Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: TO A BAPTIST VERSION OF THE NEW TESTAMENT. We are not able to say, positively, that the question, Whether the present authorized version of the New Testament be sufficiently explicit as to the mode and subject of baptism, has been agitated to any great extent; nor can we point directly to the quarter whence it has proceeded, not having noticed any discussions respecting it, except cursory ones in some religious periodicals. But it is enough to know, that such a question has been more than once moved, and that a proposal for a modified version of the present text has obtained a favorable hearing in sundry places. Nor is this all; for it is understood, that those who disallow the proposal, and who consider it most consonant with safety and integrity to retain unmutilated the established translation, are regarded as very lukewarm advocates of the denominational faith, and as the authors of a policy at once temporizing and spiritless. So they have occasion not only to defend their position, but to repel the missiles which are likely to be thrown by such as have entrenched themselves in a new location. We do not profess to stand between these two parties; for if we should be so imprudent, we might, to use a figure of the Greek historian, be cut to pieces by both. And though we should escape injurious force from either side, still, according to the laws of perspective, we should appear to each adverse party to stand nearest his opponent; since an object midway between two stations, when viewed from either, will appear most remote from that at which the observation is made; and will, consequently, seem to be nearest to the opposite point. We shall rid ourselves of the suspicion of designing to occupy any middle ground, by proclaiming, in limine, our sincere and unchange…