"For this cause it was that the church received an order from the apostles to give baptism even to infants." In his homily on Lev. 12, he says: "According to the usage of the church, baptism is given even to infants, when, if there were nothing in infants that needed forgiveness and mercy, the grace of baptism would seem to be superfluous." In his homily on Luke 14, he says: "Infants are baptized for the forgiveness of sins." It was the practice, then, in Origen's day, to baptize infants. He tells the people of his day, to whom he preaches and writes, why it was that the church had received a command from the apostles to baptize them, not proving to them the fact of history, but, taking that as well known, explaining the theological reason for it, as he understood it. It is now 1857. Eighty-five years ago, the length of time after the apostles to the birth of this man, brings us back to 1772. There is good Dr. Sales, who was born in 1770. Suppose that he should say that steamboats came from England at the time that the Hudson river was discovered, and that they had plied there ever since? No man in his right mind (not to say a scholar like Origen), however singular his opinions, would assert, for veritable history, that which was as palpably false as such a fiction respecting steamboat navigation upon the Hudson would be. Yet Origen asserts that the practice of infant baptism was received directly from the apostles. Everybody could contradict him if he were in error. _Mr. M._ But we know that he was in error in saying that forgiveness of sins was a consequence of baptism. _Dr. D._ Very well. The erroneous opinions, or practices, of men, with regard to the shape of the earth, did not prove that there was no earth in their day. On the contrary, their theories and speculations are proof, if any were needed, that the earth then existed, surely. A man who boldly advocates a theory, fears to assert for fact that which all the world knows to be false. _Mr. M._ If infant baptism were then practised, and had been received from the apostles, why should Origen assert it in his books, and in preaching, since everybody must have known it sufficiently. Does not this prove that it was not generally believed? _Dr. D._ Why, my dear sir, am I not every Sabbath telling how that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures? People do not need to be informed of it as a truth of history, but they need to be reminded of it, and to be exhorted in view of it. So of every doctrine, and everything connected with religion. We tell the plainest, the most familiar, truths to our church-members, continually; and the common repetition of those truths is, rather, a proof of their general acceptation than otherwise. _Mr. M._ In a court of justice, such testimony as that of Origen would certainly be conclusive, in the case of a patent-right, or maritime discovery. But you said that there were other testimonies of equal weight.