OF DELIBERATE FALSEHOOD.

123

intimation that it was Christ's institution that infants should be sprinkled, or but one promise that He would regenerate them thereby, how would his harassed con

science rejoice! But no. The Scriptures condemn it. God frowns upon it, and conscience falls in with the testimony of God, and writhes beneath the feelings of His displeasure.

66

'Who can describe the weight and burden of the baptismal service to a tender conscience, or what a child of God feels when he is thus compelled to mock Him to His face whom he desires to fear?

"I shall take the liberty, then, of calling the ceremony which I have just described, lie the first. “The child, having thus in its long clothes made a beginning in hypocrisy and falsehood, must be trained up, as soon as reason dawns, in the same course. It is sent to a daily, or Sunday school in connection with the Establishment, and is there taught the Catechism And now comes lie the second. Who gave you this name?" Ans. "My godfathers and godmothers in my baptism, wherein I was made a member of Christ, the child of God, and an inheritor of the kingdom of heaven." What an awful profanation is this of those holy and blessed titles which the everliving God confers on his elect alone, that every ignorant child should be thus taught to call them his own! God's own dear family, whom He has taught to fear His great name, dare not say that they are his children, members of Christ, and heirs of heaven for perhaps many, many years after they have been called by grace, and not until, after many groanings and bitter cries, Christ is revealed in them by the mighty power of God. But these ignorant little children learn from their Sunday-school teachers to claim these blessed titles as mechanically as they learn

124

MORE MODERATE OPPONENTS

their A, B, C; and are taught to repeat "Our Father," when a living soul cannot, and dare not call God 'Father," nntil he has received the Spirit of adoption, and felt the love of God shed abroad in his heart."

66

I do not in the least complain of this language; on many accounts I prefer it to that which I extracted a short time ago, from a sermon of Dr. Pye Smith. As a matter of taste, I like the plain, simple, Saxon word, " lying," better than the long Latin, sentimental word, "excruciating", when both obviously mean the same thing. Again, Dr. Smith, as he has never used the service, cannot tell whether our consciences are excruciated by the use of it, or no. Mr. Philpot does know that it was used for many years by one person, who believed it to be a series of falsehoods. Again, Dr. Smith's words are not tangible; they are of that vague kind which inflict a very deep wound, without giving the assailed person the power of warding them off. Mr. Philpot's frank confession, that there are persons who have read this service, and his declared belief that we all of us do habitually read it with a consciousness of deceit and hypocrisy in our hearts, gives every clergyman an opportunity of saying that which one clergyman says now, (repeating what he has oftentimes spoken before, openly and in secret, with a full assurance that One heard the words, who, though he may reserve his most terrible judgment of utter exclusion from his own presence for a future state, will yet sometimes even here make those who commit any flagrant act of

LESS CONSISTENT WITH THEMSELVES. 125

sin a spectacle and a warning to all around them,) that he desires, should he ever be tempted to the horrible crime of uttering a word at the solemn season of baptism, which he does not believe, or doing an act to which he does not attach a meaning, the tongue may be for ever silent which utters the blasphemy,—the hand may be withered which commits the sacrilege. Fourthly, Dr. Smith's words seem intended to suggest an excuse for us of this day, that we, never having considered the matter, having been trained up to hear these phrases from our infancy, fancy we must submit to them painful as they are. But this excuse will not avail Taylor, Hammond, Barrow, Bull, for they were constantly brought into contact with persons who objected to our services, and must have considered them. It will not avail Hooker, Herbert, Donne, for they were continually meditating upon each of these forms. It will not avail Davenant and Hall, for they mixed with the members of foreign churches, and to a great degree sympathized with them. It will not avail Usher, for he was in constant communication with English dissenters. It will not avail Leighton, for he was the son of a Puritan divine. Hence, every one of them must have been wilful and deliberate liars ;Mr. Philpot I am sure will not, Dr. Smith should not, refuse to bestow the name upon them. Lastly, Mr. Philpot's statements bring the question to the right issue. He perceives that it is just as inconsistent with sound Calvinistic doc

126 CONSEQUENCES OF LISTENING TO THEM.

trine to teach a child to say, "Our Father," as to teach it that it is a child of God, a member of Christ, and an heir of the kingdom of heaven. This is true, this is honest language; and it gives us an opportunity of saying a word to Christian fathers and Christian mothers, which no desire to defend ourselves from the most dreadful charge which can be brought against the ministers of God should have wrung from us, if we did not feel that it was called for by the wants and miseries of these times. We tell them then, plainly, that because they have not taught their children to say, "Our Father,”—because they have brought them to hear many long prayers, but have never led them to feel that they had a right to join in those prayers,-because they have inculcated it upon them, that they had something to do with Christ and that they must perish if they did not understand their relation to Him, yet have never told them that they had any relation to Him, because they have forced them to read. their Bibles, have told them at the same time that they could not understand their Bibles without the aid of the Holy Spirit, and have never told them that this Holy Spirit was given to them,—or if they have talked to them in a vague kind of way about God being their Father, yet have mixed these words with such contradictory statements respecting their outcast condition, as have led them to suppose that there is some other God than the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, that the word Father does not mean Father, that a

CHILDREN OF RELIGIOUS PARENTS. 127

man may have a Father, and yet not be a child,— in short have led them into such a maze of hopeless contradiction and perplexity,-have so disgusted them with the very name of Christianity,

have so confused them with telling them that their carnal hearts were fighting against the truth, when they knew in themselves that the better desires which strove after life, and holiness, and heaven, revolted against much which they heard, (and of course they could not distinguish which part was hateful to the flesh, and which to the Spirit);-therefore it has come to pass, that every esprit fort pounces upon the children of religious families as his most sure victims; that the ranks of political infidelity are recruited from these families; that from these proceed the most uncompromising servants of evil, because they feel like Julian, (as falsely indeed as he did,) that they have known, read, and condemned,-that they carry out into reckless, practical immorality, the principles which, in others less instructed, may sometimes consist with kindliness of nature and even purity of life. Are these things so? If they are, is it wonderful, should that be true which we affirm, that these religious parents have despised and forgotten the covenant of their God?

But the question, after all, is not, Are other men doing the very things which they hold us up to scorn? but, Have we a right to adopt that language which is used in our formularies, in that sense in which I have endeavoured to shew you that it was understood by the fathers and