I shall now produce the testimony of the blessed martyr Cyprian, who was for some time contemporary with Origen; and next to him, the most noted Christian writer of that age. Cyprian was constituted bishop or minister of Carthage, in the year 248, and Origen died in the year 252. The testimony of this ancient saint, to which I now have an immediate reference, was occasioned by a question proposed to him, by one Fidus, a _presbyter_, or minister in the country, viz. Whether _an infant might be baptized before he was eight days old_? The reason of his doubt, it seems, was an article in the law respecting circumcision, which, under the Old Testament dispensation, required that infants should be circumcised on the eighth day from their birth. Pursuant to the aforesaid question, an ecclesiastical council of sixty-six bishops, having convened at Carthage, A. D. 253, Cyprian proposed a resolution of the following import, viz. “that an infant might be baptized on the second or third day, or at any time after its birth; and that circumcision, besides being a sacramental rite, had something in it of a typical nature; and particularly, in the circumstance of being administered on the eighth day, which ceased at the coming of Christ, who has given us baptism, the spiritual circumcision; in which ordinance, we are not thus restricted, with respect to the age or time of administration.” To this resolution the council agreed unanimously; as it appears from the testimony of Cyprian in his epistle to Fidus, from which I shall extract a few paragraphs, in order to show the sentiments of those venerable and ancient saints relative to infant-baptism.—The inscription is as follows: “Cyprian and the rest of the colleagues, who are present in council, in number sixty-six, to Fidus our brother, “Greeting.