The subject may be safely left here. Few controversies have done so much harm, and led to so little spiritual fruit as the controversy about baptism. On none has so much been said and written without producing conviction. On none does experience seem to show that Christians had better leave each other alone, and agree to differ.
The baptism that it concerns us all to know, is not so much the baptism of water as the baptism of the Holy Ghost. Thousands are washed in baptismal waters who are never renewed by the Spirit. Have we been born again ? Have we received the Holy Spirit, and been made new creatures in Jesus Christ ? If not, it matters little when, and where, and how we have been baptized ; we are yet in our sins. Without a new birth there can be no salvation. May we never rest till we know and feel that we have passed from death to life, and are in- deed born of God !
be baptized.' And the reason is plain. For when Ptedobaptism in the Jewish Church was so known, usual, and frequent in the admission of proselytes, there was no need to strengthen it with any precept, when baptism passed into an evangelical sacrament. For Christ took baptism into His own hands, and into evangelical use as He found it ; this only added, that He might promote it to a worthier end, and larger use. The whole nation knew well enough that little children used to be baptized : there was no need of a precept for that which had ever, by common use, prevailed."
" On the other hand, there was need of a plain and open prohibi- tion, that infants and little children should not be baptized, if our Saviour would not have had them baptized. For since it was most common, in all ages foregoing, that little children should be baptized, if Christ had minded to abolish the custom He would have openly forbidden it. Therefore His silence, and the silence of Scripture, confirm Psedobaptism, and continue it unto all ages." — Light/oofs WorTcs. Vol. xi. p. 59. Pitman 's edition.