Footnotes

FOOTNOTES ft1 Baptism, as an emblem, points out, 1. The washing away of the guilt and pollution of sin. 2. The pouring out of the Holy Spirit. In Scripture it is made an emblem of these two, and of these only. Some of the superstitions above alluded to sin therefore by excess: but immersion sins by defect. It retains the emblematical character of the rite as to the washing away of sin; but it loses it entirely as to the gift of the Holy Ghost; and, beyond the washing away of sin, is an emblem of nothing for which we have any Scriptural authority to make it emblematical. Immersion, therefore, as distinct from every other mode of applying water to the body, means nothing. To say that it figures our spiritual death and resurrection, has, we have seen, no authority from the texts used to prove it; and to make a sudden pop under water to be emblematical of burial, is as far-fetched a conceit as any which adorns the Emblems of Quarles, without any portion of the ingenuity.