_Mr. Roscoe._--"Why, in despair. You say he needs a moral change to fit him for heaven; but as that change cannot be produced without baptism--_and he has undergone the ceremony, which cannot be repeated_--you place him under the ban of reprobation, unless you adopt the only alternative which remains for you, that of admitting him to heaven in his depraved state. Mr. Cole, in his sermon, was very severe on the evangelical clergy for two things; he asserted that, by their awful strain of preaching, they generally destroy the peace of society; and by holding out the hope of salvation to the most guilty, they destroy its virtue. These were certainly heavy charges; but do you not perceive that they are charges which may be brought with strict logical accuracy against the advocates of baptismal regeneration? For, if they follow out their doctrine to its legitimate consequences, they are compelled either to admit a man into heaven in an unregenerated state, who by a relapse into sin forfeits his baptismal rights, or, after his forfeiture, to tell him that he cannot be regenerated, by which he is systematically and inevitably consigned over to despair." _Rev. Mr. Roscoe._--"Well, I confess that the doctrine appears involved in more oppressive difficulties than I ever conceived; and yet, from the quotations which Mr. Cole gave us on Sunday from the Fathers, it appears to have been a doctrine which was received into the church very early and very generally." _Mr. Roscoe._--"Yes, to quote the language of an eloquent writer, 'it is well known that, from a very early period, the most extravagant notions prevailed in the church with respect to the efficacy of baptism, and its absolute necessity in order to attain salvation. The descent of the human mind from the spirit to the letter--from what is vital and intellectual to what is ritual and external in religion--is the true source of idolatry and superstition in all the multifarious forms they have assumed; and as it began early to corrupt the patriarchal religion, so it soon obscured the lustre and destroyed the simplicity of the Christian institute. In proportion as genuine devotion declined, the love of pomp and ceremony increased; the few and simple rites of Christianity were extolled beyond all reasonable bounds; new ones were invented, to which mysterious meanings were attached, till the religion of the New Testament became, in process of time, as insupportable a yoke as the Mosaic law. The first effects of this spirit are discernible in the ideas entertained of the ordinance of baptism. From an erroneous interpretation of the figurative language of a few passages in Scripture, in which the sign is identified with the thing signified, it was universally supposed that baptism was invariably accompanied with a supernatural effect, which totally changed the state and character of the candidate, and constituted him a child of God, and an heir of the kingdom of heaven. Hence