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CEYLON BRANCH 



son without these requisites, baptism cannot in truth be 

 administered. — Acts 8. 36, 37. 



" 2. — In what light to regard such baptized persons ? or 

 whether as christians? — and whether in virtue of their baptism 

 their children also should be baptized ? We hesitate not to 

 declare that such a person is to be regarded, not a true chris- 

 tian, but a baptized heathen : it is popery to suppose that 

 baptism christens or makes christian. Do we not know, bre- 

 thren, that by faith, by the calling of God, and by regenera- 

 tion, on forsaking heathenism, the world and the devil, a man 

 becomes a christian. Hence then the necessary conclusion, 

 that children of such baptized heathens may not be baptized, 

 unless that which is holy be given unto the dogs. Such child- 

 ren can found no right to baptism, because forsooth their 

 parents have usurped it. 



"3. — How far does Christianity extend? How far can 

 one, being a christian in name, proceed before he falls away 

 altogether from Christianity ? Do net idolatry, devil-worship, 

 incantations and such like cause an entire apostacy? We 

 trust, brethren, that your opinion herein also is one with ours ; 

 that, namely, the sin of unbelief is apostacy, Kom. 11. 20. If 

 a person infringes Christ and the covenant of grace ; when for 

 example like the Jew he does not look for the Messiah, or like 

 the Turk places Mahomet next to and above Christ, or like 

 the Socinian denies Christ's atonement ; so also when he who 

 lapses into the chief sin of heathenism, and continues therein, 

 which is idolatry, not of the second but of the first command- 

 ment, a cleaving to the service of the devil, and to incantations, 

 he has forsaken the profession of Christianity : what else is the 

 meaning of 2 Corinth 6, 14 to 18? 



" 4. — Now follows the last and grand case, (and O, may it 

 be the happy state of God's Church among you seldom or 



