The Practices of the Early Christians Considered, contains three tracts.
The first is by Mr. GREW, of the United States ; and contains a sort of code of public and private practice, drawn up from Scripture for the use apparently of a new set of Chris- tians withdrawn front the " Particular Baptists." The second • consists of Notes upon this code, with which the author does not seem to agree. The third, and by far the best in a literary sense, is a series of Letters by the editor, Mr. HENRY BANNERMAN, on the subject of baptism, which had been mooted by the two pre- vious writers. Mr. BANNERMAN shows, what was not dubious, that immersion, not sprinkling, was the ancient, the long-con- tinued, and without doubt the Scriptural practice. We are amongst the last persons to wish to interfere with the forms which conviction induces any set of Christians to adopt. Look- ' ing at baptism, however, as the representative of a solemn cove- Sant—a type of regeneration, an "outward sign" of an inward assumption of Christianity—we are inclined to consider the mode as a form that may be varied according to time and place; and -that a neophyte sprinkled in the arctic region or the colder part of the temperate zone, may be as properly received into the bosom .of the church, as one immersed beneath the burning suns of Syria.
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