Infant-baptism : historically considered

Preface

The following pages have been written in the interest of spiritual religion and the evangelical faith. ^ Years spent in the study and teaching of church history have forced the conviction that infant-baptism, taken as a whole and throughout its history, has been the most serious departure from apostolic Christianity and evangelical faith that the world has to show. It has been the open door through which most of the errors and evils which have afflicted the kingdom of Christ on earth have poured in. The whole character of Christian history would certainly have been very different had faith-baptism been preserved inviolate. Sacramental salvation, compulsion of conscience, bloody persecution and union of Church and State, would have been impossible. Its abandonment today would abolish sacramental salvation with all the churches that support this faith, would give an immeasurable impulse to evangelical faith and do more to unite the Christians of the world in the bonds of genuine spiritual fellowship and fraternity than all other possible changes. Varying views of the significance of infant-baptism is the chief cause of division among the pedobaptists themselves ; its practice is the chief barrier between Baptists and evangelical pedobaptists.

The work has been written with the full consciousness that there is much difference between the conceptions of infant-baptism as held and practiced by Catholics and evangelical Protestants, but with a very firm conviction of the evils and dangers as practiced among the latter. The author cherishes nothing but kindly feelings for his pedobaptist brethren and has sought to avoid in these pages any expression that would wound or offend reasonable people. He has written as plainly and as forcibly as his powers would permit, with the hope that pedobaptists may understand the feelings of the Baptists more fully and that some pedobaptists may be led to consider afresh their own duty in the premises. Withal, it may lead some Baptists to understand more fully the security and importance of their own position and the seriousness of the dangers that lurk in infant-baptism. W. J. M.

Louisville, Ky., Christmas, 1915.

Table Of Contents

PAGE

Introduction by President Mullins 6

I. Infant-Baptism in the World 9

Introduction

There have been, among others, two marked tendencies in the history of Christianity which have been productive of evil. One has been the tendency to overestimate the ceremonial elements, and the other to underestimate them. Because of their strenuous adherence to immersion as the form prescribed in the New- Testament for the ordinance of baptism, Baptists have often been misunderstood as champions of the ceremonial as contrasted with the spiritual elements of the gospel. Nothing could be farther from the truth than this estimate of Baptists. They have indeed expended much effort in maintaining the two ordinances of the New Testament church. But their aim has been always to preserve the spirituality of the gospel, not to lose sight of it in the advocacy of forms and ceremonies. The amount of time and thought expended upon the latter has been no greater than the tendency to overestimate them or pervert their meaning on the part of others.

Baptists have, indeed, in a very peculiar sense, felt themselves called to maintain the purity and spirituality of the New Testament Christianity. Their sense of the call to this work has been manifest in nothing more clearly than in their effort to define the ceremonial elements of Christianity in relation to the spiritual. Human nature is almost incorrigibly devoted to the outward aspects of . religion until it has become sufficiently spiritualized to penetrate to the heart and grasp the central realities. One needs only to recall the Roman Catholic perversion of a simple metaphor of Jesus into the doctrine of the "real presence." It would seem that an elementary knowledge of the principles of rhetoric would have prevented so palpable an error of interpretation. But unspiritual human nature seized (6)

Introduction. 7

upon the literal meaning and converted it into a stupendous and far-reaching perversion of the fundamentals of the gospel. It became thus a striking example of the perils which arise out of apparently small deviations from a spiritual faith.

It is in view of facts of this kind that Baptists have been the religious radicals among the various denominations. They have seen with great vividness ?.nd clearness of outline the central spiritual elements of Christianity. With a like vividness and clearness they have perceived the significance of the outward forms. For them it has seemed as if the very life of Christianity depended upon keeping the spiritual and ceremonial elements in their respective places. Christian history certainly justifies them in their view. Forms and ceremonies are like ladders. On them we may climb up or down. If we keep them in their places as symbols, the soul feeds on the truth symbolized. If we convert them into sacraments, the soul misses the central vitality itself, spiritual communion with God. An outward religious ceremony derives its chief significance from the context in which it is placed, from the general system of which it forms a part. If a ceremony is set in the context of a spiritual system of truths, it may. become an indispensable element for the furtherance of those truths. If it is set in the context of a sacramental system, it may and does become a means for obscuring the truth and enslaving the soul. It is this perception of the value of ceremonies as symbols and of their perils as sacraments which animates Baptists in their strenuous advocacy of a spiritual interpretation of the ordinances of Christianity. The practice of infant baptism has been one of the greatest evils which has arisen in the history of Christianity in the Baptist view. It is not forgotten that in the United States there has been

8 Introduction.

some modification in the estimate of the ordinance as practiced by some of the pedobaptist denominations. But in principle infant baptism remains where it has been from the beginning, an excrescence and ahen element in the body of general Protestant doctrine. Fortunately, these great denominations often possess other elements which are spiritual and inconsistent with the practice of infant baptism. This makes it seem to a Baptist incredible that infant baptism should be retained by them as in any sense an element of New Testament Christianity.

In the light of the preceding statements it will not be difficult for a fair-minded pedobaptist to understand the motive of a Baptist in maintaining believers' and opposing infant baptism. It is not as the champion of a form or ceremony merely, it is not as a formalist at all, that he pleads. It is rather as the advocate of an intensely and radically spiritual Christianity, which seeks to reproduce that of the New Testament. J Professor McGlothlin has traced the development of infant baptism throughout Christian historjr with great clearness in the pages of this volume. (Perhaps no better argument can be offered against the practice than that afforded by the facts of its origin, and the motives which led to its perpetuation. Certainly no pen can adequately describe the evils to which it has given rise in those countries where the logic of infant baptism has had an opportunity to work itself out fully in church life. The fundamental explanation is to be found at every stage in the history. Infant baptism shifts the center of gravity of Christianity so completely that a thorough transformation of church life follows. The direct gives place to an indirect relation of the soul to God; personal faith gives place to proxy profession; the vital inward change or new birth gives place to a fictitious sacramental salvation; a regenerate gives place to an unregenerate church membership. This is the logic of infant baptism, and it is universal experience as well, except where other and opposing principles neutralize the tendency. ' E. Y. Mullins.

Chapter I. Infant-baptism In The World

Infant-baptism is one of the most tenderly cherished and widely practiced of all ecclesiastical ceremonies. Of the more than five hundred millions of nominal Christian population of the world the vast majority administer this rite, while a comparatively small minority actually oppose infant-baptism and insist on the practice of faith-baptism only. The two great Catholic churches are unanimous in its support, and the great majority of Protestant churches officially favor it, though some of them insist on its practice less strenuously than the Catholics. Millions rely upon it for regeneration and life eternal. Some parents look upon the death of an unbaptized child with terror, feeling certain that the little one will be banished from the face of God forever. The baptism of royal infants is a court function of the highest importance, while in the home of the peasant it is an event of the greatest moment. Ecclesiastics and parents alike unite in demanding the baptism of the infant, to assure the little one's eternal welfare and gain ecclesiastical control over the life at its beginning,

Often the State has demanded the administration of infant-baptism as sternly as the Church, and in some lands the want of baptism is still a serious disability in the civil life of the citizen. <^uring the later Middle Ages infant-baptism was almost triumphant, and its advocates were engaged in a bloody effort to suppress by force all who opposed. It was not effectively challenged till the period of the Reformation, and the marked growth of faith-baptism did not begin till the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries!^ Even now great numbers of pedobaptists regard anti-pedobaptists as a body of ignorant, narrow, perverted and troublesome fanatics who do not care for the religious welfare of their children and who are in fact semi-heathen ; others feel that anti-pedobaptists make overmuch trouble about a ceremony that is at least harmless and beautiful ; still others feel that anti-pedobaptists deny to their children a right which was granted to them by the Saviour himself and which has been practiced ever since.

And yet pedobaptist and anti-pedobaptist scholars are agreed almost absolutely as to the ascertainable facts connected with the history of infant-baptism. Briefly stated, these facts are as follows : The Scriptures are silent concerning infant-baptism ; Jesus did not baptize any one (John 4:2), and all the recorded cases of baptism are baptisms of believers; there is no express command to baptize any but believers ; if infant-baptism is to be found in the Scriptures it is wholly by inference; there is no conclusive proof of the existence of the practice of infant-baptism for

Infant-Baptism in the World. W

more than a century and a half after the death of Jesus. The eariiest clear evidence of the practice is found in Tertullian, who lived at Carthage in North Africa, at the end of the second century; he opposed the practice; the next evidence is found in Cyprian, the bishop of this same city of Carthage, about 250. Origen, a great scholar of Egypt, also in North Africa, probably shows acquaintance with and approval of it about the same time; it next appears at Constantinople in the following century, but is opposed by the great preacher and bishop of that city, Gregory Nazianzen; from this time on it gradually spreads over the Christian world. Augustine, bishop of Hippo, in North Africa, in the fifth century, developed the theological argument for the practice, basing it in the regenerating power of baptism operating on the depraved nature of the infant child: on this basis it rapidly spread throughout the world ; civil governments began in the early Middle Ages to support the Church with force in the demand that all children should be baptized ; some of the sects of the later Middle Ages opposed infant-baptism but were hunted to death as heretics ; most of the Reformers preserved infant-baptism, but a strong contingency, known as Anabaptists, began a powerful agitation for its abolition. Since that time infant-baptism has relatively declined, while faith-baptism has had a great revival. These tendencies were greatly accelerated in the nineteenth century, and now show no symptoms of abatement.

These are the ascertainable facts concerning which there is Httle difference of opinion among scholars of all communions. The differences lie beyond the ascertainable facts in the realm of inference. Anti-pedobaptists maintain that these facts are full and final, that they constitute an overwhelming argument against infant-baptism and in favor of faith-baptism. Pedobaptists claim that infant-baptism can be legitimately inferred and satisfactorily supported by these facts. The two great parties separate in the realm of inference, not of fact.

In the view of anti-pedobaptists, infant-baptism is not only without scriptural warrant, but is also positively and seriously injurious when viewed in the whole range of its work. Pedobaptists while differing widely, even fundamentally, among themselves as to what baptism actually accomplishes in or for the infant, are agreed that it brings some blessing. And yet they would scarcely claim that their children show by the pragmatic test of actual later life any higher moral standards, and purer faith, clearer hope, greater zeal or more earnest piety than the children of pious and cultured anti-pedobaptists. The supposedly beneficial effects of baptism, when tested by actual experience, are seen to be wholly in the realm of conjecture. They cannot be set down as facts. ^ The known facts are as stated above.

Anti-pedobaptists believe that infant-baptism is not only totally devoid of warrant in Scripture in the way of either precept or example, but that

Infant-Baptism in the World. 13

it also violates the fundamental conception of religion set forth in the New Testament ; and introduces a second baptism, which works to abolish faith-baptism which is commanded in the Scriptures. In its essential nature, it nullifies the fundamental Christian principles of personal choice and conscious religious experience; it violates in the cradle of helpless infancy the sacred doctrine of religious freedom. ; historically and in practice it has obscured the great fact of spiritual regeneration through faith in Jesus Christ, it has introduced the unregenerate Vv^orld into the Church, has blurred and confused the distinction between Christian and non-Christian; has led millions to depend on its magical effects for a salvation that is promised to vital faith in Christ only; has served as the basis for the union of Church and State, and has been the indispensable condition of religious coercion and persecution through the centuries. Without the forcible administration of baptism on unconscious or unwilling individuals persecution is logically impossible, since the very essence of faith-baptism is the personal and free choice of each individual on all religious matters. Upon infant-baptism, therefore, lies first responsibility for all the blood that has been poured out by the Church in the effort to enforce ecclesiastical uniformity. No body of Christian people who have consistently practiced faith-baptism have been guilty of persecution. Further than this, a moment's consideration will make it perfectly clear to my tJx)ughtful man that those who practice faith-baptism could not become persecutors, for the simple reason that they have adopted the voluntary principle in religion.

No indictment of equal gravity can be brought against any other ceremony practiced by any considerable part of the Christian world today. Not only the two great Catholic churches, but also every other pedobaptist church, with one or two minor exceptions, carries the blood of martyrs on its skirts as a result of the effort to coerce men into uniformity through infant-baptism.

In view of these undeniable facts it seems to anti-pedobaptists passing strange that the evangelical Protestant churches who now abhor persecution, and insist on religious freedom and a personal religious experience as a condition of church membership, should still persist in a practice whose history is so dark and whose effects even now are so dangerous, a practice which is confessedly without clear Scripture warrant, which is Jewish and pagan in its original and fundamental conception, which has been condemned by its practical effects in Christian history, which tends inevitably to nullify the spiritual nature of Christianity itself, and is today the rock upon which Catholicism, both Roman and Greek, stands.

The practice persists chiefly because of the power of ecclesiastical tradition. It arose out of belief in the magical eifects of baptism, and is defended by arguments that diifer according to the fundamental standpoints of the churches

Infant-Baptism in the World. 15

that maintain it. These arguments of the various pedobaptist churches often invaHdate and negative each other, but without any effect on their respective proponents. The Calvinist repudiates the grounds on which the CathoHc baptizes infants, and vice versa. The effort to make a vaHd scriptural argument by adducing cases of infant-baptism or discovering something that could be construed into a command to baptize infants is an afterthought. No such efforts were made in the early history of the practice. It was not till Protestants arose and adopted the theory of the supreme authority of Scripture that such arguments were attempted. In modern times infant-baptism, whatever arguments are advanced in its support in controversy with the advocates of faith-baptism, really rests on one of the three following basal principles: The Catholics (Roman and Greek) and many Lutherans and Episcopalians base it on the magical regenerating power of the ceremony; Presbyterians, Congregationalists and some others on the relation of the child to believing parents ; Methodists and some others make it a simple ceremony of dedication by which the child is publicly and solemnly given to God. In the first instance the child is held to be lost without baptism and is believed to be saved in it and by it ; in the second instance the child is not supposed to be saved by it, but since it is born of believing parents (only the children of believing parents are baptized), it has a right to baptism as the ceremony which introduces it into the covenant of grace, as circumcision did in the Jewish economy. Without this infant-baptism they believe the child would somehow be at a serious disadvantage. In the third case baptism is not for the direct benefit of the child at all, but for the sake of the parents, who are thus reminded of their solemn duty to bring up the child in the nurture and admonition of the Lord. Doubtless most parents, except in the Catholic churches, are moved by parental sentiment without any clear thought as to the purpose or significance of baptism. They accept it as an ancient and pretty social and religious custom whose omission would be nothing short of a social disgrace.

All the pedobaptist churches baptize adults also, but on totally different grounds. They are agreed that an adult must repent and believe, else baptism is an idle and useless ceremony. They thus have two baptisms; one is for infants; it is without faith and is dependent for its efficacy and significance either on the magical working of baptism or on the natural family relation of the infant to believing parents, or on the subsequent religious instruction given by parents. The other is for adults, and is based upon preceding faith.

The justification of infant-baptism is extremely difficult and embarrassing to all except those who believe in its regenerating power. It grew up in the Catholic system and has always been very embarrassing to evangelical pedobaptists. Clear thinkers, like Zwingli and Calvin, are utterly con-

Infant-Baptism in the World. 17

fused when they try to find a place for it in their systems. Nothing but the power of ecclesiastical tradition could keep evangelical pedobaptists practicing a custom which is the contradiction of their evangelical principles. In view of these facts it is not strange that the practice is on the decline among evangelical Christians.

Chapter II. The Baptist View Of Baptism

Baptists hold a perfectly simple and consistent view of baptism. They have but one baptism for all, based upon the spiritual condition of the recipient. They do not baptize one class for one reason and another for another. They have *'one Lord, one faith, one baptism." What they insist on with unwavering fidelity is that repentance toward God and faith in the Lord Jesus Christ must precede baptism in every instance. It is not a question of infants or adults, not a question of \^age in any sense, but of faith. If infants could exercise faith Baptists would baptize every one that gave satisfactory evidence of the possession of that faith and expressed a desire for baptism. When there is a request for baptism and satisfactory evidence of the existence of faith is found, Baptists baptize, whether the candidate is eight, or twelve, or twenty, or seventy. Age, it is repeated, has no place in the discussion. Ours is not an adult- as contrasted with a child-baptism, but a faith-baptism as contrasted with a non-faith-baptism. Baptists believe that all persons who die without attaining moral responsibility, whatever be the cause, are saved by the mercy and grace of God in Christ Jesus. But this salvation is without the exercise of faith and so without the duty of baptism. Baptists would no more baptize , an idiot than an infant, because neither is capable of exercising faith. They believe baptism to be absolutely inseparable from the exercise of personal saving faith.

The reasons which actuate the Baptists in these views and practices are many and various. The scriptural argument will be reviewed at some length in the next two chapters. In this the more general phases of the argument will be stated.

I. Baptists believe that the essential nature of the Christian religion makes any other than the view set forth above untenable and any other practice than theirs ultimately if not immediately hurtful. Salvation is, as they believe, personal. There are no proxies, one cannot stand for another in spiritual things. Every sour must for itself enter into right relations with God through Jesus Christ. The soul must be free, in full possession of its faculties, its actions voluntary. In-^ fant-baptism is a process of spiritual kidnaping. It not only has no blessings for the child, but violates the fundamental religious rights of the individual, deciding for him when he is helpless what he has a God-given right and duty to decide for himself. It is not only futile, but denies to its victim the highest functions of a spiritual being, the right of self-direction in the supreme concerns of the soul. As well baptize an adult in\ the unconsciousness of sleep or anesthesia or de-/ lirium as an infant in its moral and religious un-j consciousness. Infant-baptism is the first and fundamental violation of religious freedom and draws all other violations in its train.

Baptists do not believe that religion in its essence is an affair of the family or the nation or of racial descent. They recognize that the pagan religions were and are tribal, national, or racial. A pagan is born into a religion as he is born into citizenship in a given state. In some measure the Jewish religion stood on the same basis. The Jewish child was born into the Jewish religion, and he was circumcised in acknowledgment and confirmation of that fact. His was a national religion. His circumcision and religious duties were based on his birth, his racial and physical origin. It neither marked nor wrought any change in his spiritual condition; in fact, it had no relation to his personal character or spiritual condition as an individual. To omit it was to renounce loyalty to Israel; it involved expulsion from the nation and so from its spiritual as well as its other advantages.

But in the fullness of the times this ideal had served its purposes in the progress of the kingdom of God, and the day arrived for the blessings of grace to be sent broadcast throughout the earth. In order to accomplish this high purpose change was necessary. John the Baptist was raised up as a ^'teacher sent from God" to institute this change. He broke away from the racial conception of religion altogether, and made the personal experience of repentance and faith in every individual of whatever race or family the basis of religion. The ax was laid at the root of every tree (Jewish as well as Gentile), and every tree (Jewish as well as Gentile) that brings not forth good fruit is hewn down and cast into the fire. The basis of religion in the mouth of John is personal. In order to enter the kingdom of God the Jew as well as the Gentile must repent and believe and so the Jew as well as the Gentile must be baptized. Circumcision was foFj the Jewish male child, baptism was for the re-\ pentant and believing hitman being (Jew and*^ Gentile alike). The two ceremonies stood on totally different bases, meant totally different things, and so had no relation of kinship to each other. Jews who had been circumcised in infancy were baptized notwithstanding their circumcision. Circumcision rested upon the rights and duties of Jewish citizenship, a racial basis, and so was to be administered to every male Jewish child; baptism rests upon a personal, spiritual basis (repentance and faith) and so is to be administered to every individual (male or female) who possesses the necessary spiritual qualifications, irrespective of sex, race, or family. Circumcision by its nature and purpose was limited to Jewish male children, baptism is limited by its nature to believers. Genuine baptism before faith is as ^X impossible as circumcision before birth. ^

Baptists do not fail to value Christian parentage or emphasize parental obligation to bring up children in the nurture and admonition of the f'

Lord. But they cannot believe that the child inherits the Christianity of its parents or loses any spiritual blessings by the omission of a ceremony ^^ that is supposed to have taken the place of the old Jewish circumcision. To Baptists the Christian religion is by its very nature personal and spiritual. In their opinion there can be no religion by proxy or family or ceremony. A child can no more inherit its parents' faith than their view of the solar system. Salvation lies in the realm of personal experience where there are no proxies before birth or after birth, and as every individual must consciously believe for himself so he must consciously choose baptism for himself.

2. Baptists reject infant-baptism because they believe our religion is spirituaL The high and holy transactions between the soul and God take place in the clear light of consciousness. They do not believe that the ceremony of baptism can work in a magical way to produce in the soul, while it is morally unconscious, such tremendous effects as regeneration and salvation. To Baptists the practice of baptizing babies for the removal of sin of which they are not conscious is blasphemous mockery, working immeasurable wrong to the soul by lulling it into a false and dangerous security when it comes to conscious responsibility. The view that baptism regenerates is pagan in its origin and came directly from paganism into Christianity. It was, except among Pelagians, the only view of infant-baptism held by anybody down to the Reformation, and is still the view and teaching of the vast majority of those who practice it. It is, in the judgment of Baptists, the deadliest heresy that ever crept out ^j^ of the pagan religions of the Roman empire into the faith of the Christian Church. If evangelical Protestants sometimes wonder at the tenacity of the Baptists in their opposition to infant-baptism they can easily find the explanation in the history and present practice of the ceremony. It is a constant cause of wonder to Baptists that evangelical Protestants so tenaciously perpetuate a practice for which they can find no certain Scripture warrant, a practice which is the very cornerstone of the Catholic churches, which is relied on by hundreds of millions of souls in our day for a salvation which no evangelical Christian believes it can give them and which had such a sinister and bloody history in the Middle Ages. Baptists cannot look upon this practice without a shudder. They believe our religion is spiritual and therefore they reject infant-baptism, which they believe has been the chief hindrance to evangelical Christianity in its w^hole history. It is in the interest of spiritual freedom and reality that they protest. It is not from love of controversy or isolation, but from a profound conviction that the most precious treasures are at stake.

3. Baptists do not believe that baptism, which has a distinct and important place in the kingdom ^ of God, should be emptied of its real meaning by reducing it to a ceremony of infant dedication.

They believe that all parents should in their hearts dedicate their children to God and do their utmost to rear them in the fear of the Lord. Nor do they have any objection to a public dedication to God, if parents so desire. What they object to is the prostitution of baptism to this use. Baptism was instituted as a ceremony of self-dedication to Jesus Christ and a public, dramatic proclamation of personal repentance and faith in him. It is needed for this purpose at the beginning of the Christian life, and it is a serious perversion of the ordinance and a serious loss to the Christian life to use it for the public dedication of infants, thereby preventing its use for the purpose for which the Founder instituted it. Pedobaptists have no ceremony of self-dedication at the beginning of the real Christian life — a great loss.

4. Baptists reject infant-baptism because they believe it to be entirely without warrant in Scripture. Confessedly there is no explicit command to baptize infants or any others than believers. Nor is there any example of infant-baptism. It is not specifically forbidden in Scripture, it is true, but Baptists believe it to be excluded by the terms of the Great Commission under which Christian work is done. They believe it is not forbidden because the practice had not arisen, and did not, therefore, come into the purview of the Christians of the first century. Complete silence concerning a custom which dififers so radically from faith-baptism, which was commanded, is a powerful presupposition against the existence of the practice. To argue that a practice is permitted and approved when it is not forbidden would open the door to all the other Catholic innovations of the centuries, such as the mass, veneration of saints, relics and images, transubstantiation and the rest, none of which are forbidden in Scripture. This argument proves too much, and therefore proves nothing. The fact that a prac- >y^|;- tice is not forbidden in Scripture is not a proof' — that it is approved.