PUBLISHED BY A LAY MEMBER OF THE PROTESTANT EPISCOPAL CHURCH. PHILADELPHIA: SMITH & ENGLISH, 36 NORTH SIXTH ST. ANSON D. F. RANDOLPH, 683 BROADWAY. 1856. AUTHOR'S PREFACE TO THE AMERICAN EDITION. Ir having been thought desirable to reprint the following work in America, the Author has availed himself of the opportunity of introducing some alterations and corrections which he trusts will render it more generally useful. Such a revision, however, as he could have wished to bestow upon it, was out of the question, partly, from want of leisure at the present moment, and partly, because more than half of the work was in type before the intention of re-issuing it was communicated to him. He is sensible, therefore, that even now, the work labors under many imperfections, particularly a want of compression in some parts, and crudeness of statement in others, which, had more time been at his command, he might have hoped to remove, and as it is, he commends it to the candor of the Christian public. The principal alteration has been the omission of some observations, in the chapter on the sacraments, on infant baptism, or rather on the amount of direct Scripture evidence for the existence of pœdo-baptism in the first age of the Church; and of some others, on the place which circumcision held in the ancient economy, and its consequent relations to baptism under the new. On the latter point, the Author's opinions have undergone a change, and as regards the former, if he still thinks that certain passages have been unduly pressed to deliver a testimony in favor, not of the lawfulness, but, of the Apostolic institution, of infant baptism, he is sincerely desirous of avoiding discussions likely to lead to controversy among those who, in the main, agree with the principles set forth in the work. The conclusions therefore to be drawn from the normal case of Scripture, viz: adult baptism, are simply stated; and it is left to the reader, if he be a iii |