Of more immediate practical importance to me was the controversy concerning Infant Baptism.  For several years together I had been more or less conversant with the arguments adduced for the practice; and at this time I read Wall’s defence of it, which was the book specially recommended at Oxford.  The perusal brought to a head the doubts which had at an earlier period flitted over my mind.  Wall’s historical attempt to trace Infant Baptism up to the apostles seemed to me a clear failure:[1] and if he failed, then who was likely to succeed?  The arguments from Scripture had never recommended themselves to me.  Even allowing that they might confirm, they certainly could not suggest and establish the practice.  It now appeared that there was no basis at all; indeed, several of the arguments struck me as cutting the other way.  “Suffer little children to come unto me,” urged as decisive:  but it occurred to me that the disciples would not have scolded the little children away, if they had ever been accustomed to baptize them.  Wall also, if I remember aright, declares that the children of proselytes were baptized by the Jews; and deduces, that unless the contrary were stated, we must assume that also Christ’s disciples baptized children:  but I reflected that the baptism of John was one of “repentance,” and therefore could not have been administered to infants; which (if precedent is to guide us) afforded the truer presumption concerning Christian baptism.  Prepossessions being thus overthrown, when I read the apostolic epistles with a view to this special question, the proof so multiplied against the Church doctrine, that I did not see what was left to be said for it.  I talked much and freely of this, as of most other topics, with equals in age, who took interest in religious questions; but the more the matters were discussed, the more decidedly impossible it seemed to maintain that the popular Church views were apostolic.

Here also, as before, the Evangelical clergy whom I consulted were found by me a broken reed.  The clerical friend whom I had known at school wrote kindly to me, but quite declined attempting to solve my doubts; and in other quarters I soon saw that no fresh light was to be got.  One person there was at Oxford, who might have seemed my natural adviser; his name, character, and religious peculiarities have been so made public property, that I need not shrink to name him:—­I mean my elder brother, the Rev. John Henry Newman.  As a warm-hearted and generous brother, who exercised towards me paternal cares, I esteemed him and felt a deep gratitude; as a man of various culture, and peculiar genius, I admired and was proud of him; but my doctrinal religion impeded my loving him as much as he deserved, and even justified my feeling some distrust of him.  He never showed any strong attraction towards those whom I regarded as spiritual persons:  on the contrary, I thought him stiff and cold towards them.  Moreover, soon after his ordination, he had startled and distressed me by adopting the doctrine of Baptismal Regeneration; and in rapid succession worked out views which I regarded as full-blown “Popery.”  I speak of the years 1823-6:  it is strange to think that twenty years more had to pass before he learnt the place to which his doctrines belonged.