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النشر الإلكتروني

THE

BAPTISM OF INFANTS

REASONABLE SERVICE;

FOUNDED UPON SCRIPTURE, AND UNDOUBTED APOSTOLIC TRADITION:

IN WHICH

ITS MORAL PURPOSES AND USE IN RELIGION

ARE SHEWN.

By MICAIAH TOWGOOD.

SUFFER THE LITTLE CHILDREN TO COME UNTO ME,
THEM NOT; FOR OF SUCH IS THE KINGDOM OF GOD.

AND FORBID
Mark x. 14

[THE SIXTH EDITION, PRINTED 1809.]

PREFACE.

THE undue and superstitious stress, which has

been laid upon Baptising Infants, by some ill instructed Christians, has, doubtless, been the chief occasion of its being treated with such unreasonable opposition by others.

When we hear Austin, Fulgentius, Gregory -and many others of a great name, amongst those called the holy fathers, with solemnity pronouncing," That infants can have no salvation, "if they die without baptism :"-" That we must "hold for certain and undoubted that they are

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ignis eterni sempiterno supplicio puniendi-to "be tormented with the everlasting punishment of, "eternal fire :"-" And, interminabilia gehennæ "sustinere supplicia, ubi diabolus &c. That they "suffer the endless torments of hell, where the "devil with his angels are to burn for evermore:" -Again: “As the unbaptised infant, cannot go "into the kingdom of heaven, you must acknowledge he will be in the everlasting fire"-Finally, "If infants have not had the sacrament of salva"tion (i. e. baptism) for their deliverance from

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I original sin, they pass into perpetual torments:" ----When we hear, I say, this ceremony of bap

tismal-water exalted into an affair of such infinite importance, the mind is naturally shocked: it rises with indignation against the monstrous absurdity and even impiety of such tenets; and (which is but too common to human nature) the transports of zeal hurry it into the opposite extreme :--to depreciate and run down, a rite so unduly magnified; and, whilst pulling it from the high rank it had usurped in religion, to cast it quite out, and to allow it no use nor place in it at all.

The middle-way betwixt these two extremes is that which is here chosen. It can with no reason be imagined, that a God of infinite mercy, who hateth nothing that he hath made, will permit the having, or the wanting, the ceremony of baptismal-water, to determine finally and irrevocably the everlasting state of a dying infant: or, that for the neglect of this ceremonial washing, (which yet the infant could in no wise help) it shall be doomed to everlasting torments amongst devils and apostate spirits. This be far from the ALMIGHTY JUDGE !

The baptism that saves,* (or, that at all profits any, whether infant or adult) is not the external washing, but the answer of a good conscience; or the pious and devout sentiments with which the ceremony is performed. In persons adult, the religious and sincere affections with which they consecrate themselves to God; and in infants, the

* 1 Pet. iii, 21.

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