But indeed, My Dear Friend, will not the plain truth of the case justify us in further remarking, that the plan of education laid down by our Church in the three formularies already specified, is only regarded by us as calculated to occupy the attention of our childish years while yet under maternal tuition; or that it may do well enough for the instruction of our Charity Schools and the children of the poor: and when we enter upon Greek and Latin authors, is not this very entrance into heathen literature the usual signal for laying aside the early instructions of our former years? or at least of admitting them to so secondary a place in our education, (if indeed it can be called secondary,) that from mere desuetude they are treated with indifference and neglect. And thus these admirable formularies become little more than a dead letter, a rule without practice, a system without observance, a privilege without enjoyment. And can it be the subject of wonder to a reflecting mind, that

the education given by our Public Schools as they were established at the Reformation, or before or after that period. At Winchester and Eton founded before the Reformation, and at the Charter House, founded since, when the purity of the principles of the Reformation had declined, Hebrew is not taught; while at St. Paul's, Westminster, and Merchant Taylor's, founded during Reforming times, the Hebrew language still continues to be taught. The opportunity of early instruction in the rudiments of knowledge, once lost, is seldomregained amidst the occupations of after life; a remark which many of us can confirm by painful experience.

a course of education, Christian in name and heathen in effect, should produce its proper fruits; that a defective principle should issue in a defective practice, and that among all ranks of our people, and all the great moral executive of the country-the Cabinet, the Legislature, the Bar, the Magistracy, and the Pulpit-and in that perhaps chief organ of moral influence, the domestic circle, where first principles are usually formed into practice the neglect of a sound pious education, provided by our truly Christian Church, should be visited by the state of society we behold; decency substituted for piety, form for substance, ordinances for devotion, and where the rottenness of heathen corruption seeks in vain for concealment under the naildeep film of a Christian profession and a Christian name.

From this self-inflicted state of moral debasement to raise our still blessed country by the application of that system of education provided by a Church which she still upholds and venerates, is the design of the following hints. I profess myself hopeless of the revival of sound Christianity in our Church, but by a recurrence to the primitive principle on which she is founded, salvation by grace through faith in the Redeemer. This, I apprehend, to be the great prevailing principle of our Baptismal service, and its kindred formularies. It is the free promise of mercy to the children of believing Parents,

which at once encourages the Parent to present his Infant for incorporation into the Communion of the saints—the Child to holy effort, and holy perseverance in his Christian course the Sponsors to undertake and to persist in their tutelary work with any hope of success-and the Church to extend her interest to every such incorporated little one, as a nascent believer, growing up under her prayers and affectionate communion, a sound member of that body of which Christ is the Head, and thus privileged to be a child of God, and an heir of glory.

LETTER II.

THE PARENTS.

Ir we ask then, how are the benefits of Infant baptism to be secured, so as to answer the ends of a holy education? we answer, from faith in the general promises made to believing Parents in behalf of their Children, and particularly in the promise made at the celebration of this Sacrament to all who partake of it in faith. And these relate to the PARENTS-the SPONSORS-the INFANT baptised-and the CHURCH.

It is surely no small consolation to Christian Parents and to those who belong to the communion of our Church, in common with others who have entered into the married state," reverently, discreetly, advisedly, soberly, and in the fear of God," "that they may see their Children christianly and virtuously brought up" to the "praise and honour" of God. According to the doctrine of our Church, founded on the word of God, the loveliest Child living is " by nature born in sin, and the Child of wrath," "forasmuch as all men are conceived and born in sin, and none

can enter into the kingdom of God except he be regenerate and born anew of water and the Holy Ghost." It must therefore be the leading desire of these Parents' hearts that their Children should be partakers of covenant mercies, and should be interested in all the blessings connected with that name, than which there is none other given "under heaven whereby we must be saved." And as Baptism has ever been considered by the Church of Christ as that initiating Sacrament, by which the Child receives the solemn investiture of his privileges as a believer in Christ; and as it is eminently so considered by that portion of the Church to which they belong; while they will hope for no blessing upon their Child but as faith draws it from the promise of a gracious God, so they will be desirous that every blessing of the promise should be sealed to him by that Sacrament which is its sign and pledge.

It might be expected, that, as our Church takes for granted, that all the Infants of her members will be presented for the sign and seal of their Church-membership, in the initiatory Sacrament of Baptism, any formal mention of the grounds of Infant-baptism might be spared, and that nothing more was necessary than to insist on the privileges and duties of this Sacra

1 Acts iv. 12.