that ablution of the soul, which is the salvation of mankind.  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 of our religion, but these thou thyself mayest peruse in the Exposition of our Faith written by Robert Barclay.  It is one of the best pieces that ever was penned by man; and as our adversaries confess it to be of dangerous tendency, the arguments in it must necessarily be very convincing.”  I promised to peruse this piece, and my Quaker imagined he had already made a convert of me.  He afterwards gave me an account in few words of some singularities which make this sect the contempt of others.  “Confess,” said he, “that it was very difficult for thee to refrain from laughter, when I answered all thy civilities without uncovering my head, and at the same time said ‘thee’ and ‘thou’ to thee.  However, thou appearest to me too well read not to know that in Christ’s time no nation was so ridiculous as to put the plural number for the singular.  Augustus Caesar himself