2. If now we examine the position of the great apostle of the Gentiles, we shall find him give place by subjection to this doctrine,—no, not for an hour. His is an independent testimony; for he was not with the eleven under the personal ministry of Christ. It is also fuller than any other; running through his thirteen epistles. First, we find that it was not his habit to baptize the converts of his own ministry; and that, upon principle. He says to the Corinthians,—“I thank God that I baptized none of you but Crispus and Gaius; lest any should say that I had baptized in my own name. And I baptized also the household of Stephanas. Besides, I know not whether I baptized any other. For Christ sent me, not to baptize, but to preach the gospel.”—1 Cor. i, 14-17. He moreover states the reason of his special devotion thus to the preaching of the gospel,—because “it pleased God by the foolishness of _preaching_ to save them that _believe_.”—v. 21. Here be it observed, the apostle speaks of preaching, not abstractly considered, but in immediate contrast with baptism. He does not baptize; but preaches, because _preaching_ is the means which God has chosen for the salvation of men _through faith_. Thus, baptism is, in the plainest terms denied the place assigned it by the theory in question. But the evidence is even more direct and conclusive. To these same Corinthians whom Paul thus reminded that he had not baptized them, he addressed a second epistle, in which he distinctly asserts that through his personal ministry the Spirit of God had been given them and new life wrought within them. “Ye are our epistle written in _your_ hearts,[111] known and read of all men; forasmuch as ye are manifestly declared to be the epistle of Christ ministered by us, written not with ink, but with the Spirit of the living God; not in tables of stone, but in the fleshly tables of the heart.” He goes on to assert his ministry to be “of the new covenant; not of the letter, but of the spirit; for the letter killeth; but the spirit giveth life.”—2 Cor. iii, 2, 3, 6. It needs no words, here, to show that thus the apostle overturns the very foundations of the theory of baptismal regeneration. Paul did not baptize the Corinthians. But he ministered to them the Holy Spirit of life and grace,—the true baptism of which he speaks so largely in his epistles. Footnote 111: That ἡμων, the reading of the Textus Receptus, should be ὑμῶν, “_your_ hearts,” is testified by a number of MSS., among which is the Sinaiticus, and is imperatively demanded by the connection.