Chapter I: A Dream

I had a _dream_, but whether it was all a dream, let him who reads it judge.

Methought in my dream that I was in Pastor: Johnson’s study. He had in his hand the Presbyterian newspaper, called the Presbyterian of St. Louis. He had just found the article of Doctor Rice on Theodosia. His little gray eyes began to twinkle the moment they caught the caption, “A BAPTIST NOVEL,” for, since his troubles with the young lady and her uncle, he has devoured with great avidity every thing which he could find against the Baptists. As he was reading, however, a heavy frown began to gather on his brow, his lips were pressed together with convulsive energy, and the paper shook with the tremulous excitement which pervaded his whole body. He continued to read, however, until he had finished the piece, and then, as if to assure himself that he had not read amiss, he began at the caption and read it every word again. When he had done, he folded the paper carefully, put it into the inside pocket of his coat, looked into the fire for several seconds, then nodded his head three times very significantly, not straight forward with the chin toward his breast bone, but diagonally, with the chin inclined toward the left shoulder, and the back of his head drawn toward the right.

What this peculiar pantomime might signify, I was, in my dream, greatly at a loss to determine, until he had gone into the room where his wife was engaged in her domestic duties.

“Mrs. Johnson,” said he, “I desire that you will pack my carpet-bag. I must make a journey to St. Louis, and to get home before the Sabbath must start this morning.”

“Why, my dear, what in the world is the matter?”

“I want to go and see Doctor Rice, madam; I don’t like the way he talks about me. He has had the audacity to call me a _fool_, madam; nay, more, he has even declared that there is not so great a fool in our whole denomination. It is too much, madam, for human nature to endure. I feel it my duty to go and talk to him as a Christian brother; I want to tell him to his face that I think he has done me great injustice, and, in short, has treated me very badly.”

Mrs. Johnson seemed instinctively to understand that delay or remonstrance was out of the question. She made at once the needful arrangements, and her husband was gone.

Then I saw, in my dream, that he entered the room where the Reverend Doctor was engaged in writing.

“I presume this is the Reverend Doctor Rice,” said he. “My name is Johnson, sir; the Reverend Mr. Johnson, of ⸻, I felt it my duty, sir, to come and see you about your paper of the ⸻”

“Ah, I am glad to see you, Mr. Johnson. Take a seat, sir; I hope you have had a pleasant journey.”

“Why, yes, sir, reasonably so; but in fact I have a great dislike to traveling, and nothing would have induced me to take the journey but a conviction of duty. I felt it to be my duty, sir, to come and tell you that I think you have treated me very badly, sir. And let me say, sir, that you have done more to destroy my confidence and that of my congregation, in the truthfulness of our positions on the Baptismal question, than all the Baptist arguments I have ever heard.”:

“Why, my dear sir, what can you mean?”

Mr. Johnson pulled the paper before referred to out of his pocket, and found the article on Theodosia.

“I suppose, sir,” said he, holding it up before the Doctor, “you will not deny that you are the author of that?”

“Certainly not,” replied the Doctor, as he glanced rapidly down the column like one who was familiar with the words. “I take credit to myself, sir, as being the first, and, so far as I know, the only person who has attempted to answer that peculiar book.”

“I have no objection,” replied Mr. Johnson, “to your answering the book. In fact, no one could rejoice more than I to see it rightly answered, but I want you to understand that you have done me and those who stood with me in that discussion very great injustice. It was unkind, sir, it was cruel in you to intimate that there was not in all the Presbyterian denomination so great a fool as I, just because I had never carefully examined the subject of baptism for myself, but trusted to Doctor Dwight and Doctor Miller, and _our other Doctors of Divinity_ for my information and my arguments. I have always had a great regard, sir, for our Doctors of Divinity. I have supposed they must be pious, and learned, and truthful men. I thought I could _rely_ upon any thing I had learned from a _Presbyterian Doctor of Divinity_; I therefore took the substance of their arguments, not venturing to employ a single one of my own, and yet for doing this you count me as a simpleton and called me a fool.”

“Ah, my dear brother Johnson, you must excuse me; I did not at first understand precisely who you were, I begin to see it now. Let me assure you, sir, that I heartily sympathize with you on the loss of so lovely a member as Miss Theodosia, and so influential an Elder as her Uncle Jones. I can easily understand, my dear sir, that you were deeply wounded by that event, and still feel a little sore on the subject. But you must not fall out with your friends on that account. _We must DO SOMETHING to break the force of the arguments_ presented by the author in his silly narrative of that transaction. We must either meet those arguments with sober logic, or we must destroy their influence by _ridicule_. I am sure when you have come to look at the matter calmly, you will not only excuse but even approve what I have said.”

“What, sir! excuse and approve your calling me a _fool_, just because I used no better arguments than had been furnished me by _our greatest Doctors of Divinity_!”

“Ah, my dear brother, I see that you do not yet quite understand me. I mean to say that, in order to destroy the influence of that silly narrative, we must either fairly meet and logically confute the facts and arguments by which Miss Theodosia and her uncle were convinced that we are wrong and the Baptists are right, or else we must turn attention from them by calling the book a ‘NOVEL,’ and laughing at the arguments as though they were not worth answering. And now let me say to you in confidence, that it was a great deal easier to insinuate that as a ‘_novel_’ it must be a work unfit for the pious to read, and ridicule and laugh at the book, than to disprove its _facts_ or answer its _arguments_. I trust, therefore, you will not take it too much to heart if you come in for your share of the laugh, since you can’t help seeing that if I had allowed your arguments and those of your friend, Professor Jones, to be the best we have, our cause is at once and forever irretrievably ruined; but by adroitly representing these as perfect nonsense and foolishness, I make the impression on the minds of my readers that we have some others of most tremendous power, which could not possibly have failed to convince your opponents if you had only known them and brought them forward.”

“But, sir,” replied Mr. Johnson, “I am sure I brought forward the very best that I could find—I took those of our most eminent Doctors of Divinity, living and dead, the present company only excepted. I would like to know, sir, if any doctor in our church ever stood higher than Timothy Dwight, D. D., and Samuel Miller, D. D., one the President of Yale College, the other an honored professor for many years in our leading Theological Seminary, that at Princeton, New Jersey. I thought, sir, I was safe from the charge of folly when I followed Dwight and Miller, and consequently I took the same ground with these eminent men to show Miss Theodosia that John did not baptize by immersion, but that the Lord Jesus must have been _sprinkled_ on the bank of the river. Just turn to volume four, page 349, of Dwight’s Divinity—‘It is,’ says he, ‘_incredible that the multitudes which John baptized in the wilderness were immersed. It will not be mistrusted that this promiscuous assembly were immersed naked. To have immersed them with their clothes on would have exposed them to certain disease and death._’ Now, I did not care to state it just in this way to Miss Theodosia, so I said that they could not have been immersed on account of their great numbers, and for this I had the authority of several Doctors of Divinity. Says Doctor Summers, page 82 of his work on Baptism: ‘_It was not possible for him to baptize the immense multitudes that came to his baptism by immersing them_,’ and gives as a reason that his ministry lasted only a year or less, and in that time ‘he baptized, perhaps, two or three millions.’ He thinks, as I did, that they must have stood in rows along the bank, while the Baptist sprinkled them either with or without hyssop, he don’t know which. So also Doctor Eagleton, of Tennessee, gives the same explanation.

“The great Doctor Rice, I know, does not venture to say, like Summers and Dwight, that it was ‘_impossible_’ and ‘_incredible_,’ but even he, in his work on Baptism, page 116, founds an argument on the assumption that ‘_it was not very probable_.’ And Doctor Miller, whom some will consider a greater than Rice, expressly says, ‘_There is no evidence, and I will venture to say, no probability, that John ever baptized by immersion._’ Then, when I wished to prove that the Apostle did not immerse any more than John had dome, what better could I do than follow these great Doctors? Doctor Dwight expressly says, volume four, page 349: _‘It is impossible that those whom Peter and his companions baptized on the day of Pentecost should have been immersed_,’ and gives as reasons, first, that they had no suitable clothes; second, there was not time enough, and he plainly intimates that there was not _water_ enough.

“So Doctor Summers says it was impossible, because there were no places suitable for immersion, and besides it was impossible for the twelve to baptize such a multitude in the six or eight hours that remained of the day. So also Doctor Rice himself, page 120 of his work on Baptism, makes in substance the very same argument. ‘Where,’ he exultingly asks, ‘did the Apostles find sufficient _water_ for the immersion of so many?’ And again, ‘The number—could the twelve Apostles baptize three thousand persons in that day?’ And Doctor Miller, whom some will think a greater even than Doctor Rice, declares, after dwelling upon these difficulties of the case, ‘The man, therefore, who can believe that the three thousand on the day of Pentecost were baptized by immersion, must have great faith and a wonderful facility of accommodating his belief to his wishes.’

“On these two points, therefore, you see I had the authority of our most learned Doctors, including even Doctor N. L. Rice himself, and yet Doctor Rice calls me a fool because I could not do better than them all.”

“Oh, no; excuse me, my dear brother Johnson, but these were not the points to which I particularly referred. I grant you had the substance of our arguments on these points, but then that argument of yours based upon with as the signification of the Greek preposition ‘_en_,’ you must allow that it was rather simple in you to rest so much upon the phrase ‘_with water_.’”

“Not at all, sir; I can admit no such thing. The truth is, sir, this is our great argument to the minds of the unlearned. It has more plausibility in it than any other that I have ever read. And, sir, you must let me tell you that though you may now call it silly and rate me as a fool for using it, I did it on the authority of more than one of our Doctors of Divinity. The Rev. Alexander Newton, D.D., in the ‘True Baptist,’ makes a long and carefully elaborated argument, based upon this rendering of the word. Dr. Summers, page 100, says expressly that ‘with’ is the proper meaning of the word ‘when found in connection with baptism.’ And even the great Doctor Rice himself, in his debate with Campbell, page 191, quoted Bloomfield to show that it was ‘with water’ and not in water that ‘_en hudati_’ should be rendered. How then can Doctor Rice call me a fool for using his own argument, and that of other doctors almost equal to himself?”

“I don’t deny that I alluded to it,” replied the doctor; “but I know too well its fallacy to risk our cause upon it as you did. But it was not for this so much as for your calling attention to those unguarded admissions of Barnes, and Chalmers, and McKnight, that I thought, to say the least, you were somewhat _indiscreet_.”

“Why, my dear sir, were not these all Presbyterians? Were they not all DOCTORS OF DIVINITY? Could I not venture to direct an inquiring member of the Presbyterian Church to our own Presbyterian Doctors of Divinity for information? I know those men were counted among the wisest and the best of all our doctors I took it for granted that they had studied the subject before they wrote about it; I had, I am sure, no suspicion that they would mislead those who trusted to their teaching.”

“But when you found which way they were leading your inquirers why did you not contradict and oppose their testimony?”

“I did do my best,” replied Mr. Johnson, “but the truth is I am not, like you, a _Doctor of Divinity_, and therefore I could not contradict such men with as good a face as you can. If you had been there you might have said, ‘My dear young friends, it is true that these learned men and eminent masters in the Presbyterian Church do teach thus, but they are utterly in error. They have stated what is entirely devoid of truth; you may take _my_ word, but you cannot trust to theirs.’ But you, no more than I, could have denied that Dr. Barnes admits baptize in Greek to be the same as tabal in Hebrew, and that he says and proves that it in the Scriptures signifies ‘_to dip_.’ You, no more than I, could have denied that Chalmers and McKnight do both unquestionably give immersion as the meaning of the word, and both agree that it was immersion that John and the apostles employed. _That_ is too plain for argument. But them, as you are a Doctor of Divinity, as well as they, and have been Moderator of the General Assembly one year, as McKnight was for twenty, _you_ might have ventured to dispute their word—_you_ might have called in question either their learning or their veracity, for if they told what is not true it must have been either from ignorance or falsehood; but it would not have done for a plain and simple pastor like myself to put _my_ word against that of any _one_ of these great doctors, much less against all three. I assure you, sir, that you Doctors of Divinity have a great advantage over us common pastors in such a discussion as that. When that learned Professor of Theology, Moses Stuart, says that all critics and lexicographers of any note are agreed that immersion is the common and primary meaning of the word baptism, and that the first Christians so understood it, _you_ can simply say _it is no such thing_; but people would expect me to prove it, and that very plainly, too, before they would believe that Stuart lied about it, or that a man of his eminent learning could be mistaken.

“When the learned MARTIN LUTHER says that ‘Baptism is a Greek word, and signifies immersion,’ and that the etymology of the word seems to demand that the person baptized ‘should be wholly immersed, and then immediately drawn out of the water,’ as he does in his works, vol. 1, p. 386, _you_ could reply: ‘Doctor Martin Luther must be egregiously mistaken about this, for I, Doctor N. L. Rice, have examined into the matter, and find it is not true.’ When that ‘godly, learned man, JOHN CALVIN,’ in his Institutes, b. iv., s. 15, says that ‘The word baptize signifies to immerse, and it is certain that immersion was the practice of the ancient church,’ _you_, as a Doctor of Divinity, can say: ‘Doctor John Calvin was mistaken—this is not true.’ When that very learned and eminent scholar, CASAUBON, says, ‘The manner of baptizing was to PLUNGE or DIP them into the water, as even the word baptism plainly enough shows,’ you have only to say: ‘Casaubon was either very ignorant of the matter, or else he lied, for I, Doctor N. L. Rice, have found it was not so.’

“When the learned BISHOP BOUSSET declares that ‘Baptize signifies to plunge, as is admitted by all the world;’ when the famous critic Venema says: ‘The word _baptizien_, to baptize, is nowhere used in the Scripture for sprinkling;’ when the great scholar says, in commenting on Matt. iii. 6: ‘Baptism consists in the immersion of the whole body in water’—you can simply reply: ‘I know these learned foreigners say such things, but Doctor N. L. Rice knows better.’

“When such a man as DOCTOR GEORGE CAMPBELL, of Scotland, the President of a Presbyterian College, says that ‘the word BAPTIZIEN, both in the sacred authors and classical, signifies to DIP, to PLUNGE, to IMMERSE, and was thus rendered by Tertullian, the oldest of the Latin fathers,’ that ‘it is ALWAYS construed suitably to this meaning,’ that ‘it is never in any case, sacred or classical, employed in the sense of rain or sprinkle,’ you have only to say, that ‘Doctor George Campbell differs on these points from Doctor N. L. Rice.’

“When a learned professor of Greek, like the well-known Charles Anthon, of Columbian College, the author of some of our most valuable classical school books, expressly asserts that ‘the primary meaning of the word is to dip or to IMMERSE, and its secondary meanings, if it ever had any, all refer in some way or other to the same leading idea,’ that ‘sprinkling and pouring are entirely out of the question,’ you have only to say: ‘Mr. Anthon is only a learned _professor_ of languages, and I, a DOCTOR OF DIVINITY, take it upon myself to assure you that he is entirely mistaken. IT IS NOT TRUE; and whether Professor Anthon is ignorant or false, the world may judge.’

“Now if I, a simple, untitled pastor, should talk so, they would not believe me. I tried it, sir. I asserted roundly, just as Doctor Miller had done. I intended to use his very words: ‘Now we contend that this word does not necessarily, or even commonly, signify to immerse, but also implies to wash, to sprinkle, to pour on water, and to tinge or dye with any liquid, and therefore accords very well with the mode of baptism by sprinkling or affusion.’ ‘I can assure you,’ he says in another place, ‘that the word we render baptize does legitimately signify the application of water in any way as well as by immersion.’ Now I could make assertions as confidently as even Doctor Rice himself, but I found that I was expected to prove them, and that from the Scriptures, and in such a way that the demonstration should be plain to the common sense of an earnest and shrewd, quick-witted girl. I assure you I had rather have tried to satisfy a dozen Doctors of Divinity.”

“But why did you not go to the Lexicons, as I did in my Lexington debate? Why did you permit that young lawyer to wrest this weapon out of your hands at the very beginning? Mr. Campbell began to quote the Lexicons on me, but I showed that this was a game at which two could play.”

“And yet I am sure, sir, Miss Theodosia would have said that you lost the game, however well you played. The truth is, Doctor Albert Barnes, by pointing to the _places_ in the Old Testament where they could find the meaning of the word as it was used among the Jews, had taken away the necessity for any reference to Lexicons, unless it were to prove that Barnes was a false interpreter, and this I did not like to do. But what could the Lexicons have availed for my purpose, even as quoted by yourself? You appealed to eleven of them, and I suppose you gave the most favorable definitions you could extract. Now, you will remember that neither Miss Ernest nor Mr. Percy had taken any such ground as Mr. Carson had done, or as Mr. Campbell did in your debate. No one in our company insisted that _immerse_ was the _only_ and _necessary_ meaning of the word, but only that it was the _common_ and _most frequent_ meaning, in connection with which it was most _likely_ to be employed, and which it must therefore (according to the ordinary rules of interpretation) be understood, _unless the context required some other_. Now you know, as well as I, that the rule of the Lexicons is to give the common, every-day meaning, as the primary or _first_ definition. And yet, when you attempted to ascertain the meaning of the word baptizo by the Lexicons, what did they testify?

“_Scapula_, according to your own rendering, gives baptizo, to dip or immerse; also to dye, as we immerse things for the purpose of coloring or washing them; also to plunge, submerge, to cover with water, etc.

“_Hedericus_ gives to dip, immerse, to cover with water.

“_Stephanus_.—To dip, to immerse, as we immerse things for the purpose of coloring or washing; to merge, submerge, to cover with water.

“_Schleusner_.—To plunge, to immerse.

“_Parkhurst_.—To immerse in, or wash with water.

“_Robinson_.—To immerse, to sink.

“_Schrivellius_.—To baptize, to immerse.

“_Groves_.—To dip, immerse, immerge, plunge.

“_Bretschneider_.—Properly often to dip.

“_Suidas_.—To sink, to plunge, to immerse.

“_Ware_.—To wash, perform ablution, cleanse; secondly, to immerse. “_Greenfield_.—To immerse, immerge, submerge, sink.

“Now, out of all the eleven, you could find but _one_, and that unknown to fame, which does not give _dip_ or its equivalent as its first and common meaning. Miss Ernest would have said the testimony is ten to one against you. If you had come into court with ten witnesses against you, and only one for you, Mr. Percy, as a lawyer, would have declared your case utterly hopeless.

“But Mr. Campbell, at that time, gave you several other Lexicons, among which was:

“_Robertson’s Thesaurus_, which defines it to immerse, to wash.

“_Pason_.—To dip, to immerse, to dye, because it is done by immersing.

“_Donegan_.—To immerse repeatedly into a liquid, to submerge, to sink.

“_Jones_.—Plunge, dip, baptize, bury, overwhelm.

“_Bass_.—To dip, immerse, plunge in water. Baptisma, immersion, dipping.

“_Stokius_.—To dip, to immerse in water.

“So we have in all sixteen witnesses who depose that this is its primary and common meaning. Sixteen who testify that it must thus be understood when nothing in the context requires another sense. And only one who gives to _wash_ as its primary meaning. Mr. Campbell also mentioned several others, whom he said gave it the same sense, and you did not dispute his word.”

“But what of all that?” replied the Reverend Doctor Rice. “I would have set aside all that array of dictionaries by quoting just one sentence from the great Baptist, Doctor Carson, who ought surely to understand what he says, and who was no friend to sprinkling; and yet he expressly says, ‘THAT ALL THE LEXICONS ARE AGAINST HIM.’ This is testimony enough for me.”

“But it would not have been for Miss Theodosia or Mr. Percy. They would have asked to see the BOOK and the place, and would have read it for themselves, and doing so, would have been sure to discover what you must have known before you quoted it, that he does NOT say that all the Lexicons are against the Baptists—he does NOT say that all or any of the Lexicons gives sprinkling or pouring as a meaning of the word—he does NOT say that they do not all agree in giving dip or its equivalent as the primary and common meaning. ‘On this point,’ he says, ‘I have no quarrel with the Lexicons. There is the most complete harmony among them in representing dip as the primary meaning of bapto and baptizo.’ But Mr. Carson denies that it has any secondary meaning at all, or that it ever means any thing else but dip or immerse. And it is on this point, that he says, page 55, ‘He has all the Lexicographers and Commentators against him.’ I could not have satisfied my inquirers with such a misrepresentation, even though my conscience could have permitted me to use it. We all know that the Lexicons give secondary meanings to these words, and in our company there was no disposition to question the propriety of their doing so. But, sir, it has struck me with surprise, since my attention has been turned to the subject, that not a single one of all the seventeen Lexicons referred to and quoted by you and Mr. Campbell give _sprinkle_ or _pour_ as even a secondary meaning. They give _wash_ and _cleanse_, but several of them are careful to explain that it is because things may be washed and cleansed by dipping them in water. And I have been thinking, especially since I read your piece, that what we are accustomed to call _baptism_ is not even _a washing_—for if the Doctor should tell me to _wash_ one of my children, who was sick, with warm water, I am sure I should not feel that I had carried out the prescription by dipping the tip of my fingers in the water and touching them to his forehead. And the truth is, sir—I suppose I may just as well tell it—that since you have made so light of all the arguments which I advanced in our discussion, and yet have given me no better, nor told me to which of all our Doctors I can go to find any more forcible or convincing, I begin to doubt whether we are not both mistaken, and that Miss Ernest and her friends had better reasons for leaving us than I can ever find for remaining where I am.”

“Yes,” exclaimed Professor Jones (who suddenly made his appearance, unaccountably, as people often do in dreams), “I have often thought how angry we should be if those who owe obedience to us should render it as some of us render obedience to God. Doctor Rice, for example, says to a little servant boy on Saturday night, go _wash_ yourself, or go _bathe_ yourself, and put on clean clothing for the Sabbath. The servant, instead of bathing his whole body, takes a few drops of water in the palm of his hand and pours it on the top of his head. ‘You little rascal,’ Doctor Rice would say, ‘why did you not wash yourself as I directed you?’

“‘I did wash myself, sir.’

“‘You did! Do you call _that_ washing _yourself_? Why, you did not even wet your scalp. Come here, sir; I’ll teach you how to trifle with my commandments.’

“‘Please, sir,’ exclaims the lad. ‘Please sir, don’t punish me; I am sure, sir, I did wash myself; I can prove it to you sir.’

“‘Why, you little impertinent. You just now confessed that you only put a few drops of water on the top of your head.’

“‘I know it, sir; but that was _washing myself_, sir; I can prove it by the united testimony of all your DOCTORS OF DIVINITY, including the Reverend Doctor N. L. Rice. You may be so angry, sir, just now, that you don’t remember it, but in your Lexington debate you said again and again that baptize means to _wash_, and of course wash means to _baptize_, and when _you_ and our other DOCTORS OF DIVINITY _baptize_, you only put a few drops of water on the person’s head. Besides, you said again and again, that wash was a “_generic_” word (I believe that was it, sir), and might be performed in any way, and as this is the way which all the great DOCTORS OF DIVINITY use when =God= tells _them_ “_to wash_” people, I am sure, sir, you could not expect _me_ to do more in obedience to _your_ command than _you_ do in obedience to HIS.’

“But let it pass; I have just called in, Doctor, to thank you for dealing so kindly with me in your article on Theodosia. It is customary when one has been driven by his convictions of duty to leave some denominations for others for those he leaves to seek by defamation to destroy his peace and injure his usefulness. It is customary to attack his character and impugn his motives. And the same course has sometimes been adopted to counteract the influence of a _controversial_ BOOK. When its arguments could not be met and refuted, the moral or Christian character of the author has been assailed with a malignity which argues very little for the piety of the assailants, and of itself affords prima facie evidence that there is something rotten in the system which requires such foul means to sustain it, and breeds such rancorous spirits to contend for it. But it has gratified me much to see that you speak of me in ‘sorrow more than anger;’ that you are more inclined to pity than abuse. You think me weak and foolish, and that is the worst of it. I could expect no less than that, for we all are apt to think disparagingly of the intellect which _cannot_ see what seems to ours as clear as light. You thought that my friend, Mr. Johnson, was simple, because he failed to convince my niece and myself; and I might have expected that you would think still worse of me, because I could not be convinced. If Mr. Johnson had used _all_ the arguments which he could have found in the works of Presbyterian Doctors of Divinity, you might with good reason have thought him a simpleton indeed.

“He contended with Doctor Miller and other doctors, that the word baptize means to sprinkle or to pour, as truly as to immerse.

“Like several others, and yourself among them, he denied that John’s baptism was Christian baptism.

“Like you and all the rest he denied that Jesus went into the water, or that John baptized in Jordan, but asserted that he sprinkled the people standing in rows on the bank.

“Like you and the other doctors, he denied that there was water enough to be had in Jerusalem to immerse three thousand, or time enough to do it.

“Like you and the other doctors, he made an argument upon the _design_ of baptism, as being better symbolized by sprinkling than immersion.

“Like you and the other doctors, he made a very plausible argument upon the Pentecostic outpouring of the Holy Ghost as baptism.

“Like you and some of the other doctors, he made the strongest argument that it is possible to make upon ‘_with water_’ as the translation of ‘en udati.’ And he gave to each and every one of these arguments _all_ the force to which it was logically entitled, and if they could not stand before the simple, common sense of a strong-minded, earnest-hearted girl, it was not his fault, but the fault of the arguments. If he had presented all the arguments which he could have found gravely set forth by Doctors of Divinity, little Edwin himself would have laughed him out of countenance. What if, like Doctor Dwight, he had declared that ‘_Christ himself has expressly taught us that immersion is unessential to the administration of this ordinance._’

“When he said to Peter, John xiii.: ‘He that is washed needeth not care to wash his feet, but is clean every whit,’ from which the learned doctor concludes that ‘a symbolical washing is perfect although applied only to the feet; as perfect as if it were applied also to the hands and the head, and if this construction be admitted, it must also be admitted that the declaration is general and extends to every other symbolical washing, and therefore to baptism, unless excluded by some plain exception.’ See Dwight’s Divinity, vol. 4, pp. 150, 157.

“So also another Doctor of Divinity declares, that ‘Christ discountenanced the practice of immersion in religious purifications. He that is washed, said he to Peter, needeth not save to wash his feet, but is clean every whit. John xiii. 9, 10. By reading this text in its connection, we will perceive that so far from introducing the practice of washing the body all over as a religious rite, he discouraged it, by declaring it unnecessary, and by refusing to gratify Peter, who wished to have the water applied to him in a more profuse manner than the Saviour was using it.’ See James Wood, D. D., on Christian Baptism, page 35. If Doctor Wood is consistent with himself, he applies the water to the baby’s. dear little foot, for it was the application of water to the ‘_hands_’ or the ‘_head_’ that Jesus ‘_discountenanced_’ and ‘_discouraged_.’ I presume, therefore, that Doctor Wood is not only a Pedobaptist, but a _pedal_-baptist, a foot-baptizer.

“What if Mr. Johnson had said, as more than one of the DOCTORS OF DIVINITY has done, that there is the same proof that the Eunuch immersed Philip that there is that Philip immersed the Eunuch? Yet the great Doctor Miller says: ‘There is the same evidence that Philip was plunged as that the Eunuch was.’ And Doctor Dwight argues that if ‘_eis_’ means into, and ‘_ek_’ means out of, in the narrative of this transaction, they were _both_ plunged _twice_ and the Eunuch _three_ times. Here are his words: ‘The declarations here made, are made concerning the Eunuch and Philip; alike of both it is said that _they went down into the water_, if we render _eis_ into; of both also it is said _that when they came up out of the water_, if we render the word _ek_ out of. Now let us see what will be the true import of the passage according to this method of construing the words in question, _and they went down both into the water, both Philip and the Eunuch_. That is, _they were both plunged. And he baptized him, that is, Philip plunged the Eunuch._ And when they were come up out of the water; that is, when they had both been plunged a second time and risen up from their immersion, _the Spirit of the Lord caught away Philip_. In other words, they were both plunged twice and the Eunuch three times.’ See Dwight’s Divinity, vol. 4, p. 350, Sermon on Baptism.

“Suppose that Mr. Johnson, like Doctor Wood, had gravely argued that the Eunuch must have been baptized by sprinkling, because he had been reading in Isaiah, and Isaiah somewhere, though not in the passage quoted as that which he was reading, says that Messiah shall _sprinkle_ many nations, while every scholar knows that in the Septuagint, which it is most likely he was reading, the word _sprinkle_ does not occur, but ‘_thaumasontai_’ astonish, ‘so shall he _astonish_ many nations.’ And Doctor Adam Clarke says it is the best rendering of the Hebrew. That the _Jews_ so understood the Hebrew is evident from their so translating it; and therefore, whether the Eunuch read Hebrew or Greek, he could have found no such word as sprinkle.

“But though your _Doctors of Divinity_ had talked volumes of such nonsense, my friend, Mr. Johnson, had sense enough to see that arguments like these could not be expected to stand the scrutiny of earnest, inquiring _common sense_, even in a simple girl, and therefore would not offer them. He used the best you have, and did the best he could with them. I grant that both he and I used some _very simple arguments_; nay, that _all_ our arguments were silly as long as we argued against the truth, for every _false_ argument _must be foolish_, but neither of us was as silly as some of you DOCTORS OF DIVINITY, and since you have yourself condemned and ridiculed the _very arguments_ by which not only he but thousands of your people are deluded and prevented from yielding obedience to Christ, I trust both he and they will see their folly, abandon their errors, obey their Lord, and like my niece and myself, unite with his visible church.”