his friends with many expressions your conduct towards your chilof affection and gratitude. And, dren indicative of but slight soto his surprise, he found that some licitude for their salvation? Do of them were already employed in you not frequently act towards cutting timber to build him a meet- them, precisely as you would, if ing-house! I shall only add, that you knew they had no souls cathe first time he preached after pable of enjoying forever the haphis return, his discourse was found- piness of heaven, or suffering fored on Acts x. 29: "Therefore ever the miseries of hell? came I, without gainsaying, as soon as I was sent for. I ask, therefore, for what intent ye have sent for me?"" RELIGIOUS EDUCATION OF CHILDREN. Continued from last Number. HAVING noticed in a cursory manner the different parts of a religions education, and offered a few remarks on the method and feelings with which it ought to be conducted, I proceed to enforce the duty. Many are the considerations which should urge parents to "bring up their children in the nurture and admonition of the Lord;" some of these will now be mentioned. 1. The near and interesting relation which you sustain to your children. They are your offspring. This consideration alone ought to be sufficient to constrain you to attend to their spiritual welfare. What evidence do you give that you love them, if you neglect their eternal interests? You believe that it is your duty to provide for their maintenance, to afford them the advantages of schools and other seminaries of learning, and to qualify them, while under your roof, to act a part on life's stage. But if eternity is of more importance than time, if the soul is more valuable than the body, surely you are under much stronger obligations to regard their immortal concerns. Parents, is not much of And let the parent remember, that if he neglect the religious instruction of his offspring, he cannot reasonably expect that others can supply the deficiency. Other persons may pray for them-may occasionally inculcate good ideas; but you are more intimately conversant with them, you have a thousand opportunities of talking with them which others have not; and you possess an influence over them, which another person may not easily acquire. The tender connexion between you and your children, the ardent affection you bear for them, and the favourable opportunities you have for conveying divine truth to their minds, ought irresistibly to impel you to the performance of your duty as parents. 2. Reflect that you have been instrumental of their entrance into life. From you they inherit that carnal mind which is enmity against God. The least that you ought to do, is to endeavour to repress that depravity, and employ your utmost exertions that they may become possessors of a nature which is divine and holy. 3. Consider the great success with which God has crowned the instructions of christian parents. Numerous instances might be mentioned apart from the Bible records. You may have read of the pious mother of Doddridge, whose delight was to instruct her son in the ways of the Lord. It is almost unnecessary to state that her son was distinguished for piety and usefulness in the world. Cotton Mather, the father of thirteen children, was uncommonly attentive to their religious instruction; and by the grace of God, the whole number followed him even as he followed Christ. The greater part of the family of President Edwards, (a man illustrious for holiness, and diligent in performing the duty of a parent,) became decided and eminent christians. But to multiply examples of this kind is not necessary. his examination resulted in a conviction of its truth; he renounced his infidelity; and by the grace of God he has become an ornament to society, and a sincere and prac tical christian. But if the spirit of conversion should be withheld, still the instructions and examples of a religious parent will probably have a salutary effect on the character of his offspring; and should the best result of his labours be, their becoming good members of society, this alone would be a large recompense for his toils. Perhaps your success may not be immediate; and even should your children become more inBut let us suppose that he is different, you should not yield to entirely unsuccessful, that his child discouragement. It may often be throws off all restraint, and besaid in reference to a believing comes the more hardened under His sorrow parent-"He that soweth in tears all his instructions. shall reap in joy :" those for will be alleviated by reflecting whom he has prayed, and to whom that he has performed his duty; he has imparted religious instruc- he will be preserved from the tion, may be converted after he may have entered into the rest of heaven. The mother of John Newton might have supposed that all her labour was lost upon her son; but he has informed us that her prayers and admonitions and lessons of piety were never entirely forgotten; and that they were among the means which God employed for his conversion. dreadful consciousness of neglecting his son's salvation. It is acknowledged that God, to exhibit his sovereignty, and to convince us of the inefficacy of means, may sometimes leave those, to whom religious instruction has been faithfully imparted, in a state of impenitence. Yet I believe such instances are more rare than we imag ine. But what? Does the physi I am acquainted with a person, cian renounce his profession, bewho after enjoying the counsels cause his patients do not always and prayers of a religious parent, recover? And must the ministry imbibed deistical sentiments. He of the gospel be abolished, because had been spending a season, set thousands refuse to believe in the apart for prayer and humiliation, Saviour? Yet the preacher may in festivity and mirth. At night refuse to speak in God's name, the thought forcibly struck him, and the physician may abandon his What would be the feelings of practice with just as much proprimy mother, if she knew the man- ety as the parent may neglect the ner in which I have passed the religious education of his children, day? This inquiry led him to a because his efforts are not always train of serious reflections; he successful. The duty is his; the was induced to examine the ev- blessing it belongeth to God to idences of the christian religion; impart To be continued. Review. REVIEW OF ROBINSON'S HISTORY OF BAPTISM CONCLUDED. In making our remarks upon the faults of this work, we do not wish to have it understood that we find in it nothing to commend. We have already given it our approbation so far as the history of baptism is concerned. But we think it no more than our duty, and what the interests of christianity require of us, to carefully guard against the dissemination of errors which may prove detrimental to the prosperity of the church of Christ. No human production is in every respect perfect; neither does it follow that because one man may discover faults in the productions of another, that he has the vanity to think his own are free from them. Every man has his own peculiar mode of thinking and writing, and every historian, especially, has some peculiar system which he all along aims to support. If his system be corrupt, it is impossible that he should not be led occasionally to countenance erroneous opinions, or make erroneous statements. This is evidently the case in the work before us. We have little fault to find with Mr. Robinson while he confines himself to facts, but when he has occasion to touch upon the peculiar sentiments of ehristianity, we are frequently obliged to withhold our assent. Had he felt an attachment to the doctrines of the cross as they are generally received in our churches, he would never have given occasion for the strictures which we feel ourselves obliged to make upon his History of Baptism; an history which would have immortalized the name of any man not grossly corrupted by a lax theology. Painful indeed is the thought, that a man who once sustained the character of a sound and evangelical minister of the gospel, was led away from the simplicity of the faith, and spoiled through philosophy and vain deceit.' But such was the unhappy case with Mr. Robinson. He was a victim to the overwhelming influence and the sentiments of Dr. Priestley, which, for a while, threatened to desolate the churches of Christ, and sweep away the hopes of man. It was in the latter part of his life that he became a Socinian. Had he lived, perhaps he would at length have returned from his errors, like many of his time, who had once been fascinated by them. But his life was cut short. He retired to bed, and died suddenly and alone. His History of Baptism was one of his last works; and it throws a melancholy light upon the state of his mind. We cease to wonder at the looseness of principle which is diffused throughout the book. Rarely have we seen so sly a stab at the doctrine of our Saviour's divinity, as is given in the commencement of the work. It seems,' says Mr. Robinson, 'to have been an ancient idea, that the beginning mentioned in the New Testament, particularly in the 1st chapter of the gospel of John, and in the 1st chapter of his 1st epistle, is to be understood not of the beginning of the world, but of the beginning of the evangelical economy. This idea glimmers in the writings of the Fathers, though obscured by allegory. This is what Cyril seems to intend, when he says, "water was the beginning of the world, and Jordan was the beginning of the Gospel" This is a sort of harmony, ingenious but fanciful, between the first chapter of Genesis and the first of Mark and John. In the former it is said, in the beginning the spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters and in the latter, the beginning, the beginning of the pel, John did baptize. gos. world, but of the beginning of the Evangelical economy. The passage has always stood in the way of those who have been inclined to lower the character of Christ. It asserts his divinity in the most explicit maninner, and confirms it by declaring that it was he who created all things. In the beginning was the word, and the word was with God, and THE WORD WAS GOD. The was in the beginning with God. All things were made by him, and without him was not any thing made that was made. · From the beginning of the world to this period, good men had been in a condition of comparative imperfection. They were individuals, mixed and confounded with numerous persons of opposite characters, in family, tribal, and national divisions. They had never been a people; but John was sent to associate individuals, to form a people, or, as an evangelist expresses it, to make ready a people prepared for the Lord; and the revolution effected at this time was so substantial, that it is called a creation, a new age, a new world, of which Jesus, whom John proclaimed and introduced as chief, was declared the creator and lord, for John professed himself only a messenger of Jesus, employed indeed in his service, but not worthy to unloose the latchet of his shoes.” Here the author says much that is true, and he exhibits a fair appearance, too, of honouring Christ by representing him as author of the new economy. All this had been well, had he let the truths which he states rest on their proper basis, the passages of Scripture which relate to the subject. But at the very time that he seems to be honouring the Saviour, he is so interpreting a certain celebrated passage, as to remove one of the strongest evidences of his divinity. He is insinuating that the belief of his being universal Creator, and, consequently, of his being God, is groundless. For it will be perceived that he approves of what he is pleased to call an ancient idea,' (but it is nothing more than the idea of Socinians) that the beginning mentioned in the first chapter of John, is to be understood not of the beginning of the same What language could St. John have employed, to make it plainer that he meant to be understood as speaking, not of establishing the evangelical economy, or constituting the christian church, but, literally, and in the fullest sense, of creating all things? This is the sense which the whole strain of the paragraph requires. He was in the world and the world was made by him, He and the world knew him not. came unto his own, εις τα ίδια, to his own possessions, for he created them] and his own [ói idiot, they who were his creatures, for he made them] received him not. Take the plain, obvious meaning of the Evangelist, and all is clear and consistent. But adopt the interpretation which maintains that Christ is not God-that he is not the Creator of all things;-the interpretation which changes the world (verse 10,) into the evangelical economy, or the christian church, and you make the verse read thus: He was in the church, and the church was constituted by him, and_the church knew him not !-Was it a fact that they who were created anew in Christ Jesus, knew him not? Certainly he himself was of a different opinion :"I am the good shepherd, and know my sheep, and am known of mine."* From the turn which our author gives to the remarks (p. 60.) on baptizing in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost, it appears, not very obscurely, that he would dissuade from the use of that form. And no wonder, for it is another strong proof of the doctrine of the Trinity, which he rejected. On this subject it will be sufficient to remark that the sketches which we have of the Apostles' transactions are extremely brief; and that we must not look to them for the form of words to be used in baptism, but to the grand commission which was given by our Lord, Matt. xxviii. 19. But the doctrine of the native depravity of the human heart, a doctrine which enters deeply into the christian system, he attacks more openly; not indeed by proving it an error, but by representing it in an odious light. We will not detain our readers by a recital of the numerous instances in which he needlessly introduces it, and presents it in a manner calculated, not to enlighten, but to prejudice the mind. While he now holds it up in one distorted, frightful shape, and now in another; while, at one time, he terms it an African doctrine, and at another, represents it as originating with the Gnostics, the humble reader of the Bible, it is to be hoped, will recollect that the Apostle, in the name of christians, frankly acknowledged, we 66 were by nature the children of wrath."t The doctrine, we know, has been forced into a connexion with that of the baptism, and the eternal misery of infants, but, in our apprehension, very unreasonably. On the contrary, believing all * John x. 14. to be naturally in a state of sin, and having no evidence in the case of infants, that they have been renewed, we think it improper to administer to them an ordinance which indicates that their sins have been washed away, and which was designed to separate the church from the world. But then, it by no means follows that those who die in their infancy, die unrenewed, and must be miserable. To regulate his conduct, God does not, like us, need external evidence; and, surely, we know not but it enters into his allwise plan to regenerate and save those whom he calls from the world in their infancy. But this we know, that he will do them no injustice; and that if saved, they will be saved, not through their own merits, but through the atonement of Jesus Christ. Here the devout christian cheerfully leaves the case; and remembers that his concern is with himself, and with those around him who have come to years of understanding. What the author says (p. 54,) respecting private christians' administering the ordinance of baptism, we think, does not place the subject in a proper light, but is calculated to introduce disorder, and disturb the peace of churches. Let it be remembered that the command to baptize was given by our Lord to none but to the apostles, to those who were ordained as ministers of the gospel. These ministers, as the churches had occasion, ordained others, or set them apart, with special acts of solemnity. It is, then, in the first place, far from being certain that any who had not thus been set apart, ever did baptize. There were probably many ordinations not † Eph. ii. 3. |