that Christianity could have enjoined it as
the only proper mode of applying water, in signifying religious
consecration. Bread and wine, eaten and drunk decently and in order, in
any way whatever, constitutes the Lord's Supper; water, applied to the
person, by a proper administrator, in the name of the Trinity,
constitutes Christian baptism; but, had the New Testament required us to
recline, and lean on one arm, and take the Lord's Supper with the other
arm, insisting that this posture is essential to that sacrament, or had
it specified the quantity of bread and wine, he thinks it would have
been parallel to the uninspired requirement of a particular mode in
applying the water in baptism.

"Baptize," he further remarks, it is said, means immerse. Suppose that
it does. Supper means a meal; therefore, one does not "eat the Lord's
Supper," unless he eats a full meal; for, if baptize refers to the
quantity of water, supper refers to the quantity of food and drink in
the other sacrament. He then seems to exult, and says, "I am glad that I
am not in conscientious subjection to any mode of doing anything in
religion, as being essential to the thing itself."

_Mother._ What answer can be made to this?

_Mr. M._ It is a very common ground, and a convenient one, to answer the
argument from _baptizo_, and the early practice of immersion in the
Christian church after the apostles. No doubt the early Christians
satisfied themselves with this reasoning, in departing from the
apostolic practice of sprinkling. But I prefer to adhere strictly to the
New Testament model. There is no immersion there. Now, is it allowable
to depart from the original mode? This could not be done in the first
initiating ordinance of the church,--circumcision. A departure from the
prescribed rule would have vitiated the ordinance. But, does not
Christianity differ essentially from the former dispensation in this
very particular, that it does not make the mode of doing a thing,
essential? Yet, it may be said, Human ordinances are all strictly
binding in the very forms prescribed. For example: "Hold up your right
hand," says the clerk, or judge, to a witness; "you solemnly swear--."
Let the witness, instead of holding up his right hand, if he has one,
and can move it, capriciously say, "I prefer to hold up the left, or to
hold up both. I wish to show that modes and forms are unimportant." He
would be in danger of contempt of court. If so small a departure f