M. "I should think not; but what has that to do 
 with the word baptism ?" 
 
 /. "Wait and learn. It may have something to do 
 in helping you to understand how worthless is this 
 word-argument of the Baptists. Shoe is* a word of sev- 
 eral meanings, so is baptism." 
 
 B. M. "I beg your pardon for interrupting you. I 
 will wait and learn." 
 
 L " My drift you'll soon perceive. Should you ask 
 of your little boy the meaning of the word sliorU he 
 might give you a true and short answer, in a short 
 time ; but he would be sure to fall far short of the some 
 twenty meanings in the dictionaries, not to say of the 
 dozens more as the word is heard in conversation, and 
 found in reading. And, certainly, a very little way 
 would he get through the meanings of the word ' Botl^'' 
 of which Webster gives not fewer than thirty-six classes 
 of applications. So, too, of other words innumerable, in- 
 cluding this word baptism. Besides every kind and de- 
 gree of wetting, it is found in the Greek, where it origin- 
 ally belongs, to mean staining^ coloring^ etc. A Greek 
 dramatic author employs it in describing a comedian 
 whose face was '■stained with a tawny wash,' as a dis- 
 guise, instead of the usual mask. In like spirit, he 
 would say our negro minstrels were baptized in black. 
 The great Homer has a lake baptized with the blood of 
 a frog. A tumble in the mud, or even in the sand, 
 
CHIEFLY ABOUT WORDS. 37 
 
 would be called a baptism. So in the old Greek trans- 
 lation of the Old Testament is the term used. Still, in 
 the East, the traveler is baptized with dust. The Eus- 
 sian baptizes his beard in his black broth; and the 
 Chinese, his chop-sticks in his snail soup. So you see, 
 then, as a general rule, a word standing by itself has 
 no particular and definite meaning, but takes its meaning 
 and value from its position, as connected with others." 
 
 B. M. " O yes ; I never thought about it before : a 
 man goes across the street to get shoes put on his horse, 
 and comes to me for quite another kind of shoes for his 
 wife." 
 
 I. " Yery well ; you are coming on. So, you see, the 
 shoes which you make are very distinct from horse- 
 shoes and sleigh-shoes, etc., and still the same word is used 
 for all ; therefore, standing by itself, the word shoe has 
 no definite meaning. So, to approach towards the word 
 baptism, wash has fourteen different meanings given to 
 it in Webster's Dictionary. For the purpose of making 
 you familiar with the changeable and slippery nature of 
 words — and how much care and skill the handling of 
 them well requires — I had laid out considerable work 
 with these big books, but want of time makes it needful 
 to take a shorter way than I had intended, to show you 
 the utter fallacy of the Baptist argument from their pet 
 words. As, however, they make words into things, we 
 may not altogether neglect to examine what sort of 
 things they really are. You have already learned 
 something of words of many meanings, and that they 
 belong to a very large class of words. You have also 
 learned that these words have no definite meaning of 
 their own, and depend for their meaning and value on 
 their connection. Wow, a glance for another word-mys- 
 
88 THE FOURTH TALK. 
 
 terj, at sucli as are used to express opposite meanings, 
 and another at such as have opposite meanings to ex- 
 press the same thought." 
 
 B. 21. " How can such things possibly be ?" 
 
 /. " That the same word is used at one time to convey 
 one meaning, and at another to express an opposite, 
 seems certainly strange ; yet so shall we find, even in 
 the Bible." 
 
 B.M. "Can it be possible?" 
 
 Z "See for yourself. Eead the first four verses of 
 the fifth chapter of Exodus ; and take special notice how 
 the little word lei is used." 
 
 B. J/. "Sure enough! 'Let my people go,' means 
 allow them to go. And when the King says, ' Where- 
 fore do ye, Moses and Aaron, let the people from their 
 work?' by let he means hinder / And allow and hinder 
 mean quite opposite things ! Wonderful !" 
 
 /. " Other examples of lei used in the sense of hinder^ 
 you may find in Isaiah, xliii. 13, and Rom. i. 13. So 
 too, Shakspeare, defying hindrance, — ' I'll make a ghost 
 of him that lets me.' In that Richardson, you may see 
 that its original meaning was to hinder ^ keep back, or 
 behmd, the exact contrary of its now usual signification. 
 Peeyent is another word which, in the whirl of ages, 
 has lost its original character. It was a helper. It is 
 now a hinderer. Its original meaning is to precede^ or go 
 hefore, to direct^ or lead^ or help. Now it is used in an 
 opposite sense ; to stand in the ivay^ to hinder^ to stop^ etc. 
 Again, in passing, first and last are used in the same 
 sense, in the expressions of first importance and of last 
 importance ; both meaning of the greatest importance.'''' 
 
 B. If. " How, then, may we be sure of the meaning of 
 such word as let, or prevent, in any particular case ?" 
 
CHIEFLY ABOUT WOEDS. 39 
 
 I. " Bj its relation with others, as already said. 
 Strange work is sometimes made of Scripture for 
 want of attention to this. Prevent^ used in its now 
 usual sense, to hinder, and what would it make St. Paul 
 say, in 1. Thess. \x. 15 ? See." 
 
 B. M. " To be sure ! It would make him say that 
 the people living on the earth, at the coming of the Lord, 
 shall not hinder the resurrection of the dead !" 
 
 I. " That would be a strange perversion of his mean- 
 ing; that such Christians as should be alive on the 
 earth, at the day of judgment, should not go before, but 
 together with the resurrected dead. The Psalmist says, 
 'I prevent the dawning of the morning.' He might 
 rise before the dawn, but could not hinder the dawning ! 
 So in many places, this word and others are used in old 
 and peculiar senses, and if not rightly understood the 
 Scripture becomes unintelligible. Nor is this peculiar 
 to the Bible." 
 
 B. M. " This reminds me that once I heard St. Paul 
 preached about as if a lawyer, in the same sense as we 
 now use the word. The preacher said, with other strange 
 things, that no doubt, before his conversion, he had been 
 as zealous in the cause of his clients as afterwards he 
 was for the cause of Christ." 
 
 /. "ISTot a small mistake; and yet not greater than is 
 often made by more learned men, who sometimes give 
 wrong meaning to right words. Take now that Cruden's 
 Concordance, and turn to the word drinh. It may help 
 us to a further knowledge of the Bible use of words. 
 What have you found V 
 
 B. M. " Whole long columns of the word drink." 
 
 /. " Near the beginning is the phrase, ' to drink 
 blood.' Bead what it means." 
 
40 THE FOURTH TALK. 
 
 B. M. "To be satiated with slaughter. 'Ye shall 
 drink the blood of princes.' " 
 
 I. " Yes, here it is in that sublime poetic prophecy of 
 Ezekiel. ' Assemble yourselves and come.' * Ye shall 
 eat the flesh of the mighty, and drink the blood of the 
 princes of the earth!' Kow run your eye along to 
 Job, xxi. 20, and read; and the following two refer- 
 ences from Psalms." 
 
 B. M. " ' He shall drink the wrath of the Almighty.' 
 'Make them to drink of the rivers of thy pleasures.' 
 ' Made us to drink of the wine of astonishment.' " 
 
 I. '" Thou hast showed thy people hard things :' 
 ' Thou hast made us to drink of the wine of astonish- 
 ment.' And so may you find a hundred other different 
 uses of the word, as ' drinking the wine of violence ;' of 
 consolation, of iniquity; the water of gall; and drink 
 up scorning ; and poison drinks up the spirit ; and the 
 earth drinketh in the rain. Now, here you have seen the 
 numerous examples of the varied, almost contrasted, 
 Bible use of a familiar general word. Travel is 
 another such word. In its varied uses it may well 
 illustrate the proper use of the word baptize. How 
 many are the ways to travel ! On foot ; on any kind 
 of beast; on, in or with any kind of vehicle, from a 
 hand-cart to a steam-car; borne by men in a palan- 
 quin ; rowed, or steamed, or sailed, in any kind of water- 
 craft ; or by a balloon through the air. And these are 
 only a part of the illustrations of the meaning of the 
 word. Its Bible use is still more comprehensive, includ- 
 ing travail^ originally the same word, and coming from 
 the same mint with trouble. Look into Richardson, and 
 you may find the word spelled both ways, promiscu- 
 ously. Old Chaucer quotes Solomon, saying, 'he that 
 
CHIEFLY ABOUT WORDS. 41 
 
 travaihtli^ etc. ; and tlie ' Knight of the burning pestle' 
 would have 'a woman that will sing a catch in her 
 traveV — now travail. So of the words baptism and 
 baptize ; the meanings are numerous, and as various as 
 the word travail — travel, and more than on-ce used in a 
 like sense. (See Mark, x. 39. Isa. liii. 11.) 
 
 B. M. "It is not, then, by any means, so easy as I sup- 
 posed, and as the Baptists think it, to answer the ques- 
 tion. What is the true meaning of baptism?" 
 
 /. " ISTo, indeed. And as to the mode of administering 
 the sacrament of baptism, whatever it may have been 
 when Christians lived, worshiped and were buried in 
 the Catacombs, it is various now; and doubtless all are 
 valid and true, when the heart is in the right place, and 
 the Gospel requirements are reverently and truly ob- 
 served. Some religious bodies both immerse and pour, 
 or sprinkle. Some pour onlj^, I believe. Some perhaps 
 only sprinkle, and some may have modes different from 
 these. The Baptist, only, restricts the mode to immer- 
 sion, and condemns all others as unscriptural, invalid 
 and false. As no mode is prescribed in Scripture, and 
 only the form of words commanded; one mode must be, 
 in itself, just as good and proper as another, if as capable 
 of being performed reverently, and decently, and in 
 order." 
 
 B. M. " Some think immersions are not always decent." 
 
 I. "Be that as it may, it is not in our way at present. 
 Water is employed as a symbol only ; and, as such, a 
 drop may be as good as an ocean : better, perhaps ; 
 better, certainly, if the quantity be depended on for 
 sanctification, and so deified and made into an idol for 
 adoration : a danger, perhaps, not quite impossible. 
 Idolatries have grown large from smaller beginnings. 
 
i2 THE FOURTH TALK. 
 
 This m passing. It sliould not pass out of hearts and 
 minds with any tendencies toward trusting in words or 
 modes. It is the work of the SPIEIT to give life ; not 
 the quantity of water, nor the manner of its application. 
 ' It is not the putting away the filth of the flesh ;' if it 
 were, mu"ch water might often be desirable; 'but the 
 answer of a good conscience towards God ;' by which. 
 ' baptism,' St. Peter says, ' doth even now save us,' not 
 by itself as a rite, but by uniting us to Christ, in the 
 way He prescribed." 
 
THE FIFTH TALK 
 
 THE WOKD-AKGUMENT, 
 
 /. "Good-Morning. Sit down and tell me what 
 says your good neighbor about the Apostle's decision, 
 that baptism is not for clean sing the body with a large 
 quantity of water, but to answer the demands of a good 
 conscience — clean, of course — and therefore needing 
 little." 
 
 B. M. "He says, that as baptism means immersion 
 and nothing else, a good conscience requires immersion, 
 without which it can make no good answer." 
 
 /. " Yery well said. "Worthy a better cause. So he 
 sticks to the word-argument; worthless as it is?" 
 
 B. M. " Yes ; and he thinks you very presumptuous 
 in pretending to know more than all his long list of 
 learned authorities." 
 
 I. "He might well think me presumptuous, if I made 
 any pretension to be the equal of the least learned of 
 them. But on this particular subject, to which, for 
 more than forty years, I have given occasional attention 
 and much laborious research, I have arrived at the cer- 
 tain knowledge, that their knowledge of it, who presume 
 to say that the word baptism means immersion and 
 nothing else, is utterly worthless, if not the most arro- 
 gant and stupid ignorance. Let them go. Let the 
 
44 THE FIFTH TALK. 
 
 fanatical sincerity of tlie sincere among tliem be their 
 portion and pride. Let the lovers and students of igno- 
 rance and bigotry have their own bad way. It is need- 
 less to attempt their enlightenment. But needless it 
 may not be to labor for the relief and comfort of their 
 unhappy and harmless victims, whose faith and peace 
 they boast of having unsettled and disturbed. Let them 
 alone ; and turn we to our task of deepening our impres- 
 sion of their miserable error. Yet I come back to this, 
 further showing that baptism is not necessarily immer- 
 sion and nothing else, with a disrelish akin to what a 
 naturalist might be supposed to experience in approach- 
 ing the task, ridiculous as irksome, of proving scientific- 
 ally, that a quadruped is not necessarily a horse." 
 
 B. M. " Do you think it equally plain ?" 
 
 /. " I do, indeed. And if you have ears to hear with, 
 and eyes to see with, and an understanding to distin- 
 guish sense from nonsense, and the plain word of Grod 
 from fables, you can not fiil of the same conclusion ; nor 
 of the wonder that as a Bible student you could ever 
 have thought otherwise. For, in your own English 
 Bible, witnesses are found, more than two or three, and 
 so more than enough to establish a fact, that baptism 
 does not always mean immersion and nothing else ; and 
 to the same effect, clouds of witnesses abound in the 
 original, through the vail of which you may see clearly 
 enough to discern them with very little aid." 
 
 B. M. "I can't think how I am to see any thing 
 through that vail." 
 
 /. " If necessary, we may manage to make a small hole 
 in it. But first let us hear our own English witnesses 
 testify, that to baptize is not necessarily to submerge. 
 
THE WOKD-ARGUMENT. 45 
 
 St. Paul tells us of tlie baptism at once of the entire 
 nation of Israel. Where were they baptized ?" 
 
 B. M. " ' In the cloud and in the sea.' " 
 
 L "Look, then, with your mind's eye, and you may 
 see them marching on the bed of the Bed Sea, its 
 waters blown away by 'the breath of the Lord,' and 
 * the cloud' overshadowing and distilling its dews of 
 heaven upon them, as they are marching 'on the dry 
 ground,' ' baptized in the cloud and in the sea.' So St. 
 Paul declares them to have been ; and that he would not 
 have us ignorant HOW." 
 
 B. M. "Do you think he means he would not have 
 us ignorant of the mode .^" 
 
 /. "Of the mode, perhaps, as well as the fact. Be 
 that as it may, it is by God's word testified to have been 
 a hajytism. And now, in that sublime scene, can you 
 discern any thing like a Baptist plunging?" 
 
 B. M. " Certainly, I can not." 
 
 I. "Then, Grod's word declares by an Apostle, that 
 baptism does not always mean immersion and nothing 
 else." 
 
 B.M. "So, indeed, it does!" 
 
 /. "Look now on what our Lord himself calls a bap- 
 tism — the descent of the Holy Ghost upon the Apostles 
 and people on the day of Pentecost, when the Holy 
 Spirit was 'poured out' upon them, as the Prophet 
 Joel had foretold, and the Apostle Peter declared to 
 be a fulfilment of the prophecy. In that sacred and 
 sublime scene, is there any likeness found of a Baptist 
 immersion ?" 
 
 ^.i/:" Surely not." 
 
 L " Then, not prophets and apostles, only, but Christ 
 
46 THE FIFTH TALK. 
 
 Himself testifies that baptism does not always mean • im- 
 mersion and nothing else.' " 
 
 B. M. '* Indeed, that is certainly so !" 
 
 I. " Other cases are found in numbers, in which im- 
 mersion is quite out of question. But these may suf- 
 fice ; for higher ground of proof is impossible to be found. 
 Yet we may ask in passing, if baptism means ' immer- 
 sion, and nothing else,' where we read of the baptism 
 with fire ; and the ' baptism of suffering,' wherewith our 
 Blessed Lord was baptized in the garden and on the 
 cross? ]S"ow take this 'Englishman's Greek Concord- 
 ance ;' turn to the ninety-sixth page, and learn a little 
 Greek for the occasion. Do you see that Greek word 
 in our common letter, as well as in Greek ?" 
 
 B.M. ''I do." 
 
 Z "What is it?" 
 
 B.M. "Baptizo." 
 
 I. " Yery well. That's Greek enough for the present. 
 Now look at the second quotation, and read it." 
 
 B. M. '• I indeed haptize you with water." 
 
 I. "Well again. Now you know the English of 
 haptizo is baptize. Eun your eye down to Mark, vii. 4, 
 and read." 
 
 B. If. " Except they ivash, they eat not." 
 
 I. "And why think you was that ranged under 
 baptizo ?" 
 
 B. 21. " I can not tell, I'm sure." 
 
 /. "It is because the word wash is haptizo in the 
 original. 'Except they baptize^ they eat not.' So on 
 the next column you find hap^tismos — baptisms, three 
 times out of four translated washing. Bead now the 
 seventh of Mark, and you will learn something of the 
 * divers haptisnis' of the Jews, for which our Lord re- 
 
THE WOKD-ARGUMENT. 47 
 
 buked them, bat which could not have been immersion 
 and nothing else. St. Luke says, they baptized their 
 hands before dinner. That was a ceremonial washing 
 which was always performed by water poured on the 
 hands by another. And 'the baptisms of cups, and of 
 brazen vessels, and of couches^'' as reads the Syriac New 
 Testament — tables, in our version — ^both I suppose ; for 
 the Jews reclined on couches^ to eat from their tables; 
 and in their hypocritical superstitions, no doubt, they 
 baptized all their dining-room furniture : but not by 
 immersion, I trow ; but after the mode of the ancient 
 purifications, which was by sprinkling. Do you remem- 
 ber about the six water-pots, or stone jars, which were 
 used in the first miracle of our Lord, and what their 
 ordinary use was ?" 
 
 B. M. "Yes, I remember them; and that St. John 
 says they were set there after the manner of the purify- 
 ing of the Jews. So I suppose they were to hold water 
 for purifying, or washing." 
 
 /. "Of course, they were. They were to hold water 
 for all these baptisms of the household of Jews th-em- 
 selves, and of the cups, and pots, and brazen vessels, and 
 couches, and tables, and many other things — every thing 
 about them. But, if they baptized no more than the 
 evangelists enumerate, they could not well have plunged 
 them into the six water-pots of stone, holding but two 
 or three firkins apiece." 
 
 B.M. "I should think not." 
 
 I. " And think right, too. JSTo, the water in those 
 pots was used on their hands by pouring, and on the fur- 
 niture by sprinlding. The mode in both cases is full^ 
 taught in the ancient holy Scriptures of the Jews. But 
 those Scriptures nowhere taught them these superstitious 
 
48 THE FIFTH TALK. 
 
 practices ; for wliich their Messiah rebuked them : ' Well 
 hath Esaias prophesied of you hypocrites, as it is writ- 
 ten, This people honoreth me with their lips, bat their 
 heart is far from me. Howbeit in vain do they worship 
 me, teaching for doctrines the commandments of men. 
 For laying aside the commandment of God, ye hold the 
 tradition of men, as the washing (l)aptizing) of pots and 
 cups : and many other such like things ye do.' " 
 
 B. M. "Is it of these things that St. Paul speaks in 
 Heb. ix. 10, of divers luashings V 
 
 I. "'Which stood (consisted) only in meats, and 
 drinks, and divers hai^tisms.'' No, the Apostle here 
 speaks of the ceremonial rites, 'carnal ordinances' of 
 the ancient ritual, to be done away by the great High- 
 Priest of the New Covenant. They consisted only in 
 prescribed • regulations about meats and drinks which 
 w^ere to be abstained from by the worshipers of the Tab- 
 ernacle, and of various ceremonial washings, or bap- 
 tisms, to be observed by the officiating Priests and Le- 
 vites, and by ceremonially defiled people, before they were 
 admitted into the tabernacle, or temple; and in other 
 'carnal ordinances,' which only sanctified to the purify- 
 ing, or, as St. Peter says, ' of putting away of the filth 
 of the flesh ;' and were therefore imposed on them, only, 
 un'til the reformation at the coming of Christ, ' an High- 
 Priest of good things to come.' Now, if you would 
 know exactly what all this means, and that these hap- 
 tisms, here translated washings, were not immersions, 
 turn to Lev. x. 9, Exod. xxix. 4, Numb. viii. 7, and 
 Lev. XV. 8, and you will see that the baptisms of the 
 persons were performed by sprinkling. ' Sprinkle water 
 of purifying upon them.' Baptism then does not always 
 mean immersion and nothing else." 
 
THE WORD-AEGUMENT. 49 
 
 B. M. " ^"0, indeed ; that's plain enough. But how 
 about that famous word Bapto, which is in every Bap- 
 tist mouth, from the preacher to the pauper, as always 
 meaning to dip^ and nothing else." 
 
 I. " We shall see. They are not quite so far wrong 
 in that assumption. Let it mean dijp^ if they will have 
 it so ; but what dip means, where Bapto is so translated 
 into our English, which is the very kernel of the matter, 
 we shall see; and that it means nothing like their im- 
 mersion as shown in their mode of baptism. When you 
 can bring a spare hour with you, come again, and I'll 
 try to make you know, as much, at least, of their famous 
 Bapto as the most learned Grecian of them all." 
 
 So, after this fifth, talk, my good Bootmaker retires 
 brighter and happier far than when he so excitedly 
 introduced the first. 
 3 
 
THE SIXTH TALK 
 
 BAPTO. 
 
 " Actions speak louder than words." — Old Promrl). 
 
 I. " "Well, I am glad to see you this morning ; for I 
 ^1 quite prepared to go to the root of the matter with 
 you, in this search into the Baptist claim of an exclusive 
 right to condemn all modes but their own." 
 
 B. M. " Of Bapto, we were to talk this time. Is that 
 what you call the root of the matter ?" 
 
 I. ''Yes; Bapto is the root of all the trees which the 
 Baptists claim to have a right to grow in this wilderness 
 of confusion and strife, which so successfully they have 
 planted. It is a strong root ; it has need to be, to with- 
 stand the storms of centuries against its lofty tree, with 
 large branches and numerous branchlets, full of leaves 
 for the healing of the nations ; if they will use them in 
 order to be healed, and not wear them as mere decora- 
 tions. The tree is called Baptizo, in its native land. 
 Like our own noble elm, it has two grand branches. 
 Baptisma and Baptismos are the names by which they 
 are called where the tree is indigenous, or native ; and 
 where it is an exotic, as in our country, all these names 
 are so framed from the originals as to show their origin. 
 
BAPTO. 51 
 
 The smaller numerous branches have also names of the 
 like radical, or root, character, which declare them to 
 partake naturally of the qualities of the root hapto. 
 With it now we have to do. Often has it been roughly 
 treated; but its strong and solid nature has saved it 
 from vital inj ury. At our hands it shall take no damage ; 
 and what we may, we'll do to heal its wrongs. In all 
 this, about the root, the tree, and its branches, I have 
 tried a little to turn your ears into eyes. I shall 
 try more by and by, and you must take the operation 
 kindly, and do what you can to insure the success of 
 the experiment, which will show you, that even the root 
 of the tree stands not in the water, any where in the 
 Holy Land of the ISTew Testament." 
 
 B. M. "I will do what I can to understand the 
 matter." 
 
 I. " We will then proceed to expose this huge error, 
 which has grown into a monster so frightful as painfully 
 to unsettle the faith of the feeble, and to disturb the 
 peace even of the strong. This so very loudly cele- 
 brated root- word 'Bapto' is found but three times in 
 the whole of the ISTew Testament. You may therefore 
 easily find all its localities." 
 
 B. M. " Where shall I look for them ?" 
 
 /. ''Open that same English Greek Concordance at 
 the ninety-seventh page, and you'll find the word with 
 the references. Where is the first?" 
 
 B.M, "Luke, xvi, 24." 
 
 /. "Find and read the verse in this translation from 
 the Syriac. With the same sense, it is more impressive 
 than in our common version. More pathetically wail- 
 ful is the too late discovery of the evil of sinful selfish- 
 
52 THE SIXTH TALK. 
 
 B. M. *' 'And "be called with a loud voice, and said: 
 Abraham ! my father, have pity on me, and send Laza- 
 rus, that he m^ay dip the tip of his finger in water, and 
 moisten my tongue; for lo, I am tormented in this 
 flame.' " 
 
 I. "Poor rich man! More awful thy lament than 
 even the despairing wail of the wretched Esau ! But 
 our task demands that from the heart we take the sub- 
 ject, and restore it to the head. The word dip^ which 
 you find there, is the English of the Greek word Bapto. 
 As the Greek word for baptism was not translated, but 
 merely Englished in its termination, so Bapto might have 
 been in the same way made into hapt instead of dip. 
 But the translators could not foresee that dip^ a then 
 common English word to express this action of touching 
 a liquid with the point of the finger, could ever be mag- 
 nified into the immersion of the whole body under water. 
 Who could have dreamed of such a strange perversion 
 of language? Yet such is the strange fact! How 
 strange, let us see ! That we may really see, and too 
 plainly to be mistaken, ' lend me your ears,' that I may 
 turn them into eyes, that you may indeed see the full 
 meaning of hapto and dip in the ITew Testament ; with 
 which only we have to do in this matter. ' May dip the 
 tip of his finger in water I Such a dip don't seem or 
 sound much like a deep plunge of a large body under 
 water, does it ?" 
 
 B. M. " I should think not. But, then, the Baptists 
 say it always signifies immersion, and so they often use 
 the word dip when speaking of baptism." 
 
 /. " Well, let us look at it. Let us see if dipping the 
 tip or point of the finger in water looks like immersion. 
 Eor the experiment we need no Greek. The word is in 
 
BAPTO. 53 
 
 our own tcngue, and the experiment is an easy one for 
 our own hands. We need find no fault with the trans- 
 lation, as the Baptists do, and would make it ridiculous, 
 by making it immersion, instead of dip. Eightly enough 
 it might here have been translated touchy to express pre- 
 cisely the same action." 
 
 B. M. " So perhaps it would." 
 
 /. "So, perhaps? There is no possible room for a 
 perhaps. Try it. Act it. Look well at the action. 
 See it with your own eyes and not another's, and be 
 never again half-fanaticised by a confused noise in your 
 ears of dij)^ plunge, immerse; in the water, and under 
 the water, and never so many more words — mere words 
 — to confound the ignoraiit, and to excite the fearful and 
 the foolish." 
 
 B. M. "I will try hereafter to keep cool and un- 
 excited." 
 
 I. " Do so by all means. And now for the experi- 
 ment ; the 'crucial experiment;' the ocular demon- 
 stration of the meaning of bapto, in the ISTew Testament ! 
 See it. Nay, feel it for yourself. You are to touch the 
 tip of your finger to the water in this cup. Mind ! you 
 are not to plunge it in as if no matter how ; or how 
 much of the water you may scatter about on my books 
 and papers ! no ; you must very carefully touchy or 
 dip^ the extreme end of your finger in, or on, rather, 
 the surface of the water, so as just to take up the little 
 drop which may adhere to it. Ko more was asked for 
 by the poor, unfortunate, rich man, in torment. A very 
 modest request for one long accustomed to sumptuous 
 fare every day. Be very careful, now, in performing 
 this important experiment. Such it is. So now, there, 
 
54 THE SIXTH TALK. 
 
 that is well and neatly done. Do you see that little 
 pendant drop ?" 
 
 B. M. "Yes, and was that the bapto — the dijp of the 
 tip of the finger of Lazarus, begged for so earnestly by 
 the rich man, who had suffered the pauper to lie at his 
 gate while the more pitiful dogs licked his sores?" 
 
 L "Exactly. That was it. And now, what sort of 
 a notion of immersion — the inevitable Baptist immer- 
 sion — does that convey to your mind ?" 
 
 B. M. " None. Certainl}^, none whatever." 
 
 I. "Yet their learned revisers of the Bible would 
 have us believe that bapto, in this place, should have 
 been translated immerse. One would think dip might 
 satisfy them, as they use it in ihe same sense. Well, dijp 
 is the word. So let it be. Immerse, certainly, if they 
 choose. But what sort of a dip, or immersion ? You 
 may well smile at the notion of immersing the tip of the 
 finger to procure a drop of water ! Can you ever again 
 be made a ' Galatian' of, foolish enough to be bewitched 
 into the silly notion that bapto always means immersion?" 
 
 B.M. "I hope not. And since seeing with my eyes, and 
 feeling with my finger, and with my heart too, that there 
 is really no truth in the Baptist notion ; I trust I am 
 pretty safe from any bad effects of their future attacks 
 on my faith. I am now quite sure they will never get 
 me into the river." 
 
 /. " You see now, that to come at a complete knowl- 
 edge of this word, as here used, you have no more need 
 of Grreek than you have to make a pair of boots, which, 
 when you have made them, you know it. Do you know 
 now that the word dip here does not mean immersion ?" 
 
 B. M. " Certainly, it is plain as day. Mistake is im- 
 possible. I can never be surer of knowing any thing." 
 
BAPTO. 55 
 
 I. " Eemember that. And let not what you do know, 
 be disturbed by what you do not know. To what yoa 
 really know, the most learned can add nothing to make 
 you know it better. But 'beware of men,' who may 
 deceive and mislead you. It will not help you, that 
 themselves had been first deceived, and are hugging 
 their chains of error because they are theirs^ and have 
 come to like the metal they are made of — the better 
 perhaps, because of their weight." 
 
 SECOND LOCALITY. 
 * Facts are the arguments of God.' 
 
 " So has it been wisely said. And from the established 
 fact of the meaning of Bapto, already past, we proceed 
 to the next place, when found — to the second divine 
 locality of bapto made English in dip, but not immer- 
 sion. You may now please read John, xiii. 26." 
 
 B. M. " Shall I read from the same book ?" 
 
 /. "Yes. There is no difference, but in one word. 
 * ;Sbp,' in our Testament, is hread in the Syriac. They 
 may help to explain each other. The word sojp in Old 
 England, and in our ISTew England, means — or did sixty 
 years ago — a piece of bread dipped in gravy or other 
 liquid. It is a so^ when moistened from the dish. You 
 may now read the answer of our Lord, to the question 
 of the beloved John." 
 
 B. M. " He it is, to whom I give the bread when I 
 have dipped it." ► 
 
 I. "Or sopped it, as was formerly the way of speak- 
 ing ; and the piece was then called a sop, as I often heard 
 it in my early days. Here, then, again we find the word 
 explained by the action to mean what falls far short of 
 
56 THE SIXTH TALK. 
 
 a plunging immersion. The circumstances and tlie ac- 
 tion make distinctly plain the meaning of the word. One 
 of the circumstances not to be lost sight of is, that the 
 Jews had no forks. Forks are a modern invention. 
 And the Jew, whose ceremonial religion trained him up 
 in abhorrence of all outward defilements, when he 
 could no longer sop the diminished bread in his fingers 
 without defiling them, wiped his lips and fingers with 
 the remaining morsel and threw it to the dogs. Such 
 were 'the crumbs that fe]l from the master's table.* 
 Fragments they are called in the Syriac New Testament. 
 When no longer tliey could be sopped without sopping 
 the fingers, they were given to the dogs. This remain- 
 ing fragment of bread was used instead of a napkin ; an 
 article unused for table purposes by the Jews, so far as 
 we know. Kow you understand about the sop — the 
 piece of unleavened bread, the end dipped in the dish to 
 moisten it for the mouth, the dry end in the fingers, not 
 dipped. Now we will look into the dish and see how 
 much this dipping is like a Baptist immersion." 
 
 B. M. ''More like, I suppose, than the finger-dip in 
 the water." 
 
 /. " Not much. Not enough to do any thing for 
 their cause. Not an immersion or any thing like it. 
 In this, as in that, fingers become tongues and cry out, 
 * No immersion — no immersion.' Now try to see with 
 your ears again, and with the open eyes of your under- 
 standing, that you may be able confidently to deny that 
 here either Bapto, dip, signifies Baptist immersion. What 
 was in the ' brazen dish,' we know all about. It was a 
 roasted lamb. 'And they shall eat the flesh in that 
 night, roast with fire, and unleavened bread, and with bit- 
 ter herbs shall they eat it.' Eat not of it raw — not rare 
 
BAPTO. 57 
 
 or underdone — ' nor sodden at all with water, but roast 
 with fire ; ' — no water must come near it — ' it is the Lord's 
 passover !' Exo. xii. 8. Of all others, we know that 
 this 'Law of righteousness,' at this last Passover, was 
 strictly and minutely ' fulfilled.' As our Lord had be- 
 fore said to John the Baptist, had there been occasion. 
 He would have said then to the twelve, — ' Thus it be> 
 Cometh us to fulfill all righteousness.' There was, then, 
 no superabundance of gravy in the brazen dish to begin 
 with ; not to say there could be very little left, when, at 
 the last sop to the traitor, the feast was virtually con- 
 cluded. * The supper being ended,' St. John says. 
 Small, then, must have been the quantity of fluid in the 
 * brazen dish.' For a plunge, too shallow. Simply 
 moist, at best, but a minute portion of it could have 
 adhered to the unleavened bread." 
 
 B. M. " More, I suppose, than of the water on the tip 
 of the finger." 
 
 /. " Try the experiment and see how much more." 
 
 B.M. "How?" 
 
 /. " Procure a lamb of the size of a Judean lamb in 
 the early spring. Dress it after the prescribed manner 
 of the Paschal lamb — all the blood drawn from it. 
 Boast it thoroughly before the fire or in an oven — not 
 bathed nor basted, but thoroughly roasted to the bone. 
 During all the roasting process, it must be exposed to 
 the evaporating influence of the flames, or of the oven's 
 scorching heat. Then, so cooked, serve up in the even- 
 ing to a dozen men, besides yourself, having all day 
 abstained from food. The feast * ended;' having mois- 
 tened both your dry meat and your very dry bread 
 with the gravy of the dish, then see if there remain 
 enough to plunge (baptize) any thing in. Will you 
 
58 THE SIXTH TALK. 
 
 doit?" 
 
 B.M, "I'll think about it." 
 
 I. "And that may do quite as well. Think soberly, 
 wisely, reverently about it, as you ought to think. 
 With great and blessed results, God is wont to reward 
 such thinking." 
 
 B. M. " I will try so to think." 
 
 I. " Do ; and be sure of effectual help. Often let your 
 good thoughts run in this channel of humiliation, viz. : 
 How much of error, and of consequent unhappiness, 
 would have been saved, had people always so employed 
 their thoughts — soberly and wisely ; and never thought 
 more highly of themselves than they ought to think. 
 And if religious people only would now all so think, and 
 act accordingly, how soon would the wilderness of sin and 
 error blossom as a garden of roses ; and peace, as a river 
 of life and love, flow gently through it !" 
 
 B. M. "What a blessing it would be !" 
 
 Z " A blessing indeed ! the very slightest thought of 
 which is almost enough to madden one who may be 
 conscious of having done little or nothing to secure it, 
 and much perhaps for an opposite result. It is indeed 
 humbling, exceedingly and distressfully, to think of the 
 evils that have come of errors of all sorts, to which even 
 the well-intentioned are subject. Such thought should 
 not be allowed to depart from us in vain, while consid- 
 ering the errors into which others have unhappily fallen. 
 Let us watch and pray, lest we also fall into temptation, 
 and a snare." 
 
BAPTO. 59 
 
 THIRD LOCALITY OF BAPTO. 
 
 ""Who is this that cometh from Edom? 
 "With dyed garments from Bozrah ? 
 This that is glorious in his apparel, 
 Traveling in the greatness of his strength ? 
 I that speak in righteousness, 
 Mighty to save. 
 
 "Wherefore art thou red in thine apparel ? 
 And thy garments like him that treadeth in the wine-fat? 
 I have trodden the wine-press alone ; 
 And of the people there was none with me : 
 For I will tread them in mine anger, 
 And trample them in my fury ; 
 
 And their blood shall be sprinkled upon my garments, 
 And I will stain all my raiment." 
 
 Isaiah, Ixiii. 1, 2, 3. 
 
 /. "We now proceed to the third and last locality of 
 the Bapto root. It is in the extreme division of the 
 Garden of Life, where fall the dark, mysterious shadows, 
 which it is sometimes fearful to encounter. Yet, to find a 
 safe way through them, there is always light enough to 
 guide the faithful, who humbly seek to find the Truth. 
 ' Seek and ye shall find.' You will now please look for it." 
 
 B, M. "In the same book?" 
 
 I. "In the same book. It is a truthful translation, by 
 a truthful and venerable man, from the language in 
 which the Gospel was first preached among the Syrians 
 by the first ministers of Christ ; with whom, in the same 
 language (their mother tongue), they conversed ; and 
 from whose lips they may have received both instruc- 
 tion and authority." 
 
 B.M. " ' And He was clothed with a vesture sprinkled 
 with blood ; and His name is called the Word of God :' 
 Eev. chap. xix. v. 13. Sprinkled ?" 
 
60 THE SIXTH TALK. 
 
 /. '* And does that surprise you, after seeing the en- 
 tire anti-immersion character of the same original word, 
 Bapto, as already examined ?" 
 
 B. M. "I suppose it should not surprise me; but 
 dipped in blood is so much more familiar to me — " 
 
 /. "Yes, certainly. How happy, if what is most fa- 
 miliar, could be also most true. Well, read it now in our 
 common version. With that we have especially to do 
 in this matter of exposing error." 
 
 B. M. " ' He was clothed in a vesture dipped in blood ; 
 and His name is called the Word of God.' " 
 
 I. "All the same, you see, excepting the single word 
 now to be questioned of its meaning. I think as here 
 illustrated by the sublime vision, it will claim no near re- 
 lationship with immersion. In the Messianic visions of 
 both the Prophet Isaiah and the last of the Apostles, 
 the main idea of the words is color — ^blood-color. A 
 prominent meaning of the Greek word is to color, or 
 stain, as before shown ; and to color or stain with blood 
 is the meaning in the apocalyptic, and also in the pro- 
 phetic vision, where the word is found. The blood- 
 stained vesture is the subject. The mode of its stain- 
 ing neither of the inspired men leaves doubtful, though 
 on modes of any sort no thought of theirs could 
 have rested ; if, even in the far-off distance, they could 
 have had a glimpse of any strife about modes among any 
 of those redeemed by the precious blood of Him who is 
 called the Word of God. Some have supposed that St. 
 John beheld his Lord as he had long before seen Him 
 on the Cross, stained — baptized with His own precious 
 blood. That was not an immersion. But the great 
 Kedeemer, by both prophet and apostle, in like words 
 which describe the same vision, is represented as a 
 
BAPTO. 61 
 
 mighty warrior, stained with the blood of His enemies, 
 sprinkled on His vesture, and still pursuing, 'in the 
 greatness of His strength,' to ' tread' the residue ia His 
 ' anger, and trample them in His fury !' Hear Him : — 
 'And their blood shall be sprinMed upon my garments : 
 And I will stain all my raiment 1' And St. John says, 
 ' He was clothed with a vesture dipped in blood.' 
 ' Sprinkled^'' says Isaiah. ' Sprinkled^'' says the Syrian. 
 Sprinkled, say all the circumstances of the vision in 
 both Testaments. But, had they all said immersed, the 
 entire context would show that no such immersion could 
 be intended as your Baptist friends contend for and 
 practise." 
 
 B. M. "That's true. I understand, now, how words 
 must be explained by circumstances. And all the cir- 
 cumstances of all the cases of Bapto in the ISTew Testa- 
 ment make the Baptist meaning of the word impossible. 
 In not one of these cases can it mean ' immersion all over 
 under,' as they say it always means, ' and nothing else.' " 
 
 I. " Yery well said. ' Let no man deceive you' again; 
 nor ' bewitch you' into the slightest doubt of what you 
 have seen, and heard, and read ; proofs unquestionable, 
 that neither the Greek Bapto^ of the original, nor the 
 English dip of our New Testament, in a single instance 
 means immerse, or any thing like it." 
 
 B. M. " I can never again be so bewitched." 
 
 /. " So I trust, and now, with one strong word more, 
 we rest from this long talk. There can be found in no 
 work, scriptural or classical, the original of baptism 
 used in the exclusive sense of an entire immersion ; nor 
 is it here believed, that the word was ever strictly so 
 employed, by any respectable writer, in any language, 
 before the Anabaptist convulsions of the sixteenth cen- 
 
62 THE SIXTH TALK. 
 
 turj ; when, says Coleridge, ' The Abolition of Magis 
 tracy, Community of Goods, the Eight of Plunder, 
 Polj^gamy, and whatever else was fanatical, were com- 
 prised in the word AnabaptisDi.' " — Aids to Reflection. * 
 
 * That this language was not supposed or intended to be offensive 
 to Baptists, is shown by the fact that it is found in a friendly con- 
 versation of the author with an English Baptist, of whom he says, 
 " both in his own and his father's right, a very dear friend of mine ;" 
 and wbom he calls, " My filial friend." 
 
THE SEVENTH TALK, 
 
 THE WOKD-AEGUMENT. 
 
 I. " Unexpectedly, my Boot-maker's face again 
 appears full of questions, as usual. What now? I 
 wonder!" 
 
 B. M. " Good-morning. I suppose you thouglit you 
 had got rid of nie ; but I have come for more talk." 
 
 /. ( With a sigh of resignation.) " Well, sit down, and 
 freely and briefly make your wants known. You have 
 no need of more talk about modes, I hope, as yet un- 
 satisfied? — as a lingerer yet among the miserables? I 
 had hoped very confidently that your cure was complete. 
 Do you feel any remaining symptoms of hydro-Gala- 
 tianism?" 
 
 B. M. " ]^o. I am quite well, I thank you; and in no 
 fear of a relapse." 
 
 I. " Very glad am I to hear that. What, then, is the 
 more talk to be about now ?" 
 
 B. M. " If you can spare the time, I would like a talk 
 about the way the Baptists have to decoy the people, on 
 all their baptismal occasions." 
 
 /. "Po you mean their Sunday processions to the 
 river, to arrest the public attention, and to lead the ex- 
 citable, the feeble, the foolish and the unstable from 
 their own places of worship ?" 
 
64 THE SEVENTH TALK. 
 
 B. M. " 1^0 ; but what tlie minister does and says at 
 the river, and at the time of the baptism." 
 
 /. " Well, what is it that he does and says to decoy 
 the people?" 
 
 B. M. " He never fails to quote, and to refer to 
 Scripture expressions in a way to catch the ears of the 
 multitude, who flock to witness the exciting scene ; and 
 I want to be able to show that his use of them is un- 
 authorized by Scripture." 
 
 I. "• And if unauthorized, of course forbidden. Per- 
 haps I may not know what you mean by his quotations 
 and references. What are the particulars of his proceed- 
 ings, on his baptismal occasions?" 
 
 B. 3£ " What I would say is, that, by the frequent 
 use of Scripture, he aims to impress on the minds of the 
 spectators, that he is showing them how John the Bap- 
 tist immersed the Saviour, and how all baptisms were 
 administered in New Testament times." 
 
 /. " And do you think he generally succeeds in so 
 impressing the multitude?" 
 
 B. M. " Yes ; I have not a doubt of it." 
 
 I. "And what are the texts that he so successfully 
 employs ?" 
 
 B. M. "Besides his never-forgotten 'going down into 
 the water,' and 'coming up out of the water,' as belong- 
 ing to every case of baptism in the New Testament, and 
 so, as he says, representing burial in the grave, and 
 resurrection from the grave, he brings in St. Paul's 
 ' buried with Christ in baptism,' as alluding directly to 
 this very mode shown before their eyes, of so plunging 
 the convert under water, and then lifting him out again." 
 
 I. " And does he suit the action to the word ?" 
 
 B,M. " Always. And he acts and speaks so confi- 
 
THE WORD-ARGUMENT. 65 
 
 dently as to make it impossible that it sliould fail to im- 
 press ignorant and excited people, that what they see is 
 a true exhibition of the Scripture mode of baptism." 
 
 /. "Yer J likely. And it is shocking to think what 
 such deceivers may have to answer for!" 
 
 B. If. " Then he speaks of the ' much water^' where 
 John baptized in ^non, as establishing the mode by im- 
 mersion. Often, so as to reach the whole multitude, in 
 the loudest tones he can raise, he says, ' Why should 
 John want much water if he did not immerse, or plunge 
 the people, but only sprinkle them?' And the word 
 sprinkle^ he is sure to speak in a tone, and with a smile 
 of contempt. By some ministers, this is so funny as 
 to set the people in a roar of laughter ; partly of appro- 
 bation of the performer, and partly of scorn of all 
 sprinklers." 
 
 I. " A horrible mockery of sacred things ! And that 
 part of the multitude that never fail to attend on such 
 religious spectacles to find material to oppose all religion, 
 can not fail to be satisfactorily edified. But what is it 
 you desire with regard to these things?" 
 
 j5. if. "I wish to be able intelligibly to tell such as 
 may be willing to hear, that a minister has no right to 
 do and say such things ; that it is an abuse of the Scrip- 
 ture, and that he acts the part of a deceiver." 
 
 /. "He may no more know that he is acting such a 
 part, than that he is playing the buffoon to make people 
 laugh ; which he may be quite unconscious of As you 
 know that there is no provable instance of his mode of 
 baptism in the Scriptures, of course you also know, that 
 he has no right to take for granted that it was the usual 
 mode, and so wickedly to sneer at all other modes in use 
 in the whole Church, his own modern sect alone ex- 
 
66 THE SEVENTH TALK. 
 
 cepted. Kot to speak of his sarcasms and sneers, you. 
 can be at no loss about his frightful abuse of the Scrip- 
 ture language, which so imposingly he employs at these 
 plunging exhibitions." 
 
 B. M. " But what I want is to know about these texts, 
 so as to make others understand how the Scriptures are 
 misused, and themselves imposed on." 
 
 /. " Seldom with profane intention, I dare say. That, 
 however, helps not the case of the victimized. Well, 
 let us try what may be done in this matter, in defence 
 of the weak, the ignorant, the sensitive, and the silly. 
 How to dispose of the going down into the water, and 
 coming up out o/"the water, you are already well enough 
 prepared. In the single case of Philip and the eunuch is 
 this manner of speech nsed, you remember, and that the 
 minister has no right to quote it as an authority, or to 
 attempt to exemplify it by plunging his subject, without 
 also plunging himself; for, if went into means went un- 
 der^ then both Philip and the eunuch went under, as 
 must also the modern minister, if he would fairly and 
 logically follow the example of Philip, the ancient dea- 
 con. The case is a perfectly plain one, and it should be 
 insisted on." 
 
 B. M. *' Yes, that I shall remember; and, if too hard 
 pressed, the laughers may be supplied with a new 
 subject." 
 
 /. ''Be careful in handling edged tools. The least 
 offensive levity in sacred things may grow into a habit 
 of irreverence, and deeply injure the spirit that indulges 
 it. The Baptist system, as productive of delusions of an 
 injurious character, and especially as destroying the 
 peace of many pious people, which is not only conceded, 
 but boasted of, is doubtless an evil and pernicious sys- 
 
THE WORD-ARGUMENT. 6Y 
 
 tern, that should be discouraged, and in charity opposed, 
 as yet it has not been. It must be done, however, not 
 only lawfully and reverently, but in Christian love and 
 kindness." 
 
 B. M. "Is it not lawful to meet them with their own 
 weapons ?" 
 
 /. "For answer to that question, my friend, take the 
 Sermon on the Mount. From that learn to separate the 
 sin from the sinner, and systems from subjects. There 
 are many good and truly pious people among the Bap- 
 tists ; quiet, peaceable, benevolent ; and not a few who 
 may remain entirely uncorrupted by their bad system, 
 and its prevailing bitterness and exclusive bigotrj^, which 
 belongs to its very life-blood, and which as an atmos- 
 phere is breathed by the water-bound sect. To offend 
 or wound one of those good people — good in spite of 
 their bad system, — would be to offend against the Grood 
 Spirit of the Good IMaster. Beware, then, how you offend 
 one of these little ones, whatever the assaults upon your 
 peace by the denouncing zeal of bigotry and ignorance ; 
 or the not less offensive compassion for your baptismal 
 position." 
 
 B. M. "I shall try and pray not to offend. But I 
 wish to be armed with the lawful weapons of self-de- 
 fence. I wish to know how to use the sword of the 
 Spirit, which they use offensively, against even the in- 
 nocent, the feeble and the defenceless." 
 
 I. "That may be quite right. Then let us examine 
 the edge and the point of this sword of the Spirit, which 
 is the Word of Grod, which you are right too in thinking 
 they have injured, by thrusting and hacking with vio- 
 lent and unskilful hands. Where would you begin?" 
 
 B. M. "With the ^much water ^^ which so often they 
 
68 THE SEVENTH TALK. 
 
 fling at us, and whic"h they seem to think ouglit alone to 
 settle the question in favor of exclusive immersion." 
 
 /. " They have many settlers of the question. Please 
 read the text ?" 
 
 B. M, '' John iii. 23. ' And John also was baptizing in 
 JEnon, near to Salim, because there was much water 
 there.' " 
 
 I. "As agreeing with their system of notions and 
 verbal interpretations, it doubtless supplies them with a 
 plausible argument ; but of testimony, not a shadow. 
 With their habit of thought the inference is strong : — 
 ' Strong as proofs of holy writ.' And as their Carson 
 says, 'even under the rack, cries out. Immersion! im- 
 mersion !' Yet the inference, though less violent than 
 that which infers under from into^ is violent still, and 
 destitute of every feature of necessity." 
 
 B. M. " And yet, they make it a mighty argument 
 with the multitude." 
 
 /. "And so will they continue to do, 'deceiving and 
 being deceived.' " 
 
 B. M. "Is it certain that in this place there was suf- 
 ficient depth of water for plunging ?" 
 
 /. " There is nothing certain about it. Where it was 
 is not known. What it was we only know from its 
 name and character, as given in the text. It was a 
 shady place — a high recommendation in a hot climate — 
 so the name means. There were probably trees and 
 vines, all kept in their refreshing greenness by springs 
 of water from among the rocks — ^many waters^ the 
 better translation, as in the Syrian version. It is not 
 probable that the place was adapted to immersion. And 
 if John plunged his subjects, why leave the Jordan, 
 where he had baptized such multitudes as to put to 
 
THE WOED-AEGUMEXT. 69 
 
 shame the aotion of his having plunged them all ? It 
 was doubtless, in summer, a far pleasanter place than the 
 hot banks of the Jordan. At JEnon the multitude en- 
 joyed the ' shadows of great rocks' and spreading trees; 
 and the many springs supplied them with a cooler bev- 
 erage than the Jordan could afford. Grapes too, and 
 other wild fruits may have abounded there — reasons 
 enough for preferring ^non to Jordan. It was just the 
 place for a camp-meeting." 
 
 B. M. (Looking at the Syrian Kew Testament.) •' Yes, 
 indeed. But I was thinking what a pity the English 
 translators put much instead of many. This translation 
 would have knocked out a considerable block from under 
 the Baptists' platform." 
 
 /. " They had then no English platform to knock the 
 foundation-blocks from under. Besides, the English words 
 much and many were then often used in the same sense. 
 We have in our translation much ivater and many waters^ 
 from the same original, by the same author — here and 
 in Kevelations. Here there is ''much water' — water 
 enough to keep the font full and to supply beverage 
 to the people ; and there the bad woman is represented 
 as sitting on ''many icaters^ to express her many vic- 
 tims. ' Custom is the law-maker of language,' and cus- 
 tom allowed such use of much and mctny in the age of 
 our translation. Custom has since repealed the law, and 
 Webster decides that such use is now obsolete. But it 
 was not obsolete for more than a hundred years after 
 the last of the venerable translators had passed away. 
 Nor, indeed, is the repeal everywhere recognized even 
 now, nor the obsoleteness allowed; for we still hear 
 much used when many is meant: 'I have much trouble,' 
 
YO THE SEVENTH TALK. 
 
 says the poor old woman, who means many troubles, 
 which she proceeds to enumerate." 
 
 B. M. "Well, that's plain enough. I shall remem- 
 ber all the sharp points, and be able, I trust, to use them, 
 at least in self-defence." 
 
 I. "So use them. They are of good metal, and will 
 not fail you in such honest and lawful service. What 
 next?" 
 
 B. M. " 'BuKiED WITH Christ in Baptism.' These 
 words are everywhere considered as a full answer to 
 all objections to immersion. In the pulpit, in the water, 
 the parlor, the kitchen, the shop, the street — every Bap- 
 tist has them at his tongue's end, as all that is needed to 
 silence all gainsayers." 
 
 I. " And by such familiar use is one of the most sol- 
 emnly spiritual figures of the great Apostle wickedly 
 profaned. It is with reluctance that I proceed to expose 
 this profanation ! I feel almost as if a partaker in their 
 sin ! But if the prevention of human misery be the 
 question, then I may not shrink from the unpleasant 
 task. With this plain assertion it is here begun : — In 
 the use of the word BUEIED, St. Paul is not s'pealdmj of an 
 outward action at all, hut of a spiritual effect upon the soid 
 of the Christian convert. What a lamentable loss that it 
 had ever been otherwise understood. Do you know any 
 thing of the manner of the burial of the dead in the time 
 and country of the Apostles ?" 
 
 B. M. " Was it different from ours?" 
 
 /. "It was nothing like it. Baking bread in an oven, 
 and covering it with coals and ashes on the hearth, are 
 not more unlike." 
 
 B.M, "Then I must confess to knowing nothing 
 about it." 
 
THE WOKD- ARGUMENT. 71 
 
 I. "And yet, just as much as your Baptist neighbors, 
 and they just as much as many learned commentators, 
 controversialists and preachers seem to know, without 
 as well as within the Baptist pale. They speak of the 
 o])en grave^ and of shovelling the earth in upon the 
 coffin ; as if St. Paul alludes to such a burial ! — an iiU' 
 mersion under ground ! Of such manner of burial he 
 knew nothing. He could not therefore have used the 
 phrase ' buried by baptism' in a sense to represent im 
 mersion. Impossible. St. Paul knew about burning the 
 dead in some countries ; — he had seen the dead in Pales- 
 tine introduced into horizontal caves and excavations in 
 the rocks above ground, and entombed in monumental 
 sepulchres ; but a coffined corpse buried under ground, 
 there is neither proof nor probability that he ever saw 
 or heard of. It is, then, simply absurd to suppose that 
 he could have made an allusion to such a burial. The 
 'new tomb — hewn out of a rock,' large enough for 
 Peter and John to enter together — the sepulchre in the 
 garden of Joseph of Arimathea, he had seen, and the 
 stone from its mouth heavenly hands had rolled away ! 
 And of the burial of some, he may have seen of the 
 seven millions of bodies buried in the Catacombs, each 
 wrapped in its linen cloth, and occupying its ovenlike 
 sepulchre in the perpendicular side of the rocky cavern, 
 where their remains still are seen. But never could he 
 have seen such a burial as a Baptist immersion under 
 water would give the slightest notion of; — the most dis- 
 tant resemblance. You must perceive, then, that all this 
 talk about St. Paul supplying an unanswerable argu- 
 ment, or evidence for their mode of baptism, is nothing 
 worth ; — mere noisy, delusive air-beating; 'full of sound 
 and fury, signifying nothing,' but to betray the igno- 
 
72 THE SEVENTH TALK. 
 
 ranee and error of the deluded: — the deceived de- 
 ceivers." 
 
 B. M. •' Yes, I perceive and understand, that unless 
 the apostle spoke of such burials as ours, in under-ground 
 graves, it all goes for nothing." 
 
 I. " To be sure, it does. And as for the word grave^ 
 it is never once found in the New Testament, in our 
 sense of the word ; but when used as a place of burial, 
 it means a tomb or sepulchre, as the grave of Lazarus. 
 B J the way, what sort of a grave was that ?" 
 
 B. M. "It was a cave, and a stone lay upon it." 
 
 /. " Rather, as we should say, against it ; or, as in the 
 Syriac, ' upon its entrance.' What more about the grave 
 of Lazarus?" 
 
 B. M. "Jesus said, ' Take ye away the stone.' " 
 
 I. "Yes; and 'they took away the stone.' There 
 was no superincumbent earth to be removed, under 
 which the body had been immersed. There was no 
 coffin to be opened. At the omnipotent command, 
 Lazarus came forth with his grave-clothes on. Now, so 
 full is this description, and still more full that of the 
 burial of the crucified Body in the garden, as to make 
 it very humiliating, that Scripture readers should so 
 blunder about ancient burials as to suppose them like 
 our own, and so bearing some resemblance to a Baptist 
 immersion under water. And when such men as 
 Whitby and Lowman permit such blunders of their ig- 
 norant assistants to pass uncorrected, it is mortifying 
 exceedingly. You are now satisfied, it is hoped, that 
 from this source the Baptists can not honestly derive 
 either help or comfort ?" 
 
 B. M. "I am satisfied of all this. St. Paul certainly 
 gives no such lessons on the mode of baptism as he has 
 
THE WORD-ARGUMENT. 73 
 
 been declared, and perhaps even generally supposed 
 to give'. But what is it that he seems so earnest to 
 teach?" 
 
 I. "It is the great, saving and blessed doctrine of 
 sanctification of character, — ' body, soul and spirit.' The 
 gentile members of the Church, to which this ej^istle was 
 addressed, particularly required such teaching. From a 
 deeply corrupt state of heathenism, they had been con- 
 verted. Nothing short of a spiritual death and burial 
 could purify and heal them. They were ' filled with all 
 unrighteousness !' No quantity of water could remove 
 tlieir moral filthiness. In the strongest terms he must, 
 therefore, declare the necessity of a new life — good, 
 pure, devoted : an utter death and burial of sin, and 
 of the heathen sinful character, and a moral resurrection 
 to a new life and character, such as the Grospel requires. 
 To impress this view on the heart, he employs the 
 strong metaphors so richly supplied by the sufferings 
 and the glorification of Christ. ' Dead to sin' we are, if 
 trulj His. Baptized into the faith of Christ, we must 
 feel ourselves baptized into His death, and so ' buried 
 ■ with Him' — not in the ground or the water, but into 
 deaih^ that so we may be raised to newness of life^ as He 
 was by His glorious resurrection. The new life of 
 righteousness, into which Christian baptism initiates, 
 requires the death and burial out of sight of the old 
 life, the old body of sin. To express this complete and 
 utter destruction of ' our old man' of sin — the sinful 
 and corrupt old reprobate within us — St. Paul employs 
 the three figures of the cross^ the deaili and the hurial of 
 Christ! — ' Crucified with Christ, Dead with Christ, Buried 
 with Christ into death.' Kot into earth or water ; but 
 into death ! ' Keckon yourselves indeed dead unto sin, 
 4 
 
74 THE SEVENTH TALK. 
 
 but alive unto God, through, or with, Jesus Christ our 
 Lord. All these are figurative expressions of the same 
 meaning, inculcating the doctrine of sanctification of 
 heart and life — 'body, soul and Spirit.' Christ was 
 crucified for you. For Him, crucify your affections and 
 lusts: crucify the old. man of sin. Christ died. Die 
 with Him in your sins, that you may rise to the new life of 
 purity — righteousness, without sin. Christ was buried 
 in a sepulchre. Let the un regenerate old. man of sin be 
 buried luith Him, that, in regeneration with Him, you 
 may rise to the life eteraal. If spiritually crucified, 
 dead and buried with Him, then we live no longer as 
 sinners. As sinners we are dead and buried by baptism, 
 by becoming his disciples — into His death, for us. So the 
 Apostle reasons and teaches. In a spiritual sense, every 
 true disciple of Christ has been subjected to the death 
 of Christ. In a like sense, they have come to His resur- 
 rection. They have risen with him from the wages oi 
 sin. Dead and buried is the sinful old man in Adam. 
 Alive and resurrected is the spiritual new man in Christ. 
 By baptism, the sacrament of initiation — the seal of our 
 privileges and obligations, and the symbol of our pro- 
 fession — we have been buried with Him into death, that 
 as Christ was raised from the dead by the Glory of the 
 Father, so should we rise from our sin — our death of 
 sin, and walk in newness of life ; live the new life of 
 Christ within us." 
 
 B. M. " All that is perfectly satisfactory, and ! how 
 glorious. I feel as if I mast shout." 
 
 /. " Let your heart shout for joy, my friend, that in 
 Him who died for you, if His, you have been crucified, 
 dead, buried, and so paid the wages of sin which is 
 death. Sin no more. Have you been planted together 
 
THE WOED-ARGUMENT. 7o 
 
 with Him in the likeness of His death ? In the likeness, 
 then, of His resurrection bring forth the fruits of the 
 spirit. ' Planted in death for our sins, He is now that 
 immortal Yine, who stands forever secure beyond foes or 
 blight, rejoicing in the fruitage of His branches.' " 
 
 B. M. "I wonder the Baptists have not added some- 
 thing to their mode of baptism to resemble the planting 
 of a vine, or something else." 
 
 /. " l^ever mind the Baptist fancies now. I must try 
 to get through and out of this glorious tangle of a laby- 
 rinth—in which no water is — so laboriously formed and 
 planted by St. Paul, in this his sixth chapter to the 
 Eomans. By the first chapter we are taught what man- 
 ner of men, and what condition of morals, he had to do 
 with. Let it be well pondered, and there will be no 
 disposition to charge the Apostle, in a letter to con- 
 verts of their past habits of ' iniquity, lewdness and bit- 
 terness', with the trifling with such people by writing to 
 them about modes. Logic, rhetoric, eloquence and the 
 sword of the Spirit, he employs with resistless energy, 
 to impress upon the Eoman converts to Christ the rea- 
 sonableness and the necessity of sanctification. In this 
 he soared far above all modes. As if doubtful about 
 being understood, he descends from the sublime figures 
 of the cross, the death, the sepulchre, to what they 
 could not fail to understand — the bondage of servi- 
 tude. Why he does this, he explains: — 'because of 
 the infirmity of your flesh.' Ye were the slaves of a 
 cruel, tyrant master, whose wages is death. Ye are 
 now emancipated by the Good Master, who has pur- 
 chased you, and made you to partake with Himself of 
 the victory that has overcome the world, the flesh and 
 the devil. Then, as Christ's freedmen, — risen with Hira 
 
76 THE SEVENTH TALK. 
 
 from death, — by Him freed from the hard and fruit- 
 less toil of a sinful servitude; let sin no more have 
 dominion over you. Let the old body of sin be de- 
 stroyed — let the miserable bondman of Satan rest in the 
 grave from which there is no resurrection ! Let the free 
 man, redeemed and sanctified, come forth alive unto God, 
 risen with Christ to newness of life. To such spiritual 
 newness of life may we all arise, and then mere modes 
 will never trouble us more." 
 
 B. M, "Amen! Amen!' 
 
 And with this devout response, and parting thanks, 
 my good Methodist Boot-maker retires. 
 
NOTES 
 
 Note A.—" WTiai a Sinner /" 
 
 In a highly appreciative Review of the " Life and Times 
 of Carey, Marshman and Ward," in " The London Quar- 
 terly^'''' following a glowing description of the first baptism, 
 by Dr. Carey, the reviewer says : 
 
 " Perhaps we feel all the more touched with this ceremony, 
 from the fact, that we are thorough anti-immersionists. It is 
 as certain that ' dip' in our English version is never haptize 
 in the original, as it is impossible to say where three thou- 
 sand people could be immersed in a day in Jerusalem. Be- 
 sides, we do not believe that any living soul ever saw one 
 man immersed by another (unless he were a European Bap- 
 tist) in all the East, on any occasion. We have watched for 
 the phenomenon in India, Egypt, Arabia, Palestine ; but 
 never once saw a native of those countries immerse himself. 
 No doubt they do dive or duck sometimes, but we never 
 saw it. . . . . There was a tale told, we know not how 
 true, of a Baptist translation into Bengalee, which, in making 
 the word * baptize' mean ' immerse,' got a term which meant 
 * to drown.' When the people heard of multitudes being 
 ' drowned' by John, they innocently murmured, ' What a 
 
 smner i 
 
 !'" 
 
 Note B.— " My Boot-Maker:' 
 
 It was objected by a literary friend, who looked over the 
 
78 NOTES. 
 
 manuscript, that the style and rhetoric of My Boot-Maker 
 was as good as mine. I replied, " that is not saying much ; 
 for the style and rhetoric of many a cordwainer are far better 
 than mine ; for examples : Bloomfield, Gifford, Dick, Dr. 
 Carey ; to say nothing of Roger Sherman, and many of later 
 times. Besides, among the Methodists, many of their shrewd- 
 est local preachers are of the " gentle craft." 
 
 Note C. — ^^ A figment extravagantly fanatical^ ■ Page 10. 
 
 " There are some extravagances so absurd as to be really 
 unworthy of serious fefutation ; and yet, such is the influence 
 of authority with multitudes, that they will read and acquiesce 
 in any thing that may emanate from a favorite system or 
 teacher, without taking the trouble to examine or even to 
 think whether it be susceptible of proof It is this considera- 
 tion, and none other, which prevails upon me, not without 
 reluctance," says the learned and judicious Dr. Turner, "to 
 take notice of," &c. — an absurd theory of interpretation — 
 " which appears in" a Theological and Literary Journal. 
 
 Let " this consideration" be my apology, so endorsed, for 
 taking notice of absurdities in the exclusive theory of the 
 Baptists. 
 
 Note D. — " foolish GalatiansP Gal. iii. 1. Pages 
 11, 12. 
 
 " Foolish," dvoTjTor : Senseless ; without consideration and 
 reflection. Comp. Luke, 24, 25. " Bewitched." The Apos- 
 tle thus expresses his amazement at the foolish conduct 
 of the Galatians, as if, to the imminent danger of their ulti- 
 mate ruin, they had been fascinated by some most inexplica- 
 ble influence operating like a supposed charm. The use of 
 the terms merely implies deceit and cunning on the part of 
 the false teachers, and ignorance and simplicity in those whom 
 they had beguiled. 
 
NOTES. T9 
 
 The Apostle puts a case which evidently arises from his 
 strong feeling of the irrational and even silly procedure of the 
 Galatians. It is the reduciio ad absiirdum ; as if he had said : 
 " Answer me, I pray you, this one question ; I will trouble 
 you with nothing else. From whence did you receive the 
 Holy Spirit, the divine agent who has dispensed his miracu- 
 lous gifts and ordinary graces among you ? Did you receive 
 his influences from obedience to the Mosaic Law, or from 
 faith in the system of the Gospel, made known to you by 
 open proclamation, and thus heard and accepted]" — Turner 
 on the Epistle to the Galatians. 
 
 This logic applied to the essence of a mode, and what 
 becomes of if? It is at once a non-essence. 
 
 Barnabas. — The blameable conduct of St. Peter, in refus- 
 ing to mingle freely with the Gentile converts, through an 
 improper desire to please those Jewish converts who were 
 bigoted legalists, seduced many other Jewish converts, and 
 even Barnabas himself — Vide Turner on Gal. ii. 
 
 Note E. — John the founder of a Jewish sect. 
 
 " Our Lord was not immersed ; and if He had been, the 
 mode of a Jewish ceremony — by the founder of a temporary 
 Jewish sect — as was John's baptism, could have been of no 
 binding authority in the Christian Church." Page 13. 
 
 Many pious leaders in religious enterprises, since John the 
 Baptist, have unintentionally become founders of religious 
 sects. So may it have been in his case. 
 
 That more than one sect claim him as their founder may bo 
 seen somewhat at large in " Duncan's Life, &c., of John the 
 Baptist." 
 
 In a learned and instructive article, under his name, in 
 "Kitto's Cyclopedia' of Biblical Literature," speaking of 
 "John's embassy of his disciples to Jesus, which is recorded 
 in Matt. xi. 3 ; Luke, vii. 19," is found this remark : " If any 
 
80 NOTES. 
 
 doubt had grown up in the Baptist's mind, it was most prob- 
 ably owing to the defective spirituality of his views; for 
 even of him Jesus has declared, ' he that is least in the king- 
 dom of heaven is greater than he' (Matt. xi. 11.) Were this 
 the case, it would itself account, not only for the embassy 
 sent by John to Jesus, but also for the continuance and per- 
 petuation of John's separate influence as the founder of a sect. 
 
 Duncan says, quoting St. Matthew and Josephus. " The 
 sect which the disciples of the Baptist constituted after his 
 death, becoming 'separated and excluded from Judaism, was 
 treated with ignominy by the people at large, while their 
 master, John, was regarded as a just man, and a prophet. 
 This recognition his followers subsequently urged to the utmost 
 extreme ; — attributing to him miraculous powers," &c. 
 
 One of the Rev. Speakers, Willett, from Wisconsin, at the 
 late Baptist Aimiversary, said : " Than Wisconsin there was 
 not a nobler field for the Baptists. He had led them up out 
 of the rivers, when the thermometer stood ten degress below 
 zero, with icicles four or five inches long hanging on their 
 heavy whiskers. But they looked good as they came up, and 
 their faces shone. The Baptists would have to work hard to 
 keep up with the Methodists." 
 
 " John the Baptist was the first John, then John Calvin, and 
 then John Wesley. He wanted to see John the Baptist go 
 ahead of the other Johns." 
 
 This Rev. Mr. Willett thus plainly seems to claim John, 
 the Jewish prophet — ih.Q forerunner, but never a follower of 
 Christ — as the founder of the Baptist church as now existing ! 
 
 Note Y. — Challenge and Resolve. 
 
 " It shocks me to think of such a seeming challenge." Page 
 15. 
 
 But the Baptists have a stereotyped challenge to show that 
 the word baptize ever means less, in the New Testament, 
 
NOTES. 81 
 
 than an entire immersion ; and though a thousand times suc- 
 cessfully met, and their official declaration, that " the nations 
 of the earth must look to the Baptist denomination alone for 
 faithful translations of the word of God," proved to be as 
 absurd as arrogant, yet both the challenge and the " Resolve" 
 still keep their place unblushing. 
 
 Note G. — " Set apart or consecrated hy JohnP Page 20. 
 
 " It does not appear that John the Baptist baptized disciples 
 into any particular name. The Jewish dispensation was still 
 subsisting, and his ministry appears to have been supplemen- 
 tary to that dispensation, rather than the commencement of 
 the Christian. Indeed, the great truths connected with the 
 death of our Lord form so the whole foundation, both of 
 Christian Baptism and of Christianity, that till His Crucifixion 
 and Resurrection the new dispensation could not be fully 
 opened and proclaimed." — Bickersteth. 
 
 " The baptism of our Lord was a connecting link between 
 the ordinances of the Old and the of New Testament." — lb. 
 
 And the new link was, of course, made after the pattern of 
 the old chain, reaching back to Aaron's consecration to the 
 work of the High-Priesthood. 
 
 Note H. — "^ picture." — The Martyr Artists. Page 22. 
 
 " In the Astor Library's great work on the Catacombs of 
 Rome, there are numerous pictures representing the Baptism 
 of Our Lord. Several of them are highly colored and elabo- 
 rated with ornamentation. These are, no doubt, of a later 
 age than the very rude and simple sketches, which may have 
 been made from memory by some early martyr who had 
 witnessed the baptism at Jordan, in the fulfilment of all 
 Righteousness." 
 
 Note I. — "^ cart-load of splendid volumes.'''' Page 25. 
 Among the numerous representatives of Christian baptism 
 4* 
 
82 NOTES. 
 
 in Ferret's great work on the Catacombs, I found not one of 
 immersion. 
 
 From the .varieties of pictures representing the Sacrament 
 of Baptism, it clearly appears that in different countries and 
 ages different modes obtained. I have before me two pictures 
 of baptism by pouring water, from a pitcher in the hands of 
 the minister, on the head of the subject. In one of them the 
 subject, a boy, is standing ; in the other, a man is kneeling. 
 The boy is nude, excepting his loins. The man is in Oriental 
 costume, while supplicating the Divine grace, near the font ; 
 and then, in another position, but kneeling, his clothes turned 
 down to his waist, the water is poured on his head from a 
 pitcher in the hand of the minister. 
 
 The baptism of the boy was witnessed by a modern trav- 
 eller in Abyssinia, the Church of which was descended from 
 the Church of Alexandria in Egypt, founded there by St. Mark 
 the Evangelist, who, there is reason to believe, baptized after 
 the same mode. 
 
 Tlie baptism of the man is after the mode in England, per- 
 haps a thousand years ago. 
 
 Note J. — Ancient Font or Baptistry. 
 
 ^^ Its dimensions forbid all oiotions of adult immersion.^^ 
 Page 26. 
 
 It is two feet in diameter, and round — ^not " so7ne two feet 
 deep and wide," as says Mr. Hodges, leaving it possible to 
 be long enough for an immersion. It is cut out of the rock, 
 and the water supplied by a dripping spring. " In the rock 
 at the end, is sketched the baptism of Jesus by pouring." 
 The subterranean recess where this font is found, was un- 
 doubtedly a catacomb of Christians during the persecutions 
 of Christianity ; for inscriptions — such as, " Who received 
 the Crown of Martyrdom," " Who was Decapitated" — were 
 found visible. It was most certainly a place of baptism du- 
 
NOTES. "83 
 
 ring the persecutions of the first century, and this font may 
 have been excavated by a convert of St. Paul, and the 
 picture scratched in the rock. 
 
 Bishop Kip says, " The spirit of the First Ages is so in- 
 delibly stamped on the walls of the catacombs, that no soph- 
 istry can explain away its force. There tlie elements of a 
 pure faith are written with an iron pen in the rock for ever." 
 — Vide Northcote^ Kip^ Fuller, Hodges, dx. 
 
 Note K. — " Work on the Catacombs''' Page 26. 
 
 Should any of my readers wish to become acquainted with 
 the subject of the Catacombs, who may not be able to consult 
 the great work in the Astor Library, they may obtain a good 
 knowledge of them from the excellent little work of Bishop 
 Kip, which contains a great number of very striking illustra- 
 tions. There is also, by Northcote, an English Romanist, a 
 small work of considerable merit. Both authors tell what 
 they saw ; and both works cost but a small sum, compared 
 with their great value. 
 
 Note L. — " Tlie Cemeteries of the Martyrs^ Page 28. 
 
 Of the computed seven millions of graves contained in the 
 nine hundred miles of excavated passages, or streets, in the 
 Roman Catacombs, a very large number of them are sup- 
 posed, without doubt, to have been of Christian Martyrs. 
 How large it is impossible to decide. 
 
 "When I was a boy," says St. Jerome, "being educated 
 at Rome, I used every Sunday, in company with other boys 
 of my own age and tastes, to visit the tombs of the Apostles 
 and Martyrs, and go into the crypts which are excavated in 
 the bowels of the earth. The walls on either side as you 
 enter are full of the bodies of the dead, and the whole place 
 is so dark that one seems almost to see the fulfilment of 
 
84 NOTES. 
 
 those words of the prophet, ' Let them go down alive into 
 Hades. " St. Jerome was born a. d. 331. 
 
 The wonderful extent of the Catacombs seems to have been 
 quite unknown even so early as the age of St. Jerome ; and, in 
 A. D. 761, so ignorant of it was even the Court of Rome, that 
 Paul I. declared that " by the impious Lombards they had 
 been thoroughly destroyed!" How little could then have 
 been known of their extent ; and not more of the number of 
 the dead deposited in them, when the same Paul I. thought 
 he had fulfilled the pious duty of removing the last of them 
 within the walls of the city ! Little thought was there then, 
 and almost a thousand years after, that the dead in the Cata- 
 combs far outnumbered the living of the palmiest days of 
 Rome ! 
 
 Note M. — " The term' AnahapiisV Page 29. 
 
 This term is not used reproachfully, but historically ; as in- 
 dicating a furious faction of religious and political flinatics, 
 who made their bloody mark in Germany more than three 
 hundred years ago. 
 
 Our good Christian brethren who have appropriated to 
 themselves the title of Baptists are, generally, far from being 
 furious, factious, or fanatical. They make no bloody marks. 
 Let them not then take offence at the use of this historical 
 term, as if in the use of it a reproach is cast upon them. 
 Freely and frankly we may declare them in no degree re- 
 sponsible, historically or otherwise, for the crimes of that 
 faction, and in nowise to be reproached as if it were the 
 origin of their respectable sect. 
 
 And now, from this declaration, may we not proceed, with- 
 out offence, to say one word about this term % In appropriat- 
 ing to themselves the title Baptists, that is, Baptizers, they 
 deny that any but themselves baptize. This is not a mere 
 inference, they so explicitly declare. Now, how is the rest 
 
NOTES. 85 
 
 of Christsndom expected to meet this hard measure of exclu- 
 sion from the visible Church 1 May we not be allowed to 
 insist that we, too, are baptizers, though we may not immerse, 
 as they do ? I hope so. But then, in thus insisting, as we 
 think we are right in doing, we inevitably charge them — we 
 cannot help ourselves — with rebaptizing proselytes from our 
 folds ! 
 
 To call them Anabaptists, then — rebaptizers — ^baptizers 
 «72a, or anew, is certainly less discourteous, however they 
 may repel the title, than for them to call themselves Baptists, 
 in the sense and with the intention of denying our baptism. 
 Surely, simple fair-play seems to demand of them to allow 
 us, in self-defence, the same freedom of speech which them- 
 selves claim and use. We ask no more. We shall not use 
 it as they do. We shall not virtually excommunicate them 
 as they do us. On their own platform let them deny that 
 they are Anabaptists. They have the right. Who shall 
 deny it to them 1 Not I. But from my own platform, with 
 all unimmersing Christendom, I must be permitted to call 
 them rebaptizers, at the best. Anabaptists means no more ; 
 but if offensive, we may not employ it. 
 
 "A name which may comprehend any denomination of 
 Christians who are averse to infant baptism, and who will 
 therefore deem a subsequent admission by baptism necessary, 
 in cases where persons have been originally presented at the 
 font as infants. We must, therefore, rank under the same 
 appellation as the fanatics of Munster, the Memnonites of 
 Holland, and the Anabaptists of England, who were, some 
 of them, quiet Christians, while others held those pernicious 
 doctrines which must tend to render the name of Christianity 
 contemptible ; pretending to be guided by an inward light, 
 they despised the ordinary advantages of knowledge and 
 learning, and were frequently most abusive in upbraiding 
 such ministers as exerted themselves in their professional 
 calling." — Shores Church History. 
 
86 NOTES. 
 
 Of the lawless class of " New Lights," as called in my boy 
 hood, not a few were known at the beginning of this century, 
 w^hose character came up to the full measure of the above 
 standard. As found in England, their character was drawn 
 by the graphic pen of Robert Hall, an excellent man and 
 learned Baptist minister, as so demoralized as to deny the 
 distinction between good and evil ; and to hold nothing in re- 
 ligion of equal value with baptism by immersion, which they 
 held to be an adequate passport to heaven. May we not 
 hope the class to be extinct 1 
 
 Note N. — " The division of the Bible into chapters arid 
 verses.'''' Page 30. 
 
 "The historical sketches, the poems and hymns, the pro- 
 phecies, memoirs and letters, composing the Holy Volume, 
 came from the hands of the Sacred Penmen, not ' found in 
 fashion,' in respect to chapter and verse, as they appear at 
 present. The division into chapters was not made till the 
 middle of the thirteenth century, or about a. d. 1250. An 
 individual, bearing a title not very attractive to protestant 
 and republican ears, a Cardinal, was the author of the arrange- 
 ment. The division into verses at least as respects the Old 
 Testament, has not so good a paternity as even this ; judging 
 from the estimation prevalent among numerous Christians. 
 It was introduced by one Athias, a Jew of Amsterdam, in his 
 edition of the Hebrew Bible published so late as 1661. The 
 division of the New Testament into verses is indeed some- 
 what older, being made by Robert Stephens, a printer, who 
 published a New Testament in 1551."— T. W. Coit, D. D. 
 
 Note O. Into.— Out of. Page 32. 
 
 In this same eighth chapter of the Acts of the Apostles, in 
 which is found the baptism of the eunuch, this little Greek 
 word eis^ erroneously translated into^ is nine times rendered 
 
NOTES. 87 
 
 differently. Thus, in verses 3, 5, 25, 27, and 40, to is the 
 translation ; 3 and 5, to prison ; 25 and 27, to Jerusalem ; 
 40, to Cesarea. 
 
 In verses 1 6, 23, in is the translation ; " in the name," " in 
 the gall," etc. In the 20th, it is loith : "Thy. money perish 
 with thee." In the 26th, it is unto: "From Jerusalem unto 
 Gaza." In the 40th, it is at: "Philip was found «^ Azotus." 
 So, twice in this verse it is translated not into. 
 
 In the first verse of the next chapter, and in several other 
 places in the New Testament, it is rendered against. In the 
 2d, 26, 30, to and unto. In 21, for. 
 
 To, unto, at, towarcls,'hy, are frequent renderings, either of 
 which would have been good, and would have saved floods 
 of controversial ink, together with a large amount of what is 
 greatly more important not to be lost — truth and love. 
 
 The decision, then, founded on a proven mistake in the 
 translation of a Greek preposition of many meanings, must 
 be revised, so as to allow Philip and the eunuch to go down 
 to the water — probably the little collection of rain-water — 
 and to stand by it, while the water is sprinkled or 2>oured on 
 the head of the convert, and then to go up from it ; one to 
 pursue his Divine mission, the other his homeward journey, 
 both rejoicing. 
 
 That this little Greek word has no definite meaning, but is 
 dependent, for consideration, entirely on its connection, ap- 
 pears from the various shapes which the translators make it 
 assume, as on, to, in, unto, into, at, against, before, upon, for, 
 towards, among. In more than all these shapes it is found in 
 our New Testament. That always with a nice attention to 
 the sense, these translations were made, none will pretend 
 who have a right to decide. 
 
 " And he commanded the chariot to stop, and they both 
 went down to the water, and Philip baptized the eunuch. 
 And when they came up from the water, the Spirit of the 
 Lord caught away Philip, and the eunuch saw him no more ; 
 
88 ' NOTES. 
 
 but he went on his way rejoicing." Acts, viii. 38, 39. Trans- 
 lated literally from the Syriac Peshito Version. 
 
 That "/rom," rather than out of^ is also the true and literal 
 of the Greek Apo, may thus appear : 
 
 Of the fifteen different meanings of the word, as given with 
 examples from the New Testament, from is the first, as the 
 natural signification. Of more than six hundred instances of 
 the use of this little word in the New Testament, from is the 
 usual translation. Out of^ rather than from^ is employed, 
 not from necessity as a literal translation, but to express 
 something in addition to make the discription of an action 
 more complete, as the translators supposed and intended. 
 Yet a simple examination of all the instances of the phrase 
 out of, in the New Testament, will show to any plain under- 
 standing that/ro7?i expresses the meaning well enough, more 
 generally if not more intensly, and often better, as well as 
 more literally. The venerable translators seem to have had 
 their souls so thoroughly imbued with their great responsi- 
 bilities to preserve the record pure, of the great things of the 
 faith, as to be unable to descend to the small things in the 
 language of the Sacred Record. Hence, probably, the not 
 always elegant, and sometimes seemingly not well considered, 
 rendering of what they deemed, perhaps, unimportant words. 
 
 If we may be able, in order to make plain our theory of 
 this matter, we beg leave, modestly, to exemplify it by some 
 cases in point — as we suppose : 
 
 Matt. iii. 16: "And Jesus, when He was baptised, went 
 up straightway out of the water." The Evangelist had said 
 not a word of his having been in the water. " When Jesus 
 was baptized. He went up immediatly from the water," says 
 the original in both Greek and Syriac. 
 
 This is the first out of from o/jo, in the New Testament. 
 Look now at the last. 
 
 Rev. xxii. 19 : Out of the Book of Life," says our own 
 blessed New Testament. " From the Tree of Life," say botli 
 
NOTES. 89 
 
 the Greek and Syriac sense, supposed spiritually the same ; 
 style and sound quite different. 
 
 One niay not ask, on what grounds, in either of these cases, 
 the Greek apo was so rendered ; but one niay conclude, with- 
 out irreverence, it is hoped that the translators did not give 
 much from, or out of, their great treasures of golden talents, 
 to what they evidently consider small matters. Small mat- 
 ters they would ever have continued to be, had there never 
 been any "causers of division." 
 
 "i^Vom, out of. Matt. vii. 4; xiv. 29." — Parkhurst. 
 "What meaneth this great Bible-lexicographer ? Is it that from 
 is the preferable translation 1 "We may look at these texts. 
 
 Matt. vii. 4 : " Let me pull out the mote out of thine eye." 
 " Out" and " out," not elegant, certainly. From Parkhurst 
 would prefer before out of. And what says Dr. Murdoch's 
 Syriac % " Allow me to pluck the straw from thy eye." 
 The moral, or spiritual lesson, is exactly the same ; but there 
 the identity ends. The spiritual sense in the former is no doubt 
 purer than the rhetorical. 
 
 Matt, xiv . 29 : " And when Peter was come down out of 
 the ship," or " descended //-owi the ship," as the Syriac has it, 
 seems better. So Parkhurst decides. At any rate out of is 
 here neither necesary, nor elegant, nor literal. 
 
 So of the other like renderings of apo, by out of. They 
 prove nothing, but how little the great English translators 
 care for little things. That they prove any thing in favor 
 of any particular mode of baptism, it would seem impossible 
 to be believed by one who had studied the subject intelligently, 
 and not under the spell of a dominant prejudice. 
 
 Note P. — Immersion not a Bible Word, 
 
 " There is not a place in the Bible, where it can be shotvn, 
 ivith certainty, that the word baptism means entire immersion 
 and nothing else,''"' Page 35. 
 
90 NOTES. 
 
 The following abridged extract from a learned volume, en- 
 titled Bible Baptism, may show that the above proposition 
 might have been even more strongly put : 
 
 1. God, in His Word, does not command persons to he im- 
 mersed. In no portion of the Scriptures is it said to any per- 
 son, for any purpose : Be immersed. There is no command 
 in the Word of God, given in any form of language, requiring 
 any person to be immersed for any purpose whatever. 
 
 2. God does not require any person to immerse others. He 
 does not direct any of his ministering servants to immerse 
 others. He does not, in any passage of His word, say to 
 any : go ye and immerse. 
 
 8. God does not direct persoiis to be baptized by immersion, 
 or to baptize others in this mode. New Testament ministers 
 are commanded to "Go — and teach all nations, baptizing 
 them." {S. Matt, xxviii. 19.) But they are not told to ad- 
 minister this ordinance by immersion. In no portion of the 
 Book of God, are men directed or authorized by any require- 
 ment, to baptize by immersion. 
 
 4. No person speaking of himself or others, is, in the Scrip- 
 tures, reiwesented as saying I or they immerse, or baptize, or 
 luere baptized by immersion. John said, " I baptize ;" — and 
 Paul, " I baptized ;" — and another sacred writer : " men and 
 women" were baptized. (>S^. Matt, iii. 11 ; 1 Cor. i. 14, 16; 
 Acts, viii. 12.) But no person mentioned in the Word of God, 
 says : I immerse, or I immersed, or they immersed, or that 
 any individual baptized or was baptized by immersion. 
 
 5. The luord immerse is not found in the word of God. 
 Any person can determine this matter for himself by reading 
 the Scriptures. It is not so much as mentioned by any sacred 
 writer, either in the Old or New Testament. It is not used 
 in God's Word for baptism or for any other purpose. So 
 far, therefore, are men from being required, by Divine au- 
 thority, to be immersed or to immerse others, that the word 
 
NOTES. 91 
 
 immerse itself is not once used for any purpose whatever, in 
 any part of the Scriptures of truth. 
 
 6. Ill the original Scriptures^ men are not commanded to 
 immerse or to be immersed for baptism^ or to be baptized by 
 immersion. In the Greek language there are two words 
 (efipaTTTG) and e^j3a7ZTi^G)) which frequently, but not always, 
 signify to put the thing mentioned entirely under water or 
 under somethmg else. Neither of these is the very word im- 
 merse itself; nor is either of them, at any time, used in the 
 original Scriptures to denote baptism. Indeed, only one of 
 them [efifSaiTTG)) is used by the Spirit of God for any purpose 
 whatever ; but that one is not, at any time or in any passage, 
 in the Greek Testament, used to signify baptism. (See Matt. 
 xxvi. 23 ; Mark, xiv. 20 ; John, xiii. 26, in Greek.) In the 
 original Hebrew of the Old Testament, no word is used for 
 baptism, which denotes immerse. If the King of kings had 
 intended to inform the world that immersion is the only 
 mode of baptism ; it is strange that He has not told men so 
 in a single passage in His own Holy Book ! It is astonishing 
 that men should be called upon to believe that immersion is 
 the only mode of baptism, when the word immerse is not 
 used so much as once in the whole Word of God for baptism, 
 or in English for any other purpose ! and when neither of 
 the original words which sometimes denote immerse is, at 
 any time, used in Scripture for baptize. If the word im- 
 merse was ever employed in the Scriptures for any purpose 
 resembling baptism ; men might fancy that, in such an in- 
 stance, the word denoted baptism. But how can they 
 imagine that the word is recorded in the Book of God, and 
 that it denotes baptism ! And then to crown the imaginary 
 climax, they appear to fancy that they can make people of 
 sense believe that immersion is not merely a mode, but that 
 it is the only mode of baptism. Is it possible for a man to 
 believe, that God commands him to be immersed or to im- 
 merse others, when the Scriptures do not so much as mention 
 
92 KOTES. 
 
 immersion as a mode of administering that ordinance 1 If 
 he can, he can believe that God commands what is not so 
 much as once mentioned as baptism in the whole of Divine 
 revelation." 
 
 Supplementary. 
 
 " After a rigid investigation of all that the New Testament 
 contains on the subject, we affirm that there is not a precept, 
 EXAMPLE, or ALLUSION from which an undoubted inference for 
 immersion as the mode of Christian baptism can be adduced 
 Not one, that any impartial or legal mind will admit, can be 
 made the basis of an invariable law, to bind the judgment 
 and conscience of men." — Hodges. 
 
 Note Q. — Homer and Poi^e. 
 
 " The great Homer has a lake baptized with the blood of 
 a frog." Page 36. 
 
 Pope happily translates the baptismal word by an English 
 
 equivalent which exactly expresses the meaning of the 
 
 original. 
 
 "Gasping he rolls, a purple stream of blood 
 DiSTAiNS the surface of the silver flood." 
 
 Note R. — Modes indifferent. 
 
 " As no mode is prescribed in Scripture, and only the form 
 of words commanded ; one mode must be, in itself, just as 
 good and proper as another ; if as capable of being performed 
 reverently, and decently, and in order." Page 41. 
 
 " We believe that all modes of Baptism are valid. But 
 we believe that, in some cases mentioned in the New Testa- 
 ment, immersion was impossible, and moreover that there is 
 no case in which the probabilities are not on the side of some 
 form of affusion. This mode is consonant with the liberal 
 and pliant nature of Christianity, which, if immersion alone 
 
NOTES. 93 
 
 were valid, could not bestow its great initiating rite on the 
 sick, on prisoners, on people at sea, in desert places, and in 
 latitudes of extreme frost." — Dr. Adams' Pitt Street Chaiyel 
 Lecture. 
 
 In all ages of the Gospel, in all countries, different modes 
 of administering baptism are found. Three modes are 
 mentioned as now practiced. Others might have been added 
 from the Oriental and Latin Churches. From the great and 
 complete work of Hodges, " Baptism tested by Scripture 
 AND History," which I had not seen when " The Talks" 
 were written, a few abridged historical instances are here 
 given of various modes at different times and places, starting 
 from the age of the Reformation, and going back to that of 
 the Apostolic period. 
 
 The FORM of words employed in Christian baptism has 
 ever and everywhere remained the same as prescribed by the 
 Lord himself. MODE He prescribed none ; therefore it has 
 necessarily varied with varying circumstances. 
 
 In 1536, A.D., Calvin in Geneva. 
 
 " The minister of Baptism pours water on the infant, 
 saying, &c." 
 
 It may be well to remark here, that then, in the old 
 Christian countries there were no adults to be baptized ; all 
 having been baptized in infancy. So is it substantially still 
 in the Oriental Churches. Mar Yohannon, when a few years 
 since he visited this country from Asia, told us that he had 
 never seen an adult baptized. Nor is it likely that Calvin 
 had at this date. 
 
 In his Institutes he tell us : " The difference is of no mo- 
 ment, whether he that is baptized be dipped all over ; and 
 if so, whether thrice or once, or whether he be only wetted 
 with the water poured on him.'''' 
 
 In 1551, A.D., In Mentz, Germany, the minister is to take 
 the child, hold him over the Font, and three times pour water 
 
94 KOTES. 
 
 on the head with his right hand. Immersion is allowed, but 
 pouring is preferred as better. Vide WalVs Hist. Bap.\o\. ii. 
 p. 361. 
 
 " In 1536, A.D., a Comicil of Cologne refers to it as a 
 matter of indifference whether the child is thrice dipped, or 
 wetted with water," &c. 
 
 In England, the Church assumes the modes of baptism to 
 be a thing of indifference, and either dips or pours. Wick- 
 liffe, the great j)reacher of the reformed doctrines, one 
 hundred and fifty years before the Eeformation, says : " Nor 
 is it material whether they be dipped once or thrice, or 
 water be poured on their heads." 
 
 In 1404, a French Synod decrees : " Let the Priest make 
 three pourings or sprinklings of water on the infant's head." 
 
 In the thirteenth century, an author of the time says : 
 "The way of Affusion is common in France and other places, 
 and was probably used by the Apostles : but the way of 
 dipping is more general." And this reminds me of the 
 declaration of a learned author, that immersion as a mode of 
 baptism originated in the dark ages. He says, " From about 
 the year a.d. 700, till about the year 1500, moral and 
 spiritual darkness spread a gloom over the world. The light 
 of revelation was almost extinguished. . . . Ignorance 
 was almost universally prevalent. . . . During these 
 ages of spiritual desolation, immersion, as a mode of bap- 
 tism, had its origin." A bold conclusion'? Well, let it be 
 investigated. 
 
 In the ninth and tenth centuries, as shown by pictorial re- 
 presentations, children, if able, standing, had the water of 
 baptism poured on their head ; and men kneeling. 
 
 In England, a.d. 816, the people having yet retained a 
 strong taint of the ancient Druid harshness, the minister of 
 baptism was required to dip the infant thi'ee times in the 
 
NOTES. 95 
 
 font, " as the Son of God was thrice dipped in the ^Yaters of 
 the Jordan !" Waiting for the proof of this, the little ones 
 were spared from drowning. 
 
 In the fifth century, the doctrine is held in the East that 
 " Tliis word of faith is so powerful in the Church of God, 
 that by means of her believing, offering, blessing ; tinging 
 with the liquid and transient element, even in a slight degree^ 
 it cleanses the infant, as entirely as a large quantity would.' 
 
 In the latter part of the fourth century, Chrysostom, of 
 Constantinople, exhorts to the joyful receiving of baptism in 
 the Church, and in health, instead of waiting for the sor- 
 rowing and weeping reception of it on the bed of death. 
 
 Jerome, of Palestine, who spent many Sundays of his 
 youth in the Catacombs, applies to baptism the prediction of 
 Ezekiel, " I will sprinkle clean water upon you." 
 
 In the third century, Ambrose, of ^Milan, bears a like anti- 
 immersion testimony. So also do all the great fathers of 
 the household of faith. 
 
 In the second century, Cyprian says, " The contagion of 
 Sin is not in the Sacrament of Salvation washed off by the 
 same measures that the dirt of the skin and the body is 
 washed off in an ordinary secular bath, so that there should 
 be necessity of soap and other helps, and a large pool or 
 fishpond, by which that body is washed or cleansed. It is in 
 another way that the heart of the believer is washed — after 
 another manner that the mind of a man is by faith cleansed. 
 In the Sacrament of Salvation, where necessity compels, the 
 shortest ways of transacting Divine matters do, by God's 
 gracious Dispensation, confer the whole benefit. 
 
 And no man need, therefore, think otherwise, because 
 these sick people, when they receive the grace of Our Lord, 
 have nothing but an affusion or sprinkling ; whereas the Holy 
 Scriptures, by the Prophet Ezekiel, says, 'I shall sprinkle 
 
96 NOTES. 
 
 clean water upon you, and you shall be clean," Ezek. 
 36: 25. 
 
 He also says that " none such may here baptized ;" that 
 the Holy Spirit is not given by several measures, but is 
 wholly poured on them that believe." 
 
 Shortly before his martyrdom, Laurentius (St. Lawrence) 
 baptized Lucillus with a pitcher of water. 
 
 Novatian was baptized by affusion as he lay on his sick 
 bed. 
 
 Origen represents the wood on the altar, over which water 
 was poured, at the command of Elijah (1 Kings, xviii. 33), 
 as having been " baptized," and speaks of each pouring as a 
 baptism. 
 
 Tertullian applies the word "sprinkling" to the act of 
 baptism. 
 
 Still nearer to the Apostolic age, Clemens Alexandrinus calls 
 wetting with tears baptism. Of a backslider whom St. John 
 reclaimed, he says : " He was baptized a second time with 
 tears." 
 
 Justin Martyr, born in the Apostolic age, also bears plain 
 testimony against the exclusive theory of the Baptists, by 
 the use of the word baptize, as do all the Apostles, in a 
 generic sense. 
 
 This ancient and golden chain of proofs is employed here, 
 not more to establish my positions in the talks, than to 
 point my readers, who would master the subject, to the 
 masteririg work of Hodges. 
 
 Let no anti-immersion Pedo-Baptist minister think it too 
 large or costly. If not only unchurched, but also un- 
 christened, we ought to " know the reason why." 
 
NOTES. 97 
 
 Note S. — Modest and quiet Spirit. 
 
 " Some think immersions are not always decent." 
 Page 41. 
 
 ^''That which is indecent^ can not he the only mode ofhap- 
 tism. In Christ's Kingdom 'all things' must 'be done 
 decently and in order.' But in immersion are many tilings 
 so indecent, that to them, modest females could not easily 
 be induced to submit, if their minds were pointedly di- 
 rected to them." Following this remark, the author of 
 the book — Bible Baptism: — enumerates several indecen- 
 cies, common^ he says, in immersions of females, which 
 must here be omitted. The subject he thus dismisses : 
 " Such indecent practices can not be indispensable to an 
 ordinance of Christ's Church, where. all things must be 
 done decently, as well as in order. Many indecencies, for- 
 merly practiced by immersers, are too gross to be men- 
 tioned here." 
 
 Yet a very plain-spoken man is Mr. Quaw ; with appar- 
 ently very small respect for the doctrine of reserve. 
 
 In Buck's Dictionary there is also allusion made to the 
 indecency of immersion ; " too indecent for so solemn an or- 
 dinance f — and that "it has a tendency to agitate the 
 spirits, often rendering the subject unfit for the exercise 
 of proper thoughts and affections." 
 
 XoTE "Y.—Rev. Mr. SijJces. 
 
 " A quadruped is not necessarily a horse." Page 44. 
 
 And yet just as necessarily as that a generic word always 
 means the same thing. But our Baptist brethren insist 
 that the word used in the New Testament to express tlie 
 ordinance of baptism., " never signifies any thing less than 
 immersion !" 
 
 Hear the Boston Baptist champion. Rev. Mr. Sykes, in 
 his " Pitt Street Chapel Lecture : " 
 
98 NOTES. 
 
 Having quoted Ernesti's authority for " affixing a par- 
 ticular sense to a word ; which MUST BE ONE," he says, 
 of the word baptism^ " Which, then, is the one sense ? Is 
 it sprinkling ? No one has claimed so much as that." 
 
 Quite a mistake, Mr. Sykes. The learned QUAW, in his 
 " Bible Baptism," does claim so much as that, and makes 
 out a strong case to supiDort the claim. The champion 
 again : " No one has yet accepted the challenge of Dr. Car- 
 son, and proved that the word used in the New Testament 
 (Baptizo) , to express this ordinance, is ever used to signify 
 any thing less than immersion ! ! ! " How bolder than a 
 lion is this indomitable champion ! 
 
 Mr. Sykes and Dr. Carson belong to the classes of the 
 unconquerable and unkillable, and would keep in a perpe- 
 tual fight the battler, of whom it is said : — 
 
 " Thrice he conquered all his foes, 
 And thrice he slew the slain." 
 
 Not three, but three hundred times, and more, has the 
 Baptist notion of the exclusive meaning of this word been 
 proved utterly absurd. 
 
 If any reader of this little book should need further light 
 to discern its utter absurdity, they may find it abundant 
 in FuLLEK, Hodges, Quaw, Bickeksteth, etc., and, be- 
 yond all, and above all, in the NEW TESTAMENT. 
 
 Note TJ. — Baptism of Tears. 
 
 " Divers Baptisms." Page 46. 
 
 Athanasius reckons up eight baptisms, and the sixth in 
 his enmneration is that of " tears." 
 
 Gregory Nazianzen uses similar language, saying, " I 
 know of a fourth baptism — that of martyrdom and blood ; 
 and I know of a fifth — that of tears." He refers also to 
 baptism at the point of death, when immersion could not 
 be often, if ever, practicable. — Hodges. 
 
NOTES, yy 
 
 KoTE V. — Purification. 
 
 " Sprinkle water of purifyiog upon them. " Page 48. 
 
 " There arose a question " — a dispute — " between some 
 of John's disciples and the Jews Dhont ^mr if ^i?}(/. And 
 they came unto John, and said unto him, Rabbi, he that 
 was with thee beyond Jordan, to whom thou barest wit- 
 ness, the same baptizeth, and all men come to him." — 
 John, iii. 25, 26. 
 
 Here is found purifying and baptizing so brought togeth- 
 er as strongly to intimate that the baptisms, both by John 
 and the followers of Jesus — ^' He baptized not " — were not 
 at all of the spiritual character of tlie Christian baptism 
 on and after the day of Pentecost, but of that of the an- 
 cient Levitical purifications; therefore, of course, by 
 sprlnJcling. — Vide Hodges at large. 
 
 Note W. — Forlcs. 
 
 " One of the circumstances not to be lost sight of is, 
 that the Jews had no forks." Page oG. 
 
 Southey, in his '' Commonplace Book," has an extract 
 from an English traveler in Italy, which states the sup- 
 posed first introduction of forks into England so late as 
 1609! Can it be so? Why not? I have seen verg old 
 spoons ; but never a verg old fork. Coryat, the traveler, 
 says, " I observed a custom, in all those Italian cities and 
 towns through which I passed, that is not used in any other 
 country that I saw in my travels ; neither do I think that 
 any other nation of Christendom doth use it, but only Italy. 
 They use a little fork when they cut their meat." He ex- 
 plains how it is. used, and says the Italians took offense at 
 foreigners Avho used their fingers instead of forks. He then 
 adds, " This form of feeding I understand is generally 
 used in all places of Italy, their forks being made, for the 
 most part, of iron or steel, and some of silver. The reason 
 
100 notp:s. 
 
 of this their curiosity is, because the Italian can not by 
 any means endure to have his dish touched with fingers, 
 seeing all men's fingers are not alike clean." He thought 
 it an improvement, and provided himself with a fork ; and 
 when he returned to England was " quipped " by his 
 " learned friend, Mr. Lawrence Whitaker, who in his merry 
 humor called him d^. furcifio\ for using a fork at feeding." 
 
 Note X. — N'o Immersion. 
 
 " Fingers become tongues and cry out, ' Xo immersion 
 — ]io immersion.' " Page 57. 
 
 Mr. Carson, the unanswerable, according to Mr. Sykes, 
 thinks the case of Philip and the eunuch, " under the most 
 violent persuasion it could sustain on the rack, would still 
 cry out, immersion ! immersion ! " 
 
 Is it any wonder that the " challenge " of such a logi- 
 cian should remain some time unaccepted ; and even until 
 another of the like shall " turn up," as willing to stultify 
 himself ? 
 
 XoTE Y.— " The Same Bool:.'' 
 
 " The Syriac New Testament." Page 60. . 
 
 "Among the Aramaean Christians, the tradition is uni- 
 versal and uniform everywhere, that this version was made 
 at the time when Christianity was first preached, and when 
 Christian churches were first established, in Syria and 
 Mesopotamia ; and, of course, that it was made by some 
 one or more of the primitive Apostles and Evangelists, or 
 by persons who were their companions and associates. 
 Some name Mark the Evangelist ; others, Thaddeus, the 
 reputed Apostle of Mesopotamia ; others, Aclueus, or 
 Agheus, a pupil and immediate successor of Thaddeus. 
 
 " Anterior to the present century, most of the Europeans 
 who gave attention to Syriac learning, so fixr assented to 
 this Syrian tradition as to maintain, that the Peshito ver- 
 
NOTES. 101 
 
 sioii must have been made either by an Apostle, or by 
 some companion and assistant of the Apostles." — Appen- 
 dix. 
 
 XoTE Z.—Rev., Dr. Tamer. 
 
 " Buried with Christ by Baptism into deatli.^^ Boraans., 
 yi. 4. Page 70. 
 
 By such, of course, as belieye — or think they believe — 
 that immersion was the most ancient mode of baptism, in 
 his learned and judicious exposition on the Epistle to the 
 Romans, Doctor Turner thus remarks on this yerse : — 
 
 " It has been inferred from the fourth yerse, that St. Paul 
 alludes to the ancient mode of baptizing by immersion. 
 But this is not supported by the phrase, which merely car- 
 ries out the figure, denoting the completeness of the spirit- 
 ual death before mentioned. And thus in Galatians, vi. 14, 
 bespeaks of himself as not only dead, but crucified to the 
 Avorld ; the excruciating kind of death amplifying the fig- 
 ure and increasing the impression." 
 
 As I have gratefully transcribed the whole of this expo- 
 sition on this sixth chapter of Romans on my heart, so I 
 can hardly keep my hand from transcribing it here into 
 my book. I had read it years ago, not without profit, as 
 my own sketchy references to the sacred text indicate, 
 which gladdens me much; yet it, seems a fair subject of 
 regret, that the book was not before me when the answer 
 was attempted to the question, " What St. Paul seems so 
 earnest to teach." 
 
 I must not deny myself wholly the privilege to take a 
 gem or two of wise and pious thought from this rich de- 
 posit of a much-loved and generous friend of old. 
 
 " The grace of God through Christ, has in all ages been 
 perverted by the corrupt heart to Antinomian recklessness 
 of living. The question in yerse 1 may be the language 
 of a depraved objector, or it may be the author's manner 
 
102 NOTES. 
 
 of stating the mischievous inference drawn from the pre- 
 vious truth," — abounding grace, — " in the truly baptized 
 person" — with the Holy Ghost as well as by water — 
 "such a continuance in sin is simply impossible, because 
 by real Christian baptism he has become mystically united 
 to Christ, therefore dead and buried with Him to sin, with 
 a view to a moral resurrection, the precursor of a physical 
 and spiritual, and glorious one at the last day." — " The 
 profession of Christianity which we publicly make in bap- 
 tism, binds us to avoid sin and to cultivate holiness." 
 2. "Dead to sin :" such figurative language is common in 
 the Xew Testament. Rom. vii. 4. " Dead to the law." 
 Eph. ii. 1 ; " dead in trespasses and sins." As it is true of 
 figurative language in general, so is it particularly true of 
 this, that the expositor should be cautious not to carry the 
 comparison extravagantly fiir, and " any degree is extrava- 
 gant ichich becomes forced and unnatiircdP Let this be 
 universally received as an axiom, as so well merited, and 
 how it would guard the general mind against the mis- 
 chievous influences which flow from the " crazy jumbles of 
 fanaticism and folly," that seem now more generally than 
 ever before to be driving men into all species of madness ! 
 1. The state of death implies a state of insensibility, 
 and is both the duty and the privilege of Christians to be- 
 come in a measure insensible to, and unafiected by, the de- 
 lusive charms of sin, so that the man who was once alive 
 to its influence becomes indiflerent to its most pressing 
 solicitations. 2. And as the Christian is dead to sin, so 
 also is sin in his view as a dead object. The Apostle sug- 
 gests this thought in verse 6, where he represents the " old 
 man" as "crucified with" Christ, "that the body of sin 
 might be destroyed." Compare Gal. vi. 14, " the world is 
 crucified unto me." As the dead object can not excite 
 pleasurable emotions and desires to which when living it 
 gave birth, so neither can sin in the mind of the Christian. 
 
NOTES. 103 
 
 As, on the contrary, the dead object excites the opposite 
 sentiments or feelings, those namely of aversion and dis- 
 gust ; so does sin in the soul of the true Christian. The 
 Christian is dead to sin, and sin is dead to him. 
 
 3. "So many of us" (rather, we as many), "as were 
 baptized into Jesus Christ, were baptized into his death." 
 What is it to be baptized into Christ? or what does true 
 Christian baptism mean ? How every thought of tnode 
 flies from the sound of these questions ! 
 
 When John distinguished his own baptism fi-om that of 
 the Messiah, whom he introduced by the announcement 
 that He should " baptize with the Holy Ghost and with 
 fire," (Matt. iii. 11,) there can be no doubt that the mira- 
 culous efi"usion of the Spirit on the day of Pentecost, when 
 the ability to speak in unknown languages was conveyed 
 under the significant emblem of appai'ent fiery tongues 
 was intended. See Acts, i. 5 ; xi. 16. 
 
 But it does not, therefore, follow that the Baptist's lan- 
 guage had no further reference. It exhibits, undoubtedly, 
 in striking contrast, the difference between his own pre- 
 liminary and imperfect baptism, and that of the divine 
 one who was " above all," and who " mu t increase " un- 
 til He should receive again "that glory which He had 
 wdth the Father before the w^orld was." 
 
 Christ's baptism and Christ's spirituality and divine na- 
 ture are in perfect harmony. There is scarcely any con- 
 ceivable moral and spiritual elevation w^hich may not scrip- 
 turally and reasonably be represented as the legitimate 
 result of Christian baptism rightly and fully understood. 
 But it is all-important to have a clear conception of w^hat 
 Christian baptism is. To suppose that it consists in the 
 immersion of the baptized party, or in his affusion or as- 
 persion with water in the name of the Holy Trinity, and by 
 a minister of Christ acknowledged to be properly author- 
 ized, would be to form a very imperfect conception of its 
 
104 NOTES. 
 
 true nature and significancy. Keal Christian baptism is 
 both internal and outward, and it is most generally thus 
 represented in the iSTew Testament. 
 
 In this connection, the Doctor quotes 1 St. Peter, iii. 
 21, as "most instructive;" and St. Paul, Col. ii. 11, "put- 
 ing off the body of the sins of the flesh;" and Gal. iii. 27, 
 " putting on of Christ," etc. 
 
 Baptism comprehends water, " the outward and visible 
 sign," and also, " an inward and spiritual grace;" name- 
 ly, " a death unto sin, and a new birth unto righteous- 
 ness." It follows, therefore, where either of these is want 
 ing, baptism is imperfect ; and surely it can not be ima- 
 gined that the inward part of the sacrament is less 
 important than the outward ? But the transcribing hand 
 must be withheld, though rekictant. Let these scattered 
 pearls lead to the richer pile. 
 
 ISToTE Zz. — TJie Baptist Bible. 
 
 " The editor of the second edition of the Baptist Bible, 
 A. C. Kendrick, intimates in his preface to the New Tes- 
 tament, that all the principal Pedo-Baptist commentators 
 sustain his views in relation to the word baptize. But so 
 far are all these commentatoi-s from maintaining that im- 
 mersion is the only mode of baptism (and this is his view 
 on the subject), that not one of them adopts that opinion. 
 It is true that several of them admit that immersion is one 
 mode of baptism ; but not one of them says or even inti- 
 mates that it is the only mode. To make such a state- 
 ment then concerning those commentators, is a crime which 
 deserves a harsher name than can be given to it here. A 
 system that can suffer its leading advocates thus delibe- 
 rately to pervert the trutli, and vilify the righteous dead, 
 Avill need more than one alteration in the Bible before it 
 can pass current with men of truth and veracity." — Yide 
 Bible Baptism, ■^. ^Q. 
 
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