Infant baptism was now established, and justified, by the grace conferred in the ordinance, its necessity to salvation, and the expedient of sponsors to answer for the child

Why, I may ask, should such a thing as the baptism of infants ever have suggested itself to the minds of men? It is not intimated in the word of God. Reason does not approve it. To religion it is plainly repugnant. From whence did it arise? It owes its existence, I answer, exclusively to blind superstition, which first persuaded men that there is a mysterious, secret, inexplicable efficacy in baptism, which conveys the grace of God to the soul of the recipient; then, that without baptism no one, whether adult or infant, could be saved; and lastly, that infants really do, by some incomprehensible power of God, repent of their sins, believe in our Lord Jesus Christ, and therefore, according to the gospel, are entitled to receive baptism! We will examine each of these propositions separately.

3. Infant baptism was now established, and justified, by the grace conferred in the ordinance, its necessity to salvation, and the expedient of sponsors to answer for the child.

Yet the difficulty was not entirely overcome. In those early days, repentance for sin, and faith in our Lord Jesus Christ, were acknowledged as indispensable preliminaries to baptism. These conditions are so plainly set forth in all parts of the New Testament, that no Pedobaptist then pretended to call them in question. They felt, on the contrary, that they were obliged to comply with them. They knew also that the repentance and faith of the sponsor, were only those of the proxy or substitute, and not of the child. But it was the child who was to receive the ordinance, not the sponsor, and the Bible requires these conditions of the very person to be baptized himself. Here, it would seem, was an insuperable impediment. What was to be done? A most convenient discovery was now made and announced to the world. It was an effectual remedy. It was found that infants do, by some unexplained and incomprehensible power of God imparted to them, really possess, truly exercise, and acceptably profess repentance of sin and faith in Christ, and are therefore, according to the conditions prescribed in the gospel, the proper subjects, and legally entitled to receive baptism!

R. B. C. Howell- The Evils of Infant Baptism- Chapter 8- Infant baptism is an evil because its practice perpetuates the superstitions by which it was originally produced