the reflections which led to my determination to offer, for the
consideration of the Christian public, some thoughts on the
subject of infant baptism."

Again, in this introductory letter, we read:--

"Never before, in any way, were so large a number of
persons, so competent to the task, brought together for its
consideration. In your volumes, men of the deepest piety, of
fine talents, and with minds every way prepared for the
consideration of the subject, have laboured to produce the
scriptural elucidation of the baptismal grace. I am persuaded
that I should not exaggerate, if I were to say that if all the
divines in Christendom had been assembled at the commencement
of the present century, and had held as many sessions as the
council of Trent, for the purpose of settling this question,
the controversy would not have been so happily conducted as it
has been in your pages, nor pursued to a more satisfactory
result. But what is the result? Notwithstanding that nothing
is so manifest as the effects of the operation of divine grace,
for wheresoever it does operate the effects are 'known and read
of all men,' yet in answer to the inquiry, 'What are the nature
and consequences of the grace communicated by the Holy Spirit
in baptism?' the Christian Observer, with all its voices
united, declares, 'We cannot tell.' This issue of the matter is
virtually avowed by yourself incidentally in a short sentence
in the number for October, 1833, where you say, 'The Church of
England certainly assumes far more than the _nudum signum_,
though it does not go to the length of the _opus operatum_.'
Within these boundaries, then, it is admitted that the proper
place of rest is not yet discovered."

And yet once more:

"I now, Sir, with great humility, beg to submit that the church
has made its utmost efforts in this inquiry--that every thing
respecting it has been concentrated in your volumes; that the
best Christian talents have been bestowed upon it in vain, up
to the conclusion of the first third part of the nineteenth
century, and to the commencement of the fourth century of the
Reformation, and that, therefore, it is a fair conclusion that
further inquiry is quite hopeless, the imagined baptismal grace
for unconscious infants being manifestly an undis