CHAPTER XXIX. THE SACRAMENT OF BAPTISM: ITS NATURE AND DESIGN: SUBJECTS OF IT: MODE OF ADMINISTRATION: APOSTOLIC PRACTICE. I. 1. Circumcision: its origin and Nature.-2. Its Relation to Christian Baptism.— 3. Mission and Baptism of John.-4. The Baptism of the Apostles, during Christ's personal Ministry.-5. Institution of Christian Baptism, by the Risen Saviour.6. Outpouring of the Spirit with Power; Relation thereof to Christian Baptism. -7. Certainty of these Divine Mysteries: and their Sum.-8. Their relation to the doctrine of God, and of Salvation-II. 1. The relation between Baptism and the blessings of which it is the Seal.-2. All who have title to the Blessings, have title to the Seal.-3. Vindication in eleven propositions, of the Right of the Infant Seed of believers, to Christian Baptism.-4. Effects of the neglect, and of the exercise of this right.-III. 1. Effect of the mode of Baptism on the validity of the Ordinance.-2. Immersion in commemoration of the Burial of Christ, a total perversion of the Sacrament of Baptism.-3. Exposition of the Scriptural Doctrine of Baptism-as related to the death and burial of Christ.-4. Various Scriptural Senses of the term Baptism: Authority of Christ to fix the sense of this term, and the mode of this Sacrament.-5. Proof in five propositions of the mode of administration intended by Christ.—IV. 1. Apostolic Practice: Day of Pentecost, and the Baptism then administered.-2. Evidence afforded by this great example: stated in three propositions.-3. First Gentile Baptism.-4. Evidence afforded by it, stated in three propositions.-5. Doctrine of Baptism deduced from the Apostolic Practice. I.-1. WHEN Abram was ninety and nine years old the Lord appeared unto him, and under his name, the Almighty God, renewed unto him all his promises and enlarged them, changed his name to Abraham-father of many nations-reduced the whole into the form of an everlasting covenant to be a God unto him and to his seed after him, and instituted the sacrament of circumcision as the perpetual token of the covenant, and the common. seal of all its stipulations.' He who entered into this covenant with Abraham declared himself to be Jehovah-and the divine names under which he binds himself, express, in a peculiar manner, his almightiness and his all-sufficiency. In the sacrament which is the outward token of this covenant, lies the first step in the separate organization of the Church of God considered as visible a sacrament which, under three dispensations of the Covenant of Grace, and under two very distinct forms has continued for about four thousand years, to be a sign and a seal of God's grace to his people. Moses simply continued, by a positive enactment, the sacrament of circumcision as he found it established amongst his people;' and engrafted it into the dispensation he was sent to organize out of the descendants of Abraham through Isaac, upon one branch of the great promises sealed by this sacrament. Christ himself plainly tells us that this was the relation of this sacrament to the Levitical dispensation; and therein points out the nature of its relation to the whole Jewish system. It was the token of all the promises of a strictly personal kind, made to Abraham: the token, also, of all the promises made in favour of Ishmael and his posterity, and Esau and his posterity: the token, also, of the far higher promises, both temporal and spiritual, made to the descendants of Abraham through Isaac and Jacob-who were very specially heirs according to the promise of God. In this respect circumcision was the basis of the Hebrew commonwealth, and of the peculiar system of the Jews in all its aspects. But its fundamental sense and use were to signify and seal divine grace, and to bind and oblige men to the performance of all duties corresponding thereto. And there fore, God called it from the beginning a token of the covenant between him and Abraham,' and declared two thousand years afterwards, by the mouth of Paul, that Abraham received it as a seal of the righteousness of faith-the great stipulation of the covenant, that Abraham should be heir of the world, not being through the law, but through the righteousness of faith." Wherefore, and in like manner, justification was sealed by it to all be lievers, of whom Abraham, through this covenant, is the common Father by which, also, sanctification was signified and sealed *The chronology adopted in this, and the former Treatise, is that which is com monly accepted as settled upon the foundation of the labours of Petaviu and bis successors. This is done, not as assenting to the accuracy of any part of it, preceding the Christian era, but because any discussions on such a topic, in the present state of opinion, and in connection with such labours as I have been attempting, would only perplex my general subject, even if they cleared up the chronology of it before the e tablishment of the Gospel Church-which was far more than I could expect. 1 Lev., xii. 3. • Gen., xvii. 11, 2 John, vii. 22. 5 Rom., iv. 11, 12. 3 Deut., x. 16. 6 Gal., iii. 7. unto them, through this sacrament. For God promised to circumcise the hearts of his ancient people, as well as to bring them into the promised land.' And in truth, in the very nature of things, he was not a Jew who was one outwardly, neither was that circumcision which was outward in the flesh; but he was a Jew who was one inwardly, and circumcision was of the heart, in the spirit, not in the letter." 2. We are not left any room to believe that the particular form of circumcision under which this great and permanent sacrament was first instituted,-under which it endured as the seal of all the promises for two thousand years, and endures still as the token of a portion of them; was intended by God to continue, as the token between God and his Church visible, and a sign and seal of covenanted grace, any longer than the glorious dispensation of the Gospel should be fully manifested on earth. Why, demanded Peter of the Assembly of Apostles and Elders, met to consider this very question-why tempt ye God, to put a yoke upon the neck of the disciples 23 My sentence is said James,-after proving that it had always been the purpose of God to visit the Gentiles, to take out of them a people for his name;-My sentence is that we trouble not them, which from among the Gentiles are turned to God. And the whole Assembly, divinely authorized and divinely taught, broke in two the heavy yoke of the ceremonial law, and of circumcision as a token of it. The Apostle Paul, largely proving these things to the Churches of Galatia, told them, that if they persisted in being circumcised, Christ profited them nothing for they not only rejected his grace thereby, but made themselves debtors to do the whole law. For Christ had expressly commanded, that Baptism with water, in the name of the Father, and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost, should be the form of this sacrament, from the moment of the outpouring of the Holy Ghost, on the day of Pentecost. For then the long predicted time would be fully come, for the Church of God to be opened to the long excluded Gentile world,' and for the proclamation of that New Covenant, so long predicted-not according to the covenant under which Israel was brought up out of Egypt, but according to an everlasting covenant, under which all shall know the Lord. We may therefore confidently say that circumcision was the primeval sacrament of the dispensation of the covenant of grace, instituted, by God, in Abraham and his seed: that it was a token between God and every one beneficially interested in that covenant, of the covenant itself and of every promise made in it: and, as such, was accepted by Moses, and engrafted into the Jewish dispensation, as the foundation thereof. Ordained by God in the flesh of his covenant people—the seed of his friend Abraham, it became the first mark of the visible separation of God's people from the world-the first step in the visible organization of the Church of God; and as such, its main use and significance were, that it was a token and a seal of the deliverance of believers in God from sin and endless death, by the only way in which God ever delivered any-to wit, by the Son of God as the Saviour of sinners-whose advent was the chief stipulation of the covenant: and that its period, under the form originally given, was until the end of all that was legal, typical and ceremonial, and the complete manifestation of divine grace and truth, through Jesus Christ-by whose command, Baptism with water, in the name of the Triune God, took its place as a token and seal of the covenant of grace, under the Gospel dispensation. 3. The Scriptures clearly explain the mission of John the Baptist, as the forerunner of Christ, together with the nature and whole course, fruits and end thereof. It is repeatedly declared, that one grand part of that mission, was to baptize the people, in the preparation of the way of the Lord, and with explicit reference to his immediate appearance in his personal ministry. Behold, said John, the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world. This is he of whom I said, after me cometh a man which is preferred before me; for he was before me. And I knew him not: but that he should be manifest to Israel, therefore am I come baptizing with water. I saw the Spirit descending from heaven like a dove, and it abode upon him. And I knew him not: but he that sent me to baptize with water, the same said unto me, Upon whom thou shalt see the Spirit descending, and remaining on him, the same is he which baptizeth with the Holy Ghost.' It is therefore certain that John was divinely commanded to baptize: that this baptism had a di* Luke, iii. 1-22; Matt., iii. passim; xi. 1–19. 1 John, i. 29-33. 1 rect relevancy to the immediate manifestation of Jesus Christ, as the Son of God and the Saviour of the world; and that Jesus Christ would initiate a better baptism than one of mere water unto repentance, which was the nature of John's baptism, as explained by himself, while he describes that of Christ as a baptism with the Holy Ghost and fire.' The baptism of John, therefore, bore the same relation to Christian baptism, that John himself bore to Christ. It was not instituted by Christ,-but preceded his ministry, and had relation only to that ministry, as has been shown,—and as the baptism of Christ himself, by John, abundantly confirms. Moreover, the Apostle Paul, not only baptized disciples who had already been baptized unto John's baptism; but he explained why he did it, in the sense I have already stated.' : 4. The Lord Jesus did not personally baptize; but his disciples did, with his approbation, in his presence, and as part of the work appropriate to them, while his ministry continued indeed it is expressly stated that they did this before the close of John's ministry. Nor in all the testimony of John to Christ, as the Son of God and the Saviour of the world, is there anything more clear and full, than his exposition of these very circumstances, when he was informed of them.' Still the decisive fact must be remembered, that Jesus Christ was a minister of the circumcision sent only, so far as his personal ministry went, to the lost sheep of the house of Israel: he came unto his own and his own received him not. And this was all involved so deeply in his Mediatorial work, that it might not be otherwise: and even the truth of God, the promises made unto the fathers, and the call of the Gentiles themselves, exacted, as is declared by Paul, this very form of the coming of Messiah. He neither took down the Jewish system, nor set up the Christian system in its stead; but on the contrary, amongst his most wonderful teachings, were his expositions of the spirituality of the dispensation to which his own mission put an end. Having invested his Apostles with all power, and designated the circumstances in which they should receive all fitness; his reserve was so great, that although he instituted the sacrament of his body and blood while he observed the Passover for the last time, he did not then 1 Matt., iii. 11. 2 Acts, xix. 1-5. *Matt., iii. 13-17; xxi. 23–27. John, iii. 26-36. Rom., xv. 8; Matt, xv. 24; John, i. 11. 1 Rom., xv. 8-12. |