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believe that regeneration, in adults and infants, is... -~comitant of baptism. Hence, as there can be no regeneration either before or without baptism, unbaptized infants cannot be in a regenerated state. Thirdly, there are those who profess no settled or specific view of the regeneration of infants; only they believe that all infants, dying in infancy, will be finally saved.

It is well known to the student in church history, that few, very few, since the days of the apostles, have ever openly held to the damnation of any of those infants who die in infancy. The Calvinistic school forms the largest exception. There have been those who have held that all unbaptized infants, dying in infancy, go to a sort of middle state, between heaven and hell, as the reader will see in the fifth chapter of this work. Others, as St. Austin, (see pp. 209-211,) with more consistency, held that where the want of baptism was not the fruit of any wicked and wilful disposition of the individual, he would be saved without it. The Protestant Episcopal Church, it appears, chooses, in regard to the state of unbaptized infants hereafter, to observe entire silence. (See pp. 270, 271, of this work.)

Now, all I wish here to say is, that I do not insist upon any peculiar sense of the word regenerate. The term has been adopted, in the following pages, because it conveniently expresses the doctrine of infant salvation. All I mean by it is, that infants are, whether baptized or not, in a state of grace; that they are embraced in the provisions of the atonement; that, if they die in infancy, they will be saved, and if they live, they will come under the gracious economy of Heaven, and receive the free offer of life. I wish not to contend about a word. I take the words of Christ, Matt. xix, 14, to refer to all infants, as such,—not to "elect" infants, or to baptized infants, or to the infants of Christian parents, merely. On this point, "if any man be ignorant, let him be ignorant."

I have only to add, as greater men have said before me, "If I have done well, and what is fitting the [argument,] it is that which I desired; but if slenderly and meanly, it is that which I could attain unto," 2 Mac. xv, 38.

Penn Yan, N. Y., Aug. 20, 1842.

F. G. HIBBARD.

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That the law of initiation, though changed as to its form, and
some other circumstances, is not changed as to its applicability
to infants, is proved from a variety of considerations

1. No assignable reason for such a change......

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3. This feature of the initiating rite is vital to the ordinance itself,
and not of a nature to "pass away," without a rescinding
act, like the ceremonial law

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5. We have the same kind of evidence for infant baptism that
we have for the change of the sabbath from the seventh to
the first day of the week; for receiving some books of
Scripture as canonical; and for many other things...............

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