THE HISTORY OF INFANT-BAPTISM. PART II. CHAP. I. Of some other Passages which are cited, and pretended to be to this purpose, but are not. §. I. THE passages produced in the first part, are CHAP. I. all that I have met with in authors that year after wrote in the first four centuries; saving that in the apo St. Austin's works there are, as I said, a great many more; but all to the same purpose. In some collections of this nature I have seen several other quotations pretended to be out of authors within the said term. But they are either, 1. Out of such books as are now discovered to be forgeries of late years. Or, 2. They are nothing to the purpose. Or, 3. Wrested and altered by those that cite them to another sense than what they carry in the authors themselves. Or. 4. Such wherein the author does not say that for which he is cited: but he says something from stles. CHAP. I. whence the other does draw it as a consequence; Year after and then sets down that consequence, as if it were the author's own words. Or, the apostles. 5. Quotations absolutely false. First, out of such books as are now discovered to be no true works of the authors, whose name they bear, but forgeries of later years. So there are quotations for infant baptism, taken out of the Decretal epistles, which have been set out under the name of the most ancient bishops of 730. Rome, but were, as I shewed before ", really forged long after that time. As for the spurious quotations that are of any tolerable credit for antiquity, I gave before some account of them b. II. Secondly, many that are produced are nothing to the purpose. As, when the antipædobaptists do fill their collections of this nature with passages out of the ancient Fathers that relate to the baptizing of adult persons. There is no pædobaptist, but does grant that there are innumerable such places; for in the first 300 or 400 years of Christianity, (in which space of time it was that the greatest part of the heathen world, being converted, came into the church,) the baptisms of grown persons converted were more in number than the baptisms of the children of Christians: as it must needs be, since the apostles, at their death, left the world in such a state, as that there was probably a hundred heathens left for one Christian; even in the Roman empire, where they spent most of their pains: but at the a Part i. ch. 16. §. 1, 2. b Part i. ch. 23. stles. end of 300 or 400 years, there were probably ten CHAPI Christians for one heathen. Now in that space of year after time there are recorded a great many sermons and the ap other discourses, persuading people to come in and be baptized and in those discourses they instruct them in what is necessary thereto, as that they must first understand and believe the principles of the Christian religion, and resolve to forsake their wicked courses and idolatrous worships. And commonly when they are upon this theme, they speak of baptism just as the church of England does in the Catechism; that there is required of persons to be baptized, repentance and faith. There are also extant many sermons made to the persons newly baptized, putting them in mind of their vow and covenant. And it is common for the antipædobaptists to cite some passages out of such discourses, which, taken by themselves, look as if those authors were against infant-baptism, and allowed it only to grown persons; but the contrary appears in that the same authors, in other places, when they speak of the case of infants, do shew their opinion and practice to have been otherwise; and that they looked upon that as a particular and excepted case. For this sort of quotations is often made out of Chrysostom, Gregory Nazianzen, and even St. Austin himself. In short, they have in this matter dealt with those ancient authors just as they did lately with Mr. Baxter; who being busy in writing something in defence of infant-baptism, heard the hawkers ery under his window, Mr. Baxter's Arguments for Believers,' &c. being a pamphlet of collections e Baxter, More Proofs of Infants Church Membership and right to Baptism, p. 414. |