his concise words, or to remain without any explanation at all. Know ye therefore that they which are of faith, the same are the children of Abraham. And the Scripture, foreseeing that God would justify the Gentiles through faith, preached before the gospel unto Abraham, saying, In thee shall all nations be blessed. So then they which be of faith are blessed with faithful Abraham." Not by themselves, with some new and peculiar blessing; but with Abraham, being made partakers of the old blessing. "That the Gentiles should be fellow-heirs, and of the same body, and partakers of his promise in Christ by the gospel." "Now I say that Jesus Christ was a minister of the circumcision for the truth of God, to confirm the promises made unto the fathers; and that the Gentiles might glorify God for His 3 mercy. "And if some of the branches be broken off, and thou [Gentile], being a wild olive-tree, wert graft in among them, and with them partakest of the root and fatness of the olive-tree." 4

2

No unprejudiced inquirer, with such passages of the New Testament before him, can consent to dislocate the Old Testament from the New; or to prosecute any scriptural inquiry without free and full reference to any and every part of God's holy Word.

Thus we are most deeply concerned in the blessing of Abraham; and thus a careful examination of the seventeenth chapter of Genesis, where that blessing is most emphatically recorded, becomes a matter of the liveliest interest to every sincere Christian. The covenanted blessing of God to Abraham was twofold, spiritual and temporal. Spiritual, "I will be a God to thee, and to thy seed after thee;" and temporal, "I will give unto thee, and to thy seed after thee, the land wherein thou art a stranger, all the land of Canaan." This latter part was obviously and necessarily, from the very nature of the blessing itself, to be confined to one nation. The land of Canaan was not come come upon the Gentiles through Jesus Christ. Consequently the blessing of Abraham, which the apostle

Gal. iii. 7-9.

2 Eph. iii. 6.

3 Rom. xv. 8, 9.

Rom. xi. 17.

5 Gen. xvii. 7, 8.

says was to come, and did come, on the Gentiles by the gospel, was that blessing which assured him that God would be in a peculiar manner a God to him and his seed after him. Thus Abraham's children were included in the blessing of Abraham.

The outward ordinance of circumcision was commanded of God as the visible token of the covenant established with Abraham; not of a part of the covenant only, but of the covenant. This appears on the face of the context-"I will establish my covenant between me and thee and thy seed after thee . . . to be a God unto thee and to thy seed' after thee; AND I will give unto thee and to thy seed after thee, the land. . . . Thou shalt keep my covenant therefore . . . . This is my covenant which ye shall keep every man-child among you shall be circumcised . . . . and it shall be a token of the covenant betwixt me and you."

. .

There is no ground therefore for the opinion entertained by some, that circumcision was the token of the promise of the land of Canaan only. It was the token of the covenant, which covenant included also the spiritual blessing. And although

circumcision itself was, like the land, to be confined to one nation, yet being connected in its institution with the spiritual blessing also, which was to come. on the Gentile nations, it obviously originated the idea that the spiritual as well as the temporal blessing should have a visible token.

Circumcision was the token of both; and when the spiritual blessing came on the Gentiles through Jesus Christ, some of the Jewish preachers of the gospel, not seeing the distinction now before us, insisted on the Gentile converts being circumcised. This arose from the connexion between circumcision and the spiritual blessing: for we hear of no attempt to put the Gentile converts into possession of the land of Canaan.

The infant children of circumcised parents could not have personally known, and felt, and believed what their fathers knew, and felt, and believed; yet the same token of the covenant was given to them as to their fathers. God was their God as truly as their fathers' God. They were treated as part and parcel of

1 Acts xv. 1.

their parents; and the root being holy, so were the branches. The whole stock of the nation was separated from the world, and consecrated to God's peculiar service (a kingdom of priests), and every bud that opened its little bosom on the tree, was holy unto the Lord by virtue of its connexion.

Such was the national custom in which the apostles of Jesus, like all other Jews, had been brought up. Now, suppose Jesus had said to them, "All power is given unto me in heaven and in earth; go ye, therefore, and make disciples of all nations, circumcising them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost," is it not clear that the apostles would have understood such a command as a command to circumcise, not only Gentile adults, but the children of circumcised adults? Would they, as Jews, have required a specific mention of infants? Or rather, would not a specific prohibition respecting infants have been required to prevent the apostles from including them? This would be irresistible if the outward ordinance had not been changed. And now let us ask, if it were the intention of Jesus to change the outward ordinance of discipleship without changing the Jewish practice as to the admission of infants, what more simple course could have been adopted than to command Jews to go forth and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them? They knew how their own nation had been made disciples, and in making disciples of other nations, they would naturally follow their own national pattern, unless they were forbidden, or supplied with some new pattern to follow. With regard to the thing to be done, they had a new pattern given them-baptism was that thing. With regard to the persons to whom it was to be done, they had no new pattern, while they had the comprehensive description, all nations. If they followed the Jewish pattern, they would begin with adults and their families, as God did with Abraham, and they would continue with the children also of adult disciples, as God did with Abraham's children. This would be to extend the blessing of Abraham among the Gentile nations.

Had the Lord and His apostles left children out of the covenant, the Jews, who took such care that their children should not

be excluded from their own ordinance, would doubtless have urged this as a great objection to the Christian religion.

But it is a fact, and an instructive fact, that among the many objections urged by the unbelieving Jews, we never hear of an objection on this account.

Was this principle of religious connexion between parent and child to extend itself among the Gentiles? The opponents of infant baptism answer, No. They say Christianity is a personal affair throughout. No one can be holy by proxy. No infant is capable of holiness. What saith the apostle Paul? "The unbelieving husband is sanctified by the wife, and the unbelieving wife is sanctified by the husband; else were your children unclean; but now are they holy" (1 Cor. vii. 14). Thus the inspired apostle calls those children holy of whom even one parent was a Christian. Had both the parents been heathens, the children would have been unclean. The origin of the scriptural distinction between clean and unclean, was the division of animals into such as might be offered in sacrifice unto God, and such as might not. The former were called clean or holy, the latter unclean. Hence the application to persons. The Jewish nation was a clean or holy nation, being consecrated to God as a living sacrifice. The heathen nations were unclean, being not so consecrated. The children of heathen parents were, like themselves, unclean, unconsecrated. The children of Christian parents, or even of one Christian parent, were holy or consecrated.

To this let me add the evidence of a fact. In the year 257, a council of sixty-six bishops of the Christian Church was convened at Carthage, concerning which, Cyprian, the Bishop of Carthage, says, that "having the question referred to them, whether infants might be baptized before they were eight days old, they decided unanimously, that no infant is to be prohibited from the benefit of baptism."1

1 Qualis illa de baptismo infantulorum controversia fuerit, ex epistolâ Cypriani ad Fidum presbyterum hic subjectâ, cognoscere licet.

Cyprianus, et ceteri collegæ qui in concilio ad fuerant, numero sexaginta sex, Fido fratri salutem."

Observe, this is no opinion of a fallible uninspired man, nor of a council. Whether the council determined right or wrong, is nothing to the purpose. The historical record of such a question having been examined, establishes this fact, that infant baptism at or after eight days old, was then the custom of the Church.

The commencement of the letter is upon another subject. It then proceeds— "quantum vero ad causam infantium pertinet quos dixisti intra secundum vel tertium diem quo nati sunt, constitutos baptizari non oportere : et considerandam esse legem circumcisionis antiquæ, ut intra octavum diem eum qui natus est baptizandum et sacrificandum non putares: longe aliud in concilio nostro omnibus visum est. In hoc enim quod tu putabas esse faciendum nemo consensit, sed universi potius judicavimus nulli hominum nato misericordiam Dei, et gratiam denegandum."

Then after some arguments in support of this, the unanimous decision of the Council, he thus meets the special objection which Fidus had urged, from the analogy with circumcision:

"Nam quod in Judaicâ circumcisione carnali octavus dies observabatur; sacramentum est in umbra atque in imagine ante præmissum; sed veniente Christo veritate completum. Nam quia octavus dies, id est, post sabbatum primus dies futurus erat, quo Dominus resurgeret, et nos vivificaret, et circumcisionem nobis spiritalem daret: hic dies octavus, id est, post sabbatum primus et dominicus, præcessit in imagine, quæ imago cessavit superveniente post modum veritate, et data nobis spiritali circumcisione. Propter quod neminem putamus a gratiâ consequenda impediendum esse eâ lege quæ jam statuta est, nec spiritalem circumcisionem impediri carnali circumcisione debere, sed omnem omnino hominem admittendum esse gratiam Christi; quando et Petrus in Actibus Apostolorum loquatur et dicat: Dominus mihi dixit neminem communem dicendum et immundum.'

"Ceterum si homines impedire aliquid ad consecutionem gratiæ posset; magis adultos, et provectos, et majores natu possent impedire peccata gaviora. Porro autem si etiam gravissimis delictoribus, et in Deum multum ante peccantibus cum postea crediderint, remissa peccatorum datur; et â baptismo atque â gratia nemo prohibetur; quanto magis prohiberi non debet infans, qui recens natus nihil peccavit, nisi quod secundum Adam carnaliter natus contagium mortis antiquæ prima nativitate contraxit? qui ad remissam peccatorum accipiendam hoc ipso facilius accedit, quod illi remittuntur non propria sed aliena peccata. Et idcirco, frater carissime, hæc fuit in concilio nostra sententia, â baptismo atque â gratia Dei, qui omnibus misericors et benignus et pius est, neminem per nos debere prohiberi. Quod cum circa universos observandum sit, atque retinendum, tum magis circa infantes ipsos et recens natos observandum putamus; qui hoc ipso de ope nostrâ, ac de divinâ misericordiâ plus merentur, quod in primo statim nativitatis suæ ortu plorantes ac flentes nihil aliud quam deprecantur. Optamus te, frater carissime, semper bene valere."Mansi. Sacr. Conci. Coll. Tom. i. p. 899. (Edit. Florence 1759.)