not, a converting ordinance in adults, and does not necessarily effect
or secure their regeneration.

Now that baptism cannot accomplish more in infants than in adults, is
self-evident; hence if it is not a converting ordinance in adults, it
cannot be in infants.

The effects of baptism on _infants are nowhere specified in Scripture;_
hence we must suppose them to be same as in adults, so far as children
are naturally capable of them. Of _regeneration_, in the proper sense of
the term, infants are incapable; for it consists in a radical change in
our religious views of the divine character, law, &c.; a change in our
religious feelings, and in our religions purposes and habits of action;
of none of which are children capable.

Again, as regeneration does not destroy but merely restrains the natural
depravity, or innate, sinful dispositions of the Christian, (for these
still remain in him after conversion,) it must consist mainly in a
change, of that _increased predisposition to sin arising from action, of
that preponderance of _sinful habits_ formed by voluntary indulgence of
our natural depravity, after we have reached years of moral agency. But
infants have no such _increased_ predisposition, no _habits_ of sin
prior to moral agency, consequently there can be no change of them, no
regeneration in this meaning of the term. Hence, if baptism even did
effect regeneration in adults, which we have proved not to be the case;
still it could have no such influence on infants, as they are _naturally
incapable_ of the mental exercises involved in it. The child, on its
first attainment of moral agency, has merely natural depravity, until by
voluntary indulgence in sin, it contracts personal guilt, and forms
habits of sinful action. If the child, by the grace of God and proper