The Authority for Infant Baptism

S. Mark x. 13–16

In the old English Office for the Baptism of Infants the corresponding passage from S. Matthew’s Gospel was the portion of Scripture appointed to be read. It was wisely changed at the first Revision under Edward VI. for this, which, by certain additions, brings into still greater prominence our Lord’s care and love for little children. It records, for instance, the indignation which He felt on realising that His disciples would have hindered the mothers who were bringing their babes, or the little children whom an instinctive impulse was drawing to His side. “He was much displeased,” S. Mark says; it is an expression nowhere else applied to Jesus, and its application here not only reminds us of the characteristic feature of this Gospel, in which the lights and shadows that passed over His face are so often noticed, but serves also to emphasise His abhorrence of the bare thought that children were not as dear to Him, or had not as much claim on His attention, as grown-up people.

Again, S. Mark records the fact that “He took them up,” or folded them, “in His arms,” which both points to the hand of an eye-witness in the description, and at the same time enables us to “perceive how by His outward gesture and deed He declared His good-will towards them.”

And lastly, we are assured of the fact, which, however, could hardly be denied even if S. Matthew’s version alone remained, that His blessing accompanied the imposition of hands. He “put His hands upon them, and blessed them.”

It is very difficult, with such a passage as this confronting them, to understand with what reason the so-called Baptists can withhold from infants the sacred rite of admission into Christ’s kingdom. Our Lord says, “Of such is the kingdom of God;” and in another place He assures Nicodemus that there is no entrance there save through “the washing of regeneration and the renewal of the Holy Ghost;” for “except a man be born of water, and of the Spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God.” Read these two declarations together, and it is impossible to avoid the conclusion that He “favourably alloweth the charitable work of ours in bringing infants to Holy Baptism.”

It will be well, however, in this place to confirm this opinion by corroborative arguments, both from analogy and from the interpretation of Christ’s purpose handed down from the beginning.

Going back to the Jewish Dispensation, we find that infants were admitted into covenant with God. Almost as soon as a male child was born, certainly as soon as he had strength to submit to the ordinance, he was circumcised. It was God’s appointed means by which He chose to admit the Jew into covenant with Himself, to become one of His peculiar people, or, as He so tenderly explains the relationship, to be numbered among His children. Now we must bear in mind two cardinal facts, borne witness to by God Himself, — first, that He is always the same, that He is the Lord, and changeth not; secondly, that Christ came into the world to fill up and develop the Divine institutions which He found in force: “I am not come to destroy, but to fulfil.” Whatever principle, then, God has once taught He will always teach. The exact method of inculcating it may vary with circumstances, but the principle remains unaltered and the same.

Now, when God said to Abraham, “This is My covenant with you,... Every man-child shall be circumcised at eight days old,” He established the principle that infants were eligible for the privileges which belonged to His people. When Circumcision was superseded by Baptism the principle remained untouched; nothing was changed but the outward form and manner of administration.

Again, Christ came to impart its fulness to the Law and its ordinances. We naturally therefore expect that any change will be at least by way of advance and improvement rather than of retrogression and deterioration. And so it is found to be on comparing the respective initiatory rites of the two Covenants. When the Jewish child was admitted into the family of God he became at once an heir of all the privileges belonging to the chosen people, but there is no indication that he received any inward gift or indwelling grace to enable him to live up to his profession. The Christian, on the contrary, is not only made in Baptism “an inheritor of the kingdom of heaven,” but also a partaker of the grace of regeneration and the gifts of the Holy Spirit, in the power of which he may fulfil the duties of his high calling in Christ Jesus.

Such has always been the belief of the Catholic Church. Now, seeing that unconsciousness was no bar to admission into covenant with God in the Old Testament, unless children under the New are to be placed in a wholly inferior position, it is no impediment now. Indeed, if Christ had given the least sanction to the idea that little children were ineligible for the kingdom, His enemies, who were always seeking for grounds of accusation against Him, would have eagerly seized upon and pressed this point very strongly, to show the inferiority of Christianity to Judaism. And it is worthy of notice that not only were infants admitted by Circumcision into covenant privileges, but, in the case of proselytes from other religions, infants were actually baptized by the Jews. It is testified to by Maimonides, one of the most learned of their Rabbis, “An Israelite who takes a heathen child, or finds a little heathen babe, and baptizes him, he becomes a proselyte.”

When, then, our Lord commanded the Apostles to make disciples of all nations by baptizing them, unless an exception had been expressly made, the same laws would be observed as had previously been in force. And history affords ample testimony that the Primitive Christians so interpreted His directions. Speaking of persons who must have been born while S. John was living, one of the earliest Fathers says that they had been “made disciples in their childhood.” Irenaeus, too, asserts that Christ “came to save all by Himself; all I mean who are regenerated to God by Him: infants and little ones, boys and youths, and older persons.” Origen also writes, “Infants by the usage of the Church are baptized;” and again, “The Church received a custom handed down from the Apostles to give Baptism even to infants.”

Many more passages of Scripture 2 and testimonies from Patristic writings might easily be pressed into the service, but enough has been adduced to afford strong grounds for the assumption that He, Who knew the end from the beginning, rebuked the disciples for keeping little children from coming to Him for His blessing, that He might confirm at the outset their claim to the privileges of the New Kingdom. That laying on of Christ’s hands upon the little ones in the coasts of Judaea was a type of the blessings in store for those of every nation who should be gathered into the fold of His Church; and that single act established the principle “that infants are proper subjects for sacramental influences, and though they may be incapable of understanding God’s mercy, they are not incapable of receiving it.”

1 The first Apology has been held by some authorities to have been written as early as 141 A.D., but the most probable date was 147-8. The persons of whom he speaks were, he said, sixty and seventy years old, which take back their birth to time considerably antecedent to the Apostle’s death.

2 The argument usually drawn from the fact of “whole households” being baptized — Acts xvi. 15, 33; 1 Cor. i. 14, 16 — is necessarily weak. The most that can be urged is a probability that they included children, which is perhaps somewhat strengthened by the suddenness of their admission. It is hardly likely that whole families of adults would embrace a despised religion in haste; the difficulty is diminished if a portion of them were unconscious children, for whose baptism a conviction was not requisite.

Perhaps the strongest evidence is to be found in the relationship of Baptismal Regeneration to Original Sin. If evil may be received unconsciously, a fortiori good, otherwise the work of the Second Adam is less extensive in its operation than that of the first. Cf. 1 Cor. xv. 22,

Note: S. Luke writes f3pt<pr), which implies that they were new-born babes.. 2 Cf. p. 5. /