and unanswerable. It follows, therefore, that those inferences are also established as true; and if so, their practical bearings are numerous, and momentous, and it might seem appropriate to disclose them here. But though the main position has been most clearly proved, yet its whole strength has not been presented, nor can it be till I have considered some of Dr. Carson's attacks on my former articles a little more in detail. In doing this I shall have occasion to adduce still further evidence from the Fathers, so various, pointed, and definite, that, in my judgment, not even a pretext for doubt will remain. Having done this, I shall close by a more full exhibition of the practical bearings of the results at which we have arrived. It was, indeed, my intention to finish the discussion in this article. But the reception of Dr. Carson's violent attack, and the general interest now felt in the subject, seemed to indicate the propriety, not to say necessity, of a discussion more thorough and extended than is consistent with the limits of one article.

CHAPTER II.

Ar the close of my last article I made the following remarks. "It was my intention to finish the discussion in this article; but the reception of Dr. Carson's violent attack, and the general interest now felt in the subject, seemed to indicate the propriety, not to say necessity, of a discussion more thorough and extended than is consistent with the limits of one article.' I proceed, therefore, to complete the discussion thus announced.

§ 59. Reasons for a further notice of Dr. Carson.

It may perhaps be alleged by some, that it is needless to take any further notice of Dr. Carson. For if his fundamental principles are false, as I have shown, then all that grows out of them is false, and therefore there is no need of exposing his errors in detail. Besides, the spirit of his work is so bad, that it cannot exert any power over a candid mind: indeed Dr. Carson has completely exposed himself, and totally destroyed his own power, by the manner of his reply. Besides, it is humiliating to argue with an antagonist who so far forgets the laws of honorable controversy, as to indulge in such assumptions of superior wisdom, and such gross personalities, as fill his reply. Such an antago. nist is more properly answered by a dignified silence.

Such things may be said, and I freely admit with much plausibility; indeed such considerations have often occurred to my own mind, in reading Dr. Carson's reply.

But it must be remembered that no organized body of men is willing to see the truth of principles which are at war with the fundamental principles on which they are organized; and if

principles which they are unwilling to see, are established, they are always more desirous to overlook and forget them, than to apply them, and carry them out to their ultimate results. And if we would correct errors which are kept alive not by logic, but by organic power, we must not only develope principles, but seek from God the discretion and energy needed in order wisely and efficiently to apply them. Then, by his aid, may we hope to see such errors finally and thoroughly destroyed.

Moreover, the fact that a work is written in a bad spirit, is not always a sufficient reason for not giving it a thorough and detailed answer. The bad spirit of a work may operate in two ways. It may either react upon the author, and destroy his power, or it may infect and corrupt the body in whose behalf it was written, and bring them down to its own low standard. But so strong are the temptations of party spirit, and so powerful is the unsubdued pride of organized bodies even of good men, that a zealous partisan, though he writes in a bad spirit, is notwithstanding applauded and hailed as a leader, if he seems to argue the cause of the party with power. In short, organic bodies are always in danger of preferring intellectual power, and the victory of their own peculiar principles, to holiness and truth. And if they do, a work written with intellectual power, but in a bad spirit, will corrupt the whole body: like poison, it will diffuse itself through the whole system. Hence, to write in a bad spirit, is the highest sin which a man of great intellectual power can commit, for it is throwing poison most malignant into the very springs of spiritual life. Nor can any one body of Christians be corrupted, without endangering the spiritual life of others. For pride in one body tends to beget both pride and anger in all others, and to excite a spirit of bitter and malignant recrimination, by which the Spirit of God is grieved and provoked to take his flight.

In all such cases it is our duty to seek for grace and wisdom from God, not only to resist in ourselves the infection of the bad spirit which is poisoning the body politic, but also to destroy its malignant power, by stripping off the garb of piety in which it

seeks to veil itself, and exposing its true and pestilential nature. Then, by the blessing of God, will its infectious power be destroyed by the fire of divine truth and holy abhorrence, and thus will the moral nature of the community be restored to soundness, and the plague be stayed.

Had any person in the Baptist denomination undertaken to do this work in the case of Dr. Carson, it would have indicated a moral soundness in that body which would have been cheering to any holy heart. It is therefore with no small grief that I have noticed the fact, that on both sides of the Atlantic, some of the leading Baptist presses have bestowed on Dr. Carson's works on baptism, and especially on his reply to me, absolute and unqualified praise. Nor have I ever seen or heard even a subdued whisper of censure, or even a remote intimation that fully to sympathize with the spirit of his works would create the least danger to individuals or to the denomination. Indeed some have written as if they were so thoroughly infected and pervaded by that spirit, that no standard was left by which a bad spirit could be detected, and no moral energy remained by which it could be resisted or abhorred.

Indeed, if it were now the design of the admirers of Dr. Carson on both sides of the Atlantic, to recognise and exhibit him as the great leader and champion of the Baptist cause on earth, the great incarnation, so to speak, of the Baptist spirit and Baptist principles, they could not use towards him language of higher praise than they have already used.

The following piece exhibits the opinion of the Christian Watchman, the leading Baptist paper in New England, in connexion with the opinion of the London Baptist Magazine.

66 DISCUSSION ON BAPTISM.

"The London Baptist Magazine for May notices a late pamphlet from the pen of Alexander Carson, the celebrated Greek scholar, entitled 'Baptism not Purification,' in reply to Edward

Beecher, President of Illinois College, who has undertaken to show that the word baptize is synonymous with the word purify. Mr. B.'s article, which was originally published in the Biblical Repository, was published in a separate pamphlet in England, and the reviewer, referring to this newly-received theory, says: 'Dr. Carson has seized it with both his hands, divested it of every particle of covering, torn it limb from limb, dissected it with the minutest accuracy, and then, without the slightest token of tenderness or pity, committed the fragments to the flames. If its admirers who extolled it so loudly in its prosperous days, now look on in silence, pronouncing no funeral panegyric, and leaving its relentless destroyer unpunished, it will give the public a poor opinion of the value of their friendship. We cannot follow Dr. Carson through his triumphant course. He shows, to use his own language, that Mr. Beecher proceeds on an axiom that is false, fanatical, and subversive of all revealed truth, namely, that meaning is to be assigned to words in any document, not from the authority of the use of the language ascertained by acknowledged examples, but from views of probability as to the thing related, independently of the testimony of the word.'

"Dr. Carson, with his vast critical resources, is the very man to perform such a work as this, and we have no doubt he has done it thoroughly; and, perhaps, it was needed in England, as quite a flourish of trumpets was made when this new theory was broached there, but it is scarcely needed in this country, for Mr. Beecher's theory is a very harmless thing here. It is probable that it would hardly have been noticed at all but for the respectability of the periodical through which it appeared."

In the preface to the American edition of his work on Baptism it is stated, "No one, it is believed, has made that deep and thorough research into the writings of the Greeks, in order to settle the usus loquendi of the words βάπτω and βαπτίζω, as has Dr. Carson."

In the Scottish Guardian the following character of Dr. Carson is given: "As a profound and accurate thinker, an able meta