6

the body and blood of Jesus Christ was instituted for a perpetual observance, even until He come,' and since our Saviour has said, except ye eat the flesh of the son of man, and drink his blood, ye have no life in you,' the Eastern Church, faithful to primitive example, has never dared to withhold the cup from the laity, nor even from infants of tender age. She ordains, moreover, that the bread shall be drenched in the consecrated wine."* Alluding to the decree of the Council of Trent, he adds: "The churches of the west have condemned an immense majority of the human race to die before they have tasted of the bread of life! They may accumulate the most specious arguments in favor of this practice; but these arguments will never be able to stand before the right and simple faith, before the authority of the universal church of all times. Let them beware! By reasoning in this way they will by little come at last to allow only the baptism of adults."

Here we pause. From the point of observation at which. we have arrived, let us look around and survey some of the singular sights which have been disclosed as successive generations of men have appeared, and have passed rapidly away.

In the dim distance of far more than a thousand years, stand St. Cyprian and St. Augustine, affirming the necessity of infant communion, and proving it from the words of our Saviour in John vi: 53, "Except ye eat the body of the Son of Man, and drink his blood, ye have no life in you." Other bishops, yes, bishops of Rome, too, and bishops of the distant East, echo the same. It is recognized by ecclesiastical mandates, and by imperial laws. At length, circumstances somewhat change. New thoughts are suggested. Discussions

arise. New influences are felt. Considerations that had been overlooked are appreciated. The words of our Saviour, that had been misunderstood and wrongly applied, are correctly interpreted. And motives pure, and, probably, motives mixed with human frailty and error, combine, under the over ruling providence of God, to produce a most remarkable

*In the Greek Church, the bread, sodden in the wine, is given to the communicant, from the cup, with a spoon. This fact is stated by the translator, the Rev. Dr. Arnold, who resided several years as a missionary at Athens.

result. What St. Cyprian and St. Augustine had affirmed on this subject was condemned and anathematized! condemned and anathematized by a general council! condemned and anathematized by the general council at Trent, with the sanction of him who claimed to be the universal Bishop, the Vicar and Vicegerent of Jesus Christ on earth, and with the practical concurrence of all the Protestant Churches !

Henceforth let no man despair of other changes in the right direction. But how shall the great ecclesiastical controversies be rightly terminated? The Greek and other eastern churches do not acknowledge the authority of the Romish and other Western churches. But the word of the Lord endureth forever. While both the great anti-Protestant portions of christendom assail each other, and urge their antagonistic claims to apostolic tradition and primitive usage, let us, thankful to God for the unerring rule of faith and practice which he has given us, endeavor to understand and obey it, and set an attractive example by yielding joyfully the lovely fruits of obedience.

The same arguments, for the most part, that disprove and forbid infant communion, disprove and forbid infant baptism. And if infant communion is a great error, infant baptism is a still greater error, and more pernicious. Infant communion does not deprive the child of the benefits of communion when he arrives at the age of discretion. But infant baptism, performed in his early infancy, does, so far as it is regarded, prevent his ever receiving the benefit of being baptized upon a deliberate profession of his faith, an event which he ought to be able to remember, amidst the temptations and cares of life, till he descends into his grave with the well-assured hope of a glorious resurrection.

Infant baptism not only thus wrongs the child, and takes from him what belongs to him, and was designed for his use when he becomes a believer; but it wrongs our Lord himself. It actually, though not intentionally, sets aside his authority. It prevents an ordinance which he saw fit to appoint, and applies it to those to whom it is not adapted, and to whom ho did not intend to have it applied. It tends, in effect, to annul what he ordained. He instituted baptism for professing dis

ciples only. The apostles sanctioned no other. The Bible not only gives no support to infant baptism, but it has passages which clearly show that infants were not baptized in the time of the apostles. And the earliest ecclesiastical history after the time of the apostles knows nothing of the practice. It is a practice that originated in error; in a sad misunderstanding of John iii: 5, and other passages; in confounding the sign with the thing signified; in attributing a mysterious efficacy to the act of baptism; and in a commendable parental affection, misguided, and mingled with the surrounding superstition. It came as an angel of light, to perform a work of mercy. But, angel of light as it seemed to be, it has done an immensity of evil. Alas! what multitudes have been deceived with the vain confidence of being regenerate, and made heirs of eternal life, by an external act performed on them in a state of unconsciousness, or have been led to think that, in connection with such an act, their salvation has, somehow, been secured!

No beautiful association of parental duties and parental confidence in God, unutterably important as these are in their places; no ingenious fiction of a presumptive faith, strong and precious as the agencies and influences of faithful and judicious parents are upon their children; no plausible apology whatever can justify the virtual annulling of the initiatory ordinance which our Lord, in his wisdom and love, established for the observance of his disciples.

Infant baptism led to infant communion. Infant communion, the comparatively innocent accomplice, has been convicted and condemned. Shall the principal offender be permitted to escape condemnation? Why should this seeming angel of light still be caressed and lauded? Why should theological or metaphysical, or any pretentious theories, be constructed to keep up a lamentable influence, ill-gotten at first, and too long retained. No good reason can be given. Infant baptism has been proved to be, not an ordinance instituted by our Lord, or authorized by his apostles, or known to their earliest successors, but a human device, at a later period, the offspring of misapprehension and of ill-directed kindness, relying on the supposed saving

efficacy of a religious ceremony. Whatever may be said of past ages, the present can have no valid excuse for continuing to maintain the error which we are deploring. The present state of christendom is summoning us to conflicts and to trials of our faith, in which we have special need of being established and built up, not in error, but in the truth. How else can we satisfy our own consciences? How else can we meet successfully the Romanists and the Greeks, with their misleading traditions, or rescue from infidelity the sceptics, stumbling over our inconsistencies?

The sacraments, baptism and the Lord's supper, have in themselves no efficacy; but the recipient, in order to be benefited by them, must receive them with faith in Christ. This, one of the great principles for which we have always contended, has now come to be generally conceded by persons of evangelical views in other communions. "But," as it has been said, with an alarming truthfulness, " until infant baptism be openly abandoned, there is a constant tendency to re-action, a danger of relapse. The entering wedge for the recurrence of all that is most fatal in the delusions of Popery is in the crevice, and a few hard blows may at any moment split all other Protestantism to pieces. It is not, therefore, merely in regard to the time and circumstances of a ceremony that Baptists are contending, but it is for principles the most valuable of any embodied in the Reformation from Popery, or in the whole range of evangelical piety-principles for which the Baptist denomination alone have consistently and unwaveringly contended during the last hundred years-principles now regarded with favor by evangelical Christians of other denominations, but in great danger of being weakened and disregarded. So long as infant baptism is preached, a Newman, or a Pusey, or a Nevin, or a Schaff, can, without much torturing, convert it into an acknowledgment of baptismal regeneration on the one side, and a Stoddard or a Bushnell make it the entering wedge of a lax church-membership on the other."*

*See the excellent work, by the Rev. Prof. Curtis, of the University at Lewisburg, Pa., on The Progress of Baptist Principles in the last hundred vears, n. 73-85 (Chap. IV).

DR. BUSHNELL'S ARGUMENTS FOR INFANT BAPTISM.

VII.

INFANT BAPTISM AND INFANT CHURCH MEMBERSHIP.

When the apostle Paul, in his epistle to Titus, mentions, among the qualifications that would indicate the suitableness of a man for the office of a bishop, his being " the husband of one wife," and his "having faithful children, not accused of riot, or unruly," he probably did not intend to be understood as saying that no man could be a bishop who was not a husband, or who had not children, or whose children were not all believers; but rather that his being a husband worthily exemplifying marriage as it was at first divinely instituted, and his having children so judiciously brought up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord that some or all of them were already baptized believers, would be incumbrances highly favorable to his being selected. We cannot, therefore, perceive the necessity of thinking with Dr. Bushnell, that the children here are called faithful or believers "in a presumptive or merely anticipatory way;" or that the Ephesian and Collossian children are included by the apostle among the faithful brethren of the two cities in the same way. The interpretation given of Eph. vi: 1, seems to us forced and unsatisfactory. On these words (children, obey your parents in the Lord), our author remarks: "It is not children in the Lord, or children obey in the Lord your parents; but it is, obey them who are parents in the Lord; as if their parentage itself, in the flesh, were a parentage also in the spirit, communicating both a personal and a christian life. So also," he adds, "when the parents are required to give a nurture in the Lord, we may see that the children are expected to be grown as saints and faithfuls, and to be presumptively in the Lord, apart from any expectations and processes of adult conversion." We cannot help thinking that if he had no particular theory to maintain, he would himself be satisfied with the short and simple note on this passage, in the Tract