Clear, faithful, strict doctrinal views commend themselves to men's consciences." I came near saying to the good lady, that, if she were able to talk in such a strain, and to say so much to her minister, he, surely, could not have deemed her so enfeebled in mind as to be incapacitated for admission to the Christian church.
"I told him, also," she added, "I was satisfied that his unvarying mode of baptism was not ordained by Him who sent the Gospel to every creature .-- Why, said I, Mr.Dow, what do you make of the apostles' baptizing the jailer, 'at the same hour of the night,' and 'before it was day ?' It could not have been for any public effect.

What need to have it done just then?
Was it superstitious and Romish?
No; it was to comfort the soul of the poor, trembling convert, with a sense of God's love to him.

How it must have soothed and cheered him to receive God's hand of love in that ordinance, before he himself fully knew what the making of a Christian profession implied! I want that same hand of love here, in my prison of a sick-chamber,--And, I never thought of it much before, but, I said then, it seemed so clear to me that they would not have gone to all the trouble, that night, and in the prison-house, and after the terrors of the earthquake, to put a whole family into bathing-vessels.

To take people from sleep, ordinarily, and immerse them in water, would be a singular act; much more when they are weak and faint, as the jailer's family must have been, from fear and excitement.
In my own case, I could not be immersed, even at home; it would probably cost me my life.

Sprinkling came to me as so sweetly harmonious, in that scene of the jailer's baptism, that I believed it to be the apostolic mode of baptizing, and I told Mr.D.that I should imitate the jailer; and that I should send for a minister who could imitate Paul and Silas." "But," said I, "what brought you to believe in the propriety of baptizing your children ?" _Mrs.P._ Your minister enlightened me on that subject.