A FAITHFUL CITATION OF ALL THE PASSAGES OF TO THIS ORDINANCE, WITH EXPLANATORY OBSERVATIONS AND ATTENDED BY NUMEROUS EXTRACTS FROM EMINENT WRITERS. With an Appendix. BY R. PENGILLY. FROM THE NINTH LONDON EDITION, REVISED AND IMPROVED BY THE AUTHOR. These were more noble than those in Thessalonica, in that they received the word Whatever pretends to exceed the direction of the Word may safely be rejected; Philadelphia: PUBLISHED BY THE AMERICAN BAPTIST PUBLICATION AND S. S. SOCIETY, 1840. I Do not know that I can better introduce the following pamphlet to the reader than by stating the origin of it; its reference to my own case and circumstances, he will kindly excuse. From my earliest childhood, I was taught to say, that, "in my baptism,-I was made a member of Christ, a child of God, and an inheritor of the kingdom of heaven."* My instructers would readily admit, and in effect taught, the following sentiments, lately given to the world by different writers :— One affirms-" With the water of our baptism, the grace of regeneration, the seed of the Holy Ghost, the principle of a higher existence is committed to the soul; it grows with us as an innate impression of our being....As long as the believer trusts to his baptism as the source of spiritual life, all is well."+ Another adds-"On a topic so interesting, I might have well enlarged. I might have told you that only by baptism we are admitted into Christ's flock on earth; by baptism we are adopted into his covenant, incorporated into his church....that in baptism all our sins are pardoned, and the Holy Ghost bestowed." And another-" Baptism brings its privileges along with it-is a seal of the covenant-does not lose its end through the indisposition of the receiver."§ These sentiments, as far as I received them, were very gratifying. I seem to have been put, by the kindness of my parents and sponsers, into a situation of unspeakable advantages, and, above all, my heaven was secured, and I had nothing to fear in life or death. Being, however, afterward brought under a faithful ministry, I observed a most ASTONISHING DIFFERENCE between the statements of the pulpit and the sentiments I had been taught in childhood, as given above. Here I was taught 'that all mankind were by nature sinners, depraved, and guilty, that unless they be brought to repent of sin, to believe in Christ, to seek and find mercy from God through the Saviour, they must inevitably perish!--As to what was done for me in infancy, I was assured it profited me nothing. My excellent minister would not hesitate to appeal to his congregation, in the inquiries which recently appeared in a public paper : "Is not the sponsorial part of the baptismal service a fragment of popery, without the shadow of a foundation in the Holy Scriptures? "Are not thousands of children, who show no signs whatever of spiAtual regeneration, taught to repeat a DELIBERATE FALSEHOOD, from week to week, when, according to the instructions of their catechism, they declare that at baptism they were made 'members of Christ, child ren of God, and inheritors of the kingdom of heaven?' "Are not multitudes of young people brought to the rite of confirma * See the Church of England Catechism, and Baptism of Infants. + Mr. W. HARNESS, minister of St. Pancras' chapel, London, in a sermon on Baptismal Regeneration, pp. 135. 138. W. B. Knight, Perpetual Curate of Margam, and Examining Chaplain to the Lord Bishop of Llandaff, in a Letter on Baptism, p. 26. In Adam Clark's Commentary, at the end of Mark. 8 |