AN IMPARTIAL COLLECTION OF ALL PASSAGES in the Writers of the Four First Centuries, THE SECOND, CONTAINING SEVERAL THINGS TO ILLUSTRATE THE SAID HISTORY. TO WHICH IS ADDED, A DEFENCE OF The History of Infant Baptism, AGAINST THE REFLECTIONS OF MR. GALE AND OTHERS. Br W. WALL, VICAR OF SHOREHAM, IN KENT. THE FOURTH EDITION; WITH THE AUTHOR'S LAST CORRECTIONS. IN THREE VOLUMES. VOL. III. LONDON: PRINTED FOR F. C. AND J. RIVINGTON; J. NUNN; J. CUTHELL DEFENCE OF INFANT BAPTISM. WHEN, after I had for some years made it my business to observe in my reading, and to collect such passages in the ancient Christian writers as did any way relate to the baptizing of infants, I published them, with some Notes of my own upon them, in the year 1705, being then sixty years old: I little thought that the doing of that would bring me under a necessity of writing any more books, which is a fatigue unfit to be borne by one of my age. The History itself, or Collection of Quotations, could not, I thought, admit of any exceptions, provided I recited them true; which I was careful to do; and for my Notes upon them, or any thing that related to the defence of the cause itself of infant baptism, I thought, that if there arose any necessity of vindicating that, some younger and abler men would undertake it. The book having had more said and published, by some for, and by some against it, than I could have expected, these latter, who have wrote against it, and especially Mr. Gale's large book of Reflections (so he calls them he might have entitled them Reproaches) have made it needful (in the opinion of some worthy men, to whom I owe a deference) for me, even in this my weak and superannuated state, to write something in vindication, partly of the cause, and partly of myself, some people having, it seems, raised a report or suspicion, as if I myself had altered my opinion about the duty, or the ancient practice of baptizing infants. |