and yet not unlawful as against the seventh commandment. 4. To prove that the parents are lawfully married, because their children are lawfully begotten, is to prove a thing by itself. There is another view of this Scripture, which we consider more satisfactory than any of the preceding. We shall attempt to lay it before our readers.

The Jews considered all Gentiles to be unclean, and thought it unlawful for a Jew to be in the house, keep company, or eat with, or touch a Gentile. By some means, possibly from the influence of Judaizing teachers, the church at Corinth seems to have been agitated with the question whether the same rule ought not to be established to regulate the intercourse of the members of the church with other persons; that is, whether the church ought not to decide, that all who were without were unclean to them who were within; just as Gentiles were unclean to Jews; and that therefore it was inconsistent with Christian purity to dwell, keep company, or eat with, or to touch them. While this question was undergoing discussion in the church, it was perceived that it involved a very important case. Some of their members were married to unbelievers, and if such a rule should be established, these members would be compelled to separate from their unbelieving husbands or wives. Although the lawfulness of the marriage was not questioned, yet it would be unlawful for a believing husband to dwell with his wife, until God had converted her. The church resolved, probably after much discussion of the question, to write to the apostle respecting it. This letter he had received, as appears from the first verse of this chapter. On the general question of intercourse with unbelievers he treats in the fifth chapter, and decides that, to keep company or eat with persons who make no pretension to religion is not unlawful, and that, were all such persons to be esteemed unclean, and their touch polluting, Christians must needs go out of the world. On the particular case of those members of the church who were married to unbelievers the apostle treats in the chapter before us. He decides in ver. 12 and 13 that they may lawfully dwell together, and in ver. 14, for the conviction and silencing of any members of the church, who might object to his decision, he in substance says, the unbelieving husband is not unclean, so that his wife may

not lawfully dwell with him: the unbelieving wife is not unclean, so that her husband may not lawfully dwell with her. If they are unclean, then your children are unclean, and not one parent in the whole church must dwell with or touch his children, until God shall convert them; and thus Christians will be made to sever the ties that bind parents to their children, and to throw out the offspring of Christian parents into the ungodly world from their very birth, without any provision for their protection, support, or religious education.

It will be perceived in the preceding interpretation that the phrase your children is taken in a different sense from that which it obtains in any of the interpretations usually offered. It is here supposed to refer to the whole church, Had the apostle designed to speak of those children only, who have one parent a believer and the other an unbeliever, he would have said (Tv auTv) their children, instead of (Texva iu,) your children. In addressing the church, and in giving general precepts, he uses the pronouns ye and you. See preceding chapter throughout, and verses 1 and 5 of this chapter. But in ver. 8. where he gives directions applicable to particular cases, although he introduces the phrase, "I say to the unmarried and widows," he makes reference to these persons, not by the pronoun you, but them: "It is good for them to abide even as I." The same mode of speaking he continues to use as far down as to the verse in question: "let them marry,-let him not put her away,-let her not leave him." After the same manner he would have said, "else were their children unclean," had he intended only the children of such mixed cases of marriage as are referred to in the preceding part of the verse. What further confirms this opinion, is, that in the original text the substantive verb is in the present tense; your children are unclean," -a mode of speaking more suited for the stating of a parallel than a dependant

case.

66

The general principles of the preceding interpretation fall in precisely with the course of the apostle's argument commenced in the 5th chapter. When these principles have been established, it is not of vital importance to the sense of the passage to determine the translation of the preposition . Many have translated it to as it is in the

very next verse. This sense accords well with our interpretation. The unbelieving husband is sanctified to the wife, just as it is said in Titus i. 15, "unto the pure all things are pure. But perhaps the more literal rendering, in, will give the apostle's sense more accurately. While both parents lived in unbelief they were unclean to themselves, and to each other: "unto them that are defiled and unbelieving is nothing pure, but even their mind and conscience are defiled." Titus i. 15. According to the Jewish rules respecting ceremonial cleanness, the conversion of one party would not render the other party holy. But in gospel ceremonies it is different. By the abrogation of the Jewish ceremonial law, and by the conversion of the wife, the unbelieving husband (or) has become holy, not in himself, but (èv ry juvamí) in the wife. That the Jews considered Gentiles unclean as stated above, may be proved from various passages of Scripture. See Acts x. 28, xi. 3. John xviii. 28. Gal. ii. 12. Mr. Adam Clarke states in his note on John xviii. 28, "The Jews considered even the touch of a Gentile as a legal defilement."

It may now be asked, where is the proof which we propose to draw from this text against infant baptism? We have already proved that it makes nothing for it. On the contrary, it is clearly implied, in the apostle's argument, that all the children of the Corinthian Christians had no nearer relation to the church than the unbelieving husband of a believing wife. He declares that their cases are parallel; and that rules of intercourse, which would require the believing husband to separate from his unbelieving wife, would require believing parents to separate from their children. But there is no conclusiveness in this argument, if the children had been consecrated to God in baptism, and brought within the pale of the church: for then the children would stand in a very different relation to the church and to their parents from that of the unbelieving husband or wife. Therefore, unless we charge the apostle with arguing most inconclusively, infant baptism and infant church membership were wholly unknown to the Corinthian church, and if to the Corinthian church, unquestionably to all the churches of those times.

See also Tract No. 44, page 24.

THE END.

1

A

FAMILIAR DIALOGUE.

Peter. Good morning, Benjamin; whither are you going so early?

Benjamin. I am going to the Baptist Prayer Meeting.
P. Then you attend the Baptist Meeting, do you?

B. I do. I am a member of the Baptist Church-I go to the Baptist Meeting from a conviction of duty, and I esteem it a great privilege.

P. I will go with you this morning, because I wish to have a little conversation with you on the peculiarities ot your denomination.

B. You shall be welcome to a seat with me, and on the way I will explain to you as well as I can, the reasons for what you call our peculiarities.

P. Well, I must tell you that I have read and thought much of late on the ground of our differences, and with respect to the mode and subjects of baptism, I have come to the settled conclusion, that you have the best of the argument. I have satisfied myself that the original word Baptizo, signifies to immerse.

B. Can you read Greek?

P. No. But I find by all history that the Greeks, who certainly understand their own language, have from the beginning, until this day, practised immersion. Their practice is a very satisfactory comment on the meaning of the word. Besides, I have read the ample concessions of more than eighty Pedobaptist writers, that this is the meaning of the original word, and that immersion was practised by the apostles and by succeeding Christians for thirteen hundred years from the commencement of the Christian era. late as 1643, in the Assembly of Divines at Westminster, sprinkling was substituted for immersion by a majority of one-25 voted for sprinkling, 24 for immersion. This small majority was obtained by the earnest request of Dr. Lightfoot, who had acquired great influence in that Assembly. Among the concessions of Presbyterians, I find the Rev. Professor Campbell, D. D. of Scotland, confessedly the most learned Greek scholar and biblical critic of modern

As