NEW JERS Y

COLLEGE LIBRARY

THE

HISTORY

OF

INFANT-BAPTISM.

BY

WILLIAM WALL, M. A.

VICAR OF SHOREHAM, KENT, AND OF MILTON NEXT GRAVESEND.

TOGETHER WITH

MR. GALE'S REFLECTIONS,

AND

DR. WALL'S DEFENCE.

A NEW EDITION,

BY THE REV. HENRY COTTON, D. C. L.

LATE STUDENT OF CHRIST CHURCH.

IN FOUR VOLUMES.

VOL. IV.

OXFORD,

AT THE UNIVERSITY PRESS.

MDCCCXXXVI.

A

DEFENCE

OF THE

HISTORY OF INFANT-BAPTISM.

WHEN, after I had for some years made it my

business to observe in my reading, and to collect such passages in the ancient Christian writers, as did any way relate to the baptizing of infants; I published them, with some notes of my own upon them, in the year 1705, being then about sixty years old; I little thought that the doing of that would bring me under a necessity of writing any more books, which is a fatigue unfit to be borne by one of my age. The History itself, or Collection of Quotations, could not, I thought, admit of any exceptions, provided I recited them true; which I was careful to do. And for my notes upon them, or any thing that related to the defence of the cause itself of infant-baptism, I thought, that if there arose any necessity of vindicating that, some younger and abler men would undertake it.

But the book having had more said and published, by some for, and by some against it, than I could