This long title almost renders a description of the book unnecessary. The book, however, besides what is described in the title-page, contains as an appendix the “Letter concerning the Religious Societies,” from which quotations have been already made, and altogether consists of two hundred and ninety-three pages 12mo. A few extracts may be useful, as illustrating the writer’s opinions, and his mode of expressing them. Speaking of the doctrine of transubstantiation, he says:—“It overthrows the very nature of a sacrament, and leaves nothing for an outward sign; it introduces the most monstrous absurdities, which, if granted, would render the Christian religion the most absurd and most unreasonable in the world; it involves the most horrid, as well as most ridiculous consequences, such as that our Saviour did eat His own body, and gave it to His disciples to eat; it makes Christians the worst cannibals to eat their God a thousand times over; and it contradicts the very nature of a body, which cannot be in two places at the same time, much less in earth and in heaven,” (p. 19 and 20.) On the subject of baptism, he writes:—“In baptism, we are so far regenerate as to be grafted into the body of Christ’s Church, and to partake of its privileges by the operation of His Holy Spirit within us, who will never be wanting to us or forsake us, unless we ourselves put a bar to the divine assistance by confirmed evil habits, and by a wicked life. But since the divine image, which we there recovered, is very often obscured again by the temptations of the world and the devil, and the remains of sin within us, there is need enough for our being renewed again by repentance; nor has God here left us without hope or comfort, but has appointed a remedy even for those who sin after baptism, and that is this other sacrament of the body and blood of the Lord, wherein we renew our covenant with Him, and receive new strength to obey His commands,” (p. 37.) In another place he writes:—“We say not that regeneration is always _completed_ in baptism, but that it is begun in it; a principle of grace is infused, which we lost by the fall, which shall never be wholly withdrawn, unless we quench God’s Holy Spirit by obstinate habits of wickedness. There are _babes_ as well as _strong men_ in Christ,” (p. 205.) The same view of baptism was substantially held by his son John. The latter, in his sermon on the New Birth, observes:—“It is certain our Church supposes that all who are baptized in their infancy are, at the same time, born again; and it is allowed that the whole office for the baptism of infants proceeds upon this supposition. Nor is it an objection of any weight against this, that we cannot comprehend how this work can be wrought in infants. For neither can we comprehend how it is wrought in a person of riper years.”[150] ----- Footnote 150: Wesley’s _Works_, vol. vi. p. 69. -----