[Footnote 150:  Acts II, 15,16.]

A similar distinction is made also by St. Paul; for when he found that certain disciples had been baptized only with the baptism of John,[151] he laid his hand upon them, and baptized them again; but this was with the baptism of the spirit.  In his epistle also, to the Corinthians, we find the following expression:[152] “For by one spirit are we all baptized unto one body.”

[Footnote 151:  Acts 19.]

[Footnote 152:  I Cor. 12, 13].

SECT.  III.

Question is, which of these turn baptisms is included in the great commission given by Jesus to his Apostles, “of baptizing in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost?”—­Quakers deny it to be that of John, because contrary to the ideas of St. Peter and St. Paul—­because the object of John’s baptism had been completed—­because it was a type under the law, and such types were to cease.

It appears then that there are two baptisms recorded in Scripture; the one, the baptism of John, the other that of Christ; that these are distinct from one another; and that the one does not include the other, except he who baptizes with water, can baptize at the same time with the Holy Ghost.  Now St. Paul speaks only of[153] one baptism as effectual; and St. Peter must mean the same, when he speaks of the baptism that saveth.  The question therefore is, which of the two baptisms that have been mentioned, is the one effectual, or saving baptism? or, which of these it is, that Jesus Christ included in his great commission to the Apostles, when he commanded them “to go and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost.”

[Footnote 153:  Eph. 4.5.]

The Quakers say, that the baptism, included in this commission, was not the baptism of John.

In the first place, St. Peter says it was not, in these words:  [154] “Which sometimes were disobedient, when once the long suffering of God waited in the days of Noah while the Ark was preparing, wherein few, that is, eight souls, were saved by water;[155] whose antetype baptism doth also now save us, (not the putting away of the filth of the flesh, but the answer of a good conscience towards God,) by the resurrection of Jesus Christ.”

[Footnote 154:  1 Peter 3. 20. 21]

[Footnote 155:  Antetype is the proper translation, and not “the figure whereunto.”]

The Apostle states here concerning the baptism that is effectual and saving; first, that it is not the putting away of the filth of the flesh, which is effected by water.  He carefully puts those upon their guard, to whom he writes, lest they should consider John’s baptism, or that of water, to be the saving one, to which he alludes; for, having made a beautiful comparison between an outward salvation in an outward ark, by the outward water, with this inward salvation by inward and spiritual water, in the inward ark of the Testament, he is fearful that his reader should connect these images, and fancy that water had any thing to do with this baptism.  Hence he puts his caution in a parenthesis, thus guarding his meaning in an extraordinary manner.