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YOUR defence of your seven Sermons, in a professed Review of my Letters to you, are just received. I have some hesitation respecting the propriety of making any public reply to what you have written; not because embarrassment occurs in any argument or objection which you have seen fit to advance; but be. cause it appears, that the dispute is like to run into personal crimination and party bitterness; the shame of all theological controversy, and

In my letters I carefully guarded against every thing of this kind. When we lose sight of decorum in our personal treatment of each other; when we forget, not only that we are disciples of the same master, but that we ought to have respect to the laws which polished society has prescribed for the due regulation of its intercourse, it is time to stop. But I seem to owe it to myself, and more still to the truth, and to the honor of God's gracious covenant, to expose in a cursory manner, before I finally take leave of you, the impotency of your attempt to sustain the tottering fabric which crumbles at every touch of your hand.

In this reply I will endeavor to remember the relation which really subsists between us, though unacknowledged by you. If any severity shall appear, it respects what you have written, and what you have done.

Much superfluous and repetitious matter will be passed by. All that you say respecting my not having produced any thing to prove that sprinkling is baptism, or that the infant seed of believers are proper subjects, will be unnoticed; because you was taught in my introduction, that my letters "were merely designed to refute the arguments contained in the sermons they cursorily review;

and that I did not profess to collect and establish the evidence which supports the pædobaptist theory." All that you say too about my not being able to produce any evidence to justify my sentiment and practice, will be forgotten, as the bold assertion of a man, whose decision, what others can or cannot do will weigh but little in an impartial balance.

You tell your reader, page 7th, that I have conceded, "that, the evidence for infant baptism does not in our day amount to a demonstration." These are your words, not mine. I made no such concession. Had you quoted me, your reader would have perceived the unfairness of the representation. I simply said, that several years ago, after I had made a more diligent search into the subject, "the evidence, that the infant children of visible believers, ought to be baptized, amounted in my view, nearly to a demonstration." This does not assert a general negative, that the evidence is not demonstrative. I now beg leave to tell you, that I at present think it is. The other things which you make me concede in this page, are not in my words, nor exactly correct. I do not deny the auxiliary advantage of consulting other writings beside the Bible; nor the possibility that the present translation of the Bible, may, in some instances, be amended. But the

correctness of it ought, in all cases, to be presumed. So far there is ever an objection at the foundation of new renderings.

In

I shall pass your history of your prejudices, and the noble conquest you gained over them, in becoming a Baptist; and your thoughts upon several texts of scripture, which are commonly adduced in support of infant baptism; because we imagine it of little conse-. quence what you think, when your thinking is not according to evidence. 17th you say, "Should you page write again, please to inform me by what authority you contradict the translators of the Bible, and injure the sense of this. text (Acts 16, 34) by telling us that the jailor believed in God and rejoiced domestically." Is this Christian treatment, to charge me with contradicting the translators? I have not done it. I said, "all his house, or domestically." The word is not used contradictiously, but as exegetical. And my authority for this is the Greek word, and the connexion. You ask me what I get by telling you, that the Greek participle, translated believing, is in the singular? It is not only in the singular, Sir, but in the perfect tense. It serves, therefore, to rescue the text from your presumptuous comments; which are calculated to make your unlearned readers