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Infant-baptism, a part and pillar of popery

by John Gill

The churches, which abjured popery at the Reformation, have retained, in the practice of infant baptism, the most vital element of popery; the prolific germ out of which it grew; the secret principle which has engendered all its baleful fruits, and which is ever tending to reproduce them. The essence of popery lies in the assumption that sacraments possess an intrinsic power to confer grace; and that, consequently, those who administer them are constituted channels of intercourse and mediation between God and the souls of men. All the absurdities and abominations with which Romanism is characterized are but developments of this central dogma; offshoots from this one poisonous root. But this also is the very core and substance of infant baptism. - p. 7-8.