ible church,--the church which is
saved,--till they are born again. If children are regenerated by the act
of baptism, of course it is otherwise; but, not believing this, I am
clear that the baptized child of a believer differs from any other
unregenerate child, who is not baptized, only in this: that God looks
upon it with peculiar interest and love, and that it is surrounded with
special and peculiar privileges, opportunities, promises, and hopes,
with regard to its being brought to repentance and saving faith in
Christ; and by baptism it is initiated into special relationship to the
people of God. The church also has special duties with regard to it.
Some of my brethren give great occasion to those who resist children's
baptism, to argue against it as Romish in its nature and effect, by not
discriminating clearly in using the words members and membership in
connection with children. Read almost any modern book against infant
baptism, and you will find that its main force is directed against the
practice as a "church and state" institution, and as making persons
members of the church by means of sacraments. Let us who are really free
from such imputation, assert the truly spiritual nature and object of
this ordinance. I wish to see it divested of all that does not belong to
it, made eminently spiritual, expressed in terms which cannot easily be
misunderstood, and appealing to the natural affections, the
understandings, the consciences, of spiritual men and women, as, in its
sober and legitimate use, God's great appointment, from the call of
Abraham to the millennium, for the increase and perpetuity of his
church.[2]

[Footnote 2: This subject is discussed by itself, and more at large, in
another part of this book.]

You are aware that the great question, which has made most of the
trouble in the Christian church from the beginning, relates to the
meaning and use of sacraments and ordinances, or what we call Symbolism.
The tendency of the human mind, even in Paul's day, as indicated by him,
with other things belonging to it, under the name of "the mystery of
iniquity, which doth even now work," was, to increase the number of
sacraments and ordinances, and make them bear an essential part in the
work of regeneration. The right to multiply or extend them, and the
claim that they possess a saving efficacy, characterizes one great
division of the professed Christian church, while those who are called
Protestants and the