known, and consequently the case of admitting to fellowship persons baptized in infancy does not occur there.

Fifthly no accidental circumstances can determine this matter. There have fallen into this controversy, as into all others, a collection of what I call accidental circumstances, and which have been argued upon, and have led off the attention of the inquirer from the case in hand.

For example. 1. Cases have been supposed and urged, as that of admitting Jesuits, and Quakers, and others; but these suppositions prove nothing. Lawyers say truly, there is nothing so hard to find as a case in point. These cases are not in point, for they never did happen, they never can happen, and were they to happen they would not be this case, and they must be investigated on other principles, and rejected for other reasons. Neither supposed cases urged on one side, nor real cases allowed on the other, constitute the law of this case.

2. The motives, tempers and views of the disputants decide nothing. A sour surly man may growl and grumble truth, a well bred man may warble melodious nonsense, a sincere disputant may be a very silly fellow, and a man right in his principles may be wrong in his motives of defending them.

3. Mistakes and self contradictions in writers yield no argument against the general truth, which they are defending. If upright men sometimes in the heat of controversy forget themselves, we should do worse than they, were we to magnify

their frailty into a crime, and their crime into a rule of action. On the other hand, an argument may be uniform, and free from self-contradiction, and yet it may not hit the case.

4. Frightful consequences, affixed by one writer to the arguments of another, ought not to be urged as decisive reasoning constituting the law of a

case.

In short, the right or wrong of this case is deter> minable only by the written revealed will of God, a test of truth, which all the parties will allow.

Having thus cleared the court of a bustling noisy crowd, that do no good because they give no evidence, and do a deal of harm because they perplex the question by throwing in a quantity of foreign matter, let us proceed to investigate what is the law of Christ in this case.

We affirm, then, that it is JUST and RIGHT and agreeable to the revealed will of Christ, that Baptist churches should admit into their fellowship such persons as desire admission on profession of faith and repentance, although they refuse to be baptized by immersion, because they sincerely believe they have been rightly baptized by sprinkling in their infancy.

By way of explanation, I beg leave to distinguish what our divines call the esse or the being of a church, from the melius esse, or best being of one; for, although I affirm such a mixt church to be a rightly constituted church, yet I do not say, its constitution is so perfect as that of the primitive churches. A church that tolerates is a good church:

but a church that has no errors to tolerate is a better. We do not therefore blame those churches, which were never required to admit unbaptized believers, for maintaining strict communion; we only say, where the requisition is made, a compliance with it is just and right.

In support of this sentiment we beg leave to offer two sorts of arguments, the first taken from those general principles of analogy, on which, the scriptures declare, the christian church is founded; and the second from the express laws of Jesus Christ recorded in scripture for the regulation of our conduct.

God is an intelligent being. An intelligent being exercises his intelligence when he constructs any exterior work, and the work will resemble the intelligence of its maker. A wise and beneficent being will naturally and necessarily form a work full of beneficence and wisdom. Should a perfect being create a world, it would be a world expressive of his invisible perfections; should he form a church in this world, it would be a church constituted on similar principles, and, if skill and compassion were excellencies of his nature, compassion and skill might be expected in the construction of his church. There would be an analogy, or resemblance, between the ties of nature and the social bonds of grace.

We find on reading the new testament, that God is the author of christianity, the creator of the christian church, that he hath displayed the eminence of his perfections in the construction of

it, and that he hath inviolably preserved an analogy between the natural and preternatural worlds. This is the true ground of all the parables, in which Christ taught his heavenly doctrine, and of all the discourses, by which he displayed the conduct of God to men under resemblances of a father and his sons, a shepherd and his flock, a husbandman and his lands, and so on. For the same reasons, we are expressly told of the aboundings, or abundance of the wisdom and prudence, the power and pity, the forbearance and patience, the love and compassion of God toward his church. He exercises the same attributes in the church as in the world, with this only difference, the display is brightest in the first. This is what we call analogy, and from this general source we derive many particular arguments from the nature and fitness of things in defence of our proposition,

First: It is just and right, and agreeable to the nature and fitness of things, that we should diminish evils and difficulties, which we are not able wholly to remove. There is in nature a thousand obstacles in the way of every just pursuit. Agriculture, commerce, navigation, literature, government civil and domestick, are all attended with difficulties, some of which threaten the subversion of the whole. It should seem better, at first sight, that no obstacles should exist to discourage such just and laudable pursuits; but they do exist, and we cannot help their existence, yea, perhaps their existence may be necessary to give being and ex

ercise to some of the finest abilities and virtues of mankind.

Our skill, and our duty too, consist neither in wholly removing these evils, for that is not in our power, nor in remaining plaintive and inactive, doing nothing where much may be done, though not all we wish; but in diminishing these ills and in making the most and best of such materials as providence hath actually put into our hands. Every projector of a great design exercises his penetration in foreseeing what obstacles may obstruct the execution of it, and much of his skill lies in providing against them.

We apply this to the case in hand. Christianity is highly fitted, and admirably adapted to the actual state and condition of men and things in this world. It was excellently said by Jesus Christ, The sabbath was made for man, and not man for the sabbath, implying that positive religion was so contrived as to yield in certain cases to natural and necessary contingencies. The man, who uses all diligence to obtain evidence of believers baptism, and cannot obtain it, and yet desires admission to the Lord's table, throws a difficulty in the way of the church, a difficulty, too, which they cannot remove; but, the question is, can they not diminish it? It hath pleased God to give this man faith in Christ and moral obedience; but it does not please him to give him light into adult baptism. He does not belong to the world, he does not desire to trouble the church, he only wishes for a peaceable admission to fellowship; we cannot give him know