church.  For if he had considered it in this light, he would never have said that Christ sent him not to baptize, but to preach the Gospel.  Neither would he have thanked God, on account of the mere abuse of it, that he had baptized so few, for doubtless there were many among the learned Greeks, who abused his preaching, and who called it foolishness, but yet he nowhere says, that he was sorry on that account that he ever preached to them; for preaching was a gospel ordinance enjoined him, by which many were to be converted to the Christian faith.  Again—­If he had considered water baptism, as a necessary mark of initiation into Christianity, he would uniformly have adopted it, as men became proselytes to his doctrines.  But among the thousands, whom in all probability he baptized with the Holy Spirit among the Corinthians, it does not appear, that there were more than the members of the three families of Crispus, Gaius, and Stephanus, whom be baptized with water.

[Footnote 177:  1 Cor.  I. 14, 15, 16.]

But still it is contended, that Paul says of himself, that the baptized.  The Quakers agree to this, but they say that he must have done it, in these instances, on motives very different from those of an indispensable Christian rite.

In endeavouring to account for these motives, the Quakers consider the Apostle Paul as not in the situation of Peter and others, who were a long time in acquiring their spiritual knowledge, during which they might be in doubt as to the propriety of many customs; but as coming, on the other hand, quickly and powerfully into the knowledge of Christ’s kingdom.  Hence, when he baptized, they impute no ignorance to him.  They believe he rejected water-baptism as a gospel ordinance, but that he considered it in itself as an harmless ceremony, and that, viewing it in this light, he used it out of condescension to those ellenistic Jews, whose prejudices, on account of the washings of Moses and their customs relative to proselytes, were so strong, that they could not separate purification by water from conversion to a new religion.  For St. Paul confesses himself that “to the weak he became as weak, that he might gain the weak, and was made all things to all men, that he might by all means save some.”  Of this his condescension many instances are recorded in the New Testament, though it may be only necessary to advert to one.  At the great council at Jerusalem, where Paul, Barnabas, Peter, James, and others, were present, it was[178] determined that circumcision was not necessary to the Gentiles.  St. Paul himself with some others carried the very letter of the council, containing their determination upon this subject, to Antioch to the brethren there.  This letter was addressed to the brethren of Antioch, Syria, and Cilicia.  After having left Antioch, he went to Derbe and Lystra, where, notwithstanding the determination of himself and the rest of the council, that circumcision was not a Christian rite, he[179] circumcised Timotheus, in condescension to the weakness of the Jews, who were in those quarters.