Since our Saviour has es d

ual favours as well as we? tablished the terms of his covenant so amply and mer-i cifully as to include them, and to testify his love and teng) der regard to them, and has bid us suffer them to be brought to him, who are we, that we should exclude them from the outward tokens of his favour, as if they! did not belong to him and to his kingdom!asy

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I wish some good man would be at the charge of an impression of a small picture, that might be given toe such as need instruction and satisfaction concerning thes will and purpose of our Saviour in this matter. The proverb is true, "That pictures have, with vulgar meny the use of books;" especially if they represent some uses ful history of the Gospel, such as this which I am g ing to recommend is, being recited by three evangelists, Matt. xviii. 5; Mark ix. 37; Luke ix. 48. Our Savis our holding a little child in his arms, and saying to his disciples, Whosoever shall receive this child [in Matthew and Mark it is, One such little child, or one of such children] in my name, receiveth me.

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If our Saviour be drawn in that posture, holding forth the child in his arms, and those words subscribed, Whosoever shall receive such a child in my name, re ceiveth me; and over against him be drawn two men standing by a font, both pretending to be ministers of Christ, and some people offering such a child to them, and one of them reaching out his arms to receive it, and the other thrusting it back, I would fain see what countenance the painter will give to that many who, seeing our Saviour look upon him, and hearing him say those words, does dare to reject it. oxid c

The ordinary meaning of the word receive, in the books of the New Testament, even when it stands alone, is well known to all readers of Scripture to be, to receive, or admit to a brotherhood or fellowship in Christianity; as (to name one place of forty) Rom. xv. 7, St. Paul commands those dissenters inopinions to receive one another.

But when Christ does moreover add here those words, In my name, it more plainly still imports that they

should be received to be as his members, his children, belonging to him, or, as I once before deduced the import of the like phrase, as 78 Xpurs OUTEç; 'being Christ's," or Christians.'

And the sanction here given to the command of such a receiving of them, is the highest that is ever given, even the same that is given to the command of receiving the apostles themselves; for, as it was said to them, He that receiveth you, receiveth me; and he that receiveth me, receiveth him that sent me; so the very same is said here of receiving children in his name.

The dispute is concerning a considerable part of Christ's flock; and it is Whether they shall be admitted into his fold or not? The infants of mankind, taken together with all such as are under the age at which the Antipædobaptists receive them, do make, I believe, a third part of the whole people.

Our blessed Saviour will certainly, at his coming, be much displeased (for he was so once upon Earth on a like occasion) either with us for receiving them, or else with them for rejecting them. It behoves us all, therefore, to mind what things displeased him here, and with such care and impartiality to study and learn his true will and meaning, and with such sincerity to follow it; and for our performance of both these things, so to implore his heavenly direction and assistance, That when he shall appear, we may have confidence, and not be ashamed before him at his coming. Amen.

POSTSCRIPT.

SOME of the Antipædobaptist writers do give us occasion to observe the great mischief to religion that comes by any one's forging words, and attributing them in print to any ancient father, -so great, that though the first forger should repent, and publicly recant what he has said, yet the mischief and ill consequence would continue, by ignorant men taking him at his first word, and commonly adding to it.

Justin Martyr is (a very few excepted) the eldest of the Christians whose books are left to us. He was born in the apostles' time, and wrote about forty years after it.

A testimony of his is more considerable than of five or six later ones. Any words of his, that should plainly and expressly determine either for or against infant baptism, would be a more material and decisive evidence than any that has as yet been produced from antiquity on either side. The greater must the impiety be of any writer in this controversy, who should forge such decisive words in his name.

Mr. Gale, writing his Reflections on a passage which a I had cited out of Justin's Apology (where he speaks of some circumstances used at the baptizing of adult cor verts) adds these words, in his pages 457, 458:

"St. Justin here mentions only adult persons; and elsewhere plainly excludes infants from being baptized in the church;" and says That Adult persons only can, or bught to be baptized. This, if true, is a very posi

tive evidence.

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Mr. Davye, having mentioned the same passage of Justin, and knowing nothing to the contrary, but that what Mr. Gale had farther attributed to him might be true, recites Mr. Gale's words as if they were from his own knowledge or reading); and adds to them another forgery of my confessing the thing to be so, in these words, in his page 54:

"St. Justin mentions only adult persons, and (elsewhere, as Mr. Wall himself confesses) excludes infants from being baptized, and in the church; and says That only adult persons can, or ought to be baptized."

If Mr. Gale can produce no such words of St. Justin (as I am confident he cannot) and Mr. Davye can produce no such confession of mine (as I am sure he cannot) they are both of them forgers of evidences; and it concerns not only the cause of religion and truth in general, but particularly the credit of the Antipædobaptists, that they be called to account, whether they can or not; and if they cannot, that they be disowned, otherwise they will be worse than the papists; for whereas some impostors formerly did, for the maintenance of Popery, forge Decretal Epistles, under the name of Bishops, as ancient as Justin Martyr, they were credited for some time ; but when the cheat came to be detected, all the honest. Papists did themselves join in condemning and exposing it; and they now disown, and are ashamed of the epistles.

I did, as I passed along, take notice of this foul dealing of both of them, at p. 155 and p. 373 of this De

fence; but I had a mind to give a memorandum of it here by itself, because the attempt being extraordinary, and the evidence for the antiquity of Antipædobaptism far more considerable, if it be a true one, than ever was heard of, it is pity but it should be brought to light, and into a fair view. I do not know whether Mr. Davye can find the place in Justin's Works; but Mr. Gale can, if it be there.