en,
to baptize them, and oblige them to do or be anything without their
consent. O, how many such "penal bonds" I have laid on my children,
already!--the more the better, I told him. "A penal bond" to love and
serve God!--I mean to add my dying charge to it, and make it as binding
as I can. How imperfect such a view of baptism is! It is God coming to
us with his seal, not we coming with our own invention to him. I wished
to have God enter into a covenant with me, who hope I love him, to be a
God to my children forever. I felt that I could die in peace, if I might
feel some assurance of this; and, it seemed to me that, to have a sign
and seal of it from God himself would make me perfectly happy.

She handed me a book, which her pastor had lent her, and she asked me to
read a passage, to which she pointed. It was an argument against baptism
in sickness. Speaking of the penitent thief, the writer says:

"The Saviour did not, as a Papist would have done, command some of the
women, that stood by bewailing, to fetch a little water; nor the
beloved disciple to asperse the quivering penitent."

Remembering the view which the mother of little Philip took of such
things, I merely said, that the writer seemed to me to asperse a large
part of the Protestant world, under the name, Papist. Christian baptism,
I remarked, had not been instituted when the Saviour and the thief were
on the cross.

I received an invitation from the husband, a day or two after, to be
present at the baptism of his wife and children. The husband was not
professedly, nor in his own view, a regenerate man, but one of the best
of husbands and fathers, destitute, however, of the one thing needful.

The wife had on a loose cashmere dressing-gown, but was sitting in bed
for greater support and comfort.

The pastor read to her the articles and covenant of the church. She
assented to them; whereupon, at his request, I laid the church-book of
signatures before her, gave her a pen full of ink, and she wrote her
name among the professed followers of the Lamb.

The pastor then declared her to be admitted, by vote of the church, into
full communion and fellowship, after she should have received the
ordinance of baptism.

He rose, and read, "And Jesus came unto them, and spake, saying, All
power is given unto me in heaven and in earth. Go ye, therefore, and
teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the
Son, and of the Holy Ghost; teachin