PJEDOBAPTISM
523
Pu^DOBAPTISM
cumcised because lie was holy, not to make him holy ; and if children were baptized at the time, it was be- cause they were holy, or consecrated by their birth in the believing family, not to make them holy ; so that, even though children were baptized, their baptism would not be the ground of their holiness, and hence would not be used by Paul in his argument. It may, indeed, be justly said, as does Kling in Lange, that " had such a practice existed, it would be fair to pre- Bume that the apostle would have alluded to it here. That he did not affords some reason fur concluding that the rite did not exist." But with a true view of the ground and purpose of the argument, the reason for such a conclusion becomes much weaker than might otherwise appear. In further proof of the prev- alence in the apostolic Church of the idea upon which infant baptism is based, it is evident from Acts xxi, 21, that Jewish Christians in Paul's time circumcised their children, and probably also for some time after him. Paul in all probabilitj' did not oppose it; and the charge brought against him of teaching that they ought not to circumcise their children was " certainly false" (Meyer).
It thus appears from the thought and language of the New Testament that the idea of the peculiar cov- enant relationship of children of believing parents, so prominent in the Old Testament from Abraham to Christ, passed into the conception of Christianitj' which Christ and the apostles have given us. The family was an organic unity ; the familj', as a familj', through its head came into the religions organization of the Jews as thej' stood in covenant with God ; the chil- dren were members of it at birth, and participators, according to their capacit}' as they grew up, in the blessings of the covenant which God had made with them. The theocracy of the Old Testament corre- sponds in its religious ideas and life, and in its organ- ization and rites, with the Church in the F w Testa- ment. The Church of Christ is essentially the ful- filment and continuation of the theocracy of the Old Testament. They are one and the same Church. This connection, continuation, and fulfilment are ex- pressed in the genealogies of the New Testament, in Christ's language, as in the Sermon on the Mount, and in Paul's writings, especiallj' in the epistles to the Romans and Galatians, in which he insists on the ful- filment and continuance among believers in Christ of the Abrahamic covenant. Accordingly the family came, as a famil}' could, into that form of the Church which succeeded under Christ, the Messiah. Former- ly the children were circumcised as a sign and seal of this fact ; subsequently, when baptism became the sign of entrance into tlie Church, and circumcision fell into disuse, the children would be baptized. This correspondence between circinncision and liaptism is mentioned by Paul, Col. ii, 11, 12, in ^vhich passage, "buried with him in baptism" (ver. 12) is explana- tory of "ye are circumcised," and of "the circum- cision of Christ"' (ver. 11) (Mej'er). See Circuje- cisiox, and the citations there made from Justin Martyr, evidently alluding to this passage of Paul, and from TertuUian and others of the fathers, show- ing that this was their understanding of the New Tes- tament in regard to the relation of tlie two rites. Whether, therefore, in the instances of l)aptism record- ed in the New Testament, children were actually bap- tized or not, its language clearl}' contains the idea and principle from which the practice so coon originated, and upon which it is based in the evangelical churches to-day.
(b) Wc come now to consider the evidence in the New Testament of the actual baptism of children, of the actual performance of the rite, which is a sign and seal of the idea unAfacf. Excluding the baptisms b}' John the Baptist, we have eleven particular instances of baptism mentioned, namely, of two individuals at different times: [1] the eunuch (Acts viii, 38); [2]
Saul (Acts ix, 18); then households explicitlj' men- tioned : [3] Lydia " and her household" (Acts xvi, 15) ; [4] the jailer "and all his" (Acts xvi, 33) ; [5] "the household of Stephanas" (1 Cor. i, IG) ; the remaining instances are : [G] Crispus and Gaius (1 Cor. i, 14) ; [7] " many of the Corinthians" (Acts xviii, 8) ; [8] Cornelius and those with him (Acts x, 48) ; [9] "they that gladly received his word" (Acts ii, 41) on the day of Pentecost; [10] "both men and women" by Philip in Samaria (Acts viii, 12); [11] certain disci- ples who had been baptized "unto John's baptism" (Acts xix, 5). In the first two instances there could have been no children. In tlie next three the bap- tism of "a household" is explicitly mentioned, the phrase "all his" being synonj-mous with household. In the case of Crispus, Paul sa^'s (1 Cor. i, 14) that he baptized him ; and in Acts xviii, 8, it is said that "he believed on the Lord with all his house." "We have in this instance the inclusion of the household or fam- ih- with its head in their belief, at least, and most probably they were baptized as the household of Ste- phanas was. Of Cornelius it is said (Acts x, 2) that he was " one that feared God with all his house." It is not probable that infant children were among the company gathered together to hear Peter speak, nor can we saj' it is probable that on the occasion of the immediate baptism of those who "heard the word," and upon whom "the Holy Ghost fell," that children were baptized. But this new religious relation of Cornelius would take his house with him, according to the universal conception, as it had done in his de- votion to Judaism ; and as we have express men- tion of the baptism of households, as if it were a com- mon custom, it follows with great probabilitj' that if there were children in this family, thej^ were baptized, and that it was an instance of "household baptism," as assumed by SchaffQApost. Church, p. 571). Peter's language on the day of Pentecost has already been noticed in its bearing upon the idea connected with the rite. It has some force also as evidence of the actual practice of infant baptism, from the fact of its being part of an exhortation "to repent and be bap- tized." In the remaining two instances, of the bap- tism of "men and women" by Philip, and of the disciples of John the Baptist, there is no implication of the faith or baptism of a family. We have then three instances certainly, and most probably five, out of eleven instances of baptism in the New Testament, in which households or families were baptized. That oIkoq and oiKta and oi aiirov TtavrtQ include children in their general meaning there is no question. That there certainly were children in anj' of these families cannot be asserted : it is only a probability, but in the nature of the case a very strong one, amounting al- most to certaint}'. And when we reflect that the men- tion of these households, with nothing to intimate that their baptism was strange or exceptional, implies the baptism of other households besides those mentioned, the question of Bengel expresses no more than the real strength of probability : "Who can believe that in so manj^ families not one infant was found, and that the Jews, accustomed to circumcision, and Gentiles to the lustration of infants, should not have also brought them to baptism?" Conybeare and Howson say, "We cannot but think it almost demonstratively proved that infant baptism was the practice of the apostles." So Lange, Hodge, Schaff, and others.