into the Jewish church, as Rahab, Ruth, and others but not one word is said of their being baptized. There are laws of admission given by Moses (3). One is this, "When a stranger will keep the passover to the Lord, let all his males be circumcised: and then let him come near and keep it. One law shall be to him that is home-born, and unto the stranger." Where now is the divine institution of either baptizing or washing a proselyte all over in water? One law shall be to him that is home-born, and unto the stranger. That law is, Let all his males be circumcised; and then let him come near. Dr. John Owen calls the opinion, that christian baptism came from the Jews, an opinion destitute of all probability yet Dr. Wall founds his main argument in favour of infant-baptism on the practice, which the Jews, he says, had of baptizing proselytes to their religion. The fact cannot be proved, and the divine authority of it is absolutely denied.

iii. It must be inquired to what practical uses the subject can be applied. The proper answer is, to none.. Be it observed, that a law to dip is not a law to sprinkle: a law for a man to dip himself is not an authority for another man to dip him; a law to dip instructed proselytes is not a law to baptize infants; a law to wash the first convert of a family is not an authority to wash all the descendants of that convert; a law to enjoin three things, circumcision, washing, and sacrifice, is not fulfilled by a performance of only one of the three. The best use, then, that can be made of a knowledge of Jewish baptisms (as they are improperly called) is to pity the apostasy of the Jews, and to set them an example of renouncing that fatal error, from which all their ills originally proceeded, an implicit faith in guides, who assumed the authority of God, who pretended to regulate religion by their Bath Col, or daughter of a voice, that is, the traditions of enthusiasts, who issued laws to bind conscience, and who, like some Etruscan statues, have not one thing in the world now to recom. mend them to attention, except their antiquity.

(3) Exod. xii. 48, 49.

CHAP. VI.

PAGAN

WHETHER BAPTISM WERE AN IMITATION OF PAGAN

ABLUTIONS.

IT hath happened to Christianity as to Judaism, the divine institutes of both have been said to be copied from the rites of Pagans; but this is not credible, it cannot be proved a fact, and it would go, could it be admitted, to cover Moses and John with shame for practising a fraud so gross as the introducing of foreign customs, in the name, and pretendedly by the express command, of God himself; an insult on the Deity, which might easily have been detected, and of which the characters of the men could not furnish even a suspicion. Among the Jews, who valued themselves upon their being a select people, a chosen generation, Jehovah's portion of mankind, who held all Pagan rites in deep abhorrence, and by a native Jew, who had never travelled, and who, it is credible, knew nothing of Pagan rituals, it is extremely rash to suppose from the mere connection of the application of water to the human body in religious exercises, that such a rite was, or could possibly be incorporated into a revealed religion in Judea.

There are three opinions, in general, among learned men concerning those religious ceremonies, which were common among the worshippers of the one living and true God and the various professors of Polytheism. It is allowed on all hands, that there is, and always was an evident similarity of religious rites, and that the temples of idols have some ceremonies resembling those of the church of God. Some think, the founders of Pagan religions incorpora. ted into their superstitious ceremonials some rites borrowed from the Jews. Others suppose that Moses and Christ took some Pagan ceremonies, proper in themselves, and hurtful only in the hands of infidels, and incorporated them into the service of the true God. Each of these opinions is attended with great difficulties, and a third is the least objectionable. This is, that the similarity is merely accidental, or, to speak more like a Christian, that the rites of true religion among the Jews were positive institutes of God, and that the practice of similar rites among Pagans rose originally out of the

exercise of common sense among the first fathers of mankind or out of positive institutes, which were debased afterward by their descendants into superstition.

Of all religious ceremonies, that of ablution, or washing with water immediately before divine worship, is the most general, and the conformity the most obvious. The Egyptians, the Greeks, the Romans and all Pagans had divers washings. Descended from the same parents as the Jews, they originally worshipped one God, the God of Noah, Job, Jethro, and Melchizedek, and him they approached with clean washed hands, expressive of that purity of heart, which was necessary to his approbation of their service. Hence this exclamation, If I be wicked, though I wash myself ever so clean, yet mine own clothes shall abhor me (1). In like manner Homer (2) represents Hector as afraid to offer a libation to Jove before he had washed his hands. He makes Telemachus wash his hands, and Penelope her clothes, before they prayed to God (3). Virgil describes Æneas as afraid to touch sacred things till he had washed himself in running water (4). There is no need to suppose

either that the Jews imitated the Pagans, or that the Pagans imitated the Jews. It was natural to consider God as a pure and holy being, and it was natural for a conqueror to wash off the blood of enemies from his hands after a battle, before he approached God to praise him for victory.

In after times when superstition had multiplied gods or demons, so that in Greece only there were thirty thousand (5), it became necessary to divide and class them, and regulate their rituals according to their rank. Some were celestial, others terrestrial and infernal; some were ærial, others aquatick, and they were treated with different degrees of respect (6). When the superior gods were approached, the worshippers washed themselves all over, or, if that could not be, they washed their hands. When sacred rites were performed to the inferior deities, a sprinkling sufficed (7). None were approached without sprinkling or washing the hands, (2) Homeri Iliad. (3) Homeri in Odyss. (4) Virgil Æneid. Lib. ii. 719. (5) Hesiod op. et dier. Lib. i. 250.

(1) Job ix. 29.

(6) Orph. ad Museum.

(7) Virgil An. ii. 719. Donec me flumine vivo abluero---corpus pargit aqua, vi. 636.

the head, or the whole body. For these purposes a vessel of clean fountain or river water was placed at the entrance of Pagan temples. A priest in waiting sprinkled those who went to worship three times with boughs (8) of laurel or olive dipped in water, and a written order was affixed in the porch that no man should proceed further without washing (9).

The heathens, not content with this simple expressive rite, multiplied religious ablutions to excess. The Egyptian priests washed themselves four times in the twenty-four hours (1). Other nations went into greater extremes, they washed and sprinkled not men only, but all utensils of worship, sometimes their fields, often their houses, and annually their gods (2). The Romans had a general lustrum every five years, when the censor sacrificed a sow, a sheep, and a bull, and lustrated or sprinkled all the Roman people (3). There are pictures of lustration on monuments yet in being (4).

It is not to be supposed that all the heathens believed polytheism. The wisest of them held the popular religion in contempt, and exactly resembled some modern deists in the church of Rome. They had a private faith for their own use, and a public profession for popular purposes. Their own good sense disabused themselves but they thought it hazardous to undeceive the common people, who, they supposed, had not sense enough to make a proper use of such intelligence as they could have given them. Hence came, most likely, the mysteries of Isis, the same as Ceres, Cybele, or the mother of the gods; those of Mithra, the same as Apollo, the sun, or fire; and those of Eleusis. The priests initiated only wise men into these mysteries, in which probably they were taught that the popular deities were nothing but symbols of the perfections and works of one almighty God (5). This was a very criminal disposition. It left them without excuse, because, when they knew God, they glorified him not as God. By professing themselves wise, they discovered themselves fools.

(8) Plin. Nat. Hist. v. 30----Sozom. Hist. Eccl. vi. 6.229. Ovid. Metam. vii. 2.

(1) Herodotus ii 37.

Eneid, vi.

(9) Potter's Greek Antiquities. (2) Ovid. Fast. iv...Lucan. Pharsal. i.----Tertul. De Bapt. cap. v. (3) Varro De Re Rust. Lib. ii. c. 1.....Tacit. Lib. iv.....Dion. Halic..... Liv. (4) Ezech. Spanheim. De Præst. Numism. tom. ii. edit. Verbeirgii. Amstel. 1717. (5) Pluche Hist. of the Heavens. Vol. i. c. ii. s. 45,

Many ceremonies were used to initiate people into these mysteries, and ablution was one. It was an odd conceit of Justin Martyr, in which, however, he was followed by Tertullian, and other fathers, that the devil inspired the heathens to mimick, in these ablutions, the baptism practised in the christian church (6). It would be in vain to object, that the ablutions used by the Pagans to initiate persons into their mysteries were far more ancient than the institution of baptism itself for these fathers inform their readers that the prophet Isaiah had foretold his waters shall be sure, and bread shall be given him; that the devil understood the prophet to foretel, in these words, the institution of baptism and the Lord's supper; and that he set up his ab. lutions in order to be forehand with Christ, and so to discredit his ordinances when he should appoint them. Satan thus prepared Paganism to say to Christianity, Have you ceremonies? So have I. Do you baptize? So do I. The devil of the fathers was an arch droll!

It is a just, and, it may be hoped, not an unseasonable moral reflection, that Pagan ablution was a sort of publick homage, which natural religion paid to the purity and perfection of God, and an universal acknowledgement of the indispensable necessity of virtue in man, in order to his enjoyment of the first great Cause.

CHAP. VII.

OF THE INSTITUTION OF BAPTISM BY JESUS CHRIST.

JESUS CHRIST before his death promised his apostles, that after his resurrection he would meet them. on a mountain in Galilee (1). Immediately after his resurrection, the angel, who informed the women at the sepulchre that he was risen, directed them to go quickly and tell his disciples that he was risen from the dead, and that he was going before them into Galilee, and there they should see him (2). As they were going to

(6) Justin. Apol.- ado. Tryph. Tertul. De coron, mil. cap. xv. De prescript. ado. Hær. cap. xl.-.--De Bapt. cap. v. --- vid etiam not. Pamelii ...Anton, Franc. Gorii. Museum Etrus. tom. i. Florent. 1737. Mark xiv. 28. (2) Matt. xxviii, 7—10.

(1) Matt. xxvi. 32.