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p296 Dear F Cavanagh, - I suppose from your letter that your boys have never been baptised. If such be the case, it is clear to me that they ought to be. I baptised myself, a number recently converted at Stafford, very recently. I look in no way on baptism or any other ordinance as a matter of obedience. I leave behind me, as being simple ignorance to refer to it, all reference to John's baptism, which was before the death and resurrection of Christ, and as far as it went would have hindered His being put to death. I reject all notion of a testimony to what we have already received, because it is entirely contrary to scripture. As to obedience; not only is obedience to ordinances, in principle, legal and unchristian, but the language of the word is, "What doth hinder me?" "Who can forbid water?" - language wholly incompatible with the idea of obedience. I reject the idea of its being witness of what we have, because I find in scripture, "Wash away thy sins" - "Buried with him by baptism unto death" - not because you are washed, or are dead - "Wherein also ye are risen" - not because you are already. I see a command to baptise, none to be baptised; nor were the apostles baptised, save Paul. But I see it evidently to be the way in which disciples were received to Christ publicly and outwardly.

It is a mistake to think that it has to do with the unity of the body: for this Christ had to ascend on high and send down the Holy Spirit, and "by one Spirit we are all baptised into one body" - but of this unity the Lord's supper is the sign, not baptism. This goes no farther than death and resurrection; what is individual, that the flesh is hopelessly bad. Men are dead to it in Christ and alive in the power of resurrection only, of which profession is outwardly made in baptism - not that we are so, but we enter in (outwardly) by this door, by dying and rising again, namely, in owning Christ dead and risen for us. There is no entering into the heavenly and eternal blessing but by the reality of this, nor properly into the outward establishment of it in the earth but by the sign of this. This is the confession made by baptism. This is, I am persuaded, the intelligence of it: as to your dear boys, this I am assured should be their mind, to do it intelligently. The recognition that if any man be in Christ, the body is dead because of sin, the Spirit life because of righteousness; that there is no mending, no remedy for the old man but death; but that in entering Christ we die and rise again in the power of a new life, in which alone we live to God.

The Lord bless them abundantly, and keep them in the deep sense of the truth of this, and in much joyful confidence in the grace of God, the Saviour, and our Father, and in Him who has called them in His love. How thankful I am to think of them as different from what they were when I saw them, though, I doubted not kind, good boys.

Yours.

1860.

[51170E]

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