Sprinkling is the only Christian baptism

1) Baptism, as a sacrament of the Lord’s house, is an emblematic ordinance.
(2) It is the emblem or sign of the Baptism of the Holy Ghost.

(3) As a sign of the Spirit’s baptism, it derives its name, its nature, its mode, and its very existence from its original; so that, as one is to the soul, so the other is to the body.

(4) As sprinkling is the only mode of the Spirit’s baptism, this alone settles the question, and demonstrates sprinkling to be the only mode of baptism, both of the Spirit and of water as its sign.

(5) That God ordained sprinkling by positive law as the only mode of baptism, both of the Spirit and of water as its sign.

(6) That for 1,500 years the Jewish church practiced sprinkling alone for baptism by God’s expressed and oft-repeated command.

(7) That when Christ and John the Baptist came and practiced the same baptism, in its improved form, they found the whole Jewish nation in the daily practice of sprinkling for baptism, and not a word was said, or any information given, of the law being repealed, or the old mode being changed.

(8) I proved that when God ordained sprinkling as the mode of His baptism, He had an infinite reason for so doing; and as human nature and salvation from sin are the same now as they ever were, that divine reasoning favor of sprinkling still continues, and must continue to the end of time.

(9) That the mode was essential to the ordinance, and that the least variation here was suicidal; that the shadow must conform strictly to the substance—the picture to the original.

(10) That two things were necessary to the validity of this, and every other emblematic ordinance: (1) an exact conformity of the sign to the thing signified; and (2) to use the sign with an enlightened faith in the thing signified. Therefore, sprinkling was the only mode of baptism, because any other mode violated both of thee conditions, and, of course, nullified the sacrament by making it a nonentity—an unmeaning ceremony.

(11) I proved that immersion for baptism was a senseless absurdity, from the fact that it could not represent the Spirit’s action upon the soul, and as this is the only thing the mode of baptism can represent, hence, immersion is just as absurd as for you to sit for your picture and when you receive it from the artist it proves not to be your likeness at all, but the likeness of a jackass! This is no burlesque, but the sober, honest truth; for immersion has no more resemblance to the Spirit’s work than the one picture has to the other.

(12) That there is no immersion in the word “baptize”; that in the Bible it has but one meaning—salvation from sin by sprinkling; that no writer, either of the New or Old Testament, ever spoke of the mode of the Spirit’s baptism, or that of its emblem—water—but as a sprinkling (sprinkling and pouring being, as we have seen, the same mode).

And for these reasons, ant one of which would be sufficient to establish any truth in the universe, but altogether they ought to force conviction into the darkest mind, and overcome the prejudices of the hardest heart, and satisfy every conscience that sprinkling alone is baptism.