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antipodobaptist Churches, are not alone in the fault, of criminally disregarding important duties of the cov enant. He will be stricken with a conviction, that the podobaptist Churches generally, if not universally, are to a sad degree, inattentive to those duties which stand in immediate connexion with the profession they have made, and the infant baptism which they practice, The neglect of these duties has furnished the most plausible objection to infant baptism. The true principle upon which it rests, in the scripture scheme, i. e. the absolute promise of God respecting a seed, and their consequent membership in his kingdom, has been perhaps of late but little understood, and but partially received. Hence little more attention has been paid to these children than to the children of the uncovenanted world, They have been baptized, and then forgotten. Their baptism has not been understood to signify the same thing with respect to them, which it is supposed to signify with respect to adults when they are subjects of it; and they have of course been received into the church, as though they had no sort of previous connexion with it. The matter has lain in a good deal of darkness and uncertainty. Parents have done little; ministers have done little; and churches, as it were nothing, coinciding with the principle of their membership. Perhaps this is a primary reason why religion is in so low a state, and the church seems so much forsaken. Thus we proceed through forms and lax habits, and the institutions of God loose their meaning, and importance. If things are so, our churches are in a state of melancho ly departure from the spirit, and the strict practice of christianity, on this head. It is infinitely important that they be acquainted with the truth, and that they be awakened to realizing views of their duty. It is important that a reformation be wrought. Ministers must take the lead. Churches must say, as the pious fathers of Israel said to Ezra : Arise, for this matter belongeth unto thee, we also will be with thee; be of good courage, and do it." Christian parents must embrace just views of the covenant, with respect to

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their infant offspring, and go laboriously into the duties which it enjoins upon them. The author of this work has perhaps little reason to calculate that his feeble performance will contribute to so desirable an event. But it is his hope, and his prayer that it may. And with a fervent wish to be instrumental of it, he will take the liberty to close his work with addresses to Par ents and Ministers, First, to christian Parents.

Beloved in the Lord, I am, in this address, to sup pose you renewed persons, sincere believers in the Lord Jesus Christ. This being your happy state, the preceding theory will perfectly meet your feelings, as fathers and mothers. You will be led to admire the infinity of that grace, which has not only provided for your salvation, and indeed secured it by an inviolable promise; but has given you leave to entertain higher hopes, of the salvation of your children, and your chil dren's children, than others are permited to form res pecting theirs. You will be grateful, that you are warranted to hope, that the blessing bequeathed to you in the covenant, will be transmitted to distant generations in your posterity. You will be constrained to say, with the grateful king of Israel. "Who am I, O Lord God, and what is my house, that thou hast brought me hitherto? And this was yet a small thing, O Lord God; but thou hast spoken of thy servant's house, for a great while to come; aud, Is this the manner of man, O Lord God?" Delightful must be the prospect of standing before your heavenly Father, at last, with a train of re deemed decendants, with this language upon your lips, “Behold, here am I, and the children which God hath graciously given me," Surely you will take the cov. enant to your bosom as an inestimable treasure.→→ You will not suffer it to be wrested from you, by any false and imposing constructions. You will not suffer yourselves to be deprived of the blessings it entails, by counter assertions, however bold or assuming. You will appreciate these blessings, as more precious, by far, than all the gold of Ophir. But you will perceive, that, as the covenant does not secure the salvation of all

the offspring of the people of God indiscriminately, the promises of it do not warrant such a confidence, as shall permit you to be prayerless and inactive. They are so dispensed as to be a most powerful guard against despondency on the one hand; and presumption on the other; either of which would be calculated to enfeeble your efforts. The seminal decent of the blessing, as a general principle, is the ground of your trust. How far it will extend you are left uninformed. You are assured, that it stands in connexion with faith in yourselves, with prayer, with exertion, with the punctual observance of the ordinances, and that train of means which the covenant has provided. Your children are brought into the kingdom of Christ, as correlates with you. They have had baptism administred to them as a seal of the covenant, and a testimony to their membership. By publicly devoting them to God in this holy ordinance, you have vowed to him, and pledged yourselves to your Christian brethren, that you would be faithful in training them up in the ways of strict religion. Here then are presented very serious questions with respect to your past fidelity; and the most pow erful motives to secure your faithfulness for the time to come. What does a recollection of the past testify? Have your views, your feelings, and your treatment of your children, comported with the relative state into which they are brought? Have you considered well, and deeply realized, the worth of their souls? Have you laid to heart what Christ, our older brother, hath done and suffered for their salvation; and been duly solicitous that his work aud sufferings should be savingly applied to them? Have you made diligent use of believing prayer? Have you taken hold of the covenant by faith, and gone to God, from day to day, pleading the promises of it? Have you surrendered your children into his hands? Have you tenderly cherished them as his children, and watched for their souls as those who must give account? Have you labored to instil into their opening minds just apprehensions of God, of their fallen state, and of the way of salvation

through Jesus Christ? Have you set before them a holy example; put them in the way of the best means; and carefully secured them, to the utmost of your power, from error, irreligion, and vice? So far as conscience charges you with neglects, in regard to attention, prayer, and practice; so far as it tells you, that unbelief has influenced you, or that the world has deadened your feelings, be penitently humbled before God, for your disregard of covenant engagements, confess your guilt at his feet, and repair to his mercy in Jesus Christ for forgiveness. The good man, as fast as he is convinced of his backslidings, will have them healed. He will turn his feet from the pit towards which he verged, and make haste to keep God's statutes. Suffer yourselves then, beloved brethren, to be excited to renewed zeal. Awake to righteousness and sin not. The night is far spent. The day is at hand. The moments are fleeting. The last particle of sand in your glass will soon fall. And the lives of your children are extremely uncertain. You and they must soon, and may within a short space indeed, be separated by death. When this separation shall take place, opportunity will be forever past. If you shall be found to have been wickedly neglectful of duty in respect to them, so the tree must lie, as it has fallen. will be no reparation of the mighty mischief; no retrieving the unspeakable loss. On the other hand, if you act in character; if you are alive in the service of him to whom you have sworne to be obedient; if death shall find you diligently employed; if you can hear, when your account shall be given up, the soothing voice of an approving God; how rich will be your reward? If you can look on your children, as recipients of the blessing through the instrumentality of your labors, how cheerfully, and peacefully, will you leave them, or lay them in the dust, should they be called to die before you? How comforting the hope of seeing them again at the resurrection of the just ? And what undescribable transports of joy will spring up in your hearts, upon meeting them at the right hand of

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Christ, and entering in with them through the gates in to the city? You have had an imperfect account set before you of the encouragements which the covenant gives to fidelity. You would be obliged were there none; and now that they are so many, and so great, will you refuse to be moved? Your children are brought into a dangerous world. Many snares are laid for their feet. They have enemies within, and enemies without, They are cast upon you by the parent of the universe, as their proper guardians and guides. You have a more easy and influential access to them, than any other of the servants of God can possibly have. They seem to be placed in your hands to be moulded, and formed at pleasure, Shall these talents, which are peculiar to yourselves, be buried in the dust? Will you not avail yourselves of opportunity, and means, as far as you enjoy them? How much is said in the laws of the government; how much do we find in the writings of the wise; how much do we hear from the tribunals of justice; and how much are we instructed by the events of every day, in the lesson, of the importance of training up children in a suitable manner? Religion is certainly the soul of education. He who is left ignorant of this, is left fatally ignorant. External accomplishments without a sanctified heart, are but the nutriment of pride, and do but prepare for a more awful destruction. Remember, my brethren, that the command of God is upon you, His direction to you is," And these words which I command thee this day, shall be in thine heart, and thou shalt teach them diligently unto thy children, and shalt talk of them when thou sittest in thine house, and when thou walkest by the way, and when thou liest down and when thou risest up. Bring up your children in the nurture and admonition of the Lord.-Feed (says the Savior) my lambs," Will you disregard these express commands of your covenant God? You must not, You have sworn to him, and must be faithful. You have openly separated yourselves from the world to be followers of the holy Jesus. You must

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