THOUGHTS ON INFANT BAPTISM. 1857.

(The following paper on Infant Baptism was read at a meeting of a Clerical Club, at which I was allowed to appear as a visitor. I have attempted to put the subject in a practical and popular form. I am anxious not to be supposed to question those statements on this subject of the higher theology, which may be found, for example, in Hooker's Fifth Book, in Wilberforce on Baptism, and in an able tract, called "The Second Adam, and the New Birth." My belief is that these views may be as it were translated into more popular language, so as to tend, at least, to reconcile opinions, without any sacrifice of truth.)

ONE of the most curious of those forced figurative constructions of Scripture, common in the early and middle ages, I lately saw quoted in a Review.* A worthy mediæval person, I do not know who, illustrated his statement that it is the province of the clergy to teach, and the laity to learn, by the text "The oxen were ploughing, and the asses feeding beside them."+

As one of the asses in question, I am well aware that we may strengthen our claim to that respectable title, if we attempt to harness ourselves, especially to the controversial plough.

It was once my misfortune to get into some controversy on the subject of this paper, Infant Baptism, with some warlike clergymen in the neighbourhood of

* Christian Remembrancer, Vol. xxviii. No. 85 (July 1854), † Job i. 14.

p. 12.

The ass on that occasion got out of the row as soon as he could, not without some perception of what, I do not say was, but might be, the odium theologicum.

In this assembly, however, where I am grateful for being allowed to appear as an intruder, I feel no such risk and perhaps my habits of many years may be some excuse for my venturing to offer some considerations on the subject.

I was not surprised at the appearance of the feeling to which I have alluded. The advocates of what is known as the hypothetical view of the Baptismal Service, have always shown an especial sensitiveness on this particular point, as if it was their proper peculium. More than that: they seem to regard it as the Athenians of old did a certain law, of which the repeal was not even to be discussed. When required, they defend it vigorously; but they prefer that nothing at all should be said on the subject. And this mainly on the ground of the alleged scantiness, to say the least, of Scripture notices about it. Dr. M'Neile has said that there is not one single word in Scripture bearing on the question.

*

Now, without going to the other extreme, as Mr. Neale, who deduces Baptismal Regeneration from this text among others, "Then fought the kings of Canaan in Taanach by the waters of Megiddo,t" this withdrawal of the question from the region of fixed dogma I am slow to acquiesce in, if it were only for the text in the Epistle to the Hebrews, in which “the doctrine of baptisms" is recited among the fundamentals

*Lectures on Church Difficulties.

of the Christian faith. For to us, to the vast majority of the Church since the day that the writer of the Epistle wrote those words under the guidance of the Holy Spirit foreknowing that state of things, the doctrine of Baptism is the doctrine of Infant Baptism in that shape, practically, it concerns us. None of the other doctrines in that memorable list are relegated to that limbo of uncertainty and I question whether this one ought so to be.

I venture to think that this feeling on the part of the theologians in question is in some measure owing to the fact, that they feel themselves somewhat weak, not of course in the Scriptural argument, but in that on our Services. Not when speaking in the heat of controversy, but when giving their deliberate opinion on the question abstractedly considered, I venture to believe that most of them would acknowledge that they would prefer the Baptismal Services, at least, otherwise expressed than they are. Not so indeed when collateral considerations come in. There are many, of all schools, who dread the consequences of the slightest alteration in any of the established legal documents of our Church and oppose it accordingly.

Μὴ κινεῖν Καμάριναν, ἀκίνητος γὰρ ἀμείνων.

This position may suit those who look on the Church as a house of cards, from which if one be withdrawn the whole will topple down. It may suit that writer in one of our periodicals, or at all events the periodical itself, which seems to hold that fixed unity and consistency in the Church is a dream, and indeed that both in civil and ecclesiastical matters Truth is that which

John Bull troweth, and that it is the business both of Church and State to reflect the ever-fluctuating forms of the average public opinion of the day. But they who think not so and they who have more faith in the English Church, as not so sickly a plant-who believe that she is, as Mr. Gladstone has said that the temporal power of the Papacy is not, "able to endure the removal of those screens which cover her from East, West, North, and South, and to expose herself to the free current of the air of heaven,"-they, should they also be among the friends of the hypothetical doctrine, would I believe generally be in favour of an alteration. Archdeacon Hone-whom however I quote not so much as asserting his own view of the doctrine as pleading for comprehension-has advocated in one of his Charges, with characteristic modesty but with no ambiguity of conclusion, a limited revision of the Prayer Book, with the object, among others, of altering the Baptismal Service. I am not implying, as will be seen before I conclude, any insuperable objection to any such alteration: I am only illustrating what I said.

To turn then to the matter of the doctrine, it seems true to say, that at least as regards the Baptismal Services it is limited to the term "Regenerate," or "Regeneration." I would not speak too confidently: but I am inclined to believe that the other statements, which look like positive assertions, that every duly-baptised infant is "grafted into the body of Christ's Church," and "incorporated into His holy Church," would be admitted to be positive assertions, not merely hypothetical or charitable judgments. I am not solicitous to establish this,

* Preface to Farini's History of the Roman State.

which is not material to my argument, and is only assumed for simplification: but I remember one direct piece of evidence of it, in a small Tract by Mr. Girdlestone, a man well acquainted with the controversy, headed Palingenesia. The aim of that Tract was to deprecate disputes on a single word, which, as he says, occurs only twice in the New Testament,* one of those two times in a sense unconnected with this question.

This position, however, seems obviously erroneous, at least to this extent that what applies to the term Regeneration must surely apply to its exact synonym, only in two or more words instead of one, as, "being born again," "new birth," or indeed, "being born of God." This doctrine, therefore, besides the Collect for Christmas Day, no doubt extends at least to the Catechism, where, as I apprehend, the child is taught by the school in question to intend a sort of mental interpolation, and to mean "Baptism, wherein (as I trust and believe) I was made a member of Christ and a child of God" that is, on the assumption that these expressions are synonymous with Regeneration, according to which I have included the words "to receive him for thine own child by adoption," in the subject of the hypothetical doctrine.

Adopting then the single word Regeneration as sufficient for the purpose, and for the moment making no definition of it, the hypothetical doctrine appears to be this that the blessing of Regeneration is, undoubtedly, conveyed to some duly-baptized infants: that the words of the service "seeing that this child is regenerate," are in some cases actually true: certainly not in all, but *Matt. xix. 28; Tit. iii. 5.