Mr. Bridgman: “The preacher offered to pay the national debt, if we from the Holy Scripture produced baptized infants. He offered a real impossibility, for a supposed impossibility, and in that he was not wise nor honest neither; for no honest man will, at least ought, to put his hand to a bill he cannot pay when due. The 1 Cor. 10:2. tells me that many infants were baptized in, or rather by the sprinkling of the cloud and by the spray of the sea; you will be so kind as to forward the national debt by return of post." My Reply: 1. I said I would pay the national debt of England in four instalments within twelve months, if infant sprinkling, as a New…

Mr. Bridgman: "The Baptist minister who will shew me the plain unequivocal command for the immersion in water of a believer, as constituting water baptism, either as commanded by Christ, or his apostles under his authority, I tell him this, that in my own chapel, at my own expense I will have a pool made, and he shall be my baptizer—will you accept the challenge?" My Reply: In reply to this paragraph, I shall state some things that appear quite plain to me on the subject of believers' baptism, but I shall not pretend to a successful execution of the challenge, because that which may be laid down as a truth and proved so beyond any fair disputation by one person, may not be at…

Mr. Bridgman: "But the preacher more than implied that the command for believers only to be immersed in water is as plainly written in the New Testament, as those particular directions about the Ark, &c. were in the old. I appeal to his common honesty, and he seemed to be an honest man; but to that principle I appeal, and to his face I would say, and in God's presence I would say, You Know that is not the truth." My Reply: 1. This is carrying the point of hostility to a high pitch and to a great length. Wrong opinions may through mistake be with great sincerity entertained both of persons and things until the judgment be better informed, but a positively affirmed charge…

Mr. Bridgman: "The preacher made long and tedious quotations concerning the building of Noah's ark, the tabernacle, and the temple, and to prove what? that which every godly Pseudo-Baptist acknowledges equally with himself—that God's commands, when plainly given, are to be by his servants implicitly obeyed—no Christian denies this." My Reply: 1. Quotations certainly were made from Gen. 6. Ex. 25. the 40. and 1 Chron. 28. concerning the building of the ark, the tabernacle and the temple, and my design was to shew that the Old Testament saints were not left to contrive nor devise anything in the service and fear of God, either in matter or shape, but that the Lord himself patterned out all that whereby he would be feared, and that…

Mr. Bridgman: "The preacher said, indeed, that he respected our feelings, yet at the same time dealt out with all his vehemence, hard blows, not, indeed, of sound argument, but which certain sophists know best suit weak minds, merely hard words and positive assertions." My Reply: 1. You make a mistake about my saying that I respected your feelings, for I neither said, thought, nor meant so; but that I loved my Independent brethren in the faith of Christ, although I condemned infant sprinkling to be sent back to its mother at Rome, and I am still of the same mind. My work, my aim, and my object was to state what I believe in the presence of God, and on the text of the…

Mr. Bridgman: "I should say to the preacher concerned in this censure, my brother, let us do to others as we would they in like circumstances should do to us. And as a Baptist (so called) would not have patience to hear a Pseudo-Baptist rant on a general occasion about infant sprinkling; so neither vice versa." My Reply: What have I done, but honestly spoken out principle at a proper place, occasion, and time? It was a Baptist ordination, and I was published to state sentiments according to my well known public profession and personal belief, and I did so, and will leave the public to judge if I should not have departed from the laws of honesty on such an occasion if I had…