This was one of the charges brought against his scheme which he earnestly resists. In reply to this objection1 he quotes the following passage from his work on " Religious Affections : " " In order to persons' making a proper profession of Christianity, such as the Scripture directs to, and such as the followers of Christ should require in order to the acceptance of the professors with full charity, as of their society, it is not necessary they should give an account of the particular steps and method, by which the Holy Spirit, sensibly to them, wrought and brought about those great essential things of Christianity in their hearts. There is no footstep in Scripture of any such way of the Apos- tles, or primitive ministers and Christians requiring any such relation in order to their receiving and treating others as their Christian brethren, to all intents and purposes ; or of their first examining them concerning the particular method and order of their experiences. They required of them a profession of the things wrought ; but no account of the manner of working was required of them. Nor is there the least shadow in the Scripture of any such custom in the Church of God, from Adam to the death of the Apostle John."
According to this theory, therefore, the Church consists of those who are " judged " to be regenerate. None but those thus declared to be true believers are to be received as members of the Church. They alone are entitled to the sacraments either for themselves or for their children, and consequently only the chil- dren of communicants are to be admitted to baptism. It may be remarked on this theory, —
1. That it is a novelty. It had never been adopted or acted upon by any church on earth, until the rise of the Independents.
2. It has no warrant from Scripture either by precept or exam- ple. Under the old economy those who professed the true relig- ion were admitted to the theocracy ; but no body of men sat in judgment on the question of their regeneration. Those thus admitted, unless excluded judicially, had a right to the sacra- ments of the Church for themselves and for their children. The Apostles acted upon precisely the same principle. It is impossi- ble that they should have examined and decided favourably as to the regeneration of each of the five thousand persons added to the Church in one day in Jerusalem. The whole Church, for more than, a thousand years, followed the example of the Apostles in this matter.
i Misrepresentations Corrected and Truth Vindicated, in a Reply to the Rev. Solomon Williams'1 Book; Works, edit. New York, 1868, vol. i. pp. 206, 207.
572 PART III. Ch. XX. — THE MEANS OF GRACE.
3. The attempt to make the visible Church consist exclusively of true believers must not only inevitably fail of success, but it must also be productive of evil. Dr. Cotton Mather, in defending the decision of the Synod of Boston, which allowed baptism to the children of non-communicants, quotes Paraeus as saying, M In church reformation, 'tis an observable truth that those that are for too much strictness, do more hurt than profit the Church." And he, himself, says, " Baptism is a seal of the whole covenant of grace ; but it is by way of initiation. Hence it belongs to all that are within the covenant or have the first entrance there- into. And is there no danger of corruption by overstraining the subject of baptism ? Certainly, it is a corruption to take from the rule, as well as add to it. Moses found danger in not apply- ing the initiating seal, to such for whom it was appointed. Is there no danger of putting those out of the visible Church, whom our Lord would have kept in ? . . . . If we do not keep in the way of a converting, grace-giving covenant, and keep persons un- der those church dispensations, wherein grace is given, the Church will die of a lingering, though not violent, death. The Lord hath not set up churches only that a few old Christians may keep one another warm while they live, and then carry away the Church into the cold grave with them when they die ; no, but that they might with all care, and with all the obligations and advantages to that care that may be, nurse up still successively another generation of subjects to our Lord, that may stand up in his kingdom when they are gone." x
4. Experience proves that it is a great evil to make the Church consist only of communicants and to cast out into the world, without any of that watch and care which God intended for them, all those together with their children, who do not see their way clear to come td'the Lord's table. Admitting with gratitude all that can be said of the great advance made by the Church in this country within the last fifty or sixty years, there are loud and almost universal complaints made of the decay of family religion, of family training, and especially of the ecclesiastical instruction of the young. It is within the memory of many now living that in almost every Presbyterian and every Congregationalist family in the land, as a matter of course, the children were regularly taught the " Westminster Catechism." It is not so now.2
1 Mather's Magnolia, vol. ii. p. 309.
2 The venerable Mr. Spaulding, during his recent visit to this country, after spending thirty-five years as a missionary of the American Board in Ceylon, was so much struck with the change in tTiese respects which had taken place during his absence, that he said