Year after

the apo

stles.

CHAP. II. what were the benefits of baptism, what was to be confessed and believed, and, in a word, what was to be observed of those that are regenerated in • Christ. For the reverend Father Austin relates of ' himself in his book of Confessions, that he con'tinued a catechumen till he was almost twenty288. five years old: which he did with that intention, ⚫ that during that space being instructed in all par'ticulars, he might be led by his own freewill to 'choose what he thought fit; and that the heat of his youth being now abated, he might better observe that which he had purposed.

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But when the diligence about our divine religion ' increased; the Christians understanding that the original sin of Adam did involve in guilt, not only 'those who had added to it by their own wicked ' works, but those also who having done no wicked

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ness themselves, yet because (as the Psalmist says,) They were conceived and born in iniquity, cannot be free from sin, since they spring from a polluted root; so that the apostle had reason to say concerning all persons, All have sinned, and have need of the glory of God, being justified freely by 6 his grace; and to and to say of Adam, In whom all have 'sinned:-the orthodox Christians, I say, under'standing this, lest children should perish if they "died without the remedy of the grace of regenera

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tion, appointed them to be baptized for the forgiveness of sins.

'Not as some heretics, enemies of God's free grace, maintained, that there was no necessity for 'infants' baptism, because they had never sinned. If that doctrine were true, either they would not 'be baptized at all; or, if they were baptized

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' without having any need of it, the sacrament of CHAP. II.

the яро

baptism would be imperfect in them, and not the Year after 'true baptism which we in the creed confess to be stles. given for the forgiveness of sins.

Therefore since all persons do perish by original

sin, whom the grace of God does not free, (even 'such as have added no increase of their own wick⚫edness,) infants are of necessity to be baptized. Which both St. Austin shews in his book de Bap'tismo Parvulorum, and the African councils testify, and is manifested by a great many other 'proofs from the other Fathers.'

This man, with his little reading, seems to have supposed that both the doctrine of pædobaptism, and also that of original sin, had their beginning but about St. Austin's time. His mistake in the first may appear by the quotations here produced; and in the other, by those mentioned by Vossius in his Pelagian History. He also invents a reason for St. Austin's delay of his baptism after he was grown up, which is utterly contrary to St. Austin's own account; who relates at large in that his book of Confessions, that it was because he was in suspense whether he should be a Christian, or a Manichee2. He miserably mistakes the doctrine of the Pelagians, as if they had denied infants' baptism to be necessary. He himself owns it to be necessary; and yet says that the ancients used it not.

But indeed there appears through all his book an

y [G. I. Vossius, Historia de Controversiis quæ Pelagius ejusque reliquiæ moverunt editio secunda, emendata et aucta, 4o. Amst. 1655. See particularly the second book.]

[August. Confession. lib. v. cap. 14. §. 25.—Op. tom. i. p. 118.]

the apostles.

CHAP. II. affectation to shew how all the doctrines and mysteYear after ries of the Christian religion have come to more and more perfection by process of time; as he makes the title of his book to be, 'Of the beginning and ' advancement of ecclesiastical matters.' And he was willing to say some such thing of baptism, that this chapter might be like the rest.

1422.

III. What Ludovicus Vives" says of this matter, is in his commentaries upou St. Austin's book de Civitate Dei, lib. I. cap. 27.

In former times no person was admitted to the 'holy font, till he were of age, and did understand 'what that mystical water meant, and did himself desire to be washed with it, and did express this desire more than once. A resemblance of which 'custom we see still in our baptisms of infants. For ⚫ an infant born that day, or the day before, is asked 'the question, whether he will be baptized? And that question they ask three times over. In whose name the godfathers answer, that he does desire it. 'I hear that in some cities of Italy the old custom is 'still in great measure preserved.'

a [John Louis Vives, a learned Spaniard, was born at Va lencia, in the year 1492. Having studied at Paris and Louvain, and obtained a high reputation for learning, he was appointed by bishop Fox one of the fellows of his college of Corpus Christi, at Oxford; here he continued for some time, was admitted a doctor of law, and read lectures in that and the belles lettres. His commentary on St. Austin's work, 'De Civitate Dei,' was first published in 1522, with a dedication to king Henry VIII.; it was reprinted in 1622, 1661, and is found in some collections of the Father's works.

Vives subsequently falling under Henry's displeasure, in the matter of the royal divorce, was imprisoned for some time; but recovering his liberty quitted England for Bruges in the Netherlands, where it is thought he ended his days, in 1537, or 1541.]

Revive.

Curcellæus.

17

the apo

Since this Vives lived so little while ago, and CHAP. II. produces no proof out of any author to confirm his Year after opinion; his affirming any thing concerning any old stles... custom is of no more authority, than if any one now living should say the same without producing his proof. Especially since he was but a young man when he wrote these commentaries, and, though learned in philology and secular history, yet confesses himself in his preface to them, that as for divinity, which was none of his profession, he minded it only so far as his other studies would give him leave.

It is certain that the occasion given him, from St. Austin's words, on which he there comments, to say any such thing is very slender. For St. Austin is only speaking of some baptized at the age of understanding, without the least intimation that they were children of Christian parents.

And for the cities of Italy that he mentions, I think nobody ever heard of them before, nor since: unless we will suppose that some remainders of the Petrobrúsians, who are said about 400 years before 1050. Vives' time to have been antipædobaptists, and of whom I shall by and by give some account, might continue that practice in some of the valleys of Piedmont. But if it were so, these men were too late, for any opinion concerning the ancient practice to be founded on what they did.

IV. Curcellæus says the same thing as Vives 1550. does. And there is to be said of him not only what was said of Vives, that affirming a thing of antiquity,

b Chap. vii. §. 5.

C

[See Stephani Curcelli Opera Theologica, fol. Amst. 1675 p. q12.] by

WALL, VOL. II.

the apostles.

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CHAP. 11. he produces no quotation for proof, but also that he Year after brings it in to maintain another tenet as paradoxical as this itself is. He has a 'Dissertation concerning Original Sin.' He denies that there is any such thing; as most that are inclined to Socinianism do. He brings as an objection against his own doctrine, the custom of baptizing infants for forgiveness of sin. He answers, that the custom of baptizing 'infants did not begin before the third century after Christ's birth; that in the first two there appear 'no footsteps of it.'

!

1578.

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Whether that be true or no, will be partly judged by what I have here produced. It is best for any one that cannot prove what he says, to affirm it dictator-like.

V. It is doubtful in which of the two forementioned sorts, of those that have thought the practice of infant-baptism to have been, either not from the beginning, or not universal, one is to place Rigaltiuse. He, in his annotations on those places of St. Cyprian, which I recited in the former part of this work, seems willing to have it believed, that in the apostles' time there was no pædobaptism; but not willing to speak this plainly.

His discourse of this matter from texts of scripture is too large to repeat here: he uses no arguments but those that are common, and have their

answers as common.

d §. 56.

e

[Nicolas Rigaltius published an edition of St. Cyprian's works at Paris, in 1648, folio. His notes were retained in the subsequent ones, of Priorius, Paris 1666, and bishop Fell, a Oxford, 1682. They are noticed, but not given at length, in the Benedictine edition fol. Paris. 1726.]