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Curious Mode of Reasoning.

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God settled on Abraham

every christian and his family. and his family a large landed estate: therefore, he gives every christian and his family the benefits of the christian religion. God commanded Abraham and his family to circumcise their children: therefore, all professors of christianity ought, without a command, not to circumcise but to baptize their children. Jesus said, "suffer little children to come unto me:" therefore, infants who cannot come ought to be carried, not to Jesus, but to a minister, not to be healed, but to be baptized. Paul advised mar ried believers at Corinth not to divorce their unbelieving yoke-fellows, lest they should stain the reputation of their children, with the scandal of illegitimacy: therefore, children, legitimate and illegitimate, ought to be baptized. A man of thirty years of age says he believes the gospel : therefore, his neighbour's infant of eight days ought to be baptized, as if he believed the gospel. And finally, the scripture does not mention infant baptism; but it is, notwithstanding, full of proof that infants were and ought to be baptized.

Really, the Baptists ought to be forgiven for not having a taste for this kind of logic; yea, they ought to be applauded for preferring argument before sophistry.

St. Austin and his company were the first who attacked believer's baptism at law; but Zuinglius and Calvin are said to be the first, who invented the method of proving infant baptism from Abraham's covenant. The dispute between Baptists and Pedo-baptists has long been maintained, and still it remains unsettled. Every thing which slander could utter has been cast upon the Baptists, and every cruelty, which malicious ingenuity could devise, has been practised against them. Thousands of them have been slain, and thousands more have been dispersed into obscure corners and caves of the earth. But still they remain, and are rapidly advancing in numbers and strength. As a body, like others, they have been much divided on many other points, but in the article of baptism they have been uniform and unshakingly fixed. They have never persecuted, although they have had it in their power to do so. But they have reasoned and remonstrat

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90 Objections of Baptists against Infant Baptism.

ed, and against infant baptism they have urged the following objections:

First. It is not in our Lord's commission; and what is not in a commission, must, of necessity, be out of it. Second. It is no where found in the Bible; and, therefore, it cannot be a Bible institution.

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Third. They deny that infants derive any benefit from baptism, and thousands of them have had the tunity. of knowing; but on the contrary affirm, that a great injury is done them by it, because they grow up in a prejudice, that they are christians, and, therefore, never examine what christianity is.

Fourth. Every person ought to be left free to choose his own religion; but infant baptism imposes a religion upon its subjects, before they know it, and they often have much trouble to get rid of it, when they become capable of refusing the evil and choosing the good.

For these and many other reasons, the Baptists without the least misgiving, reject infant baptism; and if saint Austin, and a thousand other saints beside, have said that it was an apostolical tradition, it does not in the least affect their belief, so long as they find that saint Luke, saint Paul, and saint Peter, have no where mentioned it, but have laid down principles, which go entirely to exclude it. They do not wonder that many saints have asserted what none ever proved, but they wonder that some of them have not interpolated scripture to serve their hypothesis. The Baptists are accused by their opponents of having This accusation an assurance peculiar to themselves. they are not unwilling to admit. Their peculiar assurance arises from the clear and peculiar evidence with which their sentiments are supported. This assurance has been called presumption, and those who persisted in it, in former days, were denounced obstinate hereticks, and doomed to suffer fire and sword in this world, and eternal perdition in the world to come. But a gracious

Providence has now delivered us from the force of these terrible arguments.

While Pedo-baptists send inquirers to their pamphlets and doctors, the Baptists send them to the Bible, and they cannot but exult that their sentiments are there so plainly expressed. And what emboldens them, and dis

Most of this Sketch taken from Robinson.

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gusts their opponents is, that every man, woman, and child has the leading passages by heart, on which their sentiments are founded, and can, at once, produce arguments, which the greatest doctors cannot answer without much time, nor then without much sophistry.

It is a very unlucky circumstance, that infant baptism is no where mentioned in the Bible, and I pity the person, who, with a tender conscience, sets out to find it there; for, sure I am, he will have a hard and fruitless task, and if he finally succeeds, it must be by subverting his own understanding.

The study of infant baptism is the most perplexing study in the world, as many, who are now Baptists, know by experience. And the reason is, it perverts the order of scripture. But in the study of believer's baptism every thing is plain and easy.

Infant baptism is supported by a long string of texts from the Old Testament and New, none of which mention the thing, and none of which refer to such a practice, any more than Hagar's going out into the wilderness of Beersheba, leading her sulky son Ishmael, and carrying In this with her a loaf of bread and a bottle of water. passage we find a child and water, and these are not found in many of the passages brought to support infant baptism.

As to all the shocking consequences which follow from Baptist principles, we have only to say, they are drawn by Pedo-baptists, and not by us.

And since three-fourths of the terraqueous globe is covered with water, we never expect to find any difficulty in procuring a full supply of this element.

The substance of this sketch has been selected from Robinson's incomparable history of baptism, to which I have often referred; and many sentiments and sentences, for which no formal credit has been given, have been taken from that laborious and invaluable work. There are but few copies of it in this country. It is a quarto volume of between six and seven hundred pages, with very copious Latin notes. This work will bear to be abridged; and by omitting the notes and some other articles, it might be reduced to an octavo volume of four or five hundred pages, without leaving out any of the important matter which relates to baptism. In making out the above sketch, which

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Origin of the Baptists.

has been selected from every part of it, I have been obliged to study it with considerable attention, and have conceived the design of undertaking to abridge it, after I have had a little respite from my present labour.*

CHAP. III.

A GENERAL ACCOUNT OF THE BAPTISTS IN FOREIGN COUNTRIES AND ANCIENT TIMES.

THIS chapter will extend from the introduction of christianity to about the time of the reformation under Luther and his associates.

All sects trace their origin to the Apostles, or at least to the early ages of christianity. But many, and especially the powerful ones, have laboured hard to cut off the Baptists from this common retreat. They have often asserted and taken much pains to prove that the people now called Baptists originated with the mad men of Munster, about 1522. We have only to say to this statement, that it is not true. And notwithstanding all that has been said to the contrary, we still date the origin of our sentiments, and the beginning of our denomination, about the year of our Lord twenty-nine or thirty; for at that period John the Baptist began to immerse professed believers in Jordan and Enon, and to prepare the way for the coming of the Lord's Anointed, and for the setting up of his kingdom.

But before we proceed any farther, it is proper that the terms Baptist and Anabaptist should be defined.

A Baptist is one, who holds that a profession of faith, and an immersion in water are essential to baptism. An Anabaptist is one who is rebaptized. The name of Baptist we admit is significant and proper; but that of Anabaptist we reject as slanderous, and no ways descriptive of our sentiments and practice; and when our opponents accuse us of Anabaptism, we always understand the charge

Many articles which are largely and learnedly discussed by Mr. Robinson, have not been referred to in the preceding sketch; as baptism connected with Monachism-with social obligations-with Human Creeds-with Judaism with Chivalry--with Sacerdotal Habits-and with Witchcraft ; The baptism of Bells, Tropical Baptism, the Christening of Fleets, and so on.

Six Sorts of Anabaptists.

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as the language either of ignorance or malice. In one sense there were never any Anabaptists in christendom, and yet according to historians there have been multitudes in different ages and countries. All, who ever administered baptism a second time, did it upon the supposition that the first baptism was imperfect. No party of christians ever held to two baptisms, or presumed to repeat the baptismal rite, after it had been, in their opinion, once properly administered. In this sense there never have been any Anabaptists, although multitudes have rebaptized, or, in other words, performed in a right manner, what, upon their principles, had been improperly done. According to Robinson there have been six sorts of christians, who have been called Anabaptists, as different from one another, as can well be imagined. The first placed the essence of baptism in the virtue of the person baptized; the second placed it in the form of words pronounced in the administration; the third in the virtue of the administrator; the fourth in the consent of the person baptized; the fifth in dipping; and the sixth in both a profession of faith and an immersion.

By all of these classes multitudes were rebaptized, and yet no party acknowledged themselves Anabaptists; for they all thought that there was one Lord, one faith, and one baptism, and that their own. The Catholicks most eagerly contend that pope Sylvester baptized Constance the Great into the faith of the Trinity at Rome, and the evidence seems respectable. It is however certain that he was baptized at Nicomedia just before his death, and it is supposed by Eusebius, into the Arian faith. Both affirm they baptized him; neither says he was rebaptized, because neither accounted the other a valid baptism. Probably, some Catholic writers express the matter exactly as it was. Sylvester baptized the emperour, and Eusebius rebaptized him. They affirm the same of the emperour Valens, and denominate both these emperours Anabaptists.

Dionysius and his followers in Egypt, the Acephali, Novatus of Rome, Novatian of Carthage, all the Novatian churches, Donatus and his numberless followers, called after him Donatists, of whom there were four hundred congregations at one time in Africa, all rejected the baptism administered by those, who have since been called Catholicks, whom they reputed hereticks, and whose churches they

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