Mr. Bridgman: "However, to be serious, the preacher was conscience that what he required of others he could not give himself, and that if we cannot (as we think we can) produce instances from the New Testament of infant baptism, neither can you produce one plain command, or one evident instance, for and of believers only to be immersed; you are well aware it is not a matter of certainty, but of doubtful disputation; were it a matter of certainty, and a thing so plain that he who runs may read, it would be as evident to one man of common understanding as another." My Reply: 1. You say, To be serious. If you have not been serious, you ought to have been, my brother,…

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…