There is one Baptifm. They who are not rightly baptized, are, doubtless, not bap tized at all. EPHES. iv. TERTULLIAN. THEOPHYLACT. No unbaptized perfon communicans at the Lord's Table. Boston: PRINTED BY MANNING AND LORING, PREFACE. T was not a fondness for controverfy, but a defire to vindicate the honour of Chrift, as lawgiver in his own kingdom; to affert the fcriptural importance of a pofitive inflitution in the houfe of God; and to ex culpate himself, together with a great majority of his brethren of the Baptift perfuafion, from charges of an odious kind, that excited the author to compofe and publifh the following pages. If these designs be answered, the writer obtains his end; and if not, he has the teftimony of his own confcience to the uprightness of his intentions. As we are exprefsly commanded to " contend earnestly for the Faith once delivered to the faints;" it can hardly be questioned, whether a fincere concern for the purity and permanence of our Lord's appointments in the gofpel church, be not an indifpenfable duty. indifpenfable duty. For they are no lefs the expreffions of his dominion over us, than of his love to us; no less intended as means of his own glory, than of our happiness. The fubject, therefore, that is here prefented to the reader's notice, though not of the greatest, yet is far from being of little importance in the Chriftian religion. It is entirely on the defenfive that the author takes up his pen; for had not the principles and practice of thofe profeffors who are invidiously called, Strict Baptifts, been feverely cenfured, by many that maintain, and by fome who deny, the divine authority of Infant Baptifm, thefe pages would never have feen the light. |