BV 639. C4 B3 1875 1 Barrows, W, (William) , 1815-1891 The church and her children THE Church and Her Children. BY WILLIAM BARROWS, D.D. "Feed my Llan. To alter is to injure it; but it is more: it is to slight God's wisdom, to interfere with his reign." — American Baptist Publication Society/, Tract No. 191. NO SECOND CHURCH OF GOD. hb One of the very early Cliurcli fatliers, Cyprian of Carthage, speaks so distinctly on the oneness of the Church, that his words should be quoted, because, born about A.D. 200, he was near in time to the apostolic conception of the Church, and formed and expressed these views before the times when it be- came so much an interest for sects and theorists to discover, if possible, the foundations of a second Cliurch of God, or make essential modifications in the foundations of the first. '' The Church is one, though she be spread abroad, and multiplies with the increase of her progeny ; even as the sun has rays many, yet one light ; and' a tree boughs many, yet its strength is one, seated in the deep-lodged root ; and as many streams fiow down from one source, though a multiplicity of waters seems to be diffused from the bountifulness of the overflowing abundance, unity is preserved in the source itself. Part a ray of the sun from its orl), and its unity forbids this division of light. Break a branch from the tree : once broken it can bud no more. Cut the stream from its fountain : the remnant will be dried up. Thus the Church, flooded with the light of the Lord, puts forth her ra3^s through the whole world with yet one light, which is spread upon all places, while its unity is not infringed. She stretches forth her branches over the universal earth in the robes of plenty, and pours abroad her beautiful and onward streams ; yet is there one head, one source, one mother, abundant in the results of her fruitful- ness."^ 8 Cyprian, Thornton's Translation. Library of the Fatliei-s. Ox- ford, 183y. 5b THE CHURCH AND HER CHILDREN. There remains to be produced an independent ar- gument in proof of the oneness of the Abrahamic and apostolical Church. Our Lord used the word " Church " but twice, so far as we know : " Upon this rock I will build my Church ; " '^ if he shall neglect to hear them, tell it unto the Church." Here is a reference to a body, but without any definition or explanation of it. Its origin, nature, and constitution are silently passed over. Two things only are said of the body : its creed-basis is declared to be confession of Christ ; and one of its offices is disciplinary. These two things are said incidentally, more than for information as something new. The allusions of Christ to the Church are evidently to a body already existing, recognized, and well understood. No new organization, just pro- posed or springing up, would be so referred to. As we pass along into and through the New Testament, the word " Church" appears as naturally and freely and without definition, as the word " synagogue " or" Jeri- cho "or " temple." No novelty, innovation, or obscurity seems to pertain to it. Both the name and the insti- tution are evidently old and familiar to the disciples and apostles, and to their hearers, and to the readers of that day. What is the explanation ? A very simple one, and for us, in unfolding this topic, full of information and su^csfestion. The disciples and the apostles, and the devout of their times, had the Septuagint of the Old Testa- ment in common use. They quoted from it generally, instead of quoting from the original Hebrew : so they had become familiar with the word ecclesia. The NO SECOND CHURCH OF GOD. 57 institution itself they were members of, and knew well; and this was the name by which they had l)e- come accustomed to call it, when they did not (rive it its old Hebrew name. The word came into the Sep- tuagint, and so into common use in Judtea, before the times of our Lord, and in this way : — When those Septuagint translators, in turning the Hebrew Scriptures into Greek about B. C. 280, sought for a Greek word equivalent to the Hebrew name of the Church, they took ecdesia. This is classic Greek, and at Athens or any free city of Greece designated a meeting of the voters, legally called, for the transaction of public business. Such a word was admirably adapted, they thought, to con- vey to their readers the idea of the Abrahamic Church, as a body composed in an orderly way, with a constitution, qualifications and processes for mem- bership, and with legislative and executive powers. The Hebrew word for Church, Kah-hahl, the Septua- gint translators have, though not with perfect uni- formity, rendered ecdesia, in all about seventy times. When, therefore, in New-Testament Greek, the word ecdesia was used, the mind of the speaker, hearer, or reader would revert at once to the ancient Church of God, When our Lord used the word those two times, it was inevitable that his hearers would apply his allu- sion to that holy and divinely constituted body of which they were members. In view of the way by which ecdesia had become a well-known and well-de- fined word among them, any other understanding of 58 THE CHUECH AND HER CHILDREN. the Saviour's allusion would have been impossible and absurd. So, while the apostles, following our Lord's exam- ple, changed the name from Hebrew to Greek, from Kah-hahl to ecdesia, the thing named, the oneness of the body, remained. It passed along down the ages as unchanged as the foundation-faith on which it rested, — the Rock Christ, the same to Abraham and Isaiah and Peter and Edwards. With that word ecdesia thus coming into apostolic and New-Testament use, what shadow of evidence is there that a new body was organized, crowded into notice and use, and made to assume this ancient and familiar name, and all without the least explanation of the innovation, or allusion to it, or Jewish preju- dice and protest against it ? Several delicate and difficult questions arose between Jewish and Gentile converts in the first Christian Churches ; and the epistles show how the apostles met them. If an old Jewish Church was crowded out, and a new one brought in its place, is it not a very strange thing that no controversy between Jewish and Gentile Christians arose over the change, and left some traces of itself in the apostolic epistles ? So great an innovation or rev- olution as the blotting-out of the Church of Abraham and Moses and David and Malachi must have pro- duced some cases for apostolic arbitration in those early Christian ecclesias. Some record must have been made of so great a change. No record being found, or any allusion to it, is presumptive and almost positive evidence that there was no change to be recorded. CHAPTER VIII. CIRCUMCISION AND BAPTISM SERVE THE SA:ME END. THE outward or temporal manifestations of the Church liave varied with the varying circum- stances of God's people. Prior to their going into Egypt it had pliases un- like what it sliowed in Egypt, and still different in their desert wanderinors toward Canaan. When it o became united with the state by the laws of Sinai and the Mosaic institutes it received some modifications in its externals. So it was when Israel passed from a theocracy to be governed by kings. When the temple was dedicated, and the temple service inaugurated, it underwent still other changes in its outward and ceremonial management. So dur- ing the captivity and after the restoration. And on the advent, crucifixion, and ascension of our Lord, many and most significant changes were wrought in it. Still for substance the Church was the same on the day of Pentecost that it was in the days of Abraham. None of the changes in it had been radical, or affoctt'd its organic structure. We have already noticed the fact that eircunici-sion was the first sign and seal of admission. We pass 59 60 THE CHURCH AND HER CHH^DREN. now to consider the fact that ch'cumcision and bap- tism have the same office and import. We will not, under this point, agitate the question whether bap- tism became a substitute for circumcision, or in any- way took its place ; nor yet the question whether baptism was appHed to households by the apostles, as . circumcision was in times earlier than the apostolic. We will notice simply and only the fact that cir- cumcision and baptism served equally and the same purpose of admitting the subject of the ordinance to membership in the Church of God. Abraham saw Christ's day, believed in Christ, was justified through that faith, made a public profession of it, and then " received the sign of circumcision " as a visible mark of the covenant between himself and God. It was a " seal," an official stamp, as on a government treaty or contract. It was the official seal of God to the agreement between him and Abraham, in which Abraham through faith in Christ had given himself away to God, and God on his part had accepted the offering, and on the ground of his faith in Christ had justified him and made him the heir of special prom- ises. This act brought Abraham, and every other one who performed it after the manner of Abraham, into the Church of God. This was the one and only door to membership in that ancient Church ; and this was the only sign and seal. Now, let it be noted that in the times, and accord- ing to the teachings, of the apostles, the import of the covenant between God and his child was the same as in the times of Abraham : that is, on the part of man it was belief in Christ ; and on the part of God CIRCUMCISION AND BAPTISM. • Gl it was justification by this belief or faith. This is one of the most obvious truths in the New Testa- ment. When a man was ready sincerely to confess such a faith, and liumbly to receive such a justifica- tion, he was ready to make a public profession of religion. This was precisely the state of mind in which the apostles found those three thousand on the day of Pentecost. They wished publicly to own this cove- nant with God. They wished to add themselves to the covenant people of God. They did this. '' They that gladly received his word were baptized." The covenant thus publicly made was signed and sealed by baptism. At the very point and for the very , service where circumcision was formerly introduced baptism now comes in. If any of these three thousand had, as Gentiles, thus believed in Christ in the days of Abraham or Jacob or David or Malachi, and made a public profession of religion, the sign and seal would have been circum- cision : now it is baptism. Each ceremony, therefore, has the same import, and fills the same office. As an introductory rite to the Church of God, each per- formed the same service. The difference in the form of the rites constituted no difference in their sub- stance and efficiency. Each did the same thing for the person receiving the rite. We find, therefore, that the Church of God was one and the same in the times of St. Peter and of the jmtriarchs ; that admission to it was through tlie , confession of saving faith in Jesus Christ ; that this ' confession by the head of the family brought the liouse- G 62 THE CHURCH AND HER CHH^DREN. hold into membership ; that circumcision was tlie sign and seal of the covenant thus made ; and that in the times of the apostles baptism was used as having the same import and performing the same service for the subject as circumcision. At this point in our inquiries concerning the con- stitution of the Church of God, and admissions to it, another interesting fact arises : circumcision disap- pears, and baptism appears. We first direct attention to this as a simple fact, lying up on the surface of the New Testament. Whether this came about by the command and teach- ing of our Lord, recorded or unrecorded ; or whether apostles brought about the change by virtue of their office, and under the inspiration of God, — are separate and important points for inquiry. Now, and first, we notice the fact, obvious and undeniable, that the New {Testament shows baptism at the door of the Church where the Old Testament shows circumcision. The former has not only taken the jDlace, but is doing for the subject the work, of the other. This change and substitution of the one for the , other was not instantaneous, though it Avas abrupt. The apostles came into the Church by the rite of cir- cumcision, but admitted members afterward by the rite of baptism. About twenty years appear to have been consumed in workino- the chang^e. The first admissions to the Church in connection with baptism are those mentioned as taking place on ' the day of Pentecost. This was A. D. 33. Nineteen years afterward, A. D. 52, a Church council is con- vened at Jerusalem to answer to the question, wheth- CIRCUMCISION AND BAPTISM. G3 er the rite of civcumcisioii should he enforced on Christians, many having neglected it altogether. The unanimous answer of the Council is that circumcision is not among the things necessary. And when this result of council was read to the Church at Antiocli, which Church had called the council, they rejoiced over it.^ After this we hear very little of circum- cision as a rite of any importance, while baptism rises to the importance of an indispensable rite of admis- sion. During this brief. period of twenty years, public opinion in the Church is wholly changed on the necessity of circumcision : the rite disappears from the neces- sary ordinances ; and another rite of the same general, import and office is introduced and made absolutely necessary. Now, it is to be here noticed as a most significant fact, that these changes — the disuse of circumcision, and the introduction of baptism — took place when the Church was under the personal management of the apostles themselves. They saw what was taking place : they assented to it, advised it, defended it, and practised it. They were the immediate pupils of Christ. They were inspired men ; and they gave doctrines and customs, laws and ordinances, to the Church with unquestioned authority. As acting for the Head of the Church, and under his plenary con- trol, in every official act, they debated and decided in council, they organized local Churches, and adminis- tered Church government. Therefore what they 1 Acts XV. 64 THE CHURCH AND HER CHILDREN. said and what they did becomes to us an " infallible rule of faith and practice." But it is objected that there is no command in the Bible to substitute baptism for circumcision. In considering this objection, let us narrow it to the one simple and naked point of difficulty raised by it, — by excluding all idea of the household, as included or not, in circumcision and baptism, — and state the objection thus : — " Baptism cannot be said to take the place of cir- cumcision in the adult believer's profession of religion, because there is no express command in Scripture for this change." It has been shown, and is generally admitted, that in an adult admission to the Church the two rites are equivalent. They have one and the same general aim, and answer one and the same general end. This being assumed, we reply to the objection : — 1. Many of the instructions and commands of Christ to his disciples were never put on record. " If they should be written every one, I suppose that even the world itself could not contain the books that should be written." ^ In these unrecorded teachings of our Lord Ave have a right to suppose that many principles and practices were inculcated of which we are left in igrnorance till we discover them taught and illustrated in the lives of the apostles. Having taught the apostles so far as he desired, and being about to leave them, he gave to them authority to act in his name, assuring them that tlie Spirit 2 Joliu xxi. 25. CIRCUMCISION AND BAPTISM. Qb should briiifr all thiiiGfs to their remembrance. To this must be added the special grace of inspiration, to guide them perfectly in all official teachings and practices. In these facts is found the reason why all denominations of Christians receive without question- ing so many truths and usages, set forth in The Acts and Epistles, that are without the warrant of any special command. We receive them on the authority of the apostles, as commissioned of Christ and inspired of God. As a single illustration, take the govern- ment of the Church. It was managed very different- ly after Christ from what it was before Christ. We derive our policy of Church government from usage set forth in the book of The Acts and in the Epistles, Avhich usage was introduced or sanctioned by tlie apostles. But where is their special warrant and command to work these changes and introduce these practices ? Hence the first reply to the objection : it is not necessary to find an express command in the record of Scripture to substitute baptism for cir- cumcision in order to declare that the change was made. This and this only it is enough for us to know : that the apostles acted under the authority of Christ ; and that inspiration guided them in all the official uses of that authority. 2. The practice of an apostle in the matter in ques- tion is as authoritative as the command of Christ. Virtually it is nothing else. Under his commission and the personal, plenary supervision of his inspira- tion, what is the practice of the apostle in official duty but an exponent, a reduction to use, of the teachings of Christ ? 6* 66 THE CHURCH AND HER CHH^DREN. If this be denied, then the New Testament, as a rule of faith and practice, must be sadly al)breviated. We put each writer under a special suspicion ; we put him on a moral quarantine, to prove his veracity and authority, — by demanding an express command from the Master for each of his teachingrs and usag^es in the Church. To this absurdity does the objection bring us. But the apostles did practise baptism in the place of circumcision. They used it in the same place, — at the door of the Church, as of the same import, and for the same end. The one disappeared; and the other appeared as the introductory rite to the Church under their management, and with both their defence in council, and their sanction in practice. This is equivalent to a " Thus saith the Lord." Therefore we conclude that in apostolic times baptism became a substitute for circumcision in the admission of adults to Church membership. In the prosecution of our inquiries we shall find it necessary, as the next step, to ascertain, if possible, when, how, and by whom this change in the initiatory rite was made. CHAPTER IX • A REFORMER IN JUDiEA. HOW sudden and how strange liis first appear- ing ! He never had sat in the councils of the sanhedrim, or made himself of note in the syna- gogues. He was not ushered into fame as the fa- vorite pupil of some Rabbi, or the heir of a far- sounding family name. He came without pedigree or trumpet, even as true greatness is wont to come. So sudden in his coming, as being in the manhood of his powers and of his theme, he seemed as one sent of God. His appear- ance was strange even for that generation. A coarse mantle of camel's hair was his robe, fast about him with a plain leathern girdle ; and his food was the spontaneous offering of the desert. Nor was all this affected and grotesque, as the trick of an obscure man to catch the gaze of a crowd. It was as the re- appearance from the tomb of one of the old j^rophets. It was the manner as well as the spirit and power of Elias. As when we, by sudden discovery, bring forth a painting of one of the old masters, glorious in the costume and colorings of an elder and better day, so lie stood among the wondering multitude. But the strangeness of the man and of his manner is 67 68 THE CHTJECH AND HER CHH^DREN. forgotten in the welcome wonder of his mission. For all " the people were in expectation ; and all men mused in their hearts of John, whether he were the Christ or not." ^ The times were full of this expec- tation of the Messiah. Men were studying promise and prophecy. They watched, and they waited. And when the prophecy of Isaiah was answered in " the voice of one crying in the wilderness. Prepare ye the way of the Lord," ^ the multitude flocked to the mysterious preacher, as the harbinger of the Long- Expected. They were eager to believe his word that The Christ was at the door. They could take decla- ration for proof ; they could leap all argument : so ear- nest were they to receive God's promised and anointed, the King of the Jews. National pride and ambition, personal gain and worldly glory, had sadly changed, in their views and expectations, the character, person, purpose, and work of the coming Messiah ; but their delusions only deepened their delirium of jo}^ when, thronging the Baptist, they heard from his lips that the Christ was at hand. And, if they could but re- ceive the Messiah of their expectation, what prepara- tion were they not willing to make ! A people always so ready to be carried away by any great religious truth, they heard with gladness that a new dispensa- tion in the Church of God was about to be ushered in. When, therefore, the forerunner of our Lord preached to them repentance for sin and unbelief, and urged on them a cordial acceptance of their coming I Luke iii. 15. - Matt. iii. 3. A reformeu in jud.ea. 69 Lord, tliey were eager to seal their promises of reform, ami bind themselves over in advance to be obe- dient subjects in '^ the kingdom of lieaven," now at hand in a new manifestation. So there " went out to him Jerusalem iind all Judsea, and all the region round about Jordan, and were baptized of him in Jordan, confessing their sins." ^ So general was this expec- tation of the Messiah, and so ready were they to pre- pare the way of the Lord, that this baptism was almost as the baptism of the populace, so extensive was it. The import of the rite is obvious. It was performed on a circumcised people, the chosen of God. They had broad notions of discrimination between the clean and the unclean. When Aaron and his sons were consecrated for the priesthood, they were washed and made clean ; and when Israel was about to receive the dispensation of Moses and of Sinai, they were re- quired first to wash and be clean. Baptism has the import of purification and dedication ; and so now, when " Jerusalem and all Judsea " are about to receive the Christian dispensation, this rite is administered to them as purifying and preparatory and dedicatory. Indeed, we find that their High Priest himself is in- augurated b}^ the same rite of consecration : so it be- came him to fulfil all righteousness ; and so, '' when all the people were baptized, it came to pass that Jesus also was baptized." This, then, was not Christian baptism : that was first administered a few years afterward to those three 8 Matt. iii. 5, G. 70 THE CHURCH AND HER CHILDREN. thousand Christian converts on the day of Pentecost. It was not a baptism representative of " the washing of regeneration ; " for some of the subjects of it thirty years afterward had " not so much as heard » whether there be any Holy Ghost ; " * and then the Master himself received it, in whom it could represent no such regenerating work. It was administered to Church-members. It was 'a ceremonial purification and introduction of the Church to a higher and hoher dispensation. The baptism of John was a formal purification of the peo- ple, preparatory to tlie inauguration of Christianity. He " called upon his countrymen to prepare them- selves — by repentance for sin, and reception of bap- tism as a symbol of a changed mood — to enter into the Messianic kingdom, now on the ^^ohit of being established.'' ^ " An opinion, it appears, prevailed among the Jews, that Elias, whose coming was to precede that of the Messiah, as also the IMessiah himself, would initiate their disciples by a sacred ablution ; and it was there- fore necessary, in order to avoid giving the Jews any pretext for doubt respecting either Christ's authority or functions, that both John and himself should accom- modate themselves to this popular persuasion." ^ * Acts xix. 2. 6 Giiericke's Ch. Hist,, Shedd's ed., p. 36. 1*5 Mobheim's Commentaries, Miirdook's ed., i. 89. T CHAPTER X. THE BAPTISM OF JOHN NO NOVELTY. J^HE baptism of John does not seem to have - created, as a ceremony, any interest, as if it were a strange custom in Judaea, introduced by John himself. Indeed, in all the hostility to John and his work, there is no accusation that he had assumed to create another sacred ceremonial ; and in all the hos- tility of the Jews to the Christians, for their innova- tions in religious teachings and rites, it is nowhere implied that the Jews regarded baptism as a new ceremony, springing up with this new sect. We enter, therefore, in this chapter, into an inquiry concerning Jewish baptisms before the times of John the Baptist. The Jewish systems of religious and social life abounded with ceremonial washings and purifications. These are called in the New Testament '' baptisms." ^ Their use was frequent and varied, as the Old Testa- ment abundantly shows. Any commentary on the passages cited in Mark and Hebrews will make this plain.2 iMark ^ii. 4, BaTrncr/zauc. Heb. vi. 2, BaTTtiO[xuv; (Jm^potf BanTiofxuic;. ix. 10. 2 The Hebrew Old Testament xises these words mainly to express these baptisms: i;2'd Dau. iv. 22. ^?a 2 Kings v. U. Josh. iii. 15. 71 72 THE CHURCH AND HER CHILDREN. There is also a class of passages where the same act is expressed by a circumlocution, as in Lev. xi. 32, " It must be put into water." But the different persons, things, and modes of the Jewish baptisms are not so fully obvious on the face of the Hebrew text, and in its single words. The Greek translation in the Septuagint casts much light on the line of our present investigation. Indeed, one is at first surprised to see how much baptism the Seventy find in the Hebrew Scriptures. This Greek version of the Old Testament began to be made at Alexandria about 280 B.C., and was perhaps a century in its progress to completion. That tradition of its origin, starting with Irenseus, may have some historical element in it ; but the body of it is evidently of the fabulous and marvellous. He says that Ptolemy Lagi wished to adorn his Alexan- drian library with a Greek copy of the Old Testa- ment, and so asked the favor of a translation of it from the Jews of Jerusalem. They sent to the king seventy of their learned elders, who, each in a sepa- rate cell, produced one and the same version, each being identical with every other, word for word. In the absence of all historic data as to the origin of the Septuagint, probabilities must serve us, if we say any thing. When the Jews returned from the Captivity, the Hebrew was almost an unknown tongue to the most of them, born and educated as they had been among Ruth ii. 14, 1 Sam. xiv. 27. 2 Kings ^^ii. 15. Job ix. 31. Ezek. xxiii; 15. I^v. iv. 6; et al. ]^np Ps. Ixviii. 24. ;;3Lf Ps. ix. 16 ; Ixix. 3, 35. Jea*. xxxviii. 6. Lam. ii. ix. THE BAPTISM OF JOHN NO NOVELTY. 73 the Chaldeans. When, therefore, the Scriptures were read in the synagogues in Palestine, they were rendered and explained in Chaldean. So the Jews at Alexandria, settling there soon after the conquests of Alexander, must have lost their knowledge of the Hebrew, and made Greek their vernacular. Their synagogue readings and expoundings would, then, naturally come through the Greek ; and so a Greek version of the Old Testament would be begun, ending, in a century or so, in an entire translation. The neces- sities of the case, therefore, in the natural production of a Greek translation, as well as any business request of Ptolemy, must be reckoned in among the producing causes of the Septuagint. Lonix before the comins: of Christ this translation had become widely known, and much esteemed and used. It followed the conquests of Alexander and the Grecian colonies, and thus did much to prepare the Gentiles for the reception of Christianity. '' Many of those Jews who were assembled at Jeru- salem on the day of Pentecost, from Asia Minor, from Africa, from Crete and Rome, used the Greek lan- guage ; the testimonies to Christ from the Law and the Prophets came to them in the words of the Sep- tuagint ; St. Stephen probably quoted from it in his address to the Jews ; the Ethiopian eunuch was read- ing the Septuagint version of Isaiah in his chariot. They who were scattered, abroad went forth into many lands speaking of Clirist in Greek, and point- ing to the things written of him in the Greek version of Moses and the Prophets. From Antioch and Alexandria in the East, to Rome and Massilia in the 7 74 THE CHURCH AND HER CHILDREN. West, tlie voice of the gospel sounded forth in Greek." 3 Of the three hundred and fifty quotations from the 01^ Testament into the New, all but about fifty appear to have been made from the Septuagint. Of course it must have had a great influence in the Holy Land at the coming of Christ in shaping the religious opin- ions, expectations, and observances of the people. Yet this translation abounds with tlie " baptisms " of St. Mark, and with the " divers washings'' (bap- tisms) of St. Paul. Naaman '-' went down and dipped himself (t^aTtxiGaxo^ seven times in Jordan." * Isaiah is made to say, " My heart wanders : iniquity baptizes me " ^ (;J awfiia fie ^amitei). Judith, just before she beheaded Holofernes, " abode in the camp three days, and went out in the night into the valley of Bethulia, and washed herself in a fountain of Avater by the camp " ^ (^li^aitxittto tv t/j jtupBu^oU] tm xtjg TtrijTJg Tov vdazog^. The son of Sirach, in one of his proverbs, gives still further illustration on our inquiry. '' He that washeth himself after the touching of a dead body, if he touch it again, what availeth his washing ? " " Additional to these cases of the use of ^uTtriXco^ there are about twenty passages where the Septua- gint translators have used the word ^anxco. The friends of the immersion theory of baptism have claimed that these two words are substantially one, 3 Smith's Dictionary of the Bible, Art. Septuagint. 4 2 Kings V. 14. ^ isa. xxi. 4. 6 Judith xii. 7, "^ Ecclus. xxxiv. 30. BaTni^o/jsvog otpo vsapov Kai -kuTuv dnTOfievo^ avToi), ri cj(j)e?\.TiO£v tgj 7\xivrpu avrov ; THE BAPTISM OF JOHN NO NOVELTY. 75 as a measure or equivalent each of the otlier. Dr. Carson approbates Dr. Gale's position, '* That the one is more or less than the other, as to mode or frequency, is a perfectly groundless conceit." ^ '' The two words are nearly or quite synonymous," is the position of Prof. Dagg in his '' Church Order." ^ For the general purposes of this chapter it is not necessary to affirm or deny the correctness, nice and absolute, of these opinions. The Hebrew language, as an early and simple tongue, was not affluent in words of terminology for careful and speculative dis- tinctions ; and therefore the four words above cited are used move or less as interchangeable equivalents in Hebrew. A linguist, in denominational contro- versy, marks Grecian shades of distinction between ^u7tT(o and {ianxClca ; and, running back, he may find corresponding Hebrew shades between S^tp and V^^ : but it is very doubtful whether Moses, David, and Isaiah would recognize and observe the distinc- tions in their OAvn writings. Indeed, it might trouble the translators of Ptolemy Lagi to mark the more delicate lines of meaning that led them in several cases to use one of these Greek words rather than the other. This thought is worth our dehw on it. Our translation says of Naaman that he " dii)ped himself seven times in Jordan." The Septuagint says "he baptized himself" (l^unriaaxo)}^ Yet where in the Levitical law it is said of any article that an unclean animal has touched, " it must be put into water," the Septuagint says ti*; v^mq l:)acp/^(7ezaiM 8 Bapt. Board Piih., ]Sr.3. 9 South. Bapt. Piil)., 1«59. 10 i> KiuS4; Hebrew and Talnnidical Exercitations on St. Matthew iii. 5, vol. ii. ] lG-22; A Sermon preached before the Natives of Staffordshire, K)o8, ii. 1(140, et seq.; a Sermon x>i'eaohed at Aspedeu, KiCK), ii. 1132, etseq.; also, i. 208-10, 52o-7. JEWISH BAPTISMS. 83 " The first use of baptism was not exlul)ited at that time [of John the Baptist] ; for baptism very -. many centuries of 3'ears backwards had been both known and received in most frequent use among the Jews, and for the very same end, as it now obtains among Christians, namely, that by it proselytes might be admitted into the Church ; and hence it was called baptism for proselytism ; " ^ and he refers to the Bab^'lonian Talmud for liis authority. He adds that it was an axiom among the Jews, / " No man is a proselyte until he be circumcised and baptized ; " * and so he says, " You see baptism inseparably joined to the circumcision of proselytes.^ And Maimonides says the same : " In all ages, when an ethnic is willing to enter into the covenant, and gather himself under the wings of the majesty of God, and take upon him the yoke of the law, he must be circumcised and baptized, and bring a sacri- fice, or, if it be a woman, be baptized, and bring a sacrifice." ^ By this last remark of Maimonides it will be noticed that female converts to Judaism received the ordinance of baptism. The authorities are full on this point. This is a very important historical fact to be borne in mind, while meeting the objection, that if baptism is made to take the place of circumcision, only males could be baptized. The Talmud says, " We find, concerning the maid- servants who were baptized but not circumcised," 8 Lightfoot's Works, London, 1684, vol. ii. 117. < Ibidem. 6 Do. p. 118. 6 Wall's Hist. lufaut Bap., Cotton's ed.. Ox. 1844, vol. i. 5. 84 THE CHUKCH AND HER CHILDREN. that they are proselytes. " One baptizeth a heathen Avoman in the name of a woman : we can assert that for a deed rightl}^ done." ^ And again : " When a proselyte is received, he must be circumcised ; and then . . . they baptize him in the presence of two wise men, saying, Behold, he is an Israelite in all things ; ' or, if it be a woman, the women lead her to the waters," &c.^ And, what should be more carefully noted as bear- ing peculiarly on our inquiry, if the parents were baptized, the young children were included as a mat- ter of course. The law of baptism held all who were held by the law of circumcision, and went beyond, including females. From the abundance of testi- mony to this point, an item or two must suffice. Says Lightfoot : '•'• For so was the Custom of the Jewish Nation in their use of Baptism, when a Pros- elyte came in, his children were baptized with him : and all this upon this ground, that all that \A'ere re- lated to the parent might come into Covenant." ^ And to the same effect he quotes the Babylonian Talmud and Commentary thus : '' They baptize a little Proselyte according to the judgment of the Sanhedrim. If he be deprived of his father, and his mother bring him to be made a Proselyte, they bap- tize him, because none becomes a Proselyte without Circumcision and Baptism, according to the judgment of the Sanhedrim, that is, that three men be present at the Baptism, who are now instead of a father to him." 10 7 Lif^htfoot ii. 117-18. » Wall's Hist. Inf. Bap., i. 7. ^ Works, vol. ii. 1128. lo Do. 118. JEWISH BAPTISMS. 8o As to the age under Avliich a child may be tlie proper subject of infant baptism, they had this rule : — " Any male cliild of a proselyte, that was under the age of thirteen years and a day, and females that were under twelve years and a day, they baptized as infants, at the request and by the assent of the father, or the authority of the court, because such an one was not yet the son of assent, as they phrase it, i.e., not callable to give assent for himself ; but the thing is for his good. If they were above that age they consented for themselves." ^^ And this usage of infant baptism among the Jews is farther illustrated by one of those mercies that cropped out over the barbaric roughnesses of their times. The practice of the heathen to expose their infants to death is well known ; and such were often found by the Jews, and adopted into their fam- ilies either as children or servants ; and they did the same often, with infants that came into their hands by victory on the battle-field. For the treat- ment of these the Jerusalem Talmud thus pre- scribes : — " Behold, one finds an infant cast out, and bap- tizes him in the name of a servant. Do thou also circumcise him in the name of a servant. But, if he baptize him in the name of a freeman, do thou also circumcise him in the name of a freeman." ^^ And the statement of Maimonides is to the same purpose : '' An Israelite that takes a little heathen 11 WaU i. 17. 12 11,^1 1 20. »b THE CHURCH AND HER CHHiDREN. child, or that finds an heathen infant, and baptizes him for a proselyte, behold, he is a proselyte." ^^ These are but a few of the very many specific and direct declarations of the practice of baptism by the Jews in the times of John the Baptist. It is not needful to multiply these quotations. But there are certain incidentals or wayside items, that have a peculiar force in illustrating Jewish baptisms. Maimonides sa3^s that when any offered themselves as prosel3'tes for baptism, " they make diligent inquiry concerning such, lest they come to get themselves under the law for some riches that they should receive, or for dignity that they should obtain, or for fear. If it be a man, they inquire whether he have not set his affections on some Jewish woman ; or a woman, her affection on some young man of Israel." Maimonides makes mention also of many minute circumstances that must attend the ceremony of bap- tism. It must not be on the Sabbath, nor on any holy day, nor by night. There must be three wit- nesses of the ceremony. Circumcision must precede it, and a bloody offering accompany it ; yet, in times of revolution or dispersion, the sacrifice may be omitted. The sacrifice must be a burnt-offering of a beast, or of two turtle-doves, or of two young pigeons. It was also a rite never to be repeated on the same person. Nor were the children born to pros- elyte parents after their baptism to be baptized ; for ( baptism b}^ the Jew was regarded as a purification of the race or family stock. The parents once purified, 13 WaUi. 20. JEWISH BAPTISMS. 87 all their unborn posterity were made pure up to parental apostacy. Here is the fittest phxce to mark the sliarp distinc- tion that the Jews made between baptism and circum- , cision in their uses. . Baptism constituted one a Jew, while circumcision constituted him a Church-mem- ber. 1^ The side-allusions to this usage, scattered through the best Jewish authorities, show baptism to have been as surely an ordinance among them as circum- cision or sacrifice. And now we see the reason for these strono^ and confident declarations of Dr. Lis^ht- foot, a man so scholarly in the writings of the Jews concerning their doctrines and antiquities. " Bap- tism was well enough known to the Jews ; and both John and Jesus Christ took it up as they found it." " Christ took up baptism as he found it in the Jewish Church ; and they baptized infants as well as grown persons." '' Think not that baptism was never used ( till John Baptist came and baptized. It was used in the Church of the Jews many generations before he was born." " Baptism of men, women, and children, was no new thing among them, when John Baptist came baptizing, but a thing as well known as with us now." " Christ took baptism into his hands and into evangelical use, as he found it, this only added, — that he might promote it to a worthier end and to a larger use. The whole nation knew well enougli that little children used to be baptized. . . . Nor do I believe this People that flocked to John's Baptism 14 WaU i. 5-45. 88 THE CHURCH AND HER CHILDREN". were so forsretful of the manner and custom of the Nation, that they brought not their little children also with them to be baptized." " We suppose, therefore, that men, women, and children came to John's baptism, according to the manner of the Nation in the reception of Proselytes." ^^ When baptism was introduced among the Jews is not definitely known. Its origin among them is of very great antiquity, as we are informed by Jost.^^ The Septuagint says that Naaman was baptized [i^amiaaTo) in the Jordan for the curing of his lepro- sy, and that unrighteousness baptized Isaiah (// dvo^ia liE ^anTlL,Ei) y^ There are about twenty cases in the Septuagint where the Greek for " baptism " is used as in the New Testament. Now, if Alexandrian Greek, B.C. 280, could properly describe acts as baptisms that took place among the Jews seven hun- dred and nine hundred years before the Christian era, we can easily presume that baptism was a rite of very great antiquity among them. One thing is evident : in the times of our Lord the rite was national among them. So Jost says, " Jesus also, honoring the na- 15 Lightfoot's Works, vol. ii., pp. 1129, 1133, 1040, 110, 122. See also Mosheim's Hist. Coin., vol. i. 80, Murdock's translation. "No special historical incident is necessar}^ to account for the origin of John's baptism. Since lustrations were common in the Jewish wor- sliip, it would readily occur to him to represent, hy a symbolical rite, the repentance which he preached. True, this Avas not done by his own arbitrary will : the Divine Spirit," &c. Olshausen's Cora., Matt. iii. 1. 16 Jost, "a learned JeAvish Eabbi, who has devoted his life to the investigation of such subjects, and who is considered by intelligent Jews as the most profound historian of the age."— Rev. James MuRDOCK, D.D., Bib. Ecpos xiv. 174. 1' Isa. xxi. 4. JEWISH BAPTISMS. 89 tional custom, received consecration from him" (John the Baptist).i8 In these historical inquiries into the baptism of Jolni, we find several important facts. Baptism, as a religious ceremony, was in common use among the Jews in the time of John the Baptist. Why introduced among the Jews, and how long be- fore, and by what authority, are questions not per- tinent to the unfolding of our one topic. ^^ It is enough here to know the fact that baptism was in general practice among the Jews before and during the time of John. It was used as an introductory rite to a new religion. The Jews esteemed the pagan Gentiles as an iinckan people ; yet they were con- stantly drawing converts from them. When one came over to Judaism, he received the baptismal cleansing. The act made him a Jew. It initiated him into a new religion. It did not admit him to Church-mem- bei-ship : this Avas the office of circumcision. When 18 " Fallnntiir qui ejus natale=? uon ultra Johannis prnRconiuni ex- tendunt. Scriptura pariter ac Josephus de hujus baptisino loquuu- tur, tanquam ritu diulum in eccle^ia Judaico recepto." Jo. Andrenc Danzii Baptismus Proselit. Judaic, Thesaurus Ugo- lini, Tom. xxii. 19 Judaii haptisuios suos quotidianos ab iEjjyptiis aut aliis in vioino gentibus hausLsse videntur. Spencer. De Legibus Heb. : Lib 1, c.viii. sec. iii. Antiques enini lavandi et convivandi ritus, qui cultus Judaici atque etliuici pars magna fuere, Christus in niysteria sua transtulit, et ad usus non niultuia dissiniile^ ii^, qnibus olim inveniebant, in baptisnio et cocna consecravit. Do. Lib, iii., c. ii. sec. iv. Baptisiuus Chiistianoruni Ebraicuni baptisnnim, quo turn pa- rentes ipsoruni, ut volerunt ipsi. tuui proselyti Judaisnio initiaban- tur, liaud paruin imitibatur ; undo uec novus visus est hie ritus cum fide Christiana iuibutis adhibebatur, Seldeu. De EutychiiEcclesitesuje Origines, § x. 8* 90 THE CHURCH AND HER CHH^DREN. the father of a family received it, the rite was also administered to his children of thirteen years and under. If an adult female became a proselyte, she also received baptism. So was the ordinance both national and common. When John the Baptist entered on his work as the forerunner of Christ, and as introducing a new reli- gious dispensation, he found this proselyte baptism in common use. His work was to persuade the Jewish populace to receive a higher and holier religion, to proselyte them to another system. This proselyte baptism was precisely the rite he needed to indicate the purification of his converts, and to seal them over to this new religion. This baptism John prac- tised during the years of his ministry ; and so suc- cessful was he, that it became a national proselj^tism. There " went out to him Jerusalem and all Judsea, and all the region round about Jordan, and were bap- tized of him in Jordan, confessing their sins." CHAPTER XIT. THE RABBIES AND TALMUDS AS AUTHORITY. IT appears that baptism was a common sacred rite among the Jews when John the Baptist began his mission in the wilderness of Judaea. The origin of the rite was so ancient among them as to be un- known. The Septuagint shows its existence in the times of Naaman, B.C. 804. When Gentiles were proselyted to Judaism they were baptized, and their children also. Very few historical facts as old as these stand out so clearly in ancient record. Many corner-stones of empires, and foundations of dynasties, and chrono- logical pivots, conceded and used as the best material of ancient history, have far more of the dust of ages and obscurity on them, than lies on these ecclesi- astical facts. Doubts on such data must make the realms of ancient history mythical generally ; and, un- less one proposes to go into doubting as an historical sceptic, and for the policy of it, we see not how these facts can be set aside. It ma}^ be objected, that we have quoted mainly Rabbles and the Talmuds, and Jewish authors, and that these are not to be trusted. Had the Jewish writer the least motive to falsify the records of his 91 92 THE CHURCH AND HER CHILDREN. people and Church on this subject? It cannot be shown that any gain, direct or remote, would accrue to him by so doing. Very like the objector will make the old and commonplace point, that there is much in the Talmuds that is frivolous, absurd, and even bare nonsense. Very true ; this is a characteristic of those Jewish writings : but does such a quality in a work disprove its historic verity ? May we deny that the man made the speech because very foolish things were said in it ? May we say that a sermon could not have been truthful because it was frivolous, or not genuine because it was stupid? May w^ deny that men have attacked the authority of the Talmuds, because the attacks were so puerile ? If nonsense in a book disproves the authenticity and genuineness, what will become of the scholastic and monkish works of the middle ages on theology and philosophy and the sciences ? — what of many of this age, eighteen hundred years hence ? One fact is a total refutation of the objection that the Talmuds are not to be trusted on questions of history. All ecclesiastical and exegetical writers on the authors and ceremonies and times of the New Testament, make free use of the Talmuds, where there is nothing manifestly untrue in the quotation or reference' desired. Those most interested to dis- prove their authority on points just cited quote them on other points without any historical scepti- cism. One case will serve, while long chapters of illustrations could be given. In his admirable trea- tise on The Scriptural Law of Divorce, the Rev. Dr. Hovey, professor of theology in the Baptist Theo- THE RABBIES AND TALMUDS AS AUTHORITY. 93 logical Seminary at Newton, quotes the teachings of Hillel and Shanmiai. Of all the rabbinical teachers wlio furnished materials for the Jerusalem Talmud, these two men are pre-eminent ; and the professor makes this reference to them, through the Talmud, with perfect propi-iety and safety. We also would like the privilege of quoting the same learned Rab- bies and their co-workers in that vast thesaurus of Jewish antiquities. Of course the Talmuds are to be used, like any other very ancient work, with a critical discretion. We use Josephus in that way, suspecting him "where his Roman interests might warp him, and trusting him where known fact does not contradict him. Rawlin- son convicts Herodotus of grave errors ; but we rely on the great historian, nevertheless, where he is not convicted. In the same way, it is manifestly just to use the Jewish writings of the early Christian period. AVe allow the authority of Josephus ; j^et we re- member, when reading hiui, that he studied the gratification of the Romans quite as much as fidelity to his own people. He sought favor with those who had conquered and devastated his country, and .so wrote with a mingled policy and truthfulness. All this we bear in mind ; but we trust him where he is in no temptation to prove an unfaithful historian. The editor of the Mischna lived and performed his work only about half a century later than Josephus ; and there appears to be no good reason for not re- ceiving his writings with the same discrimination and approval. Where the Rabbles liave incorporated fa- 94 THE CHURCH AND HER CHILDREN. Lies, trifles, and absurdities into the Talmud, it must be obvious to the intelligent reader ; while evidently the most that they say is truthful to the doctrines, eth- ics, ceremouies, and opinions of the da}^. The obvious fable should not lead us to reject the obvious fact. Their logic, specially on theological and moral ques- tions, is often childish ; but this does not vitiate their honestly-stated data. Their follies in moral, social, and ritual life cannot affect the truthfulness of ^he picture. The wrinkles and deformities in the photo- graph really praise the fidelity of the artist. Some of the most faithful and profitable chapters in the history of scholasticism, literature, and ethics in the middle ages are chapters of absurdities and trifles. Yet the great facts of mediaeval history are thus im- bedded; and, where the probabilities are favorable to a statement of fact, we credit the author for fidelity, and quote him as authority. The Talmud s must be read in the same spirit of analytic trust and distrust. When a Jewish doctor of divinity gravely discusses the question. Is it right to kill a flea on the Sabbath ? we .take his logic for what it is worth ; but the dis- cussion we take as a fair picture of the moral and ritualistic temper of the times. If no good reason can be shown for prejudice, prevarication, mistake, or intentional deception, we accept as historically true what he says of any religious belief, ceremony, mode of civil, social, or domestic life, in his times ; and he who doubts assumes the burden of disproof. In estimating the authoritative worth of any por- tion of the Talmuds, we should consider that the writers were dispersed among the nations. Their THE RABBIES AND TALMUDS AS AUTHORITY. 95 temple service was suspended ; and hy disuse their ritual law was becoming a dead-letter. Their sacred ceremonies and customs were becoming obsolete through their own dispersion ; and, by consequent want of consultation and ruiiformity, they were be- coming corrupted. Yet they fully expected a Mes- siah ; and they believed that when he did come they would repossess the land of promise, rebuild the temple, and re-establish their religion in Judaea in all its primitive purity of ritual and spirit. When such a time of restitution should come, they foresaw that their posterity would both wish and need an appeal to the law and the testimony, that all might be reconstructed after the pattern of the fathers. To meet the necessities of such a time they wrote out the Mischna, or oral tradition from Moses, and its Gemaras, or the commentaries of the Rabbies on it. These writings were to lie by, patient and immutable witnesses, to give testimony when again the restored Jews should rebuild the waste places, and inhabit the former desolations, and order the ser- vice of God in Mosaic and Aaronic fidelity. Their sincerity cannot be questioned in such an expectation; nor can we see any motive to unfaithful- ness in the records they should make for a coming age. As they thought that they then had every doctrine and custom as it should be, whatever their errors may have been, we see no reason why they should not write it out with a ipost punctilious exactness. There is an utter absence of any temptation to the contrary. If they affirmed any doctrinal, ceremonial, or ethical fact, the presumption is almost total that 96 THE CHimCH AND HER CHILDREN. we should credit their statement. They wrote for their own people, and not for others, and had no motive to misrepresent themselves to please either Christians or Gentiles. Moreover, the writers lived among the things of which they write. Rabbi Judah, the compiler of the Mischna, and they whose memoranda he used, must have known something personally, though in youth, of the second temple, and were the children of those who sacrificed in it and saw its terrible destruction by Titus. As the head of the sect of the Pharisees, he could not have erred as to principle and fact in what he wrote. What, therefore, the sacred and profane histories of the early Christian centuries do not contradict in the Talmuds, ordinary obligation to authors binds us to receive, so far as a declaration of fact is concerned. Where they throw light on any custom, doctrine, or law mentioned in the Old or New Testament, it should be taken as testimony of the first class, because contemporaneous, as Prof. Hovey has quoted them on the question of divorce. In coming, therefore, to the study of the New Tes- tament, on any question of faith or practice, as then held in the old Abrahamic Church, or quietly as- sumed, admitted, or used in the Christian Church, these writings of the Jews must be a great aid. As we read the New Testament, some things seem to have been believed, assun\ed, and done, as a matter of course, and without any particular instruction, so far as the record shows. They appear to be j^art and parcel of the religious current of the times, THE RABBIES AND TALMUDS AS AUTHOiilTY. 97 recognized by Christ and the apostles, and accepted by simple assent, as a part of tlie Christian current that was from tliem to run on through the ages. It is as a contemporary and collateral light in such cases, tliat tliese rabbinical writings have their great worth. The loci Talmudlci in the New Testament, or passages illustrated more or less by these ancient writings, are very many. The Gospel of St. Mat- thew alone has one hundred and twenty of them. Every scholarly commentator on the New Testament knows that there are peculiarities, forms, and cere- monies found there, in connection with the Church, without any known and formal introduction, yet with apostolic sanction, that only these Jewish writings can explain. Hundreds of keys of thought, unlock- ing dark recesses in the New Testament, now com- mon property in Gentile authors, came originally from the Talmuds. It is, therefore, a huge assumption, and an assault on the canons of historical criticism, to reject the Jewish accounts of Jewish baptisms in the times of our Lord, without makijig specific objections to any excepted passage. Let us turn this thought in another light at tliis point, even at the expense of anticipating the argu- ment of a future chapter. Very early in the Christian era, as early as A.D. 200, all agree that the Jews baptized infants ; while with the Christians the rite was old and well established, as is also agreed, as early as A.D. 253. When did the Jews adopt the rite? And where did the Christians obtain it? / There is only one historical answer. 7 98 THE CHURCH AND HER CHLLDREN. The history of this rite among the Jews in the time of our Lord, as furnished by the Talmuds, is the uninspired preface to the inspired history of household baptism in the Book of Acts. CHAPTER XIII. THE GREAT COMMAND. "npEACH all nations [make disciples: proselyte -L them to my religion], baptizing them." Wliat is that ? The term is not explained. It has no quali- fying words as to mode or subjects. Without com- ment or enlargement, do the apostles know what the ascending Master means? Shut out all history be- tween the present and tliat time ; go back beyond The Book of Acts and the day of Pentecost ; hear for yourself that command, — and wliat will you do? '' Baptizing them." What is the thing to be done ? To whom is it to be done ? Is there any antecedent or surrounding light to guide you ? You cannot consult The Acts of the Apostles and the Epistles, the councils and commentaries and Church histories. Is there any sacred service or ceremony of the times that can explain the command ? Evidently our Lord assumes that the apostles know what he .means; and they do know. In pursuing the inquiry, who, according to this last command of our ascending Lord, should be baptized, we need not so much a lexicon to define the word, or a commentary to give the opinions of the learned, as a view of the times when the Lord Jesus issued the commission. - • 99 100 THE CHURCH A^T> HER CHILDREN. For it is one of the first principles of interpretation, in gaining the import of an old law, to ascertain how it would fall in with the times when it was given, how it would suit the circumstances of that day, and how those to whom it was given would naturally under- stand it. The time and the place of the giving of a brief and doubtful command are two admirable expositors. They are as the " two great lights " that God made in the beginning. Let us, then, place ourselves with the eleven when they were commissioned for this baptismal work. They are in Judoea, and near the close of the first third of the first Christian centur3^ Judaism is as yet the religion of the land. Its religious forms, rites, and ceremonies are daily seen on every hand. The eleven are commanded to go and make disciples to Christ, or proselytes to the Gospel. This is the import of that word " teach," and is so given in the maroinal reading^ of the received version. The eleven understood this duty. They saw such reli- gious labor in the daily life of the Jews around them. Those Jews were compassing sea and land to make proselytes ; and the disciples understood, that with a deeper ardor, and for a vastly holier purpose, they were to imitate them in proselyting. Then, when by their teaching they had gained a disciple, a proselyte to this new religion, they were to baptize him. This ordinance, as we have seen, was no novelty to them. It was from the olden time in the Holy Land. As zealous Jews formerly them- selves, they had labored to gain Gentile converts, and bring them to this purifying rite ; and often had they seen it administered. THE GREAT COMMAND. 101 The Lake of Mcrom and the Sea of Galilee, as well as waters more private, had witnessed the dedication of many a proselyte. What multitndes had they seen thronging to John's baptism at JEnon, and along the Jordan ! And probably the apostles themselves re- ceived this same baptism. Then, what they were commanded now to do was no new and strange thing. The mode and nature of the ceremony were familiar to them, as common nsage in their native land. True, they were to exact a more spiritual and rad- ical preparation for it, and were to attach a deeper significance to it ; but the rite itself was to them old and familiar. They had seen adult females receive, as proselytes, this ordinance, and so become members of the Com- monwealth of Israel. They saw them in the mixed multitude that gathered so eagerly to John's baptism. So, when they made disciples and baptized them, they would, as a matter of course, include the fe- males, though we do not find any specific order to this effect. As a matter of recorded fact, we find that they did thus infer their duty, and did baptize women. The eleven also saw that proselyte parents, coming to this ordinance under John the Baptist, brought their little ones with them, and made them over to the new reliction with the same ceremonial seal of water. They knew no case where a proselyte parent had kept back his infant child from baptism. To the male infant of a Gentile thus coming over to Judaism, they knew that baptism was as much a matter of 102 THE CHURCH AND HER CHILDREN. course as circumcision. Each was inevitable. " The whole nation knew well enough that little children used to be baptized." It was as persistently exacted as the other ceremonies so tenaciously held and rigidly enforced by that ritual people. It was an integral part of the idea of proselyte baptism, as held and practised in those times, that it covers the child as well as the parent. This the eleven knew, and saw illustrated, and very like had practised, as Jews. This was the usage and the teaching of those times. These were the surroundings of the disciples, when commanded to baptize their converts. An ancient and common rite, that, coming on the head, invariably covered the members, of the household, they were to administer. There is no qualifying Avord, no intimation, that in the new use of an old rite there is to be any change as to the sex or age of the subjects of it. Place yourself, now, in those times, and in those circumstances ; and, receiving that command, whom would you baptize ? How would the sentiments and usages of the times, concerning the rite of proselyte baptism,' interpret this command to you ? The Jews around you, your neighbors, are industrious in mak- ing proselytes ; and, gaining the head of a Gentile family, they baptize the household. You are com- manded to make proselytes and baptize. You have no command or intimation to draw a dividing line between the parent and the infant child in adminis- tering the ordinance. The command is simply to baptize ; as if, from all you know of usage, and all you see in practice about you, there could be no need of THE GREAT COMMAND. 103 describing more specifically who should oe baptized. You are left, therefore, for an interpretation of the command, to the practice of your proselyting neigh- bors, the Jews. They followed the rule as the Talmud records it : " Any male child of a proselyte, that was under the age of thirteen years and a day, and females that were \ under twelve years and a day," should be baptized. In those circumstances could the eleven do any thing otherwise than baptize believers and their house- holds ? What was there to suggest to them in those times any other course ? What was there to give to them the notion, so foreign to all the teaching and practice of the day, and of the Jewish Church from Abraham, that the infant of the believer was to be passed by ? And here it should be said that we are not to mark out a course, or provide an interpretation for the eleven, from the views and feelings of this day. We may not make up a creed and course of conduct out of our present denominational material, and carry it back to them for acceptance and use. Out of the material for a judgment of duty that they then had, in the traditions, teachings, and practices of their times, what line of action would they naturally, and as a matter of course, mark out for themselves? As this command of our Lord is a brief and unex- plained command, the import of it must be made up from the views and uses of baptism that prevailed when the command was given. As a matter of course, therefore, the eleven would proceed, even as Jews, to baptize the children of proselyte believers. 104 THE CHURCH AND HER CHHJDREN. And a separate consideration will enforce this con- clusion. We have already seen that the Church of God is one and the same, under the Jewish and Christian form of it. The Church of the apostolic age is but a continuation of the Church of the preceding ages. Its confession of faith, requisite for admission, is essen- tially the same, — a saving belief in the Lord Jesus Christ ; though after the death of Christ this founda- tion faith of the Church was more clearly defined, and more fully stated and exacted. In this Church it had been from the first, as a rule, invariable and universal, that when the parent came into it his little child should receive the same seal with himself of dedication to God. Now, the eleven, constructing no new Church, but, as apostles, building on the foundation of the prophets, and only making the outlines of that foun- dation more clear and definite, would naturally go on the presumption that the children of believers would continue to come into the same relations with the people of God that they had always held ; and, bap- tism taking the place of circumcision, as an introduc- tory rite, and adopted, too, from common Jewish usage in that day, by which the children of proselyte believers were baptized, it would be the most obvious inference, it would come in their thoughts in the line of natural sequence, that they were to baptize the children of those adults whom they proselyted and baptized into the Christian dispensation of the Church of God. Or, take another standpoint from which to look for THE GREAT COMMAND. 105 the path of duty for the eleven in obeying this com- niaiul. We have seen that our Saviour took a religious ceremony, common in liis times, and promoted it to \ be the initiatoj:y rite to his Church. In doiug this lie displaced the former rite of admission. One takes the place of the other. Now, suppose the Saviour, instead of making this change, had seen fit to con- tinue the old rite, and so had said to the apostles, " Go ye therefore, and teach all nations, circumcising them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost." In such case could the eleven \ have been in any doubt whether they should admin- ister the rite to the children of believers ? Thouofh nothing is said of children, would they not be in- cluded ? Why not included, then, in a substituted rite, that was to answer all the ends of the other ? Or, vary the supposition. A Baptist Board of Mis- sions sends a band of missionaries to a particular peo- ple, with the general order to proselyte them to Christianity, and baptize them. How shall they understand that command of the Board? And what shall be their rule in determining the proper subjects of baptism ? The home usage of those who commis- sioned them. Suppose the missionaries are sent by the Ameri- can Board of Missions. What now shall define and limit the use of the word '' baptize " ? The home usage ^ of those who commissioned them ; and this on the supposition that they know what that usage is, and that they have no other means of interpreting the word " baptize," as to the question who should receive 106 THE CHUECH AND HER CHILDREN. the rite, except the home usage of those who com- missioned them. In these last two suppositions we have the circum- stances of the apostles justly set forth, as they were when our Lord put them in commission to baptize. They were to use a common and well-known rite on their adult proselytes. Their guide in the administration of the rite must be the ordinary Jewish usage, since the command is given them in general and absolute form, without speci- fication, qualification, or limitation. But, in the ordi- nary Jewish usage of that rite, the children of adult proselytes were included with their parents. Can a doubt remain, then, what course the apostles will pur- sue ? What is there in all the circumstances to raise any doubt or hesitation in their own minds ? What would you have done then and there, thus under the commission of the Lord Jesus ? CHAPTER XIV. OBJECTIONS. IT is now in place to notice certain common and plausible objections. So long as these very im- portant facts, now stated, are unknown or unadmitted, there are some objections to Infant Baptism that must lie with weight. For, if all connection between circumcision and baptism be cut ofp, and if it be denied that each is substantially equivalent to the other, and if the Jew- ish usages of baptism be kept out of the argument, and the history of Jewish religious ceremonies in the times of John the Baptist be excluded, these objections to paedobaptism may have a peculiar force. But it is a force that they only seem to have so long as mateiial facts are absent. 1. It is objected that the command is to baptize only believers. And so it may be correctly said that only believers in Judaism were to receive the circumcision and bap- tism of a proselyte. Yet, when that proselyte had children, even so young as to be unable to believe, tliey were to receive these rites. The rule among the Jews in baptizing proselytes was to baptize only believers. An adult believer 107 108 THE CHURCH AND HER CHILDREN. must be found, according to the command of our Lord, before baptism could be administered , but, when found, his infant children were to be reckoned as natu- ral adjuncts of the man. They were regarded eccle- siastically as parts of his personal responsibility, and so were not to be dissevered from him in any total dedication of himself and all his to God. The ancient policy of God was to build up his Church by family additions ; and ever regarding, as he did, the family as a unit, he embraced all when he specified the head. So, when the parent believed, the children were held also by presumption and anticipa- tion. The policy of God was not like that of too many parents, who presume that the child will be an unbeliever, and expect it, and so treat it negligently and hopelessly, and thus make out a parental insur- ance and foreordination of unbelief. Unlike this un- natural proceys, having the seeds of death in it as an organic law, was the encircling bond of mercy and of gracious expectation in which our heavenl}^ Father enclosed his accepted ones. How often in his cove- nants of mercy do we find the phrases, " children's children," " a seed to serve him," " a generation" ! On this principle his Church was built at the first, having not an individual but a family basis ; and this policy was actively in practice in the times of our Saviour. He continues it in the command to baptize only believers. As a matter of theory in the Church from time immemorial, and as a theory in full practice in the Church to which they were to make proselj^te additions, the apostles would, as a matter of course, gather in the little ones with the parents. To have OBJECTIONS. 109 done otherwise would have required, first, a radical reconstruction of the Church, and then a specific order to exclude children. When one objects to infant baptism by saying that bai)tism is a sign and seal of saving faith, and that saving faith should precede it, he is obligated to explain a difficulty that his sweeping objection creates. Circumcision is called ''a seal of the righteousness of faith." ^ Yet infants received this seal before they were old enough to have faith. On the same principle, whatever it be, they may receive baptism. By the same exegesis and principles infant baptism and infant circumcisisra stand or fall tosrether. The objection to the former — that faith cannot precede it — as a seal of faith, is valid against the latter. So the ob- jection is an objection against fact. It is an objection to what actually took place, that infants, who were not old enough to exercise faith, received the seal of faith. Moreover, if want of belief should prevent infant ^ baptism, why should it not prevent infant salvation, ' since it says, " He that believeth not shall be damned " ? 2. It is objected that there is no command in the Bible to baptize infants. In the light of the facts now before us, there would be no need of such a command to the apostles. The objection goes on the assumptions, that the apostles are about to organize the Church of Christ as a new institution, and that the nature of Church member- ship is now to be determined for the first time, and that the rite of initiation is a novel one for the times, 1 Horn. iv. 11. 110 THE CHURCH AND HER CHH^DREN. and not interpreted and limited in the extent of its application by precedent and daily use. But we have seen that the Church of Christ is one I from the days of Abraham, and continuous through all the ages. No new Church is formed. David and Paul and the Christian converts on the day of Pente- cost are members of the same Church, having the same creed. The ancient principle of membership em- I braced the children of the adult believer. Changing one characteristic in the seal of membership would HER CHH^DREN. of the change of rites, and the enlarged application, in the case in question, must commend itself to all, as corresponding with the change in the social, moral, and religious position of woman. CHAPTER XV. CHRIST AND THE CHILDREN. "/^F such is the kingdom of heaven." The phrases, v^ " kingdom of heaven," and '' kingdom of God," are frequently used in the New Testament. There is also several times introduced the expression '' the kingdom of Christ," or its equivalent. These three phrases have tlie same general import. The meaning and pliraseology are brought forward into the New Testament from the Old. And they mean the spiritual kingdom of the Messiah. Many of the Jews had attributed to this reign of Christ a personal, civil, and temporal character. He was to be king of the Jews, visible, triumpliant, and glo- rious, above all the glories that attach to any earthly monarch. But the more devout Jews, as Zacharias and Simeon, Anna the prophetess, and Joseph,^ had the spiritual, and what is now common view, of the reign of Christ. It was to be a reign without any civil organization or geographical limits. And, so far as it had any visible embodiment, it was merely as a means of showing its spiritual, religious, and heavenly origin and character. The true nature of 1 Luke i. 67, ii. 25, 3G, xxiii. 50-51. 11* 125 126 THE CHUKCH AND HER CHILDREN. this kingdom, St. Paul defines when he says, " The kingdom of God is not meat and drink, but righteous- ness and peace, and joy in the Holy Ghost." And herein he but follows the teaching of the King him- self: "The kingdom of God cometh not with out- ward show. Neither shall they say, Lo, here ! or, Lo, there ! For, behold, the kingdom of God is within you." Hence those words to Nicodemus, and re- peated so emphatically : " Verily, verily, I sa}^ unto thee, except a man be born of water, and of the Spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God.' The only external and visible manifestation of this kingdom, as an organization on earth, the Saviour set forth in the Church. Into it he designed to gather his friends, followers, and subjects. His peo- ple, as distinct from those of any other kingdom or prince, were to be embodied in this holy community. It is the only visible constitution of a kingdom that he has here. It is, under a modified and Christian- ized form, the continuation, from the days of pat- riarchs and prophets, of the visible gathering and manifestation of the people of God. We are to bear in mind that the only kingdom that God has attempted to establish in this world, since the apostacy, is Messianic. It stands on the theory and work of Redemption. Christ, as its glo- rious Head, commenced its organization in that first promise to our fallen parents. And the production of a people, from age to age, to serve him, was but giving a practical and visible effect to the purjoose and plan of a spiritual kingdom on earth. And the Saviour declares this whole truth, when he says, CHRIST AND THE CHILDREN. 127 " lie tliat is not with me is against mc, and lie that gathereth not with me scattereth abroad." Herein he chiims to himself a party and a leadership in it, and at the same time he classes all others in a party op])oscd to him. And these two parties exhaust the human family. This party, this kingdom of Christ, has heen one aud the same in all time hitherto. In the ages of l)atriarchs and prophets, during those many centuries before Christ, all who belonged to his party, to this " kingdom of God," were aggregated in the Church of God. The Church had not then that sharply de- fined spiritual border which we now assign to a par- ticular and local Church. It had many nominal, as well as actual believers, wise and foolish virgins, tares and wheat. Such was the nature, composition, and visible mani- festation of " the kingdom of Gotl," when they brought 3'oung children to Christ. We are now to remember that these children, thus brought to the Saviour, were Jewish children, and so church- members. They were nominally members of the kingdom of God. As such Christ owns them, and defends their privilege and right to be brought to him, as the real Head of that kingdom, for his blessing. We have no evidence that these children were peculiar for any spiritual traits, or were after any manner different from the thousands of others in the region, that they were thus brought to Christ. There is no evidence that they were regenerated children, or had any thing more to commend them to the favor of the Saviour than the common amiabili- 128 THE CHURCH AND HER CHILDREN. ties of childhood, excepting their relation to this " kingdom." They were Jewish children, and so members of the ^ Church, according to its Abrahamic constitution, and the uniform practice of God's ancient people. This membership the Saviour recognizes and declares, when he says, '' Of such is the kingdom of heaven." " As the only visible kingdom of God on earth, its terms of membership include these, and they should not be withheld from my notice and favor, the only visible Head of this kingdom on earth." And when his disciples rebuked those who brought them " he was much displeased." It was an interference with the relations that God had constituted between his kingdom and the little children, that he did not like. And he rebuked it. Such an exclusion of the children of believers from immemorial Church privi- leges merited his rebuke ; and he gave it. Some have su2:>posed that the Saviour is here speaking of the heavenly kingdom, or state of the blessed in glory. But, as ordinary children, could he make this affirmation of them ? Or could he say that others should enter heaven who were like these children, when at the time these children may have been destitute of the distinguishing mark that quali- fies for heaven, namely, the ncAv heart ? If, however, he does here declare their certainty of membership in the kingdom of glory, much more may we suppose he would allow their membership in his kingdom, or Church, on earth. Others have supposed that the Saviour did not intend to teach that these children were actually CHRIST AND THE CHILDREN. 129 members of his kingdom, but only that adults who liave qualities like them could be members. But can we suppose that adults would be admitted to membership because they reseml)led children in cer- tain particulars, while the children themselves would be excluded? Likeness to a child the ground of admission, and the child itself denied ? We see no reason for this ; nor do we believe that the Saviour meant to teach such a principle. The kingdom of heaven, he says, has in it such persons as these. Moreover, that the children themselves were to be included in the membership is evident from the use of the word rendered " of such," — rojv yun roiovrcov. It includes the person or thing referred to, as a speci- men or representative of a class. A few cases will make this evident. " Whoso shall receive one such little child in my name receiveth me : " ^ here the little child, whom others must be like to enter the kingdom of heaven, is itself received of Christ. " And with many such parables spake he the word unto them : " ^ Here " such parables " refers to those just spoken, and so includes them. " The hour cometh, and now is, when the true worshippers shall worship the Father in spirit and in truth ; for the Father seeketh such to worship him : " * here " such " refers to the true worshippers mentioned, who are of course included. " Ye rejoice in your boastings : all such rejoicing is evil:"^ this boasting specified is evil, and every other like it. Demetrius the silversmith called the craftsmen together " with the 2 Matt, xviii. 5. 8 Mark iv. 33. 4 joi^u iy. 23. 5 James iv. 16. 130 THE CHURCH AND HER CHH^DREN. workmen of like [such] occupation : " ^ here his own and their occupations are included as branches of the one business of makins^ shrines for Diana. These cases of illustration might be very much multiplied, showing that the words " of such " in- clude the person or thing in question, as well as those similar. And so we conclude, that, whatever the kingdom or membership obtained by those who are like little children, these children obtain the same. They are included in the favor that adults obtain by being like them. • Actsxix. 25. CHAPTER XVI. THE SILENCE OF CHRIST. THE ancient Church of God embraced the chil- dren of its members. From Abraham to Christ this was a principle and a practice. Since the most of its members entered it in infancy, it was a body, primarily, of children. They grew up in it ; and tlie waste made by death was repaired by their continual addition. Suppose, now, that this principle and usage are to be changed in the Christian form of the Church ; that children are to be excluded, and only {idults admitted : would the Saviour have so insisted on their member- ship in it, as has been shown in the last chapter? He is among a Jewish population, and before a Jewish audience, who, with their households, are members of the Church. If a change is about to be made in the basis of membership, they are greatly concerned to know it. So radical a reconstruction of its constitution ab(mt to be made, and the relations of children to it about to be so totally changed, would the Saviour have said notliing to imply the change ? His treatment of the children in this case implies more than a silent ai)probation of the ancient custom concerning their membership. He virtually 131 132 THE CHURCH AND HER CHH^DREN. pleads for it. He remonstrates against their exclu- sion. If he were about to institute a new order of things in the Church, and omit the children, would he have neglected so fitting an opportunity to unfold or inti- mate the new policy ? And, after he had shown this marked disapproval of their overlooking the children, how could the disciples afterward assume to exclude them from theu' ancient right and place, without the most spe- cific command? If they were to be dropped in making up the membership of the Christian Church, the difference between it and the ancient Church would be very great. So radical and wide-reaching a change would be worthy of a particular specifica- tion and order from the Head of the Church. Yet this so fitting occasion for it goes by, not only without the intimation of any change, but with a treatment of children in their relations to the king- dom that must accord most fully with the high-toned conservatism of a Jew in the matter. If a new policy concerning children did come into the Church, this was the transition period. This occasion not only invited, but seemed to demand, an allusion to it. And, if the change were taking place, the silence of the Saviour on it at this time is unaccountable. But assume that no change was taldng place in their rela- tions to the Church, and his entire treatment of these children, and of those who opposed their presentation, is perfectly natural, and accordant with the policy and practice of ages. Consider the silence of our Lord on this great issue THE SILENCE OF CHRIST. " 133 ill another case. When about to leave tlie woild, he commands his apostles to go abroad, make disciples, and baptize them. We have already considered how they would naturally and necessarily understand this command. For their only knowledge of baptism was gained from its practice among the Jews, and in the in- troduction of proselytes to Judaism. And in this prac- tice the children of the adult proselyte were baptized as a matter of course. It was not an open question "whether they should be. And so, with no qualifica- tions or exceptions in the command, they would nat- urally and necessarily, in baptizing an adult proselyte to Christianity, include in the rite his children, if he had any. Considering, therefore, this common practice in Jud?ea, when the Saviour gave his last command, and seeing the obvious and natural interpretation that tlie apostles would give to it, the omission of every qualify- ing or limiting clause in it touching children is sig- nificant. It may be said that the command limits the rite to believers. This is true, while yet it does not touch the question of the baptism of children. For prose- lyte baptism, without other instruction, was the model for the apostles. In administering it, the Jews were limited by command to baptize only believers in Judaism. This command to them was as strict as the command of Christ to the apostles to baptize only believers. Yet they always included the children of the believers when they baptized a proselyte. So the apostles would naturally do the same; and so the command to baptize only bcliev- 12 134 THE CHUECH AND HER CHILDREN. ers is no limitation of the command touching chil- dren. The omission of the Saviour, therefore, to qualify or limit the command by some reference for the exclu- sion of children is a very emphatic omission. The inference, in the circumstances, that they would be included unless specifically excluded, becomes an index to his purpose to retain for them the relation to the Church that they had had from time immemo- rial. If he said nothing to prevent an obvious con- clusion from known facts and common practices, then we must not turn aside from the obvious conckision that he designed that inference to be drawn. For we must remember the common practice and rule of interpretation, — that changes, variations from usage, and not the continuance of a usage, call for remark. Silence leaves a rite or custom undisturbed in its continuance. Its modification, specially if it be radical, is what is spoken of. It is the new, not the old, that occasions remark. We revise some of the statutes of the State at each session of the legislature. The law or section of which nothing^ is said holds over with full force and without any allusion. The ancient and original statute concerning admissions to the Church of God provides for and requires the admission of the chil- dren of the adult member. In the transition period of this one Church from the old to the new dispensa- tion, the Lord Jesus Christ, the Head of the Church, revises this statute of admission so far as to make baptism take the place of circumcision : so, where the statute formerly read " circumcise," it is changed to read " baptize." THE SILENCE OF CHRIST. 135 Makincf no otlier chcansje in the statnte, what remains nnchangcd liolJs over with full force under the new dispensation ; and so the present divine Liw of admission provides for and requires the admis- sion of tlie cliihh'en of the adult member, the silence of the lawgiver implying no change. Viewing, therefore, tlie common use made of bap- tism, when our Saviour took it up from among tlie Jews, and adopted it as tlie substitute for circumcision in the new dispensation, and regarding the views that the apostles must naturally and necessarily have had of their application of the rite under the last com- mand of Christ, we cannot but regard that command, thus given without qualification or limitation, as binding and intending to bind the apostles to the doctrine and practice of Infant Baptism. Previous practices in the Church, and those common and daily practices among the Jews, and all the attendant cir- cumstances, demand a specified omission and exclusion of the cliildren, if they were to be omitted. The argument on this question demands that those who deny infant baptism should show where it is pro- hibited. All the facts we have adduced show that it comes as a matter of course from the circumstances of the times, and the command of our Lord. The children havini]: been alwavs included aforetime in God's Church econom}^ if they are now to be cast out, in this transition from the old to the new dispen- sation, they wlio affirm it assume the burden of proof, and must show by what command or lawful inference they are rejected. It is Christ who says, " Forbid them not." CHAPTER XVII. THE POSITION OF THE APOSTLES. IN a scriptural inquiry concerning the doctrine and practice of infant baptism, it is very important to learn what was usage with the apostles. We now open this branch of the general subject ; and in doing this it is necessary to remember, while we proceed, a few facts. By keeping these facts before us, we shall place ourselves in the position and cir- cumstances of the apostles, and so be the better able to judge of their doctrine and practice in this thing. We must remember, then, that household baptism was a common practice in the times of the apostles, and among their own people the Jews, before the manifestation of the Christian Church. They grew up in the sight of this usage. The baptism of chil- dren was familiar to them from their own childhood. It was administered to the little ones of a proselyte as a matter of course. So, from the very source and practice whence they derived their ideas of baptism at all, they took also the idea, that, when it was applied to an adult believer in Judaism, it was also to be ap- plied to his children, so far as they could yet be re- garded as infants. We must also remember that they had no concep- 136 THE rOSITION OF THE APOSTLES. 137 lion or expectation of a new Church. The ancient Church of Crod was to be continued as a matter of course. The gracious, promised, and prophesied time of its enlargement had come, when the Gentiles should flow unto it. Instead of any new tabernacle, Zion was to lengthen her cords and strengthen her stakes, and so enlarge the covering of her tent for all the nations. The old '' olive-tree " was to be pre- served, and Gentile grafts inserted. Even the Jewish limbs that had been broken off by unbelief were to be recovered, and ^' graffed into their own olive- tree." ^ So in that first apostolic preaching, under the last commission, and in the first Christian revival, the promise of mercy for the latter days is interpreted to cover Jews. And when those three thousand, a mixed multitude of Jews '' out of every nation under heaven," received Christ and Christian baptism, and " the same day were added unto them," — the com- pany of apostles and disciples, — they were those broken branches " graffed into their own olive-tree again." These were the first professors of religion that the apostles received into the Church. And they were received into "their own olive-tree," the ancient, original Church of God. To this same body the apostles added all their other converts, Jewish and Gentile. To the Jew it was his own, the Jewish Church, and to the Gentile it was the Christian Cliurch. So we see that both were but different names and dispensations of one and the same body. This Pentecostal revival and ingathering of con- 1 Ttom. xi. 17-24. 12* 138 THE CHURCH AND HER CHILDREN. verts was the time to constitute and set forth a new Church, if any such thing was to be ever done. This was the beginning, properly, of Christian preaching. Christian baptism, and Christian profession of re- ligion. But the three thousand converts went into "their own" Church, the ancient " olive-tree " of God ; and all converts under the apostles followed them. So no new Church was ever constituted. Then we must remember, too, in this connection, that the children of believers were also included in this ancient Church. The apostles not only knew this to be universal practice, but that it was an essen- tial in the constitution and usage of the body. Nay, more: they knew that they themselves had come into it in their infancy. No peculiarity of the ancient Church was more marked than its infant member- ship. No condition of adult membership was more stringently enforced than this dedication of the chil- dren to God. A Jew esteemed few, if any, of his rights and privileges so precious and inalienable as the one to place his child within the sacred enclosure of the people of God. All this was well known to the apostles, as a law in Israel, and a universal custom with the chosen of God. And these very apostles, who were still only Jews who had " found the Christ " and accepted him, had all the deep scriptural and traditional feel- ings and prejudices of a Jew on this question. This we must bear in mind while inquiring for their usage in Infant Baptism. At the same time Ave must bear in mind that the Saviour had given them, so far as the record shows, no intimation that THE POSITION OF THE APOSTLES. 139 tlie relations of the cliiklren of believers to tho Church were to be disturbed in the new dispensa- tion. Thus we see, that, if the policy was now to be in- troduced or overlooking and excluding children when their parents were admitted, it would be a radical, conspicuous, and wide-working change in the ancient order of things. Among other things, therefore, we must also re- member this: that so organic a change as the omission of the children, if it took place, must have become the topic of frequent remark. All will see that the change, if made, was very great. Prior to the con- stitution of any Church in this world, it would be an exceedingly broad question whether children should be recoonized or ig^nored. It is now a most sio'nifi- cant difference between two churches, so called, that one expects infant dedication, and the other refuses it. i\Iuch more would the violent change discarding it, when it had been universal practice, be a change provoking attention and remark. The apostles, still Jews, and laboring among their brethren, and as a first addition receiving so many of them, would, as a natural step and as a necessity, explain this marked rejection of their little ones. What conference, and collision often, on other points, with their " kinsmen according to the flesh ! " How repeated and con- tinuous, even in the Book of Acts, and how often in the Epistles, the allusion to controversies with the Jews ! Yet not once does an apostle drop a remark in the way of explanation or defence, concerning this supposed exclusion of the children from their ancient relations and most endeared privileges. 140 THE CHUECH AND HER CHILDREN. Now, before coming to the inqiiiiy what they said and did concerning the usage in question, can we presume on a universal and profound silence by them, while so radical a change in the theory and practice of the Church of God is taking place ? But, on the other hand, if no change were to take place in the relations of the children of believers to the Church, then very little if any remark would be called for or made concerning them. If the universal usage of more than nineteen hundred years were abrogated, the change might well create a sensation and discussion ; and apostles would come to the de- fence. But the continuance of that usage would naturally be in comparative silence. What would there be in its continuance to call forth inquiry, ex- planation, or apology ? It is change, not the uniform and the stereotyped, that occasions remarks and dis- cussions. The sabbath is not mentioned for about four hundred years between the times of Joshua and of David. The continuance of the institution and its observance did not call for any remark on it. Circumcision is not mentioned for about eight hun- dred and fifty years between the times of Moses and of Jeremiah. The continuance and observance of the ceremony did not give occasion for any allusion to it. The daily and annual sacrifices in the temple for ages are not mentioned ; but their interruption is faith- fully chronicled. So, if the relations of children to the Church are continued from patriarchial and prophetic through apostolic times, we should not expect to find much, if, indeed, any thing, said about it. The circum- THE POSITION OF THE APOSTLES. 141 stances would not call for remark. Silence would be the most conclusive argument for the continu- ance of those relations. These, then, are the circumstances in which the apostles enter on their work under the last command of the Master. They are to labor for the extension of the ancient kingdom " from sea to sea." The Jew is to be per- suaded that Jesus is the Christ, and so stand with Abraham indeed in his covenant relations. The Gentiles are to be led to accept the Messiah, and so come in as the children of Abraham, assured that, if they be Christ's, then are they Abraham's seed, and heirs according to the promise. They are not to dis- organize or destroy, but fulfil, like their Master ; not innovators, but restorers of the old paths. St. John is to preach the Messiah found, as Isaiah preached one to come ; and the two are to swell the ranks for the one and common communion. CHAPTER XVIII. nOUSEHOLD BAPTISMS. THE last chapter puts us into the position of the apostles. Standing back there, we remember and feel with their experiences; we hear the final command of the Master with their understandings ; and we look forward to work by such ways and means as their circumstances would suggest. Now we are ready to go forward, and examine apostolic action in the matter under inquiry, as set forth in The Acts of the Apostles and in the Epistles. Their main effort appears to have been to convince men that Jesus of Nazareth was the Messiah, and that they should repent of sin, trust in him for sal- vation, and publicly confess him. To carry these points they urge their great argu- ments, and incur their great perils. To Jewish audi- ences and readers they argue these points from the Scriptures, showing that what they preach is but an unfolding and continuation of the faith of Abraham. In all this they say but little of those under adult or responsible years. The disposition of children, so far as their religious relations were concerned, seems to have been accord- ing to a settled and well-understood policy. It did 142 HOUSEHOLD BAPTISMS. 143 not, apparently, call for modification, explanation, or defence. There is occasionally an allusion, incidentally made, that covers children ; but generally they re- main unnoticed, just as we may suppose they would under an ancient and universal usage. Hence the fbjoction is of little account, that only three instances of household baptism are recorded in the New Testa- ment. Even if these three instances proved Infant Baptism, they would add but little to the force of the general argument. Children being always in- cluded in the Church before, and being brought always by baptism into Israel with the proselyte purent, and being reckoned by Christ as members of his kingdom, and no exception of them being made in his command to make continued additions by bap- tism, it is to be held that they continued to be reck- oned and gathered with the believing and professing parents. So, the greater the silence in the New Testament concerning them, the stronger the infer- ence that their relations have not been changed. Hence the great mistake of those who reject house- hold consecration because there is no positive com- mand for it in the New Testament. It had been commanded and practised among the people of God for nineteen hundred years. In a continuation of the doctrines and principles and Church-organization that had prevailed for nineteen centuries, why de- mand a specific command for one only of the many items continued ? As well demand that the ten com- mandments must be re-enacted in order to be in force under tlie Christian dispensation. 14^ THE CHURCH AND HER CHILDREN. So, if those of tlie opposing theory, with much spe- cial labor, seem to show that children were not of necessity included in the three cases of household bap- tism, it makes nothing against the main argument for the institution. The specific mention of infant baptism by the apostles is no more necessary to complete the proof of it, than the mention of the sabbath during those four hundred years between Joshua and David, or the mention of circumcision during^ those eic»ht hundred and fifty years between Moses and Jeremiah, is necessary to prove the continued observance of those institutions. The only thing that required a specific mention and assertion in all this matter Avas the change of seal from circumcision to baptism. This change was made and practised during the life of the Saviour, and finally and specially commanded when he said, " Go teach all nations, baptizing," instead of circumcising as aforetime. The explanation, therefore, of these three cases of household baptism may be safely passed by as a mat- ter of indifference. We can afford to leave them to the free use of those who deny the ordinance in question, if they will use them fairly. The extrem- est favorable construction for themselves that they can put on them is that children are not mentioned in them ; and, as they are not absolutely, universally, and invariably included under the word " household," there may have been none in these three households. But this does not prove that there were in them no children ; nor may they press their use so far as this. If they ask us for the family register of Lydia and of the jailer and of Stephanas, to show the HOUSEHOLD BAPTISMS. 145 names and ages of children there, before we can use these cases to establish the practice of infant baptism, we, in turn, ask of them those registers to show that there were no children, before the}^ urge the cases against us. So the whole argument from these cases is an argument from probabilities. Before dismiss- ing it, let us look at it a moment in this light. What is probable, — that there were or were not children in any one of those three households ? As a general rule, what is the fact as to finding: or not findingr children in a " household " or family ? And, according to ec- clesiastical law and usage in the land and times of these three cases, we reckon females of twelve years and a day, and males of thirteen years and a day, and under, as children. If any one will take the house- holds or families in any ward, district, or village with which he is familiar, he will find that a large majority of them have children under twelve and thirteen years. An investigation of facts will show this. If the inquiry be raised concerning an unknown family, the probabilities are altogether in favor of the hypothesis that children will be found in it. These general ob- servations and impressions may be confirmed by facts from census returns. In England, in 1837, 42,203 families, under the head of *' husband and wife," were taken in order, that is, as they came in going from house to house. Of these, 30,256 had children. ^ This fact shows children in nearly two-thirds of the families. When the census of New York was taken in 1865, it was taken by families, with special reference 1 United-States Census, 1850: Couipeud. p. 101. 13 146 THE CHUECH AND HER CHH^DIIEN. to children. To each of the women who were or had been married, of whom there were 842,562, the question was put, whether she had had chiklren ; and only 115,252 answered in the negative. In this case six families out of every seven had had children ; but no registry shows what proportion had them yet under the age of thirteen. Now, as the very term " household " or family im- plies the marriage relation, the probability is strong (three to four and six to seven, according to the above facts), that, in either one of the three cases before us taken separately, there were children. In the absence of any j)ositive proof either wa}^ this is a reasonable conclusion. If we take the three cases together, the probability rises very much, that among them there was at least one family having children. So, while the opponents of this institution incline to make much of these three cases, we specially mark the fact, that the strength of theu- argument from them lies in the very limited number of cases. A large num- ber of such instances would increase the probability to a certainty, that there must have been children among them. How doubtful an arorument is that Avhose weakness is increased with the increase of the facts on which it professes to be based ! In ordinary argu- ment, the more facts bearing on the point the better. But here the safety of the conclusion sought lies in the fewness of the data. Indeed, it is an extraordi- nary argument and most singular logic that so uses three facts to establish a point where three times three would disprove it beyond a reasonable doubt. But we must not yet take our leave of the " household " HOUSEHOLD BAPTISMS. 147 of Lydia and of the jailer and of Stephanas. The use of this word " household " in the Scriptures has an important bearing in balancing the probabilities on this question. The original word here translated *' household " is the only word in New-Testament Greek by which one could express the idea of a family, including parents and children ; and where that idea is expressed this word is used. So, when Paul is pointing out to Timothy the qualifications for a bishop, he says, " One that ruleth well his own house, having his children in subjection." Here chil- dren are included in the word ''house," or household, as is evident from the last clause of the quotation. AVhen God commanded Noah to enter the ark with all his " house,'' the command, as we know, included his children. When the Seventy made a Greek trans- lation of the Old Testament about two hundred and eighty years before Christ, they used this same Greek word to express the family. The Septuagint furnishes very many instances of this ; and very likely a care- ful examination would show a uniformity of use by them of this same word. An extensive research on this point is mentioned by Taylor, the editor of Cal- met's Bible Dictionary, and shows a conclusive re- sult. He reports the examination of about three hundred instances of the use of this word as ap- plied to persons, all which denoted a fiimily with children. 2 Tliere is one other item of evidence on the import of the word " household," that should here be 2 See Apostolic Baptism, by C. Taylor; specially on the uses of oi/cof and oUla. 118 THE OHUKCH AND HER CHILDREN. noticed. In the first Christian centuiy, a translation of the New Testament was made into the Old Syriac or Peshito. This version uses the phrase or idiom " sons of the house " for household. So in the pas- sage concerning Lydia it reads, " And when she was baptized, and the sons of her house." The same is said of the exemplary wife in Prov. xxxi. 15, 21 : " She riseth also while it is yet night, and giveth meat to the sons of her house " [household]. " She is not afraid of the snow for the sons of her house " [household]. So also in Eccl. ii. 7 : "I got me ser- vants and maidens, and sons of my house were born to me." In the authorized version it reads, "And I had servants born in my house." Here the reference is beyond question. Of this translation certain things are to be noted that give it a peculiar weight of influence. It was completed before the close of the first centmy, or very early in the second. Then the Peshito trans- lator or translators of the New Testament had proba- bly known some of the apostles personally: they lived in the very region where the apostles labored. Being, then, on the ground of their labors, if not in the time, and making this translation for those who had learned to love the Christian Scriptures, those translating had two great advantages, — a knowledge of apostolic custom as to " household " baptism, and a knowledge of the import of the word as used by the apostles and rendered " household." No writer, it would seem, could be better situated to understand the practice, and translate the language in question. And of Lydia and her household they say in trans- HOUSEHOLD BAPTISMS. 149 lation, " When she was baptized, and the sons of her house." With a concludinc^ remark we here take leave of the three " households." The weight of argument turns on the meaning of the Greek word oixog^ ren- dered "house" and "household." Fortunately we Jiave two perfectly reliable witnesses on its import. Three hundred cases of Hebrew words denoting a family with children, fifty of them known to include children, are rendered in the Septuagint by oUog. This witness testifies what meaning went into the word. A translator of the first Christian centurj^ turning the New Testament into Syriac, translates the word oixog " sons of the house." This witness testifies what meaning came out of the word. 18* CHAPTER XIX. SUI^IMARY OF THE BIBLICAL AKGUMENT. 'TTT'E are now about to pass to another branch of V V this subject. It may be well to review the ground passed over, and see what progress we have made, and what positions we have obtained. We have found that God constituted a visible church in the Abrahamic covenant ; and we fail of any Scripture evidence to show that either He or his prophets, Christ or his apostles, ever constituted any other. The forms and ceremonies pertaining to its management and worship varied more or less under different dispensations ; but the organic structure of the one universal Church of God remained un- changed. In it the apostles were members ; and to it they united their converts, as the proplietic incom- ing of the Gentiles. We have seen, too, that the pa- triarchal and apostolic creed required for admission was one and the same, — faith in Christ. Under the ancient regime the additions were made by families, so far as the adults coming* in had fami- lies. So the two leading^ features m the Abrahamic Church Avere Christ as the body of doctrine, and the Family as the body of membership. We have found that Circumcision and Baptism held the same office, 150 SUMI^IARY OF THE BIBLICAL ARGUMENT. 151 and rendered the same service, as ushers at the door of the Church. It lijis been seen, too, that, while the former disap- peared in the times of the apostles, the latter ap- peared, filling its place. And, while there is on record no divine command for this substitution of one for the other, it has been shown that an apostolic practice is as authoritative as a specific divine command ; since the apostles were in the enjoyment of the promise that the- Holy Ghost should teach them all things, and bring to their remembrance what Christ had said to them. In such circumstances we may well suppose that the specific command of Christ, that baptism should be substituted for circumcision, was left out of the record, and among those '^ many other things which Jesus did, the which, if they should be written every one, I suppose that even the world itself could not contain the books that should be written." In the course of our inquiry we have ascertained that household baptism was common among the Jews in the times of our Lord, and was an invariable rite for the families of Gentile proselytes. So, in the last great command of Christ to his apostles, baptism had no strange or unusual import, but was defined by tradi- tional and common usage. Therefore, if qualification was not made by Christ to the contrary, the apostles would naturally go forth baptizing families into Chris- tianity, just as the Jews from time immemorial had been baptizing Gentile families into Judaism. Hence the rare mention of household baptism by the apos- tles — only three cases — is a very natural omission. A common usage, and unquestioned, is not of a nature V 152 THE CHUECH AND HER CHILDREN. to call forth remark and record, specially wlien the annals are as brief as the apostolic. Though positive proof is wanting in the three cases recorded, to show that there were or were not chil- dren under twelve years, and so subjects for infant baptism, in those families, still the presumption is very strong that there were ; for taking society as it is constituted, and going from house to house, two- thirds if not three-fourths of the households would be found to have members under twelve years of age. AVhile it is objected that the command is to baptize only believers, we have found also that the command was to circumcise only believers ; and, as the children were included in the command for circumcision, so they may be included in the command for baptism, by a fair construction of language, as well as by a consideration of that proselyte usage of baptism on which the Christian use of baptism sprung up. In- deed, the most of the objections to Infant Baptism — as that the rite is designed to be a seal of true piety, that the infant has no knowledge of its import and gives no assent to it, that it deprives one of the privi- lege of making a profession of religion for himself, and many other such objections — lie with equal force against the rite of circumcision. The objections over-reach in their design, and break in on the econo- my of God for his Church as set forth in the Old Testament. Thus far we have brought the argument, extending it through apostolic times. It is now a matter of first importance among auxiliary evidences, to know what SUMMARY OF THE BIBLICAL ARGUMENT. 153 was the practice in those churches founded by tlie apostles, in the first centuries of the Christian era. We now, therefore, pass to the Historical Argument for Infant Baptism. CHAPTER XX. THE HISTOKICAL AKGTJMENT OPENED. IN the light and strength of the argument, as thus far developed, let us assume, yet only for the time being, that the Christian Church moved off from apostolic times into the centuries, with this usage of infant consecration in common practice. Wherever, in the cities of the East, a branch of the Church was established, let us, for a little, presume that this rite came into practice. We will not declare that it was so : we will only assume it, and for this reason, that any historical evidence bearing on the question may appear in its true circumstances, and have its due weight. Unless the rite is wholly a forgery, and was foisted into the Church among the corruptions of early times, its practice must have been common in the two and three opening centuries of the Christian era. If a practice at all, it was probably general and without controversy. Only as an innovation would it be likely to be discussed. Then, if practised thus as a rite not to be ques- tioned, we should not look to find much said concern- ing it by the writ'ers of those times. It would stand among the acts that were performed as a matter of course, and so called for remark or allusion but sel- 154 THE HISTORICAL ARGUMENT OPENED. 155 dom, and then incidentally, as the keeping of the sabbath and circumcision are not mentioned for cen- turies in Jewish historj^ A remark of Augustine may be quoted in this place as pertinent and illustrative. Pelagius, in the great controversy occasioned by his denial of the doc- trine of original sin, accused Augustine of originat- ing the doctrine, and, as proof, affirmed that nothing was said or heard of it in the earlier Church. Au- gustine aptly replies, " What need is there that w^e should examine the works of those who lived before this heresy [the Pelagian] arose, and so had no occa- sion to be employed in solving the difficult question ? — which no doubt they would have done, if they had been compelled to reply to such things." If no controversy should be raised concerning the authority of the rite, and no sect spring up denying it, the fact of its performance, or the question as to the proper subject for it, might naturally pass through the first three centuries with scarcely an allusion to it by the writers of those times. The scantiness of historical reference, therefore, to this topic, in those early times, is no necessary evidence against the prac- tice of the ordinance. It is a singular and interesting fact, as we shall see, that, so soon as there is any occasion to speak on this subject, the allusions and statements are full, free, and unqualified, as if it were an ordinance received from the apostolic fathers, always approved, and generally observed. When the rite first became, by incident, a subject of controversy in the Church, even those most interested to deny its apostolical 156 THE CHURCH AND HER CHILDREN. practice, that they might the better defend them- selves in certain departures from the common faith, make no intimation that it is a rite of human inven- tion. The first controversial opening on the subject is plenary as to the fact of the practice of the rite, leaving us to conclude that at any time during the preceding period of silence there would have been the same fulness of statement if occasion had de- manded. It may not seem needful to cite witnesses to the general prevalence of this ordinance later than A.D. 412, when Augustine opened the Pelagian contro- versy. Yet it is so convenient and pertinent to intro- duce here certain from Europe and Asia and Africa, — men eminent and of wide scholarship and influ- ence in their day, — that it is not easy to refrain. It is the more willingly done, because it does not seem to be as well known as it should, how full of evidence on this point the early Church history is. Let us begin, therefore, a few years later than A.D. 412, and work backward among the Christian fathers, to a point as near to the times of the apostles as we can find any one of them speaking on this subject of Infant Baptism. Vincent of Lerins flourished as a presbyter and monk about A.D. 430, and has preserved his name by an attack on Augustine, that gave occasion for that great man to write his four books Concerning the Soul and its Origin. Vincent had his island home in the Mediterranean, a little off the coast of France, as his title indicates. We are indebted to Augustine for the words of Vincent on the baptism of infants : — THE HISTORICAL ARGUMENT OPENED. 157 "We must consider those infants, wlio, being des- tined to baptism in the present life, are prevented by death before they are regenerated in Christ. ... I dare to affirm that they may obtain the forgiveness of original sin, though they may not be admitted to heaven itself : as to the confessing but not baptized thief the Lord granted not heaven, but paradise." ^ Here Vincent advances the theory that baptism is necessary to a full salvation, the unbaptized infant prevented from the intended rite being admitted only to the intermediate state of paradise. That this is his theory is evident from his second book, where he supports his reference to the thief by the current tradition of Dinocrates, a boy of seven years, and his sister, who, being heathen children, could not obtain baptism, and so gained only paradise.^ We pass from Southern Europe to Mesopotamia. Theodoret, who was eminent in his work about A.D. 420, a pupil of Cluysostom, and bishop of Cyrus on the Euphrates, is said to have had there at one time the charge of eight hundred churches. He was a distinguished writer. " His learning," says Mosheim, " was great, his genius good, and his productions *o taries on the Old Testament, and on the Pauline 1 "Hahendain diciimis de iufantibus isthis modi rationem, qui pr.nedestiuati baptismo vitie praesentis, antequam renascuntur in Cliristo, prfeveniuntur occiduo. . . . Aiisiiu dicere istos pervenire posse ad originaliiim indial{:^entiam peccatonim, uon tanien ut ca3leste iuducantur in regnum. Siciiti latroui confesso quideni, sed non baptizato, Domiuus non cadonuii reswuni tribuit, sed para- disinn." — Apud August., De Anima, Lib. ii. 9, 10. 2 Idem, Lib. i. 9, ii. 10, 12, iu. 9. 14 J 158 THE CHURCH AND HER CHHJDREN. Epistles ; An Ecclesiastical History, covering the time from A.D. 320 to A.D. 427, which is a con- tinuation of Eusebius ; Five Books on the Existing Heresies ; The Lives of Thirty Eminent Monks ; Dialogues on the Trinity ; An Apology for Chris- tianity, in Twelve Books, besides miscellanies. He did a great work in confuting and converting the Marcionites, of whom he says he baptized ten thou- sand. Such a man was, of course, eminently fitted to speak on the usage of infant baptism in his times. He says, — " Baptism is not what the foolish Messalians call it, — only a razor that cuts off past sins, which, indeed, it does. But, if it affects no more, why need we baptize infants, who are sinless ? " ^ This question of the learned Theodoret is direct and simple, and can leave no doubt in a candid mind that the rite we are considering was generally ob- served in his day. That we may take the widest range of the Chris- tian field, and gather evidence from extreme and opposite borders, to show the universality of this usage, let us pass now from the Eu^Dhrates to the Nile. Isidore of Pelusium was active and prominent in church affi[iirs from A.D. 388 to A.D. 431. He devoted much of his very rigid monkish life to expo- 3 Ov yap cjf ol "Infantes, etiam si non baptizentur, habere vitam letei-nam. . . . Infantes non baptizati, non solum regnum cadorum, verum etiam vitam leteruam habere nou possint." — Augustl, Ei)i8. ad rauUnum, clxxxvi., alias ovL 168 THE CHURCH AND HER CHHJ^REN. then held to wash away original sin, he virtually conceded that they had it, by agreeing with the coun- cil that the unbaptized could not be saved. He also abandoned his favorite theory of the third state, — that is, neither salvation nor perdition. Pressed to so great renunciations, we may well suppose that, if it had been a possible thing for him, in the face of the practice, traditions, and historical light of that age, to declare infant baptism to be a merely human rite, and foisted into the Church, he would most certainly have done so. Such a thought seems to have been wholly foreign from the accused and accusers. This shows how deeply and thoroughly the ordinance was then imbedded in the history of the Church, only about three hundred years from the living teaching of the apostles themselves. That lapse of time would allow for the germinating and growth and adoption of a new doctrine, as it evi- dently had in their common belief in baptismal regen- eration. But a new article of faith is a quiet, unseen, mental growth, that may mature in a brief time ; while a rite, and specially a sacrament, like this one, is visible, public, — a thing for the congregation to see, and for the families to study and use in their most tender and interested relations. To dupe the whole Church, in that space of time, by the forgery, and leave no trace or clew to it, that a man like Pelagius could find, — scholarly, keen, and pushed vigor- ously to his defence as a heretic, — is a presumption that very few historical scholars would undertake to defend. More than this: the time between the council of THE PELAGIAN CONTROVERSY. 169 Diospolis and the apostles must he divided, on the opposing theory of forgery and corruption, hetwecn two forgeries or corruptions. First, the rite of infant baptism must have been invented, popularized, and made authoritative ; and then it must have been per- verted, to carry the second forgery or corruption of bajjtismal regeneration as the antidote of original sin. And these two impositions must liave come tandem, and not abreast, on the Church, and both within those three centuries. It would have been a great deliver- ance for Pelagius if he could have sliown any traces of the innovations as departures from the earlier usage. But he not only does not do this : he affirms his faith in the rite, as of divine authority, in a letter to Inno- cent, bishop of Rome. The letter is preserved only in the quotations of Augustine, who reports him as saying, — '^ He was defamed by men who said he denied the sacrament of baptism to infants, and promised the kingdom of heaven to some without the redemption of Christ. . . . He never had heard even an impious heretic say what he was accused of saying concerning infants. . . . Who is so wicked as to keep infants from the kingdom of heaven, while he forbids their being baptized and regenerated in Christ? " ^ Coelestius makes a similar confession in his creed ; 8"Se ab hoiuinibTis infainari quod nej^et parvulis baptisini sacra- mentuni, et absque redeniptione Christi alicinibiis ccploruin re^ia proniittat. . . . Niinqnainse vel iinpimu aliquein hsereticiim audi-^se, qui lioc quod i)ropo/5uit de parvulis, diceret. , . . Delude (]uis taiu inipius, qui parvulos exsortes re;^ui cadoruui e-?se velit, duduni cos baptizari et in Chiisto reuasci vetatV" — Apiul August., I)c Pcrc. Oriff., §§ 19, 20. 15 170 THE CHUECH AND HER CHTLDEEN. " That infants ought to be baptized for the forgive- ness of sins, according to the rule of the universal Church and the teaching of the gospel, we con- fess." 9 Julian, the other triumvir in this Pelagian defec- tion, is quite as positive as either of the others. " So far from denying that it is useful to those of all ages, we pronounce an eternal anathema on all who say it is not necessary, even for infants." ^^ The action of three councils on the Pelagian heresy should be stated, because it expresses the opinion of large bodies of men, that represented a wide extent of country. In the year of our Lord 416, a council of sixty- eight bishops was convened at Carthage ; and in giving an account of their doings, in a letter to Innocent, bishop of Rome, they say, " Whoever denies that infants are delivered from perdition and obtain eter- nal salvation by the baptism of Christ, — let him be accursed." ^^ In the same year a council of sixty-one bishops convened at Milevis for the province of Numidia. In their letter to Innocent, they inform him of their de- liberations concerning those who held that " the sac- rament of Christian grace does not profit infants." In his reply Innocent, speaking of the notion of Pelagius, 8 " Qiianquam per baptismum Christi etiara pai-vnlonim fieri re- deinptionein, libello suo Ccelestius in Cartha.s^niensi ecclesia jam coufessus est." — August. Opera, Tom, x. 2383. Ed. Paris, 1838. 10 Apud August. 11 "QuicTimque nen^et parviilos per baptisnnnn Christi aperditione liT)erari, et salutem jiercipere senipitemam, auatLema sit." — August. Epis. ad Innocentium, cbcxv., alias xc. THE PELAGIAN CONTEOVERSr. 171 that infiints may be saved without baptism, calls it perfatuum^ very absurd. ^^ Another and hirger council was held at Carthage, A.D. 418, numbering two hundred and fourteen bishops. As declaring against one of the errors of Pelagius, they say, — " Infants, who have as yet not been able to com- mit any sins in their own persons, are truly baptized for the forgiveness of sins, that they may be cleansed by regeneration from that which they contracted by generation." ^2 The historical survey now made takes us back to- ward the apostles to A.D. 410, and covers the ground between A.D. 410 and A.D. 430. By a widely gath- ered and varied accumulation of testimony, the prac- tice of infant baptism at that time is made evident. Before leaving this section of our argument, certain things should be said relative to the evidence. From the days of the apostles no occasion had arisen to call out and put on record the fjxcts concern- ing the acceptance and use of this ordinance, if in use, till the Pelagian controversy agitated the Church. But so soon as this arose, and gave occasion to bring up the practice of the Church, tlie testimony to a general use of this ordinance comes np from all parts of the Christian field, and in great abuiulance. 12 " Illud vero qiiocl eos vestra fratei-nitas asserit prredicare, par- viilos aeterna; vitrc prasmiis etiam sine haptisniatis gi-atia posse don- ari, pei-fatinnn est " — August., Epis. dxxxii. alias xciii. 13 "Parvuli, qui nihil peccatoruni in seipsis adliuc coniniittere potuernnt, ideo in peccatoruni reniissioneni veraciter baptizantnr, lit in eis le^eneiatione nnindetur qnod generatione traxerant/* — Concil Carth., An. 418, Can. Sec. 172 THE CHURCH AND HER CHILDREN. The entire Churcli is full of evidence to the fact that infant baptism was universal usage, and unquestioned as to its apostolical origin. Southern Europe, North- ern Africa, Asia Minor, and the Holy Land had but one voice in the matter. If, then, the rite had been a human invention, and introduced into the Church after the da3^s of the apostles, — three hundred years only, — it must have gone everywhere with the Church, and imposed on it in its most remote sections, and with a strange thoroughness. It is to be noted, too, that the leaders in the Pela- gian heresy were deeply interested to show that in- fant baptism was a human ordinance, foisted into the Church. No modern sectary can have so good reason for disproving its divine institution. For no argu- ment bore so heavily against them, as the proof of original sin from the use of this rite in the Church to wash it away. They resorted to many and varied and even absurd reasons for its practice. Some said infants were not baptized for forgiveness. Others said the form of forgiveness was observed in the ritual, not that infants had sins, but that there might not be two forms of baptism. Some said the formula merely expressed forgiveness for any who might have sins to be forgiven. Others still said that in baptism the sins of a pre-existing state were forgiven. In such extremities to account for this practice, what a relief would it have been, if they could have pointed to any Church or sect, within three hundred 3'ears, Avho had denied, disowned, and disregarded tlie institution ! But, instead of discovering and using any such comfortable fact, Ccelestus admits infant baptism THE PELAGIAN CONTROVERSY. 173 to be " the rule of the universal Church ; " and PeUi- gius says that " he never had heard even any impious heretic or sectary deny it." If it had been of human origin these two men were the scholars to discover it. For they were born and bred for public life ; and they spent many of their best years at Rome, the very ear of the Church universal, for both facts and rumors. They had both travelled extensively, and spent much time in Northern Africa, Egypt, Palestine, and South- ern Europe. Yet they never relieve themselves, in the most difficult part of their defence, by any inti- mation that the rite could prove nothing because it had no Scripture warrant, or was disregarded by some of the ancient churches. It must be noted, too, that this Pelagian question was discussed and disposed of by seven councils and synods before the death of its originator, namely : at Carthage, A.D. 412 ; at Jerusalem, A.D. 415 ; at Diospolis, A.D. 415 ; at Mileve and Carthage, A.D. 416 ; at Carthage, A.D. 417, and again A.D. 418.^^ Yet, in all the controversy attending these convoca- tions, in their sessions, and among the churches, no dis- covery is made in the tradition or usage of any church, that infant baptism was said by any one to be an innova- 14 The acts of these councils, Carthaj^e, A.D. 412 and 417, are ex- tant only so far as quoted by Auj^ustine and others. The latter ap- pears to have acted on our subject only so far as to dissent from the opinion of Zoziiuus, the Roman bishop, that he had ijiven in favor of J*elaj4us and Codestius. The former chai'ged Coilestius ^vith de- nyinj; original sin; and lie defended himself by sayinj;, that, what- ever he mij^ht think of the sins of infants, lie believed in their bap- tism : Wall, 1 : HO. Seventeen other councils or synods took action on the Pela^'ian heresies, after the death, or rather disappearance from history, of I*elaj,dus. The date of liis death is uidcnowu. 15* 174 THE CHUECH AND HER CHH^DREN. tion, and so of useless reference. On the other hand, it is difficult to conceive how the ordinance, as a hu- man invention, could have taken a universal and un- questioned place in the Church within so short a time of the apostles, and no trace of its introduction, and no remonstrance against its use, and no Church disre- garding it, be left for the searching eye of those who were so deeply interested to find such a fact. GHArXER XXII. AUGUSTINE ON INFANT BAPTISM. THE historical gleaning that we have made for our purpose out of the Pelagian controversy, covering a period of twenty years, gives a prominence, of neces- sity, to Augustine. He appears in this baptismal arena A.D. 412. But he was then in the flfty-eiglith year of his age, and had been in the Church twenty- five years, and an ardent scholar forty 3^ears. Before he came to this controversy he had written and pub- lished extensively on Church questions, and is, there- fore, a most important witness to be detained and still further examined in this case. But, while we hunt up more evidence in his earlier writings, we shall do well to regard what he says to Jerome in a letter written near the close of the Pelagian struggle. In his work on Free Will, written forty j-ears be- fore, he has made brief allusion to infant baptism, so brief, and therefore inexplicit, that the Pelagians were able to turn it for their side. Of what he wrote, and its perversion, he thus speaks : — " In that work I said some things concerning the baptism of infants, not largely, but as much as seemed needful for that book \jnon svffic'ienter^ sed quantum nil operi satis videhatur^, that it hel^^s those even 176 176 THE CHURCH AND HER CHILDREN. who are not sensible of it, and are as yet without personal faith. I did not think it necessary then to speak of the condemnation of infants who die without it, because the controversy now pending was not then agitated " [quia non quod nunc agitur agehatur].^ It is disputed questions and innovations that make their full record in the writings of the times, while conceded truths and common customs get but inci- dental and wayside allusions ; and therefore a lean, bald reference to a usage is conclusive that it has age and fixedness. Let us proceed to gather in, at this stage in our investigations backward, some allusions and declara- tions of Augustine concerning infant baptism, that he made in his writings during his twenty-five Christian 3'ears preceding his disputes with Pelagius. The quotation we first introduce is from a letter to Jerome, in which the origin of the soul is in discus- sion. Augnstine wavers between the two theories of propagation and of creation, and says, — '' Before I can decide which theory must be taken, I deliberately say this: that the true one cannot be opposed to the most firm and well-grounded tenet by which the Church holds that the new-born children of human kind cannot be freed from condemnation except through the grace of the name of Christ, which he has commended in his sacraments." ^ 1 August., Epist. ad Hiervny, clxvi. alias xxviii. 2 Anteqnam sciam quaenain earum potius eligenda sit, hoc me non temere sentii-e proftteor, earn quae vera est non adversaii rol»ns- lissimae ac fnndatissimse fidei, qua Christi ecclesia nee parv'ulos homines recentissime natos a damnatione credit, nisi per gratiani nouiinis Christi quam in snis sacramentis commendavit, posse libe- rari. — August., Epist, clvL alias xxviii. AUGUSTINE ON INFANT BAPTISM. 177 Any one familiar witli the synonyms and termin- ology of Augustine, when speaking of baptism, will not hesitate as to what he means by gratlam nominis Chriati. How very firmly established in the Church this ordinance was when he wrote this epistle, the two superlatives indicate, — robustissimce ac funda- tissimce. Another passage in the same letter is equally ex- pressive : — " Whoever says that infants shall be made alive in Christ, that die without receiving this sacrament, both denies the apostolic doctrine and condemns the entire Church [totani condemnat ecclesiam'], in which men hurry and run with their little ones to be bap- tized." 3 The next extract about to be made is more weighty for our purpose, because written several years ear- lier, and in confutation of schismatics who date from A.D. 312. The sect of the Donatists originated in a secession of seventy Numidian bishops or pastors from ihe African Church, on account of alleged irregularities and corruptions in it, and became so large as, at one time, to number more than four hundred pastors. They refused to fellowship the mother Church, and even denied the validity of its ordinations and sacraments, and re-baptized those who came from it 8 Qiiisqiiis dixerit qiuxl in Christo vivificalnintur etiam parviili qui sine sacranieuti ejus participatioue cle vita exeunt, liic profecto et contra apostolicam pr.npilicationeni venit, et totam couileninat ecde- siain, nld propteieacuin baptizandis parvulis festinatur et curritur. — IhidQin. 178 THE CHURCH AND HEE CHILDREN. to them. In A.D. 400 Augustine wrote his De Bap- tismo Contra Donatistas, and in it argues the impiety of re-baptizing. He affirms that an impure and he- retical church administering, and a wicked man receiv- ing it, cannot make the ordinance invalid in that case. He proves this by citing the case of those bap- tized in youth, and who afterwards were led away by error or sinful feelings. They grew up into a better knowledge and moral state, but did not reject their baptism, as if made worthless by their unworthy condition when receiving it. He then appeals to the practice of the Church to sustain his position. " If an}^ one demands divine authority for this thing, we can very well show what the sacrament of baptism avails for infants from the circumcision that a former people received ; though what the whole Church practises, and was not instituted by councils, but was always held, may most justly be believed to be handed down by apostolic authority."^ Here is a schismatic Church, correct in faith, but defective in polity, of a hundred years' standing in its schism and irregularities ; and Augustine, in his argument to recover them, appeals to their practice of infant baptism. The appeal carries this usage back, as unquestioned, a century nearer to the apos- tles than the Pelagian controversy found it. But let it be noted that the point in the quotation and 4 "Et si qiiisquam in liac re diviiiam auctoritatem quaerat (quau- qnam quod universa tenet ecc.-lesia, neo conoiliis institutuiu sed sem- per retentum est, nou nisi anctoritate apostolica traditiun rectisslnie creditur) ; tanien veraciter conjicere possumus quid valeat in parvu- lis l)aptisnii sacranientuni ex circiiuicisioue caruis quain prior popu- lus accepit." — Lib. iv. c. 24. AUGUSTINE ON INFANT BAPTISM. 179 reference is not authority for tlie rite of baptism, but authority for its validity and perpetuity when once properly administered. The argument of Augustine is not for baptizing infants, but against re-baptizing any one, affirming that the church has never done it ; and m tliis affirmation he incidentally, and so the more powerfully for our argument, mentions infant baptism, as practised in that seceding church. Augustine seldom, if ever, argues for the apostolic authority of this sacrament for infants. He implies or affirms the fact, as not needing argument. So in his work on Genesis, one of his earliest writings, he says, — " The custom of the mother Church in baptizing infants must by no means be slighted or esteemed useless, or thought to be any thing else than an apos- tolic tradition." ^ No declaration of opinion could be clearer or stronger : yet this is not the language of ardent and sharp controversy, after he had been twenty years in the Pelagian conflict. It is the cool, scholarly decla- ration of his early Christian life, incidentally made, while inquiring which of the two theories of the origin of the soul is correct. In concluding his re- marks on that question, he says, that, let the soul of the infant originate as it may, the sanctifying waters of its baptism must not be omitted. The language is not stronger or more positive that s "Consiietiido matris ecclesiae in haptizandis parviilis neijna- qiiaiii spernanda est, neqiie ullo niodo siiperflua deputanda, nee omnino credenda nisi apostolica esse traditio." — De Genesi, Lib. X. c. 23. 180 THE CHURCH AND HER CHILDREN. he uses in a sermon preached and published against the Pelagians many years afterward, and in all the warmth of that heated controversy. Then he says of the ordinance of infant baptism and its power , — " This the Church has always had, always held : this it received from the creed of the fathers ; this it guards perse veringiy even to the end." ^ Here we take our leave of this eminent Church father, doubly grateful to him, first, that he has made the field of our inquiry so luminous with evi- dence from A.D. 430 to A.D. 412, in his debates with the Pelagians ; and secondly, that, in his efforts to reform the Donatists and others, he has set beacon lights along our path one hundred years farther back towards the apostles, to A.D. 312, when that schis- matic body took organization. 6 " Hoc ecclesia semper habiiit, semper tenuit ; hoc a majonim fide percepit, hoc iisqi;e in finem perseveranter custodit." — Senmo X. De Verbis ApostolL CHAPTER XXTTI. INNOCENT AND CHRYSOSTOM. WE have been traversing the primitive forma- tions of polemic theology, yet only to obtain what has been incidentally preserved in those old strata. Others explore those mountain ranges to quarry stone for the private theological houses and party breastworks of to-day. We only skirt the bold sides and quiet valleys, seeking the little fossil foot- prints of the children of Zion. So far our search has been abundantly repaid. The alluvium of time has carelessly covered, yet most faithfully preserved in their minutest delineations, the infantile impressions that we seek. So on cabinet slates of old red sand- stone you will see first the huge tracks of pre-Adamic monsters ; but among and between them, and half trampled out of sight, the delicate imprints of little birds and insects. Let us now proceed to remove other layers, and uncover deeper strata, to see what may be seen. Innocent, the first of that name in the episcopal chair at Rome, was elevated to that honor A.D. 402. He wrote several epistles in which infant baptism is mentioned. Decentius, a bishop, had written to Innocent, inquiring whether any one but a bishop 16 181 182 THE CHURCH AND HER CHILDREN. could bestow the chrism or anointing to a baptized infant. Innocent replies as follows : — '* Concerning the anointing of the foreheads of infants, it surely cannot be done except b}^ a bishop. . . . The presbyters, when they baptize in the presence or absence of the bishop, may properly anoint the baptized, if the chrism has been prepared by the bishop ; but it is not proper for them to anoint the forehead with the same, which service belongs to the bishops alone." ^ Again, in a letter to a synod at Toledo, on qualifi- cations for entering the ministry, he says, — " A certain law declares that particular ones only may be elected into the clerical order, — to wit, those who were baptized in infancy." ^ He here speaks of those little observances that pertain to an old custom, and that, by their very antiquity, have become rules and regulations. Form- alism in non-essentials is of slow growth, and the accretion of time ; and the small items mentioned in these two extracts are evidence that this rite had long been in use, and that law had sprung up out of mere habits in it. Chrysostom is not without testimony on this sub- ject. Though not a topic inviting his oratorical 1 " De oonsi<:piandis vero infantibus, inariifestum est nnn ab altero quam episcopo fieri licere. , . . Presbyteris sen extra episcopiiin, sen presente episcopo cxun bax)tizant, chrismate baptizatos iin.i^ere licet, seel qnod ab episcopo fiierit consecratum; non taiiien fonteiu ex eodeui oleo signare, quod solis debetur episcopis." — Ad Decenti., Can. 3. 2 "Qui ab ineunte ietate baptizati iueTint." — Ad. Syn. Tolet. Cau. 5. INNOCENT AND CHRYSOSTOM. 183 powers, and one in which he was no way involved by controversy, it yet so lay at the very door of the Church, that it gained some w^ayside notices from him. He wrote a homily, Ad Baptizatos (To the Bap- tized), not now extant in Greek, but quoted by Julian and Augustine. One passage cited by Julian against Augustine to prove that Chrysostora rejected the doctrine of original sin, as commonly held then by the Church, is as follows : — " You see that baptism has many benefits, while some think this grace of heaven brings only forgive- ness of sins. I have stated ten benefits from it. We baptize infants for this reason, that, though not pol- luted by any sin, they may thus obtain sanctity, righteousness, adoption, the inheritance and fellow- ship of Christ." 3 On baptism, as compared with circumcision, we have his own words as follows : — " Our circumcision — I speak of that of baptism — has pleasure without suffering and healing, is the minister of a thousand benefits, and fills us with the blessing of the Spirit. Nor has it any determinate time, as the other ; but one in immature age and in 3 "Yifles quot sunt haptisinatis lar^tates: et nonnulli deputant crplestem gratiaiu in peccatoruni tautiini reniissione consistere; nos auteni honores coniputavinms deoeni. Hac de causa etiaTu infantes l>aptizanius, cuni non sint coinquinati peccato, nt eis addatur sanc- titas, justitia, aurLo&evTEg,^ oi fiEv ettu Trcudec ovTEg rovro £Aa/3ov. K. T. A. — Horn, xxiii., in Acta. Apost. 1 ^uTi^ti is a common synonym with the Greek Fathers for /3a7r- INNOCENT AND CHRYSOSTOM. 185 state. Some of those were accustomed to anoint the foreheads of tlieir babes with a magical preparation, as a safeguard or charm against witches. He exhorts them against the pagan ceremony after this man- ner : — " Defiling his cliikl thus, does he not see that he makes it disgusting ? How can he bring it to the hands of the minister ? Tell me, liow can you think it fitting for the seal to be j)laced on its forehead by the hand of the presbyter, when you have polluted it?"6 No one will fail to perceive the reference here to the rite of infant consecration. No other early usage in the Church fills out the allusion. These extracts from Chrysostom, if left standing thus solitary, would 'not serve the ends of historic justice in this discussion. The patriarch of Con- stantinople, and his relations to the times, should be regarded. Chrysostom was born about A.D. 347, at Antioch ; ordained deacon A.D. 381, and presbyter A.D. 386, and Patriarch of Constantinople A.D. 387. Early devoting himself to Christ and the Church, he was a monk, an eremite, and an earnest, distinguished scholar ; and commenced authorship at the age of twenty-six, A.D. 373, dying at the age of sixty. Few names have been so eminent in the Eastern Church. His knowledge, as his influence, was very 6 'O BupfiupC) xpi-^v TTwf bvxf- Koi (3delvKTdv ttouI rd Traidlov ; 11 wf yup avrb TzpoaavH rale A^fp^f tov Itpecjt; ; E/tte /iOi, nuq «^?of inl tov (lETunov oa iniTe^T/vcu napa Tijg tov 7rpea(3vT£pov x^'^P^i tv&a tov jSopftopov eirexpioac. — Ilom. xii,, in 1 Epis. ad Corintlios. IG* 186 THE CHUECH AND HER CHCLDEEN. extensive ; and, as a legacj^ to the Christian Church, he left more than twelve hundred sermons, homilies, and exegetical discourses, and two hundred and fifty epistles, besides a miscellany of tracts. Such a man could not speak as he does of infant baptism, if it weVe a novelty, or had only a partial and equivocal place among the rites of the Church. CHAPTER XXIV. FOUR COUNCILS, AND SIRICIUS. WE pass now from one witness to many, from a man to a conncil. In those early and barbarous times, when Christianity was working its way into the kingdom of darkness by slow and perilous steps, Christian villages and families were subject to raids from the heathen, for pillage and capture and slaugh- ter. In these incursions it often happened, as on our Indian frontier, that children were carried off by the pagans, and in after years would be re-captured or ransomed. So it was in Northern Africa, in the times to which we have now come in our backward move- ment. Little ones so seized and carried off had been redeemed by the Mauritanian Christians. But, when brought back, they had so outgrown the memories of their childhood and of their early friends, as to be unable to tell whether they had been baptized or not. Then the question arose, whether they should be baptized at the hazard of a re-baptism, or not be baptized at the hazard of never being baptized. The case of such was submitted to the fifth Council of Carthage, A.D. 400 ; and they gave judgment as found in their Sixth Canon : — 187 188 THE CHURCH AND HER CHHJ^REN. " As to those infants concerning whom no witnesses can be found who are able to testify beyond a doubt that they have been baptized, and who themselves cannot answer, on account of age, whether the sacra- ments have been administered to them, it is resolved that they may be baptized without any scruple, lest that scruple deprive them of the purification of the sacraments. For our Mauritanian brethren have come to us with this question," &c.^ It will be seen at a glance, that this rite must at that time have been owned and unquestioned in the African Church, or this double solicitude could not have been raised and brought to the deliberation and decision of a council ; for there was the fear that the persons might fail of baptism wholly by its being now with- held, and the fear of repetition if now administered, — of both which errors the Church then had a dread. The third council of Carthage, A.D. 397, was called to view this question of infant baptism from another standpoint ; but their testimony is to the same point for us, only the better for its variations. We have already spoken of the origin of the sect of the Donatists, and their notions. About the time of this council that party was breaking up, and showing a willingness to come back into the mother Church. It was therefore debated in this council, whether any retm-ning from that schism should be admitted to 1 Placuit (le infautilms quoties noii in veiiiuntur certissimi testes qui eos baptizatos esse sine duhitatioiie testentur, neque ipsi sunt per jBtatein idoncl de tvaditis sibi sacramentis re^pondere, absque ullo scrnpulo eos esse baptizandos ; ne ista trepidatio eos faciat sacra- mentoruni puru^atioiie privari. PTiuc eniiii le<,'ati Maurorivm fiatrea nostri, &c. — L.vbdei, Concil. Carthcuj. Quint. FOUR COUNCILS, AND SIRICIUS. 189 office ill the Church. There was a division of the question for answer. It was agreed that those who went over to the Donatists, and were re-baptized by them, might return to the Catholic Church, but only to the rank of la3^men. As to those born among the Donatists, and baptized among them in infancy, the council agreed to ask advice of two bishops outside the region of the schism, and so more likely to be unbiased by local prejudices. They selected Sim- plicianus. Bishop of Milan, and Siricius, Bishop of Rome. The request for judgment is made in Canon 48 of this council : — " As to the Donatists, it is resolved that we will consult our brother bishops Siricius and Simplicianus, concerning the infants only who were baptized among them, — whether that which they did without their own consent shall hinder them, as the error of their parents, from ministration in sacred things, when, with a proper feeling, they may be turned again to the Church of God." 2 It would seem that these two referees judged that infants so baptized might be office-bearers afterward in the true Church. At least, a council at Carthage, four years afterward, affirmed this point without doubt or reference. This evidence is auxiliary to what we have before had, showing that this schismatic Church, originating A.D. 312, had infant baptism as 2 De Donatistis, placniit lit consulainiis fratres et consacerdotes nostros, Sirioiiim et Simpliciammi, de solis infantibus qui haptizantiir penes eosdem, ne quod suo uou fecerunt judicio, cum ad ectle-iani Dei salubri propositofuerint conversi, parentuui illos error inipediat, ne proveliautur saori altaris ininistri. — Labbei, Concil. Carthaf/. Tert., Can. xlviii. 190 THE CHURCH AND HER CHILDREN. one of its rites. Had the mother Church or her way- ward African child originated this rite, or admitted it as a novelty during this period of separation, — almost a century, — there must have been some in- timations, affirmations, or denials about it, Avhen, in those two councils, and in the reference of the ques- tion to two foreign bishops, they were agitating so delicate and important a point, and Avere making the holding of office in the Church to turn on it. It must be conceded, in view of these facts, that the rite of infant baptism was common in the Church as early at least as A.D. 312. The question raised and decided in the fifth coun- cil of Carthage, A.D. 400, was also discussed in the council of Hippo Regius, A.D. 393. This Numidian council is the one that established the canon of Scrip- ture in its full and final integrity. These bishops de- cided, that, where there was no certain proof that a person had been baptized in infancy, the rite might be administered. But their judgment and advice seem to have been somewhat neglected ; for, in a synodical letter of A.D. 397, it is implied that a complaint for neglect had come before them ; and they enjoin action in this breviat : " Concerning those who have no sure evidence that the}^ have been baptized, let them be baptized." 3 Let us now continue our approach nine years nearer to the times of the apostles, and take the testi- mony from Siricius at the time of his induction as 3 De his qm nullo testimonio se baptizatos novenmt lit baptizen- tur. — Centurice Magdeburg. Cent, iv. c. 9. FOUR COUNCILS, AND SIRICIUS. 101 Bishop of Rome, A.D. 384. When he entered this office he found there iin unanswered letter from Ilimerius, bishop of Aragon. In this letter he is informed that in Spain they had been accustomed to baptize on almost any occasion of a general religious gatliering. To this Siricius objects, in his reply, with a decided dissatisfaction, and sa3^s that Pente- cost and Easter are the only proper occasions for baptism, with specified exceptions, as thus : — ''As to infants, who, from their age, are not yet able to speak [make confessions and renunciations], and others who from any necessity may be in imme- diate need of the sacred water of baptism, he would hasten to their relief, lest it turn to our ruin if the saving Avater be denied to them needing, and any one of them should die losing the kingdom and life. If one is in danger from shipwreck, or the attack of an enemy, or siege, or if any dangerous sickness come on one and he desire this aid of our faith, let him have the gifts of regeneration in the very moment when lie asks for them." ^ Siricius furnishes us with another item of weight in the same letter, where he is upbraiding the Spanish bishops for inducting into the ministry those who had been but recently converted to Christianity. " He who dedicates himself to the services of the Church should have been baptized in his infancy, be- * Ita infantibiis qui necdnm loqiii potnerint per ajtatem, vel his quihiis in qualibet necessitate opus fuerit sacra nnda haptisniatis, onini volnnius celeritate succurri, ne ad nostraruni pernicieni tendat aniniannn, si ne<;ato desiderantibus fonte salntari, exiens nnus(]nis- que de seciilo et reguiuu x>erdat etvitaui. — Siiuci. Episwp. Decrei. Epist. Prima, c. 2. 192 THE CHURCH AND HER CHILDREN. fore the years of youth, and been accustomed to the duties of the readers." ^ In these several passages just now cited, in which either councils or individuals make reference to this ordinance, many minor points and side issues are brought out. The questions are raised : Who may ap- ply the chrism that accompanies baptism ; what graces are conferred by it ; whether its administration is confined to any particular time ; neglect of its obli- gations is rebuked, and heathen defilement of the babe's forehead before baptism ; whether those may receive the ordinance who are uncertain as to a prior baptism; whether valid, if administered by here- tics and schismatics ; whether those so baptized may enter the ministry ; whether the time of administra- tion may be hastened in case of- mortal peril ; and whetlier one may enter on the sacred offices of the Church who Avas not baptized in infancy. These questions were discussed and answered, in places wide asunder, as in Spain, Italy, Africa, and Asia Minor. It is difficult to conceive of such a gen- eral and varied discussion of the same thing, unless the rite were at the same time general in the Church. It could not have been isolated and rare cases, that led to this wid^ expression of views, as if it were then beginning stealthily to intrude itself among the ap- pointments of God for his house. It was an ordi- nance not only at home in some regions and Churches, but it was at home everywhere in the Church. And 5 Quicumque iptur se ecclesire vovet obseqniis, a sua infantia ante pubertatis annos baptizari, et lectorum debet miuisterio sociari. — Ibidem, c. 9. FOUR COUNCILS, AND SIRICIUS. 193 it had evidently been so, for so long n time, that neither the memory of man, nor the record of coun- cil, nor the writings extant of any author, run back to the contrary. It is also difficult to conceive of such a discussion over issues trivially related to the main point and rite itself, within three hundred years of the apostles, and no intimation be made by an}^ one of the variously related and often excited parties, that it was a human ordinance, of which the apostles had no knowledge, and that therefore it was a non-essential to Church order. In the conflicts of opinion concern- ing doctrines and rights and duties related to this or- dinance, and in the necessary study for the authority of precedents, stimulated often by intense partisan feelings, how is it possible, if the rite were not apos- tolic, that its invention, and intrusion into the Church should not be discovered and declared ? While no one before the times of Pelagius was as much interested as he to deny or disprove the apos- tolic origin of the sacrament, many were so deeply involved in issues related to it, that they could have eased off the force of many an argument, and hushed the scruples of conscience many times, if they could only have known and felt and said that Infant Bap- tism came into the Church after the apostles had left the world. But, so far as our survey has extended, history gave them no warrant for such an assumption : no one made it. 17 CHAPTER XXV. AMBROSE OF IVIILAN, BASIL, GKEGORY NAZTANZEN, AND OPTATUS. IN continuing our inquiries on the practice of In- fant Baptism in the times immediately following the age of the apostles, we come next to Ambrose of Milan. This step carries us ten years nearer to the apostles, as Siricius, our last authority, was made bishop A.D. 384, and Ambrose A.D. 374. lie was an evangelical, devout, energetic, and scholarly man in the Church. Though in the Latin branch of it, he read the Greek fathers, mingled freely in the contro- versies of the times, and wrote extensively, twenty volumes at least, besides ninety tractates, or letters so called. As our topic was not then in dispute, we find in the writings of this father only wayside allu- sions to it, whose power, of course, is inversely as their direct and polemic character. In his commentary on St. Luke, he traces a re- semblance between John the Baptist and Elias, while remarking on the words, " He shall go before him in the spirit and power of Elias." In tracing the par- allelism he says, that they were both in the desert ; both fed on coarse food, — one locusts, and the other what the ravens furnished ; both rebuked kings, — the 194 AMBROSE OF MILAN. 105 one Aliiib, and the other Herod ; and after other points in the comparision, he says, ''The one turned back Jordan, the other turned men to the waters of sal- vation." 1 He then continues his remarks on the miracle of Elias in dividing Jordan after tliis manner: " Per- liaps this may appear to be fulfilled in our day and in that of the apostles. For that flowing of the Avaters back to the source of the river, in the division of it by Elias (as the Scripture says, Jordan was turned back), signified the sacrament of the waters of salvation, about to be instituted, by which little children, who are baptized, are reformed from their corruption back to the primitive condition of their nature." ^ The reference of the bishop to the washing away of original sin in baptism is nothing to our j)urpose. The use of the ordinance is our point of inquiry. Of the abuse of it we have sufficiently spoken for a treatise of this kind while we Avere sifting the Pela- gian controversy. Later Church historians will not probably find all the errors and excesses of " the fathers " confined to the first three or four Christian centuries. In speaking of Abraham, in his work on the patriarch, as enjoined to circumcise infants, he says that the law very reasonably imposed the rite on every male infant, 1 Ille Jordanem divisit, liio aSt. Lucce, c. 1. 196 THE CHURCH AND HER CHILDREN. even those of the bond-servant, that the remedy might be as extensive as the disease, and come on the child as early as his danger. He includes the proselyte by saying, that every race as well as age is exposed, and by the law was required and expected to be protected. Showing a spiritual meaning over circumcision and baptism, he says the import of the rite is plain. Those born in the house are Jews ; and the purchased are Gentile believers ; and both must be circumcised from sin, if they would be saved. " Both the home born and the foreign, the clean and the unclean, must be circumcised by the forgiveness of sins, so as to sin no more ; since no one enters the kingdom of heaven except by the sacrament of baptism." ..." For ex- cept one be born again, of water and the Holy Spirit, he cannot .enter into the kingdom of God," quoting the words of Christ. Then he continues, " He ex- cepts no one, not an infant, not one prevented by any necessity." ^ These two citations from a witness, born A.D. 333, and dying A.D. 397, are as good proof of the practice of this rite commonly in that period, as though he had devoted whole chapters and tractates to it. The bishop of Milan evidently had other work than writing largely on an ordinance generally received and practised, as from the apostles. 3 " Ergo et Jiidneus et Grrecus, et qiiiciiniqne crediderit, dehet scire se circnimcidere a peccatis, ut possit salvus fieri. Et doiuesti- cus, et alienigena, et jastiis, et peccator circiiiucidatur reiuissioue liecoatoniiu, ut iDeccatum non operetur amplius; quia nemo adscendit in reguuiu cailonim, nisi per sacranientuni baptism atis. . . . Nisi enim quis renatus fuerit ex aqua et Sj>iritu Sancto non potest in- troire iu regnnm Dei. Utique nullum excipit, non infantem, non aliqua pnuventuui necessitate." — Ajmbbosu de Abi-aham, Lib. ii. c. 11. AMBROSE OF MILAN. 197 The careful reader will here note one of those synonyms for baptism, of which the early Christian writers made so free a use, and of which we shall lind a great variety as we 'proceed. '' Circumcised by the forgiveness of sins, since no one enters the kingdom of lieaven except by the sacrament of bap- tism." Here, evidently, Ambrose uses " the forgive- ness of sins," and " the sacrament of baptism," as meaning one and the same thing. So in the quota- tion above made from his Commentary on St. Luke, he calls baptism " the sacrament of the waters of salvation." Augustine expresses baptism by " the grace of the name of Christ." * Chrysostom calls it " circumcision ; " " our circumcision, — I speak of that of baptism ; " ^ and " enlightening " ^ and '' the seal." '^ Siricius calls it " the saving water." ^ As Ave proceed, the reader will find the following words and phrases as common synonyms for baptism : " The circumcision of Christ," " washinor of recren- eration," '' sanctification," " consecration," " regener- ation," " the laver of regeneration," " the laver of salvation," '' the enlightening," " born of water," " spiritual circumcision," " sacrament of eternal sal- votion," " renewal," &c. In the citation of any passages where these terms occur, the text itself, or the context, will readily show that nothing else than baptism can be meant. Those early writers thus used varied expressions for the one act of baptism, as we use the words christen, consecrate, and dedicate, for baptize. p. 17G. 6 p. 183. 6 p. 1S4. 7 p. 185. 8 p. 191. 17* 198 THE CHUECH AND HER CHTLDEEN. Basil, a fiither eminent in the Greek Church, was born about A.D. 329. He pursued his studies at Constantinople, Antioch, and Athens. At first a hermit, he became successively a deacon, a presbyter, an assistant bishop, and then sole bishop of Neo- Ccesarea. He was an able theologian, and an efficient manager in ecclesiastical affairs. He is introduced here among the ancient witnesses for infant baptism, not because he has written abundantly or with pecu- liar directness on the subject, though his testimony has weight, but because some things said by him have been made to bear as^ainst this ordinance as existinsc in his day. In one of his sermons, delivered on a fast da}^ ob- served on account of a great drought and famine, he rebukes the church-members for absenting them- selves. " The grown men," he says, " generally follow their business. A very few come to join in the worship ; and those, indolent, sleepy, and gazing about." "And these little boys, laying their books by at school and joining with us in the responses, do it as a relaxation and play," &c.^ It is quite evident that these children were bap- tized, because in the ancient church service only the baptized could remain through the prayers that called for responses. A few woi'ds will make this plain. In the church services of that day, the sermon came before the prayers ; and to hear it any and all classes 9 Ot 6e -naldec ol ofiLKpora-OL ovtol, ol rui' deXrovg h toIc du^aaKaTuoLQ ano&efiEVOi sal av/ulSoiJvTec Vf^lv, uc; uveaLv nd70\jov koi lEp-ipiv to 7zpuy/Aa fiETipxovraL, k.tX — Drowjld and Famine: a Fast Daj-Sermon. BASIL. 199 could be present, — heathen, Jews, catechumens, or candidates for membership. After the sermon fol- lowed the prayers; and these were of two kinds. First, prayer for the catechumens, repeated by the dea- con. At each petition in this prayer, the congrega- tion responded, " Lord have mercy on them." As all Jews and unbelievers and unbaptized ones, ex- cept the catechumens, were requested to leave the church before this prayer was offered ; so, after it was offered, the catechumens themselves were requested to leave. Then the second kind of prayers followed, the baptized alone being left ; and through these varied prayers, responses were made by the whole congregation remaining.^^^ When, therefore, Basil speaks of little children uniting in the responses, he virtually says they were baptized ; since none but the baptized could be pres- ent during that part of the service. . One other item should be taken from Basil, as menlioned by Theodoret and other historians of that time. The only child of Valens, the emperor, being dangerously ill, Basil was called to the palace. After looking on the dying little one, he assured the father that the child would be restored if baptized. The child was baptized, but died. A query has been raised whether the child was not old enough to be baptized on his own account. But Theodoret calls the child madinv, the word used by St. Mark, when he says, " They brought young children " to Jesus, and so small that " he took them up in his amis ; " and !•> Bingham's Antiq. Club Cli. book i. cLap. 3 ; book xiv. cbap. 5 200 THE CHURCH AND HER CHH^DREN/ by St. Matthew, when he says, " They found the young child," " wrapped in swaddling clothes." Little doubt should be allowed that this was a case of infant baptism. In one of his sermons Basil urges baptism on some of his hearers, who had evidently been brought up in Christian families, and therefore must have failed of infant consecration. From this some insist that the rite could not then have been in use. As well argue that it is not in use now, because some are urged to regard it. No doubt Christian parents neglected some of their duties then as well as in our times. Moreover, it is no improbable thing that some of these hearers, now chided for neglecting baptism, were too old for infant consecration when their parents were converted to Christianity, and, since their own conversion, had been very tardy in making a profession of love to Christ. Gregory Nazianzen is an important link in^ our chain of evidence. Born A.D. 325, devoted to the Lord by his mother, Nonna, as early as Samuel, and his father, the bishop of Nazianzen for forty-five years, a student in the two Csesareas of Cappadocia and Palestine, as also in Alexandria and Athens, his opportunities were good for knowing early the doc- trines and customs of the Church. He was ordained a presbyter A.D. 361 ; afterward assistant bishop of his aged father ; in A.D. 379 he was pressed into taking the chair of patriarch at Constantinople, but soon withdrew into a more congenial and quiet life, and died A.D. 390. He was one of the first of orators in the Greek Church ; from his doctrinal GREGORY NAZIANZEN. 201 stiulies and labors he gained the title of The Theolo- gian ; and as a polemic, a writer, and a man of a practical religious spirit and activit}^ he led the men of his era in shaping the course of events for the Church. Among the extant works of Gregory is a sermon on Baptism, that settles, beyond any qnestion, the practice of the rite on infants in his times. It may be well to preface the quotations that are about to be made from this writer with the remark, that he calls baptism by various terms, as, " the anointing," " the washing," '' the gift," " the laver of regenera- tion," " the seal," " the divine formation," '^ the grace," " our improved formation," *' the dedication," " the sanctification," " the enlightening." Neander says that some of these synomyms came into use because the teachers of those days con- founded regeneration with baptism, and connected the gifts and graces of the Holy Spirit with the per- formance of this external act. Indeed, the fathers then commonly gave the name of regeneration to bap- tism alone. So in the opening of this sermon, Greg- ory says that baptism brings one into a new life, and that the baptized should guard most sacredly against sins afterwards, "because there is no second regeneration." ^^ In another part of the same, he meets the frivolous excuses of many for delaying baptism, on the ground that sins com- mitted afterwards could not be easily cleansed away. He warns them of the craft of the great adversary, ^ 'OvK 'uvarjc dtvrepag avayevv/jacoc. 202 THE CHURCH AND HER CHILDREN. who, if he cannot make them despise baptism, will make them so to prize it, and be over-cautious in its use, as to lose it altogether. Then he says that every age needs it, — youth and gray hairs and infants. " Have you an infant ? Let not evil take advantage of the age : let it be sanctified from infancy ; let it be consecrated by the Spirit from birth. You, as a faint-hearted and unbelieving mother, are afraid to bestow the seal on account of its weakness. But Hannah, even before Samuel was born, promised him to God ; and, as soon as born, consecrated him, and clothed him in a holy garment, not fearing human weakness, but trusting in God." ^ It is rare that we find an enforcement of the duty of infant baptism in any modern writer more plain and pointed than this. It is a clear, direct, earnest inculcation of the duty, through the appointed manner of God, to dedicate the child to the ]\Iost High. No one can misapprehend the allusion that he makes soon after. When he has reminded the mother of the use of amulets and charms, so common in that day for protection, he says, " Give to it the Trinity, that great and noble guard." ^^ Let the name of the Triune God, to whom he is consecrated, be called on him in the formula of 12 NfiTTUOv koTL ool ; M7 "kaSeTu natpov rj KOKia, sk (3pefovg uyiaa&f/ro), e^ ovvxi'iv KodtspuT^^TO) tC) Uvevaari. "Ei) SiSoiKO^ rr/v o(l>payi6a diu to (pvaeag a&eve^, ug fiiKpoxbvxog i] firjTiTip oTj-yoTnaroQ. 'OvK "Kwa 61 Kal Tiplv f] yvvTi^rjvaL tov 2a//ou^A KvdvTTeoxsro T(j Qeu Koi yevvTjdivTa lepbv ev&vg iroid, koI tq upaTiny aro/S} ovvari^eipev, vv to uv-bpCi-mvov fOiSTjdnaa, t(j de QeC) TnoTtvaaaa. — Greg. Naz. Or. xl. 13 Aof avTu TTiv Tpiada, ro fieya Koi Ka?idv ^vTuiKTriptov. GREGORY NAZIANZEN. 203 baptism. This will prove the best amulet and charm against evil. We pass to another important quotation. After urging this ordinance on those who understand its import, he supposes an objection, worded thus : — " But what say you of infants, not yet old enough to realize the loss or the grace ? Shall we baptize them ? Most certainly, if any danger impend. Better to be consecrated without sense of it, than to die unsealed and unadmitted. And a reason to us for this is circumcision on the eighth day, — a certain typical seal, and applied to those not taking the sense of it, as also the anointing of the doorways, saving the first born by senseless things." Having given his opinion that some may be kept back to the third year, when they will be able to utter the baptismal responses, he continues : — " But it is by all means fitting that they should be made safe by the laver, on account of the sudden attacks of danger and powerful assaults coming on us." 1^ This passage from Gregory's sermon is declarative of both a fact and a tendency in his times. The fact is the practice of this ordinance in his day. ' Or to state the same in the language of Neander, '' Infant baptism was now generally recognized as an apostolical institution," and "acknowledged to be necessary." The tendency was to neglect it, and because of !•* TeTSLx'iadaL de t€) TiovrpC) navTi Tuoyu TiVOiarfMoTepov (ku raf k^al(^VTi^ ovfim-TOvaag i/fuv TTpoajioKag tCjv klv()vvuv, Kal ftuijQdag Lnxvportpag. — Or. xl. 204 THE CHURCH AND HER CHH^DREN. false views of the design and powers of baptism. Neander, while treating of its neglect by adult converts, thus states those false views, and the con- sequent delay of the rite : — '^ They were disposed to enter into a sort of com- pact, or bargain, with God and Christ, to be permit- ted to enjoy as long as possible their sinfid pleas- ures, and yet in the end, by tlie ordinance of baptism, which like a charm was to wipe away their sins, to be pm^fied from all their stains, and attain to blessedness in a moment. Hence many put off bap- tism until they were reminded by mortal sickness, or some other sudden danger, of approaching death. Hence it was, that in times of public calamity, in earthquakes, in the dangers of war, multitudes hurried to baptism, and the number of the existing clergy scarcely sufficed for the wants of all." " The cause of delaying baptism, with numbers, was their w^ant of any true interest in religion, their being bred and living along in a medley of Pagan and Christian superstitions ; nor can it be denied, that the neglect of infant baptism contributed to prolong this sad state of things." " Many pious but mistak- en parents dreaded intrusting the baptismal grace to the weak, unstable age of their children ; which grace, once lost by sin, could never be regained. They wished rather to reserve it against the more decided and mature age of manhood, as a refuge from the temptation and storms of an uncertain life." ^^ And Neander, in supporting these statements, 15 Church History, ii. 319 et aeq. GREQOKY NAZIANZEN. 205 quotes tliis same sermon of Gregory from wliicli tlie above extracts are taken. Now, it is plain why Gregory gives tlie suggestion that infants, in certain cases, be kept back to the third year, while he urges that they immediately " should be made safe by the laver," in any case of imminent death. The apostolical and traditional theor}^ of the Church moved him to preach and urge the early api)lication of this seal ; but public opinion, vitiated by a false view of the ordinance, was setting the other way, and reserving the rite, as having a cleansing power, to be applied, if they could so time it, in the last hours of life. Gregory attempted to compromise somewhat the true views in a medium time, and suggested the third year. This little summary of the history of those two conflicting theories and wishes shows us how deeply imbedded in the foundations of the Church this ordinance for infants was at that ver}^ early day. We have here, too," another of those historical crises and partisan exigencies, growing out of or centering in this rite, where one party must have been strongly tempted and pressed to deny its apos- tolical authority. If it had power to wash the soul clean for heaven, and if there was ''no second regeneration" by the laver, and if sins committed after baptism were exceedingly diflficult and almost impossible of removal, there was strong reason why not only infant baptism should be discarded, but adult baptism be deferred to the last moments of life. It was almost a question of salvation, under the theories of that day, to set infant baptism aside. 18 206 THE CHUBCH AND HER CHILDREN. Yet under all tins partisan pressure, and amid all these tender spiritual anxieties of parents for the salvation of their children, no doubt is raised on the apostolical origin of the rite. They made no opposi- tion to it, or urged delay of it, on the ground that it is a human invention and innovation in the Church, and may be ruled out by human authority. In the writings of Optatus, Bishop of Mileve, we find a single passage only on our topic. Optatus was in office here about A.D. 368. He could not, of course, avoid controversy with the Donatists, and so wrote several books on that schism. In the dis- pute whether baptism is valid when administered by an heretical or unworthy officer, he compares the putting on of Christ to the putting on of a garment, and then says, — " But lest any one should say that the Son of God is irreverently called by me a garment, let him read the apostle saying, ' As many of you as have been baptized into Christ, have put on Christ.' O gar- ment always the same and yet so variable, that clothes properly all ages and forms I It does not hang loosely about infants, nor is it too small for men, nor needs it any change for women." ^^ The passage does not need an explanation. No com- ment can make it plainer. He is speaking of bap- tism, and declares its fitness and adaptation to any 16 " Secl ne qiiis dicat, teniere a me Filiuin Dei vestem esse dictuiu, legat apostolum dicentem: Quotqot in nomine Cliristi baptizati estis, Christum induistis. O tunica semper una, et innu- merabilis, qure decenter vestiat et omnes aitates et formas! Ken in infantibus nigatur, nee in juvenibus tenditur, nee in fceminis mutatur." — Lib. Quinto de Schis. Donatis. OPTATUS. 207 age and cillier sex. Among the classes of persons to whom it is adapted he mentions infants. Why applicable and fitted to them, except as they were fit subjects for it? .If infants were not then usually receiving it in the ministrations of the Church, the references to them had no pertinence, and the state- ment convej^s a wrong impression. CHAPTER XXVI. AN OBJECTION CONSIDEKED. IN this connection it will be well to notice the assertion of some, that many of the early Church fathers were not baptized in their infancy, and therefore the rite could not have been regarded as of divine authorit}^ They give as instances these four in the Greek Church : Basil, Gregory Nazian- zen, Nectarius, and Chrysostom ; and in the Latin Church, Ambrose, Jerome, and Augustine. If these men Avere not baptized in infancy, it may have been owing to the fact that when they were infants their fathers were pagans, which we must inquire into ; or it may have resulted from the tendency, that we have been considering, to defer the rite as long as could be safely done, and yet receive it before death. Moreover, it is to be considered that parents then, as now, might neglect a rite held by universal theory and in the general practice of the Church, and the in- fants neglected become eminent men afterward. Marked failures prove only and at best but a general observance. But. let us inquire into the alleged facts. The time of the baptism of Basil is nowhere men- tioned, and so may have been in infancy ; and some 208 AN OBJECTION CONSIDERED. 209 expressions of rhetorical fulness in Gregory's funeral oration on him take the meaning of infant baptism better than any other. For illustration, Gregory speaks of the reconstruction of his formation in the beginning of his life, and of his being consecrated from the womb and in infancy.^ It seems the more probable that Gregory here re- fers to his baptism ; as he, in mentioning leading events in the life of Basil from his birth onward, makes there allusions to him in a time when his bap- tism would properly take place, and omits any allu- sion to it as taking place at any other time. When much opposition, and for various reasons, was made against the continuance of Gregory Nazi- anzen in the patriarchate of Constantinople, lie retired, and with a remark that would give great prosperity to the Church of God, if the spirit of it could become general : " If I am the cause of these unfortunate troubles, let me hasten away ; but let the Church of Christ have peace." They appointed, as his successor, Nectarius, an unbaptized layman, of senatorial rank, no scholar, and less a divine, but of fine appearance and cultured manners. So they spoiled a good alderman and made a poor bishop, not an uncommon result when a factious church turns off an able and useful pastor. As this Nectarius had not been baptized when elected, the opponents of infant baptism argue from the fact for their views. They disregard the Chris- tian condition of things then existing, that very 1 'Ek Bp£uitentiam uou esse (leiie.LTaiKlaiu, eo quud co^noverit pect-atuia smxui; qui etiaui deceiu anuis agat pn-niteutiani; cui post decern annus pr.t>stari ccjuiuiunio debet. Si vero infantes fuerint transducti, quod nou suo vitio pec- caverint, iuciinctanter recepi debeut." — Cone. Eliber. can. xxii 220 THE CHXTBCH AND HER CHILDREN. This canon evidently has in view two classes of apostates, — those who went over to heresy as adults, and knowingly, and those who were carried over by their parents in their tender and irresponsible years. The canon contemplates the restoration of both to the communion of the catholic Church, as having dis- covered their error and wishing to be restored. One class it is proposed to restore after ten years' peni- tence, and the other class immediately on application, incunctanter. Plainly, the fii-st class are church-mem- bers. The language of the canon referring to them is not pertinent to a catechumen. No catechumen could be said to go out from the Church, and return to the Church ; nor do the fathers so speak. But the canon couples the two classes in the same expressions as to going out of the Church, and being restored to the Church ; thus showing that both had membership. Therefore the infants of the canon had been baptized, as baptism was indispensable to membership. If they had not been baptized, they must have taken the position and processes of catechumens. This would require instruction and delay ; but the council says, let them be " taken back immediately." The evi- dence of infant baptism in this canon appears to be unimpeachable. CHAPTER XXVm. THE SIXTY-SIX BISHOPS, AND CYPEIAN's LETTER TO FIDUS. "TTT'E come now fifty years nearer to the apos- V V ties, when we bring Cyprian, and sixty -five other bishops, on the stand. If any reader of this historical argument is yet sceptical, his special atten- tion is called to the testimony about to be introduced, both in regard to its positive nature, and to the time when it was furnished. It was A.D. 253, that a large meeting of African bishops was held at Carthage. It was one of those informal meetings in the ancient Church, held occa- sionally at convenient centres, by the pastors of the territory. They met for mutual improvement, and for the consideration of any question presented that might concern the welfare of the Church. At this meeting sixty-six were present. What other topics were raised for consultation we are not informed ; but, Fidus, a country pastor, presented l)y letter two questions. One was, whether an infant might receive baptism before it was eight da3^s old. This question Fidus accompanies Avith an argument in the negative. He urges that earlier than the eighth day the babe would seem to be so unfinished 19* 221 222 THE CHURCH AND HER CHH^DREN. and unclean that men would revolt from giving to it the usual kiss of welcome into the church. He makes much also of the fact that circumcision was prescribed for the eighth day, and insists that the rule of initiation in that form should hold in this. He also urges other things against the baptism of an infant before the eighth day. The question and argument of Fidus appear to have been very freely discussed by the bishops, and their result was unanimous. The duty of condens- ing their opinions, and making replj^ to Fidus, was devolved on Cyprian . This letter of Cyprian to Fidus is preserved. In the edition of his works by Parme- lius, and by the Benedictines, it is the tifty-ninth epistle ; in the Oxford edition of Fell, it is the sixty- fourth. We introduce here so much of it as will set forth distinctly the historical genealogy of infant baptism in its pedigree toward the apostles. " But as to the case of infants, who, you said, ought not to be baptized within the second or third day of their birth ; and as to your point, that the law of ancient circumcision should be regarded, and a child not be baptized and sanctified within the eighth da}^ of its birth, — it seemed quite otherwise to all of us in council. No one agreed to the thing that you thouo-ht ouo'ht to be done. . . . " And therefore, brother dearl}' beloved, this was our conclusion in council, that no one ought to be kept back by us from baptism and from the grace of God, who is merciful and kind and tender toward all. For while we think that attention and regard should be had for the wants of all, we think that we ought THE BISHOPS, AND CYPRIAN'S LETTER. 223 to do tliis especially for infants and the new-born, who seem to chiim our aid and the divine compassion the more, in that- from tlieir hour of birth, waiUng and weeping, they do nothing except to implore aid." 1 This epistle of the martyr bishop of Carthage is worthy of special attention. As a witness concern- ing the ordinance of infant baptism, it has a leading and commanding place among the ancients. It is a genuine epistle of Cyprian, and as well authenticated as any of the works of any of the fathers. Jerome and Augustine have quoted it so freely that almost every passage of it may be found in their works. And they lived so near to the time of its author, that we cannot suj)pose it possible that they were duped by a forgery. Particular notes should be made on the letter as evidence worthy of division, and a stud- ied attention in our discussion. ^.^^ (1.) The question submitted by Fidus. It is sometimes the case that a question well put gives more information than the answer. It is in a meas- 1 Quantma vero ail nausam infantiuin pertinet, qiios dixisti intra secinulniu vel tertium (lieiii, quo nati sunt, constitutes baptizari non oportere, et considei-anduin esse legem circuuicisionis antiqujc, ut intra octavuni diem eum qui natus est baptizandum et sacrifican- diini non putares, longe aliud in concilio nostro omnibus visum est. In hoc enim (piod tu putabas esse fa<3iendum, nemo cousensit. Et iilcirco, frater carissime, hnec fuit in concilio nostra sententia, a baprtsmo atque a gratia Dei, qui omnibus misericors et beniguus et pins est, nemineui per nos debere prohiberi. Quod cum circa universos observandum sit, atque retinendura, magis circa infantes ipsos et recens natos obsesvandum putanius, qui lioc ipso de ope nostra, ac de divina, misericordia plus merentur, quod in primo statim nativitatis suaj ortu plorantes ac flentes nihil aliud f aciuiit quam deprecautur. — Ep. Iviii. — Ox. Ed. bciv. 224 THE CHUECH AND HER CHH^DEEN. ure so in this case. The inquiry is a large revelation on the subject of infant baptism at that time. For in it Fidus assumes the validity and universality of the ordinance. It is no part of his inquiry whether the rite shall be administered. By the very terms in which he puts his question he concedes this. The scriptural authority for the ordinance, or its propri- ety, does not lie in any doubt in his mind. A ques- tion so sharp and so precise in its point could arise only where infant baptism, by common consent, was assumed, granted, and practised as a Christian ordi- nance. The question of Fidus is simply one of time : May the rite be administered before the child is eight days old ? Would such a question ever arise in a Baptist community ? And the discussion and answer of the question concede all that Fidus concedes in it, as to the prevalence of the rite. Were the ordinance at that time an innovation, or had it intruded itself into the Church within the memory of some of the aged ministers in the assembly, such a question could not have come in and been discussed, under so full an assumption and admission of its apostolical au- thority. Not only is its divine institution as fully conceded as adult baptism, but the council say, " We think that we ought to do this especially for infants and the new-born." They thus call for it a more prompt and prominent attention than for adult baptism. (2.) The connection that Fidus makes between baptism and circumcision. He argues that the rule of baptism must be the same as the rule of circum- cision, as to time, and that, therefore, the only proper THE BISHOPS, AND CYPRIAN's LETTER. 225 day for the administration is tlie eighth. Is it an undesigned and untaught conincidence that he here presents ? Why does lie connect the two rites at all ? Why make such a connection of them in the eighth day ? He evidently regards the two as initiatory to the Church under its ancient and modern administra- tion, and the latter as taking the place of the former. Hence baptism is here called " the spiritual circum- cision." All this is significant as found in the letter of a bishop living so near to the times of the apos- tles. We cannot escape the conviction that this con- necting of the two rites, and this law of time, and the use of the word circumcision as the synonym for baptism, in the letters before us, are the result of tradition and instruction from the apostles, and that the latter ordinance comes by their authority in the place of the former. If such were the teaching and belief of that early day, we can easily explain these expressions and allusions and reasonings. Otherwise the coincidences are very strangely accidental, lying even totally outside the problem of the calculation of chances that they would ever occur. (3.) The large section of the Church represented in this council. The number of bishops is sixty -six. At that early day, A.D. 253, this number must have represented a large portion of the African Churches ; for in the best days of Christianity on that continent the number of bishoprics did not exceed five hun- dred. This body, then, is no local clique of the clergy, drawn together on some principle of doctrinal or politic affinity. Wide geographical boundaries mark the limits from which they come. It is a pro- 226 THE CHUECH AND HER CHILDREN. miscuous gathering, not knowing, till gathered, to what questions they were to make answer. A draft by lot on the Church at large would not probably have brought together fairer representatives of the Christian faith and practice concerning infant baptism than were found in that Carthaginian body. (4.) Their perfect agreement in answer to the question of Fidus. There is a grateful unanimity among them, for one who loves the sacrament in question, as one of the foundation stones of Zion. " No one agreed to the thing that you thought ought to be done," nemo consensit. The waiting for bap- tism to the eighth day of the child was unanimously overruled. This unity of opinion and result assures Tis that they reasoned from a unity of faith and of practice. Such agreement in faith and practice through the Church, and out of which this unanimity in advice to Fidus sprang, may have resulted from either of two causes. There may have been a- universal prevalence of the teaching of Christ and his apostles, that infant baptism is a divine institution in the Church. Or there may have been a universal prevalence of such a rite, and a universal belief in it as of divine origin, while it was only a forger}^ and an imposition among the' original and authoritative rites of the Church. In determining which of these causes did, probably, lead the council to this unity of advice to Fidus, we come to the final reflection proposed on the letter in question : — (5.) The time when this assembly was convened. Some of its members could, very like, make their THE BISHOPS, AND CYPRIAN'S LETTER. 227 memories cover nearly half the period between the time of their session and the time of living apostles. They knew the generation who knew the apostles. In so narrow space of time could infant baptism have sprung up of human device, and established itself so widely and so absolutely? If this rite be an innova- tion and corruption among the institutions of the apostles, it must have come in by slow introduction. Three-quarters of a century would hardly suffice for so radical and fundamental a change in the constitu- tion of the Church of God. For it must be firmly carried in mind, that seventy- five years then and now are, practically, two very different periods of time. With our routes of travel by land and sea, and lively and constant going to and fro ; with our printing press, prolific in daily, weekly, and volume issues ; with national and international postal systems ; with locomotives flying across the continents like birds of passage ; with telegraphic wires gathering into one centre the present leading thoughts of five continents in six hours, — our years are half centuries to those of Cyprian and old Carthage. Then thought went on foot from city to city, and by word of mouth from country to country, or; if it took carriage, it was the lumbering and contracted vehicle of the copyist and parchment. Then the protracted absence of the African LivinG^stone would have created little surprise. In seventy-five such years could an innovation, an imposition, creep in and carry the entire African Ohurch ? But for the sake of an in(|uiry, allow three-quarters of a century to be a sufficient time for this. 228 THE CHURCH AND HER CHILDREN. Between the time of this meeting at Carthage and the death of the last apostle was about one hundred and fifty years. Divide the time into two equal parts. Could the invention and imposition of this rite have taken place in the last half of this interval ? But that would have been within the lifetime and knowledge of these bishops. If an innovation of their own day, and known to them, could they have gone through the discussion of the question with Fi- dus, and come to that unanimous and written result with no intimation or breathed suspicion that the or- dinance was of human invention, and so should be left with the widest range of human judgment to per- form when it pleased, or not all ? The entire teaching and spirit of the letter show that they supposed they were dealing with a divine ordinance, which could not be true if introduced within their memory and knowleds^e. Then, on the other hand, could the innovation have taken place during the first half of this interval? But it is claimed by those who regard this ordinance as of man's devising, that it is a great violation and departure from the primitive and apostolical constitu- tion of the Church. It is an innovation and change, say they, of vast magnitude. Could it have been wrought in seventy-five years, no pure and protesting antipsedobaptist minority remaining, nor any record of the violation thus done to God's Church ? No person, paper or tradition, to prevent the unity of opinion and result in that body of sixty-six ? Could the change have been wrought in those first seventy- THE BISHOPS, AND CYPRIAN'S LETTER. 229 five years, followinfir tlie apostles, when there were so many living and influential men in the Church whom the apostles themselves had trained and indoctrinated ? On the theory that infant baptism is a human de- vice, and a forgery thrust in among apostolic institu- tions, the Letter of Cyprian to Fid us is a vast per- plexity. The narrow and definite question that it answers, the number of bishops for whom it speaks, their perfect unanimity in opinion, and their nearness to the apostolic age, are confusing thoughts, if we as- sume that this rite is not of the apostles. If it be an invention of ritualists, begun so early, carried so thoroughly and widely, and all knowledge and history of its corrupt human beginning lost so profoundly, and all within one hundred and fifty years of the apostolic age, then it is a marvel in Christian history without a parallel. We turn to those rejecting this ordinance for any comfortable disposition of this let- ter. Their inventive theory, in the face of Cyprian's Letter, would almost make it possible to forge pas- sages into the Declaration of American Independence. 20 CHAPTER XXIX. THE TESTIMONY OF ORIGEN. "TTXE come now, in our progress, to consult the V V works of Origen. This brings us to a point for observation much nearer to the apostles ; for he was born at Alexandria, A.D. 185. He was of a Christian ancestry, parents and grandparents, accord- ing to Eusebius.i His father, as a devout Christian, required him, when a boy, to commit to memory, daily, some portion of the Scriptures ; and, when the father suffered mar- tyrdom, Origen, then a lad of seventeen, wished to suffer with him, and was kept back only by his mother. Under the persecution, the whole property of the Origen family was confiscated. Origen became a cate- chetic and philosophical teacher, and a devout Chris- tian, as well as austere ; for he ate the coarsest food, went barefoot, and slept on the ground. He sold his large and valuable pagan library for a perpetual in- come of about seven cents a day, for a living, and so gave himself up to study and teach and propagate Christianity, while the pagans watched his house and 1 *Ek TTpoyovuv Kara Xpiarbv. — £ccl. His. Lib. vi. c. 19. 230 THE TESTIMONY OF ORIGEN. 231 walks for opportunity to assassinate him. Not only was he *' master of the literature and science of that age," says Dr. Murdock, but he " was beyond ques- tion the first biblical schohxr of the age."^ Guericke calls Origen " the most learned and stim- ulating, and in all respects one of the most distin- guished, of the primitive fathers, and one who has exerted an abiding influence upon the history of the- ology." 3 So descending from a Christian ancestry, and so educated in things pertaining to the Christian Church, any testimony he may give on the question in hand should have great weight. Standing so near to the apostles, the light between him and them could, in- deed, be but little obscured. Born within eighty-five years of the time of a liv- ing apostle, and whose grandfather, very like, may have known " the beloved disciple," Origen had no need to go out of his own family to know the theory and practice of the apostolic Church in regard to in- fant baptism. When, therefore, Origen says, that " the Church received the order from the apostles to give baptism to infants also," as he does in his Com- mentary on the Epistle to the Romans,^ we can read- ily see that his father may have learned this from men to whom apostles taught it personally. It will be noticed that we are coming now into close quarters with the apostles themselves. Our 2MosHEnr, i. 107. 3 Ancient Church, Shedd's Trans, p. 227. * " Ecclesia ah apostolis traditioneiu suscepit etiani parvulis bap- tism um dare." 232 THE CHURCH AND HER CHH^DREN. converging lines of evidence are bringing both par- ties in this investigation into a very sharp and closing angle. Geologists often find bowlders that have been carried by natural forces to great distances from their original situations and home mountains. In those gla- cier periods and huge ice-floes from the north, these rocky masses were carried southward along the con- tinent ; and the geologist, finding them isolated and peculiar, as he goes northward, can readily tell from their characteristics, to what kind of rocky ranges and strata he is approaching ; and he at length finds the mountain itself, whence the fragments started. As we have been working our Avay slowly backward toward the apostolic and primitive formations, we have been meeting these ecclesiastical bowlders. They have a likeness in common, Avhile they are found in the converging lines of a common drift. It looks now as if we should find their common starting place and home in the mountains that are round about Jerusalem. If so, they will probably be proved to be part and parcel of the stones of Mount Zion itself. We have just passed by the Cyprian bowlder. To those wishing to turn it aside we think it will prove to be the insuperahile saxum. The Origenistic group is just before us. In his eighth homily on Leviticus, Origen presses the proofs of human depravity ; and, to the other points, he makes this addition : — " To all which things this also can be added, that, since the baptism of the Church is given for the remission of sins, baptism, according to the usage of the Church, is also given to infants, when, if there THE TESTIMONY OF ORIGEN. 233 were nothing in infants that needed forgiveness, this grace of baptism would seem to be superfluous." ^ Here Origen attempts to prove one of his peculiar notions by citing the rite of infant baptism as a com- mon practice of the Church. In another of his commentaries he brings out the same thought, and appeals to the same usage : — " As the occasion gives me the opportunity, I will notice a thing that causes frequent discussions among the brethren. Infants are baptized for the forgive- ness of sins. What sins ? Or when did they sin ? Or how can there be any reason for the laver for infants, unless for the reason I gave just now, that no one is free from taint, not if his life had been but one day on the earth. For this reason infants are baptized, because in the sacrament of baptism natural corruption is washed away." ^ In his exposition of St. Paul's Epistle to the Romans, he says that the Levitical sin-offering for every new- born child, indicated that any child, even of one day, 6 " Addi liis etiam illud potest, iit reqniratnr qnifl cansrir^ sit, cum baptisma ecclesiaj in reniissioueiu peecatoruiu tletiir, secundiim ec- clesiaj observantiam etiam parviilis baptisimiin dari ; cum utique si niliil esse in parvulis quod ad remissionem deheret et indulgentiaui pertiuere, gratia baptismi supertlua videretur." — Ilom. viii. in Lev. c. 12. 6 " Quod frequenter inter fratres qureritur, loci occasione commo- tus, retiacto. Parvuli baptizantur in remissionem peccatorum. Quorum peccatorum? Vel quo Tempore peccaveruntV Aut quo luodo potest ulla lavacri in parvulis ratio subsistere, nisi juxta ilium sensum de quo paulo ante diximns: nrdlus mundus a sorde, nee si unius diei quidem fuerit vita ejus super terram ? Et quia per bap- tismi sacramentum nativitatis sordes deponuutur, propterea baptiz- antur et parvidi." — Horn, in Lucam, xiv. 20* 234 THE CHTJRCH AND HER CHILDREN. had sins to be remitted ; and then he proceeds to say : — " For this same thing the Church has received from the apostles the order to administer baptism to in- fants. For they, to whom the divine mysteries were committed, well knew that there is a natural corrup- tion of sin in all, which must be washed away by water and the Spirit. " <" This testimony of Origen to the practice of infant baptism, in his times and earlier, has the greater force, as it comes in the easy and natural way of allusions. He has no point to establish by prov- ing that it was practised. He makes incidental refer- rence to it, as well known and common practice. He assumes that everybody knows the fact, and he alludes to it merely to use it. He also says that the Church does this by an order or tradition from the apostles. This is direct, posi- tive, and without the possibility of an ambiguity. Indeed, no quotation that we have made from him is open to that verbal criticism and affected scepti- cism, by which the vitality and force are sometimes expelled from a well-cited passage. Origen, as quoted, is so explicit as to be beyond the power of misunderstanding and misapplication. It remains only to speak, in a word^ of the authen- ticity and genuineness of these quotations from Origen. 7 " Pro hoc et ecclesia ab apostolis traditionem suscepit etiam par- vulis baptisimini dare. Sciebant enim illi qiiibiis niysterioruiu secreta coiinnissa sunt divinorum, quia essent in omnibus genuinae sordes peccati, quae per aquaui et Spirutum ablni deberent." — Com. in Epis. ad. Bom. Lib. v. THE TESTIMONY OF ORIGEN. 235 The works from which we liave extracted them re- main to us only in Lathi transhxtions, the original Greek having perished. The homily on Leviticus, and the commentar}" on the Epistle to the Romans, were translated by Rufinus, and the homily on St. Luke by Jerome. Both these translators lived within one hundred years of the times of Origen ; and, being learned men, they must have known whether he misstated the practice of the Church in this rite. If they suspected him of error, we cannot suppose they would have translated and given his erroneous teachinGfs to the world without caveat or protest. It is true, when the translated works of Origen were collected, some spurious writings were gathered with them, and attributed to him. But the homily on Luke could not have been one of them ; since Jerome owns to the fact that he translated it, and no one questions but that Rufinus translated the other works quoted. It is also true that Rufinus intentionally made omissions, in his translations, of passages in which he regarded Origen as unorthodox, though he is not accused of making interpolations. As Rufinus was an ardent admirer of Origen, we may presume the passages in question would have been omitted if they inculcated what the Church had not accepted, and so would endanger the reputation of their author. Besides, they are sustained fully in sentiment by the passage in the homily on St. Luke, over whose genu- ineness there hangs no doubt. It is to be considered, too, that these translations were made while their 236 THE CHURCH AND HER CHHuDREN. Greek originals were common ; and so any variations from the Greek would be liable to immediate dis- covery and exposure. Neander, alluding to the statement of Origen, that the Church received the order from the apostles to baptize infants, makes this remark : — " An expression, by the way, which cannot be re- garded as of much weight in this age, when the inclination was so strong to trace every institution, which was considered of special importance, to the apostles."^ This remark of the eminent historian savors not a little of the theorist ; and it is a fair index to that un- fortunate fact in his history, that all his historical evidences on infant baptism in the first four centuries are for the institution as apostolical, while his philo- sophizing on the facts is against it. There appears to be, throughout his great work, a purpose wrought out to neutralize the legitimate influence of the facts that he adduces on this subject. 8 Ch. His. i. 314. CHAPTER XXX. TERTULLIAN. "TTTE come next in order to take the testimony of V V TertuUian, a presbyter in the Church at Car- thage. He Avas born there, of pagan parents, about A.D. 160. This brings us a quarter of a century nearer to the apostles than the times of Origen, and within a century of the time when the most of the New Testament was written. He was one of the most influential and learned of the authors of his times. Guericke esteems him as one of " the three leading and representative minds in the Church at the close of the second century."^ " In the Latin language," says Mosheim, " scarcely any writer of this century elucidated and defended the Christian religion,^ except Tertullian." " He had much learning, but lacked discretion and judgment." ^ He was erratic, and even heretical, in some of his religious views, being for years a Montanist. But these imperfections can in no manner impeach his ability or fidelity in making historical allusions to the ordinance and use of infant baptism, as then held and practised. 1 Ancient Church, 14G; note 2. 2 EccI. ffis. i. 122, 3. 237 238 THE CHURCH AND HER CHILDREN. He wrote a treatise on the subject of baptism. Holding to the doctrine that the stain of original sin attaches to every child of Adam, and that bap- tism is efficacious to wash it away, he says, — " Since it is agreed that no one can obtain salva- tion without baptism, according to that marked say- ing of the Lord, Except a man be born of water he cannot have salvation, scruples arise, and the rash dis- sertations of some, how, by that rule, any apostle could be saved, excepting St. Paul. For since Paul, only of them all, received the baptism of Christ, the others who failed of the water of Christ, must either be in great danger, that the rule may stand, or the rule is rescinded, if salvation is obtained without baptism."^ TertuUian here makes baptism a logical necessity for salvation. If, then, infants did not receive it, they must have incurred the great peril, as those " who failed of the water of Christ." Of course we have now nothing to do with the truth or error of those notions about the taint of Adam's sin, and its supposed washing away in bap- tism and failure of salvation without the rite. We are concerned only with the practice of the ancient Church in this ordinance. But so earnestly did Ter- tuUian hold these views of the necessity of baptism, 3 Quuiii vero prjBScribitur nemiui sine baptisnio competere salu- tem. ex ilia maxima pronuiKuatioue Domiiii, qui ait; nisi natus ex aqna qnis erit, nonliabetsalntem; suhorinnturscrnpuli, imo temerarii tractatus qnorumdam, qno modo exista prsescrii^tione apostolis salus competat, qnos tinctos non inveniiuns in Domino, pi'reter Pauhun : imo, cum Paulus solns ex illis baptismnm Christi indnerit, ant praejndicatum esse de caeterorum periculo, qiii careant aqua Christi, lit pnescriptio salva sit; aut rescind! prjescriptionem, si etiam aoji tinctis salus statua est. — Tektull., Dq Baptismo, c. 12. TERTULLIAN. 239 that he put the duty on laymen to administer the rite, when death made the circumstances urgent. Yet with great caution they were to baptize : — *' Let it suffice that you exercise this right only in extreme cases, when the circumstances of place or time or person urge it. Then the boldness of him helping will be allowable, when the danger of him needing is imperative." ^ Reading the passages now quoted frorri this eminent father, no one would doubt as to his theory and prac- tice in this matter, and from these would naturally and safely infer the custom of the Church in that day. There is, however, another passage in Tertullian that must be quoted and harmonized with the preceding, if, indeed, there is any discrepancy, as some maintain. " According to the condition and disposition and age, also, of every person, the delay of baptism is more useful, but especially for little children. For what reason is there, except in case of necessity, that the sponsors should be brought into danger, since they may fail to keep their promises through death, and may be deceived by the development of a sinful disposition. The Master indeed says. Forbid them not to come to me. Therefore, let them come when they are grown up ; let them come when they are in- structed, when they understand Avhither they are to come. Let them be made Christians when they are able to know Christ. Why should their innocent age make haste for the forgiveness of sins ? . . . For 4 Stifficiat scilicet in iiecessitatibus utaris, siciibi aut loci aut tem- poris aut personal conditio conipellit. Tunc euiui constantia succiir- rentis excipitur cum urget circumstantia periclitantis. — Do. c. xvii. 240 THE CHURCH AND HER CHHJDREN. cause no less, the unmarried should be delayed, for whom temptation is in preparation," &c.^ These passages from Tertullian are worthy of several specific remarks. (1.) What he here says is declaratory of infant baptism, as common usage at that day. He urges its delay for little children ; he speaks of godfathers in the baptism of children; he recommends delay for those whose disposition has not yet shown its char- acter ; he quotes the command of our Lord concern- ing infants ; he counsels that they be kept back till they are grown up, till they have an education, till they know what the ordinance means, and can intel- ligently receive Christ. All this implies infants, and that it was usual to baptize them. (2.) He wishes to effect a change in the practice of the Church in this matter. Personally, he does not favor early baptism, and presses his objections to it. He holds it to be indispensable to salvation, and provides for the administration in the case of a dying infant, even by the irregularity of lay baptism. Yet, where delay may be safe, he urges delay, as if sins committed alter baptism could have remission only 5 Itaqiie pro cujusque personse conditione ac dispositione, etiain setate, ciinctatio baptism! utilior est; pnEcipiie tamen cii-ciim par- viilos. Quid enim necesse est, si iion tarn necesse, spousores etiain periciilo iugeri? Quia et ipsi per mortalitatem destituere proniis- siones suas i)ossunt, et proventu malfe indolis falli. Ait quidem Dorainus, nolite illos prohibere ad ine venire. Veniant, ergo, dum adoleseunt, veuiant dum discunt, dum quo veniant docentur. Fiant Christiani quum Christum nosse potuerint. Quid festinat innocens fetas ad remissionem peccatorum? . . . Non minori' de •causa iunupti quoque procrastinandi, in qoibus tentatio prseparata est, etc. — Do. c. xviii. TERTULLIAN. 241 with peculiar difficulty. Virtually he advocates autipoedobaptist views in a poedobaptist Church. He leads off among the fathers in opposing tlie rite, ex- cept the peril of death call for it. He holds the two notions, that baptism must precede salvation, and that sins committed after the reception of the rite incur a very special danger. These two views led him to defer the rite as long as possible, yet be ready to grant it in extremities. He finds the custom of the Church in the way, and so seeks to work a revolution, showing thus ground for the remark of Mosheim, that he ''lacked discretion and judgment." (3.) The office of godfathers and godmothers had become an established fact at this time. He refers to such persons as well known, and as assuming a responsibility for the infant subjects of this rite well understood. Then the rite had been practised long enough to establish this prominent feature among the practices of the ancient Church. True, tliere were three classes of sponsors ; but plainly he refers to sponsors for infants, who may make up a sad moral character, and so endanger those who promised for them at their baptism. Whether he was orthodox or heterodox, consistent or inconsistent, in his own Church, is no question now with us. His historical declarations and allusions concerning this ordinance are all we want, and they are enough. (4.) As he wished to dispense with this rite for in- fants, why did he not press the point, that it was only a human institution so far as infants are concerned ? This would have been the best thing to be said by 21 242 THE CHUECH AND HER CHH^DEEN. him to caiTj his point; and, as born within sixty years of a living apostle, he should have known, and doubtless did know, what was apostolic custom. In his work, De Baptismo, he makes no allusion to it as of human invention, when it was for the highest interest and conclusion of his argument to do so. These extracts from the writings of this eminent father in the ancient Church cannot fail to make the single impression, that infant baptism was a rite gen- erally accepted and practised at that very early day. We see not how one can take any other view of them, unless he comes up to the view out of a theory. And it shows the scarcity of material, and the frailty of the argument against this institution, when men quote Tertullian as opposing the rite as a novelty and an innovation. Even Neander says, " Tertullian appears as a zealous opponent of infant baptism, a proof that the practice had not as yet come to be regarded as an apostolical institution, for otherwise he would hardly have ventured to express himself so strongly against it." ^ On the contrary, his allusions to the practice are as to a rite generally accepted and used. He op- poses nothing as new, and makes no attack on a specified innovation. Himself is the innovator, and urges the Church to change. With a strange inter- pretation of that saying of our Lord, '' Except a man be born of water and of the Spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God," and with a notion of regeneration almost as crude as that of Nicode- 6 Church History, i. 312. TERTULLIAN. 213 mus, he holds baptism to be indispensable to salva- tion, but considers one's salvation endangered by sins committed after he has received the ordinance. So early had the theory of baptismal regeneration, and the very dangerous nature of sins following, taken definite form in the Church, the outworking of which idea, two and three centuries later, we have already detailed. In accordance with these views Tcrtullian naturally and logically and devoutly urged the Church to change her custom of early baptisms, and put the rite as late for the subject as it could be safely. The baptismal garment was, as the ascension robe, to be put on so late that there would be the least possible danger of soiling it. Therefore, the very opposition of Tcrtullian to infant baptism, and the reasons for his opposition, show that the ordi- nance had then an established and well-grounded reputation and favor in the Church. CHAPTER XXXI. IRENJEUS IREN^US has a passage that must have great weight in this investigation, if it be evident, that, under the words he uses, he is referring to baptism. It may be said, in general, that Irenseus held fully to the dogma of man's total apostasy from God, and that his recovery is only through Christ. This recovery he often, if not generally, connects in time with baptism, calling it " the redemption," " the restoration," " the renewal," '' the regeneration to a better life." He frequently couples regeneration with baptism ; as already and thus early in the Church the notion was beginning to foreshadow itself, that baptism in itself is operative and effica- cious to aid the new birth and insure salvation. The passage in question is a reference he makes to Christ, in his work "Against Heresies." " Being, therefore, a master, he had the age of a master ; not reprobating nor rising above man, nor violating in himself his own law for the human race, but sanctifying every period of life, through the resemblance there was to him in it. For he came to save all by himself ; all, I say, who by him are regen- erated unto God : infants and little ones, and children 244 IRENiEUS: "REGENERATED UNTO GOD." 245 and youth and seniors. Therefore he came through eacli several age, — being made an infant for infants, sanctifying infants ; a little one for little ones, sancti- fying those of that age, at the same time giving them an example of piety, justice, and subjection ; a youth for youths," &c.^ Whether this passage is pertinent or not, as evi- dence in this investigation on the early use of infant baptism, turns on the meaning of the phrase, " re- generated unto God," — renascuntur in Deum, It is obvious to remark, that to speak of infants as regen- erated unto God, meaning thereby the new birth spiritual as connected with the ordinary means of grace, is a very unusual expression. Such a term would be proper only in connection with the theory of baptismal regeneration. A wide context in Jewish usage, in the apostolic and previous age, and among the earl}- fathers, can alone determine the meaning of Irenoeus in this pas- sage. The Jews were accustomed, in New Testament times and before, to call the baptism of a proselyte his " regeneration," his " new birth," or his " being born again." 1 Magister ergo existens magistri qixoque haliebat petateui, non reprobans nee supergrediens homineni, neque solvens suaiu legem in se humani generis; sed oinuein .netatem sanctificansper illam qnaj a*l ipsiini erat siniilitndineni. Omnes enini venit per seniet ipsum salvare, onanes, inqnani, qni per euni renaseuntnr in Deuni, infantes, et parvulos, et pueros, et juvenes, et seniores. Ideo per ojnneni venit aitateni; et infantibiis infans factns, sanctificans infantes, in parvulis parvulus, sanctiticans banc ip.sani habentes retateni; simul et exemphim illis pietatis effectns, et justitije et subjectiouis ; iu juveuibus juveuls, etc. — Lib. ii., c. 22, §4. 21 246 THE CHURCH AND HER CHHiDREN. These Jewish synonyms for baptism have their origin in times preceding the Cliristian, and they grow out of the Jewish idea of proselyte baptism. According to the theory and practice of the Jews, baptism converted a Gentile into a Jew : it made him the citizen of another nation ; it changed his nation- ality. It was to the Gentile a second nativity, a new birth civil. As to citizenship he was " born again." So the Rabbies called a proselyte, at bap- tism, recens natus. And Maimonides says, " Gentilis proselyta factus ; ecce est ut infans jam natus." When, therefore, we come down from those earlier Jewish times into the Christian and New Testament period, and have occasion to speak of persons as changing their spiritual nationality, these old Jewish and proselyte forms of expression need only to be spiritualized to convey the idea. One abjures the ruler of the darkness of this world, and becomes a subject in the kingdom of God's dear Son. He be- comes as " a little child " in doino^ it. After doinof it he is as a " new-born babe : " " modo genitus infans." — Vulgate. As to his new king, kingdom, and citi- zenship, he is " born again," " renatus denuo." — Vul- gate, The Jew saw fit to mark the changed nation- ality of the Gentile by the symbol of baptism, and the proselj^te was natus ex aqua into the Jewish com- monwealth. And to every Gentile proposing this civil change into Judaism the Sanhedrim said, with inexorable words, " Verily, verilj^, we say unto thee, except a Gentile be born of water he cannot see the kingdom of Israel." Here were, then, in the Holy Land, and in the IRENiEUS: "REGENERATED UNTO GOD." 247 times of Christ, a symbolic ceremon}^ and a verbal expression for it, in common use and well understood. The idea set forth therewith was worldly, carnal, and hardly semi-religious ; for the act brought the Gentile only toward the Church and not into it. For those about to exchange nationality and citi- zenship, the Lord Jesus desired a ceremony, a symbol, and an expression of it. He had already taken, and was about to take, very many Jewish rites, cere- monies, symbols and phrases, and Christianize them for the new form of his old Church. Without, there- fore, introducing a new rite, and an obscure confusing terminology, he simply elevates this common cere- mony, symbol, and phrase of the Jews, and fills the whole with a spiritual import. Hence, easily and naturally, and divinely too, those synonyms for baptism have come into the New Testa- ment : " Born again," " born of water," " washing of regeneration." They imply the visible, physical ceremony of baptism ; while they carry an import that is spiritual, and infinitely more than the visible. These synonyms for baptism of course re-appear in. the Vulgate Latin Bible of the second century, and for St. John iii. 5, we have "nisi quis renatus fuerit ex aqua ;" and for Titus iii. 5, we have " per lava- crum regenerationis." ^ These Jewish synonyms for baptism appearing in the Greek of the New Testament, and re-appearing in the Latin Vulgate, they will of course be repro- 2 "The laver of rej^eneration : a reference to haptism which mi^ht all the niore easily be exMbited as a laver, Tuovrpov etc." — La^ge in loco. 248 THE CHURCH AND HER CHILDREN. duced with variations by the Christian writers imme- diately following the apostles. Enough has, there- fore, been said to show the meaning of Irensens in the phrase in question. Still, to set forth the con- clusion very clearly, we will quote additional testi- mony. Justin Martyr lived in the times of Irenseus, hav- ing been born about A.D. 114. No writings of the second century, now extant, are of more worth to Christian history ; and his Dialogue with Trypho, the Jew, is the first systematic treatise to win that an- cient people to Christianity. In one of his Apologies he thus speaks of baptism, and of the process of uni- ting with the Church : — The candidates " are led by us to some place where there is water ; and after the manner of regeneration by which we were regenerated, they are regenerated. In the name of God, the Father and Governor of all things, and of our Saviour Jesus Christ, and of the Holy Spirit, they are washed with water. For Christ said : ' Except ye be regenerated ye cannot see the kingdom of heaven.' ' And we have re- ceived from the apostles this reason for this ' [rite] . ' There is pronounced over him who wishes to be born again, and has renounced his sins, the name of God, the Father and Governor of the universe ; and he who conducts the person to the laver to be washed, calls him by this name only.' " ^ 3 "ETretr uyovrai vtt' r^ficov ev&a vdup earl, kcu rponov uvayew^aeuc ov Kot Tj/ielg avTol aveyevinj^rj^EV, uvayevvuvTaL. 'Ett' dvofiarog yap tov Jlarpbg tuv oTu^v koI AeaTrorov QeoVf km tov 1.uTypo^ rjfjubv 'Ijjaov Xpiorov KCU JlvevfiaTOC 'Ayiov ev tcj vdan tote Xovrpbv ■noiovvrai. Kcu yap 6 lEEN^US : " REGENERATED UNTO GOD." 249 Clemens Alexandrinus was contemporary with Irenseus, and would be quite likel}^ to use the same technical phrases, and with the same import as Irenceus. In his controversy with the Gnostics he has occasion to use the baptismal terms ; for that sect added so much to the simple rites of baptism as some- times to make the converts to a pure Christianity feel that they had not received baptism enough to be complete Christians. We take only sentences enough from the argument of Clement to show his use of the words in question. " Immediately on the baptism of the Christ, a voice from Heaven declared him beloved. — Being regener- ated, was Christ at that very time perfect ; or, as a most wicked thing, will it be said that he was yet lacking ? — As soon as baptized by John he becomes perfect. — He is perfected by the washing, and sanc- tified by the descent of the Spirit. — He having been regenerated immediately obtained a completeness. — One having been regenerated, as in fact it is called, and having been enlightened, comes at once into a new state." * * Xpiarb^ elTrev: 'Av f^f) uvayewq-df^Te, ktI. — Apol. Prim, ad Anton. Pium, c. Ixi. "And this food is called among us the Eucharist, of wlii(ih no one is allowed to partake but the man who believes that the thijigs whidi Ave teach are true, and who has been washed with the washing that is for the remission of sins, and unto regeneration." —Do., c. Ixvi. 4 \vTiKa fjsv (iaTTTLl^ofdvu TO) Kvpiu in:' ovpavov ETrr/xvoe (p(^iV {J-aprvg rj-yaiTTjfih'ov. — Ifjfjepov uvayevvrjdelt; o XpLordi r/67] rtXttd^ iariv ; y oantp aTOTTUTUTOv, f W^fTT^f ; — 'A/xa Toivvv TOi) (Sann^eodai uvrbv vno Tov luUvvov, yiveraL Te?.€ioc. — TeletovTat 6e XovTpu xai tov Uvei'iiarog tjj KadoiSw) ayui^eTOL. — 'AvayewTjeevTe^, evdiuq to TiTiciov ineiXTicpafiev. — 'O fiuvov avvayevvTjdug, tjOTTCtpolv Kal to mofia 'exti, nai (^utloOuq, uttijX/mktcu jjikv napaxprj[W, ktX. — Pondafjog. Lib. L c. 6. 250 THE CHURCH AND HER CHILDREN. Obviously the " perfection," the " completeness," the new state, here spoken of by Clement, is not spiritual, but ritual. And he is arguing to show that baptism, simple as Christ's, introduces one fully into Christian relations and privileges, as naturalization makes one perfect, in citizenship. In doing this, he uses baptism and regeneration as synonyms. Either word takes in wholly and measures exactly the meaning of the other. Evidently, it was a matter of indifference which word he used to express the rite ; and he used the two interchangeably for variation in style. " Being regenerated^ was Christ at that very time perfect ? " '-'- As soon as baptized by John he became perfect." The use of these two words here, as referring to that one and the same act at the Jor- dan, cannot be mistaken. Here it should be now carefully noted, that for the last eighteen years of the life of Irengeus, he and Clement were contemporary. If, therefore, the meaning of Irengeus, in the phrase, " regenerated unto God," be at all in the shade of doubt, this most bold side light of Clement, his Christian neighbor and co-worker, must make it clear, beyond question. These quotations from Clement come in to explain, as the Madison Papers on phrases in our National Constitution. Tertullian casts more light on this passage from Irengeus, though it is later, and more distant. He was born about forty years after the death of Clem- ent, and of course would inherit more or less the theological phrases of the preceding age. In his discussion of baptism he says, — IKEN^CS : *' REGENERATED UNTO GOD." 251 " It is agreed that no one obtains salvation with- out baptism, according to the noted saying of our Lord : ' Except a man be born of water lie cannot be saved.' The hiw of baptizing is imposed and the form given. ' Go,' said he, ' teach tlie nations, bap- tizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.' To this law it is added : ' Except one be born again of water, and of the Spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of heaven.' This bound one's faith to the necessity of baptism. Therefore, afterward, all believers were baptized." ^ It is not needful to quote further from Tertullian to show his use of these synonyms for the baptismal rite. Origen indulges in the same phraseology for bap- tism as Ireiiaeus and Clement. Commenting on what Christ says of offending the little ones, and of their angels, he raises the question, when the angelic can commence in the life of the little ones : — " Whether they assume the oversight of them at the time of the washing of regeneration, by wliich they are born again, ... or from their birth," &c. Again, on the passage : " Ye which have followed me in the regeneration," he says, " In the regenera- 5 "Prrescribitiir neinini ainebaptismo comi>etere sahitein, ex ilia maxima pronunciatione Domini, qui ait: nisi natiis ex aqua quis erit, not liabet .salutcjii. Lex eneni tin<;uen(li iiiiposita est, et forma pra3.-cnpta : Ite, imjuit, docete iiariones, tinguentes eas in noiiien Patris, et Filii, et Spiritus Sancti. Huic legi eollata detinitio ilia, nisi quis renatus fuerit ex aqua et Sjuritu, non intrabit in rejj^num cadorum; ol)strinxit lideni ad baptisnii necessitateni. Itaque oninea exinde credentes tiuguebantur. — Tektull,, De Baptisrtw. c. xiL 252 THE CHURCH AND HER CHILDREN, tion by the laver, every one, born again of water and of the Spirit, is free from stain." ^ Cyprian's use of the words under consideration, and of their synonyms, makes it quite pertinent to call attention to a few of his expressions. Cyprian was born, probably, while Irenseus was yet alive. In his epistle to Donatus, giving an account of his own conviction and conversion, he says, — " I thought it a very difficult and hard thing for me, with my habits, that which the divine favor promised for my salvation, to wit, that any one could be born again, and that, animated to a new life by the laver of the saving Avater, one could put aside what he had formerly been." ^ " But after the washing away of the stain of a for- mer life by the aid of the regenerating water, it poured light from above on the expiated and pure heart." « " It seems, also, a foolish thing, since that second birth is spiritual by which we are born unto Christ through the laver of regeneration," &c.^ 6 TloTEpov de^afievoi ttjv o'lKOvofuav nepi uvTOvg dioiKhv a(p' ov dta T^wrpov iraTuvYyevEolac, I) t)'ev7]d7jcav . . . tj ai:b yereoeo)^. — Kara Se tov lovrpov ndhryyEvealav Trof jUera mdapog iinb pvitov 6 yEvrfQElg uvoOev k^ v6aToq koX IlvEVfiaTog. — Comin. in Matt. xviiL 10, xix. 28. 7 Difficile prorsus, ac dimim pro illis tunc moribus opinabar, quod in salutem mibi divina indulgentia pollicebatnr, ut qiiis renasci deniio possit ; iitque in novara vitam lavacro aqure sahitaris aniuia- tns, quod priu^ f uerat. exponeret. — Epis. 1, ad. Don. §3. [In the Oxford edition tliis Epistle is put among the Treatises of Cyprian.] 8 Sed postquam undje genitalis auxilio superioris »vi labe detersa, in expiatmn pectus ac purum, desuper lumen inf udit. — Do. § 4. 9 lllud quoque ineptxim, ut cum nativitas secunda spiritualis sit, qua in Christo per lavacrum regenerate onis nascimur, etc. — Ep. Ixxiii. § 5. Ox. ed. Ixxiv. IRENJEUS : " REGENERATED UNTO GOD." 253 " Rut if regeneration is in the laver, that is, in bap- tism," &C.10 " For the second birth, which is in baptism, begets sons of God, &c.i^ " As in the hiver of the saving water the fire of Gehenna is extinguished, so by ahns and good works the flame of sin is quenched. And because once, in baptism, the remission of sins is granted," &c.^^ Many more passages, probably a score, could be cited from Q'prian, to show that he used phrases similar to the one under examination from Irenseus to express baptism. Yet why increase the citation of witnesses ? All the sons of Jacob were not sum- moned to prove the identity of Joseph. Let the case, therefore, be brought to a close. It does not seem needful to surround this phrase of Irenseus, renascuntur in Beum infantes et parvulos^ etc., with a wider context for interpretation. It plainly appears to have been the usage of the times to express baptism, baptizing, and the baptized, by the terms regeneration, regenerating, born again, born of water, &c. We are the slower to take the ancient meaning and spirit of such phraseology, because we now commonly connect the saving and divine work of the 10 Si autem in lavacro, id est, in baptismo, est regeneratio, etc, — Do. § 6. 11 Secunda enim nativitas, qnse est in baptismo, filios Dei generat, etc. — Ep. Ixxiv. § 14. Ox, ed, Ixxv. 12 Sicut lavacro aqure sahitaris Gehenna? ignis extingiiitur, ita eleemosynis atque operibiis justis delictorum fiamnia sopitnr, Et quia seniel, in baptismo, lemissio peccatonim datur, etc. — Cyp. De Opcre et Eleemos. § 2. 22 254 THE CHURCH AND HER CHH^DREN. Holy Spirit with regeneration. It means with us that radical moral change and creative act of God by which one becomes a new creature in Christ Jesus. But it is in comparatively modern times that the word has come to have that meaning in theological terminology. Anciently it was not so. There is another theory of interpretation for the passage. It is said that Irenaeus teaches in his works, that as Adam brought death to the human race, Christ brings life, and in that sense he is the regenerator of the race. All which is true, and many passages culled from his writings show this.^^ But, so far as appears, Irenaeus does not elsewhere use the language in ques- tion to express the redeeming work of Christ. This phrase, however, is a common expression with him for the baptismal ceremony, if not in identical, yet similar words, and of the same import. "When introducing the commission of our Lord, " Go, teach all nations, baptizing them," &c., he says, " And again, giving the authority for regeneration unto God to his disciples, he said," &c.^* This " authority for regeneration unto God " can be nothing else than the commission for baptizing. For to say that this commission implied authority to work any spiritual regeneration, is simply saying that a divine energy was then given to the apostles to create men anew in Christ Jesus. Speaking of the blind man to whom Jesus restored 13 Bib. Sacra, vi. 546-56. 14 Et iterum, potestatem regenerationis in Deum demandans di»- cipiilis, dicebat eis, etc. Adv. HjEr. Lib. iii. c. 19. IREN^US : " REGENERATED UNTO GOD." 255 sight by tlie anointing and the washing in Siloara, Irenseus calls the washing figuratively, " the washing of regeneration," — lavacrura regenerationis, — and " that regeneration which is by tlie laver " — Earn qupe per lavacrura est regenerationem.^^ While treating of the errors of the Valentinians, who greatly corrupted baptism, he says, that they worked '' for the rejection of the baptism of regenera- tion unto God, and for the destruction of the whole faith." 1*5 We have now come up, by a many-sided approach, to that doubtful phrase of Irenseus, renascuntur {71 Deum, infantes^ etc. We have surrounded the pas- sage by a wide context of other authors, living at and near the same time with him. They are the most com- petent interpreters, writing in the style of the age, and using its terminology. They leave us in no doubt whether, in those times, the words baptism and regeneration, were synonyms. They use them as such. More than these interpreters, Irenseus is his own. The baptism which Christ empowered the apostles to bestow, he calls a "regeneration." The washing of the blind man in Siloam, he calls " regeneration by the laver." The Valentinian corruptions of this sacrament, he says, amount to the rejection of the " baptism of regeneration." Neander tersely says of this passage, " Regeneration and baptism are in Irena3us intimately connected; and it is difficult to 15 Do. Lib. v., c. 15. ^^ E/f k^upvqaLv tov ^annaiiaTO^ rfj^ ng Qibv avayewrjOEuc kol naorj^ T^f nlarecj^ un&&eaiv. — I)o. Lib. i., c. 18. 256 THE CHURCH AND HER CHILDREN. conceive how the term ' regeneration ' can be em- ployed in reference to this age [of infants] to denote anything else than baptism." ^'' So near to the times of the apostles do we find this record of infant baptism. We can make nothing of the phrase, less or more than this. And this by a "Writer who was born within fifteen years, probably, of a living apostle. That leaves but a short space till we come to the baptism of the " household " of Lydia, and of Stephanas, and of the jailer. 17 ch. His. L 311. CHAPTER XXXn. HISTORIC SILENCE. HERE we are met by an objection. If conceded that Irenseus refers to infant baptism in the passage just examined, and if conceded, as it is, that this is the earliest direct reference by Christian authors to tills ordinance, there remains a period of about one hundred years between the death of the last apostle and the death of Irena3us, during which the writings of the fathers make no allusion to this institution. Those not accepting the ordinance call this an ominous historic silence, and they assume the position as one of great apparent strength. It is a wise assumption, for this is the last stand-point for them. The objection made is, that, for one hundred years immediately following the apostolic age, the Chris- tian writings fiu-nish no allusion to the ordinance in question. We have given to the objection extra force by allowing a century to the period. It is probably much less ; for Irenseus was born about A.D. 114, and suffered martyrdom, as is supposed, A.D. 202. His principal work as an author, against the Gnostics or Heresies, in which the passage in question occurs, was written during the reign of Commodus, who 22* 257 258 THE CHURCH AND HER CHILDREN. came to the throne A.D. 180. The ominous silence, then, may be only about eighty years. The objection has some substance and much sem- blance, and we will consider it in particulars. 1. The rank or relative importance in which the New Testament left baptism should be regarded. The Lord Jesus himself never baptized.^ Thus by his practice he gave fundamental truth an immense prominence above a ceremony. Saving faith, holy love, and consecration, the Christian life, — these were the main things with him. So the fruit were good and the tree vigorous, he did not personally attach a label. St. Paul had instruction into this very spirit and practice, to keep rites in the back-ground. " Christ sent me not to baptize, but to preach the gospel." Hence the great apostle was no ritualist. He had seen and practised enough of the externals in Judaism. He gave his attention, as a Christian minister and scholar and writer, to doctrines and hearts and fruits. How he opens on the petty sects and strifes in the Corinthian church ! He could not bear to see the great essentials of the Christian faith and life obscured, and crowded from their centre, by the merely nominal. " I thank God that I baptized none of you but Crispus and Gains, and the household of Stephanas. Besides these, I know not whether I baptized any other. For Christ sent me not to ritualize, but to evangelize." ^ Not that the apostle would undervalue a title, but 1 Jolm iv. 2. 2 1 Cor. L 14-17. HISTORIC SILENCE. 259 would keep in its legitimate pre-eminence the sub- stance to be entitled. Doubtless the stamp, or trade- mark, of the manufacturer is a good thing, attached to a finished and worthy article ; but how immensely more important to make that article ! Under St. Paul's thanksgiving to God, that lie liad not baptized many, but left it, among minor things, to helpers and deacons, we would not expect the apos- tolic fathers to press this rite to the front in their preaching and writing. It was left for an age farther from tlie apostolic to make ceremonials outrank essen- tials, and push a ritual into an operative, and a label above the fruit on the tree. 2. Care must be taken, lest the objection of silence, belonging to the second century, borrow a strength from the nineteenth century. For it is liard for us, burdened by the prolific press of to-day, to judge in equity of the silence of history and the poverty of general literature, in an age thirteen hundred years before the invention of printing, and when new volumes on the Christian reliction were so wid^ apart. During the year 1873, one, to have kept up with the English press, American and foreign, in its copyright issues of volumes and pamphlets, must have read fifteen works a day. If he would have followed closely the press in the entire repub- lic of letters, he must have read eighty works a day. And, besides all this, there is the daily and weekly, the quarterly and occasional miscellany, the thick- strewn falling leaves of every hour from the tree 260 THE CHURCH AND HER CHTLBREN. of knowledge, that never aspire to the dignity of literary property in a copyright. With the literar}^ birth and culture and burden we have in this age, we take up a literary question of the second century, and unconsciously attempt to run into a bookstore at Rome or Athens, Corinth or Alexandria, to read up on the topic. Doubtless, men there would then have talked with us on the subject ; but there would not have been interviewers, stenographers, reporters, and printing-presses, to transmit our discus- sions to the nineteenth century. Athens then did not publish " The Pan Optikon Daily," nor Rome " The Weekly Orbis Terrarum ; " nor did Gamaliel then edit a " Bibliotheca Sacra " at Jerusalem, or Quintus, an " Ecclesiastical Quarterly" at Alexandria. No steamers then vexed the Ostia, the Piraeus, the Bosporus, and the mouths of the Nile, with their burden of mail-bag^s. Locomotives were not then playing along both slopes of the Apennines and Alps ; nor did telegraphic wires then click in the Parthenon, and stretch from the Acropolis to lands indefinitely be3^ond the Indian borders of Alexander. .Id^s then travelled on foot, and Hoe's printing-press was preceded by only the inkhorn and parchment. With such means at their command for publishing, what literary remains 'could we expect from the Christian writers of that day ? 3. The Christian scholars and authors in the second century were very few. What St. Paul said to the Corinthians, about the year sixty of our Lord, could have lost but little of its aptness about the year one hundred and sixty. " Ye see yom* calling, brethren, HISTORIC SILENCE. 261 how tliat not many wise men after the flesh, not many mighty, not many noble, are called : but God hath chosen the foolish things of the world to con- found tlie wise ; and God hath chosen the weak things of the world to confound the things which are might}^ ; and base things of the world, and things which are despised, hath God chosen." ^ This is not a very hopeful beginning for Christian authorship in the second century, and for full alcoves in our Library of the Fathers. The historic fact, therefore, as given by Mosheim, as to the number and grade of the Christian writers of the first and second centuries, must not surprise us, while it must limit our expectations from the authors of those times. In the age of the apostolic fathers he says, — " It was not deemed so essentially requisite in a teacher that he should be distinguished for profound or extensive knowledge, either human or divine, as that he should be a man of virtue and probity, and, in addition to a due measure of gravity, be possessed of a certain degree of facility in imparting instruction to the ignorant. Had the apostles, indeed, thought otherwise, and directed that none but men of letters and erudition should have been elected to the office of presbyters, it would not have been possible for the churches to have complied with such a mandate ; since, at that time, the number of wise and learned who had embraced the faith of Christ was but small, and, as it were, of no account. The Christian writers of the first century, consequently, were not many ; and from the labors of the few, whose works have 8 1 Cor. i. 2G-28. 262 THE CHURCH AND HER CHH^DREN. reached us, whether we consult such as have been handed down whole and entire, or such as carry with them the marks of interpolation and corruption, it is uniformly evident, that, in unfolding the sacred truths of Christianity to the world, the assistance of genius, of art, or of human means of any other kind, was but little, if at all, courted."* It must not surprise us, therefore, in looking back through the eighty years or so between Irenaeus, our last authority for infant baptism, and St. John, to find the number of authors very few, who wrote any thing for Christianity. 4. The reflection is a sad one, consequently, that any of those fcAv writings should have been lost to the world. And the regret becomes the deeper, if the death of the witness and the loss of his affidavit be so used as to work against the claim to the fulness of the Christian system. The conceded loss of a col- lection of pax-)ers pertinent to the general issue, and the possible loss among them of one paper pertinent and important to the particular issue, should at least mitigate an adverse judgment. In the confessed loss of miscellaneous historic evidences, equity and candor would draw a wide margin for the unknown, that should be, at the least, neutral ground. In the court of moral equity, denial would not be allowed to exceed affirmation, as to the value of the loss. It is with pain that the Christian scholar reads those references in Eusebius, to books of our earliest Chris- tian authors, now evidently lost. It Avas about A.D. 130, that Quadratus, bishop of Athens, presented 4 Mosheim's Com. vol i,, 200, Miirdock's ed. HISTORIC SILENCE. 263 to Hadrian a written apology, or defence, of Chris- tianity ; but it has perished.^ One of the })hilosophers at Athens, Aristides, embraced Christianity, and wrote a defence of it; and his work was extant in the seven- teenth century, but is now lost.^ Melito of Lydia wrote eighteen treatises on Christian topics ; the loss of which we mourn the more, as one of them was on baptism.'^ Miltiades flourished as a writer while Irenyeus was combating heresy, and published an Apology, now lost, with five other works.^ Apol- linaris, bishop of Hierapolis, in Phrygia, about A.D. 170, made valuable contribution to the Christian volumes now lost.^ The same may be said of Hege- sippus of Asia Minor, who, about A.D. 150, wrote five books of ecclesiastical -memoirs.^^ Nor should we know of these losses but for the incidental allusion to the books by Eusebius and others. How many of the few written perished without any recognition, and were left without monument, epitaph, or mound even, in " the waste howling wilderness " of paganism, througli which Christianity came up to its promised land, Avill never be known. And when pressed denominationally by this ominous historic silence, and oi)pressed by it, as all ecclesiastical scholarship is, there is relief in think- ing what might have been. For it is only technical justice that gains by the death of witnesses. What might have been is painfully illustrated by the pagan persecution of Diocletian. This began 6 Euseb. iv. 3. « Do. iv. 3. ' Do. iv. 26. 8 Do. V. 17. » Do. iv. 27. 1° Do. iv. 8, 22. 264 THE CHUBCH AND HER CHILDEEN. A.D. 303. Tlie edict of the emperor called for the destruction of all the Christian edifices. Every stone structure was to be pulled down, and every wooden one burned. It called also for the destruction of all the sacred books of the Christians ; and the penalty of death hung over the magistrate who should be negligent, or the Christian who should be recusant of the edict. All parchments, papers, letters, and documents of any kind, kept in the churches, or in the houses of the bishops, were called forth, and given indiscriminately to the flames. ^^ And so, across the Roman empire, these vandal fires went, robbing the libraries of all coming time. " And hence," says Mosheim, '' the history of Christianity suffered an immense loss in this Diocletian persecu- tion. For all that had come down from the earlier ages of the Church, — the documents, the papers, the epistles, the laws, the acts of the martyrs and of councils, from which the early history of the Chris- tian community might be happily illustrated, — all, or at least very much of them, perished in these com- motions." ^2 How many years of vain study and unclosed argu- 11 So Bassus, governor of Adrianople, says to Philip, the bishop : Legem Iinperatoris autUstis. . . . Vasa, ergo, qiuBcunque vohisciim sunt aurea, vel argentea ; scripturas etiam, per quas vel legitis, vel docetis, obtutibus nostrse potestatis ingerite. The bishop, standing iit the door of the church, with his assistants, complied in part, say- ing : Vasa, qnoe postnlas, mox accipe. Ista contenmimus. Non pre- tioso metallo Deiim colimus, sed timore. The sacred books he would not give np. These Bassns violently snatched from their place, and burned in the forum. — Moshelm, ut infra. 1^ Mosheim's Com., ii. 422, et seq., Murdock's ed. HISTORIC SILENCE. 265 ment, and what sorrow in the world of letters, those fires of Diocletian inflicted! After such devastation of Christum writings in the years 303 and following, we would not expect to ftnd much remaining of the sacred authorship of the first and second centuries, specially if we remember that any little remnant, to reach our day, had yet to run the gauntlet of the ages, between pagans and Jews, infidels and Moiiammedans.^^ Well does Milton speak of this practice. After charc^infT the Church and the Commonwealth "• to have a vigilant eye how books demean themselves," he says, '' Yet, on the other hand, as good almost kill a man as kill a good book. Who kills a man, kills a reasonable creature, God's image ; but he who destroys a good book kills reason itself, — kills the image of God, as it were in the eye. Many a man lives a burden to the earth ; but a good book is the precious life-blood of a master spirit, embalmed and treasured up on pur- pose to a life beyond life. It is true, no age can restore a life, whereof perhaps there is no great loss ; and revo- lt Tliis burning of unpopular books was a common resort, where brute force instea«l of arfrumeut prevailed, and where one found it easier to carry the opinions of his opponent to the stake, than his own convictions into the heart of that opponent. Thus, those early converts at Ephesiis, under the preaching: of St. Paul, brou-^ht together their books on magic, and burned them to the value of seven or eight thousand dollars. Some twenty-five years later, under Domitian, tliisact of theEphe- sian Christians was imitated by the Romans, in burning the works of nnpopularauthoi-s. Netjueinipsos m<>doanctt)i-es, se ili et, illo igne vocem populi Ilomani, et lilwrtateni senatus, et con- scieutiam generis humani aboleri, aibiuabautiu. — Taciti Aoiac, § ii 26 266 THE CHUECH AND HER CHELDREN. lutions of ages do not oft recover the loss of a rejected truth, for the want of which whole nations fare the worse." ^* 5. The small number of Christian treatises, prior to those of Irenseus, that remain to us. Ecclesiasti- cal history is able to cite but eleven authors, whose writings are known to be extant, between St. John and Irenaeus. And many of their treatises are ex- ceedingly fragmentary, as showing a perilous escape through the ages. The larger number of the Avorks, of even these eleven, have perished. The entire amount saved out of the Christian writinsrs of the about one hundred years, covered by our review in this chapter, would make probably less than five hundred pages in Torrey's Neander. The English press of to-day is issuing that amount, under copy- right, every three hours. ^^ 6. Consider the topics that would naturally and necessarily come up for discussion, between the writ- ing of the New Testament, where household baptism is mentioned, and the allusion to it by Irenseus, a 14 Of Unlicensed Printins:. 15 The eleven accredited authors of the period nnder review are as follows : Cleinens lloinaniis and his First Epistle ; nnknowu author of The Epistle to Diognetus ; Ignatius and seven geuuine epistles to the Ephesians, Magnesians, Trallians, Romans, Phila- )eant in se vitam." — Aug., Serm. clxxiv. §7, ed. Paris, 1837; or Serui. vili., De Verbis Apostoli. 296 THE CHUBCH AND HER CHTLDREN". let them be admitted to the mysteries of the encha- rist." 4 It were needless to add more quotations, though they could be much multiplied. As it is evident that the Church baptized, from the earliest Christian ages, the chiklren of her members, it is alike evident, that, for six or eight centuries from Cyprian, she gave to those children the communion of the Supper. This privilege is the highest evidence of complete and total membership in the Church. Of the error of the fathers in this matter of infant communion, from which the Catholic Church re- covered in the ninth century and later, it is not need- ful to speak. It has been cited only as evidence of infant church-membership. The line of inquiry does not lead us to point out and criticise the abuses of that divine relationship. It is in evidence, therefore, that in the Abrahamic constitution of the Church, in Gentile proselytism to it, in apostolic additions, and in its increase under the fathers down to ver}^ late yeai*s, the children of believers have been brought into membership. Con- sidering the question scripturally, historically, and logically, we find the baptized child in the Church. *"Si parvTili sint, respondeant pro illis qui eos offerunt, jnxta inorem baptizandi, et sic manus inipositione et chrismate coni- muniti, eucharistje mysteriis adniittantur." — Gennad.,D€ Dogmat., Eccles. Cap. 52. CHAPTER XXXVl. THE POSITION OF BAPTIZED CHILDREN IN THE CHURCH. M "AY full privileges be had without any other or _ - more formal recognition ? Are they to come to the communion ? Are they liable to discipline ? May they take part in the government of the Church ? Are evidences of regeneration indispensable to the completion of all the rights of membership ? Fail- ing in these evidences, may they be excommuni- cated ? These are not unnatural questions from a candid inquirer, whose views on the subject are yet unsettled. It is pertinent here to assume and declare that baptism, in and of itself, has no efficacy. It is no rite in spiritual magic, to work a radical moral change in the subject. The touch of baptismal fin- gers is not ictic and efficacious for any such result, according to the figment of the highest ritualist. It is only the signature to a promissory compact. It is as the signing of the papers for the construction of a continental railway. The signing does no work on the road : it only pledges competent parties to see the work done. 1. It is to be noted primarily and prominently that 31* 21)7 298 THE CHURCH AND HER CHILDREN. the position of this child is divinely arranged. The organism and workings of an institution, that has done more than any other to mould and control this world, have brought the child into that position. God shaped that institution to do that thing ; and the child is now, by baptism, in the place and surround- ings of God's intention. 2. Moreover, the propagating power of grace is recognized and utilized in this position. Whatever forces there may be presumed to be in parental and famil}^ and church piety, they are concentrated at the very point where God has placed the child. It is in the very focus of religious warmth and power. Allow what we may or must for imperfections and infelicities within church relations, there are as few in no other earthly circle. There this child, uncon- scious, slowly coming into a mental and moral life, its infancy the best symbol of weakness, impressible, plastic, impotent, is placed to be moulded and nur- tured into a child of God. It is placed helpless in the strongest current of grace that flows across this earth, to be swept heavenward. The place is excep- tional by just so much as the Church differs from the outside world in power to train religiously. The rite locating the child thus is no aesthetic ceremony merely, of which the best and most has been said when it is called " touching " and " beautiful." 3. God -expects to do much fortius child in par- ticular. The converging of his plans at this point silently enunciates this expectation. All the divine antecedents are as preparations ; and tlie constitution of his Church has from the beginning contemplated THE POSITION OF BAPTIZED CHILDREN. 299 and anticipated tliat child at that formative period. Then, his covenant with the parent enables him to do more and better for that child than he can for an outside child. With him, as with man, S3^stem and plan are moral insurance toward success. These infant members of the Church are his primary scliool in which he has arranged a foreordaining drill for all the mortal years of these children. When it is con- sidered how seldom a Jew or a Papist becomes a pervert, we see how effectually this divine plan may be used, even when alienated to purposes so ceremo- nial and unspiritual. Much more, when so used for spiritual ends as to retain the divine co-operation, and the moral and religious elements are stimulated and subsidized, must it become a primal force in the regeneration of the race. 4. If received and cared for by the Church in the spirit of this plan, the child is baptized into a reason- able expectation of regeneration and heaven. Cer- tainly no earthly surroundings could be more favorable were the end an ambitious worldly one. The condi- tion is highly hopeful for early piety ; and with any due regard for the covenant, and for the filling of the obligations on the human side, the conversion of the child may be confidently expected. Indeed, these "little ones " are to be held tenderly and prayerfully and workfully in the hands of the Church, as pre- sumptive communicants. Any thing less than this has dark shadings toward lack of faith as a con- tractor, and lack of work, and so breach of contract. At this very point it is, where the human party has so often failed to carry out its agreement, and so the 300 THE CHURCH AND HER CHILDREN. divine and perfect plan has been brought under reproach. The child has been baptized, perhaps ostentatiously and under admiration, and then let alone ecclesiastically. Of course in such cases infant baptism is a nullity, and comes under sectarian or worldly reproach. So, to speak to a business ear, the contract is signed with publicity, and then not really thrown up, but thrown aside. This is as if the pen that signed the Emancipation Proclamation were to be sacredly treasured, and the four millions of the document left to neglect and forgetfulness. The sign manual of the United States is of little account to them, if that is the end of it. 5. The Church should entertain thoroughly the fact of infant membership. If one find it difficult to accept this position, it is well that he inquire whether his difficulties are grounded in the Bible, or in some book more recently written and published. We come unconsciously under traditions and usages that make void divine arrangements. It may be so in this case. With all reasonable latitude conceded for denominations on questions of polity, it must be understood, that, in the two fundamentals of the Church, — creed and membership, — its type must everywhere be one ; for those two features are prime- val, organic, and divine. No by-laws of the village " church," or sectarian hand-book, or Bibliotheque Royale, may derange what the one Church Manual of God has arranged on these two points. CHAPTER XXXVII. THE NEGLECT OF BAPTIZED CPIILDREN BY THE CHURCH. BUT one finds a difficulty in treating a child as a clmrch member, because it cannot share all the privileges and responsibilities of membership. Is the objection well made ? That child has full family membership. It has also full national membership. Let it but lay claim in Austria to American citizen- ship, and the entire force of the United States will back the claim, " by the utmost exertion of the power of the republic, military and naval." ^ The freshman has full membership in the college, but not therefore the privileges in full of the senior. Does not the objection in question lie broadly against child- hood as undistinguished from manhood ? Member- ship for the child in the family and in the state is both instant and total in the outset. It is an end, accomplished at the beginning. Why may it not be so in the Church under its present constitution ? When his father had said, " His name is John," and the infant had been circumcised, John the Baptist had membership in full in the Church of God. Cere- monials afterward enlarged only his privileges. Mem- 1 \Vel)Ster's Hiilseman Correspondence, Works, vi. r>01. 26 301 302 THE CHURCH AND HER CHH^DREN. bership in the Church, as in the family and in the state, lias not growth. The difficulty under consideration arises frtin a failure to separate between membership, and the privileges and rights and duties of membership. The former is an act instant, complete, and final ; the latter, a matter of age, growth, and suscepti- bility. The minor is a citizen ; but he cannot vote, and is not liable to military duty till of a certain age. The female is a citizen, but is not liable to bear arms, and does not vote at any age. The child of four years finds his duties and privileges in the family very different from those of his brother of sixteen years ; yet the membership is equal. Suppose some sect in the state, Utopian and radical, should object to the theory and practice of infant citizenship, on the points that the infant cannot be a conscious party to an arrangement that makes it a subject of the government ; cannot come to the polls with its oldest brother and father ; cannot be drafted into the army ; cannot be eligible to office, and so on and on. It will be noted that the objections are against being an infant. Infant citizenship remains as a profound reality for the unconscious babe ; and the state makes it an intensely practical fact for the child, in all that pertains to " life, liberty, and the pursuit of happi- ness " commensurate with the years of the child. It is seen at a glance, that the objection now under consideration, if well taken and sustained, reaches beyond the Church, and unsettles relations and mem- berships of childhood that long since passed into civil and social axioms. NEGLECT OF BAPTIZED CHILDREN. 803 But another difficulty arises. If infant church- membership be conceded, one finds impediments and inconveniences in treating " these little ones " as the children of the Church, and in bringing them up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord. Very like. Obedience to God is usually attended with impedi- ments. The Decalogue, and the Sermon on the Mount, when brought to practice, have been always found open to the same objection. The proper training of children is not a total luxury ; and, indeed, some do regard them as incumbrances. It can be readily seen, that the easy, comfortable theory of adult membership would need reconstruct- incT for a vast amount of Church Avork now left undone, if the children of believers were to consti- tute the juvenile school of the Church. In modifying the theory and practice of Church work in the line indicated, there must come in a sys- tematic labor for the young. When it is considered, that about one-half the community are minors, and are in the formative period for character, and that afterward moral teaching and influences avail mostly for confirmation, and but lightly for reversal in radi- cal changes for good or evil, is it asking too much that one-half the moral and religious teaching of the Church be in the interests of the young ? Yet, as it now is, how rare the Church service, in prayers iind teachings, that is adapted to interest and benefit children ! The ornate essays, doctrinal and philosophical and controversial discussions, and the seminary sermons, all courteously called preaching, find but poor reception and response with a large 804 THE CHURCH AND HER CHILDREN. portion of the adults. If the hungry slieep look up unfed, how must it be with the lambs ? And, when the shepherd does propose to feed the lambs, how the sheep flock about him ! It has been suggested that a fourth year be added to the present theological course in our seminaries. Instead of giving it to philology, ontology, neology, and Egyptology, suppose it be devoted to a de- partment of Juvenile Theology, with the homiletic and pastoral as subdivisions. Such a man as was once the eminent rhetorical professor in one of our Eastern seminaries should not be a candidate for the new chair. When about to preach, on notice, to a New-York congregation of children, he began by saying, " When I am through, I shall want you, my dear children, to give me an abstract of the discourse. You know what abstract means ? It is synonymous with synopsis." If Hannah, when she made the "little coat" for Samuel, had gotten up an overcoat for Elkanah, she could not have gone wider of the measure of the bo}^ What cutting and fitting of spiritual garments for children in our pulpits! What capacious arm-sizes, baggy and dangling sleeves, with vast and solemn latitude and longitude of skirts ! When the little fellows, after the benediction, leave the church-door, and assay to go, if they try to carry the sermon they move oif staggering like David in Saul's armor. It is all " synonymous with synopsis " to them. If any thing could reconcile us to a woman in the pulpit, it would be that Hannah might " from year to year " make a " little " coat for every consecrated Samuel in the congregation. NEGLECT OF BAPTIZED CHILDREN. 305 There is a lamentable failure in appreciating child- hood as an age vastly important, and susceptible of the moulding power of the Church. The quiet, easy neglect, the waiting till false religious notions are formed, and sinful propensities and habits are boldly marked, is amazing. Yet why amazing, if baptized children are not expected to receive proper training, and become converts and communicants ? It is too much with the Church as with the state, that appears to have little to do with Ciiin till he has killed Abel. It is painfully understood that the vast work of the state in her criminal processes is largely the undoing of mistakes, the defence against evils, and the punishment of crimes, that have their beginnings fixr back in a neglected and abused childhood. It is for the Church to be made wise by this sad fact, and administer her divinely assigned work under the warning of it. When Jericho was blighted and wretched from bad water, the man of God " went forth unto the spring of the waters," and healed them at the fountain. Very like he did this great work in a rural district and in an obscure place ; but that was better than purifying some now and tlien at so much a glass, retail, in a splendid establishment on Jericho Park. Our fine ministerial culture, and great sermons, and artistic music, and beautiful church aroiiitecture, are not reaching the children. The safety hydrants are all very well, and silver-plated, but in private houses. Men of God are needed, with new cruses, at the spring of the waters, to do wholesale work for all Jericho. 26* ' 306 THE CHCTRCH AND HER CHILDREN. When Xavier was making his triumphal procession in the conversion of Asia to Jesuitism, his labors were intensely exhausting, and his hours for sleep few and uncertain. Yet he took his broken rest under this standing order to his attendant : " If a child calls to see me, wake me." The conversion of lialf a continent lay in the wisdom and spirit of that order ; and three centuries attest the fidelity and success of the man who could not sleep when a child wished to speak to him. Our ministry needs greater wake- fulness, and a quicker ear for the calls of child- hood. Too many of them, it is to be feared, are like Choate, lying in his last chamber, and overlooking the sea at Halifax : *' If a schooner or sloop goes by, do not disturb me ; but, if there is a square-rigged vessel, wake me up."^ But it is more than the pulpit, whose labor is requisite for this great undertaking. Some parts, at least, of the artistic interior of the house of God, might be permeated by a consecration to the produc- tion and manifestation and cultivation of juvenile piety. What church architect of modern time has any thought or provision for children in the house of God ? The seating, as the service, is on the adult grade ; and all within says, " This is for men and women." " It was a beautiful device of the late Prince Albert of England, to erect at Windsor Castle, for the benefit of his young children, a statue of J^dward VI. pointing with his royal sceptre to this verse on the page of an open sculptured Bible : ' Josiah was eight years old when he began to reign ; 2 Brown's Life of Rufus Choate, p. 349. NEGLECT OF BAPTIZED CHILDREN. 307 and he did that which was right in the sight of the Lord, and walked in all the ways of David his father, and turned not aside to the right hand or to tlie left.' " 3 Why is not something of this kind as much in keeping with the house of worship, and as religiously useful, as complex arches, Ionic capitals, or those stained windows where some of the light of heaven, competing with gas, is indignantly red unto crimson in its struggle to get into the temple of the Most High ? If our tens of thousands must go into the building of a sanctuary, why not some of it be made spiritually instructive to children, rather than all of it aesthetically gratifying to adults ? No collegiate course should be run for seniors only. Why not in the building and furnishing and serving of the house of God, as in our family home, have a recosjnition of childhood in its different ao^es and interests and rights ? Parents should not build and occupy the house of God on the fiction of bachelor and maiden life. As the human race is an elongated family, so the Church of the day is a section of it, and as such should be aptly housed, as well as cul- tivated. But what is needed is an ecclesiastical training of the children of the Church in matters of faith and practice, corresponding to the civil training by the state in matters secular. The whole should come into a system commensurate with the divine obliga- tions set forth in the constitution of the Church, and 8 Clirist's Infant Kinjjjdom. By Ilex. J. T. Tucker. Cong. Pub. Society, Boston, 1870. P. 23. A small treatise full of practical thoughts ou this subject. 808 THE CHURCH AND HER CHILDREN. with the vast issues involved in a proper religious culture of the rising generation. For it is evident that A BETTER HANDLING OF THIS WORLD LIES IN A BETTER HANDLING OF THE CHILDREN. There- fore the prevenient wisdom of God incorporated the Church as both a nursing and adult organization. The fact has place and pertinence here, that those are the best systems of government, and produce the highest grades of civilization in all pertaining to the body, property, and liberty of the citizen, where the state takes best in hand the education of the chil- dren. On the other hand, where the children are left, like the young in the lower animal kingdom, to grow up uncultured and wild, there society comes nearest to the savage and brute condition. The Church, as the embodiment of the divine kingdom in this world, is constituted and enjoined to do the very best thing religiously that the wisest civil government does secularly. Have commenta- tors and Christians yet taken the full import of the phrases, " kingdom of God," '' kingdom of Heaven " ? Here is implied a government having a constitution, laws, and a progressive, annexing administration in this world. It has a divine head, with a manage- ment in stewardship, as under a proxy that is procon- sular, legatine, or viceroyal. This divine lieutenancy is vested in the Church, and, indeed, is the Church. It must, therefore, begin where the best civil gov- ernment begins ; and, if it work wisely, it will spend a large part of its training force on childhood. It will be as wise and prompt and energetic, as the state is in securing worldly ends. For ecclesiastical NEGLECT OF BAPTIZED CHILDREN. 309 fidelity and parental fidelity are the upper and lower hin-60 ; baptism of, 214. Jewish baptisms, 71-90. " nation not tbe Church, 5, 6. " nation and the Church, started 400 years apart, 13, 14. " nation and the Church, Difference between, 19-25, 30-32. " use of "regeneration," " new birth," &c., 245-247. Jews, Tlie expectation of, when John came, 67-70. John the Baptist, first appearance of, 67, 68. JuLiAX, Testimony of, 170. Justin Martyr's use of '' regeneration " for baptism, 248. Juvenile Theology, A department for, needed in seminaries, 304. K. " Kingdom of heaven" wliat, 125-130, 308. L. LlGHTFOOT, 82. Lord's Day and Supper as little mentioned as baptism by early writers, 267, 268. Lost works of the Fathers, 262-266. M. Maimonides, 82. MiLEVis, Council of, 170l Milton on the destruction of books, 265. Monica and her son Augustine, 335, 336. Mothers, The influence of, 3:34-336. F. Neander on the origin of the Church, 22, note. " The theory of, against his facts on infant baptism, 236, 242. " and the influence of mothers, 334-336. Neander, on delaying baptism, 204. Nectarius, baptism of, 209, 210. Neoc^sarea, Council of, A.D. 314, Singular question before, 216-219. " New birth" &c.. Origin of, in the New Testament, 247. Nona and her son Gregory, 334, 335. INDEX. 847 o. Objections considered, 107-124. " Baptism a seal of personal piety only, 111-113. " Command to baptize only believers, 107-109. " Includes females, as circumcision did not, 117-124. " No command to baptize children, 109-111, 142, 143. " Takes away the privilege of a pei*soual profession of religion, 113-110. " That leading Fathers in the Church were not baptized in infancy, 208-215. " The infant does not consent to it, 112, 113. " Of such is the kingdom of heaven," import of, 125-130. Oi'/cof and OlKta, meaning of, 147. Old Testament, rejection of, as authority for church organization, 26-29. Optatus of Mileve,'testimony of, 200, 207. Origen, and his parents' influence over, 334. " The testimony of, 230-230. Origen' s use of regeneration and baptism, as synonyms, 251. Original, sin, Pelagius' view of, 103, 104. Pagan destruction of Christian histories, 264. Parents, and amusements for their children, 338, 339. " Little interest of, in infant baptism, and why, 331-333. " Things said herein to and for and about, 330-340. Patriarchs and Prophets, Were the church-members, 29, 30. Pelagian controversy and infant baptism, 162-174. " question before seven councils, yet infant baptism not denied, when denial would avail so much, 173. Peshito translation of New Testament, and "household," 148. Preaching should be more for the children, 313-315. Press, the f ruitfulness of, in the nineteenth as compared with sec- ond century, 259, 260. Prince Albert and his device, 300, 307. Proselyte baptism, 71-90. Q. Quebec, and the orphan girls, 336. 348 ■ INDEX. E. Rabbies, authority of, 91-98. "Renascuntub in Deum," The, of Irenseus, 244-256. s. Sabbath school as related to the Church, 287, 289, 309-311, 321. Seldex on origin of baptisms, 89. Septuaglnt, Origin of, 72, 73. " Uses of, 56-58, 73, 74. Silence of history on infant baptism considered, 257-272. " of the Jews on infant baptism, 273-275. Smicnjs, Testimony of, 190-192. Spencek on origin of baptism with Jews, 89. Syeiac, or Peshito, on "household," 148. Tacitus on destruction of books, 265, note. Talmuds, Origin of, 80, 81. " Authority of, 91-98. Taylor, C, on "household," 147. Tertullian, The testimony of, 237-243. Tektullian's use of "regeneration" for baptism, 250, 251. Theodoeet of Mesopotamia, Testimony of, 157, 158. Tucker, The Rev. J. T., and his treatise, 306, 307. Y. Vincent of Lerins, Testimony of, 156, 157. w. Woman, The new position of, under the New Dispensation, explained, 117-123. X. Xavieb and the children, 306. r