it would be contemptible if it were not wicked. Patristic testimony and usage stand as the immediate and unmistakable commentary on the language of the New Testament, and our author does prudently in quitting the field without show of fight.

Leaving "with satisfaction the Fathers,"-evidently an impracticable set, he comes to the question of immersion. "Two opinions are here in antagonism, one that the baptism of water in Apostolic times was an immersion, the other that it was an affusion or sprinkling. With scarcely an exception, the Baptists have decided for immersion. (!) The Greek Church sides with the Baptists, and at Moscow children are plunged in water. The Romish Church also indorses the Baptist practice. All the Protestant Churches, with the exception of Baptists, practise sprinkling." What does the author mean by saying that the Romish Church indorses the Baptist practice? Does he mean to have his readers understand that the Romish Church generally practises 'immersion instead of sprinkling, and that thus the usage of the Greek and Romish Churches coincides with that of Baptists, as against that of all other Protestant sects? No other construction can be put upon his language, although the falsehood is too glaring to render it credible that he could have intended it. The Greek Church has tenaciously maintained its original rite of immersion. The Romish Church, like most Protestant sects, has long since abandoned its early usages, and joins them in "indorsing," indeed, immersion, but practising affusion.

The author admits that if immersion was the baptism of the New Testament, we are bound to adhere to it, and condemns the "many champions of Pedobaptism who, with Neander, coolly affirm that the Apostles invariably practised immersion, but their successors are perfectly justified in doing otherwise, and then proceed to offer some sort of an apology for having substituted sprinkling." He proceeds therefore to take the bull by the horns. "We intend to show that baptism by immersion is a modern fiction, borrowed from the heathen; that neither John the Baptist nor the Apostles practised

immersion; that it was unknown to them. We will even go further, at the risk of being stigmatized as rash by our friends, and we will assert that immersion is no baptism. We will not even stop until we have proved it to be an indecency, the parody of a Christian institution, if not even a blasphemy. We pledge ourselves to thus much.”

A tolerably bold pledge. For the author thus to throw down the gauntlet, not only to his enemies, but to his friends; to challenge the whole Christian world to the encounter, requires either a good deal of learning, or a good deal of ignorance and presumption. If Rev. Philippe Wolff is not a man of extraordinary erudition and ability, then he is a man of extraordinary foolhardiness. It will be interesting to follow our new Light, and see how his pledges are redeemed.

"When," he proceeds, "the Reformers of blessed memory undertook to translate the Bible into the common vernacular, they were stopped by the Greek word Baptizo, which they did not know how to render. They were aware that this expression had more than one meaning, and that there was not any modern word, drawn from profane language, which corresponded exactly with it. Luther alone found an approach to it in the German taufen. The Reformers, it is true, and Calvin among others, inclined for immersion; but their respect for the Word of God was too great to permit them ever to make their particular views triumph through a translation affirming what the original text does not affirm."

Now, how does the author know that the "Reformers of blessed memory" did not know how to render the word baptizo? What right has he to make his ignorance the measure of their knowledge, and to libel them by imputing to them inability to render a word, than which none in the Greek language is easier to render? If the fact of a word's having "more than one meaning," or having no exact equivalent for all its shades of signification in any foreign language, is a reason for declining to translate it, then two-thirds of the words in the Greek Testament would remain in the obscurity of the original, for there are few of them whose uses are so few and definite as those of Bantizw. And where in the

writings of the Reformers does the author find the statement "that they did not know how to render" baptizo? Calvin, whom he expressly cites, was not among the doubters. He had no question as to the meaning of the word, and the mode of rendering it. He declares, in the most explicit terms, that it is perfectly well understood that Barrigw means immerse, and that immersion was the practice of the primitive Church.

But it seems from our author that some of the "Reformers of blessed memory," and Calvin among them, "inclined for immersion "-inclined for a practice which is no baptism, but only an indecent and blasphemous parody of a Christian ordinance! Can this be possible? Did these blessed Reformers really stand so far in knowledge, and taste, and discernment of what is decent and proper, below the Rev. Philippe Wolff? Did they get really down so near to the level of the Baptists ?-in fact entirely to their level so far as their judgment and preference were concerned? And is it quite fair in the author to deal out such different measure to the two parties; to extol the "Reformers of blessed memory," who inclined in their deliberate judgments for immersion, and heap abuse on the Baptists, who simply carry out the convictions of the Reformers? But the Reformers, though inclined for immersion "had too much respect for the Word of God, to permit their particular views to triumph through a translation," &c. Now we suppose this 'inclination' has reference not to a personal preference for the rite of immersion, but to their conviction that immersion was the apostolic usage. We simply ask, then, if the Reformers' respect for the Word of God was too great to permit them to render it honestly, according to their conviction of its meaning? If a man translates the Scripture, we do not know how he can well avoid translating it according to his "particular views." Rev. Philippe Wolff differs from the Reformers in being utterly dis-inclined for immersion, and in holding it in abhorrence and contempt. When, therefore, he brings his brilliant talents and extraordinary erudition to the work of illuminating the world with a new version, will not his translation be in accordance with his "particular views?" If not, we should like to see whose

"particular views" his respect for the Word of God will lead him to put forth? Surely not those of Baptist immersers, nor of the Reformers whose Baptist inclinings made them nearly as bad! None, finally, can respect the Reformers more truly than we. But they were men, and still entangled in the prejudices and errors of humanity. And we cannot avoid the conviction that a more thorough and profound respect on their part for the Divine Word, that a more implicit surrender to it of personal preference and traditional usage, would have secured to our Protestant Zion greater purity of the Christian ordinances. Had they followed more completely their convictions, some of the unseemly patches of Romanism would not still deform the beautiful habiliments of the church.

But all is as yet preliminary. Our author finally opens his formal argument by the portentous declaration that "to immerse means to drown." "After deciding to translate baptizo, the Baptists have been most unfortunate in the choice of a suitable word." They have chosen an "unpopular" word, not "understood by the common people," and which compels them "virtually to insist that John the Baptist and the Apostles drowned the believers in much water, while Jesus Christ would have drowned them in the Holy Ghost." This is unfortunate, and we know of but one alleviation of the calamity, viz: that, notwithstanding the word means to drown, yet the people who are immersed are not necessarily nor generally drowned. This is a great comfort, and gives a new significance to the old inquiry, "what's in a word ?" • Immerse' means to drown, it seems, but fortunately the word does not live up to its own signification. People who are drowned are drowned, we suppose: people who are immersed are always immersed, we know: and if things which are equal to the same thing are equal to one another, then by every law of logic and the dictionary, people who are immersed ought to be inevitably drowned. But they are not. Thousands of people immerse themselves every day without being drowned. Every person who enters a river and plunges himself completely under, is immersed, but fortunately not of course drowned, our author's Lexicon to the contrary notwithstand

ing. Nay, those Pagans from whose immersing practices the Fathers caught the hint of immersion, did they drown. themselves? The author has but to turn to p. 87 of his book and see how his own citation regarding the triple immersion in the Tiber (ter mergetur) refutes his foolish declaration. His own use of 'immersion' on every page shows that he himself does not believe that immerse means to drown.

He advances now to the argument from the classics. This would seem to be a point of some importance. The standing vernacular usage of a thousand years might justly be allowed some considerable weight in deciding the import of a word— especially one which represented a merely outward and material act, and therefore would be less affected by moral changes. How important our author deems it, may be judged from the fact that he dispatches it in about three pages of mostly irrelevant matter. He first edifies us with the meaning of " the Greek word baptizo, or as it is often met shorter, bapto.” These, then, are one and the same word, the one a shorter form of the other! It seems not to have entered his head that they are two distinct, though of course related, words, and one with significations which the other never has. "Dictionaries attribute to this word no less than fifteen different meanings, the principal of which are immerse, wash, sprinkle, purify, and dye." Now any amount of error and folly may be propounded under cover of the vague term "Dictionaries." But no decent Dictionary gives to both these words, or to either of them, all the meanings which the author selects out of his fifteen. Вáлτ means to dye, which ßartigo never does. Both mean to immerse, to dip, and neither of them ever means to sprinkle, to purify, or properly, to wash. The difference between immerse and sprinkle in English, or between immergo and spargo in Latin, is not more strongly drawn than between Barritw and ῥαίνω οι ραντίζω in Greek.

The author indulges in one citation from the Greek classics. He quotes Homer's well known ἐβάπτετο αἵματι λίμνη as proof that the word (βαπτίζω, shorter βάπτω) does not mean immerse; and then concedes that it may mean here that the lake was partially dyed with the blood of the mouse which is pre