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Rh, nay, in some measure, how they are impressed with it; and so on, with regard to every means wherewith one person is entrusted to promote the soul's health of others. The blessed communion of our Body and Blood in like manner is made in some way dependant upon the ministry of the Church, since she is entrusted with the power of dispensing it more or less frequently; and so upon her faithfulness depends, in some measure, the richness and fulness of the blessing which her members enjoy. But all this is again a priori and rationalistic arguing. For why should not the spiritual blessings of one man depend upon others? and do they not most manifestly? The Jewish child, if not circumcised on the eighth day, was to be cut off. Did not its inferior privileges depend upon the obedience of its parents? Are not pious parents a high spiritual blessing? and if so, why should not the simple obedience to ordinance be a means of obtaining the blessings of that ordinance for our children?

The comparison with Circumcision, which is generally found united with this theory, occasionally served to extol that sign, whence it was asserted to convey regeneration as well as the other privileges of the Christian covenant, (only as was sometimes said, in a lesser fulness than now): for the most part its effect was to bring down Baptism from a Sacrament of to the character of the signs of the older Dispensation. Thus