So that the parity of reason being so plain, nothing less than an express prohibition from our Saviour, and an exception of children from baptism, can be thought sufficient to deprive the children of Christians of any privilege of which the Jewish were capable. For the plain meaning of this commission to the Apostles to go and proselyte all nations to the Christian religion, and to admit them solemnly into it by baptism, as the Jews were wont to proselyte men to their religion by circumcision and baptism, by which rites also they took in the children of the proselytes, upon promise that when they came to years they should continue in that religion. And if this was our Saviour's meaning, the Apostles had no reason, from the tenor of their commission, to understand that the children of Christian proselytes were any more excluded than the children of proselytes to the Jewish religion, unless our Saviour had expressly excepted them.* * Archbishop Tillotson's Works, folio, 1717, Vol. I. pp. 513, 514. CHAPTER III. Testimony in support of Infant Baptism from the Fathers, of the four first centuries of the Christian era. I now proceed to lay before the reader a species of evidence in proof of the practice of pædobaptism without which a book of this nature must be materially imperfect, though I regret to observe that some writers on this subject have but sparingly employed it, while our adversaries have been encouraged by this remissness to turn it in a most disingenuous manner to their own advantage: proofs of this I shall have occasion to offer in the sequel. As an introduction, however, to the subject of this chapter, I must entreat the reader to consider the following particulars :—I have shewn, from the Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments, that Infant Baptism is to be inferred, by just and evident consequence, from the nature of the divinely appointed rites of initiation into the Jewish and Christian Churches, (or rather into the Church of Christ under those two dispensations); and I think I am fairly intitled to assume the fact of pædobaptism as a principle which has been incontestibly established. Now, what would be the next step which a fair inquirer would naturally take in pursuing this investigation? Would it not be to search, as far as he could, into the writings of those who succeeded the Apostles in the Christian Church, to discover what allusions they make to this rite, and to satisfy himself, by a fair and copious induction of historical evidence, whether the baptism of infants did really exist in the earliest ages after the Apostles? Judging, beforehand, from the state of the world, and from the partial diffusion of Christianity, I should not expect to find, in the age immediately succeeding that of the Apostles, many allusions to the practice for which I contend; because, at the first establishment of a Church in any place, or district, in these early times, the parents would naturally be first proselyted, and baptized, and then their infants would be received by the rite of Christian initiation into the Church as well as themselves: in the infancy of the Church, we should naturally hear more of the baptism of adults; but when once the Church had been for a while established, adult baptism, which had previously excited more attention, would gradually come into disuse, and Infant Baptism alone, or for the most part, would prevail,* and in the same degree be noticed and commented upon. Now this anticipation, from the nature and circumstances of the case, is fully confirmed by historical fact: on examining the ecclesiastical history of the first ages of the Church, we find the matter precisely as we had expected; --- the allusions to adult baptism are more numerous at the commencement of the Christian era, while the references to that of infants are few and incidental; as we go on, the former become gradually less frequent, and by degrees give place to the latter; or, if adult baptisms do at any period become more abundant, this circumstance will be found to owe its existence to a cause which cannot, in the slightest degree, affect the argument by which the sound and scriptural defence of Infant Baptism has been so immovably established. Before I proceed to particulars, I will submit to the reader a list of the most distinguished Fathers of the Christian Church, with the respective dates which mark the interval that elapsed * Distinguere oportet inter ecclesiam constituendam, et constitutam in illâ adulti prius docendi, et ubi crediderunt, tum ipsi, tum eorum liberi, sunt baptizandi; in hâc vero infantes prius baptizandi, ac postea sunt docendi. Vossius de Bapt. Disputatio xiii. c. 2. from the time of the Apostles to the period at which each writer flourished. "Several persons among us of both sexes, of sixty and seventy years old, who were proselyted, [or made disciples] to Christ in their childhood, continue uncorrupted." 66 The word which I have translated, above, proselyted, or made disciples, is the very same word which is employed by St. Matthew, in expressing our Lord's command ManrevσatƐ, “ Proselyte," or disciple all nations," and this, says Justin, happened to these persons in their childhood, εκ παίδων. Now let the reader consider the force of this argument against the Baptists: they say 66 |