The religion of childhood

Front matter

J LIBRARY OF CONGRESS. !j

{UNITED STATES OP AMERICA. |

THE

Chapter I. History Of The Doctrine Of Infant Salvation

Doctrine history — Our argument Scriptural — Doctrine not new — Object practical — Two causes have embarrassed the doctrine of infant salvation — Baptismal regeneration — Early doctrine of the Church — Ambrose — African Church — African Synod of A. D. 418 — Augustine — Tertullian — Fulgentius — Pope Gregory — Peter Lombard — The Schoolmen — Lay baptism in the English Church — Geographical theory of hades — Apology for the ancient Church — Augustine's Confessions— Wickliffe — John Huss — Protestant Reformers — Doctrine of the Church of England — Lutheran Church — Reformed Church — Dr. Woods — Methodist Episcopal Church — Special election — Arminian controversy — Dr. Wall on Church of England doctrine — Bishop Jeremy Taylor — Presbyterian Confession of Eaith Pages 27-69

Chapter II. Relation Of Childhood To Natural Depravity

Importance of a right estimate of our moral condition by nature — Infidel theory — Scriptural sense of our corruption — Various theories of depravity and sin — The true statement of the doctrine — Bible argument — Views of Pelagius — Of Augustine — Of Arminius — Peculiarities of Biblical psychology — Church of England doctrine — Jeremy Taylor on the doctrine of Christian antiquity — Final statement — President Edwards's views 70-107

Chapter III. Relation Of Childhood To Christ

Children are reckoned to Christ — Proof from Rom. v, 12-21 — Proof from Matt, xviii, 1-14— Proof from Matt, x, 40-42 -From Matt.

22 CONTENTS.

Chapter IV. Relation Of Childhood To Christ Continued

Recapitulation of the Bible argument — Are infants regenerate ? — Various significations of the word — Bishop Hopkins's view — Dr. Wall — Dr. Waterland — Archbishop Seeker — Archbishop Usher — Bishop Bedell — Mr. Goode — Mr. Wesley — Richard Watson — Luther — Chrysostom — Gregory Nazianzen — Ccelestius — Dr. Some — The question stated — Meaning of yevvaw, gennao — John iii, 5 — Regeneration and life often synonymous — Use of #«m'£w, to illuminate — Dr. Bomberger on infant regeneration — Regeneration not baptism — Spiritual — Regeneration and conversion defined — New creation — Children capable of a principle of divine life — Bishop Beveridge — Bishop Davenant — Bishop Taylor — Witsius — Dean Comber — Early Protestant divines — The subject again stated — St. Augustine — Bishop Taylor — Moral state of infants dying or living, the same Pages 152-197

Section I. Nature And Force Op The Church Relation Of Childhood

Church relation defined — Object of Church instrumentality — Who are legitimate members — Eph. i, 9, 10 — Faith not essential per se — 1 Cor. vii, 14 — Apostolic Church practice — Post-apostolic Church practice — Nature and force of infant Church membership — Denominational Church membership — Distinction between infant and adult Church relation — Incapacity to fulfill all the duties of the Church relation no bar to membership 198-214

Section II. Family Constitution — Its Vested Powers And Religious End

Two stages of Church life — Family Church— life of childhood — Family a primal Church agency — Origin of the family institution — Historically the oldest form of Church life — Vested powers of the family headship — Three principles in the family constitution : the oneness of husband and wife, authority of the parents and submission of the children — Analogies of nature — Man's higher destiny — Duty of exercising parental authority — Scripture precepts — Example of Eli — Of David — Duty to servants and strangers in the family „ 214-239

CONTENTS. 23

Section III. Family Institution, Continued — Bible View Of Its Religious End

All things point to a religious end — Marriage has a religious sanctity — Our Savior's decision — Doctrine of the Christian Church — Mai. ii, 15 — All covenant grace primarily given to the family — Antediluvian apostasy due to family corruption — Old Testament law— Its religious principle binding and vital now — Apostolic teaching — Religion first binding on the parent, and through the parent to reach the child Pages 239-252

Section IV. First Stage Of Church Life Realized In The Family Parental

AND FILIAL DUTY.

The family a normal Church agency — Proved historically — Proved from the tenor of religious precept to both parent and child — The law of the New Testament as to which parent should claim the religious training of the child, where one is an unbeliever — Rights of the mother — Religious family life among the early Christians — Attempts to overthrow the family institution— Heathenism — Monachism, and celibacy of clergy — Rev. John Fletcher — Communism and Socialism — ■ Rousseau — Foundling hospitals — Robert Owen — Fourier — Christianity our only hope 252-283

Section V

THE RELIGIOUS ORDER OF THE FAMILY FUNDAMENTAL TO THE GOSPEL SCHEME — ITS RESTITUTION PROMISED.

Our argument stated — Precept of the Decalogue — Reaffirmed in New Testament — Heathenism destroys natural affection — Law oi Triptolemus — Mai. iv, 6 — Quoted by the son of Sirach, showing how deeply the Jewish mind was affected by it — Quoted by the angel as the first reiteration of Old Testament prophecy in the New Testament — Quoted by our Lord — By Peter — Christ defends the family obligations against the traditionists 284-297

Section VI

SECOND STAGE OF FAMILY CHURCH-LIFE — TEACHING BY PUBLIC INSTITU- TIONS.

Second stage of family Church-life defined — Examples, Passover institution — Unleavened bread — Redemption of the first-born — Monuments at Gilgal — General statement of Deut. vi, 20-25 — Of Hezekiah — Of Asaph — Jewish law for admitting a child to the Passover — Point of the argument under this head stated 297-304

24 CONTENTS.

Section VII

SECOND STAGE OF FAMILY CHURCH-LIFE, CONTINUED — DUTIES OP CHURCH OFFICERS AND MEMBERS.

Argument stated — Proved by Christ's charge to the apostles — To Peter personally — Paul's example — John's address to little children — Irenseus — Solomon — David — Influence of Christian oversight upon the child — Early practice of the Methodist Episcopal Church — John Wesley Pages 304-317

Chapter VI

DATE AXD EFFICACY OF EARLY TRAINING. Human responsibility — Three principles laid down — Time for beginning religious teaching — Isa. xxviii, 9 — Ps. viii, 2 — Eph. vi, 4 — First effect of infant instruction — Force of the phrase " bringing up " — Greatness of the work — Prevenient grace — Religious susceptibility of childhood — Can the child grow up without forfeiting infantile justification ? — Religious capacity of children — De Quincey — Simplicity of faith suited to childhood — Of prayer — Of religious experience — Early Christians— St. Basil 318-361

Chapter VII

EXAMPLES OF EARLY PIETY, AND THE EARLY RELIGIOUS CAPA- BILITIES OF CHILDHOOD.

All theory to be tested by practice — Example of Jesus — His childhood life illustrates the possibilities of all childhood, through grace — His character under twelve years — At twelve years — After twelve years — His junior life falls within the capabilities of our nature — Example of Samuel — Of Timothy — Some of the prophets — Polycarp — Origen — Augustine — Chrysostom — Lady Huntington — Dr. Doddridge — Rev. C. Gridley — Hester Ann Rogers — Bishop Hedding — Force of early training in Papists, pagans, Mohammedans — Charlotte Elizabeth — Cases noted by Mr. Wesley — Cases of personal observation — Rev. Ira Fairbank — Willie Stacy — Daughter of Dr. Thomaa Scott— Children of the millennium 362-390

Chapter VIII

DUTY OF THE CHURCH IN THE DEVOTIONAL AND EXPERIMENTAL CUL- TURE OF THE CHILDREN.

Painful absence of our children from our Church altars and fellowships — Want of confidence in the professions of childhood piety —

CONTENTS. 25

Rev. Mr. Towsley — Rev. E. Hebard — Children brought up with the impression and belief they are outside the Church's pale — The moral influence of this practice — Reason why the Church is so coy of childhood profession — Characteristics of childhood piety — God's sympathy in childhood wants and infirmities — Error of testing moral principles by the apparent greatness of the circumstances which develop them — Catechumens of the early Church — Methodist Episcopal Church Discipline — Mr. Wesley precedes Robert Raikes — Some further provision for the children needed — Experience of a pastor — Sphere of the Sunday school — A new medial provision needed between the Sunday school and the Church — Excellences and defects of the Methodist

Episcopal Church Discipline on the subject Pages 391-411

THE RELIGION OF CHILDHOOD.

Chapter I. History Of The Doctrine Of Infant Salvation

Doctrine history — Our argument Scriptural — Doctrine not new — Object practical — Two causes have embarrassed the doctrine of infant salvation — Baptismal regeneration — Early doctrine of the Church — Ambrose — African Church — African Synod of A. D. 418 — Augustine — Tertullian — Fulgentius — Pope Gregory — Peter Lombard — The schoolmen — Lay baptism in the English Church — Hades — Apology for the ancient Churches — Augustine's confessions — Wickliflfe — John Huss — Protestant reformers — Doctrine of Church of England — Lutheran Church — Reformed Church — Dr. Woods — Methodist Episcopal Church — Special election — Arminian controversy — Dr. Wall on the Church of England doctrine — Bishop Taylor — Presbyterian Confession of Faith.

1. The history of doctrine is most instructive. It is the history of the human mind in its search after truth, its struggles against error, its aspirations after the higher life, often, too, of its gropings and wanderings when it has lost the path of Revelation and sound philosophy, and the light of Scriptural exegesis. Every doctrine now settled in the faith of orthodox Christians has been, at some period, the subject of violent controversy, rescued from the hands of er-

rorists and the toils of sophistry and faction only by the martyr-like integrity of those who, in all ages, have been raised up to "earnestly contend for the faith once delivered to the saints." Truths, too, which were once settled in the faith of the Church have been, and still are, subject to the disturbing currents of doubt, induced by new theories of doctrine, or of "philosophy falsely so called." The price of orthodoxy and established faith is "eternal vigilance" in the exercise of the Christian armor "upon the right hand and upon the left." Prescriptive faith is not always the " ancient way," the " way everlasting," nor are new views of Christian doctrine always the result of a deeper and clearer insight into Divine things than the fathers enjoyed. A proper respect must be paid to antiquity, but mostly as proving the simple fact that the ancients did understand Holy Scripture in a given way, not as proving that way to be necessarily right or Scriptural. The Holy Scriptures alone must be accepted, according to the universal Protestant principle, as the only rule, and the sufficient rule, of faith and practice. The uses and the abuses of an appeal to patristic authority and traditional faith in general, are to be carefully studied and kept in view. And while we thankfully admit that an unbroken chain of orthodox faith has been transmitted to us from the apostles, and this channel of orthodoxy is distinguishable through all ages, yet the Bible only is our test, as it is to us the source, of infallible truth, to which the faith of the Church, both ancient and modern, must be brought. The opinions of men, when offered as religious dogmas, can have no value any further than they are grounded upon the "Word of God.

In our search for truth, therefore, the first question that must be asked is not, "What have the fathers believed before us ?" but, " What do the Scriptures teach?" All legitimate investigation is, hence, original investigation. Discoveries in religious truth, if such a word be at all admissible, are not advances made upon the original revelations of Holy Scripture, but discoveries made upon our own previous false methods of interpreting Scripture, or our false methods of reasoning from Scripture premises. Holy Scripture, objectively considered, is a system of immutable truth, which can neither be added to nor diminished; but Holy Scripture, subjectively considered, is simply the variable limit of our perceptions and understanding of that truth, and is as variable as the history of theological opinion.

We admire the stern integrity of our old Protestant reformers. In the prefatory remarks to the " Order and Form of Baptism, inserted in the Brandenberg and Nuremberg Liturgy of 1553," it is premised that, "in all ecclesiastical usages, we must diligently mark what God has commanded and instituted, and what men have added thereto, in order that we may hold the Divine as the essential part, and diligently practice it; and, on the other hand, judge the human additions, whether or not they are things indifferent, and if indifferent, whether they are also useful or not, in order that what is contrary to God's Word, or otherwise unprofitable, may be done away."

The principles here laid down are the only safe guide to the Church of God. If she would be sound in doctrine her theology must be more Biblical than dogmatic, more exegetical than traditional. If she would be evangelical in piety, her faith must rest more on conviction than prescriptive authority, and if she would preserve the ordinances in their primitive efficiency, she must beware of all human additions.

In the following pages we do not propose to advance any new doctrine unknown to the Church in former ages, but to rescue, if possible, an old and most precious truth from the doubts and obscurities which disputatious theology and a false theory of doctrine have thrown around it. Our argument is purely Biblical; the Bible alone can settle the question of the moral state of infants. Our references to the history of the doctrine are merely to indicate the track of opinion, not to decide the argument.

2. The doctrine in question is not of merely-speculative importance, but is a fundamental truth broadly underlying and giving character to the entire system of evangelical theology. The views which a man entertains concerning our race, that is, our common nature, prior to all responsible action, will determine his views of the character and office of Christ, and the whole import of the Gospel scheme of grace and instrumentalities.

Then, again, the views which one entertains of the moral condition of childhood will, more than anything else, tend to shape his whole practical system of training and culture of the child. Among evangelical Christians how sadly has doubt respecting the extent and efficacy of grace to all childhood enervated faith in the prayers and labors of parents for their offspring, and wrought confusion, distress, and defeat ! In this, as in all enterprises intrusted to human judgment and accountability, men must have a settled doctrinal basis to rest upon, and be well assured that their efforts are in the direction of the Divine order and purpose, and the subject of Divine promise and reward, in order that their work may be wrought in the heartiness and perseverance of faith. It is faith that parents need — strong, living, patient, intelligent faith in the TVord and promise of God, in order to fulfill their duty to their children throughout the successive years and the ever-varying scenes, and wants, and caprices of junior life. They wish their children to be religious, they strive to teach and guide them in Christian paths ; but is their work wrought in faith ? Do they look straightforward to results, promised and assured by the Word of God, with the calm confidence of the husbandman who "ploweth in hope," and "waiteth for the precious fruit of the earth, and hath long patience for it till he receive the early and latter rain?"'' Xothing can give this abiding confidence, this habit of faith in the work of bringing up children in the "nurture of the Lord," but broad, and clear, and settled views of the

I true relation which children hold to Christ and his Gospel. If our practical treatment of children is not in harmony with the laws of their moral and gracious condition, and the Divine plan concerning them, all analogy and all experience assure us that defeat must follow. No good intentions of the parent can compensate for a doctrinal error here. The hope of the husbandman is warranted only by an intelligent and accurate adjustment of his labors to the condition of the earth and the congeniality of external nature. If success is not warranted by the laws of God in nature and providence, his hope is futile, and no honesty of purpose on his part can atone for the blunder and retrieve the fortunes of the year. It is so in all our moral and religious concerns. It is the object of this work to ascertain the Scriptural doctrine of the moral condition of infants, and the Providential purpose in regard to them, and to encourage faith and labor in their early religious training, suitable to their condition and Providential destiny.

3. Two causes, more than all others, have contributed to embarrass the doctrine of infant salvation, and its salutary moral effects on the culture and destiny of childhood. The one is the doctrine of baptismal regeneration, and the other that of special election. As to the former, the ancient Christians interpreted the words of our Lord to Nicodemus— John iii, 5 — "Except a man be born of water and of the Holy Ghost, he can not enter into the kingdom of God/' in their literal sense, as denoting, 1st, water baptism: and 2d, the necessity of baptism in order to salvation. The order was construed as peremptory, universal, and literal ; and to the letter of this statute, thus construed, they rigidly adhered. In all their arguments on the necessity and efficacy of baptism, this text was the grand starting-point and original authority. From the early Church this doctrine passed down through the Papal and Greek Churches, and, with some modification, into the earlier Protestant branches — the Lutheran, the Calvinistic, and the Church of England. The chief exceptions which were made by the early Church were in favor of martyrs, those who died for the truth, who, by some accident, had not been baptized, and those who, having come to some knowledge of Christ, and had formed a purpose of baptism at the first opportunity, may have died, nevertheless, unbaptized. In such cases they did allow that the letter of the law might be waived in consideration of the spirit of the law having been fulfilled. Hagenbach, speaking of the sentiment of the Church on this point, from the eighth to the sixteenth centuries, says : " In opposition to earlier divines, later theologians — for example, Bernard, of Clairval, Peter Lombard, and Thomas Aquinas — maintained that in such cases — as those who by circumstances are providentially prevented from being baptized — the will alone was sufficient." And this judgment of charity has since prevailed. Yet, in regard to infants, a strange perversity of doctrine obtained, as shocking to all our sense of natural justice

34 TIIE RELIGION OF CHILDHOOD.

as it was hostile to the genius and letter of Revelation. To doom an infant to eternal perdition for want of water baptism, which it was physically beyond his power to secure, seems to us incredible ; and to do it on the authority of the rigid literality of our Lord's words to Nicodemus, above quoted, is a specimen, among many others, of the faulty and often absurd and puerile theory of Scripture interpretation which obtained then. Many, indeed, were shocked at the consequences to which their relentless interpretation led them, and started back. These, yielding to humanity and natural reason against their own theory, invented a middle state — a limbus puerorum — of milder and rather negative punishment, to which unbaptized infants, when saved at all from final ruin, might go. But to " enter into the kingdom of God " without baptism was held on all hands to be impossible. St. Ambrose, A. D. 374, referring to Christ's words — John iii, 5 — says, "You see he excepts no person, not an infant, not one that is hindered by an unavoidable accident. But suppose that such have the freedom from punishment — which is not clear — yet I question whether they shall have the honor of the kingdom." "No person," says he elsewhere, " comes to the kingdom of heaven without baptism." The doctrine that infants, dying without baptism, were lost, prevailed in the African Church, says Prof. Schaff, since the time of Cyprian, or A. D. 2$0. In the General Synod of African Bishops held at Carthage, A. D. 418, they thus enacted in their fourtb canon against the Pelagians: "If any one says that because the Lord has said, 'In my Father's house are many mansions,' it is to be understood that there is a place in the kingdom of heaven, or a place any where at all, in which children are happy who leave this world without baptism — without which they can not enter into the kingdom of heaven, which is eternal life — let him be anathema.

For since the Lord has said, '"Whoever is not born again of water and the Spirit can not enter into the kingdom of God,' what orthodox man can doubt that he that does not deserve to be a joint-heir with Christ has his part with the devil? He that does not stand on the right hand will doubtless be on the left." Augustine, A. D. 388, says: "Whoever should affirm that infants which die without partaking of the sacrament [baptism] shall be quickened in Christ, would both go against the apostles' preaching and also would condemn the universal Church." He says that even the Pelagians, overborne by the united faith of all Christian people, "do own, without any tergiversation, that no infint that is not born again of water and of the Spirit does enter into the kingdom of God." Tertullian takes it for a standing rule, that "without baptism there is no salvation." Fulgentius, A. D. 410, says of unbaptized infants : " Whether they die in their mothers' womb or after they are born, one must hold for certain and undoubted that they are to be tormented with the everlasting punishment of eternal fire; . . . to suffer the endless torments of hell, where the devil with his angels are to burn for evermore." And in one sermon of Augustine, where he was hardly pressed by Pelagius, that father says: "Our Lord will come to judge the quick and the dead, and he will make two sides — the right and the left. To those on the left hand he will say, Depart into everlasting fire; to those on the right, Come, receive the kingdom. He calls one the kingdom, the other the condemnation of the devil. There is no middle place where you can put infants; ... so that when you confess the infant will not be in the kingdom, you must acknowledge he will be in everlasting fire." At other times he makes a middle state for unbaptized infants, where they " will not be punished with so great pain " as actual sinners. "Who can doubt," he says, "but that infants unbaptized, who have only original sin, and are not loaded with any sins of their own, will be in the gentlest condemnation of all?"

Pope Gregory says, A. D. 600 : " Some are taken from this present life before they have any good or ill deserts by their own deeds : and having not the sacrament of salvation [baptism] for their deliverance from original sin, though they have done nothing of their own here, yet these come to torments; . . . perpetua tormenta percipiunt — they undergo eternal torments."

These sentiments obtained for a long time; but about A. D. 1150, Peter Lombard, father of the scholastic theology, taught that the proper punishment for original sin, where there was no actual sin, was " the punishment of loss — loss of heaven and the sight of God — but not the punishment of sense, or of positive torment." Pope Innocent III afterward confirmed this distinction, and determined that "the punishment of original sin is being deprived of the sight of God; and of actual sin the punishment to be the torments of an everlasting hell." " And so," says Dr. "Wall, "the whole troop of schoolmen do establish the same by their determination. They suppose there is a place or state of hell or hades, which they call limbus, or infernus puerorum, where unbaptized infants will be in no other torment or condemnation but the loss of heaven." This distinction generally prevailed in the Latin Church, though there were not wanting Papists, nor even, in later times, Protestants, who revived the severer doctrine of Fulgentius above named.

The geographical theory of the invisible world, according to the schoolmen, embraced heaven and hell according to the common orthodox view. Between these, in a subterranean region, lay the middle state or place, which was further subdivided into — 1. Purgatory, which lay nearest to hell; 2. The Limbus Infantum, where those children went who died without baptism; 3. The Limbus Patrum, the abode of the Old Testament saints — the place to which Christ went to preach to the "spirits in prison." This was also the same as "Abraham's bosom." All these apartments or regions belonged to the general domain of hades or hell, with very different proximities to heaven or hell, and variable degrees of misery or happiness. As for such infants as died before birth, the schoolmen held that "such an infant being subject to no action of man, but of God only, he may have ways of saving it for aught we know."

So necessary to salvation was baptism, in the estimation of the early Christians, that lay baptism was practiced in cases of imminent danger of death — nay, even baptism by the midwife rather than that the child should die without salvation. Tertullian, speaking to dissuade laymen from administering baptism where a bishop might be called, or where delay might not be dangerous, says: "Let it suffice that those make use of this power [to baptize] in cases of necessity. For then the adventuring to help is well taken when the condition of a person in danger forces one to it; because he that shall neglect at such a time to do what he lawfully may [that is, to baptize] will be guilty of the person's perdition."

4. The doctrine of the early English Church on lay baptism was grafted directly upon that of the Christian fathers and the Papal Church. In the " Ecclesiastical Laws " of Edmund, King of England, A. D. 945, as quoted by Dr. Hook in his Church Dictionary, it is stated: "Women, when their time of child-bearing is near at hand, shall have water ready for baptizing the child in case of necessity." And in the National Synod under Otho, A. D. 1237, it is directed: "For cases of necessity the priests on Sundays shall frequently instruct their parishioners in the form of baptism." To which is added, in the Constitutions of Archbishop Perkham, in A. D. 1279 : "Which form shall be thus: I crysten thee in the name of the Fader, and of the Sone, and of .the Holy Goste." In the Constitutions of the same archbishop, A. D. 1281, it is ruled that "infants baptized by laymen or women — in imminent danger of death — shall not be baptized again." But in 1575 the administration of baptism in that Church was restricted to the clergy.

5. "We are astonished to hear such doctrines within one hundred years of the death of the apostle John, but our astonishment abates when we consider how inveterately superstition roots itself in the uninformed mind, and that the converts to Christianity were generally, after the first thirty years of the Christian ministry, made up of persons born and bred in heathenism. The philosophy of heathenism in that age was generally either atheistic or superstitious as mythology itself. The tendency of religion was to outwardness, and it was difficult for the masses to learn to disconnect religion from all necessary dependence upon visible institutions. A purely spiritual religion — one which at once appeals to the highest reflective reason, and at the same time holds outward forms in their due place, giving to them their simple symbolic and circumstantial importance — is at any time the highest moral and intellectual elevation of the soul.

Under these cir cum stances it became easy for the early Christians to pervert certain plain Scriptures, and to infer from such passages as Acts ii, 38, and xxii, 16, that baptism was by Divine institution necessary for the remission of sins ; and from such statements as those of John iii, 5, and Titus iii, 5, that, whether in adults or infants, baptism and regeneration were inseparably conjoined.

The same error respecting the cleansing efficacy of baptism also often induced the delay of it till later life, when the temptations of youth should be passed, so that sins after baptism might be avoided, or till just before death, that the soul might enter pure and unspotted into the celestial regions. Augustine, in his Confessions, simply illustrates the not uncommon custom within two hundred years of the apostles when he says of himself, in a sickness during his boyhood: "Thou sawest, my God, with what eagerness and what faith I sought, from the pious care of my mother, and thy Church, the mother of us all, the baptism of thy Christ, my God and Lord. Whereupon the mother of my flesh, being much troubled — since, with a heart pure in thy faith, she even more lovingly travailed in birth of my salvation — would in eager haste have provided for my consecration and cleansing by the health-giving sacraments, confessing thee, Lord Jesus, for the remission of sins, unless I had suddenly recovered. And so, as if I must needs be again polluted should I live, my cleansing was deferred because the defilements of sin would after that washing bring greater and more perilous guilt." So lightly was sin esteemed before baptism in comparison to sin after baptism, that the same father states it as a common saying concerning one who sinned before baptism: "It echoes in our ears," says he, "on all sides, Let him alone, let him do as he will, for he is not yet baptized." To such absurd excesses does superstition lead men.