Imagini ale paginilor
PDF
ePub

through the mercy of God because we were sinners and in the same way are all persons enjoined to receive it.' Irenæus was a champion for the faith and truth as it is in Jesus, about sixty-seven years after the Apostolic day. And what is his testimony? He (Jesus Christ) came to save all persons by Himselfall, I mean who are by Him regenerated unto God, infants, and little ones, and children, and youths, and elder persons. This regeneration, Justin Martyr most plainly and emphatically refers to Baptism.' Of this regeneration, infants were plainly capable-and if it were indeed only another name for Baptism, as the testimony of the earliest fathers unite to prove, it clearly shews not only that infants were capable of Baptism, but actually and constantly enjoyed it. Tertullian, who taught about one hundred years after the Apostolic era, gives some reasons, into which it is unnecessary to enter, why Baptism may be profitably delayed, especially in the case of little children; an opinion in which he is singular among his brethren-but the very caution most decidedly implies the prevalence of the custom. Origen,

1 Wall on Infant Baptism, pp. 13-17. Ed. 1705.

2 Ibid. 15.

who wrote about ten years afterwards, observes, "Infants are baptized for the forgiveness of sins. Of what sins, or when have they sinned: or how can any reason of the laver in their case hold good? except according to that sense which we mentioned even now? None is free from pollution, though his life be but of the length of one day upon the earth; and it is for that reason, because by the Sacrament of Baptism, the pollution of our birth is taken away, that infants are baptized."1 In this passage we have a plain declaration of Infant Baptism, in the very early Church, and that upon the ground of a pollution coextensive with the whole human race. It is unnecessary to bring forward any more from the great cloud of witnesses adduced by the divines of the Anglican Church, for the Apostolic origin of Infant Baptism; or rather for the Apostolic execution of that large and comprehensive commission of mercy, wherewith the great Head of the Apostles had intrusted them; and which He had ordained as the entrance door into that fold of salvation, where they were to feed his lambs and his sheep with the bread of life.

1 Wall on Infant Baptism, p. 34. His series of proofs on this subject is complete and irrefragable.

1

!

The preceding discourses may be regarded as a foundation whereon the practical character, the spiritual privileges, the momentous duties, the glowing hopes, the sacred claims and obligations arising out of the holy Sacrament, ordained by the Lord of glory for his Church, must rest. It is for you to judge, with the word of the truth of God in your hands, whether that foundation hath been rightfully, lawfully, and sufficiently laid. If really so, then I would affectionately exhort those who may heretofore have indulged the persuasion, groundless in itself, and cruel to the little ones whom Jesus called in the tenderness of mercy to Himself, whether they may guiltlessly hold early Baptism lightly, and defer it from day to day, from month to month, from year to year? I ask, whether they who cannot help themselves, must be abandoned to extraordinary helps for salvation, whereof we have no assurance, and of which we have no scriptural warrant, while we neglect, on their behalf, adopting the way and means which come to us enforced by a precept of Christ,1 by the obedience of his Apostles, and by the imitation of the Church? I ask, whether, in short, it be not a

1 Laud's Conference with a Jesuit, Sect. 15, p. 56.

neglect, for which we must be prepared to answer unto God, at the bar of eternal judgment, that we have delayed to make our children, in this holy rite, members of Christ, children of God, and heirs of the kingdom of heaven?

[merged small][merged small][ocr errors][merged small]

AND THE CHILD GREW, AND WAS WEANED AND ABRAHAM MADE A GREAT FEAST THE SAME DAY THAT ISAAC WAS WEANED. AND SARAH SAW THE SON OF HAGAR THE EGYP TIAN, WHICH SHE HAD BORNE UNTO ABRAHAM, MOCKING. UNTO ABRAHAM, CAST OUT THIS

WHEREFORE SHE SAID

BONDWOMAN, AND HER SON: FOR THE SON OF THE BONDWOMAN SHALL NOT BE HEIR WITH MY SON, EVEN WITH ISAAC.

It is one among those sacred and profitable truths, which the obedience of Christian faith soon learns to lean upon and embrace, that "the natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness unto him; neither can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned," that the surface of a scriptural statement, hastily or slightly examined, may give no indication of the spiritual

1 1 Cor. ii. 14.

« ÎnapoiContinuă »