of their being the subject of prophecy? Such a reasoner will be the properest person to write a sequel to the Plea for Primitive Communion.

The author has been betrayed into these absurdities, by confounding together two things totally distinct a sincere belief in the truth of inspiration, with an explicit knowledge of its contents. The prophets were invested with credentials which entitled them to the profound submission of mankind; but to receive their predictions as the word of God, is one thing, and so to penetrate their scope and intention as to be in possession of precisely the same facts, and acquainted with the same truths, with those who lived to witness their accomplishment, is another. All good men equally possessing the former, had the same spirit of faith; while, with respect to the latter, the situation of the hearers of the prophets under the law, and of the apostolic converts under the gospel, was most dissimilar. It is certain, from the eulogiums bestowed upon John, that his attainments in religious knowledge surpassed the highest of those of his predecessors; yet we are informed from the same authority, that the least in the kingdom of heaven is greater than he. But in what is this superiority, so universally ascribed to christians, to be placed, except in an acquaintance with the facts attested after the day of Pentecost, and a knowledge of the mysteries with which they are inseparably allied? These, however, form the very core and substance of the apostolical testi

mony, the unshaken profession of which was the indispensable condition of baptism; and among the foremost and most fundamental of these are the vicarious death and resurrection of our Lord, which we are compelled by their own testimony to believe were most remote from the previous expectation and belief of the apostles. Christian baptism is the "answer of a good conscience towards God, by the resurrection of Jesus Christ."*

In order to demonstrate the equality of the requisitions of John with those of the apostles, this writer has attempted to exhibit them in opposite columns. These columns, however, are not very majestic, nor very uniform, including only three passages on one side, and four on the other. Two remarks may be amply sufficient to counteract the effect of a device which is addressed to the eyes rather than to the understanding. The first is, that the explicit testimony which the harbinger bore to the character of our Lord, after his baptism, is adduced without the slightest advertence to the distinction of times, as a proof of the manner in which he first announced his commission; but as his knowledge of the person of the Messiah, we learn from his own declaration, was subsequent to that event, his language must necessarily have been modified by that circumstance. The second is, that we have no more reason to suppose that his disciples comprehended the true import of his instructions, or that they

* 1 Peter iii. 21.

interpreted them aright, than that the immediate disciples of our Lord understood similar declarations of their Master; from whom, we are infallibly certain, the sublimest part of his teaching was hid, until it was elucidated by events. And what but a blind attachment to hypothesis can obviate the suspicion that the followers of John were in the same predicament, unless we are prepared to affirm, either that they were the apter scholars, or had the more skilful master? As this writer lately applied the ample volume of prophecy as a criterion to ascertain the minimum, or lowest measure of knowledge requisite to constitute a disciple of John, so he now, with equal propriety, puts together all the scattered sayings of that great prophet, for the same purpose. If this be admitted in the case of the forerunner, it can, with no consistency, be withheld in the instance of our Lord; and by measuring the actual attainments of the apostles by the extent of his instructions, we shall find them little less enlightened and intelligent after his resurrection, than they were before that event. The fact, however, is far otherwise.

It requires little penetration to perceive that the true method of ascertaining (as far as it is practicable) the essential qualifications of John's candidates, is, not so much to consult detached sentences recorded of his ministry, as the actual state of religious knowledge at that period, the known attainments of the apostles, and above all, the language he is affirmed to have uttered,

at the moment he was celebrating his peculiar rite.

Whatever ideas he himself might affix to the terms "Lamb of God," and "Son of God," which it may not be easy exactly to determine, we may be certain that his followers did not comprehend their true import, because the apostles themselves were, long after, ignorant of the principal fact, or doctrine, denoted by the first of these appellations; and, therefore, to introduce these passages, as this writer has done, with a design to insinuate that they conveyed to the mind precisely the same impression as at present, is to presume too much on the simplicity of the reader. He should have been aware, that few are so bereft of the power of recollection, as to be incapable of detecting such flimsy sophistry.

Aware that confidence is contagious, he uniformly abounds in that quality in exact proportion to the weakness of his proofs. Of this, the following passage exhibits an egregious example:-After surveying his columns with a

placency not unlike the restorer of Babylon, he triumphantly exclaims, "Even prejudice itself might be expected to acknowledge, that so far from any material variation between John and the apostles, in introducing their respective candidates to baptism, they made a near approach to a syllabic agreement.'

"

*Plea for Primitive Communion, p. 24.

To say nothing at present of the name of Jesus, a point we shall have occasion to discuss hereafter, did John require of his candidates a profession of their belief in Christ's death, resurrection, and ascension ? If he did, he was a superior teacher to his Master, and his disciples greater proficients than the apostles; a proposition which, however "boldly it may appeal to our faith," it is hard to digest. If, on the contrary, he acknowledges that a belief of these facts was not required by John as the condition of baptism, while it unquestionably was of the apostolic converts, what becomes of his syllabic agreement? and what temerity, not to say impiety, to represent these stupendous events, the death and resurrection of the Saviour, which involve the destinies of the human race, the incessant theme of the apostolic ministry, the basis of hope, the pillar, not the miserable columns of a page, but the column which props and supports a sinking universe, an affair of syllables, so that whether they are omitted or included, there exists a syllabic agree

ment!

Justly apprehensive of fatiguing the attention of the reader, the author cannot prevail on himself to dismiss this branch of the subject without bestowing a word more on the fallacious medium of proof employed in this instance by the writer of the Plea. Prophecy, he informs us, as "boldly appealed to faith" as history; from which the only legitimate inference is, that the disciple of reve