Bertha and Her Baptism, page 19 by Nehemiah Adams
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undertakes to say that they are not necessary to him, or to any in this age of the world, is in peril. The only danger from forms and ordinances is when they are of human origin. We must take care and not let our revulsion from Romanism carry us to the extreme of neglecting or setting aside the ordinances of God's appointment. "There are three that bear record on earth, the Spirit, and the water, and the blood; and these three agree in one." A man may, with equal propriety, dispense with the blood, and its symbol the wine, or with the Spirit, as with the water, if God has appointed it with the other two as a witness between him and us. You notice that the Spirit is named with the two inanimate things, the blood and the water. Take care, I say to my friends, lest, in setting aside the water, you shut out that divine Spirit, who, knowing how to deal with our nature, chooses the blood and the water to be used by us in connection with our most spiritual religious exercises of the mind and heart. We have no more right to interfere with God's ordinances than with the number of the persons in the Trinity.
"All this affects me so," said Mr. Benson, "that I shall not fail to offer my child to be baptized, if I am allowed to do so. Now, there is my difficulty. Why do you think, and how do you show, that baptism must now be used as God's sign and seal of his covenant with believers for their children? When circumcision was dropped, some insist that the covenant was dropped with it, and, therefore, that there is no warrant in Scripture for baptizing children."
"Why," said Mrs. Ford, "if the coming in of Moses' dispensation did not abolish the arrangement with Abraham, why should its going out? I am inclined to think that Abraham and his seed are, to Moses and his dispensation, something like that vine to the trellis, running over it to the top of the piazza, bending itself in, you see, to accommodate itself, but having a root and a top, the one below, the other above, the short frame, which only guides it up