This is the sum of the argument. Mr. Kinghorn asks, whether, on cool, deliberate reflection, the Eclectic Reviewer 'thinks the cases are the same,'-the case of the primitive Christians to whom the rule was first given, and the case of the Baptists. We will answer by another question: Does he suppose that general rules are limited to specific cases; or that an inspired direction was given without regard to the future circumstances of the Church, which, it was foreseen, would occur? Does the validity of the reason, God hath received • him,' rest on the circumstances of the case? God hath received him, Christ hath received him,' says Bunyan; therefore do you receive him. There is more solidity in this argument than if all the churches of God had received him. This receiving then, because it is set an example to the Church, is such as must needs be visible to them, and is best 'described by that word which discovereth the visible saint. 'Whoso, therefore, you can by the word judge (to be) a visi'ble saint, one that walketh with God, you may judge by the 'self-same word that God hath received him. Now him that 'God receiveth and holdeth communion with, him you should ' receive and hold communion with. Will any say, we cannot believe that God hath received any but such as are baptized? I will not suppose a brother so stupified, and therefore to that 'I will not answer. "Receive him to the glory of God." This is put in on purpose to shew what dishonour they bring to 'God, who despise to have communion with them who yet, 'they know, have communion with God.'

Again, under his tenth reason, Bunyan adds: Bear with one word further. What greater contempt can be thrown upon the saints, than for their brethren to cast them off or debar them from Church-communion? Think you not that the world may have ground to say, Some great iniquity lies ' hid in the skirts of your brethren, when in truth the trans'gression is yet your own? But I say, what can the Church 'do more to the sinners or openly profane? Civil commerce 'you will have with the worst, and what more have you with these? Perhaps you will say, we can preach and pray with these, and hold them Christians, saints, and godly. Well; 'but let me ask you one word further: Do you believe that, ' of very conscience, they cannot consent, as you, to that of water-baptism, and that, if they had light therein, they would as willingly do it as you? Why then, as I have shewed you, our refusal to hold communion with them is without a ground from the word of God. But can you commit your soul to their ministry, and join with them in prayer, and yet not count them meet for other Gospel privileges? I would know

by what Scripture you do it. Perhaps you will say, I commit not my soul to their ministry, only hear them occasionally for trial. If this be all the respect thou hast for them and their ministry, thou mayst have as much for the worst man living. But, if thou canst hear them as God's ministers, and sit under their ministry as God's ordinance; then, shew me • where God hath such a Gospel ministry, as that the persons ministering may not, though desiring, be admitted with you to ⚫ the closest communion of saints. Where do you find this piece⚫ meal communion with men that profess faith and holiness as you, and separation from the world?

If you object that my principles lead me to have communion with all, I answer, With all as afore described, if they will have communion with me. Object. Then you may have ⚫ communion with the members of antichrist. Answ. If there ⚫ be a visible saint yet remaining in that church, let him come to us, and we will have communion with him.'

His fifth reason for his practice, this admirable man states to be, 'Because a failure in such a circumstance as water, ⚫ doth not unchristian us. This must needs be granted, for ⚫ that thousands of thousands that could not consent thereto as we have, more gloriously than we are like to do, acquitted themselves and their Christianity before men, and are now with the innumerable company of angels and the spirits of just men made perfect. What is said of eating or the contrary, may, as to this, be said of water-baptism: Neither, if I be baptised, am I the better, neither, if I be not, am I the worse;-not the better before God, not the worse before men; still meaning, as Paul doth, provided I walk according to my light with God. Otherwise it is false; for if a man that seeth it to be his duty, shall despisingly neglect it, ⚫ or if he that hath no faith therein shall foolishly take it up, ⚫ both these are for this the worse, being convicted in themselves for transgressors. He, therefore, that doth it according to his light, doth well; and he that doth it not, or dares not do it, for want of light, doth not ill; for he approveth his heart to be sincere with God; he dares not do any thing but by light in the word. If, therefore, he be not by grace a partaker of light in that circumstance which thou professest, yet, he is a partaker of that liberty and mercy by which thou standest. He hath liberty to call God father, as thou, and to believe he shall be saved by Jesus; his faith, as thine, has purified his heart; he is tender of the glory of God as thou art, and can claim by grace an interest in heaven, which thou must not do because of water. Ye are both then Christians before God and men without it. He that

can, let him preach to himself by that: he that cannot, let "him preach to himself by the promises. But yet, let us rejoice in God together; let us exalt his name together.'....

The best of baptisms he hath: he is baptized by that one spirit. He hath the heart of water-baptism; he wanteth "only the outward shew, which, if he had it, would not prove him a truly visible saint; it would not tell me he had grace in his heart. It is no characteristical note to another, of my 'sonship with God. Indeed, it is a sign to the person bap'tized, and a help to his own faith; he should know by that 'circumstance that he hath received remission of sins, if his faith be as true as his being baptized is felt by him. But if, for want of light, he partake not of that sign, his faith can see it in other things, exceeding great and precious pro'mises. Yea, as I have hinted already, if he appear not a 'brother before, he appeareth not a brother by that. And 'those that shall content themselves to make that the note of visible church-membership, I doubt, make things not much better, the note of their sonship with God.'*

These were the clear, solid, Scriptural sentiments which drew down upon the head of Bunyan, the coarse and splenetic reviling of the strict-communionists of that day. These are what Mr. Kinghorn calls practically undermining the authority of Baptism. We have said that the spirit of the cause is, in the many, both an intolerant and a malignant spirit, and that the Baptist churches that have dared to act on the principle of Christian communion, have been in particular the objects of this malignity. This,' replies Mr. Kinghorn, is an accusation I never heard before, and it is of so serious à nature, that it requires better evidence than the mere opinion of the Eclectic Reviewer.' He shall have it.

• Be intreated to believe me,' courteous reader,' says Bunyan, I had not set pen to paper about this controversy, had we been let alone at quiet in our Christian communion. But, being assaulted for more than sixteen years, wherein the brethren of the baptized way (as they had their opportunity) have sought to break us in pieces, merely because we are not in their way all baptized first; I could not, I durst not forbear to do a little, if it might be, to settle the brethren, and to arm them against the attempts which also of late they begin to revive upon us. That I deny the ordinance of baptism, or that I have placed one piece of an argument against it,

Bunyan's Works, vol. i. pp. 68-73.

(though they feign it,) is quite without colour of truth. All I say is, that the Church of Christ hath not warrant to keep out of its communion, the Christian that is discovered to be a visible saint by the word, the Christian that walketh according to his light with God. I will not make reflections upon those unhandsome brands that my brethren have laid upon me for this, as, that I am a machivilian, a man devilish, proud, insolent, presumptuous, and the like; neither will I say, as they," the Lord rebuke thee;" words fitter to be spoke to the devil than a brother. What Mr. Kiffin hath done in the matter I forgive, and love him never the worse, but must stand by my principles, because they are peaceable, godly, profitable, and such as tend to the edification of my brother, and, as I believe, will be justified in the day of judgement.'

It is indeed, not a little amusing to find the Paul's and Danvers's and Denn's of those times, telling the Author of the Pilgrim's Progress, the man of the greatest genius that the English Baptists have the honour of ranking in their number, that he would not have meddled with the controversy at all, had he found any of parts that would divert themselves to ⚫ take notice of' him. These illustrious persons stigmatise honest John as a person of that rank that need not to be ⚫ heeded or attended to.' Why is my rank so mean,' he replies, that the most gracious and godly among you may not ⚫ duly and soberly consider of what I have said? Was it not

the art of the false apostles of old to say thus,-to bespatter ⚫ a man that his doctrine might be disregarded? Is not this ⚫ the carpenter's son? and, His bodily presence is weak and con* temptible, did not use to be in the mouths of the saints.' Some of these worthy strict-communionists, we find, compared him to the devil, others to a bedlam, others to a sot and the like, for his seeking peace and truth among the godly. Two of them, however, it seems, gave pretty good evidence that strict communion and strict moral conduct are not always united; 'the one' (Mr. Lamb) 'having given his profession the lie, and for the other, perhaps they that know his life will see little of conscience in the whole of his religion.' This I thank God for,' adds Bunyan in conclusion, that some of the brethren of this way are of late more moderate thanformerly, and that those that retain their former sourness still, are left by their brethren to the vinegar of their own spirits; ⚫ their brethren ingenuously confessing, that, could these of their company bear it, they have liberty in their own souls to 'communicate with saints as saints, though they differ about • water-baptism. Well, God banish bitterness out of the

churches, and pardon them that are the maintaivers of • schisms and divisions among the godly!

Such was the spirit of the strict-communion Baptists of other days towards a Baptist brother, the most eminent in their denomination. We can assure Mr. Kinghorn that we never meant to insinuate that he is actuated by a similar spirit; but does he persuade himself that this spirit is extinct? Has it never occurred to him to hear the most eminent man among the Baptists of the present day spoken of in a tone of depreciation and with a feeliug of bitterness by the strict-communionist? Did Robert Robinson meet with nothing like intolerance and malignity on the part of his brethren ? We could adduce other instances, both among the living and the dead, of Baptist ministers who have suffered much from the unkindness and intolerance of their strict-communion brethren; but we have no wish to revive the painful remembrance of forgotten altercations, and have, we trust, said enough to shew that the Eclectic Reviewer did not express a hypothetical opinion. If to depreciate the character, to impeach the sincerity, to asperse the motives, to affront the person of a Baptist minister, because he does not conform to their narrow, antichristian policy, does not savour both of intolerance and of malignity, we have yet to learn the meaning of those words. If it does, we can assure Mr. Kinghorn, that this spirit is at work still.

We have neither room nor inclination to enter into all the ramifications of the argument by which the advocates of strict communion seek to give plausibility to their favourite doctrine. In Bunyan's masterly treatise, they are all examined and refuted with his characteristic clearness and point; but his works unfortunately are costly and scarce, and there has always been found a bar in the way of reprinting them. When Mr. Kinghorn says, that no attempt has been made to shew that Baptism was not intended to be a visible evidence of connexion with the Christian Church, he mistakes the matter. We recollect scarcely a single position that he has advanced, to which Bunyan will not furnish an answer. In his · Differences about Water Baptism no Bar to Communion,' he examines seriatin the fourteen arguments' of his opponents.

The foremost place is given to that which is founded on our Lord's Commission, Matt. xxviii. 19, 20,-a commission to extend the promulgation of the Gospel to the Gentile world, which has been strangely degraded and tortured into a mere by-law for regulating a point of order in the Church, the whole spirit of the passage being refined away by the process. Thus we find M.Lean insisting on the order

of the words as a demonstration that Baptism is an indispensible pre-requisite to communion,