Mr. Bridgman: "St. Paul's rule of admission to Christian communion is this, As many as Christ has received, let us receive. Rom. 15:7. The whole of Chap. xiv. is applicable, and especially the 15:5, 6, 7. I wish you could be made to blush for your inconsistency— I mean not yours alone, but of your party."  My Reply: 1. Wherein have we differed from Paul's rule in the admission to communion? For that is all still to be discovered and to be proved. You must prove that any one was ever admitted to communion, without being first added to the church, and that there ever was one added to the church without being first baptized on a personal profession of faith in Christ, or that…

Mr. Bridgman: "Yours is a Baptist rule, not an apostolical —not Christian—not Christ's rule. It is the rule of a party, and therefore schismatical, because it rends the beautiful garment of Christian love."  My Reply: 1. "Yours is a Baptist rule."  This we are quite ready to admit, and are by no means ashamed of it, nor disposed to conceal it, or deny it; for we have a good conscience in it as such, on the authority of the word of God, as we can find no authority therein for any gospel rule to the contrary. For our great Christ was a Baptist, being baptized in the cold water of the river of Jordan; and he was a Baptist minister, for he made, and by…

Mr. Bridgman: "St. Paul's criterion would not be cold water, little or much, but the living water of the Spirit, such as Christ spoke of to Nicodemus, and at the last day of the feast." John iii. 5. vii. 37.  My Reply: 1. If your spirit never be admitted into heaven till you can prove that Paul the apostle as the Lord's servant ever admitted, or that the sentiment as the truth of God ever entered his heart to admit, persons to the table of the Lord without their being first baptized on a personal profession of their faith in our Lord Jesus Christ, you will never, no never, see the face of Jesus, my brother.  2. The work of divine grace in the heart,…

Mr. Bridgman: "You call it strict, I call it schismatical communion, because you, not we, keep away the children from their Elder Brother's table, unless they conform to your rules, I say your rules ; for since the national debt is to be paid by one of us, I will pay it twice, if you will find me scripture text which saith, or seem to say, Let men and women first be dipped, and so let them eat of the bread, and drink of the cup."  My Reply: 1. Your calling us schismatical is an old popish opprobrium, now and then raked out from among the bats and cobwebs of college cloisters, by the true sons of secular churches, for difference of sentiment only, without…

Mr. Bridgman: "Are the elect, redeemed, and regenerated of the Lord, to be kept from, or thrust back if they approach the Lord's table, because they have not been immersed in cold water—although, as the elect, their names are in the Lamb's book above."  My Reply: 1. The Lamb's book above is no rule for our conduct in the church below, but the revealed and written will of God, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, given under heaven.  2. Neither election, redemption, nor regeneration, constitute any perceptive law of institutions, or of order in the church; but the word of the God of all such grace. We are to be neither law-makers for the wicked, nor breakers of divine law for the saints.…

Mr. Bridgman: "I would ask that minister in all seriousness, Have you and your denomination exclusively the keys of the Church of Christ."  My Reply: In reply to this we say no; nor do we ever pretend to any such thing, "We are but servants, and our great Master's word and the example of his first servants on his New Testament establishment, is our law, rule, and only authority of order and of action. We lock nothing up that the scriptures have not locked up, and we have got no keys to unlock what the word of God does not unlock, if you have. If that word be no law to you it is to us; and you have, for all what you have written…