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the physical, not less than in the political and moral conditio of man, a brighter period is approaching, than has ever beamed on the human race.

Art. VIII. Considerations addressed to the Eclectic Reviewer, in De fence of those who maintain that Baptism should precede Communion. By Joseph Kinghorn. 8vo. Norwich. 1825.

ONE

(Concluded from page 446.)

NE of the most remarkable features in Mr. Kinghorn's defence of the practice of strict communion is, his perpetual appeal to the authority of pædobaptist writers. There may be some little controversial dexterity displayed in his use of the argumentum ad hominem; but when the matter comes to be sifted, his cause will not appear to have gained much by his citations. The following sentences are prefixed to the title-pages of his Defence in answer to Hall,' and the pamphlet before us.

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"Among all the absurdities that ever were held, none ever maintained that; that any person should partake of the communion before he was baptized." Wall.-History of Infant Baptism." "What man dare which hath neither precept nor example to warrant it, from a way that hath the full current of both? Yet, they that will admit members into the visible church without baptism, do so." Richard Baxter."

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No one will suppose that the authority of either the learned Episcopalian, or the venerable Nonconformist, has the smallest weight with Mr. Kinghorn, on the subject of Baptism. Their views of the ordinance are altogether opposed to his own. He would deny their premises, while he seeks to avail himself of the conclusion they drew from them. As he has not deemed it necessary to state in what part of Dr. Wall's History, the first of these passages occurs, we are unable, without losing more time than we have to spare, to verify the citation, and examine the context. We readily admit, however, that a host of learned Episcopalian authorities might be cited to shew the absurdity of admitting any unbaptized person to partake of the Lord's Supper. The grace which we have by the holy Eucharist,' says Hooker, doth not begin, but continue life. No man, therefore, receiveth this sacrament before Baptism, because no dead thing is capable of nourishment: that which groweth, must of necessity first live. And it may be that the grace of Baptism would serve to eternal life, were it not that the state of our spiritual being is daily so much hin

dered and impaired after Baptism. Now, if outward Baptism be, as this judicious' Apologist for the Church of England maintains, a necessary outward mean to our regeneration,' the instrument or mean whereby we receive grace,' the door of our actual entrance into God's house, the first ' apparent beginning of life,' so that, according to the manifest ordinary course of Divine dispensations, we are not newborn, but by that Baptism which both declareth and maketh us Christians,' and the Church which withholdeth the ordinance from infants, incurs the guiltiness of blood,' and, as much as in her lieth, wilfully casteth away their souls ;'-if it be in Baptism that we are made members of Christ, children of God, and heirs of the kingdom of heaven; who does not see that the Reverend Messrs. Wall and Kinghorn are right? What could be a greater absurdity, than that persons unregenerated, unchristianised by Baptism, dead, graceless souls, should partake of the Lord's Supper? The Church of England consistently excludes such persons, together with the excommunicated and felons de se, from the rites of sepulture.

Richard Baxter assuredly held no such Popish views of Baptism. On the contrary, in his Christian Directory, he only contends, that unbaptized persons ordinarily are not to be admitted to the rights and communion of the visible church, because we must know Christ's sheep by his own mark.' But is Mr. Kinghorn prepared to adopt either this limitation or the reasoning? Will he say that his pædobaptist brethren want the distinguishing mark of Christianity, so that he cannot know them to be Christ's? That Baptism is that mark? One of the champions of strict communion in John Bunyan's time, did not go quite so far as this, when he styled Baptism Christ's livery, by which his servants might be known. What,' replies that admirable man known by water-baptism to be one that hath put on Christ, as a gentleman's man is known to be his master's servant, by the gay garment his master gave him? Away, fond man, you do quite forget the text: BY THIS shall all men know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.'

Baxter, it will have been seen, is extremely guarded, and hesitates to deny that cases might occur in which unbaptized persons should be admitted to communion. He admits that they have a remote and incomplete jus ad rem, though no jus in re. In fact, though, at that time of day, the terms of Christian communion were far from being clearly defined or

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understood, he shrinks from the conclusion that Mr. Kinghorn so fondly cherishes. Nay more, he is careful to explain to what sort of persons he refers as ordinarily inadmissible. As those that are married, but not by legal 'celebration, and as those that in cases of necessity are ministers without ordination, so are such Christians as Constantine and many of old, without baptism."* Constantine, to say nothing of his very equivocal character in other respects, purposely deferred his baptism, under the idea that whenever he submitted to this regenerating process, it would absolve him from all his previous sins. Such Christians, and many of old like him, we, who are not advocates for strict communion, but merely for Christian discipline, should assuredly judge to be ordinarily unfit to be admitted to the rights and communion of the visible church. We are indebted to Mr. Kinghorn for pointing out more than one proof of Baxter's catholicism. Although, in his Plain Scripture Proof of Infant's Church Membership,' he represents the Anabaptists as playing the Devil's part, acquitting them, however, of malicious intention, still, in his Directory, to the question, May Anabaptists, that have no other error, be permitted in church communion?' he replies: Yes, and be tolerated in their own practice also.'+ This,' remarks Mr. Kinghorn, seems the full stretch of charity then.' We know not how charity could stretch much further. It has assuredly shrunk since then, in certain communities. With the views he held of the sentiments of his opponents, (and his language shows that he did not consider them as less erroneous, or their error as less serious, than the opinions of pædobaptists are deemed by Mr. Kinghorn,) what more could Baxter have conceded, than that they ought still to be recognised as brethren, and allowed the utmost liberty of conscience?

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With regard to Mr. Kinghorn's other pædobaptist authorities, so far from proving, as he imagines, that their opinion is, in its principle, the same with that which is embraced by the strict Baptists,' they prove just the reverse; that, if there was any coincidence of practice, there was none of principle, since they attributed to Baptism a character and an efficacy which no Baptist can ascribe to the rite, considering it as analogous to circumcision, and arguing on that hypothesis. That Baptism is an initiatory rite, all persons must admit. That the conscientious and so far involuntary omission

See the passage cited in Mr. Kinghorn's Baptism a Term of Communion,' p. 157. + Ibid. p. 72.

of that rite excludes from church-membership, or disqualifies for participation of the Lord's Supper, is neither maintained by Mr. Kinghorn's authorities in words, nor does it follow as a necessary consequence from their positions. If any pædobaptists have maintained such an opinion, it has been as a deduction from premises which Mr. Kinghorn would deem erroneous, -from what he would regard as mistaken views of the ordinance itself; or otherwise from connecting perversity and moral delinquency with the wilful neglect of the rite.

But, if neither Mr. Kinghorn's episcopalian nor his dissenting authorities will bear him out in the practice of strict communion on his principles, since their reasons are not his reasons, and he is only building upon their errors, we suspect that he would be as little inclined to rest the defence of strict communion on the reasons which some of his own brethren have assigned for the practice. We have seen that Richard Baxter compares unbaptized church-members to unordained preachers, and married persons whose marriage has not been legally celebrated. The latter comparison is carried much further by a writer named Danvers, one of those who assailed the excellent John Bunyan with a coarseness and malignity which Mr. Kinghorn seems not to be aware that any strict-communionist had ever manifested. By that public declaration of consent,' (the baptismal vow and covenant,) says this Writer, is the marriage and solemn contract made betwixt Christ and a ⚫ believer in baptism. And if it be preposterous and wicked for a man and woman to cohabit together and to enjoy the privileges of a married estate, without the passing of that legal solemnity; so, it is no less disorderly upon a spiritual account, for any to claim the privileges of a church, or be admitted to the same, till the passing of this solemnity to These words, remarks good John Bunyan, are very black.' But he cites some still blacker, for these primitive and more consistent defenders of strict communion argued, that, as pædobaptists were not fitly qualified for church communion, so, their communion among themselves was unlawful and therefore unwarrantable: they are joined to idols, and ⚫ ought not to be shewed the pattern of the house of God, ⚫ until they be ashamed of their sprinkling in their infancy, and accept of and receive baptism.' Again, they argued, that as no uncircumcised person was to eat the passover,' so, the sign of baptism was not less required now, and for the ⚫ like reason.' And one of them intimates, that'a transgres⚫sion against a positive precept respecting instituted worship, ⚫ hath been punished with the utmost severity that God hath ⚫ executed against men, on record, on this side hell.' It is

not quite clear, whether this charitable denunciation is levelled at pædobaptists or at those who admit them to communion. In precisely the same spirit, M'Lean asks: Was it not the 'transgression of a positive law which introduced sin and death into the world?' He too maintains, that Baptism is ⚫ essentially necessary to the visible communion of saints,' and he broadly intimates that the same law of exclusion applies to the incestuous person and the pædobaptist sinner*. Now, we have too high an opinion of Mr. Kinghorn to suppose, that he would either adopt such reasons as these, or justify the spirit and language of such advocates. But these are the genuine and original grounds of strict communion, and the practice can be consistently maintained on no other.

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Our object in these citations has been, not merely to expose the fallacy of the appeal made to Episcopalian and other authorities, but to shew that the principle on which all communities have proceeded in enforcing their terms of communion, has been, that a spiritual incapacity or moral disqualification attached to those who were thereby excluded. Those whom the Church of Rome excludes from communion, she excludes from salvation also. Those whom the Church of England excludes, she excludes as unregenerate, and abandons, to use the words of Bishop Mant and others, to the uncovenanted mer'cies of God.' Those whom the strict-communion Baptists of other days excluded, they excluded as unfit for the communion of saints, not visible Christians, uncircumcised, idolatrous, transgressors of a positive precept, not legally married to Christ, not wearing his livery. All this sounds very intolerant, and yet, admitting only that these terms were properly applied, the common principle of exclusion is right. The Church of England does right to exclude the unregenerate, if she can; and the strict Baptist church does right to exclude all idolatrous or un-christian persons. Here is plainly a Scripture principle. The error lies simply in the misapplication of those terms to persons who are regenerate and are joined to Christ. If a Baptist church excludes a pædobaptist in the character of a moral delinquent, it acts consistently, for no bad man ought to be recognised as a Christian brother. Mr. Kinghorn's principle is the greatest innovation as well as the greatest inconsistency imaginable: he pleads for the privilege of excluding the vast majority of the pious and the regenerate from his communion, acknowledging them to be such, and bows them out of the church, with the softest words and most compli

Works, Vol. III. pp. 349, 50, 55.

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