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The Mould of Doctrine
A Study OF
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PRINCETON . NEW JERSEY PRESENTED BY
Clarence L, Le crone
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1420
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■m MOK 18 tHE PROWm »f ^gjyjEHCEL.LECRO«E
THE MOULD OF DOCTRINE.
A STUDY OF
ROMANS VI. 17,
AS BEARING ON THE MEANING AND VALUE OF THE SPECIFIC FORM OF BAPTISM, AS APPOINTED BY OUR LORD.
JESSE B. THOMAS, D. D.,
Pastor of the Fjrst Baptist Church in Pierrepont St., Brooklyn, N. Y.
PHILADELPHIA :
AMEPJCAN BAPTIST PUBLIC ATIOX SOCIETY,
1420 CHESTNUT STREET.
Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1883, by the
AMERICAN BAPTIST PUBLICATION SOCIETY, In the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington.
RKPEINTKD rSOM THB " EXAMINEK.
CONTENTS,
CHAPTEll I.
The Baptists and the Bible 5
Fidelity or Stubbornness — AYhich? 8 — The Charge of Ritualism, 12 — The Specific Case Considered, 13 — The Question of Catholicity, 17— The War About a Word, 21.
CHAPTER II.
Baptism the Mould of Doctrine 23
A Tendency to Guard Against, 24 — What the '• Mould " Signifies, 27 — How Theories Some- times Grow, 30 — A Curious Hypothesis, 33 — Applying the Survival Theory, 34.
CHAPTER III.
Baptism, the Resurrection, and Historic Chris- tianity 40
Things to be Explained, 43 — Baptism and the Resurrection, 46 — Baptism a Historic Witness, 49.
CHAPTER lY.
Baptism and the New Birth. — Modern Theories 57 The First Great Question, Does Baptism Re- generate ? 57 — The Second Great Question, Does Baptism Symbolize Regeneration ? 69.
CHAPTER V.
Baptism and the New Birth. — The Apostolic
Idea 73
Analogy of Roman to Jewish Beliefs, 76 — Paul Against these Beliefs, 78 — The Central Truth of Christianity, 82 — Baptism Not a Purifica- tion, 85.
3
4 CONTENTS.
CHAPTER YI.
Baptism axd the New Birth — Perversions and
TIIKIR SouRc?:s 90
The Symbolism of the Ordinances, 91 — What Does Infant Baptism Mean ? 94 — llow Sprink- ling is Defended, 98 — An Enormous (Contradic- tion, 101 — How Infant Baptism Arose, 104.
CHAPTER VII.
Baptism and the New Birth — Results of Per-
VERSI.^N 101
Unitarianism and its Orisrin, 113 — Luther's Great Inconsistency, 115 — Spiritual Baptism and the New Birth, 119 — Evolution Fallacies Anticipated, 122.
CHAPTER VIII.
Baptism and Loyalty — The Historic Idea 127
Luther's Prophecy Historically Realized, 132 — Freedom, Civil and Intellectual, Demanded, 135 — The Anabaptists and this Demand, 139 — Re- formers of the Reformation, 14].
CHAPTER IX.
Baptism and Loyalty — Debasing the Standards 147 A Remnant of Rome, 151-— First, The Revision of Formularies, 153 — Second, The Warping of Interpretation, 158 — Some Illustrative In- stances, 160.
CHAPTER X
Baptism and Loyalty — The Ultimate Issue 168
First, The Parable of the Disobedient Son, 171 — Second, The Parable of the Rebellious Tenants, 175— Third, The Parable of the Con- temptuAis Servants, 176 — Baptism the Test of Loyaltv, 181 — A Linguistic Agnosticism, 182 —The Witnessing Word. 188.
The Mould of Doctrine.
CHAPTER I.
THE BAPTISTS AND THE BIBLE.
IN the Autobiography of Dr. Lyman Beeclier (vol. ii., p. 87), in a letter addressed by him to his son Edward, then preparing for the Con- gregational ministry, occurs this curious passage: *^ There is only one thing which you will have to watch and pray against; that is the morbid sensibility of what may be termed a nervous conscience; by which I mean a conscience made preternaturally sensitive and fearful. This I have reason to believe has w^orried many a man till he became a Baptist through excess of conscience." So wholesome a recoil did this paternal caution produce from "excess of con- science," that not only did the young student abandon his growing Baptist predilections, but no one of Dr. Beecher's household has ever siuce been driven thus by conscience into the Baptist ranks.
The notion here insinuated, that Baptist con-
6 THE MOULD OF DOCTlilJSE.
scientiousness is at bottom only scrupulosity, highly flavored with obstinacy, is not unusual, and perhaps under all the circumstances not un- natural, in the casual observer. The skillful partisan knows how to seize an apt point of cir- cumstance, to present an imposing front by mar- shalling his meagre facts into a battle-line long though thin, and so to win by impression rather than by measuring weapons. In the court of prejudice the brilliancy of the indictment is accepted as conclusive of the facts, and judicial inquiry is dispensed with.
Such an opportunity has been afforded, and abundantly improved, in the recent dealings between the Baptists and the American Bible Society. Consider how formidable a case may be made by the bare statement of a few facts, with plausible inferences therefrom, viz. :
1. The real question at issue is the translation of a single word, and that in a single sense — the Bible Society being willing to translate the Greek word by a "generic" term, or to transfer it untranslated. — Did ever "jot and tittle'^ breed 60 great a controversy before?
2. Because the Society will not concede this point, the Baptists alone of all the co-operating denominations withdraw. — What a wanton breach of the "Unity of Christendom," because
THE MOULD OF DOCTRINE. 7
an unsectarian Society will not violate its organic and fundamental principle !
About these two main positions now deploy a skirmish line of supplementary suggestions, such as:
3. The Baptists cling tenaciously to immersion as the only baptism. — How absurd to obstruct the coming reign of "sweetness and light '^ by thus superstitiously exalting the " letter '' above the "spirit" of the ordinance!
4. The Baptists stand almost alone "against the Western world ^^ in this. — How presump- tuous in them to condemn the ancient church by rejecting infant baptism! How arrogant to reflect upon the present church by their "close communion'' doctrine!
6. The Baptists, as known in history, have somehow been pretty uniformly "in the oppo- sition."— This seems to suggest some inherent waywardness of temper, or obliquity of doctrine, tending to the theory that the only way to "please God" is to be "contrary to all men."
Probably the above counts would be regarded by the most rancid anti-Baptist as sufficiently vigorous and comprehensive to present the case in its strongest features, (and perhaps in his judgment to close it in the opening.) But patient examination will often show how a statement
8 THE MOULD OF DOC THINE,
even of undeniable facts may, by an omission, a misconstruction, or the suggestion of a mis- leading inference, tend to a conclusion specious, but utterly false.
Let us begin then with the last of the charges, which being at that end of the case naturally carries the sting, is most venomous, and first felt.
FIDELITY OR ST aBBORNNESS — WHICH?
Some recent New England monographs upon the early Baptists of that realm seem devoted to the establishment concerning them of Elihu's thesis against Job, "What man is like Job, who drinketh up scorning as water? '^ Now if supe- rior success in getting before magistrates, behind prison bars, into the pillory, or out of the com- monwealth, fairly demonstrates a craving for misery and hate, then some of our forefathers seem to have had a really cavernous appetite for that kind of luxury, and no stinted supply. And by the same rule so did the early martyrs. But before concluding so uncharitably, in either case, it is well to consider the reasonableness of their own explanation ; that the suifering was endured rather than coveted, as a logical necessity of fidelity to a doctrine precious above life to them, but sought to be exterminated by others.
But how can fidelity concerning a mere iso-
THE MOULD OF DOCTRINE. 9
lated rite create any logical necessity in realms of conduct and controversy so wide and so distant? Because this necessity is not at once obvious, its existence has been too often ignored or denied, and loyalty to principle has been mocked as stubbornness of self-will.
"It is the singular and distinguished honor of the Baptists,'' says Herbert Skeats, in his History of the Free Churches of England ^ " to have repu- diated, from their earliest history, all coercive power over the consciences and the actions of men with reference to religion. No sentence is to be found in all their writings inconsistent with those principles of Christian liberty and willing- hood which are now equally dear to all the free Congregational Churches of England. They were the proto-evangelists of the voluntary prin- cipled' Mr. Skeats adds in a note, that he is not himself a Baptist. This adds value to his testimony as impartial, but it suggests also a further and pertinent thought. One would suppose that so unique and persistent a coinci- dence, of peculiar doctrinal tenets and allegiance to a peculiar principle, would have hinted some possible causal relation between the two. But he appears to have no suspicion, even, that the alliance is more than accidental. In like manner
^ London edition, 1869, p. 24.
10 THE MOULD OF DOCTRINE.
Gervinus, in his Introduction to Uie History of the- Niiideeiith Cerdury^ writing of the Anabaptists, couples together their "refusal to baptize infants^' by State command, and their "return to the fun- damental maxims of liberty and equality for ■which men were redeemed by Christ," "antici- pating principles which could only be established in later times" — but he does not recognize any mutual dependence of the two ideas. Bogue and Bennett, in their History of Dissentet^s,^ notice it as a ''singular fact that Baptists have universally been independents, when in the nature of things there might have been Episcopal or Pres- byterian Baptists^' Even within a few months the New York Independent asked editorially, in a puzzled way, why the rejection of infant bap- tism and of sprinkling should so uniformly have clung together.
Since men act from motives, and motives arise out of beliefs, it is but just and charitable first to seek an explanation of conduct in some cog- ency of conviction; and only when that resource fails to attribute it to caprice or some baser motive.
Reverting now to the suggestion that the great body of Christendom are united against the Bap-
' London, 1866, pp. 29, 30. » London, 1808, vol. I., p. 142.
TEE MOULD OF DOCTRINE. 11
tists as to their peculiar views, it is enough to cite in response Bishop Jewell's words in his apology, ^ " Unity is not a sign of truth. There was per- fect unity among the Israelites when they wor- shipped the golden calf." " The old Arians called themselves CatJiolic, and stigmatized the Ortho- dox as Ambrosians and Athanasians/^ If ma- jorities alone establish "catholicity/^ then is Rome really more catholic than Protestantism, and Paganism more so than all of us together. If divergence from the majority, either in the past or the present, seems to savor of presump- tion or arrogance, it is still the inevitable penalty of trying to do right. Luther sometimes felt the seeming rashness of the attitude he and his comrades had assumed toward "the Pope and the Doctors, and the whole body of the Church,'^ while, as he quaintly said, "there is not wit enough among us to cure a spavined horse.'' But he did not flinch, and the Reformation be- came secure. If an honest effort to improve upon the decayed or perverted habits of the community be a reflection upon one's neighbor, who can measure the arrogance of a man who buys a new hat before his neighbors are supplied. "Master, saying this, thou reproachest us also,"
1 Cited in Hunt's History of Religious TJwught in England (London, 1870), p. 44.
12 THE MOULD OF DOCTRINE.
siiid the lawyer to our Lord, as though such a consequence must lead him to review or with- draw his words. But the words stand.
THE CHARGE OF RITUALISM.
Turning the wheel one notch further back, we come to the third charge against the Baptists as specified above — ^the familiar charge, (so " fa- miliar" indeed as to have bred "contempt/') that they value form above essence, and so be- come mere ritualists. The freedom of dealing with the ordinance by others is applauded by way of contrast, as exalting the "spirit'' above the "letter." Probably those who follow this line of suggestion do not see that they are ad- vocating the entire abolition, and not the modi- fication, of the external ordinances. Was the Apostle in contrasting the terms " letter" and "spirit" contending for literal circumcision on a reduced scale? Coleridge, criticizing Jeremy Taylor's discussion in this line, says^ "his only plausible arguments apply equally to the Pedo- baptists and the Baptists, and prove the Quakers right if anybody." But Neander^ tells us that George Fox, the chief interpreter of the Quak- ers, went further, and argued the subordination
1 Works (N. Y., 1853), vol., Aids to Re/., p. 336. ^History of Chrislian Dogmas (Bohn, 1858), vol. II., p. G33.
THE MOULD OF DOCTRINE. 13
of all the "letter" of Scripture to the "inward light," on the same grounds that the Catholics subject it to the authority of the " Church," and Meier and his followers to that of "reason." Socinus, too, the early herald of Unitarianism, denieii the permanence of water baptism, re- garding its early observance a concession to the carnalism of Jews and heathen. Along this same drift went Ralph Waldo Emerson, trans- cendentalizing the Scripture, and breaking finally from the Unitarians, because he would not par- ticipate in the superstitious prolongation of a "mere form" in the Lord^s Supper.
A command to do a particular thing is not obeyed by doing some other thing, however similar. And as its issuance implies wisdom and authority, to attempt to improve upon it is to assume superior wisdom, and to release from it is to arrogate superior authority. The Bap- tists are simply guilty of refusing to do either.
THE SPECIFIC CASE CONSIDERED.
But to consider the more specific case in hand, as set forth in the second of the above com- plaints. Baptists, it is alleged, having entered with others into a "catholic" and " unsectarian " organization, sought to induce its managers to violate the original agreement between the par-
14 THE MOULD OF DOCTRINE,
ties, and prostitute the institution to a sectarian end, and failing in this, they have broken up the unity of American Christians in Bible work. The managers of the Bible Society in the leading article of their official paper. The liecoi^d (for June 15, 1882), which was intended to be a kind of irenicon to the Baptists, have not been able by a most courteous and dexterous statement of the ciise to avoid the virtual renewal of this heavy cliarge. They say "the Society was formed in 1816 with one specific object," which the mana- gers have since aimed to carry out " in a manner entirely free from sectarianism and partisanship." In illustration of this they add, that the Society ^' has never printed or circulated the Douay Bible or the Rhemish Testament, or appropriated funds for this purpose ; " that " it is a principle of the Society to circulate no versions except those which are made from the original Greek and Hebrew, and this rule excludes from its list certain versicms in French, Spanish, Portuguese, and Italian, translated from the Vuk/ateJ^
Beferring to the request of the Missionary Union for funds to publish " two versions of the Bible whixih have been long in use in Burmah/^ one of them ''well knoum as Dr. Judson's version, the early editions of tohich had been printed at the Socieiy^s expeTise/^ the other "Dr. Mason's Karen
THE MOULD OF DOCTRINE. 15
Bible/* they add that having been examined "in regard to their catholicity and the fidelity of their translation/^ they were found ^^defixiiefnt in the quality of catholicity, and therefore could not he lyroperly recommended for adoption J' This lack of catholicity, they explain, is evidenced by the fact that some of those using Dr. Judson's ver- sion do so " under protest, being constrained, for conscience sake, in the public reading of Scrip- ture to substitute other words for those selected by Dr. Judson to indicate the rite of baptism." They further remind the public, that "as long ago as 1836'' they offered "$5,000 to those who were then interested in Dr. Judson's work, to promote the circulation of any versions which all the denominations represented in the Society could consistently use and circulate in their several schools and communities, and the offer was de- clined." The article in question is entitled "Limitations," and its whole aim is to show, as above indicated, that the Baptists have ignorantly or craftily attempted to betray the Managers into trangressing the Society's or- ganic "limitations," and this being refused, have unreasonably, if not dishonorably, revolted.
But before accepting this as a new illustration that the Baptists are like porpoises, with their heads always instinctively to the wind, let us ask
3fi TEE MOULD OF DOCTRINE,
wliether, in this as in many other cases, it may not be the wind that has changed instead of the porpoises.
What, then, was the "specific object '' for which tlie Bible Society was established? As stated in its own documents, it was the circula- tion^ of "received versions where they exist," and the "most faithful translations" where there are no received versions. Under that original compact they recognize to this day their obliga- tion to print only King James' English version, without inquiring into its "catholicity," or the superior " faithfulness " of later revisions. Their " limitations " as rigidly still bind them to spread that as to reject others. Under the plain letter of their mutual contract (to which the Roman Catholics were not a party, either), they published, at least up to 1840, Roman Catholic translations of the Vulgate. A report in their minutes of that year, referring to this fact, says : ^ " In for- eign countries we were to publish 4n received versions where they exist, and in the most faith- ful translations where they do not.' These ^re- ceived versions' alluded to were no doubt the French, Spanish, Portuguese, German, Italian, Arabic, Syriac, Armenian, etc., as old or older
^ A. B. Society Report, 1840. 2 lb., pp. 33, 34.
THE MOULD OF DOCTRINE, 17
tlian the English, and which the Society could not expect to alter." Now in this group are the very versions mentioned by the Managers in 1882 as excluded from their list by a " principle of the Society," to " circulate no versions " made " from the Vulgate," but only those '^made from the original Greek and Hebrew." When and how this ^^ principle" came in does not appear.
If their being "received versions" be denied or ignored, and the question turn on their being " faithful and catholic translations," it may well be answered: 1. That they fully meet the So- ciety's standard of catholicity, their only test being the treatment of the word for baptism; 2. That if translations based on the Vulgate be presumably inferior — ^the stream being less pure than the fountain — ^those based on the English must be still worse, as coming from still lower in the stream — the English itself being derived chiefly through the Vulgate from the Greek. ^
Whether under its obligation to print "re- ceived versions" or "faithful translations" does not appear, but under one head or the other the Society did print Dr. Judson's version at the
^ See Eadie History English Bible (London, 1876), vol. I., p. 402 ; vol. II., pp. 70, 191, et passim. li
18 THE MOULD OF DOCTRINE.
first. If it was the "received version '^ then, it is now; for there is no other. If it was a "faithful translation" then", it is noAv; for it has not changed. If the original compact ever required its publication under either head, it does now; for it is a first principle of equity that no compact once entered upon can be changed, or new terms added, except by com- mon consent. And four partners can no more do this as against one, than one as against four.
But the Managers of the Bible Society have not only Violated the rights of their copartners by the forcible insertion of the words "and catholic ^^ ill the original compact, but have gone on to define that word in a sense most invidious and exclusive, ahd so most contradictory. If an unsectarian be a comprehensive and a sectarian a divisive spii'it, then has the Bible Society chosen for itself a most sectarian attitude.
It was scarcely worthy of a scholar like Dean Trench, in his work on Bihle Revision,^ to suggest that the "so-called Baptists" could not be invited to co-operate, "seeing that they de- mand, not a translation of the Scripture, but an interpretation, and that in their own sense." It is no more worthy of a great Christian organiza- tion like the American Bible Society to brand as
'New York, 18r)8, p. 1T9.
THE MOULD OF D0CTJiI2i'E. 19
non-catholic a version of the Scripture, which in its rendering of the particular word criticized follows exactly in the footsteps of "all the im- portant ancient Oriental versions/' made b fore our modern sects came into beinfr. Was tlic ancient Syriac made by a Baptist for partisan ends? Was Ulfilas a sectarian, or Luther, or Henry Martyn, whose Persian Bible this Society has probably circulated? But in all these trans- lations the word is "immerse," or its equivalent.^ But the question of catholicity, we are re- minded, is in this case a practical one. The Society comprises various denominations, and it must circulate no versions save those which all alike can "consistently use and circulate." But what can they ^^ consistently^^ use and circulate? Since all versions are still to be conformed "to the principles upon which the American Bible Society was originally founded," it is fair to interpret the word in the light of those prin- ciples as then announced and acted on. It appears, then, that in 1816 the Society thought it "consistent" for all parties to "use and cir- culate" versions rendering baptize "immerse"; for they promised to circulate and did circulate
1 Cf. Bosworth, Gothic and Anglo-Saxon Versions (London, 1874).
20 THE MOULD OF DOCTRINE.
such versions then and for a long time after,' By what rule do the Managers decide that it is inconsistent for a High Churchman or a Broad Churchman to use such a version, when these do not for a moment dispute the meaning of the word, but rest their divergent practice solely on the authority, the one of the Church, the other, with Dean Stanley, of the Zeitgeist According to the scholarship of Bishop Titcomb's own Church, it is just as easy to prove that "im- merse'' means "sprinkle'' as that ^'JBaptizo^^ does, and he need not be more " embarrassed " by the one than by the other.
But he is embarrassed by the "public reading" of one word and the public doing of another and different thing, and "consistency" must be re- stored by conforming the word translated to the thing done. At this writing, therefore, transla- tors must, in order to reach the "catholicity" required by the American Bible Society, subject their work to three successive processes of refine- ment : 1 . Start Avith Greek and Hebrew text ; 2. Correct by the English version ; 3. Modify so as not to conflict with current customs. It was the Komanist, Albert Pighius, who said the Scrip- tures are like "a nose of wax which may be twisted every way." They are certainly never
1 See Bible Society's Record, June 15, 1882.
THE MOULD OF DOCTBII^E, 21
more pliable than when fluent in the process of translation.
THE WAR ABOUT A WORD.
But as something more is hereafter to be said on this particular theme, it is well to pass on to the only remaining point — the supposed folly of war about a word. It is quite open to some of our good-natured critics to urge that the English title, ^^ Particular Baptists ^^ be now relinquished to the Americans in memory of this controversy. But it will be remembered that it was the Board and not the Baptists who first struck at the word. It had been left untranslated, or rendered by divers terms colorless or misleading, as the Bap- tists believed, without revolt by them. They asked for themselves only what they conceded to others, a charitable reciprocity of judgment and dealing. But this was decided not to be " catho- lic.'' And they "were made offenders for a word."
This event will have served a good purpose, however, if it compels renewed attention to some questions involved in or cognate to the matter of Scripture translation. Whether the Scripture shall be translated at all is no longer a question, at least among Protestants; but it was once hotly contested, and great epochs of religious history
22 THE MOULD OF DOCTRINE.
grew out of the contest. Whether it shall all be translated, and if not, what and hoAv many words shall still be kept in the original shadow — this, though seemingly a smaller question, has also had its not insignificant place among the problems of the past. The inevitable narrowing of the issue here and now to a single word may well set us inquiring also as to whether that word, and the rite it describes, have had their due consideration as formative and conservative forces in Christian history, and whether they are worth contending for.
A sentence of the apostle Paul is eminently suggestive in this connection, occurring in Romans 6: 17. In the New Revision it reads, "Ye became obedient from the heart to that form (margin "pattern'') of teaching whereunto ye were delivered." It is noticeable that, in fidelity to the original, the marginal rendering in the commou version is the exclusive, form in the New. If the ^^ mould of doctrine^^ here alluded to be, as will here be maintained, the ordinance of baptismy then the significance of the present issue will be manifest. For, in that case, he Avho breaks the mould imperils the doctrine.
CHAPTER II.
BAPTISM TBE MOULD OP VOCTBIXE.
TWO master sayings from great men will be found pertinent in current religious discus- sion The one is from Lord Bacon's Essay on Superstition,' viz.: "There is a superstition in avoiding superstition, when men think to do best if they go farthest from the supei-stition formerly received; therefore care should be h'-<l t^^* the good be not taken away with the bad. The other is from Bishop Butler in his Anahgy of Beligion,' viz.: "As it is one of the peculiar weaknesses of human nature when, upon a com- parison of two things, one is found to be ot greater importance than the other, to consider this other as of scarcely any importance at all; it is hio-hly necessary that we remind ourselves how gr^t presumption it is in ns to make light of any institutions of divine appointment." i-Whately's Annotated Bacon (Boston, 1863), p. 178. J (London, 1852), Pt. II., ch. 1, p. 209.
24 TUB MOULD OF DOCTRINE.
A TENDENCY TO GUARD AGAINST.
The reactionary tendency to an irrational ex- treme is perceptible in much that has lately been said in disparagement of ^institutional religion.'' Luther found people in his day who thought the greater part of Protestantism consisted in show- ing their contempt for Rome by eating meat on Friday. There are some who measure their spirituality to-day by the magnificence of their contempt for all religious forms. Now it is to be hoped that tlie essence of neither Protestantism nor spirituality consists in stupidity; and if not, it will be worth while to notice that the really contemptible thing in Christian history has been, not the introduction of forms, which was divine; but their unauthorized multiplication, and per- version to base ends, which was wholly human. Let the parasites suffer, and not the tree they have infested. Because baptism, for instance, was once wrongly counted necessary to salvation, we need not now, as though "reverse of wrong were right," conclude that it is in every sense unnecessary. Because, like its Divine Origi- nator, it has been disfigured and loaded with tawdry mockeries, we are not bound to crucify it between two thieves.
Bishop Butler's caution as to over-disparage-
TUE MOULD OF DOCTRINE. 25
ment by contrast reminds us likewise of the frequent suggestion that baptism, being less important than other things, is I'eally u7iimpo7^- tant. Here the illicit expansion of the partial into an universal conclusion seems to arise from a lurking fallacy in the statement of the case. For unless it be less important in every sense than all other things, it cannot be unimportant. To say, for instance, that baptism is of less consequence than faith, because it does not save, is like saying that brains are of less account than breath, because life does not come through them. Breath and brains are not rivals, but alike essential in their rcsjjective spheres — the one that life may exist, the other that it may report itself. Comparing baptism with Christ^s only other ordinance, it is indeed '^difficult," as Dean Stan- ley remarks, "to see what is the difference in principle in the Roman Church which has ren- dered the practice with regard to one sacrament so exceedingly lax, with regard to the other so exceedingly rigid "^ and the observation need not be confined to Home.
However superciliously treated by men, the Kew Testament unquestionably gives baptism a preeminent place. In the order of time it is
* Article on ''Baptism," Nineteenth Centiry Magor vine, VI., p. '<04.
26 THE MOULD OF DOCTMINE.
first. The two great transitional epochs of the early world, when Noah Avent through the flood, and Israel through the Red Sea, beginning the world's life anew, are specialized as the true prototypes of baptism.^ Through it our Lord was " manifested " and found entrance to his pub- lic ministry.^ Through it Christianity became visible on the day of Pentecost, and the external church began to be.^
Not less significant is its primary place in the order of symbolism ; for according to Archbishop Whately it "denotes spiritual birth" as the Lord's Supper does "the continual support of the Christian life."*
But a still deeper primacy of significance is attributed to this sacred ordinance in the title given it by the apostle Paul, and which has suggested these articles. Bishop Wordsworth renders the verse in question (Rom. 6 : 17) as follows: "You readily obeyed the mould of Christian faith and practice into which at your baptism you were poured, as it were, like soft, ductile, and fluent metal, in order to be cast and
»1 Peter 3: 21. 1 Cor. 10: 2.
2 John 1 : 31.
s Acts 2 : 38.
* Corruptions of Christianity (N. Y., 1880), p. 109.
THE MOULD OF DOCTRINE. 27
take its form." ^ Adding that the metaphor suggests itself to the apostle naturally in Corinth, wtee he was writing— a city famous for its castings in bronze. Conybeare and Howson^ translate the closing words of the verse "liter- ally" as "the mould of teaching into which you are transmitted." In a note they remark of the context :
St. Paul's view of the Christian life, throughout the sixth, seventh, and eighth chapters, is that it consists of a death and a resurrection; the new-made Christian dies to sin, to the world, to the flesh and to the law; this death he undergoes at his first entrance into communion with Christ, and it is both typified «^^ realized when he is buried beneath the baptismal waters. But no sooner is he thus dead with Christ than he rises with him ; he is made partaker of Christ's resurrection; he is united to Christ's body ; he lives in Christ, and to Christ ; he is no longer in the flesh, but in the spirit.
W^HAT THE "mould" SIGNIFIES.
The authority of these leaders of the English Church, so eminent for learning and candor, will be assumed as sufficient to justify at least the preliminary assumption that the apostle in this vei-se refers to baptism as the "mould of
^Commentary on New Testament (London, 1877). p. 232.
2 Life and Epistles of Paul (New York, 1869), vol. II., p. 170.
2R THE MOULD OF DOCTRINE.
doctrine." The word here rendered mould {tupos) carries three shades of significance, as is recognized in our authorized version of the New Testament, viz.:
1. Historic. The mould has itself been cast, and records unerringly the features of the matrix that formed it. Thus the unbelieving disciple demanded to see not simply marks (stigmata) in the hands of the Crucified, but the unmistakable print (tupos) of the nails.
2. Symbolic. The mould bears a distinct out- line which has a meaning; always the same out- line, and hence always the same meaning. The correspondence here is not of Tact and fact, but of fact and idea. In this sense Adam was the ^^jigure (tupos) of him who is to come."
3. Formative. The mould fixes its character- istic outlines upon all its fabrics, so that their genuineness is proved by their being exact re- productions of itself. So Moses was to make all things "according to the pattern (tupos) shown him in the mount."
The constant idea throughout is that of per- manent and verifiable coincidence of outline between counterparts. But to break a single line of the mould is to destroy this coincidence. It no longer faithfully records its origin, its device is blurred, and all its products marred.
THE MOULD OF DOCTRINE. 29
Precisely this significance the apostle here attri- butes to the baptismal mould.
1. Historically. It is the memorial of the dominant fad of Christianity — Our Lord's Resurrection from the dead. It bears the "print" of that event as unmistakably as his hands did the outline of the nails. ^'Like as Christ," says the apostle in verse 4, "so we."
2. Symbolically. It is the palpable "figure" of the dominant idea of Christianity — ^the New Birth. This indisputable emblematic force of baptism forms the crisis and justification of his whole argument. "Are ye ignorant" of this, asks the apostle, in verse 3, as though such obtaseness were incredible.
3. Formatively. It is the faithful exponent and enforcer of the dominant principle of Chins- tianity — the surrender of the whole man through faith. " Ye became obedient from the heart," he says, therefore "your members" are all included. The "yielding up" in baptism is the "pattern" of the whole subsequent life.
The Epistle to the Romans is indisputably the great doctrinal Epistle of the New Testament. That Epistle is but an elaboration of these three elements of doctrine. They appear at once in the introduction (ch. 1 : 1-7), viz. : the resurrection of Christ, as the "declaration" of his Sonship;
30 THE MOULD OF DOCTRINE,
saintship [i. e,, separatedness to a new life) as the characteristic of discipleship; and "obedi- ence of faith '^ as the shaping force in Christian character. But all these again, in distinct though germinal outline, are enclosed in the single rite of baptism. If it seems absurd to us that so great issues can lie hid in so insignificant a thing as a "mere rite/^ let us remember that he who out of infinite possibilities selected that single form, is the same who has chosen the acorn to hold un- counted forests, and — a significant parallel — birth to hold all the marvels and still unexplored mysteries of life. Recent philosophic and his- toric discussions remind us how little danger of exaggeration there is in attributing so tremen- dous a force to symbolism. "Men are guided by type, and not by argument," says Dr. New- man. " Every idea vividly before ns/' says Bage- hot, "soon appears to be true, unless we keep up our perceptions of the arguments which prove it untrue, and voluntarily coerce our minds to re- member its falsehood."
HOW THEORIES SOMETIMES GROW.
The Puritans maintained, says Hardwick in his History of the Thirty-Nine Articles,^ "with as much sagacity as malice," that "the right
iBohn's Edition (London, 1876), p. 206. •
THE MOULD OF DOCTRINE. 31
government of the Church cannot be separated from the doctrine.^' It is significant that their quarrel ^vith the English Church, Luther's with Rome, and nearly all the controversies in the Church, have grown out of the questions per- taining to the external, which were seen to involve inevitably the internal also. Archbishop Whately's Essay on the Corruptions of Borne Traced to their Origin in Human Nature is a book w^ell w^orthy of careful study, and bearing directly on the present theme. He there says,^ ^' It is a mistake, and a very common and practi- cally not unimportant one, to conclude that the wngin of each tenet or practice is to be found in those arguments or texts which are urged in support of it; that they furnish the cause, on the removal of Avhich the effects w^ill cease of course; and that when once those reasonings are exploded, and those texts rightly explained, all danger is at an end of falling into similar errors. The fact is, that in a great number of instances, and by no means exclusively in questions con- nected with religion, the eii^oneous belief or prac- tice has arisen first, and the theory has been devised afterwards for its support.'^ Dr. Newman's book on the Development of the Doctrine in the Church
^ Cited iu Annotations on Bacon, p. 183.
S2 THE MOULD OF DOCTRINE.
of Rome ^ is a precise illustration of this state- ment. He himself describes it as containing a "hypothesis to account for a difficulty;" the "difficulty" being that the "successor of the Apostles" has plainly repudiated the apostolic precedents by which he assumes to be bound. Many modern theories as to the nature and import of baptism, and the Scriptural terms describing it, may justly be described by the same title. Inherited practices as to mode and subject, and notions as to symbolism do not coincide with Scriptural language ; hence " hypo- theses" ever springing to account for the "diffi- culty." Two of these theories — the Romish and the Broad Church — distinctly admit that the "mould" Paul speaks of has been broken. Bossuet says, " We are able to make it appear by the acts of councils and by ancient ritual, that for thirteen hundred years baptism was administered by plunging." Wall in his History of Infant Baptism says further, that this has never ceased in any except a Papal nation.^ Dean Stanley, who may stand for the Broad Church, says, "No existing ritual of any European Church offers any likeness " to the apostolic ordi- nance. " The change from immersion to sprink-
1 London, 1845.
2 Ed., Nashville, 1860, p. 728.
TUB MOULD OF DOCTRINE. 33
ling has sd aside the large)' part of the apostolic laiiguage regarding baptism, and lias altered the very meaning of the word.'^ ^ For this frankly admitted boldness in reconstructing the original rite, the Romanist offers as a justification the supremacy and infallibility of the Church. Dean Stanley proposes instead the sanction of "the spirit which lives and moves in human society, and can override even the most sacred ordi-
But there is still a third, and both curiously and unfortunately, a far more modem theory. Curiously, because if true, it is wonderful that it was never discovered by those who wrote the primitive Greek, as it has never yet occurred to those who inherit the language. Unfortunately, because of the acres of apology and casuistry it might have saved if broached before. This " hy- pothesis" removes the "difficulty" by a simple expedient. "The ^ mould' never was broken," it mildly suggests, " for it was made of material so elastic and flexible as to be incapable of being broken." A word was sagaciously chosen, as it appears, to describe it, so plastic, that into what- ever country the gospel should come, its messen- gers might inquire what particular form may be
^ Nineteenth Century Magazine, VI., p. 698. C
34 THE MOULD OF DOCTRINE.
most congenial to the customs, convenience, or tastes of the people, and thereupon answer, "the word means that/' We have heard of the Judge who left it to the prisoner to say " w^hat day w^ould be convenient for him to be hanged " — but never of a law ambiguously framed for the express pur- pose of leaving it to the prisoner's comfort or caprice how he should be hanged, or whether he should be hanged at all. Devotion to such a theory w^ould soon produce for us a genuinely "limp-back" Bible — limp, not as to binding only, but all the way through.
These theories, so extraordinary and so perilous in their tendencies, have all grown out of a com- mon exigency. First practically departing from the "pattern" Christ had given — ^then "willing to justify," rather than to rectify, that departure =— men have successfully substituted for his supremacy that of the Infallible Pope, or the infallible nineteenth century; or reduced his sceptre to a mocking "reed" by the application of the " flexible-interpretation " to his w^ords of command.
But if the original command w^as in fact ex- plicit, and the original rite distinct and uniform, what rational explanation can be given of diver-
THE MOULD OF DOCTRINE. 35
sities so early and so great? Here again we are reminded at once of Archbishop Whately's sug- gestion, and bidden to ask if there be any radical and constant *' tendencies of human na- ture" likely to furnish a clew. Dean Stanley's^ article (in the Nineteenth Century Magazine) on Baptism, begins with the remark that he intends to consider "what is the inner meaning which has more or less survived all the changes through which it has passed.'^ Dr. G. A. Jacob (also of the English Church) remarks of the baptism of infants, that it is "not to be found in the New Testament," but that we find there " the funda- mental idea from which it was afterwards de- vdoped."^ These words "survival" and "de- velopment" are "half in the speech of Ashdod." To Ashdod let us go, therefore, for interpre- tation.
A "survival," in scientific parlance, is a cus- tom or notion which has come over from a former state of society, but is no longer in- telligible, because from gradual loss of its origi- nal form or otherwise, its original meaning has also been lost.^ The habit, like a Fourth of
' Nineteenth Century Magazine, YI., p. 685.
2 Ecclesiastical Polity of New Testament (New York, 1872), pp. 270, 271.
3 Tylor's Primitive Culture (New York, 1874), voL I., p. 70, seq.
36 THE MOULD OF DOCTRINE.
July pin-wheel, goes on Avhirling after its fire is burnt out. The Tyrolese peasant crosses him- self when he yawns, the Italian says Felicita when his neighbor sneezes, and wise people everywhere are troubled at overturning the salt- cellar. But if you ask why, all will answer with the stolid Mexican, "Who knows?" The modern soldier thinks the hair streaming from his helmet a mere ornamental device; but Mr. Ruskin says it is a reminiscence of the mane that once hung down the back of the savage, who donned the skin of the wild beast he had killed, to steal its courage.^
'^Development" in the scientific sense is that process of change through which, whether by accretion or decretion, by improvement or degen- eration, customs, and all things else, have come to their present form. Every existing fact is to be studied as a fossil, whose features, enlarged, con- fused, or worn down in petrifaction, assimilation, and wave-tossing, still may be dimly read; remembering that the forces that shaped it are constant and calculable. The history of words, for instance, may be traced Avith considerable certainty, according to Professor Sayce,^ by the recognition of three universal tendencies, viz. : " 1.
^Ragle's Nest (N. Y., 1873), p. 190. ^Introduction to Science of Language (Loiidou, 1880), vol. I., p. 163, seq.
THE MOULD OF DOCTRINE. 37
Imitation or anaIogy^\' e.g., the Chinese trying to speak English falls into Pigeon-English; the Frenchman Gallicizes our words into ros-bif and bif-teck; and the temporary Parisian perpetually throws his small force of badly drilled French words into a hc>llow square, so as not to seem too exotic. "2. A vnsh to be dear and emphatie.^' This taxes the inventive faculty. It invents new words, or new meanings for old words. The modern use of "evolution'' is an illustration. Every political campaign produces new epithets and catch-words, which sometimes live. In John Wesley's time "sentimental" was new. He wrote of Sterne's Sentimental Journey, '' Sentl- mnental is not English." He might as well have said Continental. But one fool makes many. The Avord has become fashionable, though it means nothing." "3. Laziness/^ leading to "phonetic decay." This clips the ears and tail, and sometimes cuts through the body of words, as in the slovenly "gent" and "bus." It loses good words, or spills the meaning out of them. So "Magdalen" becomes "Maudlin" — and a "simple" man a fool. Through this unhappy mutilation and defacing of the coin of speech we are cut off from commerce with former ages, as with foreign countries, except through the inter- vention of the philological money-changer.
58 THE MOULD OF DOCTRINE.
Unliappy it certainly is, for as Dean Trench once remarked, "Hardly any original thoughts on mental or social subjects ever make their way among mankind . . until aptly selected words or phrases have, as it were, nailed them down and held them fastJ^ ^ Elsewhere he likens words to ships which " convey the mental treasures of one period to the generations that follow : and laden with this, their precious freight, they sail across gulfs of time in which empires have suffered fchipwreck.'^ ^ How harmful then to tear up the fixed symbol — to wreck the freighted ship.
Now all that is here said of words, which are forms of speech, is true of rites, which are forms of action, meant to serve a like end, and subject to peril from like causes. To be like the heathen, Jeroboam made a golden calf, through which to worship the true God. In like spirit Rome has since borrowed the mass from Buddhists, and holy water from Pagan temples. Israel "forgot his Maker,^' but emphasized his religiosity by "building temples.'^ Rome "shortened the Deca- logue, but lengthened the Creed ; " she took the cup from the laity — but added the elevation and
1 On the Study of Words, (New York, Twenty.fifth Ed.), p. 26.
2/6., p. 28.
THE MOULD OF DOCTRINE. 39
adoration of the host, and multiplied idle cere- monies.
To satisfy the people's love of ease she has, in Dean Stanley's words, had the ^' boldness " to *' substitute a few drops of water for the ancient bath." "Through the history of sacrifice," says Mr. Tylor, in his Primitive Culture^ "it has occurred to many nations that cost may be economized without impairing efficiency." Ac- cordingly, " in Madagascar the head of the sacri- ficed beast is set upon a pole, and the blood and fat are rubbed on the stones of the altar" (in lieu of the gift of the whole beast, as formerly) ; "and Scotchmen still living remember the corner of a field being left untilled for the Goodman's croft {i. e., the devil's); but the principle of ^clieating the deviV was already in vogue, and the piece of land allotted was hut a worthless scraps ^
lEd., New York, 1874, vol. II., pp. 370, 399-402.
CHAPTER III.
BAPTISM, THE RESURRECTION, AND HISTORIC CHRISTIANITY.
BAPTISM is defined by the Congregational Union of England and Wales in their de- liverance of 1833, to be "the application of water to the subject" in the name of the Trinity.^ The whole significance of the rite, according to this definition, is in the natural symbolism of water as a cleansing agent, " putting away the fihh of of the flesh." The writer of Ecce Homo inter- prets the Lord's Supper by a similar rule. " The meal consisted of bread and wine, the simplest and in those countries most universal elements of of food." "A common meal is the most natural and universal way of expressing, maintaining, and as it were ratifying relations of friendship." The primary idea being therefore the expression of mutual friendship, " The Christian communion is a club-dinner J^^
Accepting these suggestions as quite in their line,
1 Schaff, Creeds of Christendom, vol. III., p. 732.
2 Ecce Homo (Boston, 1868), pp. 187, 188.
40
THE MOULD OF DOCTRINE. 41
the modern "evolution" school push them to their logical issue in the denial of any authoritative institution or historic significance in either ordi- nance. Mr. Herbert Spencer devotes his book on Ceremonial Institutions mainly to "reasons for rejecting the current hypothesis that cere- monies originate in conscious symbolization, and for enteitaining the belief that in evei^y case they originate by evolution J' ^ Mr. Tylor in his Prim- itive Culture concludes that according to the " ethnographic method in theology," " a vast pro- portion of doctrines and rites knowTi among mankind are not to be judged as direct pr'oducts of the particular religious systems which give them sanction; for they are in fact more or less modi- fied results adopted from previous systems.^ He instances baptism, assuming it to consist simply in the "application of water," as a mere prolong- ation of heathen lustration — water being in either case the natural and universal symbol of purifying agency.^ By parity of reasoning the Lord's Supper would find its origin and sufficient explanation in the primitive custom of " eating salt" together as a pledge of mutual fidelity.
By this process all reminiscence of Christ or his work is boldly purged out of both ordinances, and the historic relations of Christianity are
» (New York, 1880.) 2 YqI. II., p. 451. ^ /^.^ pp, 430, 441.
42 THE MOULD OF DOCTRINE.
practically treated as unreal or insignificant. If the characteristic symbols of our faith express only or mainly the present and isolated fact of our purification through water, and our fellow- ship through bread and wine, why busy ourselves with a past to which they do not point us? What to us, then, more than to Festus, are those ^^ques- tions of their own superstition," especially "of one Jesus which was dead, whom Paul affirmed to be alive." The Scotch Sermom of 1880 plainly state that the great battle of the last century over the credibility of the miraculous was "an affair of outposts altogether," and touched "no vital point of revelation." Strauss flattered himself at first that liis view w^as "more Christian than the old Christian one itself," for although he had sought to obliterate the historic Christ, it was only that he might substitute for the transient person an eternal idea. "Not by immersion;" says Canon Curteis, in considering what conces- sions the Church of England may make to win back Dissenters, "in that point the Church's freedom must be unflinchingly maintained in order to teach the spirituality of the Lord's sacra- ments, by using the drop of water and the frag- ment of bread to represent the regenerating bath and the eucharistic feast." ^ That is to say, the ^ Damp. Lee, isn. ''Dissent., etc" (London),]). 289.
TEE MOULD OF DOCTRINE. 43
idea is only truly to be propagated by effacing the formative fact, the "spirit" only by defacing the significant " letter."
THINGS TO BE EXPLAINED.
But facts are not destroyed by supercilious treatment, and it is unavailing to attempt the ideal reconstruction of a history which has not first been actually abolished. The primary question is one, not of theory, but of testimony. The assailant of Christianity from the side of historic criticism is therefore called to explain the following indisputable circumstances:
1. The continuous and uniform belief of the church, from the first century, that it had its origin in the facts narrated in the New Testa- ment.
2. The existence, as acknowledged even by the most extravagant criticism, of at least four of Paul's letters (viz. : to the Galatians, the Romans, and the two to the Corinthians), within a short generation of the alleged occurrence of the facts therein cited.
3. The general observance to this day of a rite which, as the Apostle reminds the Corinthians, had been instituted by our Lord "on the night in which he was betrayed" as an enduring testi- mony of his crucifixion.
44 TEE MOULD OF DOCTRINE.
The value of this last link in the chain has been often urged by writers on the evidences of Christianity, and will not be underrated by those who are familiar with the principles of historic inquiry. For 1. It reaches back to the event itself, and is of the nature of contemporaneous testimony. 2. Being a concrete act participated in by many, its testimony was unequivocal. 3. It was not only the reminder of a fact, but a scenic rehearsal of its very form. It was not a feast, for it was established at a feast. The bread and wine were present, and were being shared in ; but they told no story, until he put the hrealdng of the one and pouring of the other into emblem- atic association with the breaking of his body and the shedding of his blood, and so bade them ^^ show the Lord's death till he come.'' This ceremonial is forever sundered from all heathen feasts, therefore, not by the use of bread and wine, which is common to both, but by the form of that use with which no heathen rite has any- thing in common.
But the question of the historic reality of our Lord's death is not, after all, the cardiiial one in the battle with the skeptics. Serious critica have rarely doubted that, or cared much for it. For that death, in itself, involved no supernat- ural element, and could not, however devoutly
THE MOULD OF DOCTRINE. 45
believed, fairly account for Christian history. The true crisis of faith is not at the cross, but at the sepulchre. Did Jesus really rise from the dead? "This," says Strauss, "is the centre of the centre — the real heart of Christianity;" "with it the truth of Christianity stands or falls." ^ "If I could believe the resurrection," says Spinoza, "I would become a Christian at once." Ewald says "It is the culmination of all the miraculous events which are conceivable from the beginning of history to its close."
To this respond affirmatively such defenders of the faith as Christlieb, "The resurrection is the proof of all other dogmas, the foundation of our Christian life and hope, the soul of the entire apostolic preaching, the corner-stone on which the church is built."^ Westcott says: "We must place it in the very front of our confession, with all that it includes, or we must be prepared to lay aside the Christian name." ^ " To preach the fact of the resurrection was the first function of the Evangelists; to embody the doctrine of the resurrection is the great office of the church ; to learn the meaning of the resurrection is the task, not of one age only, but of all." Fairbairn
1 Christlieb, Modern Doubt, (New York, 1874), p. 455.
2 /&., p. 448.
3 Gospel of the Resurrection (London, 1881), p. 7.
46 THE MOULD OF DOCTRINE.
says, " It created the church." " It is a resumi of historical yet supernatural Christianity."
There are, therefore, two great Christian facts : the death and resurrection of Christ. There are also two great Christian ordinances: the Lord's Supper and Baptism. Of these facts, the first would seem lea^ to need historic witnessing, since it does not trench on the supernatural, and since its significance is mainly for the believer, revealing the inner secrets of salvation. Yet for its perennial confirmation, as well as illustration, provision is confessedly made in the Lord's Supper, the inward fronting rite of the church. The other fact, on the contrary, fronts the world, challenging its scrutiny as miraculous, and de- manding its assent as verified by reliable testi- mony. To this fact, therefore, so pre-eminent and decisive, it might reasonably be expected that baptism, the only other Christian rite, and also the outward fronting one, would lend its needed and confirmatory testimony.
BAPTISM AND THE RESURRECTION.
The candid skeptic, however, will be surprised, on reading in the Westminster Catechism that *' baptism is rightly administered by pouring or sprinkling water upon the person." To this he will find Dr. R. J. Breckeuridge, of Kentucky,
THE MOULD OF DOCTRINE. 47
naturally adding, "I find nothing in the Scrip- tures to warrant the assertion that there is 7;ny tsacramentcU commemoration by the mode of bap- tism of the burial of the body of Jesus.-^^ Hav- ing further learned from Dr. John Eadie, of Glasgow, that believers "eyen in immersion do not go through a process having any semblance to the burial and resurrectimi of Christ^^;"^ and from Dr. Charles Hodge, of Princeton, that in PauFs words (Rom. 6: 4) — ^'buried with him by baptism into death" — "it is not necessary to as- sume that there is any reference, to the immersion of the body in baptism, as though it were a burial; " ^ he will probably be puzzled to account for the zeal and ingenuity put forth in dis- proving concerning one ordinance what is so eagerly claimed for the other, and is equally presumable of both — that they Avere meant to be commemorative as well as symbolic. This probative function may be lightly valued now^, but "from the beginning it was not so."
The peculiar evidential value of PauFs state- ments concerning the facts and institutions of early Christianity has been more and more recognized of late. He was at the time of his
1 Knowledge of God Subjectively Considered, p. 572.
2 Commentary on Colossians (London, 1856), p. 154.
3 Commentary on Romans (Philadelphia, 1864), p. 305.
48 THE MOULD OF BOCTIIINE,
oonvei'sion a mature man, of too high culture and too wide observation to be charged with super- stition or shallowness. He had too much at stake to be risked on the unverified assumption of so stupendous a fact as the resurrection of Christ from the dead. He saw as clearly as niaoteen centuries have proved to us, that on the reality of that fact all else hung — for without it he declared his "faith was vain." His letters are among the earliest, if not the very earliest, of the New Testament documents, and four of them stand, as before remarked, unchallenged to this day. In two of these (Romans and 1 Corinthians), written to be publicly read in metropolitan heathen cities within about twenty-five years of its alleged occurrence, he distin(;tly claims the reality of the resurrection as an established and com- monly admitted fact. As justifying this, he refers implicitly to the testimony of " the greater part" of "more than five hundred brethren" still surviving the event; and explicitly to that of the abiding ordinance which, as he reminds the Romans, is the " likeness of Christ's resurrection," and which he assures the Corinthians is meaning- less, if it do not mean that. For so, according to the uniform custom of the early interpreters, we are to interpret 1 Cor. 15: 29.^
* Stanley, Commentary on Corinthians (London, 1876), p. 304.
THE MOULD OF DOCTRINE. 49
BAPTISM A HISTORIC WITNESS.
Baptism, bearing this legible "imprint/* was in Paul's esteem a historic monument^ 1. Of the fact that Christ had risen. 2. Of the preeminence of the fact, and its consequent primary place in Christian doctrine. 3. Of the corporeality of the fact, as against all mysticizing tendencies. It follows, therefore, that by the abandonment of its appointed form, baptism ceases to be a witness to the reality of the resunrdion. Of Paul's allu- sion in Rom. 6 ; 4, 5, Conybeare and Howson say, " This passage cannot be understood unless it be borne in mind that the primitive baptism was by immersion.'' Dr. Schaff says, '^All commefntators of note (except Stuart and Hodge) expressly ad- mit or take it for granted that in this verse .... the ancient prevailing mode of baptism by immersion is implied, as giving force to the idea of going down of the old and rising up of the new man.'^^ The obviousness of the parallelism is implied in the continual coupling together of tlio two ideas in Scripture, and in the writings and emblematism of the early Christians. Christ's Messiahship was "manifested" by his baptism, his Sonship was "declared'^ by his resurrection?
> Lange's Commentary on Romans (New York, 1869), Note, p. 202. ' John 1 : 31 ; Rom. 1 : 4. D
50 THE MOULD OF DOCTRINE.
The apostles were ordained to be "witnesses of his resurrection," "beginning with the baptism of John." If, as Peter says, the "figure" of baptism "saves us," it is "by the resurrection of Jesus Christ." So Cyril, of Jerusalem, says, " Thou going down into the water, and in a man- ner buried in the waters as he in the rock, art raised again, walking in newness of life." Chrysostom says, "For as his body, buried in the earth ; bore for fruit the salvation of the world, so also ours buried in baptism bore for fruit right- eousness .... and will bear also the final gift of the resurrection." Tertullian says "For by an image we die in baptism; but we truly rise in the flesh, as did also Christ." Many of the early baptisteries were in the shape of sarcophagi, or octagonal, in reference to the number 8, the sym- bol of resurrection. " Remove the resurrection," says Fairbairn substantially, "and the Lord's Bay, the Supper, and Baptism would be inexplicable." ^ Observe the force of these statements. The " application of water," as significant of cleans- ing, would have introduced no new idea, nor demanded any new fact to explain its origin. It was the familiar and immemorial symbol both of Jews and heathen. But it was far otherwise
^Studies in Life of Christ (N. Y., 1882), p. 359. Cf . also Westcott, Gospel of the Resurrection^ p. 128.
THE MOULD OF DOCTRINE. 51
if the idea portrayed were one so novel and startling as that of a Messianic resurrection from the dead.
The superior evidential value of a rite is not always recognized. It is an acUd faith, con- spicuous, unequivocal. It was vain, said Paul, for Peter to preaxih the equality of the Gentiles while he would not eat with tliem. Peter, on the day of Pentecost, having set forth the pro- phecy and the correspondent fact of Christ's resurrection, demanded not only a verbal assent, but a baptism in the "likeness" of that resurrec- tion, as a visible avowal of their faith in it. '* Belief expressed in action," says Canon West- cott, "is for ihQ most part the strongest evidence one can have of any historic event." How tre- mendous therefore is the significance of the fact that on that day, less than two months after the alleged transaction, in the very city where it was said to have taken place and where the evidence could best be sifted, three thousand people by a public and unequivocal symbolic act " set to their seal " that the resurrection had really occurred ; and thereby not only boldly challenged all skep- ticism, but irrevocably announced their separa- tion from all the old ties of friendship and faith. If the value of testimony depend on its having been contemporaneous, contiguous, from many
52 THE MOULD OF DOCTRINE.
witnesses, unequivocally expressed, and impartial, or against interest, then may that be more truly said of the resurrection as evidenced in baptism, which has been said of the crucifixion as con- firmed by the Lord's Supper, viz.: "0/" no other event in the history of man have we an equal guarantee of the historic truth of the facts/' ^
The immense damage done to Christianity by the obliteration of the original features of bap- tism is manifest in the fact that it has not only, where so changed, lost all present witnessing power, but that it has led men, as we have seen, to deny that it ever had such power; and so to seek to invalidate the earliest and most authori- tative testimony to the most vital fact in Chris- tian history. The conservative power of a care- fully preserved rite is enormous. "It serves," in the language of Sir George Cornewall Lewis, "to stereotype an oral tradition, and preserve it from the license of imagination or the distor- tions of forgetfulness." Like the arrowhead inscriptions of Babylon, and the hieroglyphics of Egypt, its definite message is cut into the visible life of men, as theirs is cut in stone, and remains like them, changeless amid the changing.
It remains to speak of baptism as meant to bear witness, 2. Of the primary and jyreemineni
^ Cf Westcott, Gospel of the Resurrection, p. 133.
THE MOULD OF DOCTRINE, 63
place of the resuirecticm in the Christian system. The Acts significantly precede the Epistles. The announcement of the fact of the resurrec- tion, and the possibility of salvation, historically preceded tlie unfolding of the tJieory of the atonement and the method of salvation logically involved therein. Baptism, correspondingly, the first appointed act of the believer, was a joyful acceptance of the fact preached with all its yet unrevealed implications. The early catacombs had no crucifix or sorrowful inscriptions, but many-blended and cheerful symbols of baptism and the resurrection. To-day we find the Eucharist jealously guarded (having been by the Council of Trent declared "above all other sacraments," because while they may sanctify, "in this is the Author himself of sanctity'^) while baptism is made the toy of ecclesiasticism and "convenience." By a precise parallelism we find Rome occupying the whole horizon with her realistic and purposely painful visions of the suffering or dead Christ; and Protestantism giving fifty-one weeks in the year to philosoph- izing about the atonement, and Easter Sunday only to the definite and emphatic proclamation of the atonement itself, as a fact completed and made real to us by the resurrection of Christ. There is no room here for a detailed review
54 THE MOULD OF DOCTRINE.
of the steps by which this result has been reached. Suffice it to say that the gradual ignoring of the primary function of baptism as a witness entailed a parallel subsidence from view of the fact to which it witnessed. Priestly incantations and scholastic subtleties crowded the foreground, and the risen Christ slowly faded into the distance, where he seems to the be- wildered masses still to hang on the cross, sad, severe, and inaccessible.
Finally, and only by way of hint, we must consider a subject most momentous in our time: the value of the definite and inflexible form of baptism as a witness, 3. Of the corporeal actu- ality of Christ's resurrection. The idea of immortality was common to all men, but that of a bodily resurrection was mocked as absurd by the Athenians, or refined into a metaphor as in its literal form too gross by the Gnostics [Knowers). Curiously, the Gnostics of that day and the Agnostics of this are closely akin : and the spreading eaves of their roof shelter thou- sands between, who, through various degrees of real though perhaps unsuspected consanguinity, are bound up with them in a common thought. Among these are the Mystics, Quakers, Sweden- borgians, Transcendentalists, and a large part of that school who worship the Aurora Borealis
THE MOULD OF DOCTRINE. 55
under the name of Liberalism. To them the primal curse is subjection of the idea to formal expression. The formal church, the formal rite, the formal Scripture, formal knowledge, and even formal existence, are vulgar, and must be volatilized. Listen to Matthew Arnold's ren- dering of the plain Gospel narrative: "To the mind of Jesus, his own resurrection after a short sojourn in the grave was the victoi^y of his cause after his death, and at the price of his death. His disciples materialized his resurrection, and their version of the matter falls day by day to ruin.'' He "lived in the eternal order, and the eternal order neve)" dies.'' This, he argues, is our only possible immortality.
Now the noticeable fact is that over against all theories falsely calling themselves "spiritual," because they rejected "form" in his day, the Apostle set the statement that Christianity is primarily and characteristically a historic religion — resting on the concrete manifestation of Christ " in the flesh," and his formal and sensible resur- rection— and bodying forth in vivid and graphic outline, in the permanent rite he had ordained, the literalness of that resurrection. It is not sur- prising to find among most of the Gnostic sects, as among modern "Liberals," indifference to, or aversion for, tlie formal, alike in baptism and in
5C THE MOULD OF DOCTMIJVE,
resurrection. Nor can it surprise us much more if the habitual blurring of the ordained outline of the one, to make it more "spiritual/' should everywhere tend to melt the revealed outline of the other into a mere gauzy metaphor. But if it be a metaphor, says Paul, the dead "are per- ished'' and "ye are yet in your sins."
CHAPTER ly.
BAPTISM AND THE NEW BIRTH.^MODEJlN THEORIES.
N
O department of religious literature would ^ probably yield an anthology so rare in its variety, and so marvellously delicate in its shad- ings, as the discussion of the relations of Bap- tism and Regeneration. Its range is so wide, its relations so complex, its bulk so voluminous, that it would be impossible to compress into an essay like this a statement of it which should do justice to every local or individual phase of opinion. Nothing is aimed at but a compendious statement, which it is hoped may escape the suspicion of at least intentional unfairness either as to accuracy or proportion.
There are two great questions involved.
THE FIRST GREAT QUESTION.
1. Does baptism itsdf regenerate f
This question brings to the stand at once all advocates of infant baptism to explain a custom which, if it do not imply regeneration inde-
' 57
58 TEE MOULD OF DOCTRINE,
pendent of faith, very much needs explanation. Fairly representative of the divers responses are {a) The Theory of Rome, This seems to be unequivocal. The Council of Trent declared that " in baptism, not only remission of original sin was given, but also all which properly has the nature of sin is cut off." It makes one "a Christian, a child of God, and an heir of heaven." As to faith, Cardinal Wiseman says, "The Church teaches that it is a virtue essentially in- fused of God in baptism ; and such must be more or less the belief of every Church that adopts the practice of infant baptism." ^ The whole efficacy of baptism, however, is made to depend on the intent of the administrator. The doctrine of Rome, therefore, renders only one thing certain, viz. : the perdition of the unbaptized. It leaves 'the salvation of the baptized both uncertain and incomplete, for it depends for its validity on the secret "intent" of the administrator, and for its consummation, even in the holiest person, on mass and penancje here and purgatory hereafter. Rome therefore teaches that cleansing grace, the counter- part of sanctification, is wrought in baptism, but not regeneration, the counterpart of justification;
^Lectures on Doctrine and Practice of Roman Catholic Chu-ch (Baltimore, 1862), p. 74.
THE MOULD OF DOCTRINE. 69
neither of which latter ideas has a place in her theology.
(6) Luther^s Theory. Luther launched the Reformation from the Koman stocks with a single lever; the doctrine of "justification by faith alone." "Faith," he says, "must appro- priate the divine; all other things can be only signs for the operation and formation of faith." ^ The heavenly talisman was thus at once trans- ferred from the covetous and despotic hand of the priest to the heart of the believer : for the sacraments, which had been reckoned the "Keys of Heaven," could no longer shut up that king- dom which Christ had set "open to all believers."
Protestantism, which repudiated the authority of tradition, and rested the validity of every- thing in the Christian life on faith, inherited therefore a Trojan horse in infant baptism. "The Zwickau enthusiasts," says Neander,^ "who came to Wittenburg in A. D. 1522, were zealous opponents of infant baptism ; they raised a controversy upon it, and placed the Witten- bergers in a state of embarrassment. Mel- ancthon, in writing to the Elector, declared that "Satan had attacked them in a weak place,
1 Neander, History of Christian Dogmas (Bohn, 1868), vol. II., p. 688. 2/6., vol. II., p. 692.
60 THE MOULD OF DOCTRINE.
for he knew not how he should refute these enthusiasts."
But principles outrun practice, as the clouds fly swifter than the ships in the heavier sea below. There is scarcely a better illustration of the conservative power of established custom than in the tergiversations to which it brought a man so candid and strong as Luther, in his efforts to defend the retention of an old practice, directly contradictory of the very principle he was at the time trying to establish. Infant baptism is not taught in Scripture, he said, but neither can it be proved to be against Scripture. Baptism of course presupposes faith, he admit- ted, but "who can tell whether God does not implant faith in early childhood as in sleep?" Faith, he further urged, is negative; infants therefore do have faith, because they do not resist the truth. "He knew how to relieve himself," says Neander, "though he put down objections more by bold Assertions than by ar- guments." ^
The Augsburg Confession therefore distinctly
reads, "concerning baptism, they teach that it
is necessary to salvation . . . and condemn the
Anabaptists who hold . . . that infants can be
saved without it." ^ Luther himself wrote that
^ Neander, Hist, of Chris. Dogmas, vol. II., p. 2 Ihid, p. 693.
THE MOULD OF DOCTRINE. 61
"baptism is the bath of regeneration, because in it we are born again/' Practically, therefore, he only substituted sacramental for sacerdotal grace — transferring the shaping of eternal destiny from the inward whim of the priest to the out- ward whim of the parent or friend. For the sake of rescuing those little ones, whom Christ had appointed to the "kingdom of heaven,'' out of the " limbo deep and broad " which God had "prepared for the devil and his angels," but which "the Fathers" had appropriated to un- baptized children, he sacrificed the broad prin- ciple of the Reformation at the shrine of a narrow and cruel tradition.
(c) Calvin^ s Theory. "It is to be no means easy," says Bishop Browne,^ "to define his doc- trine of baptism. Inconsistency is very little his character; yet on baptism he seems to have been somewhat inconsistent with himself." To Calvin the one overwhelming and only creative fact in the universe was the definite, prevenient purpose of God. To conceive of the eternal fiat of that sovereign will as in any way dependent for its completion or change on the temporal accident of sacrament or personal intent, seemed to him as absurd as to expect the flame to be mastered by the moth that is shrivelled in it. Baptism
1 On the Thirty-nine Articles (London, 1865), p. 651.
62 THE MOULD OF DOCTRINE.
cannot, therefore, make one a Christian, but only declare the elect to be so (to whom alone the ordinance belongs). Bat since the purpose of God is secret, how are the truly elect to be ascer- tained? This is not so difficult in the case of adults, plain tests being supplied in Scripture (see 1 Thess. 1 : 4, 5; 1 Peter 1 : 2). But "elect infants'^ are not to be so discerned. To escape a dilemma, therefore, Calvin, revolting alike at Home's sacerdotal and Luther's sacramental, fled to hereditary grace. He decided that the Chris- tian church was not a '^ new birth " from, but a prolongation of, the Jewish. Diifering from Paul, who thought the Abrahamic with the old covenants "pertained to his kinsmen according to the flesh," he concluded that the measure and margin of electing grace are still plainly trace- able along the outline of genealogical descent. "The children,"^ says Dr. John Hall, "are born into the church. . . It is a mediaeval superstition that represents the child as ^christened,' or made a Christian in the rite." "Our Confession of Faith," says the Presbyterian Assembly's Digest, "recognizes the right of baptism of the infant children only of such parents as are members of the church."^ To these were added, under
» Questions of the Day, (New York, 1873), p. 263. 2 (Ed., Philadelphia, 1855), p. 106.
THE MOULD OF DOCTRINE. 63
exigency, still after the Abrahamic idea, the "infant slaves of Christian Mastei-s.'^ ^
But now again the "Trojan horse'' disgorges discord within the Genevan ramparts. If elec- tion is already determined by birth, and the salvation of the elect assured by immutable decree, baptism cannot add to the certainty of the one or the security of the other. The "elect infant" will be saved without baptism: the non- elect cannot be helped by it. If baptism do not "convey'' as well as affirm grace, it is nugatory, and its omission involves neither peril nor sin. Moreover, since the elect cannot apostatize, there is serious peril in positively and solemnly desig- nating as "children of God" those who may after\N^ard give every indication of being "chil- dren of the Devil " rather.^
Since Calvin thought with the other Reformers, however, that (in the language of the English Church) infant baptism was "in any wise to be retained," he boldly made a place for it by knocking out the corner-stone of his entire system. For in his Gatechi^i for the Genevan children he taught it to be "certain that pardon of sins and newness of life is offered to us in
1 Presbyterian Assembly's Digest, p. 107.
2Cf. Bossuet, Variations (Dublin, 1829), vol. 1. p. 360.
64 TUE MOULD OF DOCTRINE.
baptism." '^We must take heed not to tie Gocl\s grace to the sacraments ; " he writes again in his Coimnentary on the Acts, " for the administmtion of baptism profits nothing except where God thinks fit. " The efficacy of baptism/' according to the Westminster Confession, ^4s not tied to that moment of time wherein it is administered ; yet, notwithstanding, by the right use of this ordinance the grace promised is not only offered but really exhibited and conferred by the Holy Ghost to such (whether of age or infants) as that grace belongeth unto, according to the counsel of God's own will in his appointed time." ^ The Presbyterian doctrine, as Dr. Charles Hodge, of Princeton, says, is midway between Rome and Zwingle in this : that baptism always, the other that it never, conveys grace. Presby- terians hold only that it "does not uniformly or always at the time do so." Since "regeneration" is expressly mentioned (in Ch. 28, Art. 1 of the Confession) as included in the " grace promised," and therefore " really exhibited and conferred " in baptism, it is plainly taught that baptism does regenerate, only not exclusively, always, nor instantly.^
How narrow a rim of hope is thus left even
1 Schaff, Creeds of Christendom (London), vol. III., p. 663. 2 lb., vol. III., p. .
THE MOULD OF DOCTRIJSE. 65
to Calvin's elect infant world, to sav nothing: of the awful shadow left on those who lie outside the circuit of the ^^ birth covenant/' For be- lievers' children also, as it seems, may die un- regenerate, being unbaptized; and the like may happen even after baptism, if grace be delayed or fail to be given therein. Now, since the un- regenerate cannot "see the kingdom of God," it follows either that the elect may perish after all, or that believers' children do not certainly com- pose the elect, and ought not to monopolize the rite of baptism. Either of these propositions admitted is fatal to Calvin's theory of grace; either of them denied is fatal to his theory of baptism.
(d) Zwingys Theory. Zwingle alone, of the three great leaders of the Reformation, con- sistently and at every point repudiated the saving efficacy of rites in themselves. "If the sacraments were the things they signified," he argued, "then they could not be signs. For the sign and the thing signified cannot be the same." "External baptism with water con- tributes nothing to the washing away of sin." "Original sin," he strangely added, however, "does not deserve damnation if a person has believing parents."^ And still more strangely,
^ Browne on Tliirty-Nine Articles, p. 657. E
6G THE MOULD OF DOCTRINE.
maintaining that the ^^hing signified" in bap- tism was a pledge "to be a hearer and disciple of God, and to obey his laws," he held that ft jeh a pledge might be fitly administered to infants.
{c) Current Theories. Of these four theories, the Romish, or sacerdotal, lies at the foundation of the English Church, filtering down thence through the Methodist; the Lutheran, or sacra- mental, largely pervades the Continental churches; the Calvinistic, or hereditary, has shaped the Scotch and other Presbyterian churches; and the Zwinglian, or dedicatory, though not distinctly avowed, has deeply im- pressed the history of Congregationalism.
The English Articles of 1536 were undis- guisedly Romish.^ They endorsed penance, con- fession, purgatory^ image-worship, and other superstitions. They plainly declared baptism "a thing necessary for the attaining of ever- lasting life," "insomuch as that infants and children dying in their infancy shall undoubtedly be saved thereby, and otherwise not." Sub- sequent revisions show the traces of Lutheran and Calvinistic pressure, the latter being espe- cially anti-sacerdotal and democratic as embodied in Puritanism. The Thirty-Nine Articles as finally revised still describe the baptized as
*Hardwick, History of Thirty-Nine A 'tides, p. 50.
THE MOULD OF DOCTRINE. 67
"christened," and baptism as '^a sign of re- generation, or the new birth, whereby as by an instrument they that receive it rightly are grafted into the Church;" and the Catechism charac- terizes it as a proceeding whereby the baptized is "made a member of Christ, the child of God, and an inheritor of the kingdom of heaven" — words varied only trivially in form and not at all in sense from the Romish formula from Avhich they came. The diversity of strata in her growing formularies and literature give pre- text enough for the multiplication of theoretic conflicts in the English Church, and point enough to the not quite accurate quip of Lord Chatham that she has "Calvinistic Articles, a Papistical service, and an Arminian clergy."
The Methodist Articles were based on those of the English Church, since often revised in minor points. Concerning them John Wesley wrote, " It is certain our Church supposes that all who are baptized in their infancy are at the same time born again : and it is allowed that the w^hole office for the baptism of infants proceeds on this supposition."^ \yatson, a standard au- thority in Methodism, says of infant baptism, " It secures, too, the gifts of the Holy Spirit in those secret spiritual influences by which the actual
* Sermons (London, 1872), vol. II. (sermon 45), p. 74.
68 2 BE MOULD OF DOCTRINE,
regeneration of those infants vrho die in infancy is effected." This, says the venerable Dr. Curry, in a recent article, more fully to be referred to a few pages farther on, was the doctrine of the earliest American Methodist ministers, to which, modified somewhat in expression (it may be fairly inferred from his language), he still holds.
Presbyterianism does not seem to recede from the Westminster platform. Dr. John Hall says, "the only reason why the baptized child does not sit at the Lord's Table, of course, is the counterpart of the restraint on the vote of the American youth." ^
Congregationalism, notwithstanding the con- genital affinity of the Savoy with the Westmin- ster Articles, and its high-church developments in New England history, shows strong tenden- cies toward reaction against the Calvinistic in- terpretation of infant baptism, and even against the continuance of the practice itself. Dr. R. W. Dale, in a volume not long since published, protested that " no one can become a member of a Congregational church by birth," supplement- ing the statement by a vigorous and destructive criticism of the whole birthright theory.^
Nothing is more curious to observe, in review-
^ Qaestiovs of the Day, p. 263.
2 Ecclesia (Second Series, London, 1871), p. 371.
THE MOULD OF DOCTRINE. r,9
ing tliis subject, than the fertility of ingenuity displayed in saving the Scriptural doctrine of salvation by faith alone from the manifest affront put on it by the administration of baptism where faith is impossible. This is attempted in every case by an intruded fiction. The transaction does rest on faith, says Rome — the faith of the Church ; not so, says the English Church, but on the faith of the sponsor : not so, says Calvin, but on the faith of the parents: not so, says Luther, but on the unconscious faith of the child itself. If these devices sucxjeed in justifying the practice, it will be only because " faith is made void."
THE SECOND GREAT QUESTION.
2. Does Baptism symbolize Regeneration f The British Conference of \yesleyan Metho- dists has, during the present year, after a seven years' controversy, so modified its formulary as (in the opinion of the London Quarterly Revieiv,^ the able organ of that body), to decide "that the Lord has not in the couree of his ministry con- nected regeneration with baptism in any way.'* This event affords an apt illustration of the working of the very principle which these arti- cles are designed to illustrate — viz. : the power of symbolic rites as moulds of doctrine: un- i October Number, 1882, p. 146.
70 THE MOULD OF DOCTRINE.
broken, they hold the outline of opinion secure; broken, they refashion plastic opinion to thei • own altered form, and silently but steadily seek to reduce to the same conformity the harder lines of formulated statement.
Baptism, administered without preliminary faith in the recipient, by its symbolic form compels some theory of regeneration without faith, and ultimately a reconstruction of the whole statement of the ground of salvation. Baptism, so altered in form as no longer to symbolize regeneration, but "purification" in- stead, tends rapidly to iBubstitute the idea of "purification'^ for that of regeneration in the scheme of doctrine, and to revolutionize creed statements accordingly.
Students of doctrinal history will not have been unobservant of a steadily growing aversion for the term "baptismal regeneration," and the equally steady growth of emphasis on "bap- tismal grace" as a substitute therefor. Dr. Hodge in his Theology, devotes a long section to the battering down oi' the one and the exaltation of the other.^ Episcopal writers betray a keen scent in the same direction.^ Dr. Curry, in the
iVol. III,p. 591,se^.
2 See American Quarterly Cliurch RevteiVy vol. XXIV., p.] 22, se^.
THE MOULD OF DOCTRINE. 71
remarkable article before referred to (in The Independent of Nov. 2, 1882), repudiates the doctrine of baptismal regeneration, out of which he says infant baptism was "developed," but still insists that the "sacraments of the Church ordained by Christ" (by evolution, as it appears) "are not simply ceremonies: but rather that they are really effective through the spiritual grace that accompanies them." The able writer in the London Quai'tedy above cited, also insists that "no harm can come from a Scriptural and guarded maintenance of baptismal grace." The "question as to the specific grace baptism pledges and conv^eys to the children of the Christian covenant finds little direct solution in Scripture, but mucli indirect illustration." It is not, how- ever, "regeneration," he is sure, for the "new birth" is the "full development of the germinal seed" planted in baptism.
Precisely parallel to the growth of the theory that baptism conveys grace only and not regener- ation, is that of the theory that baptism means purification only and not regeneration; and preliminary to both was that change in the form of the ordinance which reduced it from a vivid memorial of Christ's historic resurrection and the symbol of the believer's correspondent spiritual passage "through death to life," to a mere "wash-
72 THE MOrin OF DOC THINE,
ing with water/' laying sole emphasis on the "putting away the filth of the flesh'' thereby.
Concerning all this, it is obvious to remark that as Christ once only rose from the dead and men once only are regenerated, so baptism, fitly complementing the analogy, is once only to be administered. But if grace is conferred only by baptism, and when so conferred is but incipient ; if baptism symbolize "washing" only, which is from its very nature incomplete, — then either "grace" must forever stop short of "regeneration" and imperfect sanctification forever preclude perfect justification, or baptism must be often repeated until the measure of grace and holiness be full. They are the true Anabaptists who divide the one baptism into two, entailing a separate ritual and theory for each; or so mutilate the one baptism that, once administered, it teaches incompleteness, and suggests some further step to reach the actual ne\A' life.
CHAPTER V.
BAPTISM AND THE NEW BIRTH.— THE APOSTOLIC IDEA.
IT is a noticeable circumstance that Paul's Epistle addressed to the Romans, busies itself chiefly with the Jews, and when it men- tions the Gentile world invariably cites the Greek rather than the Roman as representative of it. Not less remarkable is its texture. Its material is borrowed mainly from the Jewish Scriptures; its method from the Greek dialecti- cians; while its vocabulary is derived from, and its whole spirit is redolent of, Roman law. We are reminded at once how, in the w^orld^s metrop- olis, Roman, Greek, and Jew were then dwelling together, equally arrogant and mutually dis- dainful, but together were hanging over the world their tri-color of prerogative, against the outer barbarian who was neither a citizen of the Empire, a disciple of the school, nor a child of Abraham.
Paul was himself a Roman freeman, a Greek scholar, and a Hebrew of pure blood. But he
73
74 THE MOULD OF DOCTRINE.
had heard a voice, like the blast beside Jericho, before which the triple walls of his citadel of privilege had fallen flat. It was the same word that* had startled Nicodemiis, assuring him that he too, who of all men fan.'ied himself peculiarly well-born, must equally with the Gentile "dog" ''be born again.'^ With peculiar authority, therefore, he assails the entrenchments wliich he himself has found insecure. To the Roman, he substantially says, "Your law cannot really 'justify;' and it is a small thing to be on the right side of Roman law, yet on the wrong side of God's law." To the Greek, "Your knowl- edge cannot save ; a man may know, ' but how to perform that which is good, find not.' " To the Jew, "Your birth is of no avail; high birth is neither preventive nor cure of low life." Jew, Roman, and Greek stand, therefore, equally with the base-born, nomadic, and illiterate barba- rian, shelterless before God's law: for "there is no difference."
There is a special significance in the addressing to the Roman of an argument from the Jewish standpoint, for it implies a certain community of ideas, without which it would be unintelligible. That such a community in fact existed is implied in the apparition of Judseo-Roman elements in subsequent church history. The Pope still wears
THE MOULD OF DOGTBINE. 76
the imperial crown and the title of Pontifex Maximus borrowed from pagan Rome, but with these assumes the robes and functions of the Jewish Higli-Priest. Cardinal Newman, in his sermons, argues that the Church is an imperial power, prolonging also the Jewish regime, Lu- ther found ^'new wine," indeed, but borrowed from Rome her "old bottles" to put it in, and so Judaized the Reformation. The Genevan system derived its inspiration, by way of Calvin through Augustine, from the Latin Theology of North Africa: and it culminated in an attempted rees- tablishment of the Old Testament Theocracy in the New Testament era.
The historic consilience of these two lines of influence in the systems named, and the uni- formly coincident occurrence of one of the theories of privilege above mentioned (the sacer- dotal or corporate, the hereditary, or the sacra- mental), suggest something deeper than a mere casual connection. Perhaps the battering-ram, ostensibly aimed by the Apostle at the distinctly- named Jewish bastions of prerogative, but meant really for the scarcely-named Roman, may, if given full swing, prove equally destructive to the work of unnamed theorists who have more lately built, of the same material, on the same foundations.
76 TEE MOV LB OF DOCTRINE.
ANALOGY OF ROMAN TO JEWISH BELIEFS.
It should be remembered that those ^^ ruling ideas in early ages" which Canon Mozley has so admirably delineated, still survived in PauFs time, and in fact, have only slowly receded be- fore the advancing pressure of the gospel. Chief among these was the notion of right, as the creature exclusively of birth, of ceremonial, or of law. The individual had indeed not emerged into view, as a possessor of rights, or even as a subject of thought apart from the corporate life of which he was a fractional element. Of this wide field, however, there is opportunity only hastily to glance at the limited section which embraces the question immediately in hand.
In the Jewish household of Patriarchal times lay, yet unseparated, the Family, the Church, and the State. The household was itself incor- porate in the personality of the Patriarch, of which wife, house, son, servant, ox, and ass were regarded as in the strict sense the property, indissolubly sharing his rights and destiny. The punishment of Achan would have been incom- plete, had it not extended to all his belongings, which were truly parts of him. Subsequently the household grew through the tribe to the nation^ and through the Mosaic Institute was
THE MOULD OF DOCTRIXE. 77
merged into the State, which thereupc n absorbed all priestly, social, and civic functions. Still, however, the individual had no recognition, religious or political, except through the high- l)riest, or as incorporated in the ^^congregation." The rite of circumcision had been from the be- ginning the seal of ancestral rights, and still re- mained the badge and guaranty of membership in the commonwealth. By its magical power ev^en an alien could be "adopted" into citizen- ship, and through a legal fiction counted as a home-born child. How completely the Jewish conception of prerogative was bounded by polit- ical, hereditary, and ceremonial lines, is manifest from Paul's words to the Ephesians (2 : 12). The uncircumcised Gentile, whatever his per- sonal attainments or character, being an "alien from the commonwealth of Israel," and from defect of birth a "stranger from the covenants of promise," is accounted as necessarily "having no hope, and without God in the world." To be "cut off from the congregation" was to the Jew equivalent to being cut off from life itself. Not one of these conceptions could have been unfamiliar to the Roman. While stronger em- phasis in his scheme lay on the imperial than on the hereditary element, yet so complete an analogy existed between the Roman an i Jewish
78 THE MOULD OF DOCTRINE.
exaltation of political, ancestral, and ceremonial right, that the Roman might fairly be called a secular Jew. The Patria Potestas was in full force — extending even to the power of life and death over the son, whose independent existence, even, was not recognized by the law. The loss of citizenship, as Ortolan tells us,' was the loss of liberty, and, as the slave was not accounted a person, but a thing, amounted to civil extinction. "Adoption" was analogous to circumcision, in- vesting the stranger with a fictitious kinship, through pontifical ceremony.'^ Paul knew how to make the chief captain "afraid," who had "bound him with thongs." ^ After the true Roman spirit he appealed, not to his personal innocence, but to his political and ancestral claims, for he was "a Roman," and that not artificially, for he was " free-born."
PAUL AGAIIfST THESE BELIEFS.
Now it was inevitable that in the mind of both Jew and Roman the new idea which Paul brought should at first tend to fall into, and take form from, the "mould" of their preconcept'on. They would identify the Church with the State, whereupon membership in the one would follow
^ History of Roman Law, (London, 1871), p. 607. 2/6., p. .58L ^ Acts 22: 29.
THE MOULD OB DOCTRINE. 79
citizenship in the other. Or they would allot its privileges according to hereditary right, reck- oning the father's adhesion to the new order as necessarily involving his posterity and investing them also with his new relations. The new initiatory rite they would be likely to regard as a mere outward sacramcntum by which the indi- vidual, not born a citizen of the new State or an heir of the new race, might be formally incorpo- rated therein after the analogy of the Jewish circumcision or the Koman adoption. It is evi- dent, therefore, why the Apostle lays so much emphasis on that rite itself as supplying a new "mould'' of conception, and why he devotes the preceding chapter of the Epistle to a preparatoiy dislodgement of the misapprehensions above re- ferred to.
He attacks first the idea of salvation by cor- porate relation. Let the Roman boast of his share in the majesty of the Empire, and the righteousness of his Twelve Tables. These cor- porate splendors had not saved individual men form the Gehenna of shame and misery depicted in that livid first chapter of the Epistle. Let the Jew glory in the "election" of Israel, and the possession of the divine "Ten Words." But "they are not all Israel which are of Israel": and though the law be "holy, just, and good/^
80 lUE MOULD OF DOCTRINE.
not the ^4iearer" thereof but the "doer" alone is justified. God "will render to every man/^ not according to his corporate claims whether he be Jew or Gentile, but " according to his deeds/^ and by those deeds, his own law being witness, "shall no flesh be justified.'^
He turns next to the notion of salvation by ceremonial. "Our Rabbins have said," writes Rabbi Menachem, "that no circumcised man will see hell." Augustine, who made baptism the counterpart of circumcision, taught that both were saving rites.^ But Paul declares that Abraham was saved before he was circumcised, and that circumcision was but the palpable "sign" and "seal" of an accomplished fact.^ The outward form, therefore, he argues, creates nothing, and even as a symbol means nothing except there be first a "circumcision of the heart." It is plain, therefore, that the over- weening confidence of Jew and Roman in the thaumaturgic power of rites has no tolerance in the Apostle's thought.
Closely connected with this idea is the further notion of hereditary grace through lineal descent. This inveterate conceit of the Jews, so diametric- ally opposed to the whole genius of Christianity,
1 See Ecclesi'a., 2 : 57.
2 Romans 4 : 11,
TUE MOULD OF DOCTRINE. 81.
and so strangely given a posthumous life in modern systems, is assaulted in the New Testa- ment li'om end to end. It is Avorth noticing that the very first mention of the Abrahamic covenant in the New Testament is in connection with the ordinance of baptism, and involves a distinct repudiation of the modern birth-right theory. "Think not to say within youi-selves, We have Abraham to our father/' says John the Baptist to the Pharisees who came to be baptized, '^for I say unto you that God is able of these stones to raise up children unto Abraham."
Paul here declares the whole theory which interprets the Abrahamic covenant "as pert lining to the flesh'' unsound. Abraham himself was justified, not by circumcision "in the flesh," as w^e have seen, nor by incorporation in the Jewish commonwealth "according to the flesh," for that did not exist in his day. The covenant did not run with descent "according to the flesh," for "Jn Isaac shall thy seed be called" while Ishmael *s rejected. It could not be limited to Israel alone "according to the flesh," for the very name Abraham is " father of many nations." He con- cludes, therefore, that as Abraham himself was saved by faith alone, the covenant inures to all " them who also walk in the steps of that faith of our father of Abraham, which he had being yet
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uncircumclscrl ; that he might be the father of all them that believe, though they be nc»t circum- cised." If these apostolic propositions be not seen at once clearly to obliterate the foundations of the national, the hereditary, and the sacramental theories of the church, it would be vain to seek further to elaborate or emphasize them.
THE CENTRAL TRUTH OF CHRISTIANITY.
The Apostle now approaches the very heart of the Epistle and of Christianity — the doctrine which he terms the "justification of life" (ch. 5: 18). There is a law anterior to and far deeper than the Roman or the Mosaic code, of which indeed they are but feeble and fragmentary ex- cerpts. Our corporate relation to the universe is one of more consequence than to microcosmic Bome or Israel, and it depends on our attituc^e toward that law. The true ancestral question, also, reaches back, not to Abraham only, but to Adam, in whom the trend of race destiny was established. On the one side of law are sin and death— root and fruit ; on the other side, in like relation, righteousness and life. Justification is that rightening with law which effects transition from sin to righteousness, and so from death to life. Death coming into the world by Adam and "passing through to all men" since, is proof
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conclusive of condemnation, and disjointing of our relations with the universe. Life in the risen Christ is equally conclusive of justification and a restored citizenship in the commonwealth of God. "Christ being raised from the dead, dieth no more: death no more hath dominion over him." For Christ's is that ^^ better resur- rection," now for the first time manifest, by which he became the ^^ first-horn from the dead" — a birth "new," not in time only, but as the Greek words commonly used imply, "new" in kind.^
It is evident, therefore, that in Christ's death and resurrection we find the analogue of that spiritual process through which we too are "jus- tified," being "born anew." We are "justified by faith," but " he that hath died is justified from sin."^ "If any man come unto me . . . and hate not his own life also," said our Lord, "he cannot be my disciple." As, therefore, our Lord "of himself" "laid down his life that he might take it again," "being raised again for our justification," so faith, not "counting life dear unto itself," willingly "surrenders it for Christ's sake," that it may "find it" ancAV in him. Fitly, therefore, our Lord's death and
J See Trench, Synontjms, Part II., (New York, 1868), p 42. ^ Romans^ -."i [Canterhury Revision).
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resurrection and our analogous spiritual new- birth are jointly symbolized in that act of faith in which the believer voluntarily "lays down liis life" also, that he may resume it again, not bv his own act, but throuo;h another hand in Christ's name, as his avowed servant, henceforth "to walk in newness of life."
For it cannot be too often reiterated that the central idea of baptism is not a meagre and imperfect "purification," but that complete and marvellous "new birth" w^hich alone made PauFs message "a go.spel," "the power of God unto salvation to every one that bellevdh: to the Jew first, and also to the Greek." The symbolic essence of baptism is therefore, according to the Apostle's arguments, not the cleansing "applica- tion of water," but the " burial " of that " breath which is in man's nostrils" into an element in which breath and thereby life is cut off, and its being raised thence by exterior power. Dean Goulburn, of the English Church, tersely puts it thus : "Animation having been fc)r one mo- ment suspended beneath the waters, a type this of the interruption of man's energies by death, the body is lifted up again into the air by way of expressing emblematically the new birth of resurrection."^ We can but join in his expressed
^ Bampton Lectures (1850), Oxford Edition, p. 18.
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"regret" that "the form of administration un- avoidably (if it be unavoidably) adopted in cold climates should utterly obscure the emblematic significance of the rite, and render unintelligible to all but the educated the Apostle's association of burial and resurrection with the ordinance/* "Were immersion universally practiced," he adds, "this association of two at present heterogeneous ideas would become intelligible to the humblest.'' How "obedience from the heart" to this "mould of doctrine" may give outline to the whole c»f the Christian life, Archbishop Cranmer tell us after his vigorous manner: "The dipping into the water doth betoken that the old Adam with all his sin and evil lusts ought to be drowned and killed by daily contrition and repentance." " The Apostle here teaches," adds Bishop Wordsworth, "that the doctrine of our ncAV birth in baptism is a practical doctrine, and is indeed the root of all Christian practice." *
BAPTISM NOT A PURIFICATION.
The idea of purification is never in the New Testament explicitly associated with baptism, and the term "wash" but once. In that sole in- stance it was Ananias' word with reference to the baptism of Paul himself. It may be re-
^ Commentary on Netv Testament, p. 230.
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marked incidentally that in that case immersion was necessarily implied : for the Greek louOy Dr. Robinson's New Testament Lexicon bein^ witness, is never used except the whole person be involved. But it is more significant to notice that the em- phasis is laid, not on washing the man, but washing away sin; that is to say, in Cranmer's (and also Luther's) phrase, "drowning the old Adam,'^ as the old world was flooded and "washed away" from JN^oah. Alluding to Noah's case (one of the two typical events of the Old Testament to which the term baptism is applied in the New) Peter distinctly antici- pates and repels that false interpretation of the ordinance which makes it a mere "putting away of the filth of the flesh." Noah was not cleansed by the "application of water," nor has that "figure" any conceivable "likeness" to, or connection with, the "resurrection of Christ." He lays emphasis instead on that loyal "answer of a good conscience toward God" by which Noah became, as the Epistle to the Hebrews phrases it, "the heir of right- eousness by faith." His loyalty was manifested in the unhesitating surrender of his life into God's hand, to be shut up into an unprecedented structure, without rudder, chart, or compass; wliereupon he sailed through the flood of death
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to the shores of a new life, and became, like Christ, in a manner the ^'first-born of the dead.'^ "The like figure (literally "the antitype") whereunto," adds the Apostle, "baptism doth now save us . . . by the resurrection of Jesus Christ."
Turning to the other Old Testament type adduced by Paul, we are told that the redeemed people were "all baptized unto Moses in the cloud and in the sea." Much childish hilarity has been indulged by those who think baptism consists in the cleansing "application of water," over the seeming incongruity of an " immersion," while going over the sea "dry shod." It is not difficult to see that such triflers indulge in a bad joke at their own expense. For if the Israelites were untouched by water, as is implied in the narrative, and still were baptized, it is plain that baptism cannot be "washing." On the other hand, remember that the Children of Israel were commanded by Moses in God's name to "go for- ward " into the as yet unparted sea, and that they boldly surrendered their lives to his word; and so " by faith they passed through the Red Sea as by dry land : which the Egyptians assaying to do were drowned." "By that act," says Bunsen, "history was born;" for by it Israel "passed over" from continent to continent, from slavery
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to freedom, from the kingdom of Pharoah to the kingdom of God. How thoroughly does all this harmonize with the figurative language of the Epistle to the Romans. They had been " buried " as Egyptian slaves: they had been "raised'^ as God's freemen to "newness of life." They were "justified" — that is, completely changed in relation, but not yet " sanctified " — ^that is, pro- gressively changed in character. " Sin " had " po more " rightful " dominion over them," for they had " died " to it ; but they were yet so to "yield their members unto righteousne&'s " that it should have no real dominion. They were got clean out of Egypt, but Egypt was yet by slow and painful discipline to be got out of them. They were " perfect " as " new-born " babes, but not perfect, nor by any further " birth " to be- come so, as full-grown men.
Thus it is manifest that into an unbroken " mould " Old Testament type, New Testament resurrection, and perennial new birth and justifi- cation alike fit with an exactness that reveals their affinity one with another, and links them all to an antecedent faith, whose " obedience " is expressed therein. Symbolically the believer thus pictures forth to men the transaction by which he has spiritually "passed over" from " the law of sin ^nd death " to the " law of the
IHE MCULD OF D0C2KINE. 89
Spirit of life in Christ Jesus/' wherein, and not wherefrom, he has been ^^made free." He has died " io sin " that he might not die '^in his
CHAPTER VI.
BAPTISM AND THE NEW BIH TIT—PERVERSIONS AND THEIR SOURCES.
WHAT mean ye by this service ?^^ This was the question which, as Moses declared, the Passover ordinance was expected and intended to provoke from successive generations. We may gather from the terms employed a significant hint of the essential nature and functions of an ordinance. It was a "service/^ that is to say, something done because commanded, and since the "servant is not above his master," done as commanded. It had a "meaning,'' specific and intelligible. It was God's chosen symbol to body forth his chosen thought. To have sub- stituted some supposed higher service for exact obedience would have been disobedience. King Saul tried that, and found a quick passage into history, branded with the stinging legend, "to obey is better than sacrifice." To have modified the symbol as if to express some w^iser thought, or to express the appointed thought in some wiser way, would have been to insinuate indiscretion
90
THE MOULD OF DOCTBUVE. 91
in the Omniscient One in not taking earlier counsel of the assumed reviser. "He that rc- proveth God, let him answer it.'^
"What mean yef^^ said the children to the fathei-s, and this could be easily told and easily understood. For so vividly did the appointed rite reproduce the salient features of that memo- rable time, in which God " passed-over " sheltered Israel, and Israel "passed-over" the sea — that 3ven the child must recognize the likeness of the Dne in the other. But all that God meant thereby neither fathers nor children could as yet tell. No — nor can we to whom the "mystery hid from the ages" has been revealed: for it is a mystery that forever "passeth knowledge," into which still even "angels desire to look."
THE SYMBOLISM OF THE ORDINANCES.
This is the common mark of the Divine, in ordinance and prophecy, that while simple and obvious in their primary import, they hint far more than they disclose. So do they in their deep-lying principles tap the roots of things — so do they continually freshen and deepen them- selves in meaning, aptly interpreting new phases of fact and feeling, and finding "springing and germinant fulfilment" in growing history — so do they by subtle allusion touch secret doors opening
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into byways of discovery, as to remind us that he who framed the ordinances of the church is the same God who also established the "ordi- nances of heaven." Reverently we watch the trial of the perfectness of those heavenly ordi- nances, as the planet lays its pulse-beat open on the sun, and brings the chronometry of centuries to the test of seconds ; and lo ! a spider's film is not delicate enough to find a margin of variance. How more devoutly ought we to study, and rever- ently to deal with, those earthly ordinances meant to steady a sublimer pulse-beat and measure the arc of a longer flight, even that of a soul, whose fulfilment of its course is one day to be laid open and measured against the sun.
The prophets could not comprehend the full meaning of the sayings given them to utter; all the less could they safely dwarf or alter them, but they could "speak God's word faithfully." Israel could read the historic, but not the deeper prophetic, meaning of the Passover. So far it was to them a message sealed. But all the more reverently did they guard the sacred mystery, and bring it to later ages safe under the un- violated seal ; thus " not unto themselves, but unto us they did minister " a blessing greater than they knew. Surely the ordinances of the New Testa- ment are not narrower in range, nor do they
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enshrine a mystery less profound, than those of the Old. Accordingly our Lord did not lay, even uj)on his Apostles, the delicate and perilous task of readjusting as if ill-devised, or ^^ de- veloping'^ as if incomplete, appointments om- nisciently prepared; nor did he demand even a perfect comprehension of the depth and ultimate bearing of his commands : he asked only a pos- sible and far humbler service, viz., that they would "keep'' his "words." The "faithful" servant in the parable is reckoned also "wise." For though the " servant knoweth not what his Lord doeth," he may still borrow of his Lord's wisdom and further his Lord's end by obeying unquestioniugly his Lord's command.
"What mean ye by this service?" let us ask of Paul, concerning either of Christ's ordinances. His answer is unequivocal. Its authority rests wholly on Christ's word. He has "received from the Lord Jesus" what he has "delivered unto" us; and delivered as he received it. The ordinances, like the gospel, were given him "in trust," and not even "an angel from heaven" might authorize the violation of that trust, nor could he alter without destroying. The primary meaning of each ordinance is likewise in Paul's teaching palpable. In baptism, to which we here espe( ially turn, the historic resurrection of
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the Lord is reenacted in outline, as we liave seen, and the analogous spiritual new birth thereby symbolized. It emphasizes the fact of the resurrection, and the reality of the new birth. But beyond this it fastens attention on the old question of the disciples, ^^ what the rising from the dead should mean'': and sets men asking again with Nicodemus concerning the new birth " how can these things be?"
If the sole aim of baptism were to impale thoughtless men on these questions, it would be no unworthy consummation, nor foreign to the central issues of to-day.
WHAT DOES INFANT BAPTISM MEAN?
But again we ask those who are sprinkling water upon a babe in the name of the Trinity, ^'What mean ye by this service?" The most noticeable feature of the somewhat multitudinous and chaotic reply will be that no one ventures to turn for authority, as Paul turns concerning primitive baptism, to the explicit command of Christ. For no one is mad enough to claim that our Lord ever by any specific word commanded men to be sprinkled, or babes to be in any way baptized. The utmost that is claimed is that the word used by him was so generically comprehen- sive, and so vague, that by a liberal construction
THE MOULD OF DOCTRINE. 95
these ideas may be sheltered inclusively under the outer edges of its meaning: that baptism is not necessarily confined by Scripture to immer- sion, nor to adults — only that. The XXXIX. Articles of the Church of England say, *'The baptism of young children is in anywise to be re- tained in the Church as most agreeable with the institution of Christ/' The Methodist Aiiicles more curtly say, "The baptism of young children is to be retained in the Church." ^ While the most recent utterance of all, that of the Reformed Episcopal Church, proposes as justifying the re- tention of the form, the cautious statement that it is " not contrary to Scripture,^' and is conformable to "ancient usage.'' ^ It will be observed that all these recognize the institution as existing and to be "retained," but there is, in all, significant silence as to its origin and credentials; unless the tracing it to "ancient usage" be meant as a return with Rome to the sufficiency of tradition. The Council of Trent did, indeed, claim that the bap- tism of infants was "instituted by our Lord Jesus Christ " ; but this was asserted equally of all the seven sacraments, and on the authority, not of Scripture, but of an alleged Apostolic Tradi- tion. Cardinal Bellarmine places among the
* Schaff, Creeds of Christendom, vol. III. */6.,vol. Ill, p. 820.
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things depending wholly on tradition, because not found in Scripture — with the perpetual vir- ginity of Mary, the perpetual recurrence of Easter on Sunday, and Purgatory (which Luther believed, )^et admitted it could not be found in Scripture) — "infant baptism, which is necessary to be believed, but neither Romanists nor Protestants can prove it from Scripture."^ The Romanist Mohler adds, that the retention of the custom is '^utterly incomprehensible, according to the Protestant view." The Anabaptists, he says, drew the natural conclusion from Luther's premises, and he was powerless to answer them.^ The impression made by this difficulty upon, and the share it had in shaping the history of, two men alike so spleudid in endowment, so acute in criticism, so candid and lovable in char- acter, as John H. and Francis W. Newman, yet ultimately driven wide as the Poles asunder in faith, ought not to be overlooked. The dis- covery of the spuriousness of the "decretals" and other alleged early documents upon which Rome had rested the authority of her traditions, had left her without even this gwa^i-apostolic basis of support. All her novelties, their base
1 Browne, on The Thirty-nine Articles (London, 1865), p. 137.
'^ Symbolism (New York, Thi -d Edition), p. 208.
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being cut away, hung like a mirage in the air, ready to vanish. To meet this "difficulty/' John H. Newman broached the "hypothesis," since so prominent in all discussions of the theme, of the " Developmext of Doctrine." ^ Protestant writers have been ready to borrow, as the sole possible resource in the authentication of infant baptism, this theory, which its inventor himself regarded as worthless, if it did not vindi- cate all the peculiarities of the Romish Church. Commenting on that one of the Tkirty-Nine Articles of his own Church which bears on this subject, Principal G. A. Jacob says : Infant bap- tism "is not mentioned in the New Testament — no instance of it is recorded there — no allusion is made to its effects — no directions are given for its administration — it is not an Apostolic ordi- nance;" but he adds: "\ye find in the New Testament the fundamental idea from which it was afterwards developed."^
Not so easily did Francis W. Newman dispose of this stumbling-block in the Avay : one of the first, as he tells us (in the pathetic history of his soul struggles recorded in his Phases of Faith)^ to escape which he turned aside from the beaten
^Development of Christian Doctrine, (London, 1845), 2 Ecclesiastical Polity of Neio Testament, p. 270 » (London, 1870), pp 6, 9, 10.
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]iath. Being a candidate for orders in the Church, he was shocked, on approaching this subject, to find baptismal regeneration plainly taught in the Articles, and as plainly evaded by clergymen, as it seemed to him, through '^shifts inv^ented to avoid the disagreeable necessity of resigning their functions/' All the defences of infant baptism he found to partake of the same Jesuitical spirit: involving the attempt to fasten upon the Scriptures by insinuation the responsi- bility of a custom which could not be directly derived from them. " Even if they can be made to confirm, they could not have suggested or established, it." The sharp recoil against dis- covered disingenuousness in sacred things in- tensified itself into a suspicious temper, grew to cynicism, and so he went out into a realm "lonely as the desert behind Algiers,'' where he still Avanders solitary and uncomforted, while the night comes on.
HOW SPRINKLING IS DEFENDED.
The practice of sprinkling is equally devoid of Scriptural warrant, and carries with it the marks of human and — in its extended applica- tion— comparatively modern intrusion. Cere- monial corruptions, says Archbishop Whately, are " first overlooked, then tolerated, then sane-
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tloncd, and finally embodied in a system; of which they are rather to be regarded as the cause than the effect."^ When the African Bishop Cyprian uttered the hesitating, but amiable sug- gestion, that the drenching of the bed-ridden convert in water might graciously be accepted as confessedly imperfect, but in such case the only possible approach to the divine immersion^ — probably he little thought an exception based upon so timid and casual a venture of opinion would one day assume to be the rule, to the practical exclusion of the divine order itself. Yet through that insignificant breach, the deep waters of baptism have shallowed down until they are at length reduced to tiny drops trick- ling on an infant's forehead. The watermarks of this decline are plainly visible, as will here- after be shown, in the history of the modification of ecclesiastical formularies: the juxtaposition of the new and the surviving old producing in some cases a sense of incongruity as striking as the sight of the baker's loaves and pans set in the niches and mixed with the sculptured relics of Vesta's temple at Rome. The Methodist Discipline^ for instance, still solemnly cites the traditional warrant for infant baptism, ^^ Except
* Errors of Rome, p. 16.
2 " Not unlawful." See Cave, Primitive Christianity, (Oxford, 1840), p. ] 50.
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a man be born of water," etc.," and then as solemnly provides a teaspoonful of water out of which the child is to be ^^ born." The Anglican Catechism of 1862 asks the ancient question, " What is the outward and visible sign or form in baptism?" and returns the answer novel, in more senses than one, ^^ Water: wherein the person is baptized."^ According to this, water itself is a "mere form^^ and that being non- essential, may be dispensed with.
As to the positive symbolic import of the sprinkling of water upon infants under the name of baptism, enough has been already said of the multiplicity and incompatibility of modern theo- ries, to show that no majority vote could prob- ably be obtained in favor of any verdict more definite than that which the Pharisees rendered concerning the origin of John^s baptism, " We cannot tell." Nearly all the Chiu*ches — to quote substantially the language of Dr. John Hall, used in another connection, but most ajpro- pos here — appeal first to the New Testament: if that fails, to the Old Testament : then to anti- quity: and finally conclude that no inspired rule is given. "So," he says, "loose practice, like loose thinking, always seeks to represent the standard as indefinite." ^
1 Schaff, Creeds of Christendom, p. 521.
2 Questions of the Daj, p. 273, vol. III.
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It is probable, however, that on the negative side far greater definiteness and unanimity might be reached, in the avowal that baptism does not symbolize regeneration by faith. This is logi- cally inevitable, whether or not it take the form of definite avowal. For literally the sprinkling of water in no wise touches the life, or even re- motely shadows forth emergence from death into life. Theoretically, as applied to infants, it can- not imply regeneration by faith, for faith is there impossible. It must therefore, in such case, either be held to effect regeneration, or to make no allusion to it. We reach, therefore, this re- markable result :
AN ENORMOUS CX)NTRADlCTION.
That baptism, which was in Paul's time im- mersion, the visible ^'likeness of Christ's resurrection," and the symbol of the believer's passage through death to life, may in the nine- teenth century equally well be pouring or sprinkling, which are alike devoid of every trace of such likeness, or of such symbolism; that that era-making idea of the new birth — with which our Lord startled Nicodemus ; with which the Apostles "turned the world upside down"; and which has been the inner force of every great religious revolution since; which our Lord
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"writ large '^ in a s}nnbol chosen by himself and set at the forefront of his advancing church — may with perfect safety be pushed from its place, and the notion of "purification, consecration" or what not, thrust in instead.
Clearly a baptism which carefully excludes from its purport the central thought which Christ included, and so refashions the outline of the rite as to efface all traces of his design, and adapt it to the utterance of the new thought so alien to his own, can no longer be Christ's baptism. And his word returns again : " Ye have made the word of God of none effect by your tradition."
The enormity of the contradiction reached through these perversions, and still maintained by those who declare the Bible their " only and sufficient rule of faith and practice," is startling. The most specious if not the only apology, which Protestantism can be said to have pro- duced, is the citation of that perilous principle which Luther himself suggested — for the pro- tection, however, not only of infant baptism, but of auricular confession, penance, and the bulk of the Romish innovations;^ and to which, as we have seen, the Reformed Episcopal Church has just recurred, viz. : that nothing can be per- nicious that is sanctified by antiquity and not ^ Hard wick, History of Thirty-Nine Articles, p. 14.
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explicitly forbidden by Scripture. A moment's consideration will show that this is a revision, which amounts to rescission, of the Protestant Canon. For it absurdly proposes two "only'' rules, Scripture and ancient usage, which, how- ever, must not conflict. But conflict is in fact inevitable; for "the restless spirit of man," says Canon Liddon, "cannot but at last press a principle to the real limit of its application, even although centuries should intervene between the premises and the conclusion." ^
Infant baptism, for instance, even if not fairly included under the authority of Christ's commis- sion, seems at worst only a harmless superfluous form, and is often defended on that plea. But the ver\^ foundation principle of the theory which introduces infant baptism compels inevitably the claiming of the whole field for it, leaving adult baptism, save in heathen nations, exceptional only. For if baptism can be of any spiritual service, independent of intelligence or volition, it would be criminal to neglect or postpone it. That fierce old Christian militant who made his motto "bap- tism or death " was an evangelist after his way : and equally so that enthusiastic Churchman who covertly sought to save the Algerian Moslems not
"^ Bampton Lectures (1866) on the Divinity of Our Lord (New York, 1868), p. 484.
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long since. Standing at his window with prayer- book and watering-pot in hand, he diligently read the baptismal service from the one, and from the other simultaneously sprinkled the passers-by.^ But baptism in unresisting infancy would, according to their theory, have been equally efficacious, and would have been the normal course: for it would have saved the resort to force in the one case and to craft in the other.^ It is evident, then, that infant baptism and believers' baptism cannot permanently dwell together. The parasite, once fairly lodged, will, if it be not torn away, drink the life and usurp the place of the trunk to which it clings. The church, no more than the individual, can "serve two masters." Scripture or tradition alone must be supreme.
HOW INFANT BAPTISM AROSE.
As to the antiquity of the rite of infant lustra- tion there can be no doubt. Indeed, it might be hard to resist for it the claim which one of the Romish Fathers has triumphantly brought in vindication of the practice of prayers for dead: that it was "more ancient than Christianity
* Westminster Review, 114 (October, 1880), p. 549. 2 Curteis, Bampton Lectures, p. 214.
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itself." ^ It was almost the universal custom of heathen nations, as Mr. Tylor tells us, to couple a religious meaning with the washing and naminor of the child after birth. The Greeks and Romans practistKl, not only infant baptism, but the sprinkling of holy water upon wor- shippers, as a purifying symbol.^
But when or how the baptism of infants as a Christian rite began it is not so easy to say. Evil did not first come into the world in the manifest garb or with the honest tramp of an open foe, but with the gliding of the serpent, " more subtle than any beast of the field." " No one," says Archbishop Whately, " can point out any precise period when the Romish corruptions began — ^they crept in one by one — the natural offspring of human passions unchecked." ^ They "all grew out of natural and generally praise- worthy impulses, as in the case of prayers for the dead, supposed to be in purgatory," according to Canon IMozley. But these worthy impulses were manipulated constantly to an unworthy end, and cannot hallow the rites they confided in. In the days when the Roman Republic had superseded the Kingdom, but the old kingly
' MUller : cited in Barrows' PargaU ry (Americau Tract Society, 1882). p. 107.
^Prwnhvt Culture, 2 : 430, 439, 441. * Errors of Home, p. 11.
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reverence still lingered, "eight ancient kingly statues stocxi in the Capitol. A statue of Julius Caesar was placed near these, two years before his death, with the covert object of giving him kingly honors." ^ The statue dumb and motion- less seemed innocent, but in fact the snow-white marble was dyed deep with an iniquitious intent, and the candid sculptor's art suborned to the basest of treacheries.
So, one by one in the second century A. D., there crept to the side of the simple rite Christ had appointed new "symbolic elements in ac- cordance with the taste of the time and the poetic genius of the East, especially of the Egyptian Church ; " ^ beautiful, tender, seemingly harmless and even helpful. A little later and these new features have multiplied, got into the foreground, taken on a deep and awful signifi- cance. The brotherly minister has become a thaumaturgic priest; the simple bread and wine under his incantations become the literal body and blood of the Lord, exclusion from the taste of which, for child or man, is death; the bap- tismal water must, equally with the bread and wine, be "trans-elemented" by the pouring in
1 G. C. Lewis, Credibility of Early Roman History, (London, 1855), p. 107.
2Pressens6, Early Tears of Christianity (London, 1879), p. 4:24.
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of oil ill tlie form of a cross, the letting down a lighted taper until the melted wax had flowed in and the light was extinguished, with divers other subsidiary rites and multiplied forms of words. ^ The water thus made ^'lioly'^ of itself regenerated all who were plunged therein, and nothino: else could. Considerino; the strenjyth of parental love and piety, and the preconceived unity of parent and child in the popular mind, as heretofore explained; considering also the new rod of power thereby lodged in priestly hands — it Ls not wonderful that the baptism of infants entered and grew apace.
When sprinkling and pouring had been first introduceil as " not unlaAvful," says Cave in his Primitive Christianity, it "quickly succeeded in the room of immersion, because the tender bodies of most infants (the only persons now baptized) could not be put under water in these cold cli- mates without prejudice to health, if not to their lives." ^ Wall puts it a little more carefully, thas : " It being allowed to weak children to be baptized by affusion, many fond ladies and gen- tlemen first, and then by degrees the common people, would obtain the favor of the priest to have their children pass for weak," and so escape
' Cf. Cowles in Bih. Sac, vol. XXXIII., p. 426. ^Primitive Christianity, p. 156.
108 TUE MOULD OF DOCTRINE.
dipping.^ It is noticeable that immersion did not at once sink into sprinkling. "In 1645," says Wall, " when dipping ceased, there was no sprinkling, but pouring only." He quotes Vas- quez as saying that "sprinkling (as compared with pouring) cannot be practised without sin." ^ How sprinkling itself first got a footing as bap- tism is not clear. Exorcism, which always accompanied baptism in the early church, in- volved the sprinkling of holy water. It is quite possible, as has been maintained by some, ^ that this was afterwards confounded Avith baptism; and that the custom of sprinkling to-day is the "survival" of a superstitious charm to drive away the Devil: which it were to be devoutly wished, though quite unlikely, that it may do.
The conclusion is obvious. No antiquity, however hoary, can change earthly things to heavenly. No silence of Scripture, however profound, can be taken as a license for the intru- sion of human device into rites that are divine: and such intrusion can bring only evil. Man, powerless to create, is mighty to destroy. Even in the Apostles' time the "mystery of lawless- ness" had begun to work, and the sanction of
1 History of Infant Baptism, p. 717. 2/6., p. 719. 8 /6., p. 723.
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the Fathers is weaker still. There is "but one lawgiver'^ — not Wesley, nor Calvin, nor Augus- tine, nor Cyprian, nor even Paul, but Christ the L )rd. " What he saith unto you, do it/'
CHAPTER \LL
BAPTISM AND THE NEW BIRTH— RESULTS OF PERVERSION.
RESULTS, in history and nature, are often remote from, di^^proportionate to, and in themselves unlike, their causes. The links that bind them are likewise frequently delicate and obscure. It may easily happen, therefore, that the suggestion of such intimacy of relation will at first awaken a sense of surprise, or even of incredulity — the connection, though real, not be- ing at once obvious. Nothing could perhaps seem more incongruous than the attributing the local persistence of red clover, by Mr. Darwin, to the presence of cats. ^ But the absurdity dis- appears when we are reminded that the prolonged lite of the clover depends on its fertilization by the humble bee; that the bee cannot survive the destruction of its comb and nest, and that these, which the mice would destroy, the cats, by ex- terminating the mice, protect. Thus often a most delicate thread of connected circumstance
^ Origin of Species (New York, 1883), p. 57. 110
THE MOULD OF DOCTRINE. ' 111
once grasped will lead us to the centre of the labyrinth, and change our embarrassment to sur- prise.
Doubtless the connection of cats with clover will seem to the casual observer quite as de- monstrable as that, for instance, of a perverted baptism with the current evolution philosophy. Nevertheless, a patient fumbling among the ad- jacent facts may touch a clew leading to the revelation of a real kinship.
THE TESTIMONY OF THOLUCK.
Nowhere has the grosser Evolutionism found a more congenial air or a better prepared soil than in the field that Luther ploughed. Indeed, so rampant has been the growth of thorns and so abundant the crop of tares in that region since his day, as to suggest that the '^ enemy'' may in- sidiouf^ly have broken off the point of his plough, so that it did not go deep enough, or thrust some tares into the seed-bag while he was still sowing. According to Dr. Charles Hodge,^ "in the com- mon Protestant theory, no judgment is expressed or implied by the church, in receiving any one, as to the fact of his regeneration," for it is "not the purpose of God that the visible church on earth should consist exclusively of the regenerate.'^
^ Systematic Theology, vol. III., p. 545.
112 THE MOULD OF DOCTRTNE,
In proof of this he cites the parable of the "^vheat and tares/' But if, as he maintains, the "fiekV in that parable be the church, and the "tares" the unregenerate, the scope of the Mas- ter's directions to his servants is somewhat enlarged by implication. For they were only forbidden to usurp the " angels' " functions by "pulling up" the tares, but it seems they may without hinderance take on them the "enemy's'^ Avork of planting them. How thoroughly this has been done in Lutheran Germany let the ven- erable Professor Tholuck tell. " I regret nothing so much," said he to Joseph Cook,^ "as that the line of demarcation between the church and the world which Jonathan Edwards and Whitefield drew so deeply in the mind of New-England is almost unknown, not to the theological doctrines, but to the ecclesiastical forms of Germany. With us confirmation is compulsory. Children of un- believing as well as of believing families must at an early age be baptized and profess faith in the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. Without a certificate of confirmation in some Church, em- ployment cannot be la\\^ully obtained. After confirmation, the religious standing is assumed to be Christian : after that, we are all church mem- bers. Thus it happens that in our State Church 1 Bih. Sac, vol. XXXII., p. 740.
THE MOULD OF DOCTRINE. 113
the ronverted and unconverted are mixed pell- mell together/' In a note Mr. Cook adds that " in a few cities of North Germany infamous licenses were granted women for an infamous purpose, but only on exhibition of a certificate of conjirm- ation." Of the analogous evil results of infant bai)tism in New-England, Mr. Joseph Cook, who is himself a Congregationalist, has borne the most courageous and trenchant testimony. It led, (he says in substance, in his lectures on "Qrthodoxi//')^ to the "half-way covenant," and that to skepti- cism. He affirms, on the authority of Tracy, that all the churches not following Edwards and Whitefield in their revolt against unregenerate church-membership became Unitarian.^ Infant baptism, imported from the Old World, laid the foundation of a State Church in New-Eno-land. Roger Williams, he adds, protested that it would lead to the secularization of church-membership; which it in fact did, and out of this secularization grew the weakness of New-England against French infidelity.^
UNITARIAXISM AND ITS ORIGIN.
The history of New England Unitarianism is doubtless familiar, but it is perhaps not so well known that infant bai)tism was responsible for
1 p. 280. 2 p_ 281. 3 pp. 271, 272, 281.
II
114 THE MOULD OF DOCTRINE.
its origination, as well as its modern revival. The name itself, according to Bodd, one of their early historians, was not derived from antipathy to the doctrine of the Trinity as their character- istic tenet, but from the union of all parties (including the Orthodox) at their instance, in a bond of religious toleration, under the name of uniti or unitarii. When the rest receded from this, the name attached to them alone.^ The first propounder of Unitarianism, says Eees, was Cellarius. In the beginning of the sixteenth century, he was appointed by the Reformers to defend infant baptism against the Anabaptist leaders. Being overpowered by their arguments, he repudiated infant baptism not only, but went further and denied the Trinity. That this was no legitimate outgrowth of Anabaptism itself, however, is historically certain; for in 1546 Adam Pastor was excluded from their body for holding Unitarian views.^ But the intensity of the revulsion, which led to the supreme exalta- tion of reason, and the consequent rejection of the mystery of the Trinity, is not inexplicable when we remember to Avhat stultiloquence the Keformers had descended in justifying infant
1 Rees, Bacovi'an Catechism (London, 1818), Preface IV. 2/6.. VII.
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baj)tism. Luther said, for instance, as follows: "The Anabaptists pretend that children, not as yet having reason, ought not to receive bap- tism. 1 answer that reason in no way con- tributes to faith. Nay, in that children are destitute of reason, they are all the more fit and proper recipients of baptism. For reason is the greatest enemy that faith hath. . . Faith comes of the word of God, when this is heard : little children hear that word when they receive bap- tism, and therewith they receive faith."* Bap- tism having been thus reduced to magic, and f lith, for its sake, identified with unreason, the Unitarians rejected both. Their Racovian Cate- chism is largely devoted to an arraignment of infant baptism and sprinkling as unscriptural — one of the most complete anywhere to be found.^
Luther's great inconsistency.
It is the more remarkable that Luther did not revolt against infant baptism, when we remember irs sharp antipathy to Papal usurpation, and also that the immediate occasion of the Reforma- tion was the sale of indulgences. For infant baptism was manifestly, as Dean Mil man terms it, one of the "strong foundations of sacerdotal
' Lxfher's Table Talk (Philadelphia, 1868). p. 202. 2Recp, Racovian Catechism, p.* 253, seq.
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power;" ^ and the sale of Indulgences was its direct outgrowth. For the very notion of indul- gence, with that of penance and purgatory, depends on the assumed loss of baptismal grace by after-lapse into sin, the eifects of which w^re thus to be averted. But the idea of regenerating virtue in baptism, again, arose, as we have seen, in connection with infant baptism, inferentially interpreted as made efficacious by ^Uransele- mentation " of the water (an idea still surviving in the ritual of the English and the Methodist Churches in the prayer that ^^ this water may be sanctified," etc.) " Because the taint of our birth is purified by baptism," says Origen, "therefore infants are baptized." It is obvious that the damnation of infants not so purified, logically follows, even were it not distinctly asserted by the Fathers, as it was. Even good Dr. Emmons, in a later day, only softened this inevitable corollary by hopefully surmising, with Dr. Watts, that they might be annihilated.^ They are still ominously excluded by the English Church from burial in consecrated ground. Infant com- munion was also early practised ; it being con- sistently held, with Augustine, that mystic food
^History of Latin Christianity, (London, 1857), vol. III., p. 277. 2 Works, vol. II., p. G51.
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was as essential to the maintenance as mystic birth to the inception of spiritual life.^
Thus through the misinterpretation and mis- application of baptism had faith been changed to superstition, and the shadow of priestly power been projected over the whole range of life from the cradle to the grave, and even into the in- visible beyond. Claiming to hold the "keys of heaven" through the sacraments, the priesthood had tyrannically gone on to "bind heavy bur- dens and grievous to be borne, and lay them on men's shoulders," which they themselves would not " move with one of their iiuo^ers."
Out of this region of tradition, with its hidden reefs, disordered compasses, and baffling winds, Luther set sail into the open sea of God's word, laying a straight course along the line of "justi- fication by faith alone." But unhappily, reaching the subject of baptism, he at length fell "into a place where two seas met" — and from that ship- wreck, only " on boards and broken pieces of the ship" have men since "escaped safe to land." To drop the figure, Luther left his people a priceless legacy in an honestly-translated Scrip- ture, in the assertion of its sole authority, and in the doctrine that faith alone justifies. But to this last and vital doctrine he unhappily ap-
' Ecclesia., Second Series, p. 59.
118 TEE MOULD OF DOCTRINE,
pendcd, as the only recourse for the defence of infant baptism, the neutralizing qualification, "but baptism alone regenerates." Thus divorc- ing baptism from faith, and regeneration from justification, he submitted to his critical and sagacious countrymen a conception of Christian doctrine hopelessly paradoxical. We must obey the Bible against tradition, he said: and yet he endorsed sprinkling as substituted by tradition, for immersion as commanded (according to his own translation) in the Bible. He insisted that the people must read the Bible for themselves, because intelligence is the basis of faith: yet contended that the faith of infants is superior because unintelligent. He argued that salvation is inward and not outward, and therefore beyond priestly control: yet by hanging regeneration upon baptism made the inward the creature of the outward, and still dependent on another's whim. The moulding power of a visible act upon thought and its expression is manifest in the fact that the uniform connection of Luther's w^ord taufeUj to dip, with the practice of sprink- ling, has in fact gradually subverted the meaning of the Avord itself. So that the American Bible Society maintains its consistency in publishing Luther's translation including that word, because it has now come to mean "sprinkle." If now
THE MOULD OF DOCTIIIJS'E. 119
the Rationalist claims Luther's authority for the proposition that Christianity demands the re- nunciation of reason as the condition of faith, it will not be easy to answer him. If, finally, the Naturalistic Evolutionist suggest that the "theory of the potency of every form of life in matter" ought not to seem novel or incredible to one who already accepts the idea of spiritual birth as the product of material baptism, it may at least freshen our curiosity concerning the whole matter, and suggest a more careful re- vision of the words of Christ and the signifi- cance of his ordinance in this connection.
SCRIPTURAL BAPTISM AND THE NEW BIRTH.
That ordinance, as we have seen, in Paul's conception symbolically and visibly reenacts the spiritual transaction which Christ calls the new birth. The Scriptural primacy and fertility of that idea have been already insisted on. " It is," says Professor Austin Phelps, " one of the con- strudive ideas of inspiration, which are not so much here or there as everywhere. It is perva- sive, like the life blood in the body. It is lilvc ca- loric in the globe." ^ The Old Testament begins with "the book of births" — speaking significantly of the " generations of the heavens and the eartli,"
» The Xew Birth (Boston, 1867), p. 21.
120 TUE MOULD OF DOCTMINE.
and "of man" — and of the "bringing forth" by the earth and the waters, of grass, herb, and living creature. The New Testament begins with the "generation of Jesus Christ," which although *^ from David according to the flesh " and so in the old order, was likewise a "new birth" — a birth "from above"— a birth of "the Spirit." His discourse with Nicodemus pivots itself on the same idea, on which also the whole New Testa- ment henceforth turns.
It is a notable instance of the perverse industry with which Christ's words have been twisted from their aim, that one verse (John iii. 5,) of this most prescient discourse, has not only been robbed of its deep suggestiveness, but actually so in- verted as to seem to defend the very idea it was meant to destroy, For, as Wall says, all the ancient Christians understand it to refer to bap- tism, Calvin being the first to deny it. By which denial, adds Wall, he has done "ten times more prejudice" to infant baptisni (involving, as it must, baptismal regeneration) than by "all his new hypotheses and arguments^" the Baptists having already seized upon it as confirn^ing their views.^
But that regeneration is, in any case, inde- pendent of baptism, is distinctly taught in the 1 Historu of Infant Baptism, pp. ool, 552.
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same chapter (verse 36). Surely he that "hath everlasting life" is regenerate, and this is affirmed of him "that believeth/' As to the verse itself it may be incidentally remarked that, the article being absent, it is doubtful whether the Holy Spirit is here referred to. In the Armenian and many earlier versions, the passage reads literally, "of water and of spirit"^ — the preposition be- coming thus generic, and perhaps alluding to certain most significant facts in the physical order, and not to baptism at all. But there is no room to enlarge upon or even to explain this hint.
What is unmistakably to the purpose is the fact that our Lord's whole discourse is manifestly aimed, not to encourage, but to beat down the too gross and mechanical notions of Nicodemus. His first w^ord was anti-materialistic. It in- sisted on a birth "from above," impliedly as asrainst one from beneath. In answer to Nico- demus' obtuse suggestion of a possible allusion to earthly rebirth he makes the antithesis still more distinct, uttering a protest which cannot be too deeply pondered in our day against the pos- sible evolution of the spiritual out of the mate-
iSo in Syriac, Slavonic, Gothic, Anglo-Saxon, Persian, etc. See Malan, on Gospel of John (London, 1865), Note, p. 42.
122 IRE MOULD OF VOC TRINE.
rial. "That which is born of the flesh is flesh; and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit." To suppose that the intervening verse was meant to teacli precisely the opposite, and to press up(jn Nicodemus a formalism which was already a snare to him, would be absurd. It does not identify, but distinguishes, water-birth and spirit-birth; and makes the latter not dependent on, but inde- pendent of, the former, and urges it as the one newly revealed and essential necessity.
EVOLUTIOX FALLACIES ANTICIPATED.
This sharply defined parting off of the mate- rial from the spiritual realm, and the assertion of the powerlessness of the lower to transcend its limits, are suggestive in many directions. They point back to that signal break in the order of creation when it reaches man, as re- corded in Genesis. Though "formed,'^ like the rest of the animal creation, " from the dust of the ground," that is, from beneath, he alone re- ceived from above the breath of God, and became thereby a "new creature." Of whom Professor Huxley says, "Whether from them (that is. the animal creation) or not, he is not assuredly of them," "being the only consciously intelligent denizen of the world.' ^ We remera- 1 Evidence of 3fan's Place m Ncdure, p. 110.
TUE MOULD OF DOCTRTXE. 123
ber likewise that unique element in the Incarna- tion which severed it from all anterior human births: by virtue of which Jesus said to the Jews, "Ye are from beneath, I am from above." It is not accidental, therefore, but by logical con- sequence, that a rejection of the doctrine of regeneration is usually accompanied by a denial of the Incarnation and the Deity of Christ. Not less significant is PauFs claim of authority for his words as emanating, not from a superior human, but from a superhuman source — a differ- ence of kind, and not of degree only: for he declared himself " an apostle, not of men, neither by man, but by Jesus Christ, and God the Father, who raised him from the dead.'^ Thus carefully are the discrete lines between the "flesh" and the "spirit," and their respective possibilities emphasized in Scripture. The bar- riers are thus set against the intrusion of any "Monistic" theory in the interpretation of Christianity or life, by which the boundaries of Genius and Inspiration, Natural and Supernatu- ral, Matter and Force, Body and Spirit, and the like, may tend to be effaced; the lines of the symmetric universe melting thus into the chaotic haze of Agnosticism.
Again, great emphasis is laid in Scripture on the transitional element in birth. "Flesh'' can-
124 TUE MOULD OF DOCTRINE.
not be developed, or disciplined, or reconstructed into " spirit." For birth is not to be confounded with growth: the latter is a process, protracted, continuous, uniform, incomplete: the former is a transaction, sudden, interruptive, spasmodic, com- plete. The "old man" must die that the "new man" may be born. But death is not annihila- tion, nor birth creation, of the mechanism of life. The babe dies as to the foetal, that it may- enter ihe atmospheric, life: this necessitates no modification of structure, but only a transfer of the dynamic centre of vitality. The "new creature" in Christ is simply one the gravitative centre of whose life has been changed from the "flesh" to the "spirit."
The great truth which feeds the mills of phil- osophy to-day with much grain and more chaif, and from which most heterogeneous grists are being ground, lies close by. It is that the secret of the universal order is vital, not mechanical; anl that a "new thing" can arrive upon the earth only through the gateway of birtJi.
"We are apt to speak vaguely sometimes," says Thoreau, "as if a divine life were to be grafted onto or built over this present as a suitable foundation. This might do if we could so build our own old life as to exclude from it all the warmth of our affection, and addle it, as
THE MOULD OF DOCTRINE. 125
the thrush builds over the cuckoo's ^^'^ and lays her own atop, and hatches only that; but the fact is — so there is the partition — we hatch them both, and the cuckoo's always by a day first, and that young bird crowds the young thrashes out of the nest. No! destroy the cuckoo's ^^^ or build a new nest." ^
There is still another significant element in this connection, vividly illustrated, as are those already noticed, in the resurrection and equally in baptism, to which Paul refers as its analogue. It is that the new birth is not self-wrought. Christ's resurrection power did not issue from his dead body, much less from the grave — he "was raised" by power from above. The im- mersed believer does not resume life of himself; he too "is raised" by a lifting hand. The old schoolmen were not wholly ignorant of or in- different to that series of phenomena which un- derlie the modern theoiy of evolution. They preferred, however, the more expressive term eduction, as indicating a power leading from before, rather than pushing from behind. The word "evolution" Is logically colorless in itself. It becomes theistic or atheistic according as it recognizes the "hand reaching through nature moulding man," or reverts to the old Lucretian
^ Letters, (Boston, 1865), p. 42
126 TEE MOULD OF DOCTRINE.
thesis that "Nature is able to produce all things of herself, without the intervention of the gods." Thus, in the nineteenth century of research and speculation, the world finds itself sitting oi)posite the same central idea with which our Lord taught men to begin in the first. That primary ordinance, which Christ provided as the corner-stone of organization in his church, into Avhich the true doctrine of the new birth w^as visibly cut, has been marred, defaced, and thrust aside by the builders, until the idea itself has been perverted, obscured, or lost. In its stead therefore comes the specious counterfeit: a religion whose Bible is "evolved" out of human literature; its Christ out of social progress or a mythic tendency; and its inner life out of culture, inheritance, or good nature; and a science with the legend, " That which is born of the flesh is spirit." "Ye must be born from below."
CHAPTER VIII.
BAPTISM AND LOYALTY— THE HISTORIC IDEA.
rriHERE is a great future for you Baptists," JL once said Neander. The prophecy will in many quarters be met only with a shrug of sur- prised incredulity. Perhaps it may kindle a gentle smile of derision even upon the features of one whose
" Arched brow prilled o'er his eyes With solemn proof proclaims him wise " ^
— a mute and modest confession of his own con- sciously superior profundity as contrasted with the superficiality of the simple-minded old German. For he has penetration enough to assure himself that the Baptist function is (as has been conspicuously published not very long ago) the "prolonging a conscientious and useless con- troversy" over "not even an ordinance, but the external method of its administration " ^ — (what the internal method might be does not appear) —
i Churchill.
' H. W. Beccher, Life of the Christ vol. L, p. 226.
127
128 THE MOULD OF DOCTUIKE.
thus figliting for ^^an externality of an extern- ality/' and becoming the elect apostle of formal- ism, stupidity, and self-Avill. He is further confident that this eccentric "externality'' consti- tutes, as the very name Baptist implies, his whole theological stock in trade: that it is his shibboleth for the gate of heaven, his sermonic " harp of a thousand strings," his compendious religion. Is he not, therefore, rather an anachrc)nism — a be- lated mediaeval ghost who must soon retire before the sun?
It may be deferentially suggested to such a critic, in passing, that as a criterion of character or doctrine no "externality of an externality" is more likely to be deluding than a name. Judged solely by that standard, the "Reformed" people ought once to have been dissolute, the " Methodists " ought to be characteristically prim and cold-blooded, and the " Congregationalists " and "Sabbatarians" ought to be recognized as having a peculiar purchase on the better land, because there alone ^^congregations ne'er break up and Sabbaths have no end."
The profundity of the logic which gauges the breadth of the issue by the size of its occasion — as if the value and dimensions of an estate were dependent on the acreage of the parchment con- veying it — is also worthy of a moment's gaze.
THE MOULD OF DOCTRINE. 129
The question of baptism, it is said, is only one of mensuration — a little more water, or a little less — and pertinacity about such a trifle reduces Christianity itself to a trifle. By the same rule, American liberty is "reduced" to the right to use unstamped paper, about whic^h "trifle'' our fathers were somewhat perverse; Mohammedanism was by the Sepoy rebellion revealed to be only an aversion for greased car- tridges; and Paul's religion was summed up in an obstinate and somewhat paradoxical refusal to circumcise Titus, while consenting to circum- cise Timothy.
In fact, great doors usually swing on small hinges. The pass of Thermopylae may be narrow, but it cradled and kept the life of Greece. The great battles of the world have grown out of circumstances often grotesquely diminutive and commonplace, such as the refusal to doff a cap, or the belching out of an impet- uous word; but the results and the principles involved have not been therefore insignificant. These battles, moreover, however large the territory involved, have been fought, not over broad areiis chiefly, but along narrow border lines. The engineer does not much dread a locomotive leap to the track ten feet away, but he is cautious of the switch points. I
130 THE MOULD OF DOCTRINE.
THE GROUND OF NEANDER'S SAYING.
But we climb again to Neander. He was not a Baptist. He was not a novice, nor an en- thusiast, but a ripened and sedate student and observer. He saw things, not under the dazzling glare of the passing noon, but in the calm light of the centuries. His utterances were not those of the flippant paragrapher, but of the cautious and philosophic historian, and are entitled there- fore to a respectful hearing and pondering. Neander dwelt in a time and place of peculiar political and intellectual effervescence and tran- sition. The ancient despotism in Church and State had drifted (to borrow a striking figure from Froude) like icebergs into a warmer sea, where, steadily melting away beneath, they must soon topple headlong and be dissolved. The "signs of the times'^ augured the speedy mastery of that principle which his countryman Ger- vinus summarized^ as ^'freedom, or the right to pay submission to nothing but law : and equality, the duty of all alike to obey one and the same law." In all this Neander could but recognize a divine pressure on the individual soul, causing it to break out of its cerements: he could but
* Fntrodiiction to History of the Nineteenth Century, p. 67.
THE MOULD OF DOCTRINE. 131
hear a divine voice saying to men, "Loose him and let him go."
Equally portentous were the phenomena on the intellectual side. Enlarged area, multiplied mate- rial, improved apparatus, sharpened methods, had made the critical school exigent and audacious. Nothing was too recondite, too fixed, too an- cient, too sacred, for their prying and ransack- ing spirit. On every side the iconoclastic hammer was ringing, the hungry white-hot fm*nace was bellowing, and eager pincers feeding it with institutions, customs, traditions, documents, to be tested and refined or consumed. Nor was this inexplicable. No sooner was the daughter of Jairus aroused than it was commanded that '^something should be given her to eat." The awakened soul is always hungry. He who is set free to act must also be set free to inquire, that he may know how to act. One of the most stirring trumpet-calls of the Reformation was that sentence of Luther's, in a letter prefixed to his Treatise on Chridlan Liberty, wherein he repudiated restraint in interpreting the word of God, which, inculcating liberty, must be itself free. This sentence, says Roscoe,^ exploded Leo's Bull of Excommunication against him. Doubtless it did much more. It caused that 1 Li/e of Leo X. (Bohn, 1847), vol. II., p. 214.
132 THE MOULD OF DOCTRINE,
spark to be dropped in the ready tinder, and the Cyclopean furnace to be kindled into which the Pope himself, with his bull, his tiara, and all his belongings must go beside the word of God, to be "tried by fire." Neander believed with David that already " the words of the Lord are pure words: as silver tried in a furnace of earth, purified seven times." He could not doubt, therefore, that while human incrustations must crumble and waste away in the refining flame, the divine word itself would come forth clean and lustrous.
Luther's prophecy historically realized.
Out of the conjoint tendencies of his time, therefore, he saw a principle emerging and soon to be dominant, viz.: The unfettered word for the unfettered soul. But this, the prophetic idea for the coming era, he found to be the identical his- toric idea at the roots of that movement then and still contemptuously stigmatized in his own country as Anabaptist. "The origin of this sect," says Professor Butler, of the Episcopal Church,^ "is very obscure. The name was extended to persons of very different origin and of various opinions." "Some came," he adds, "from the Waldenses and Petrobrusians,"
1 Ecclesiastical History (Philadelphia, 1872), p. 232.
THE MOULD OF DOCTRINE. 133
"some" were "the secret disciples of Wiclif, Huss, and others." "The general views in which they agreed were, that the visible church should consist only of holy persons; that nothing of human device should be admitted into its order or worship: and that infants were not proper subjects of baptism." It is deeply signi- ficant to find the names of the Waldenses, Wiclif, and Huss, coupled by an impartial hand with the oris^in of this movement and these ideas. For of Peter Waldo, says Mrs. Ranyard, ^ " It is certain that the Christian world is indebted to him for the ^irs^ translation of parts of the Scrip- tures into a modern tongue, after the Latin ceased to be a living language. . . . The prepa- ration of their (the Waldensian) pastors for the ministry consisted in learning by heart the (tos- pels of Matthew and John, all the Epistles, and most of the writings of David, Solomon, and the prophets." They were " Biblical Anti-Sacer- dotalists," says Milman,^ whose "great strength was in the vernacular Scripture," who denied " all sacraments, except Baptism and the Eucha- rist," and whose martyrdom was for "preaching without authority." To this "voice crying in the wilderness" more than three hundred years
1 77ie Book and its Story (Phila., 1854), pp. 124, 126.
2 Latin Christianity (London, 1857), vol. lY., p. 98.
134 TUE MOULD OF DOGIRINE.
before Luther, Bishop Newton attributes these words: "In articles of faith, the authority of the Holy Scripture is the highest: and for that reason it is the rule of judging: so that what- soever agreeth not with the word of God is de- servedly to be rejected and avoided. The read- ing and knowledge of the Scripture is free and necessary for all men, the laity as well as the clergy. Ceremonies manifestly hindering the teaching and learning of the word are diabolical inventions.'^ As to Wiclif, it is scarcely neces- sary to be reminded that he was for the four- teenth century in England what Waldo had been for the twelfth on the Continent. "He gave the whole Bible to the people, he gave it without note or comment, and he was the first man that did so.'' ^ Upon him the friars vented their maledictions, because by his translation "the gospel pearl was cast abroad and trodden under foot of swine, and the gospel which Christ had given to be kept by the clergy was now made forever common to the laity." ^ John Huss again in the fifteenth century, and in Bohemia, was the champion and martyr of Wiclif 's doctrines; among them, as specified and condemned by Pope Pius II. pre-eminently this:
1 TJie Book and Its Story, p. 134. 2/&., p. 133.
THE MOULD OF DOCTRINE. 135
that " every one hath free liberty to preach the word of God/ Thus was the torch of an un- fettered word passed on from darkened century to century, until the morning dawn of the Re- formation.
FRilEDOM, CIVIL AND INTELLECTUAL, DEMANDED.
The historic connection of freedom of action with the uncovering of the word of God is no less manifest than that of freedom of inquiry. " If the foundations of freedom (that is, civil free- dom) were laid in religion," says Gervinus,^ there would be no fear concerning its progress. Machiavelli was aware of this truth when he looked for a fundamental regeneration of the times and of States only in a reform of the Church." "In Luther's time," he adds,^ "when the first foundations of liberty were only in the act of being laid, the scheme for the whole future edifice was sketched by some few who had already
determined on its immediate completion
Among the religious enthusiasts, a few, under the name of Inspirati or Anabaptists, had conceived the idea of a purification of Christianity and its forms, according to the dictates of reason; an
1 Introduction to History of Nineteenth Century, p. 26. 2/6., p. 28.
].% THE MOULD OF DOCTRINE,
idea which was only realized in the days of their great-grandchildren, whose expatriated mission- aries found a home in America." He further instances as especially remarkable their "appeal to a divine right (the natural rights of man, as they were afterwards called ) ; the foundation of Church and State on an idea, on a universal and natural right, which was urged in opposition to the vexatious privileges of the few, and of castes."^ Voltaire, who had few soft words to bestow on religionists of any sort, and who knew of the Anabaptists chiefly from their executioners, who "showed them about in cages as wild beasls are shown, and caused their flesh to be torn off with red-hot pincers," declares that the "manifesto published by these savages in the name of the men who till the earth might have been signed by Lycurgus," and that "their demands as delivered in writing were extremely just." ^ It is they, he said, who "laid open that dangerous truth which is implanted in every heart, that mankind are all born equal; saying that if Popes had treated princes like their subjects, princes had treated the common people like beasts." ^
The "manifesto" above referred to is given in full by Gieseler in his EGdesmdical History,^
1 Introduction to History of Nineteenth Century, p. 30.
2 Works (London, 1701), vol. IV., p. 70. ^ Ih., p. 73. * (Edinburgh, 1855), vol. V., p. 347-9.
TUE MOULD OF DOCTRINE. VJl
and is worth referring to, alike as an eloquent statement of their notion of liberty, and a proof of their avouching of the word of God as the sole source of that notion and guaranty of their claim. The third article reads as follows: "Hitherto it has been the custom for men to hold us as their own property, which is a pitiable case, considering that Christ has delivered and redeemed us with his precious blood shed for us, the peasant as much as the prince. Accordingly, it is consistent with Scripture that we should be free, and wish to be so. Not that we wish to be absolutely free, and under no authority; but we take it for granted that you will either willingly release us from serfage, or prove to us from the gospel that we are serfs.'^ As a "conclusion and final resolution" of the whole twelve articles they say, " If one or more of the articles, herein set forth, is not in agreement with the word of God, we will recede therefrom, if it be made plain to us on Scriptural grounds . . , Likewise if more articles of complaint be truly discovered from Scripture, we will also reserve the right of resolving upon these." Here is unmistakably Get forth the claim that in the word of God is to be found that intelligible, infallible, supreme, and exclusive revelation of fundamental law, which every man has a right for himself to read
1.18 THE MOULD OF DOCTRINE.
and comprehend, and to wliich every man must at Ill's peril implicitly submit. And here is douljtless that radical idea in which the pene- trating eye of Xeander saw, beneath a rough husk of crudity and fanaticism in the early Anabaptists, the "mustard seed" of a near future.
Crudity and fanaticism enough there clearly was, registered in that company; filling the fore- ground of history with violence, monstrosity, and noisy incoherencies. But Ave must remember that almost all vital forces are awkward in their first forms. The swiftest bird first props itself on ungainly legs, and climbs with tremb- ling and unsteady wing to reach its arrow flight. The very criterion of beginning life in the bio- plasmic mass, according to Dr. Beale, is the shapelessness of its uneasy heavings.^ Nor is it to be forgotten that the times were themselves chaotic. The old was broken, or breaking, the new was not yet fashioned. The Reformation flood was sweeping on with impetuous majesty, and ran into a gulf as yet unmeasured. Up against the cataract rose a spray of enthusiasm, formless. Protean, tempestuous. Nevertheless, looking steadily upon the confused scene, we may discern, hanging within, distinct, symmetri- ^Life, Force,and Matter (London, 1870), p. 38.
THE MOULD OF DOCllilNE. 139
cal, abiding, a "bow in the cloud." The very liarbinger that Neander saw of the coming time, wlien every man should be free for himself to know and for himself to obey the one law — when the unfettered soul should be entrusted fully with the unfettered word.
THE ANABAPTISTS AND THIS DEMAND.
It remains to inquire how directly the Ana- baptist movement was itself associated with this idea ; whether such association was logical, or merely incidental ; and if logical, whether as cause or effect. For this two or three pre- liminaiy suggestions may prepare the way.
First It will be noticed that the question of immei-sion was not as yet involved. The reason is obvious. The practice of pouring and sprink- ling, though prevalent in some quarters and to some extent, had a place by sufferance only, and not by positive injunction. The formulary drawn up by Calvin at Geneva was, says the learned Dr. Wall, "the first in the world that prescribes affusion absolutely."^
Second. The real point of controversy was not the alleged rebaptizing itself, as the taunting name transmitted to history would seem to imply ; but the repudiation of infant baptism, commonly
^History of Infant Baptism, p. 718.
140 THE MOULD OF DOCTRINE.
expressed in that overt form. It was primarily a revolt against an existing order, rather than the fashioning of a new one. Dr. Wall more accurately terms them Antipedobaptists.
Third, Properly there was no specific Ana- baptist sect as such. Groups most widely separated and discordant in doctrine and spirit were miscellaneously covered by that epithet. The communistic anarchist, the rationalistic Sj- cinian, the mystic Illuminist, and the sober Men- nonite, though differing at almost every other point, agreed in their contempt for this institu- tion, and were bound together under a common name thereby. Indeed, so wide was the sweep of the stream spanned by that comprehensive title, and so impetuous was the current, that it may fairly be said to have drawn in the great body of those who sought further to reform the Reformation. Even some of its original leaders, including Melancthon, CEcolampadius, and Zwingle, barely escaped its tremendous power, as they distinctly confess.^
Now, it is scarcely conceivable that mere accident should have rallied so many and so discordant groups of combatants to a single and so narrow a point of resistance. Nor does it
' Of. Meander's History of Dogmas, vol. II., p, 688. Planck, History of Protestant Tlieology vol. II., p. 47.
TEE MOULD OF DOCTRINE, 141
seem credible that those heterogeneous miihi- tudes should, through mere caprice or self-will, have contested even to the galloNvs and the block so trivial a concession as the harmless submission of their children to the priest's hands for bap- tism. It is manifest that they saw, or thought they saw, some more tremendous weight of con- sequence hanging on that pivot.
Inevitably thus the great issues of church history in doctrine and life have grouped about and hidden in this marvellous symbolic ordi- nance. As in the time of John, the great re- former, so now, it is the "axe laid unto the'' very "root of the trees." "The Reformation had scarcely boasted an existence of five years," says Mohler (beginning his account of the "funda- mental principle of the Anabaptists" in his work on Symbolism), "when from the midst of its adherents men arose who declared it to be insufficient." He proceeds to urge their con- sistency in that claim, since as a necessary result of "Luther's maxims and writings," "nothing is easier than to account for their rejection of infant baptism."
REFORMERS OF THE REFORMATION.
The pregnant idea of Luther's career was embodied in his famous ultimatum at the Diet
142 THE MOULD OF BOCTMINE,
of AYorms, refusing to retract anything but ^vhat could be shown "from reason and Scrip- ture, and not from authority, to be erroneous." ^
For many centuries the Bishops of Rome had claimed infallibility, and to doubt their dogmatic utterances or disobey their edicts was not only to be a heretic but a rebel. Under that usurped authority they had gagged reason, subordinated the Scripture to tradition, and substituted the mailed hand for the winning voice of the gospel. All this was embodied in infant baptism, in which reason was insulted by the dogma of bap- tismal regeneration and vicarious faith, Scripture perverted or ignored in behalf of tradition, and voluntary consent of the baptized made impos- sible.
In his revolt, therefore, against force, tradition, and unreason, Luther was bound in consistency to sweep away this final bulwark behind which they were all entrenched. But magnificent as was his onset, he halted too soon, and began to " build again the things he had destroyed.'^ "As the founder of a new Church ,^^ says Roscoe,^ "he appears in a very different light." "In one instance he effected his purpose by strenuously insisting on the right of private judgment in
1 Roscoe, Leo X, vol. II., pp. 105, 226.
2 Ih., vol. II., pp. 235, 236.
THE MOULD OF DOCTRINE. 143
matters of faith, whilst m the other he succeeded by laying down new doctrines to which he ex- pected that all those who espoused his cause should submit/' When arguments from Scripture failed, he resoii^ to more violent njeasures.
When Carlstadt refused to accept his fantastic theory of consubstantiation, Luther saw in that, *"as well as in the denial of infant baptism,^' to use Gieseler's words,^ "the sole result of the pride of reason advancing beyond Scripture; and he resisted both doctrines as entirely analo- gous fanaticisms," and banished him accordingly. Insulted reason thereupon, being denied any- thing, seized everything, lifted the banner of revolt, and marched away under Socinus into the Unitarian apostasy.
Luther had staked all upon the supreme au- thority of the written word, and the universal "liberty of prophesying.'^ But he forthwith assumed, not only the arbitrary interpretation of that word, but the right to impose an observance confessedly unwarranted by it; and he forbade the intrusion of all other interpreters except they could "work miracles'' or show "priestly orders"^ in the apostolic succession as their cre- dentials. Naturally enough he found many as
^ Ecclesiastical History, vol. Y., p. 340. ^Mohler's Symbolism, p. 369.
141 TUE MOULD OF LOCTRINE.
sensitive to the claim of monkish, as he had been of Papal, infallibility; and some, vaunt- ing excess of liberty, renounced together the mastery of Pope, monk, and Scripture alike; trusting to the divine sanction of that "inner light" which they left to the Quakers as their chief heritage, and which has cast some warm gleams along the line of Moravian and Metho- dist descent.
Again, Luther having summoned mankind to a revolt against all depotism, temporal or spiritual, had ended, as Gervinus says, in simply transferring "the divine right of investiture from the Pope to the secular magistrate":^ thus making the struggle to be, "not for the liberty of conscience of the simple individual of tne middle class, but for the right of princes to make reforms in their own lands, and to effect im- provements in the Church as a benefit conferred by them on the people." "Luther had been successful," says Voltaire,^ "in stirring up the princes against the Pope and Bishops; Miinzer stirred up the peasants against them all." No wonder, therefore, when they were summoned by the civil magistrate, under penalty of death, to renounce reason and abandon Scripture, in
* Intro, to Hist, of the Nineteenth Century, p. 32. 2 Works, vol. lY., p. 73.
THE MOULD OF DOCTRINE, 145
behalf of an ordinance for which they fuund no sanction in either, that they retorted that "in- fant baptism is of the Pope and the devil/' Nor that one group of peasantry raised their grotesque and savage war-cry, "Forge Pin-ke- pank on Nimrod's anvil," and like the defrauded Samson, blind and crazed, bowed themselves be- tween the pillars to bring down the whole civil structure — the lawful progenitors of all com- munistic enthusiasts thenceforth.
But these volcanic outbursts, though so con- spicuous, were but sporadic hints of a compact and steady flame blazing deeper down. There were "yet seven thousand" who would not bow down the knee either to the Papal, the Lutheran, or the Libertine Baal. They saw in the unintel- ligent, unconsenting babe, thrust by magisterial force into the priest's hand, the very image of man himself under the terrible hand of Rome : coming thence spiritually — as was fitly symbolized physically in the inquisition torture of the "iron virgin" — with pierced eye-balls, mangled flesh, and crushed bones. But they saw also that rea- son and faith are harmonious and trustworthy only when yoked indissolubly to Scripture. For liberty is but perfect obedience to perfect law — and only "the law of the Lord is perfect." Re- sisting alike the intrusion of all forms of human
146 THE MOULD OF DOCTRINE.
authority — civil, ecclesiastical, or social — into that realm Avliere "Christ alone is King and Law- giver," they insisted that baptism, Avhich he has made the outer badge of discipleship, belongs to faith alone — that faith rests on freedom — freedom on intelligence — and that God's word, read and comprehended, alone is the "truth that makes free.'' Thus — though successively accounted rebels, heretics, and obstructives, as the sceptre of usurped authority has passed from State to Church, and from Church to nineteenth century " Catholicity," — they " continue unto this day ^vitnessing both to small and great, saying none other things than" our Lord himself taught them when he said, " If a man love me, he will keep my wordsJ^
CHAPTER IX.
BAPTISM AND LOYALTY— DEBASING THE STANDARDS.
TN a volume of Theological Essai/s, published J- a few years since, Mr. E,. H. Hutton oifers these suggestive comments upon the history and policy of the Romish Church. "Rome alone has presented her theology to the world in a
thoroughly institutional form Romanism
was a vast organization almost before it was a dis- tinct faith. Rome did not so much incarnate her dogmas in her ritual as distill her dogmas out of her ritual.^' ^ Again, "Rome in general acted first and thought afterwards. She distilled her Christian theory out of her Christian institu- tions. And what is the rule by which she has tested her institutions, and therefore, in the last result, her dogmas? It is by their adaptation to the mind of the universal church. Neither ancient nor modern Rome has had any strong love for truth as truth. . . . The definition of divine truth coming nearest to the conception
» (Philadelphia; 1876), p. 336.
147
148 THE MOULD OF DOCTRINE.
which seems to be formed of it by the Romish Church would be "that body of theoretic as- sumptions which would be needed completely to justify, on intellectual grounds, all those in- stitutions, special and general, by which practi- cally she has been enabled to win hearts and guide nations.'' ^ That is to say, she recognized the necessity of positive institutions as the em- bodiment of authority and basis of a visible organism, and that such institutions will in- evitably "distill" doctrine and mould faith. She thus saw that she must build upon a rock, and that the outline of the rock would shape the outline of the building. But instead of taking "Christ" for "that rock," or even Peter, as she claimed to do, laying her walls along the line of the divine ordinances as devised by the one, and set in place by the other, she took het^self for a foundation; and reshaping the ordinances to the measure of human credulity, passion, and self-interest, built thereon a temple of supersti- tion and self-will, wherein Christ may speak only in an unknown tongue or the dumb show of the mass, and appear only dead on the crucifix, or superfluous in the niche, or in the picture on the wall.
Recognizing even to an extreme the value of
1 Theological Essays, pp. 345, 346.
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"catholicity" as a test of truth, Mr. Ilutton insists that "in order that the social power and influence of an institution may be any sign of its divine origin, the common cry must go up spontaneously, and without ulterior aim, out of the popular heart": not so "if it be only the result of combination, instead of its cause. If you can explain it in the vulgar method by merely pointing to a common and visible self- interest, or even to a clearly recognized class of common aims and purposes, then there is no sacred mystery in this uplifting of a common voice. . . . ^ Great is Diana of the Ephesiaus' was no vox populi, but merely a vox argenta- riorum — ^a voice of silversmiths. It was an offi- cial cry, the clamor of consentient self-interests, issuing from the artificial mouth-pieces of esprit de corps J' ^ Tried by this canon the "catho- licity" of Romanism breaks up into a partisan- sliip, none the less real, because of the length of its antiquity and the strength of its majority.
And what other alleged "catholicity" will fare better, when offered as a criterion of truth? For where is the man that does not belong to some "craft" that is, or at times seems to be, "in danger," and to whom is not some vox argentariorum a vernacular? The acme of
* Theological Essa^/s, p. 347.
ino THE MOV LB OF DOCTRINE.
achievement in vital mechanics is balanced per- pendicularity in man, and even he cannot get forward without leaning. So long as ^Svinds of doctrine '^ blow, we shall be likely to bend be- fore them or against them. Even without their disturbing pressure, a sudden mental apocalypse might surprise many of us by showing that we are reeling heavily under the fumes of preju- dice, or lolling against the pillars of custom. The determining of truth by the averaging of opinions, therefore, would be a process as unre- liable as the sifting out a vertical line by com- puting the net direction of a wilderness of slant- ing ones. And even more fatuous would it be to submit a standard once found to revision by such a process. Woe to the man who attempts to improve the perpendicularity of the plumb- line by taking counsel of ^Hhe blowing clover and the falling rain.'' Such a plumb-line is the revealed word of the Divine Christ, and such an improvement upon its perfectness Kome has essayed by the consent of tradition, the vote of Councils, and the decree of Popes. Infallibility having been successively assumed for these, falli- bility by obvious inference fell upon all else; and the practice of Rome became the mould by which worship, duty, and doctrine must be shaped, and into conformity with which the
THE MOULD OF D0CTIiI2iE. 151
meaning and even the words of Scripture r. ust l)e refashioned.
A REMNANT OF ROME.
Can the Romish spirit have been so subtle and so tenacious as imperceptibly to have penetrated in any degree into and lingered in the atmos- phere of Protestantism? The spectroscopists have amazed us by finding the three-millionth of a milligramme of sodium in a dust speck, where the most delicate chemical tests had failed to re- veal its presence.^ Perhaps we may err in fancy- ing we have a spiritual spectroscope so fine, or at least that we know equally well how to use it. But wherever we find an ecclesiastical practice or dogma virtually erected into a standard, to the pattern of which formularies are progressively readjusted, (such readjustment gravitating toward the gradual extrusion of associated Scriptural language or idea as incongruous), and to the exi- gencies of which the canons of interpretation and translation must be made to bend, we may fairly suspect a residual element from Pome. That the practice of sprinkling, in lieu of im- mersion, under the name of baptism, applied to infants as the rule and to adults only exception-
^ Schellen's Spectrum Analysis (New York, 1872), p. 5.
ir,2 HIE MOULD GF DOCTRINE.
ally, has been made such a standard, and with such results, it is sought here to show.
The testimony of the late Dean Stanley, in his before-mentioned Nineteenth Century article on Baptism (afterward substantially embodied in his book on Chnstian Institutions), is worthy of citation in this connection. The pnmitive bap- tism he distinctly affirms was immersion. "On philological grounds it is quite correct to trans- late John the Baptist by John the Immerser.'^ ^ "Baptism by sprinkling was rejected by the whole ancient Church (except in the rare case of death- beds or extreme necessity) as no baptism at all.'' ^ It was of adults. "The liturgical service of baptism was framed entirely for full-grown con- verts, and is only by considerable adaptation ap- plied to the case of infants.'' ^ It was intelligent and voluntary, for it was " of their own delibe- rate choice" — it was ^'tlie special sacrament," "the pledge," the "oath of allegiance."* Of this primitive normal type he sets out to find what he significantly calls the "residue." In- stead of a baptism which is the immersion of an adult believer, he finds a baptism which is not immersion, not of an adult, and not of a believer. Suppose that on an apothecary's shelf is a jar
1 Nineteejith Century Magazine, vol. YI., p. 698. ^Ih. Uh.,^.&^% -^ 76., p. 692.
THE MOULD OF DOCTRINE. 163
labeled "pure water." Now pure water is "color- less, trausparent, and without taste or smell." But in the jar he finds only a viscid drop which is not colorless, not transparent, and not without taste or smell. He will surely conclude that the only "residue" is the label, which to avoid con- fusion might better be removed. At least he will take it as an odd suggestion that the muddy globule be made the standard of "pure water," and Webster's definition re-adjusted thereto. But Dean Stanley says the primitive ordinance was one "to which no existing ritual of any Euro- pean Church offers any likeness" — "the change from immersion to sprinkling has set aside the larger part of the apostolic language, and has altered the very meaning of the word." ^ By way of testing the trustworthiness of these con- clusions, it may be profitable to study some of the reflex influences of the present practice on —
FIKST — THE REVISION OF FORMULARIES.
The successive changes made by the English Church, and by the American Methodist Church advancing thereon, will afford a convenient field of inquiry. For impartial authority WalFs well-known History of Infant Baptism and
* Nineteenth Century Magazine, vol. VI., p. 698.
154 THE MOULD OF DOCTRINE.
Sherman's History of the MdJiod'ist DiscipUney will be relied upon. ^
Up to 1530, according to Wall, the formu- laries for public baptism universally enjoined dipping, without mentioning pouring or sprink- ling. The Sar-um Manual of that year pre- scribed dipping alone. In the Common Prayer Book printed in 1549, it is added, "if the child be weak, it shall suffice to pour water upon it,'' etc.^ Subsequently, he says, "the inclination of the people, backed with these authorities (that of Dr. Whitaker, Calvin, and others), carried the practice against the rubric, which still required dipping, except in cases of weakness."^ In revising the Prayer Booh at the Restoration (the Pmitan Directory Avhich had disj)laced it in 1644 having declared it "not only lawful, but most expedient" to use pouring or sprinkling), the Church "did not think fit to forego their maxim in favor of dipping": but being equally unwilling to ignore the drift of custom and popular taste, they so modified the rubric as to concede in fact what they refused in word. For by requiring the child to be dipped only when the godfather shall certify that it "may well endure it," they removed the presumption of
1 Wall, before cited. (See p. 34.) Sherman (N. Y., '74).
2 Wall, pp. 715, 716. 3 75.^ p. 713.
TEE MOULD OF DOCTRINE. 1^5
robustness by which alone dipping had been preserved as the rule. Thenceforth, as Wall re- gretfully remarks, "they never do certify the priests/' and " the priests seldom ask the ques- tion/' and dipping has wholly wasted away in the English Church.^
The American Methodist Episcopal Church, formally organized in 1784, in its original Discipline provides for "the choice either of ininiersion or sprinkling" (to which is added in 1786 "or pouring.")'^ Persons baptized in infancy and having now scruples are, if they persist after argument, to be baptized "by im- mei'sion or sprinkling," as they desire.' This "Anabaptist" heresy lingered in the Discipline until 1868. The ritual order of baptism, abridged from that of the English Church, originally required the minister, taking the child into his hands, "to dip it in water or sprinkle it therewith" — in the midst of which was inserted in 1786 "or pour water upon it" — and finally in 1792 the whole clause was erased, and in its stead inserted "sprinkle or pour water upon it, or if desired, immerse it in water."* In the original formulary ape re- tained, from the English, allusions to the case
1 Wall, pp. 750, 721. 2 Sherman, p. t20. ' Tb. * lb., p. 306.
15C THE MOULD OF DOCTRINE.
of Noah and of Israel led through the sea, as "figuring this holy baptism'' — to the baptism of Jesus "in the river Jordan" — to the burial of the "old Adam'' and the raising up of the "new man in him" — to "spiritual regeneration" and the "resurrection from the dead" — all which have successively, but with singular uniform'ty, been singled out for expurgation.^ Substantially, therefore, the ritual, by purging itself of all malapropos Scripture, has so far refashioned itself to the " broken mould," that regeneration and resurrection are effectively excluded from its symbolism; a result which, as before men- tioned, has been reached by the British Wes- leyans in a still more categorical form. And this notwithstanding John Wesley's comment on Rom. 6 : 4, viz. : " Buried with him — allud- ing to the ancient manner of baptizing by im- mersion," and the entry in his Journal of "Feb. 21, 1736, Mary Welch, aged eleven days, was baptized according to the custom of the first church, and the rule of the Church of England, by immersion."^
It may be added, that while Calvin was un- equivocal in admitting that "the word baptize means immerse,"^ and the Westminster Confession
^ Sherman, p. 300, seq.
2 Journal (London, 1872), vol. I., p. 25.
3 Commentary on A ds, 8 : 38.
THE MOULD OF DOCTRINE. 157
declared only that "dipping" was "not neces- sary," the Presbyterian Church of to-day in its ^'Directory for Worship^^ has gone on actually to forbid immersion, for it enjoins "pouring or sprinkling," "without adding any other cere- mony." ^ The unique attitude thus assumed by Presbyterianism in practice and ritual may sug- gest one element at least for the explanation of another phenomenon equally unique. Any student of the later Commentaries will be struck with the fact, that while nearly all scholars of the English and Continental Churches have recognized frankly and without reserve the con- clusiveness of the verdict of philology, exegesis, and history, in favor of immersion as the primi- tive baptism, there has been a conspicuous sensi- tiveness and reluctance in that direction on the part of the Scotch writers, followed and intensi- fied along the same lines on this side of the sea. Among the Episcopalians and Lutherans, where the union of Church and State and the con- tinuance of prelatic functions make extreme notions of ecclesiastical authority still tolerable; or where, on the other side, rationalism has supplanted the supremacy of Scripture, there is no sense of discomfort in confessing the distinct-
1 Appendix to Psalms and Hymns, Presbyterian Boa-d, Philadelphia, p. 42.
158 TEE MOULD OF D0C2HINE.
ness of the command, avoiding its present claims by pleading release through subsequent author- ity. But in non-prelatic Churches, and where latitudinarianism is not yet dominant, this re- source fails. It will be in vain there to forbid what the Scripture is acknowledged to prescribe. To have reconstructed the ritual so as to coincide with the practice will be in vain, except the Scripture can also be reconstructed so as to har- monize with both. Hence the emergency that issues in —
SECOXD THE WARPING OF INTERPRETATION.
" The Scriptures," says Bungener, " were writ- ten by common men to be understood by common men.'' ^ " The more any interpretation bears the mark of simplicity, and it appears as if it ought to have struck the reader before, the more likely is it to be true," says Ernesti. "It is better to run all lengths with Scripture truth in a natural and open manner," Bengel ^ adds, " than to shift and twist and accommodate." "The sense of Scripture is one, certain and simple," breaks in Melancthon,^ and is everywhere to be ascertained in accordance with the principles of grammar
1 History of Council of Trent (N. Y., 1855), p. 96.
2 Life by Burck, p. 257.
3 Elements of Rhetoric, II.
THE MOULD OF DOCTRINE. 159
and human disccurse." And finally Luther: " We must not make God's word mean what we wish; w^e must not bend it, but allow it to bend U8; and give it the honor of being better than we could make it; so that we must let it stand." But the fatal facility of exegesis when under stress is proverbial, and has been often justly satirized. Mohammed, it was said, prohibited the eating of a certain part of the swine. But the Mussulman, having first assumed uncertainty as to the part forbidden, argued against the probability of the intended application of the prohibition to each part successively, until he had gone over the whole. The result Cowper sums up:
Thus, conscience freed from every clog, Mohammedans eat up the hog. i
Dean Swift's famous study of the dexterously interpreted will scarifies the same foible. The retention of the demise was made dependent among other things on the heir's refraining from the wearing of "silver fringe." But that style of decoration having come in fashion, it was opportunely found that the term "silver" was "allegorical," and that "fringe" (being perhaps a "generic" word) might mean "broomstick."
1 Jacox, Secular Annot. (London, 1871), vol. II. p. 49.
IGO lUE MOULD OF DOCTRINE.
The objection that a prohibition to wear an "allegorical broomstick" was unmeaning, ^^as overruled as "irreverent and hypercritical."^ This sarcasm is not lower than the strange abuses of Scripture which provoked it. Of such a character ^vas the sermon justifying the persecution of heretics, from the words "Rise, Peter, slay and eat." The defence of seven as the number of the sacraments on the ground that mysterion is the Greek word for sacrament, and that se\-3n is the mystic number; and the proof that the mass Ls a true oblation because Paul speaks of the "table of the Lord," while "table" means "altar," and an "altar" implies "sacrifice," are of like character.^ Dumoulin justly says, that to depend on such proof-texts is "like warming oneself at the moon." Even the great Augustine, to save unbroken the doctrine that baptism is essential to salvation, maintains that the dying thief was baptized with blood from the Saviour's wounded side, or else had been baptized before his conviction.
SOME ILLU.STEATIVE IK^STANCES.
Matthew (3: 6) describes the people as bap- tized "in Jordan." Dr. Whedon^ {in loco) says:
1 Tale of a Tub, Works, (Ediii., 1814) vol. II., p. 88.
2 Buugeuer, Council of Trent, pp, 152, 337, 338.
* Commentary/ on Matthew (New York, 1870), p. 47.
THE MOULD OF DOCTRINE. 161
"The Jordan had several banks within banks, so that a person could be in the Jordan on dry ground." This curious geographical informa- tion, fortified by a citation from Dr. Thomson, is conveyed for the purpose of adding a caveat against what, it seems to be implied, would be a a natural inference from the language itself. "This expression, 4n Jordan,' only indicates, therefore, where the rite was performed : it in no luay indicates the mode.^' This adroit effort at the evisceration of the Evangelist's meaning — suggested long before, by the way, by Ewing, an antagonist of Dr. Carson — ^ has been since treated somewhat harshly by the Revisers, who make the text now read "in the river Jordan," as the parallel passage in Mark already did. But waiving that, consider how fantastic a theory is here put forth in the name of interpretation, to divest the words of their natural meaning, obvious, but inconvenient for the interpreter. By the same process, having moved 1800 years forward, try the statement that a man was "drowned in the Mississippi." "Mississippi" may readily mean ^Mississippi Valley, especially as that is often called the Mississippi "bottom" — the word "drowned" means "strangled," and "strangled" is a "generic" word including
1 Sec Baptism (Philadelphia, 1860), p. 125. L
162 THE MOULD OF DOCTRINE.
'^hanged;" and since no man would go into the water to be hanged, the legitimate rendering of the passage would be that he was '^hanged in the Mississippi Valley/^ One of the pioneers and among the ablest exponents of this school of exegesis was Dr. Paulus, who sought to prove by the same process, also with an ulterior though different motive, that when our Lord is said to have walked on the Sea of Galilee, he only walked in fact along its shores. ^
One of the expressions cited most widely and confidently by theologians and- liturgies as de- scribing baptism, and with special emphasis by some as justifying infant baptism, and excluding immersion, is that used by Paul in Titus 3 : 5, "the washing of regeneration." But those who thus apply it must maintain : \. Immersion. For the Greek word {loutron) takes in the whole body, not a part.^ 2. Baptismal regeneration. Since this is, in such a case, the literal force of the terms used. On the other hand, that this was not the natural interpretation of the words, but reflected upon them by a perverted ordinance, and a false doctrine craving justification, is man- ifest: 1. From the grammatic parallelism —
' Christlieb, Modern Doubt, p. 346 2 "■Louo'' to bathe, to wash, but only a person or the whole body.'' — Robinson, Gr. Lex. of New Testament.
THE MOULD OF DOUTJilJVE. 163
"washing of regeneration, and renewing of the Holy Ghost" — as the Holy Ghost renews, so re- generation washes. One-half cannot be inverted without inverting both, which Avoiild shatter the sense. 2. From the force of the figure. Kcgen- eration may wash, for life cleanses ; death only is pollution. "Being born again by the word of God," says Peter, — " that he might cleanse it (the church) with the washing of water by the word," says Paul — "Now are ye clean through the word," says our Lord. On the other hand, wash- ing can never bring life. No washing can change the "leopard's spots" and the "sow's" filth into the purity of a "new creature." ^
Another passage strangely distorted and even reversed in emphasis by enforced subjection to a theory, is Paul's joint reference to baptism and circumcision in Col. 2: 11, 12. Here, true to the instinct above mentioned, the Scotch Presby- terian, Dr. Eadie, says, " We are not prepared to admit c>f any allusion to that form (immei-sion) in the clause before us." " The apostle looks on baptism and circumcision as being closely con- nected, the spiritual blessing symbolized by both being of a similar nature." ^ Baptism having been assumed to be a drop applied at a single
^ Cf. Jacox, Secular Annotatiov}^, vol. IT., p. 48.
^ Commentary on Colussians (Lcutlon, 18.")G), p. 153.
164 THE MOULD OB DOCTRINE.
\r)h\t of the body, and to be the exact counter- part of circumcision, how natural and how com- fortable is it to read the apostle as here confirm- ing both ideas. But this is wholly to dislocate his meaning. The comparison is one of con- trast, not of resemblance. It is, says Lightfoot, ^ the " contrast of literal circumcision of part of the flesh, with putting off the whole in baptism." The word used to describe the contrasted whole- ness of baptism is a double compound to that end: "a word," he adds, "as strong as it is rare to express the idea of completeness, both in energy of action and extent of operation."^ "The eye, the ear, the hands, the feet, all have been baptized with the divine baptism," says Perowne. ^ Hence follows the exhortation in ch. 3: 5, to realize what has been symbolized, "Deaden therefore your members," etc. The same emphasis on symbolized entireness occurs in Gal. 3 : 27 ; for as Baur remarks on that pas- sage,'* "he who puts on a garment goes alto- gether inside it," and so there is an " end of the exterior identity of the believer." This, he
^ Commentary on Colossians (London, 1880), p. 184.
2 Jh., pp. 184, 189.
3 Halsean Lectures, 1868, on Immortality (New York, 1870), p. 119.
4 F. 0. Baur, Life of Paul (London, 1875), vol. IL, p. 177.
THE MOULD OF DOCTRINE. 105
says, "graphically represents" burial into Christ's death in "immersion."
Finally, the "baptism of fire," referred to by John in Matt. 3: 11, has been most grotesquely put under the bellows to forge a shaft against immersion. " This text," Dr. Whedon says,* " is the fundamental passage for showing from the very nature of the rite what is the true method
of performing baptism The baptism of the
Holy Spirit was not by immersion, but aiFu.sion. . . . the tongues of fire sat on them." He adds the glim Boeotian hint, for those "whom it may concern," that " baptismal fire is aifusion ; the fire of Hell is immersion." Dr. James Strong, of the same Church, on the other hand, insists that the " baptismal fire" here alluded to is the "fire of Hell," being an "overwhelming" with "con- suming vengeance."^
That the Pentecostal allusion is imposed upon and not suggested by the expression in question is manifest. The contextual use of "fire" not only does not hint but really forbids it, as has been often pointed out. Nor is there anything in the Pentecostal scene to suggest the idea of pouring or sprinkling, more than of immersion, in the "appearing" of "tongues parting asunder" that
1 Commentary on Matthew.
2 Harmony of the Gospels (New York, 1854), p. 30.
166 TEE MOULD OF DOCTRINE.
" sat on each of them/^ In fact, the attempt to determine the 'Hrue mode of performing bap- tism" from the single featui-es of that occasion will land the inventors of that scheme at an unde- sired port. To identify the baptism of the Spirit with the " rushing of a mighty wind/^ the " being filled with the Holy Spirit/^ and the "speak- ing" with "tongues," would teach re-baptism, which all Christendom repudiates : for these were repeated upon the same subjects.^ One solitary circumstance remains that never recurred to them: "it filled all the house where they were sitting." They were, in the words of Professor Plumptre, of King's College, "plunged as it were in the creative and informing Spirit which was the source of life and holiness and wisdom."^ The confusion introduced into this whole sub- ject by a back-handed exegesis might be greatly relieved by remembering that the "baptism of the Spirit" and the "gifts of the Spirit" are distinct. The priest was anointed after he was washed: the Spirit came on our Lord after baptism, and AndrcAv thereupon spoke of him as " the Christ " : and the charisms, whether of tongues or other, are nowhere confused with baptism in the New Testament.
^ Acts4.: 31.
2 ''Handy Commentary" (T.ondon, 1879), edited by Bp. Ellicott, on Matt. 3:11; cf. Acts 1 : 5.
THE MOULD OF DOCTRINE. 107
These examples may suffice to show how imperious, how insidious, and how pernicious is the power of a mutilated ordinance. There was once a "shekel of the sanctuary," the standard and test of all others. Plow certainly would tlio holder of a coin clipped or wasted, but which lie claimed to be the true shekel, desire to bring the sanctuary standard to conformity with his own. Speaking of the good and learned men who persist that en hudatl must be rendered with water J Dr. Campbell,^ of Aberdeen, an extraordi- nary Presbyterian, says, "The true partisan always inclines to correct the diction of the Spirit by that of the party. ^^ " I am sorry to observe," he adds (p. 23) " that the Popish translators from the Vulgate have shown greater reverence for the style of that version than the generality of Protestant translators have shown for that of the Original. For in this the Latin is not more explicit than the Greek."
1 Four Gospels, on Matthew 3 ; 11.
CHAPTER X.
BAPTISM AND LOYALTY— THE TIL TIM A TE ISSUE.
FARRAR begins his History of Free Thought by describing it as "the struggle of the human mind to free itself from the authwity of the Christian faith." ^ As if responding to con- firm this view Strauss writes in his New Life of Jesus: "In the person of Jesus no supernatur- alism shall be allowed to remain : nothing which shall press upon the souls of men with the leaden weight of arbitrary , insci-utable authority. '' ^ The chief priests and elders had challenged our Lord himself long before with the words "By what authority doest thou these things?"^
It becomes us earnestly to ask — What is this "authority'^ which seems to provoke to instinc- tive and perhaps unconscious revolt? — lest we ourselves may have come in contact with it, and " haply be found even to fight against God/^ If there be any embodiment of it, we may fairly
» Bampton Lectures, 1862 (New York, 1863), p. 1.
2 Cited in Farrar's Witness of History to Christ (Lon- don, 1871), p. 5].
3 Matt. 21 : 23.
168
THE MOULD OF DOCIHINE. 100
regard as such that last consummate expression of his kingly will, which the risen Redeemer gave to his disciples as the organic statute of his kino:dom. As rendered in the Revised Version the passage reads thus : "All authority is given unto me in heaven and on earth. Go ye there- fore, and make disciples of all the nations, bap- tizing them into the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost : teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I commanded you." The first and last of these injunctions, viz. : to " make disciples,'' and to " teach them to observe'' all "things commanded," have been universally regarded as of literal obligation. But the mid-lying clause, although it embodies one of those very "things commanded," and the only one thus exalted into isolated eminence, is not only treated as belonging to an inferior category, but the proposition to "observe" it as of positive significance like the rest, is in many quarters treated with an impatience verging to- ward indignation or contempt.
It is totally immaterial, we hear continually, whether "baptize" means "immerse" or not, since precise conformity is in any case unne- cessary. And this because,
1. Christianity, being a spiritual, not a formal religion, looks to the intent, and lays no emphasis
170 THE MOULD OF DOCTRINE,
on the outward act. Insistence on immersion, J- ays Dr. Scliaif in his Church History, is a ''pedantic Jewish literalism.^' ^
2. The verdict of Christendom has settled the question. " The overwhelming majority of Prot- estant Christians, to say nothing of Roman Catholics, are unbaptized," if immersion only is baptism. Such is the broadside poured into the Baptist stronghold by Dr. Rice.^
3. Our more refined civilization revolts at so coarse a form. It is, to cite Dean Stanley, "peculiarly unsuitable to the tastes, the conve- nience and the feelings of the countries of the North and West.'^ The substitution of sprink- ling he regards as "a striking example of the triumph of common sense and convenience over the bondage of form and custom."^
In the Gospel of Matthew (chapters 21 and 22) are recorded in immediate succession three of of our Lord's parables, apparently uttered on a single occasion, which precisely anticipate these modern suggestions, one by one. They are full of profound significance in this connectic»n, of which only a hint can here be given. They are :
1 (New York, 1860), vol. L, p. 123.
2 Mode of Baptism, p. 36.
^ Nineteenth Century Magazine, vol. VI., p. 698.
THE MOULD OF DOCTRIJSE. 171
FIRST, THE PARABLE OF THE DISOBEDIENT SON.
A father commanded his two sons to work In the vineyard. The first said "I will not,'^ but afterwards went. The second said " I will," but never went. The bystanders, being appealed to, decided instantly that the first alone "did the will of his father." Now the "doing the Father's will" is the one thing on which our Lord lays most stress as essential in the Chris- tian life.^ He here plainly teaches that when that will is embodied in an explicit command, there is no obedience, whatever the intent, short of doing the specific thing commanded, in a "pedantically literal" way. Had the father given the son a parable to be puzzled over, a doctrine to be meditated on, or even a statement of fact to be received, these addressing them- selves to the intellect might have demanded delay, and involved embarrassment in appre- hension and mental adjustment. But a com- mand is addressed to the will alone: and no response is possible but surrender or refusal, and these take form in outward act or omission to act. All law is specifically a rule of conduct. Only where, as in the old common law, that rule must be traced through a tangle of bewildering
1 Malt. 7 : 21 ; 12 : 50 ; MarkZi 35 ; John 4 : 34 ; 5 : 30.
172 THE MOULD OF DOG THINE, .
precedents and general maxims, can imperfect conformity be in any degree atoned for by good intent. The explicit statute cuts off such a plea. Failure to keep that lias no excuse, except it can show the statute itself ambiguous or impracti- cable. There is no trouble in distinguishing the common law realm of the parabolic, doctrinal, and ethical in Scripture — which are given to stimulate research, reflection, and inference — from the explicit statutes of the Lord, which need only to be obeyed. Concerning these he says, " Why call ye me Lord, Lord, and do not the things which I say?'^
That so palpable a principle as is here empha- sized should ever be overlooked is due in part, perhaps, to a latent and dangerous ambiguity of thought lying in the word " authority '^ itself. Thiers and the first Napoleon were both "authors": the one of the History of the Em- jpire, the other of the Empire itself. The "authority" of the one was doctrinal — in the realm of opinion only; of the other magisterial — in the realm of law.^
It is quite possible to pass insidiously from the one sphere to the other, and under the garb of an interpreter to assume the functions of a
1 Cf. Gladstone's Gleanings, (Scribner, New York), vo\ III., p. 139.
THE MOULD OF DOCTIliyE. 173
lawgiver. John Calvin, in his Institutes, spoke with the authority of a logician; in his comments on the Romans with that of an exegete; in his translation of baptir.o^ with that of a linguist, appealing to reason and the Scripture itself for his vindication; but when, having admitted the command to immerse to be distinct and unquali- fied, he proceeded to offer dispensation from literal obedience by decreeing that ^^ dipping is not necessary," ^ he assumed the functions of a Pope, and spoke with no authority at all, for he appealed to nothing. Dr. Hodge, of Princeton, decided that baptism with sand, mud, wine, oil, or milk, though in the name of the Trinity, and with perfect intent, is invalid: because 'Svater is essential to baptism, and as far as 'the matter' is concerned nothing else is."^ It is as though where the law required an official signature for the authentication of a particular document, a judge should hold that a blotch from an over- turned inkpot would be sufficient; since ''ink is essential to a signature, and as far as ' the matter' is concerned nothing else is." Our Lord com- manded a specific act to be performed — whatever
1 Commentary/ on Acts (Edinburgh, 1846), (on ch. 8 : 38), vol. I., p. 364.
2 Jb., cf. institutes, Book IV., cap. 15, p. 19.
3 Oil Church Polity/ (New York, 1878), p. 198.
174 TEE MOULD OF DOCTRINE.
is conditional to that act is of course implied; but to teach that the thing implied is essential, and the thing commanded non-essential, is not to interpret, but to legislate.
It is curious, indeed, that those who are so averse to literalness in form should be so pain- fully precise as to literalness in element. Is water in itself more "spiritual'' than milk or wine? And is it really venial, in a religion which "regards only the intent,'' to change the form through caprice, but mortal to change the elements through necessity, as in the case of the desert-bound disciple, whose sand baptism was pronounced invalid? In this specific case it was Rome who first taught us to appeal from Christ to the Pope to learn what is really essential in the divine word.^
"Go work," said the father. The words are verbs, and describe acts. They are not figurative or paradoxical. The son who refused literal obedience disobeyed. "Go baptize," said our Lord. The word "baptize," says the learned preacher, means "immerse" — "I baptize thee," he repeats, moistening the forehead with a drop. " They say, and do not," said our Lord of the Pharisees.
1 On Church Polity (New York, 1878), p. 198.
THE MOULD OF DOCTRINE. 175
SECOND, THE PARABLE OF THE REBELLIOUS TENANTS.
Never was there a more "catholic cousent" than that of the husbandmen who had hired the vineyard. The verdict that they need not pay for it, but on the contrary might usurp the inheritance itself, was unanimous, and vigorously acted on against all claimant messengers. But it is plainly liinted that there are some questions not deter- minable by a majority vote. Obligation arises out of a state of facts, and cannot be extinguished by any process short of payment, or abolition of these facts. It may be very true that if the debtor " owes ten thousand talents and has not to pay," he may "be sold, etc., that payment may be made" :^ but that unhappy consequence would be quite irrelevant as disproving the existence of the debt. It is painful enough to think of the "overwhelming majority of Protestant Chris- tians" as " unbaptized," and so it is to think of the over^vhelming majority of the people in Christian lands as not Christians at all : either statement would bring offence, but neither pain nor indignation settles a question of fact. The toothache does not extinguish itself by agonizing as. The obligation to be baptized arises, not
I Matthew 18 : 25.
176 THE MOULD OF DOCTIillfE.
out of the consent of Christendom, but out of the command of Christ. Whether any man has obeyed the command is to be determined, not by asking what conclusion would be most comfort- able for him or most flattering to the majority, but rather what was the exact thing required, and has that thing been done. The debt due to the landlord was neither disproved nor paid by resentment against the messengers.
SUBJECTS.
The citizens who had tacitly accepted the in- vitation to the king's feast did not generally find it "convenient" to come when summoned. One went, but in a garment of his own devising, seeing the "wedding garment" was unsuited to his "tastes." There is a significant inverse gradation in these parables. On the one side they ascend — the father, the landlord, the king: on the other they descend — an arbitrary com- mand, an equitable claim, a courteous invitation. But while no specific punishment is attributed to the sluggish son, the presumptuous guest meets the bitterest fate of all. The lesson is obvious. Evil as is the neglect of the father's authority, still worse is an insult to the king's majesty. And that insult they offer who "make light of"
TUE MOULD OF DOCTJil^E. 177
his message, or prefer their own patterns as more decorous than his.
Notwithstanding Dean Stanley's statement,* it is very difficult to believe that the change from immersion to sprinkling was due at all to change in climate, custom, or taste. Palestine itself was not strictly tropical. Our Lord speaks of a "cloak" as well as a "coat."^ Ritter says, "the cold north winds of winter make furs very com- fortable in Jerusalem."^ "The waters of the Jordan are then (in winter and early spring) so cold, as they flow from the snows of Lebanon, that even Arabs will not bathe." So writes Geikie,'' citing Sepp and others. Frozen Russia has clung to immersion. Subtropical Italy has abandoned it. The change since the days of Queen Elizabeth, who was immersed/^ has not coincided with a roughening English climate, or a gradual abandonment of " bathing " (if that has any bearing). They plainly delude them- selves, therefore, who imagine that so flimsy a pretext could ever have been the original and
^Nineteenth Century Magazine, vol. VI., p. 698.
» Matthew, 5 : 40.
3 Geography of Palestine, (New York, 1866), vol. IV., p. 182.
♦ Life of Clirist, (New York, Appleton, 1880), vol. I., p. 577.
6 AVall, History of Jvf. Bap., pp. 712, 717. M
178 TEE MOULD OF DOCTRINE,
avowed basis of so serious a departure, however it may be urged in defence of an established custom. The case of Italy, as contrasted with that of Russia, shows that the alleged " triumph of common sense and convenience'' is in fact the triumph of Papal assumption. The devout Presbyterian does not in fact refer to his arbi- trary "taste" as the ultimate criterion, in decid- ing what is valid baptism, but to the Church formulaiy — and that rests on the "authority" of John Calvin.
It is nevertheless a serious matter to "make light of" any feature of our Lord's regulations, even by a frivolous or disparaging word. The beggars were welcome at the king's feast, for they were not too "refined" to wear the garments which the king himself had chosen : but the man who sought to air his "Christian liberty" in a garment of newer and superior cut, got himself and the rebuke that met him pinned fast on the enduring page, for the leisurely study of all sub- sequent adventurers Avho incline to exalt sesthe- tics above revelation.
Immediately succeding these parables in Mat- thew's narrative is an incident which crowns their teaching; reminding us that events were as fluent as parables to the Divine Teacher's will.*
^ Matthew 22: 15—22.
TEE MOULD OF DOCTRINE. 179
The ^'entangling" qnestion — the coin from Cses- ar's "mould" — the pungent answer, "Render therefore to Caesar the things which are Caesar's ; and unto God the things that are God's" — all these are familiar. They teach us to recognize discriminate spheres, and to render "tribute to ■whom tribute is due" in each. Tacitus speaks of soldiers who preferred "to discuss, rather than to obey, their leader's commands," thus virtually assuming leadership themselves. Caesar's coin bore the impress of his majesty in his "image and superscription:" to alter that, to clip the coin itself, or to withhold it when claimed as tribute, would be treason against the empire. But if unquestioning loyalty in the slenderest trifle was due to a human ruler, how much more to the Divine. Caesar might utter laws super- fluous, ephemeral, or otherwise needing to be repaired or to be adjusted: this is only to say that he was human. ^ Not so of him who " knows the end from the beginning," and whose command is to last unchanged and unrepealed to the end of the world. To attempt remodeling that to meet changes impliedly unforeseen or neglected, is to revise the judgment of Omnis- cience and "charge God with folly."
' Of. G. C. Lewis, on Methods of Observation, etc., in Politics (London, 1852), vol. L, pp. 470, 472.
180 THE MOULD OF DOCTRINE, BAPTISM THE TEST OF LOYALTY.
And now, lest this discussion should seem to be a mere grouping of accidental coincidences and their perversion to an alien end, it may be well to call attention to the circumstance that * occasioned the parables cited, and furnished their theme. The transition will be easy, from the contrasted claims of God and Caesar, just men- tioned, to the contrasted authority of baptism, regarded respectively as "from heaven or of men." (Ch. 21 : 25.)
The chief priests and elders had questioned our Lord's authority. He flashed their lantern- light back into their own faces, and down into their hearts, with a question which, though seem- ingly remote, was all too close for them.^ He picketed them in fact between the two horns of a dilemma, from one of which they must dangle, unless they could slip out between. *'The bap- tism of John, whence was it? from heaven or of men?'' They had superciliously treated it as human, "being not baptized of him":^ but they had not dared to deny that it was divine, "for they feared the people." They vaulted therefore through a ready loophole, saying, "We
^ See Dr. Parker's admirable chapter on Christ as an Interlocutor, Kcce Deus, (Boston, 1868), p. 207, seq. 2 Luke 7 : 30.
THE MOULD OF DOCTRINE. 181
cannot tell": and were pursued by the athletic parables in question.
It is noticeable that our Lord here makes bap- tism the test, as it is in itself the expression, of wholeness of loyalty. "His (John's) idea of repentance exceeded the outward requirements of the Mosaic law," writes Dr. Lange, "as much as his rite of immersion that of sprinkling."^ It was "to fulfil all righteousness," "laying down his life of himself" ^^ symbolically, as he after- wards did literally, that Christ was baptized in Jordan. "Ye became obedient from the heart to that form (or pattern) of teaching whereunto ye were delivered":' so Paul sums up the whole- ness and absoluteness of the life-surrender em- bodied in the sacramental t\-pe.
The Pharisee's answer may imply contempt for the question as trivial, or real uncertainty. If the latter, it was, as shown by our Lord's further words, only a convenient and inexcusable uncertainity. " None deny there is a God, but those for whom it maketh that there w^ere no God," Lord Bacon pithily remarks.* Having repudiated John's baptism, it was needful some- how to discredit it. The plea of impracticability
iLanffe, Matthexv (Ed. Sehaff, 1869,) p. 69. 2 Matthew 3 : 15 ; John 10 : 18. '^Romans 6 : 17. [Canterbury Revision). * Wbately's Bacon, p, 155.
182 2 HE MOULD OF VOG TRINE.
being obviously unavailable, that of uncertainty alone remained possible. But they were flour- ishing a deadlier weapon than they knew.
A recent periodical contained a stirring sermon from a Methodist preacher on this question to the Pharisees, concerning the origin of John's baptism.^ The theme deduced from it was, "The Inspiration of Moses." Its relation to the text will not at once blaze on the reader, but its statement reveals a true homiletic in- stinct. The baptism of John and the message of Moses proceed from the same source, appeal to like credentials and demand like reverent submission. Wilful or disingenuous dealing with the one will inevitably entail like treat- ment of the other. Therefore, Christ will not "commit himself to them;" for, as he intimates in his parable, they who have not dealt fairly with the "servants" will not "reverence the Son." 2
A LINGUISTIC AGNOSTICISM.
If the validity of baptism be really inde- pendent of mode, so that proving the word to mean "immerse" would be entirely irrelevant and immaterial, as is constantly affirmed, it is plain that so translating the word would be
^ Cliautauqua Assembly Herald, Aug., 1882. 2 Matthew 21: 38, 39.
THE MOULD OF DOCTltlSE. 183
equally harmless. In that case it is singular that Bishop Titcomb should have been so "em- barrassed" by such translation, and that the Bible Society should have decided it impossible "consistently to use and circulate" a Bible infected by it.^ The sensitiveness thus mani- fested reveals the conscious untrust worthiness of the theory advanced. " The bed is shorter than that a man can stretch himself on it." The meaning of the word is of consequence. It must\)Q "embarrassing" to explain even to the stupidest Burman that Christ has commanded his followers to be " immersed/^ that he has said, " if a man love me he will keep my loords,'' and that therefore it is his duty to be — sprlnlded. There is a more convenient way — it is, when he asks what Christ means by being baptized, to say, " We cannot tell." This linguistic agnosticism is the inevitably adjacent burrow into which t e argument vanishes if hotly pressed. The mean- ing of the word is only immaterial when men do not insist on knowing it, but impossible when they do. Indeed, it is argued that the meaning is uncertain because it is immaterial, and also immaterial because it is uncertain.
It is possible here only by fragmentary illus- tration to show how the exigency thus arising
1 Bible Society Record, June 15, 1882.
184 THE MOULD OF DOCTRINE.
presses scholarship awry, and "blinds the eyes of the wise/' The mention of a name so dis- tinguished and revered as that of Dr. Schaff, in this connection, affords occasion to say, what it is hoped might in any case be charitably believed, that the citations made in these papers have been made purposely from men in various denomina- tions high in attainments and in the esteem of the Christian world. It would be absurd to suppose that the inconsistent or erroneous teach- ings attributed to them are meant to impugn their abilities or motives; on the contrary, the more clear-sighted and unimpeachably conscien- tious they are reckoned, the stronger is the case here sought to be made against the witchery of a perverted ordinance,
The difference in th^ ecclesiastic atmosphere of German Lutberanism and Presbyterian ism has been already s^lluded to. Dr. Schaif (then in the Lutheran Seminary at Mercersburg), piib- lished in 1858 his History of the Christian Church. In 1882, (then being in the Prasby- terian Seminary in the city of New York), he published a revised edition of the first volume. In this revision anjong many changes occur t!.ese significant ones. The statement of 1858, that "the usual form of baptism was immersion, is plain/' ^ from divers circumstances, becomes
» Vol. I, p. 122.
THE MOULD OF DOCTRINE. 185
now only that It is "inferred."^ The old refer- ence to ^^ later Hellenistic usage" ^ as allowing to baptism "sometimes the wider sense of washing and cleansing," now becomes an avowal that " Hellenistic usag^e " ^ at laro^e did the like. A serious change: for while the former statement could not affect the question in hand, the latter clearly might. It would be interesting to know what secret archives have recently disgorged tes- timony to reverse the overwhelming verdict of scholarship since Schneckenburger's day/ to which Dr. Schaff assented in 1858, that prose- lyte baptism was unknown in Christ's day. Again, in 1869, Dr. Schaif published Lange's Commentary on Matthew , annotated by himself. It is there stated without note of qualification or dissent, as to John's baptism, that " This bap- tism was administered by immersion, and not by sprinkling."^ Ten years later, in 1879, Dr. Schaff published another Commentary on 3Iat- thew, prepared by himself with the help of Dr. Kiddell. Speaking of the same baptism, he now
1 Vol. I., p. 468. 2 p, 125. 3 p. 469.
* The whole matter is thus summed up by Fairbairn: " So far as the direct evidence goes, the very utmost that can be said is, that indications appear of Jewish prose- lyte-baptism as an existing practice during the fourth century of the Christian era." — Hermeneutics (Phila- delphia, 1859), p. 305.
* Lange, Matthew, p. 68.
186 THE MOULD OF DOCTRINE,
says, "The subjects went into the river, and were either immersed by John, or water was poured on them. The Greek verb baptize is a technical term for a symbolical washing." ^ If this means that it has now become a technical term, it is irrelevant. If it means that it was so when our Lord used it, the world waits for proof. Most extraordinary tasks have been attempted in that direction. Dr. Krauth his even undertaken to prove that the modern tech- nical sense of taufen is in fact its ancient sense, and that Luther never used it as meaning to dip, although Luther himself says he did.^
One of the most extraordinary books on the "technical sense" is that of Dr. Armstrono:, whose whole argument is distinctly " limited to baptizo used as a religious or sacred term.^^^ It is, he says, "always a generic term, having no reference to mode : and hence to translate it by
1 Scribner's Popular Commentary, 1879, vol. I., p. 42. Cf. also, on use of Greek preposition en, Lange on Mat- thew 3 : 11, with Schaff and Riddell on same verses, and also on Mark 1 : 8.
2 Krauth, Conservative Reformation in Theology (Philadelphia. 1871), p. 536. Cf. Schaff-Herzog, Kn'cy- clopoedia of Religious Knowledge (New York. 1882). *' Luther sided with the im^lersiotlist^J, and described the baptismal act as an immersion, and derived taufe (Ger- man for baptism), from tief (deep), because what one baptized, he sank tief in the water." — p. 210.
3 Sacraments of the New Testament, (New York, 1880), p. 12.
TUB MOULD OF DOCTRINE. 187
(lip, immerse, sprinkle, or pour, will be to mis- translate the word of GodJ'^ His main au- thority for asserting the occurrence of such terms in the New Testament is Dr. Campbell, from whom he quotes in extenso — substantially to the eifect that "classical use is not only sometimes unavailing, but may even mislead."^ Dr. Camp- bell is correctly cited thus far : but he supplies further information on this subject, which is, very abstemiously, refused, viz. : " The word baptizeifij both in sacred authors and in classical, signifies to dip, to plunge, to immerse, and was rendered by Tertullian, the oldest of the Latin Fathers, linger e, the term used for dyeing cloth, which was by immersion J^^ The same Dr. Campbell reminds those who insist that it is impossible definitely to translate a word because it has secon- dary meanings, that by the same rule all lan- guage would become hopelessly indefinite. " The explanation of a simple sentence will appear like the solution of a riddle." " The verb to make in our language has, according to Johnson, sixty- six meanings, to put eighty, and to take one hun- dred and thirty-four." * Every institution ought to be suspected, which for its own self-justifica-
^ Sacraments of the New Testament (New York, 1880), p. 1. ^Jb.,]).^.
3 The Four Gospels (Aberdeen, 1854), vol. IV., p. 24 (on Matthew 3: 11). ^ lb., vol. I., p. 97.
188 THE MOULD OF DOCTRINE.
tion begets an effort to weaken confidence in the certainty of the word of God. Milraan in his Essays says, "The first to impugn the authen- ticity of Scripture, leading Astruc, Eichhorn, Pauhis, and Strauss, was the Jesuit father Simon ; who did it to assert the authority of the Church/' ^ To reach tliat end Simon contended that "the greater part of the Hebrew words are equivocal, and that their signification is entirely uncertain,'^ and that the "Hebrew lexicons commonly contain nothing but uncertain conjecture.''^ "Modern neology deals with Christ's words just as Rome does," says Archer Butler, "treating them as imperfect; showing that the philosophy of Romanism and that of Rationalism are funda- mentally one."^
THE WITNESSING WOED.
Akin to the exigency which tempts to obscure, is that which tempts to alter, the written word. The liberties which Rome has taken in this direction are familiar to all. In the Index of Pope Clement VIII. it is declared proper "to expunge even the words of sacred Scripture which may be impiously turned to a profane
1 (London, 1870), p. 302 ; cf. p. 305.
2 Campbell, The Four Gospels, vol. I. pp. 81-3.
3 Letters on Eomamsm (Cambridg-e, 1858), p. 28.
TEE MOULD OF DOCTRINE. 189
use."^ In Cardinal Wiseman's Essays we are informed that "the prenomen ' Jesns/ of Barab- bas, has from motives of reverence been dropped from the text."
Dr. Jenner, physician to Edward YI., pub- lished a Drama in which he represents the mass as praying thus :
" Because in the Bible I cannot be found The heretics would bury me under ground. I prav you heartily, if it be possible, ^^ To get me a place in the great Bible."
The Council of Trent exalted the Vulgate above the original Greek and Hebrew, as the "authen- tic" Scripture. =^ Eadie says, the British and Foreign Bible Society did the same thing for the Elzevir text of 1624, (and by keeping verses in it now known to be spurious, "circulated a forgery in the divine name."^) The American Bible Society has erected the common English Version into a like canon; requiring all its issues to be " conformed in the principles of their translation" to it.* It has gone further; it has declared that version authentic only as the word "baptism" is taken in a particular sense: it being impossible "consistently to use and circu-
i Cited in Letters on Romanism, p. 27.
2 Bungener, Council of Trent, p. 90.
3 History English Bible, vol. II., p. 347, note. * See Rules of Translation.
100 THE MOULD OF DOCTRINE.
late" any translation in which the equivalent for "baptize'^ is understood among the peopl.'^ as meaning "immerse."^ It follows logically that if the autograph manuscripts of the Evangelists should be discovered to-day, they must be de- clared ^Meficient in catholicity/^ and could not be "consistently used and circulated'' among the Greeks (where the word baptizo is universally understood to mean "immerse'')^ until revised by inserting rantizo or cheo, in order to conform them to the "principles" of the English version. It is a good omen that there is so much anxiety to explain away the definite meaning of this critical word. It reveals an increasing popular anxiety and determination to know its meaning. Prelacy is an anachronism — indiflPerentism does not quiet the conscience — the issue narrows to the word itself. " What is written in the law ? how readest thou?" The "mould" has been broken, but the witnessing word — kept by the providence
» Bible Society Becord, June 15, 1882.
2Cf. Stanley, Eastern Church (London, 1861), p. 17. " The humblest peasant who reads his Septuagint or Greek Testament in his own mother tongue, on the hills of Boeotia, may proudly feel that he has an access to the original words of divine truth which the Pope and Car- dinal reach by a barbarous and imperfect translation." '•There can be no question that the original form of baptism — the very meaning of the word — was complete immersion in the deep baptismal waters. . . To this form the Eastern Church rigidly still adheres." — p. 34.
THE MOULD OF DOCTRINE. 191
and grace of God through superslitioiis jealousy of the letter, fossilization of language and palimpsest — remains intact. To it the final ajipeal must be had. In it the tru€ outlines of the ^^ mould " are traceable, and by it they may be restored. "It is not he that hath good gold that is afraid to bring it to the touchstone," said King James's translators. He only will l)j justified in the end who shall be found in sim- plicity and integrity, '^Holding fast the
THE END.
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