of the investigation may well close in the words of Professor Stuart, of Andover, who, after citing many authorities, says: "But enough: 'it is a thing made out,' says Augusti-viz., the ancient practice of immersion. So, indeed, all the writers who have thoroughly investigated this subject conclude. I know of no one usage of ancient times which seems to be more clearly and more certainly made out. I cannot see how it is possible for any candid man who examines the subject to deny this." V. SUBSEQUENT USAGE OF CHRISTENDOM. 1. The Greek churches, which extend over Greece, Russia, Egypt, Abyssinia, Arabia, Palestine, and the whole of Western Asia, and in some of which the Greek language is, and ever has been, the vernacular, have always practised immersion and insisted on this as the true import of the word. Throughout the vast Christian communions of the Orient they have in all ages steadily refused to recognize sprinkling or pouring as baptism. Coleman says: "The Eastern Church has uniformly retained the form of immersion as indispensable to the validity of the ordinance, and they repeat the rite whenever they have received to their communion persons who have been baptized in another manner."* Dean Stanley says: "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, and that for at least four centuries any other form was either unknown, or regarded, unless in the case of dangerous illness, as an exceptional, almost a monstrous, case. To this form the Eastern Church still rigidly adheres, and the most illustrious and venerable portion of it—that of the Byzantine Empire-absolutely repudiates and ignores any * Ancient Christianity, ch. xix. other mode of administration as essentially invalid."* All the authorized rituals for baptism in the Greek churches require immersion. Alexander de Stourdza, Russian state councillor, of the orthodox Greek Church, says: "The distinctive characteristic of the institution of baptism is immersion, baptisma, which cannot be omitted without destroying the mysterious sense of the sacrament and contradicting at the same time the etymological signification of the word which serves to designate it. The church of the West has, then, departed from the example of Jesus Christ; she has obliterated the whole sublimity of the exterior sign; in short, she commits an abuse of words and of ideas in practising baptism by aspersion, this very term being in itself a derisive contradiction. The verb baptizo, immergo, has in fact but one sole acceptation. It signifies, literally and always, to plunge. Baptism and immersion are, therefore, identical; and to say baptism by aspersion is as if one should say immersion by aspersion, or any other absurdity of the same nature."† But further citation of authorities is here needless, as all church historians unite in affirming immersion as the theory and practice of the Greek churches. Now, as it cannot be supposed that the Greek churches, consisting largely of Greek-speaking populations, have through all the ages mistaken the meaning of their own language, the inference, from their uniform doctrine and practice from the Patristic period to the present, would seem to be irresistible that baptizo signifies and has always signified-to immerse when used of the Christian. ordinance. 2. In the Roman Catholic Church the form of baptism cortinued to be immersion until the thirteenth century, * History of the Eastern Church, p. 117. † Quoted in Conant's Baptizein, p. 150. Ed. 1864. as all authorities show. Thomas Aquinas, who flourished in the middle of that century, although defending sprinkling, says: "The symbol of Christ's burial is more expressively represented by immersion, and for that reason this mode of baptizing is more common and commendable.” . . . "It is safer to baptize by immersion, because this is the more common use."* The Council of Nismes, in 1284, while requiring immersion, made this exception in case of danger or immediate death: "If a sufficient quantity of water cannot be had for wholly immersing the infant, let a certain quantity of water be poured upon the infant." The Council of Ravenna, in 1311, was the first to make baptism allowable by sprinkling in all cases. It decreed: "Baptism is to be administered by trine aspersion or immersion [sub trine aspersione, vel immersione]."† Bossuet says of immersion: "We are able to make it appear by acts of Councils and ancient rituals that for thirteen hundred years baptism was thus administered." Hagenbach says: "From the thirteenth century sprinkling came into more general use in the West. The Greek Church, however, and the church of Milano still retained the practice of immersion." Brenner, an eminent Roman Catholic, after an elaborate investigation, closed his work entitled Historical Exhibition of the Administration of Baptism from Christ to our Times with the following statement: "Thirteen hundred years was baptism generally and regularly an immersion of the person under the water, and only in extraordinary cases a sprinkling or pouring with water; the latter was, moreover, disputed as a mode of baptism, nay, even forbidden." The change thus made in the practice of the Roman Church from immersion to sprinkling was, *Summa Theologiæ, part iii., Quest. 66. † See Burrage's Act of Baptism for full citations. however, not based on any change of conviction as to the original form of the rite. Roman Catholic theologians hold, and have ever held, that this was immersion, and they rest the validity of the change solely on the authority of the church to alter rites and ceremonies. 3. Among the Reformers, Luther and Calvin, with all scholars of that age, unitedly affirmed, in emphatic language, that immersion was the original form of the ordinance; as, indeed, do all continental scholars of the present age. Luther, in his work De Sacramento Baptismi, said: "The name baptism is Greek; in Latin it may be rendered 'immersion,' as when we immerse anything in water that it may be all covered with water. And although that custom has now grown out of use with most persons (nor do they wholly submerge children, but only pour on a little water), yet they ought to be entirely immersed and immediately drawn out, for this the etymology of the name seems to demand." His Order of Baptism, A. D. 1523, says: "Then let him take the child and dip it into the baptism." Calvin, in his Institutes, says: "The word baptizo itself signifies to immerse, and it is certain that immersion was observed by the ancient church."* But in establishing the Lutheran and Reformed churches these eminent men disregarded the form as not essential, and permitted the continuance of sprinkling, which in the sixteenth century had become the common practice on the Continent. And this form of the rite has remained in those churches, notwithstanding the universal admission that it is not apostolic. 4. In the English Church, however, immersion had remained; and at the Reformation it was continued in the Establishment. Lingard, in his History and Antiquities of the Anglo-Saxon Church, describing the canonical regula * Liber iv. 15-19. tions for baptism in the ante-Reformation period, says of the adult candidate: "He then descended into the font; the priest depressed his head three times below the surface, saying, 'I baptize thee in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost." And of the child: The priest "plunged it thrice into the water, pronounced the mysterious words, and then restored it to the sponsors." No change was made in this until the reign of Edward VI., when, in 1549, it was ordained: "If the child be weak, it shall suffice to pour water on it." The rubric of the English Church, as finally settled in 1662, reads as follows: "Then the priest shall take the child into his hands, and shall say to the godfathers and godmothers: 'Name this child;' and then, naming it after them (if they certify him that the child may well endure it), he shall dip it in the water discreetly and warily, saying, ‘I baptize thee in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost.' But if they shall certify that the child is weak, it shall suffice to pour water on it, saying the foresaid words." In the rubric of the Protestant Episcopal Church of the United States this is modified as follows: "And then, naming it after them, he shall dip it in the water discreetly, or shall pour water upon it." The above law of the English Church has remained unchanged; but in practice sprinkling, instead of being the exception, has become the rule. In the Scotch Kirk, John Knox, following Calvin, established sprinkling. Among the English Puritans, however, there was an earnest party favoring the original form. In the Westminster Assembly, 1644, as reported by Lightfoot, who was present, when it was proposed that the Directory of Public Worship relating to baptism should read, "The minister shall take water and sprinkle or pour it with his hand upon the face or forehead of the child," after long dispute, "it was |
