me of the Trinity, may be valid baptism; but I prefer the New
Testament mode, as I understand it, and am happy to allow others the
same liberty of judgment which I enjoy. It would be an extreme case
which would lead me to administer the ordinance in any other way than by
affusion.

But, said Mr. D., you began by inquiring respecting the practice of
infant baptism in the early ages. I presume that your mind is settled
with regard to the connection of the practice with God's everlasting
covenant with believers and their offspring. I lately read a statement
of this point, which pleased me much, in the writings of the famous Rev.
Thomas Shepard, the early pastor of the church in Cambridge,
Massachusetts. He says:

"There is the same inward cause moving God to take in the children of
believing parents into the church and covenant, now, to be of the number
of his people, as there was for taking the Jews and their children. For
the only reason why the Lord took in the children of the Jews with
themselves evidently was his love to the parents. 'Because he loved thy
fathers, therefore he chose their seed.' So that I do from hence
believe, that either God's love is, in these days of his Gospel, less
unto his people and servants than in the days of the Old Testament,--or,
if it be as great, that then the same love respects the seed of his
people now as then it did. And, therefore, if then because he loved them
he chose their seed to be of his church, so in these days because he
loveth us he chooseth our seed to be of his church also."

Though the title of the treatise from which I read is called the
Church-Membership of Children, to which expression I have very great
objections, and feel that it has done harm, yet this good man held the
doctrine of infant church-membership in a sense which is free from all
reproach of making people members of the church otherwise than by
regeneration. His belief on this point comes out under the following
illustration:

"These children may not be the sons of God and his people really and
savingly, but God will honor them outwardly with his name and
privileges, just as one that adopts a youngster tells the father that
if the child carry himself well toward him, when he is grown up to years
he shall possess the inheritance itself; but yet in the meanwhile he
shall have this favor, to be called his son, and be of the family and
household, and so be reckoned among the number of his sons."

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