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    therefore considered myself as having-taken possession of ground not before occupied . As to the other topic , I do not suppose that baptism was or could be administered as a symbol of being purged from old sins , if applied to infants who could not have committed sin , but merely when applied to persons newly converted from Judaism or heathenism to Christianity . S . T . most certainly knows that passages have been produced from early Christian

    writers , in which baptism appears to be called " Regeneration /* ( in allusion ^ it is supposed , to our Saviour ' s expressions in . John iii . 3 . 5 . 1 . which Dr , Benson , I think , interprets as referring to water-baptism ) ; because hereby a person was

    introduced into a new situation , new relations , and new modes of life , and so' was , figuratively ,- " new-born . " And that it was actually considered as a symbol of being- purged—not from original sin , which is a tenet that J * T . has long ago renounced * , as well as the" Seeker of Truth , " but—from the sins committed by the baptized in their former Jewish or Gentile state , appears to me to be suggested , not only in 2 Pet .- i . 9 . but also and still more plainly in Ananias ' s address to Saul , as-sriven in .

    Acts xxii . 16 * u Arise , and be baptised , and wash away thysins . " That the substitution of " wash" for " baptise ^ ' ia the passages quoted by S . T . ( page 531 ) appears to him to be improper , I can ascribe only to his evident predilection for kn * mersion . If the ear were once accustomed to it , perhaps being cc washed unto Christ" would be thought more proDer

    than being immersed unto Christ . " S . T . will permit me to ask , whether there may not be an allusion to water-baptism in 1 Cor . vi . 1 i . where " being washed" seems to be distinguished from the moral purification denoted by XQ being sanctified ?" However , the hints dropt ia regard to the mode of baptism :

    were proposed merely as queries . The quantity of water to be used in administering the ordinance appears to me to be a matter of very little consequence , and such as ought to be regulated by the age , sex , or constitution of the person baptized , or by other circumstances of a like nature . I have only to observe , in reply toS . IVs postscript , that we in this country think ourselves

    in general to be sufficiently cleansed if only the face and hands ^ are well washed ; that , as baptism is performed by those Christians who are called Baptists ( especially in Wales , where , I am Informed , it is the custom for persons to go into the water with , their common clothes on , without any fear of suffering from it in their health ) the addition of the ceremony suggested would not occasion the smallest indecency , and therefore that it could not have occasioned any if used by the three thousand mentioned in Acts ii . 41 . After all > I must beg S * T / s excuse , if I add

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    660 Defence qf € c Thoughts on Baptism"

• Citation
  • Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Dec. 2, 1806, page 660, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse-os.kdl.kcl.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct1731/page/44/