Sometime ago I came across the title of a sermon by Stephen Marshall, a 17th century puritan, entitled, “A Sermon of the Baptizing of Infants”, delivered at the Westminster assembly, I think. One would think such a thing would have been available somewhere on the internet by now. Sadly, I had not been able to find it.

Today, a friend of a friend, or a “friend” in facebook-speak, sent me a scanned copy of an original document. (Thanks!) It runs to 60 pages – I estimate nearly 20,000 words.

One sermon! My sermons last 30-35 minutes and I think I say about 3500 words. Scaling Marshall’s work appropriately, I estimate 6 hours of preaching. Can that be right? I suppose they had a lot of time…

Tongue in cheek, I think, he says in the preface,

…I indevoured to cleere it as fully as I could in one Sermon, and was thereby compelled to borrow a little more time then is usually allotted to that Exercise.

“Borrow” a “little” more time, indeed…