TWO of Dr. Miller's reasons in favour of a mixed church--a church composed of professors and non-professors--of regenerate and unregenerate persons--of voluntary and involuntary members, have been considered and shown to be naked assumptions, without any show of scriptural evidence or authority. We shall now examine his other reasons for infant church membership.

      His third reason is--"The actual and acknowledged church membership of infants under the Old Testament economy, is a decisive index of the Divine will in regard to this matter." Now, on his own showing, the non actual and unacknowledged church membership of infants under the Old Testament economy, would be a decisive index of the Divine will in regard to this matter. Dividing, then, the Old Testament economy into four thousand years from Adam to Christ, we have two periods of a very different character. There is a period of 2100 years from Adam to the covenant of circumcision, during which time there was not an indication of infant church membership by any kind of right, title, or visible recognition whatever. There was, indeed, a period of about 1490 years, in which there was a national institution--in which was recognised a male infant membership, and other hereditary honours. The mitre, sceptre, and the tribeship honours were alike hereditary in this "Jewish national church state." By what new species of logic and theology he makes an Old Testament church of four thousand years standing a model of a Christian church we know not, especially as more than half that time there was no infant membership whatever; and during the remainder of it, only a male infant right in a national institution. But why argue for one portion of its male hereditary rights, and oppose another part of it? Why contend for male infant membership, and not for male infant rights to the priesthood and the throne? Why make the Old Testament national institution a reason for infant church membership, and not also for church rulers, priests, and kings? Did not this Old Testament church birthright make of certain males, according to tribes and families, priests and kings, as well as citizens? [326] And did it not equally exclude females from them all? If there be reason, or truth, or propriety in his assumptions, Professor Miller ought to have his sons fill his chair theological and his pulpit ministerial, in virtue of his own flesh; and also exclude his infant daughters from membership in the church, because, girls, under Moses, had no national birthrights to sealing ordinances! What an unenviable intellectual discrimination do these veteran defenders of Papal traditions evince in the defence of infant church membership!

      But our learned professor affords many other such instances of his own peculiar logic. In the very same chapter, in proof that circumcision sealed to infants spiritual blessings, he alleges that "circumcision is expressly declared, by the inspired Apostle, to have been a seal of the righteousness of faith." Rom. iv. 11. Our logical text-books do not afford a more complete illustration of the "fallacia accidentas," or of the error of affirming a general or a universal truth from an accidental or particular case, than does our zealous Pedobaptist present to the literary world in his quotation of Rom. iv. 11. Paul, in this place, says of Abraham that "he received the sign of circumcision, a seal of the righteousness of the faith which he had before he was circumcised." From which singular and remarkable case, Dr. Miller infers that circumcision was the seal of the righteousness of faith to infants that have no faith! If he does not argue this, I ask what does he argue?--! Can an infant, male or female, have a righteousness of faith, without having faith?--! Must not a human being have faith before he can have its righteousness? I would ask, Was circumcision to Ishmael, or to the babe Isaac, what it was to Abraham, who had believed God many years before either of them was born? But Paul calls circumcision the sign and a seal--not the seal. It was to all the circumcised infants a sign in their flesh that they were of the blood of Abraham; but not to any one of them a sign of any faith, or righteousness of faith--for they had neither on the eighth day. Were we allowed to suspicion a design to mislead, Dr. Miller affords ample means, of making out a very strong case from the liberty which he here takes with the sacred text. He entirely changes the meaning of the passage as read in the common New Testament and in the original, by leaving out the definite article before faith, and again by lopping off an entire member of the sentence defining the word faith in Paul's use [327] of it here. This will appear to all by quoting Paul's own words, and placing them in contrast with the words that Dr. Miller puts into Paul's mouth. Paul's words are--"He received the sign of circumcision, a seal of the righteousness of the faith which he had being yet uncircumcised." But Dr. Miller makes Paul say, "He received the sign of circumcision, a seal of the righteousness of faith." The doctor makes circumcision in all cases a seal of the righteousness of faith; while Paul makes it only a seal of the righteousness of that faith possessed long before the date of the covenant of circumcision. Now I will not, in charity, call this a wilful handling of the word of God deceitfully; but will rather say it is a proof of the perversity of prejudice; or of the blindness sometimes accompanying long cherished errors.

      But what makes this sophism still more unpardonable is the fact, that Paul, in commenting on the case, alleges that it was designed for a very special purpose; viz. to indicate that in the gospel age Gentiles without circumcision should equally enjoy with the circumcised all the blessings of the Christian institution; and, therefore, his having the righteousness of faith before circumcision, constitutes him the "father of all them that believe, though they be not circumcised;" and also, "the father of circumcision to them who are not of the circumcision only, but who also walk in the steps of that faith of our father Abraham which he had while uncircumcised." This explanation of a seal of the righteousness of the faith of Abraham, possessed twenty-four years before he was circumcised, leaves not the shadow of an excuse for any man of letters making that use of it probably adopted, rather than fabricated, by Professor Miller.

      His fourth reason for infant membership is no better than his third. It is, indeed, less excusable, because it adds to its logical infirmities a gratuitous assertion concerning a concession which it cannot prove. It reads thus:--"As the infant seed of the people of God are acknowledged, on all hands, to have been members of the church equally with their parents, under the Old Testament dispensation, so it is equally certain that the Church of God is the same in substance now that it was then." They are not "acknowledged on all hands to, have been members of any church" for two, thousand one hundred years; and not members of a Church of God, unless a nation be a church; and not then, unless male infants mean "the infant seed of the [328] people of God." Now, as these are not certain--nay, not true--from his own words, this argument is a logical fallacy. His words are, "It is equally certain that the church of God is the same in substance now as then." That is--It is equally certain as that which is wholly uncertain--nay, contrary to the most express testimony.

      The evidence that the Jewish nation and the Christian church are not identically one and the same in substance, spirit, or form, is, to an unprejudiced mind, most copious, clear, and irrefragable. I will give a few proofs of it by stating a few facts:--

      1. The house that Moses built and the house that Christ built are spoken of as two, and not as one and the same. Paul to the Hebrews, chap. iii., "Moses was faithful as a testimony of things to be spoken" in the gospel age--faithful in God's house; but "Christ as a son over his own house, whose house we (Christians) are." Now, as Moses was born before he built God's house, so the Messiah was born before he built his own house: They are, then, two houses, and not one and the same.

      2. God promised, by Isaiah, chap. xxviii. 16, that he would build a new house, or church, and himself lay the foundation of it. "Behold, I lay in Zion, for a foundation stone, a tried stone, a precious corner stone, a sure foundation." Of course, Moses had not laid even the foundation of the New Institution, or Christian temple.

      3. Daniel, chap. vii., also declares that, in the days of the Roman Cæsars, "the God of heaven would set up a kingdom," which would survive "all the kingdoms of the world, and stand for ever." Surely, that was not the Jewish church. It had been set up long before.

      4. Dr. Miller will have the Jewish covenant and the Christian covenant the same; whereas, God promised a new covenant, and also told the Jews by Ezekiel, chap. xvi. 61, that he would make a new covenant, and add, to a portion of the Jews, the Gentiles, and form a new community; but, says he, "Not by thy covenant;" yet Dr. Miller affirms by one "and the same precious covenant." He makes Jesus Christ the head of the Jewish church; for, with him, the Jewish nation and the Christian church are identical throughout. "The same head, the same precious covenant, the same great spiritual design, the same atoning blood, the same sanctifying Spirit." Such are his dogmata; and his illustration is, "It is not more certain that a man [329] arrived at mature age is the same individual that he was when an infant in his mother's lap, than it is that the church, in the plenitude of her light and privileges, after the coming of Christ, is the same church which, many centuries before, though with a much smaller amount of light and privilege; yet, as we are expressly told in the New Testament, (Acts vii. 28,) enjoyed the presence and guidance of his Divine Head in the wilderness." P. 19. The illustration is much better than the proof. It is certain that the infant and the full-grown man are identically the same person; for, of this, consciousness is the highest proof. But has the Christian church this consciousness? Nay; Dr. Miller gives that up;, and proves his allegata by simply affirming here; that the Christian church is identically the Jewish church, full-grown; because the Jewish church enjoyed, according to Stephen, "the presence and guidance of her Divine Head." Suppose it should be said, for illustration of this splendid logic, that George Washington was both the head of the American army and afterwards the head of the American nation--that, therefore, the American army and the American nation were identically one and the same institution or body corporate; what would our political doctors say? Yet, just such a logician is this venerable theological professor of Princeton.

      To illustrate or argue the identity, the doctor proceeds into the Galatians, and brings up the fourth chapter to sustain his notion of identity. Because an heir, when a minor, is under a master as much as a servant, therefore the Jewish community and the Christian community are identically one church. Now, the Apostle's own argument in that chapter most expressly compares the Jewish covenant and people to Hagar and Ishmael, and the Christian covenant and people to Sarah and Isaac--saying, that the two women represent two covenants, or constitutions, and that the two sons represent two distinct communities--the Jews and the Christians. The difference between the Jewish community and the Christian institution was never more circumstantially drawn by the Apostle Paul, or any one else, than in this graphic allegory. Here is the slave Hagar and her bond-son, and here is the free Sarah and her free-born son. Here are the Jews, born after the flesh, and the Christians, after the Spirit. The Jewish institution, in the birth of its members, differed nothing from England or the United [330] States--the door into both was flesh, blood, or natural birth; but, into Christ's church none can enter, unless, like Isaac, they are supernaturally born, or born after the Spirit. So the Apostle argues: "Cast out the bond-woman Hagar and her son Ishmael--both the old covenant and those born under it; for the son of the bondwoman shall not inherit with the son of the free woman." Dr. Miller says they are identically the same, and do inherit the same relation. But Paul differs from the doctor; averring, "So we, brethren, are not children of the bondwoman"--of the Jewish covenant; for these two women represent the two covenants; but we Christians are "children of the freewoman," or new covenant.

      It will not help the doctor, to assume that the dispensations are two and the covenants one, since Paul makes two covenants. Indeed, this whole hypothesis of two dispensations of one covenant, is but dust and ashes thrown by the theological doctors into the eyes of their too credulous devotees. Two dispensations of religion change membership and privileges just as much as two covenants. A covenant is a dispensation. There is, therefore, just as much sound sense as sound theology in speaking of two dispensations of one dispensation, as in speaking of two dispensations of one covenant. It is learned nonsense. A modest theologian would, methinks, be satisfied with the fact that the Saviour preached a new birth as essential to admission into the Christian church or reign of Heaven. The Jews were born of flesh, of blood, and of the will of man; but not of God. But the Messiah, who came to set up a new kingdom, preached a new doctrine, and gave, only to those who received him, the power or privilege to become the children of God. And this, we are expressly told, cut off all the sons of the flesh: for, only "to those who received him, who were born not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God, gave he privilege to become the children of God," or members of his church. Hence, to Nicodemus, he affirmed, "Except a man, be born again he cannot enter into the kingdom of God."

      But our learned Dr. Miller is full of proof-texts. That the Jewish church and the Christian are identically one and the same institution he alleges from the dislocated joint of an argument, Heb. iv. 2, "For unto us was the gospel as well as unto them:" that is, in the doctor's vision, to saying, the same gospel was preached unto the [331] Jews that has been preached to us. Suppose that were the fact; would that make us Jews, or them Christians?! It certainly, on the doctor's showing, has as much power to make Gentiles Jews as Jews Christians! But few men, in this our day of learned criticism, would have the courage to make such a quotation: for all the learning of the age is on the side of reading the passage, "For glad tidings of a rest to come are preached to us Christians, as were glad tidings of a rest (in Canaan) preached to them;" but the good tidings of a rest in Canaan preached to them did not profit them, (since but two men of the whole nation entered into that rest,) because of not believing the glad tidings concerning it announced to them. So evident is this the contextual import of the passage, that children in our Sunday-schools, equally with the most learned of our critics, so understand it. Surely, Dr. Miller has survived his generation!

      This can only be excelled by Dr. Miller himself. The Jewish church ate the manna and drank the mystic rock, and are a gospel church because, says the doctor, they are builded on the same foundation--the Apostles and Prophets. Moses alone founded the Jewish church. It is only at this Princeton Observatory, through some new ecclesiastic telescope, that the Prophets and Apostles were seen along with Moses when he founded the church of Christ in the wilderness of Sin!!

      But, finally, the doctor completes his climax by the parable of the Good Olive Tree, Rom. xi. The case is this: Jeremiah (chap. xvi.) in allusion to the past history of the nation, says, "The Lord called thy name a green olive-tree, fair and of goodly fruit." Paul to the Romans applies this figure, and reminds some Gentile brethren, compared to the branches of a wild olive, that they had been grafted into the good olive-tree and made to partake of its root and fatness. Some of the natural branches of this olive-tree had been broken off, and they were grafted in their place.

      That we may not pervert or misapply this allegory, it is important to keep the facts on which it is founded clearly before our minds. Of these, the following are chief:--

      1. "To the Jews pertained the adoption, and the glory, and the covenants, and the giving of the law, and the service of God, and the promises, whose are the fathers, and of whom, as to the flesh, Christ came." But Christ's church is not found in the inventory [332] of their peculiar rights, honors, and privileges. They had the adoption and the Shekinah. They were the only people that God acknowledged nationally, and among whom he pitched his tent and held his abode. The covenants guarantying blessings to the human race, and of making them nationally according to the flesh a peculiar people, were in their hands. To them the law of circumcision was given. The typical worship of the only living and true God was theirs. The promises spiritual and eternal were given to them for the benefit of the human race. This, indeed, was a chief blessing; for Paul admits their chief advantage to have been, that "to them were committed the oracles of God." The three great fathers, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, in whom God promised to bless all the families of the earth, were their natural progenitors. Hence the Messiah himself was the natural son of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, with some fifty-two other progenitors: for, according to Luke, Jesus was the fifty-sixth person in descent from Abraham. But it is nowhere said that to them pertained the church or believing family of the only living and true God. This is assumed by all those who make the Jewish nation and the Christian church identical. There was a people of God before Abraham, and after Abraham they did not derive their blood from him. Abraham, that he might be a great father, was made the father of two races of men--a natural and a spiritual progeny. The history of Sarah and Hagar and their two sons stereotypes this for ever. Now for almost two thousand years these two races were chiefly found in one nation. This was the good Olive Tree. Especially was it good while the whole nation, as such, kept pure the only true worship of one only living and true God. But, be it emphatically said, that this was predicted to continue so only till the Messiah should come. For the patriarch Jacob, when dying, said of Shiloh, the son of Judah, "To him shall the gathering of the people be." Many a type and prophecy indicate this. Hence, according to prophecy, "he came in the fulness of time" to his own nation, but "his own people received him not." "To as many, however, as received him" in his proper character, and to none else, "he gave the privilege of becoming the children of God, even to them that believe on his name; who were born not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God." Hence "if we be Christ's," and in no other way, "we are Abraham's seed and heirs according to the promise." [333]

      The worldly sanctuary and service are abolished, and the worldly race of Abraham are broken off from now being the peculiar people of God. A portion, however, of the natural seed of Abraham became his spiritual seed, and formed the nucleus of a new institution. To them, as Christ's church, the believing Gentiles are added. Thus the natural branches of God's ancient olive-tree are every one broken off; and none but spiritual branches, or believing men and women, are regarded as his peculiar people. Into this good olive-tree believing Gentiles are as admissible as believing Jews; for now "we are all the children of God by faith in Jesus Christ;" and "if any man be in Christ he is a new creature, old things are passed away, behold all things have become new."

      How Dr. Miller could mystify or overlook the three following declarations,--"Because of unbelief they were broken off"--"Thou standest by faith"--and, "If they abide not in unbelief, God will graft them in again"--can only be explained on the alleged all-predominating power of prejudice. Are not these declarations fatal to his assumption that all that are born of a certain kind of human flesh are, without faith, to be grafted into Christ's good olive-tree? To any such engrafted individual, who could say with Paul, "Thou standest by faith?" "Be not high-minded, but fear!"

      Dr. Miller's fifth argument is--"If infants were once members, and if the church remains the same, they undoubtedly are still members, unless some positive Divine enactment excluding them can be found." P. 21. But we have shown that infants never were members of any church less than a whole nation, or a church founded on blood. Therefore, his fifth argument is, in one of its branches, altogether baseless as a dream. In the other branch--"if the church remains the same"--it is equally without foundation. There never was a community on the earth founded upon faith till Jesus Christ came. This is the divine and glorious character of Christ's Church. All other communities, ancient or modern, are founded in blood or selfishness of some kind. But this alone is founded on faith--"If thou believest with all thy heart thou mayest." This is its essential and indispensable prerequisite. "That which is born of the flesh is flesh." Hence we must be born again in order to enter into Christ's kingdom.

      His sixth argument is to show that baptism came in the room of [334] circumcision. He, however, strange to tell, proves that it has not come in the room of it. He says that "circumcision publicly ratified admission or entrance into the visible family of God." P. 23. But circumcision was not the door into Abraham's family, or the family composed of the children of Abraham. Natural birth was the door, and not circumcision. Moreover, circumcision was confined to male children. It was also restricted to the eighth day after natural birth. In these particulars, as in many others, baptism is proved not designed to fill or occupy the room of circumcision. He seems to have forgotten that Jesus Christ was himself both circumcised and baptized--that the twelve Apostles were circumcised and baptized--that the whole Christian church, for seven years after its birth on Pentecost, in its myriads of converts, all Jews, was entirely composed of persons both circumcised and baptized--myriads of the Jews believed and were baptized! Two seals, blood and water, attached to one subject and to one covenant as doors into the church!

      Nay, farther, he asserts that circumcision was done away, and that baptism came in the room of it. But where is his proof? Circumcision was not, in any recorded case, dispensed with. The believing Jews, down to the end of the New Testament history, circumcised their children. Paul publicly declared, by an overt act, that he had not commanded them to desist from circumcising their children. It is, then, perfectly gratuitous to affirm that circumcision has been done away by any divine statute; and, consequently, that baptism has come in the room of it.

      Dr. Miller's seventh argument for infant baptism is household baptism, already noted. Bishop Kenrick gives that up, as wholly inconclusive, and so must every enlightened man of candour. There is no case of family baptism indicating infant baptism. On the contrary, we have shown that there is internal evidence that there was no case of infant baptism in any one of them. But suppose there was no ambiguity on the subject of infant baptism, that it was a matter clearly established; even then it could not be proved that in the three or four families reported there was an infant in them. In the first place, it is not named. Hence it is inferential. There is no circumstance at all indicating or even implying it. Then it rests upon mere possibility, not upon the least probability; for [335] there are amongst us many families or households and not an infant in them. Therefore, nothing remains but bare possibility; and he that builds a Christian institution upon a mere possibility, is not to be reasoned against; for there is no sound reason in him.

      His eighth reason is, that "had the sign of infant membership been suddenly withdrawn, there would have been wounds and murmurings, and feelings of deep revolt and complaint against the new economy." Had they, indeed, had as carnal and secular views as Dr. Miller seems to have of Christianity and Christian baptism, there would have been a fearful tumult and uproar among the people. But when we remember that faith and repentance, from the days of the Harbinger, were preached as essentially prerequisite to baptism, and that John refused to baptize some who demanded it on the ground of having Abraham, or some saint, for their father, we only wonder that any one well read in the New Testament could have ever found such an objection. And still more especially, after reading the Acts of Apostles, in which faith is so often connected indissolubly with baptism. When Jesus said, "He that believeth and is baptized shall be saved," who can rationally expect to find his followers and his Apostles teaching by their practice--he that is baptized without faith shall be saved?

      His ninth argument is, "The New Testament abounds with passages which cannot reasonably be explained but in harmony with this doctrine."

      Among his specifications, the following are deserving of notice: The first is a prediction of Isaiah, intimating that a time would come in which the wolf and the lamb would feed together--in which God would create new heavens and a new earth--increase the age and comforts of his people and bless their offspring. He next relies upon the words of the Saviour to those who were inhibiting parents from bringing their children to the Lord for the imposition of his hands and a benediction. The next is Peter's assurance to the Jews that the promise of the Holy Spirit was tendered to the believing Jews and their descendants or children. And then the argument of Paul to those who would have some believing wives or husbands to separate from their unbelieving partners. To the last of these only need we now advert, as the others have been already examined in our last Review. Indeed, the promise quoted from Isaiah for the sake of the [336] phrase, "and their offspring with them," and that from Acts ii., "The promise is to you and your children," are but a puerile play upon the words children and offspring, as if offspring and children were identical with speechless babes. These terms generally mean our descendants. We are at eighty years the children of our fathers--just as much their offspring at eighty years as eight days. These are so palpably a begging of the question, that it would be only an idle parade of words to expose them.

      But the sentence, 1 Cor. vii. 14, calls for a special notice, as we have formerly adduced it as a conclusive argument against the slightest probability of infant baptism as either taught or thought of in the apostolic age. It stands before the public unresponded to in my discussion with Mr. Rice. The words are--"The unbelieving husband is sanctified by" (or to) "the wife; and the unbelieving wife is sanctified by" (or to) "the husband; else were your children unclean; but now are they holy." Booth, in his "Pedobaptism Examined," adduces more than twenty of our most distinguished critics, reformers, and commentators; among whom are Melancthon, Whitby, Camerarius, Wolfius, Vitringa, &., in proof that the holiness or sanctification of the unbelieving party and their children here is not that of the new covenant nor of church relation; but as bread is "sanctified by the word of God and prayer," so is this relation sanctified as respects matrimonial intimacies. The marriage relation and those growing out of it are not to be dissolved, but are lawful and proper, though one of the parties should not be converted to God with the other. For, were it otherwise, your offspring would be unclean and not to be endured; but now are they holy or sanctified to you. Two things must appear obvious, as we conceive, from this passage:--First, That the unbelieving parent and the child were in the same sense sanctified or holy to the other party; and, in the second place, that, as the Apostle changes the address from the third person to the second, he includes all the infants born to the church in Corinth. "Your," not their "children," said the Apostle, are not to be judged unclean and to be repudiated: but to be regarded as worthy of your care, protection, and support.

      Now had infant baptism been ordained in the primitive church, all infants would have been alike consecrated by it, and the Apostle could not have said, "Else were your children unclean;" [337] for that could not have been supposed had they been baptized. Thus it is manifest, from this passage alone, that infant church membership and infant baptism were alike unknown and unthought of in the age of the Apostles.

      But to make infant holiness a passport to baptism is not only unsupported but unsupportable by any plausible proof deduced from the New Testament. Infant holiness, in a covenant sense, a prerequisite to baptism, is certainly, so far as the oracles of Christ and his Apostles are regarded, a new idea. What a strange argument Dr. Miller puts into the mouth of Peter! Dr. Luke makes him say, "Be baptized every one of you for the remission of sins." Doctor Ananias says to Paul, "Arise and be baptized, and wash away your sins." But Dr. Miller says, "Arise and be baptized, you innocent babes, and wash yourselves, because you are relatively holy, and are actually born members of the church."¹

      Dr. Miller's tenth and last argument for infant baptism is, "Finally, the history of the Christian church from the apostolic age furnishes an argument of irresistible force in favour of the Divine authority of infant baptism."

      Of this argument we cannot say much. We have, already noticed it in our last essay, and shown that there is no historic evidence of infant baptism till the third century. When first named, too, it was opposed as an innovation. And what is no little remarkable, infant communion at the Lord's table is as well authenticated from the annals of the church of the same century as it is. Nay, more, the monastic life, or perpetual celibacy, constitutes another of its coevals, and virginity becomes as efficacious to gain heaven and glory as faith in Christ or his resurrection from the dead. Infant baptism, infant communion, perpetual virginity, are of the same origin and of the same century, as we may hereafter show, and I hope to the conviction of some who have long been imposed on by the alleged high antiquity of infant church membership and infant baptism. We have not yet bid adieu to Dr. Miller of Princeton, We only bid him good-bye, in hope of listening to him on some other branch of the subject. [338]

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