ne
hundred years after the apostles; from Cyprian and the Council of
Carthage; from Augustine and his antagonist, Pelagius, who expressly
said that he had never heard of any one, not even the most impious
heretic, denying baptism to infants.

In contrast with such a passage as the one just read to you, I am
reminded of the host of writers, on our side of the question, who,
almost all of them, make such candid and full concessions, that they
furnish their brethren of the opposite side with many of their arguments
against us. I remember reading a book of "Paedobaptist Concessions,"
containing a formidable array of points yielded by our writers, so that
a common reader might ask, What have you left as the ground of your
belief and practice? But the thought which arose in my mind was,
Notwithstanding all these concessions, they who make them are among the
firmest believers in baptism by sprinkling, and in infant baptism. That
cause must be affluent in proofs, and deeply rooted in the scriptural
convictions of men, which can afford to make such concessions to its
antagonists. These refuse facts, which we afford to others for so large
a part of their foundation, show how broad and sufficient ours must be.

The quotation which I read to you, speaks of Popish tendencies as having
already begun. This is true; and more may be added. In the second
epistle to the Thessalonians, Paul tells us that the mystery of iniquity
was already at work. On the subject of religious days and festivals, the
first Christians very soon began to be superstitious, incorporating
heathen festival days into Christian observances, under the plea of
redeeming and sanctifying them, with some such feelings and reasoning as
that with which people, now, would transfer secular music to
sanctuaries, saying that the enemy ought not to have all the best music.
It is true that this sensuous, and, afterward called, Romish, tendency,
corrupted everything. The pure stream of apostolic doctrine and practice
was like the Moselle, which you saw from the fortress of
Ehrenbreitstein, pursuing its unmingled course distinctly for some
distance in the turbid Rhine, till at last it yields to the general
current. Infant baptism, as we learn from ecclesiastical authorities
with one consent, proceeded from the apostles; yet soon it began to be
practised with many superstitious absurdities; and, moreover,
immersion, making such powerful appeals to the senses, suited the taste
of