Infant baptism scriptural and reasonable Author:Samuel Miller Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: SERMON III. THE MODE OF ADMINISTERING BAPTISM. Can any man forbid water, that these should not be baptized?— Acts x. 47. Having endeavoured,, in the pre... more »ceding discourses, to show that the baptism of infants is a scriptural and reasonable service, I now proceed to inquire into the mode in which this ordinance ought to be administered. And here, it is well known, that there is a very serious diversity of opinion. On the one hand, our Baptist brethren believe that there is no true baptism unless the whole body be plunged under water. While on the other hand, we, and a very great majority of the Christian world, maintain that the mode of baptism by sprinkling or affusion is a method just as valid and lawful as any other It will be my object, in the present discourse, to support the latter opinion; or rather to maintain, from Scripture, and from the best usage of the Christian church, that baptism by sprinkling or affusion not only rests on as good authority as immersion; but that it is a method decisively more scriptural, suitable, and edifying. From the very nature of this subject it will require some little extent of discussion to place it in a proper light, and some closeness of attention to apprehend and follow the arguments which may be employed. Let me then request from you a candid and patient hearing. If I know my own heart, it is my purpose to exhibit the subject in the light of truth; and to advance nothing but that which appears to rest on the authority of Him who instituted the ordinance under consideration, and who is alone competent to declare his will concerning it. And 1, Let us attend to the real meaning of the original word which is employed in the New Testament to express this sacramental rite. The Greek word (3art ifco, which we translate bapti...« less