Thus the forerunner said, 'I indeed baptise you with water unto
repentance; but He that cometh after me is mightier than I, whose shoes I
am not worthy to bear: he shall baptise you with the Holy Ghost and with
fire.' Likewise Paul, the great apostle of the Gentiles, writes as
follows to the Corinthians, 'Christ sent me not to baptise, but to preach
the Gospel;' and indeed Paul never baptised but two persons with water,
and that very much against his inclinations. He circumcised his disciple
Timothy, and the other disciples likewise circumcised all who were
willing to submit to that carnal ordinance. But art thou circumcised?"
added he. "I have not the honour to be so," say I. "Well, friend,"
continues the Quaker, "thou art a Christian without being circumcised,
and I am one without being baptised." Thus did this pious man make a
wrong but very specious application of four or five texts of Scripture
which seemed to favour the tenets of his sect; but at the same time
forgot very sincerely an hundred texts which made directly against them.
I had more sense than to contest with him, since there is no possibility
of convincing an enthusiast. A man should never pretend to inform a
lover of his mistress's faults, no more than one who is at law, of the
badness of his cause; nor attempt to win over a fanatic by strength of
reasoning. Accordingly I waived the subject.

"Well," said I to him, "what sort of a communion have you?" "We have
none like that thou hintest at among us," replied he. "How! no
communion?" said I. "Only that spiritual one," replied he, "of hearts."
He then began again to throw out his texts of Scripture; and preached a
most eloquent sermon against that ordinance. He harangued in a tone as
though he had been inspired, to prove that the sacraments were merely of
human invention, and that the word "sacrament" was not once mentioned in
the Gospel. "Excuse," said he, "my ignorance, for I have not employed a
hundredth part of the arguments which might be brought to prove the truth