The Westminster Confession holds that "baptism is a sacrament of the New Testament, ordained by Jesus Christ, not only for the solemn admission of the party baptized into the visible Church, but also to be unto him a sign and seal of the covenant of grace, of his ingrafting into Christ, of regeneration, of remission of sins, and of his giving up to God through Jesus Christ to walk in newness of life; which sacrament is by Christ's own appointment, to be continued in the Church to the end of the world." In the seventeenth article of the Methodist Episcopal Church, it is declared that "baptism is not only a sign of profession and mark of difference whereby Christian men are distinguished from others that are not baptized, but it is also a sign of regeneration, or the new birth. The baptism of children is to be retained in the Church." The same language is substantially used in the Articles of Religion of the Church of England, and with some addition by the Protestant Episcopal Church in the United States of America. Richard Watson, in his Institutes, Vol. II, page 646, says: "Baptism introduces the adult believer into the covenant of grace and Church of Christ, and is the seal and pledge to him, on the part of God, of the fulfillment of all its provisions in time and in eternity; while on his part he takes on him the obligation of steadfast faith and obedience. To the infant child it is a visible reception into the same covenant and Church, a pledge of acceptance through Christ, the bestowment of a title to all the graces of the covenant as circumstances may require, and as the mind of the child may be capable or made capable of receiving it, and as it may be sought in future life by prayer, when the period of reason and moral choice shall arrive. It conveys also the present blessing of Christ; of which we are assured by his taking children in his arms and blessing them, which blessing can not be merely nominal, but must be substantial and efficacious. It secures, too, the gift of the Holy Ghost in those secret spiritual influences by which the actual regeneration of those children who die in infancy is effected, and which are a seed of life in those who are spared, to prepare them for instruction in the Word of God, as they are taught it by parental care to incline their will and affections to good, and to begin and maintain in them the war against inward and outward evil, so that they may be Divinely assisted, as reason strengthens, to make their calling and election sure. In a word, it is both as to infants and adults, the sign and pledge of that inward grace which, though modified in its operations by the difference of their circumstances, has respect to, and flows from, a covenant relation to each of the three persons in whose one name they are baptized--acceptance by the Father, union with Christ as the head of his mystical body, the Church, and the communion of the Holy Ghost. To these advantages must be added the respect which God