causing to be regarded as mysterious, two operations, in neither of which there was any mystery, -to be regarded as having a connexion with each other-and that connexion fraught with mystery-two objects, between which no such connexion, nor any connexion at all, had been established by Jesus.

(2). [1. Baptism].-This operation was a ceremony: a ceremony, having for its object the serving to establish, and upon occasion bring to mind, the fact of a man's having been aggregated into the society formed by Jesus: the religious society, of which-God or man, or both in one, he was the teacher and the head.

In an unlettered community it was a sort of substitute for an entry in a register or memorandum book. By a too natural misconception, the mere sign or evidence of this aggregation was taken for the efficient cause of the benefits produced by it. Thereupon came questions, out of number, about the circumstances by which it should be accompanied:-1. whether the application of the water should be total or partial?2. if partial, what fingers should be employed in it?-3. and what the form should be that should be given to the wet mark made by it? &c. &c.*

* In the Russian Empire, by differences on this ground, persecutions and disastrous civil wars have been kindled. By the sect, which, in the sixteenth century, under the name of Anabaptists, to the determination of performing the humectation in the total way, as it was performed by Jesus, added other particulars, some of which were not only absurd but deplorably mischievous-peculiarities not regarding ceremony but morals-prodigious were the miseries inflicted and suffered.

the principle of nullity-that inexhaustible source of uncertainty in all its excruciating shapes-that prime instrument of fraud and rapine-being borrowed from technical jurisprudence, and in the character of a necessary consequence, attached to every deviation from the arbitrarily imagined and endlessly diversified standard of rectitude, In the same spirit, had the literary, and more durable expedient of a Register-book been employed, questions might have been started— whether, for the validity of the appointment, the quill should be a goose-quill or a crow-quill; the paper, demy or foolscap; the binding, calf or sheep.

Christ ordain Baptism under the name and character of a Sacrament? If by ordain is meant the same as by institute-the same as the having been the first to practise, or cause to be practised,he did not so much as ordain it in the character of a ceremony. Practise it indeed he did, and afterwards cause it to be practised. But, before he practised it, or caused it to be practised by or upon any one else, he submitted to have it practised upon himself, after it had been practised already upon multitudes. By John it had already been practised upon multitudes, before it was practised by him upon Jesus.-Those who are forced to say this Catechism, why are they so much as suffered to read the New Testament? Can they read it without seeing this?

By whomsoever first invented and put in practice, in its character of a succedaneum to an entry in a Register-book, it was an operation in every respect well imagined. In the country in which it was thus practised, heat was plenty,

water scarce, writing and reading still scarcer, money not over plenty. Baptism,-whether by dipping, by sprinkling, or by both, was then and there a pleasant operation. Wherever either a river ran, or a lake stood, it cost nothing. John took no surplice fees. Jesus took no surplice fees. Whenever the existence of the Devil is fully proved, it will be proved that by that Ghost it was that these priests' fees were instituted, exactly at the same time with Judges' fees. Surplice fees are unknown in Scotland. By the Church of England only, not by the Church of Scotland, do the poor behold the gates of heaven shut against them.

Question 12.-What meanest thou by the word Sacrament?

Answer.-I mean an outward and visible sign of an inward and spiritual grace, given unto us, ordained by Christ himself, as a means whereby we receive the same, and a pledge to assure us thereof.

OBSERVATIONS.

Here, as already observed-here may be seen another example,-shewing how a semblance of something may be manufactured out of nothing. Two transactions-the performance of the ceremony of Baptism, and the utterance of a few words, stated as having been uttered by Jesus on the occasion of a supper at which he was present -two transactions,-which, unless it be the identity of the person who bore the principal part in both, had nothing at all in common,-forced into conjunction; and a generic appellationthe sacrament-made to serve, as it were, for a box, for inclosing them, and keeping them together.-Sacrament? by whom was this word in

vented and made? By Jesus?—no more than it was by Satan. When thús made, what is the meaning given to this Rome-sprung vocable? In the English, and other dialects of the Teutonic, it is rendered by holy: it is the holy thing. And a holy thing, what is it?-Holiness? the word holiness, what is meant by it? As a property belonging to the thing itself, be the thing what it may, just nothing. By a thing-by any thing whatsoever, of which, by the principle of association, the idea has happened to become connected with the idea of the Almighty Creator,—a connexion of which any one created thing is, and ever has been, just as capable as any other,-by any thing -by every thing to which any such accident has happened, is this mysterious property thus acquired.

Thus then-such has been the course taken by the manufacturing process-by the invention of this so much worse than useless generic term, a branch of false science-a portion of wayward school logic-has been manufactured. Being made to pass examination in this science, the unfledged parrot takes in the words that are forced into its mouth, and declares itself to understand, where there is nothing to be understood.

Under the name of " a grace," a something— and that something "good"-given unto usgiven to every body-given alike to every man, whatsoever be his conduct-given as a thing of course, by the mere ceremony: a pretended something, which, when examined by an unsophisticated eye, turns out to be in itself exactly nothing, and even by the name thus given to it,

is but a sign,-yet, by the description at this same time given of it, it is an efficient cause!

The Almighty laid hold of, and made to enter into a contract (under what penalty is not mentioned) pledging himself, binding himself, to give to this pretended efficient cause a pretendedly real effect! Thus it is that the sham science grows: thus it is that the wilderness is formed, in which the wits of those who are destined to travel in it, are destined to be lost.

Question 13th.-How many parts are there in a sacrament? Answer.-Two: the outward visible sign, and the inward spiritual grace,

OBSERVATIONS.

A compound made out of a real and visible ceremony, to which, by the force of imagination, is attached an invisible and unintelligible effect— such is the whole: and now comes the unfledged parrot, and with his tongue is required to split it into two parts.

Question 14th.-What is the outward visible sign, or form in Baptism?

Answer. Water (1); wherein the person is baptized (2) in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost (3).

OBSERVATIONS.

(1).—Water the sign? No:-of itself water is not the sign of the thing in question-i. e. the transaction here in question-or of any thing else. Of the transaction in question, viz. aggregation to the society in question, the sign was a physical operation: not water itself, but the application of that liquid to the body of the person