therefore endows that parentage
with special privileges and promises. The inclusion of children with
their believing parents has been the great means of perpetuating
religion in the earth. It is a stream which washed the shores of Judaism
under the name of circumcision; now it washes the shores of the Gentiles
under the name of baptism. For the Saviour or the apostles to have
reaeppointed infant dedication, with the use of the cotemporary
initiating ordinance, would, to my mind, be as superfluous as for the
allied powers to have agreed that the Danube should still run through
Austria.

_Mr. K._ Your principle of interpretation, Mr. M., has brought in all
the darkness which has covered the earth in the Romish apostacy. There
will be no end to human inventions in religion, if this principle
prevails.

_Mr. M._ But, my dear sir, there certainly has been an end at the very
beginning; for what inventions in Protestant worship have non-prelatical
Paedobaptists made? Surely that practice has not been prolific of
superstitions. I often hear this alleged, Mr. K., and we are called
Romish and Popish because we baptize infants. But will it not be best
for Christian sects to allow each other entire liberty of conscience,
and not accuse each other of tendencies to Romanism, when all are
zealously Protestant? Here is a piece, which I cut from a newspaper
lately, which describes the baptism by immersion of some females and
others, one Sabbath in January, the thermometer below zero, a place
being cut through the ice for the purpose, and a boy watching with a
pole to keep the floating ice from the opening. Shall I call this
Romish, superstitious, fanatical? Shall I say, How can we, consistently
with such practices among Protestants, say anything about the doctrine
of penances? No. I prefer to think that those who do these things are as
good Protestants as myself, and I will not impeach their rigid adherence
to their belief, by imputing Romish tendencies to their modes of
worship and their ordinances; for no people are further from Romanism in
their principles than they (unless it be some of us Paedobaptists, Mrs.
Kelly).

_Mr. K._ Well, there is no quarrelling with you; but let me say that
when another sect sees you employing an ordinance which has no warrant
in the Bible,--sprinkling water upon people, on proper subjects and
improper subjects for baptism, when we know that the word _baptize_
means to _immerse_, and that believers