baptism and the blood of Christ, of which, as well as of the Holy Spirit, this water is an emblem, and which is called “the blood of sprinkling” from the method of its application to the heart. From all these things, and from the absence of any specific directions on the subject, it is reasonable to conclude, that baptism may be rightly administered in each of the _three_ ways which have been mentioned. And it is too much like an undue magnifying of _the sign_, when it is attempted to make it in all respects answerable to the thing signified by it. This is the only passage _directly_ relating to baptism in the Epistle to the Romans. But there is a statement of the Apostle in the eleventh Chapter, which not only confirms what has been already said of the continuance of the Covenant with Abraham under the Christian Dispensation, but which also bears strongly upon the subject of the right of the children of believing parents to the token of the Covenant, together with their parents. The passage particularly referred to is the 24th verse of the eleventh Chapter. “For if thou wert cut out of the olive-tree which is wild by nature, and wert grafted contrary to nature into a good olive-tree, how much more shall these, which be the natural branches, be grafted into _their own olive-tree_!” The Apostle is here comparing the admission of the Gentiles into the Church of God, to the cutting off of branches from a wild olive and the grafting of them into a good olive; the good olive being the ancient church, planted, as it were, in the person of believing Abraham. ‘In the view of St. Paul, the establishment of the Christian Church was no dissolution of the Jewish Church. It is the same Society still;—the same Body Corporate. Some of its rules and regulations, indeed, have been altered: a disfranchisement of many of its old members has taken place, and new ones have been admitted: but the same Church,—the same Chartered Company,—which existed _before the Law and under the Law_, exists to this present hour under the Gospel Dispensation. It is still Abraham’s family. He is “the father of all them that believe.” “If ye be Christ’s, then are ye Abraham’s seed, and heirs according to the promise.” {61} When, therefore, any of the Jews “abide not in unbelief,” and are received into the Church of Christ, it is but “the grafting of the natural branches into _their own olive-tree_.” They are restored to the privileges which their fathers enjoyed, and are made members of the Church of God. But are their children to be left behind? Are they to be left out of the Covenant? And is this, might a converted Israelite justly ask,—Is this to be restored to our fathers’ privileges? “Circumcision was not of the law, but of the fathers.” _That_ is taken away; and what have we in its place, if baptism, which is now the token of the covenant, be withheld from our children? If circumcision was our children’s birthright before,