) Cj p-RTTSrnF.TOTJ. N. J. «v^ Presented by Mr Samuel Agnew of Philadelphia, Pa. Ag-icw Coll. on Baptism, No. Digitized by tine Internet Arciiive in 2011 with funding from Princeton Tiieological Seminary Library littp://www.arcliive.org/details/truemodeofbaptisOOmi THE TRUE MODE OF BAPTISM INVESTIGATED ; EING A PLAIN AND COMPENDIOUS SUMMARY OF EVIDENCES IN FAYOUE OF SPRINKLING, AGAINST IMMERSION, BY THOMAS MILLS, AUTHOR OF ' CHRISTIANITY, ITS PROGRESS AND PRESENT IMPEDI- MEKTS,' AND OF ' SANCTIFICATIOX EXPLAINED AND ENFORCED.' Hontron: JOHN SNO\r, PATERNOSTER ROW; J. MASON, PATER- NOSTER ROYV; AND J. BAKEWELL, 80, NEWGATE STREET. 1849. CONTE^'TS. ^ -s> t^ ^o V PAGE. Advertisement . . . . . . . . o Introductory observations .. ,, ,, 11 Baptism by Sprinkling observed in the tnie spirit of obedience 17 Immersion not expressly enjoined . . . . . . 19 Religious pxirifications under the law by Sprinkling . . 39 Sevenil examples of baptism Ihe baptism at the Red Sea . . . . 47 — — of Nebuchadnezzar . . . . 49 Sundry Jewish baptisms .. .. .. oO The baptized vesture .. ,. ,, 55 Baptizo translated to dip . . . . . . . . 57 Immersion disaproved by analogy of the Lord's supper o9 Shedding forth, and not Immersion, a type of spiritual baptism .. .. .. .. 61 John's baptisms . . , . . . , , 66 The baptism of the Lord Jesus ... .. .. 84 The disciples feet washed emblematically . . , . 86 The baptisms on the day of Pentecost .. .. 87 The baptism of Paul .. .. ^— of Lydia . . . • of the Philippian Jailer — of the Ethiopian eunuch of Cornelius 96 96 96 98 110 112 115 130 132 139 The *Oncbap'iisin' Burial ^vith Christ by baptism Dipping, and not Sj)rinMing, an innovation Baptism in the early churches The spiritual nature of Christianity opposed to immersion Immersion opposed to the mild and gentle spirit of the gospel .. .. .. .. 140 Immersion dangerous and unseemly Immersion sometimes impracticable Concluding observations . . . . Appendix ., 144 146 149 159 1^- ^-^.-^^ ADVERTISEMENT It is with unfeigned reluctance that I have entered into the controversy on the mode of baptism. jMany persons under my pastoral oversight, however, have often stated that tliey never heard the rite of baptism by sprinkling defended from the pulpit; that they were consequently but little aquainted with the ai'gu- ments in its favour, — while immersionists, from the frequency with which their Ministers attempt to vin- dicate dipping, are familiar mth the plausible sophis- tries with which that practise is defended ; and that popular arguments in its favour were frequently obtru- ded upon them by zealous advocates, some of whom in no h]un])ie manner have attempted to show that it is the duty of Christians to be plunged in water. They have also so frequently requested me to give a public lecture on the mode of baptism, that I finally consented to do so. J, therefore, delivered a lecture in Parliament Street Chapel, Nottingham, and subsequently in other places ; in which I endeavoured by an exposition of the true sense of the word of God, and a careful induction of its facts, to explain and vindicate the di\dnely appointed rite of sprinkling; and thus, at the same time, to oppose the groundless assumptions D ADVERTISEMENT. of mistaken brethren, who represent a human cere- mony as of divine and imperative ordination ; and to check the unholy encroachments of a prosely- ting spirit, in so far as it may exist. I have been so often and so strongly urged, by members of various Christian churches, to publish the riews and reason- ings which that lecture contained, that they are now presented to the public in a more extended form. My object in writing this treatise has been to supply a desideratum which is frequently expressed, viz. a work sufficiently large to contain a clear and com- pendious view of the argument which proves sprink- ling to be right and immersion wrong ; and yet small enough to render it suitable for general circulation among those persons, — and they form the largest class of society, — who have but little time for reading books, and little money to purchase them. Absolute originality on the subject of baptism is almost impossible. We cannot make new facts ; nor can we give correct expositions of the Holy Scrip- tures, without stating views which are held by other expositors. ^Yriters who reason from the same prem- ises, must necessarily be oftenled to the same conclu- sions, and much in the same manner. I have, there- fore, not been surprised in having, since this treatise was written, met with forms of thought and language in other works, which are \ery coincident with my own. I have culled, however, where I thought I could do so to advantage. Condensation and clear- ADVEKTISEMEXT. 7 iicss are the objects at which I have aimed, in the vindication of what I believe to be truth. It may be that some immersionists will think that I have si)oken lightly of a practice which they venerate as a divine rite ; but let them remember that it is not as an ordinance of Christ that I have done so, but as a human rite. I know ot no con- troversial works m which I have met with more asperity and bitterness, than in works on baptism. I have scrujDulously guarded against such an imhappy sj^irit. Though there may be persons, who are so sensitive on the subject of baptism, that to oj^pose the practise of dipping, is to offer them a personal affront ; yet the " Baptists " withm the cu'cle of my aquaintance, both of the General and Particular denominations, are very estimable Christians. The 2)iety and intelligence of many of them, and the signal services which, as churches, they have ren- dered to Christ, by their missions, require no eulo- gium from me. I rejoice to hold frequent and affectionate intercourse with them as brethren in the Lord ; and I have served them in the pulpit, both in and out of England with pleasure. I should deeply regret if they should be so far mistaken, as to regard an attempt to refute their oj^inion, as an act of hostil- ity or unkindness to themselves. Indeed, the more freely I endeavour to vuidicate our views of Christ's ordinance, the more anxious do I feel to testify sincere and fervent Christian love to brethren whose b2 ADVERTISEMENT opiuions those views constrain us to oppose. I would fain be a helper of their joy, when they are the means of turning sinners to God. I hope there is not a word to be found in the fol- lowing pages which Christian charity can condemn. But if I may judge how this treatise will be received by some, who are of various immersionist bodies, from the anger v/hich my lectures have causelessly excited, 1 may expect to be assailed with acrimonious lan- guage, rather than be met with sound arguments in a kind and Christian spirit. If immersionists are right, what have they to fear from discussion ; and if they are wrong, can they find it out too soon ? That cause which is strong in its truth, neither requires nor obtams the slightest aid from human passion. When men lose their temper it betrays a misgiving that they are losing their cause. Angry men should remember, that the way to demolish a structure that offends them, is not to attack the builder; for it will stand though he may fall. Such men always inflict the greatest injuiy upon themselves and theii* denomination. If im- mersionists think that because we do not believe their practice of dipping to be the true mode of Christian baptism, we do not love the truth, we can only say that we will adopt it as the ordinance of the Lord, when they have convinced us that he instituted it. If they think that we are mistaken as to what is truth, let them instruct us j but let them ADVERTISEMENT. 9 not be impatient, nor scold us ; nor cliai'gc us with insincerity, impiety, or u want of common sense, be- cause they deem us slow of heait to believe that their opinion is God's truth. To convmce us they must clearly refute our reasonings, and employ argu- ments which they have not yet pressed into their ser^■ice, if any such can be found ; for the old ones have all failed. So long as we beUeve God's word to be true, we think we must believe then- opinion to be false. We certauily have an equtd right with them to be angiy, on the gi'ound of a difference of opmion ; but we should be sorry to exercise the liberty to sin, for " The TSTath of man worketh not the righteousness of God." Controversy is a less evil than error; especially when controversy is conducted Arith Christian temper, and error is associated with dogmatism and michari- tableness. The spirit of foniialism and censorious exclusiveness in which immersion is commonly ad- vocated, and sometimes practised, is a much more serious evil than immersion itself, considered as a mere mode. ^lany advocates of immersion profess to welcome all attempts to prove it to be a false doctrine, as being sure to multiply the number of those who beheve it to be true. I hope, therefore, that all such persons will zealously aid me in the circidation of this work, and I shall be satisfied wdth the resiJt. Unfortunately immersionists in general do not read r3 10 ADVERTISEMENT. works which are oj^posed to their own opinion. They represent us as opposing baptism when we op2)ose diiDpmg ; and as denying the Holy Scriptures, when we affirm that their interpretation of Scripture is incorrect. Possibly some points in this argument may be singled out as assailable, though I know not which of them can be ; but if any person believes that he can successfully grapple with, and overturn, the en- tire argument, in all its principles and parts, I can only say that, though I have not written for mere controversy, he may, of course, make the attempt. But let him not be anonymous ; nor meet argument with declamation and mere epithets ; nor indulge in a sinful temper ; nor employ any language, but such as the Christian vocabulary will supply. T. M. Nottingham, October 1848. TRUE MODE OF BAPTISM.., / immmwi oeseevatioxs. Several denominations of Christians, who 2-)ractise immersion as a religions ordinance, have thought proper to entitle themselves "Baptists," as tlioiigh all undi])ped Christians were nnbaptized. Indeed they affirm that sprinkling v>'ater on a person, in the name of tlie Holy Trhiitv, is not baptism ; and sometimes they deride and reprehend that rite in sti'ong and scornful language. Some churches deem it right to attach such importance to unmersion, as to make it a condition of memljership, and to treat us, who have not been religiously plunged, as unfit for Christian communion \\ith them at the Lord's ta])Ie; and though they do not Vr-ithold other and minor tokens of Christian recognition, they refuse thus to acknowledge us as Christians. This peculiar rite is their distinctive bond of Christian fellowship, and the cause of then* separation fron those branches of the Saviour's church with which they otherwise agree. Attempts are unceasingly made bysomeimmersion- ists, in various localities, not so much to save the unregenerate, as to 23roselyte to their o^vn party those who are converted to God, and thus to alienate them fi'om the churches which were the means of their conversion, and in the bosoms of which, they find .sanctuaries of peace. Great numbers have been b4 12 INTRODUCTORY OBSERVATIONS. thus proselyted ; but if they could succeed m tuniing all Christians to the ''baptistiy," the world would not contain one Christian more than it does now, and not a soul would in consequence be saved from death. Their's is a useless expenditure of zeal, which might be beneficially dnected to really useful objects. In some places there are zealots, whose in- discreet and impetuous zeal is nearly in an inverse ratio to their knowledge ; who attach exaggerated importance to their favouiite rite ; and who seem as though they would move heaven and earth to im- merse the members of other churches. They so confidently rej^resent a merely human and unscrip- tural opinion as an absolute truth, and so constantly enforce it by bold and positive assertions, as to lead timid and uninformed people to imagine, that a doctrine which is so earnestly defended in public and in private must surely be tme ; and especially as we, who in general have to attend to more impor- tant subjects, so seldom refute their sentiments, and administer to them any merited rebuke. When the defenders of true Christian baptism have mamtained then ^dews of Christ's ordinance, some immersionists, instead of attempting fauiy and fully to refute then arguments in a mild and gentle spirit; have designated them by mere epithets, as though they spoke from the throne of judgment. Mr. A. Campbell, of America, attributes our riews to "pre- judice, bigotiT, and interest;"-*^ and he calls them crudities, boyisms, puerilites, mere trifling, and things beneath notice. Dr. Carson thunders like an offended little infallible. He seems, in his book, to tremble ^rith "horror" at the temerit}' and impiety of his theological opponents, as an archangel would tremble at sin ; and he scolds and even scalps them most unmercifully ; but evidently all from so high a * See his debate with Mr. MaccaUa, page 211. INTRODUCTORY OBSERVATIONS. 13 sense of duty, that that we cannot but believe him to have been as thoroughly sincere as he was un- charitable.* Indeed, various advocates of immersion treat theii- opponents in a summary and supercilious manner. They put on airs befitting only infallible beings ; are impatient of contradiction ; and de- noiuice sprinkling as though it were foolish or sinful. Y\'hy should there be so many mimic terrors ? They are all powerless, and excite no alarm. Xo one can frighten us out of our honest convictions of truth. If any man will pour forth vitriol or gall, let him be assured that they run off a good conscience as they would run off a globe of glass. Unholy and unloving- words can injure those only who utter them. If a man is able to prove his doctrines to be true, he may as well Adndicate them calmly, and in love to those who think differently. Severe and hard speeches may convince us that those who use them are angry, but they wiU not convince us that our views are erroneous. Such j^olemics constrain us to think that their temper and prejudices are much stronger than their arguments. If severe and unmeasured language could have determined this controversy, it would have been settled in favour of dipping long since. But we can none of us determine v>hat is true by authority ; for the wisest man is but a learner in * The foUowiug are a few samples of Dr. Carson's language, selected from a small pamphlet of 74 pages, in reply to Mr. President Beecher of Illinois College, America. " Extravagantly idle ; — childish fallacy ; — mere trifling ;— nonsense ;— perverse cavilling;— monstrous idea; — hlasphemy; — gothic rhetoric; — give the lie to the inspired narrator; — give the lie to the Holy Spirit; — neological canon; — grounded on infidelity; this is a respectful way of calling him (the Holy Ghost) a liar ;— heresy ;— childish trifling; — sickening;— false, fanatical, and suhversive of all revealed truth; absurdly and extravagantly idle, &c., &c." His large treatise abounds in language of a similar kind. He epeaks of his learned opponents as though they were men oi weak understandings, and very frequently attempts to terrify them B 5 14 INTRODUCTORY OBSERVATIONS- the school of Christ. We cannot make truth different nor better than it is; but we may easily injure our- selves by vain attempts to do so. If we are angry with one another, we shall never do each other any good ; but we shall do ourselves much harm. It is pauiful to see brethren lose the spirit of Christ, while they think they are contending for his cause. If we try to merely vanquish each other, the enemy vdU. conquer us all. Mere declamation, and iDiausible sophisms, and vauntmg words, may influence those peo2)le who are led by sound more than by sense ; but they never can overturn the truth. It becomes all Christians to put on the gentleness and meekness of Christ. If our brethren will only use kind and gen- tle words, — there are plenty of them, — and thus express a catholic and loving spirit, they are welcome to use the strongest a3'guments they CcUi find ; iind v>e will give to them all the consideration to which they are entitled. There ai'e persons who hold immersion to be as true as the gospel, and who consequently regard opposition to the dij^jiing ceremony as a manifesta- tion of temerity, equal to that displayed by an attack on Christianity itself. Many immersionists appear to imagine that they alone have a right to speak on this subject. They can never hear too much in favour of immersion, but they are offended when it is op230sed. The mono2)ly they assume might have been j^atented to them from heaven. If we vindicate sprinkling, we are regarded as invaders, and disturbers of the peace ; and they marvel tliat we cannot let them declaim for ever, and be silent. ■with the awful ■word, blasphemy ; anil at the same time he i^rotests how very proper his feelings are. It is to be deeply lamented that this Minister, who was a distinguished scholar, and, with this sad exception, a good man, should have been led to disfigure his writings with such hmguage. INTRODUCTORY OBSERVATIONS. 15 So much irritable impatience betrays a degree of fear. Surely truth, whatever it may be, is public property; and the Hberty to ascertain and defend it ])elongs equally to both sides. We have at least as much right to defend our views of Christ's ordinances as others have to ojipose them ; ^^-ithout weakening the bonds of Christian friendship, or calling forth un- charitable remarks. AVhy should they love us less because, from a sense of imperative duty to God, and in the spmt of faithfulness and love to them, we speak what we sincerely believe to be true ? Will they deny us the right which they themselves so frequently ex- ercise ? We are ^\dshful to contend earnestly for what we believe to be the faith and commandments once delivered to the saints, but we certainly do not wish to be guilty of enticing the members of the evan- gelical ''Baptist" churches to our ot\^i. Many Pedo- baptist churches have suffered much from the proselyting spiiit, and such a spirit is deserving of of very severe reprehension, Immersionists have said and are contantlv saving so much in defence of then' views of baptism, and we have said so little, that our \iews have been represented to be indefensi- ble. We do not gioiy in water. It is not our denomina- tional symbol, nor our bond of union. We all, indeed, are in danger of devotmg more attention and affec- tion to the distinctive peculiarities of our ovra denominations, than to the gi'eat fundamental truths in which all evangelical Protestants agree ; and of being too tenacious in respect to church ordinances and church order, on which revelation is less explicit, and in which it has pleased God to leave much to our own sense of what is most convenient and proper. It cannot be proper to single out this one rite from aU that the New Testament teaches, so as to magnify its importance, and to devote an undue attention to it, to the practical disparagement of more important thmgs. We do not ever and anon, obtrusivelv thrust {f> INTRODUCTORY OBSERVATION??. our views on the attention of our esteemed ])retln=en who deem it right to be immei^ed. We desire to live with them in peace and love. But our quietness is often attributed to cowardice and fear. Indeed, there are men who have temerity and indiscretion enough to affinn, that we have not sufficient dis- cernment to see the truth, or that we have not honesty enough to avow it. Water baptism could scarcely be deemed more important by some brethren, even if like faith and holiness it were indispcnsible to salvation. We certainly maintain and enforce the obligation to be baptized with water, and we therefore constantly observe the ordinance; but we deem the baptism of the soul by the Holy Spirit, to be of much greater importance. Christianity looks much more to the spirit of obedience, than to our formal compliance with certain rites, which men define more precisely and authoritatively than the Holy Scrij^tures. It is proper, how^ever, that we should observe its ordinances according as its rubric has prescribed the mode; whether that i)rescription be given by the exj^ress directions, or by the personal examj^le, of holy and inspired men of God. It is impossible to vindicate the right mode of baptism \^dthout opposing the wrong, and unfortu- nately without seeming to oppose Christian l)rethrcn who observe it. Y\'e agree with the great body of immersionists in the use of water, and of the sacred formulary of words ; that the rite is a symbol of renewing grace, and subordinately a sign of the Christian covenant, and a token of the Christian profession: and with them we reject bai)tismal re- generation, the use of sponsors, and the sign of the cross ; as mockeries and delusions. One princi]>al question in dispute between us and them is in respect to the true and proper mode of Iniptism. Now we believe that sprinkling or shedding forth water is the true mode of bajjtism, and tliat iunuersion is not. Here THE SPIRIT OF OBKDIEXCE RIGHT. 17 then we join issue with ihem, in a friendly and Christian sjjirit. We doubt not that many of those who have heard ojily tlicii- present practice advocated, if they attentively study our auguments, and try them not by their own ojnnions, but by the word of God, will be con\inced that immersion is not the baptism which Christ commanded, and which his apostles observed. Indeed to us it is so cleai' that dij^piiig is wrong as a Christian ordinance, that we do not despau- of its being totally abandoned. Our be- loved brethren who immerse may fill up their " baptistries " without ceasmg to be holy, useful, and 2^1*0 sjDero us chui'ches. IF IT COULD BE PROVED THAT WE ARE WRONG IN THE FORM, WE ARE RIGHT IN THE SPIRIT OF OBEDIENCE. Even if sprinkling were not the true mode of baptism, we observe it as an act of obedience to the Lord Christ, and from a sincere and honest conviction that it is his appointment. We also hold the great truth of which baptism is a sign, as much as any immersionists can. The sign is surely made for the thing signified, and not the thing signified for the sign ; as a likeness is made for the man, and not the man for the likeness. We therefore keej) the law according to our interj^retation of its true meaning ; and we seek the great sj^iritual blessing which water ba2)tism sets forth. Since therefore God will not condemn us, why should our brethren ? There are several positive laws of God which both they and we observe, not in the letter, but in the spnit. To mention one such law, " Greet one another with a holy kiss"; ii. Cor. xiii. 12. &c. meaning that men should kiss men, and women women ; This is as sacred a sign of Christian brotherhood, as baptism is of renewing grace ; and it is enjoined in five j^laces, and by two apostles. If dipping were enjoined as 18 THE SPIRIT OF OBEDIENCE RIGHT, plainiy and expressly as the kiss of charity, — though we Imow that it is not, — it would surely be as i:>roper to obey the spirit of one command as of the other ; when the form is impracticable, or lialjle to abuse, or dan- gerous, or otherwise inconvenient and incongruous. Christian love, and the right hand of Christian fellowship, as being more accordant with our national customs and feelings, are undoubtedly accepted by the Lord as acts of obedience, in the absence of the precise form prescribed to the Greeks. And why should not our sincere belief and obedience to the law of baptism be also accepted ; and especially as we believe that we observe the actual form that was in- tended by the Lord Jesus, and observed by his primitive disciples, and that immersionists do not ? Our obedi- ence is of faith, how then can it be sin ? Immersionists deem their fashion to be right ; let them therefore observe it as such, in a right spirit ; and if they have no opportunity of learning better, God will be pleased vvith their well meant obedience : but let them not blame us because we cannot bow to their interpretation of Christ's law. AVe do not doubt but tliat our gracious God accepts sincere and well meant obedience to the spirit of his laws, in respect to phylacteries, — which the Pharisees observed in the letter and not in the spirit ; — to washing one another's feet ; to the law of the shew bread ; and of the Jewish sabbath; to saying the "Lord's prayer," and to baptisms. The spirit of obedience always leads men to observe the proper outward acts, in so far as they are understood, and are practicable. If a man loves God with all his heart, he will do all he can to 13lease him. Some men allow this doctrine and act upon it relation to other things, but deny it in res- pect to this one rite of baptism. They speak as though, after we have done our best to understand the law of Christ, he condemns us for what at most ■^ounts to no more than a verbal mistake nbout IMMERSION NOT EXPRESSLY ENJOINED. 19 a Greek word ; in consequence of v/hich supposed mistake, we do not use water enough, nor use it after a certain manner. You may serve God and keep the connuandmeiits in their letter and outward forms, and attach as much importance to eveiy ritual punctilio as the Pharisees did, and yet be fatally defective in the true spirit of obedience to God. The advocates of formality tithe anise, mint, and cummin, though at the same time they neglect the weightier matters of the law. " The letter killeth ])ut the spirit giveth life." If you possess and practi- cally exemjDlify the right spirit, you cainiot be very seriously ^^Tong in tlie ritual modes, especially where they are not very expressly and exiDlicitly denned. IMMERSION NOT EXPRESSLY ENJOINED. If it were possible to prove that any one instance of baptism is sj^oken of in the New Testament as an act of immersion, that instance would not prove im- mersion to be the only mode of baptism that was observed; and still less would it prove that that mode is enjoined upon us. Our Lord said of prayer, "When ye stand praying forgive." Mark xi. 25. He thus speaks of standing as a mode in prayer ; but that does not forbid kneeling; nor can it be sup- posed to give a preference to standing, as the most proper posture in prayer. In Hke manner, if we had an instance of baptism being observed by a person being dipped in water, that would not prove dipping to be the only proper mode ; but only that it is one mode of l)aptism. But where is such an in- stance to be found in the New Testament ? Nowhere. If the coiuplete immersion of the body of every Christian, be the oidy proper mode of baptism allow- able, is it not remarkable that that one only mode should never onc<3 be expressly commanded or explicitly defined ^ Is it not also surpribing that 20 IMMERSION NOT EXPRESSLY ENJOINED. among so many narratives of the administration of this sacred ordinance, not one of the incidents of a single dijiping should ever be mentioned; though many must have occurred, if all the peojDle were plunged over head in water ? and that there is not one single certain allusion to such a ceremony in all the New Testament; but that on the contrary many circumstances and allusions are entirely opposed to the immersion theory ? If there be sucli commands and allusions, so plain that he who runs may read ; must it not be regarded as strange that, in these days, when every christian has a copy of the holy book, and when knowledge is cheaper than bread, the great majority of plain and learned readers, who regard that book mth supreme veneration, and whose constant study is to ascertain its meaning and to keep its laws, should fail to discover them ? We are often told indeed that the command to be baptized is a command to be dipped ; for immersionists affiiin that to baptize is to dip and only to dip ; and that it designates the mode of baptism sj^ecifically. The main augument by which they try to j^rove the Christian duty to be immersed is founded on the alleged meanuag of the Greek verb baptizo, (/JaTrri^a,) This argument must be somewhat unintelligible to those who are ignorant of Greek; and amongst those who are well aquainted ^^dth Greek, it is a subject of much controversy. But can it be deemed credible that God has enjoined an imperative duty in so obscure and dubious a form as by the mean- ing of a single word, and notwithstanding that multitudes of learned and good men see many valid reasons to believe that that said word, as used in the book of God, has no such meaning ? Other duties are described circumstantially, and are enjoined so plainly that plain people can understand them. Since immersion is not enjoined with equal plainness, it cannot, to say the least, be equallv TM.MERSldN* NOT EXPRKSSI.V ENJOINED. 21 certain that God has commaiicU'd it; as all specific duties are enjoined in terms whicli are not of doubt- ful import. If the Lord Jesus directed his disciples to plunge each other in viater, it must be the action only tluit is important, and not any mere name of the action. In that case, we should have had such Greek words, as describe the act of being put under water, used indiscriminately in the sacred narratives; as we use immerse, dijD, submerge, plunge, &c., indis- criminately to describe the same thing. We might sometimes have had by/hizo; (/Si^^i^o.) the New Testament meaning of which Greenfield gives, in his Greek Lexicon, as being to immerse ; to sub- merge ; to cause to sink ; &c AVe might also have expected to have met with the vrord pontizo; (-ovTi^i,) to plunge in deep water: and epik/iizo; {zTriyj.v^-jc) to oveiliow with deep water. And there is duno ; (^jvi) and its derivatives, one of which may be mentioned, ^iz. dupto, {Iv-rx) which has both the sound and the sense of our word dip. Indeed Schrevehus, though his definitions are in Latin, in this instance gives the Engli&h to dip and to dive, as the sense o^ dupto. Kataduno ( y.ara^i/yi' ) means to immerse exp>ressly. Schrevelius gives its mean- ing has being demergo ; which is to plunge over head and ears ; to submerge, &c. ; and Jones in his compendium of the Lexicons by Damm, Sturze, Schleusner, and Schweighseuser, gives its meaning as being, to plunge down or into ; to sink under, &c. ^^^len immersion came to be practised by the Greeks, they used this word to describe the mode of the ordinance ; but the ordinance itself, they, of course, still denominated baptisma. The Latins also, when immersion became common, used therpro- \)er Latin words to describe it, as immergo, &c. But instead of baring words used indiscriminately to describe and enforce a specific rite, as though the 22 IMMERSION NOT EXPRESSLY ENJOlNEtf- act of being plunged were the thing enjoined^ we have always the one word baptizo used, in such u way, and in connection with such circumstances and truths, as prove it to be a generic term, in its New Testament sense. And when baptizo is paraphrased and exjilained by other words, those words are, pour, shed forth, &c.; which is clearly opposed to the opinion, that to baptize is absolutely to dip. But though baptizo is the word uniformly employed in the inspired original of the New Testament, it proba])ly would not be the word commonly spoken by the Lord Jesus, or by John, or the Apostles. They did not commonly speak the Greek tongue ; but as they mingled with the common people of Judea, they spoke in their vernacular language ; which was the Syriac, or Syro-chaldaic, a foiTuation of the Hebrew ; so that the common people heard him gladly m theii* native tongue. Those words of our Lord which are untranslated, even in the Greek, as, "Talitha cumi," Mark, v. 41. "Ephphatha," Mark, vii. 34., and "Eli, Eli, lama sabacthani," INIatthew XXVII. 46, ai'e Syi'iac words. He spake from heaven to Saul in a similar langTiage, — the Hebrew, Acts, xxyi. 14. The word which he, and John, and the Apostles, and the peojDle generally used, would, in all probability, be o S^^iac word. It would assist us in our inquiry if we could ascertain what the word originally employ- ed was. Happily, the means of learning it are at command, in the Syriac translation of the Nev* Testament. This was the first translation ever made. It was made very early, some say in the first centuiy, and all admit that it was made not later than early in the second ; so that some of the contemporaries of the Apostle John would still be living at the time. It bears the name of the Pes- chito, that is, the literal or simple ; because it contains the precise, sense of the original Greek IMMERSION NOT EXPRESSLY ENJOINED. 23 text, as it was understood in that early age. Accor- dingly this version is regarded as being of almost equal authority with the inspired original itself. As this translation was made so early, and for those who spoke the Sp'iac tongue, and consequently for the Jews ; and as the word originally used to desig- nate baptism must have continued in daily use, from the frequent observance of the ordinance; and have been in use at the time that this version was made ; that same word would probably be used by the transla- tor to designate this ordinance. Xow those who know Syriac affirm that this word is not tzeha, which mea^ns to dip ; nor is it a word that denotes any other specific mode of obseiwing the ordinance ; so that no precise form could have been imperatively and speci- fically prescribed, and much less immersion : the spnitual intents and objects of the ordinance only being of that importance which is now humanly attached to a ceremony. The Sp'iac word is emad. It is a generic term and means to stand; to confimi ; to establish ; as a pillar is established. And hence, the English word made, to be constituted. It is said to correspond with the same word in the Chaldee, and Arabic. The Hebrew word emad (iDr) cer- tainly has precisely the same sense and sound. As the emblematical washings of the law were observed to sanctiiH' and purift' persons and things, so the emblematical washing appointed by our Lord, would thus be to formally confirm and estabhsh Christians, as such. The primary name of the ordi- nance thus denoted the formal confimiation of new converts and their children, as belonging to Christ; and the mode in which it was done, \iz., by an emblematical cleansing, denoted that they were not * Stablished, strengthened, and settled,' by oaths or by halnt, interest or prejudice, but by the gracious influence of the Spirit of God, the true Baptizer. ^May not this explain the meaning of the body of Christians being described as 'the pillar and ground of c *^4 IMMERSION XOT EXPRESSLY ENJOlXEt?- the truth' ? i. Tim. hi. 15; and of the gloiified being said to be 'Pillars in the temple of God, to go no more oiit'P Eev. hi. 12; Eind may it not account for the origin of the papal rite of confinnation ? There are other passages vdiich it seems to explain, such as Rom. xiv. 4, 'God is able to make him stand.' No such practice as dipping can be deduced from this name of the ordinance. The proper mode of observing it must be learned from the mode actually observed by the Apostles, as far as circumstantial evidence teaches it. It may be objected that the two names, emad and baptizo, denote t^'o different things, but what if the ordinance denotes those two things, viz., a confirmation of Christian discipleship and the purifving influences of the Holy Spirit, may not both names be of di^-ine authority? Let the reader, however, give to this argument the consider- tion to which he deems it entitled. The New Testament in Greek is our only sure guide, and bap- tizo is the only word which God employs in the com- mand which constitutes our duty. As both emad and baptizo are generic terms, our Lord, in using them, could not have attached so much importance to the precise method as immersionists do. When the Apostles wrote in Greek, they invariably used some form of the verb baptizo. Dr. Carson and others affirm that it never expresses an}i;hing but mode ; but he admits that all the Lexicographers are against him. Baptizo is a derivative from bapto. It seems to have much the same meaning, in the classics, but with greater latitude, and rather to have superseded it than to denote a distinct idea ; as bapto, it is said, is commonly used in the early, and baptizo in the later writers; but in a similar sense. Most T\Titers rcgai'd them as being sy- nonymous in the main. Dr. Halley says that bapto is more expressive of mode than baptizo, as to dip is than to immerse ; that with the exception of a com- pound in Pin^lar- -rrh.'^ro it r-tnnds as a relic in Greek IMMERSION NOT EXPRESSLY ENJOINED. 25 literature, it is first found in Plato and xlristotle, in the sense of to overwhelm ; that it rather denotes covering with water than dipping in water ; that it has gi'eater breadth of meaning than bapto ; and that in the New Testament it is used in a more 'unrestricted sense, and without reference to mode. There is reason to believe that the most ancient use of bapto was in the sense of to dye, and that it acquired the meaning of to dip from the circum- stance of dipping being the usual mode of dyeing. It is used by Homer, the most ancient Greek writer, to denote staining, or dyemg, and very frequently by other ancient writers also. This primary sense bapto never lost, though often used in the secondaiy sense of to dip. Even if the primary meaning of these verbs had been to immerse, it does not follow that they should have retained that meaning in all counti'ies where a Greek dialect was spoken, and in all ages of time. There are numbers of words in all languages which have various meanings, and words in a spoken lan- guage often change theii' meanings. Thus the verb to spring, primarily denotes the rising of water in a fountain ; it also means many other things, either as a vero or a noun ; as the sj^ring of a watch ; a leap ; to fire a mine ; the growth of a plant ; the spring of the year, &c.; and yet we never mistake the sense. Villain anciently meant a villager, but now a wicked ^vl'etch. The meaning of words sometimes so enlarges and entirely alters, that the original idea is left out. Thus prevent, v»'hich anciently meant, and according to its derivation from pre-veiiio, properly means, to come before, or to anticipate, is now used in the sense of to hinder. Indifferent, formerly meant im- l^artial; impei-tinent meant iiTelevant; and tATant, parasite, and sophist, were anciently the honourable denominations of kings, magistrates, and philoso- phers. Candlestick originally denoted a $tick to c 2 2'6 IMMBRSION NOT EXPRESSLY ENJOINED. hold a candle ; it may now denote a pillar of gold for the same purpose. Multitudes of words have been subject to similar mutations in their use. The radical meaning of a word is very often quite different to its specific sense in actual use, which must be determmed by its context, and by circum- stances. Immersionists assume that bapto and baptizo have retained their alleged one meaning in all ages, from Homer to the last Greek writer. Let such an assumption be proved, and we shall have an unexampled phenomenon in the tongues of Babel ; an instance of identity in a changing world for tw^elve hundred years; a pair of corresponding verbs, like parrallel wheels runnmg on under water, in deep ruts, and in a straight line through many ages of time ; and which are to run on in the same course for ever. By what unalterable law of destiny can these two words have become immutable, amidst all the tortuous fluctuations of human speech, and the countless evolutions and accidents of time ? Immersionists attempt to give a limited meaning to the word baptizo, which it has been often shoA\Ti does not belong to it ; they tell us, — but they have not proved it, that it means always and only to dip, though it certainly has other meanings ; and then they build a system of ceremonies on that trans2>arently incorrect interj^retation, to which they tell us it is our duty to submit, as an act of obedience to God. To establish theii' system, they must prove that to baptize is for one person to put another under water, and to raise him up again, and that it never means anything else; for if it is ever used in another sense, it may be used in that other sense in the New Testament, unless they can prove to the contraiy. The Lexicons say that bapto and baptizo mean, not only to immerse and to overwhelm, but also to wash, to cleanse, &c. Mr. N. L. Eice, of America, has published the definitions given in various Lex- icons in proof of this. They are as follow : Heder- IMMERSION NOT EXPIIESSLY ENJOINED. 27 icus defines bapto to mean among other things. To dye ; to wash. Coiilon, To dye ; to cleanse. Ursinus, To wash ; to sprinkle, (aspergo.) Schrev- eliiis, To dye ; to wash ; to draw water. Groves, To wash ; to wet ; to moisten ; to sprinlde ; to steep ; to imbue; to dye. Scapula, To stain; to colour: to wash; to dye. Donnegan, To dye; to colour; to wash. In each of these instances, the verb to wash, denotes the cleansing process irrespective of the mode. How then can it be proclaimed to the world that bapto means to immerse only ? and if bapto does not mean simply to dip, still less can baptizo ; because, as a derivative, it must have a less strict meaning than its root, ]\Iany learned men affirm that it is a general rule in the Greek language, that the derivatives in izo are not hmited to the original meaning of their primitives ; but have uni- formly an extended meaning. Baptizo is invariably used in the New Testament in reference to Christian baptism. ]Mr. Rice has collected the following defini- tions of this verb. Scapula and Schrevelius, give To vi^ash ; to cleanse ; as two of its senses. Heder- icus. To cleanse ; to wash ; to baptize in a sacred sense. Parkhurst, To immerse in, or wash with water, in token of purification. Eobinson, in the New Testament, To wash ; to cleanse ; to purify. Bretschneider, Properly often to wash ; simply to wash ; to cleanse ; I wash or cleanse myself. Suidas, To wet ; to cleanse ; Secondly to immerse, &c. Sclileusner, To cleanse ; to wash ; to purifv^ with water. Wahl, defines it, First, to wash ; to perform ablution ; to cleanse ; Secondly, to immerse, &c. The Latin vrords, lavo and abluo, to cleanse ; to wash ; which are used in most of the above Lexicons, signify washing and cleansing in any mode. Things or l^ersons may certainly be washed, wetted or cleansed without being dipped in water. In addition to the above definitions, various Lexicons have also given the following ; To dive ; to lead ; to pierce ; to fill ; c 3 28 IMMERSION NOT EXPRESSLY ENJOINED. to draw ujd ; to pollute ; to overwhelm ; to perish ; to purge; to redden: to affright; to put under; and to stain. Lexicographers do not determine the mean- ing of words by authority, but they ascertain and define the sense in which they are used by respecta- ble wi-iters. It is not difficult for men of ordinary information to leam the meaning of a word from its context, as well as the compilers of dictionaries. No Lexicon of the least authority can be found that affirms what many immersiouists affirm, that baptizo means to dip and only to dip. When baptizo con- veys the idea of immersion it refers to the condition rather than to the action. If an object be painted, besmeared, or covered over, it is baptized in the clas- sical sense of the word. So far from the two Greek verbs always signifying one action, and that action immersion, they have a variety of meanings; as the senses in which they are used amply prove. Several instances have often been quoted in this controversy, of the use of ba^ito, bap- tizo, and then derivatives, in the ancient classics and by the Greek fathers, as they are styled, which clearly prove that those words are used in other senses than that of to dip, or to overwhelm. For example : Hippocrates, one of the fathers of medical science, who lived in the fifth century before Christ, speaking of dyeing liquid, says; 'When it drops upon the garments they are baptized.' ( baptclai. ) So that a garment is baptized when drops fall upon it. Of what moment is it vrhether those drops be colour- ed, or colourless ? The advocates of immersion are compelled by this use of the word, to admit that bajDto signifies to dije by sprinkling ; why then should it not signify to wet by sprinkling. Arrian and Plutarch speak of baptizing the beard. That was not to dip but to dye the beard, no matter how. .Llian speaks of a garland of flowers being baptized with ointment. The flowers could not have been dipped in ointment. Diodorus Siculus, quoted by IMMERSION NOT EXPRESSLY ENJOINED. 29 Stuart; Josephiis in Ant. Book iii. ch. 7, anclJudges V. 30, sjjeak of garments embroidered with flowers, as being ba2)tized with them. Any person who saw such garments would naturally say, in a figure, that they were sj^rinkled with flowers. Sacred and profane histoiy say they were baptized. Aristophanes sjDeaks of Magnes, a comedian, haritizmg {baptume/w^) his face with tawny colours ; and yet the man did not plunge his face in j^aint, but besmeared it. Aristotle speaks of a certain substance which, being rubbed or squeezed, stains (baptei) the hand. In this instance also, there is no reference vrhateyer to immersion. Ho- mer, one of the oldest Greek writers, — for he li^'ed nine hundred years before Christ, — speaks of a lake being baptised (ebapleto) with the blood of a wound- ed frog ; meaning, of course, not that the lake was dipped into the frog's blood, but that it was stained by it.* In one of the SybiUine oracles, quoted byv^ Plutarch, in his life of Theseus, there is a poetical prediction of the future fortunes of Athens. ' Thou mayest be baptized, O bladder, but thou canst not dip.' (dunai.) These words establish a dis- tinction between being baptized, or floating on troubled Avaters, and going down into water. Bap- tized is used in contradistinction to dipped; so that the two conditions must, in this instance, be dif- ferent. The bladder was buoyant among the curling and crested wayes, as they rolled oyer and about it. It was baptized by superfusion, not by immersion. An object may, therefore, according to this high * See the battle of the Frogs and Mice; a mock-heroic poem, and a satire on 'military glory.' Crambophagus, a frog, -was mortally wounded by his fm-ious antagonist, Lychenor, a mouse. 'Lycbeuor following with a doAvuward blow, Reached in the lake, his ixnrecovered foe, Gasping he rolls, a purple stream of blood, Distains (ebaytttu) the surface of the silvery flood.' Book hi. Cowper renders it 'Reddening with his blood, the wave, &c. c 4 30 IMMERSION NOT EXTRESSLY ENJOINED. authority, be baptized aiid yet not be dipped. Ori- gen, a Greek Cliristian writer, who was born in the second century, speaks of the wood on the altar as ha^ing been baptized with the v/ater that was poured on it at the command of the prophet Elijah.f To pour, therefore, whether the object be wood, or an al- tar, or a person, must be to baptize ; for Origen, though a visionary in theology, surely understood his native tongue. Iren?eus, a celebrated Greek Christian writer, and a bishop of the second century, alluding to water falling upon the dry earth, compares the baptism of our bodies to the ram which is freely shed from heaven.-^- Justin ]Martyr, who also wrote early in the second century, said, *What is the use of that baptism which cleanses only the flesh and the body ? Baptize the soul from anger and from covetousness, from en\y and from hatred, and then the whole person will be clean.' § Baptize is thus applied to the soul. It is construed with apo, (from) which is incorrectly rendered out of, in the narrative of our Lord's baptism ; and m this instance it is used by one of the earliest and purest Christian writers, — in whose time the word may be supposed to have retained the sense attached to it in the days of the Apostles, as spiony- mous with cleanse, and being clean. To dip the soul from anger, &c. is absurd. To baptize, therefore, in this place, is not to dip. In a narrative by Eusebius, (Book III. 123.) preserved by Clement of Alexandria, we are told of a youth — who left the church and f He says "Elias did not 'brtplize the wood upon the altar, but commanded the priests to do that. How then was he, who did not bTiptize himself, but left it to others, about to baptize when he came according to the prophcy of Malachi ?" Origen. Com, in Joh. * Irenopus adv. Hser. rii. 17. quoted by Dr. Halley, in his work on the Sacraments, p. 432. § Justin adv. Tr\pho. p. 231. quoted in the Congregational Magazine, 184', p. 3-43. IMMERSION NOT EXPRESSLY ENJOINED. 31 joined a band of robbers, and whom the Ajiostle John was the means of restoi-mg, being baptized with his own tears. That certainly was not to be dipped in tears. Dr. Haiiey mentions Gregoiy Kazianzen, and Athanasiiis, as speaking of b-eing baptized with tears ; and of martyrs being baptized in their o^vn blood ; vrhich could not possibly have been by dipping. Baptism, therefore, as used by those ancient wiiters, was not synonymous with immersicn. Mart}TS were not dipped in then' own blood, nor penitents in their own tears. AVhy then should it be supposed, vrhen the same ^vriters speak of baptism with water, that they mean immersion in water ? Though we reject antiquity as a theological tutor, we must pay deference to its authority- as an interpreter of language. In the life of Pythagoras by JambUchus, an an- cient wi'iter, one of his directions is given as being ; * Baptize not in the perirranterion, or basin.' The allusion is undoubtedly to baptism by spiinkling. The perirranterion stood near the entrance of the temple, Uke the papal holy water. The pnest sprinkled the people with a branch of laurel or olive, as the Je\^dsh priests did with hyssop. Vu^gil, in his VI. .Eneid, siDeaks of these lustrations thus : — * A verdant branch of olives in his hand, He moved around and piuified the bands ; Slow as he passed the lustral waters shed, Then closed the rites, and thi-ice invoked the dead.' Justin, who was born about sixty years after the death of our Lord, states that idolators sprinkled themselves before presenting their offerings, in im- itation of the true baptism, signified by the prophets; and he calls them pretended purifications, (Apol. i. p. 94.) The true baptism which they imitated, of course, was by sprinkling, for no man can regard sprinldmg as an imitation of dippmg. Other ancient v.Titers, speak of the lustrations by sprinkling, among c -J 32 IMMERSION NOT EXPRESSLY ENJOINED. the pagans, as heathen baptisms. It is quite clear, therefore, that sprinkling was baptism, whether it were the true baptism, or a jDagan imitation of it. Apart of Psalm li. 7. 'Purge — or, as in the Hebrew, sprinkle — me with hyssop.' is rendered in the Septuagint, — which is the Old Testament in Greek, translated by seventy persons, about three hundred years before the death of the Lord Jesus, — 'Sj^rmkle me with hyssoj);' and thus rendered, this Terse is applied to baptism in the commentary of Theodoret, — whom Mosheim describes as an eloquent, copious, and learned writer, and a bishop of Cyj^rus; * Thou sh alt sprinkle me vrith hyssop, and I sliall be cleansed, for the gift of baptism alone can jDroduce this cleansing.' Other Greek and Latin authors are said to do the same thing; so that sprinkling must, in those early times, have been considered to be scriptural baptism ; though, as the men of early times could never make enough of forms, they l^ractised immersion, and that three times over, and with divers appendages. The above examples show the sense in which the word baptize was sometimes understood by pagan and Christian writers, when the Greek tongue was spoken, both before and after Christ. Others might be quoted to show that it sometimes meant to wet ; to colour ; to inject; to perfume, as the head; to dye, as the hair; to cleanse; to besmear, as a glutton in eating ; to purge ; to tint, as the colours of a flower, &c. These and many other extracts, vd]l for ever preserve the church of God from being imposed upon by such an error as that baj^to and baptizo mean to dip and only to dip. Such an assertion can never be sustained. So incontestible is the fact that bapto is used in other senses than that of to dip, that Dr. Carson hunself distinctly mamtains, in page 46, that by any thing imj^lied or referred to in some instances, it could not be known that bapfo ever signifies to dip. Mr. Thorn has shown that these two words are used IMMERSION NOT EXPRESSLY ENJOINED. 33 in about fifty senses,* even in passages cited by immersionists themselves. How improper, then, it must be to reason as though ba2:)tize had only one absolute and exclusive sense ; and from such un- sound premises, to dictate the precise form in which alone we can observe a Christian duty. What is most important for us to ascertain, is, the sense in which baptize is used in the New Tes- tament; for it is an undoubted fact that some Greek words are used in the classics, and in Holy Scripture, in somewhat different senses. ^Yhen our Mission- aries translate the Bible into foreign languages, they are obliged to use many words in entii'ely new senses, because they are applied to entirely new sub- jects. Even in common parlance words acquire new and conventional meanings. If the proper mode of baptism must be determined by the mean- ing of the word that designates it, it must be the meaning belonging to the word in the dialect of the Nev/ Testament; and not that attached to it by heathens. The ideas of heathens on theological sul)jects were very unlike those of the sacred writers, so that the sacred use of Greek words, and the classical use, are often very different. '^Ve deny without hesitation,' says Ernesti, pp. 66 & 7, 'that the diction of the New Testament is pure Greek ; and contend that it is modelled after the Hebrew; not only in single words, phrases, and figures of speech, but in the general texture of the language.' Profes- sor Stuart in his notes on Ernesti, and Dr. G. • They are the following : — Bathe. Besmeared. Broken. Cleanse. Coloured. Cooled. Covered. Cru<=;bed. Destroyed. Defiled. Dip. Disguised. Drowning. Ducking. Dye. En- feebles. Fills Hiding. Imbue. Infected. Involve. Lost. Op- pressed. Ornamented. Overcome. OveriJowered. Overwhelmed. Plied. Plunged. Poisoned. Polluted. Popped. Poured. Put. Pushing. Quenching. Ruined. Soaks. Sprinkle. Stain. Slet p. Stick Submersed. Sunk. Sweetened. Tempered. Variegated. V,'aroper, why should it not now and always be so ? If immersion was not then instituted, as an appropriate ty|)e of purifying grace, how has it become so since ? Where can you find a vestige of authority for such a practice, except in the alleged pagan sense of baptizo, which is not the Christian sense. Even if sprinkling wat^^^ as a religious rite, had been superseded by a burdensome form, it must be entitled to respect, as a rehc of a venerated though obsolete law, and as an institution of God ; but as there is no sufficient proof that it has been superse- ded, and as there is abundant evidence that it has been perpetuated as Christian baptism^ it must surely be wrong for a Christian to reject an ordi- nance which God himself instituted, and to magnify the importance of being submerged in water; and especially as there is no valid evidence whatever to prove that he appointed such a practice. Had Christians been commanded to baptize themselves, the precise form to be observed would have been less clear; but as the rite is solemnized by an ad- ministrator, and as God had sDecificallv enjoined B 2 44 RELIGIOUS PURIFICATIONS UNDER THE LAW, spmikling only to be thus administered, and never directed one person to immerse another, the baptism of the New Testament, in which the j^urifpng rite is transferred, is not by immersion but sprinkling. As the purifying rite was solemnized by sprink- ling, the word rantizo, — to sprinkle, is used in the Scrijiture, by the Apostle Paul, in the sense of to purify. Heb, X. 22. & ix. 13. And thus when the Lord said by Ezekiel, in xxxvi. 25, 'I mil sprinkle clean >Yater upon you, and ye shall be clean ; from all your filthiness and from all your idols will I cleanse you,' he used the words sprinkle and cleanse in much the same sense. God has not said that being plunged in water symbolizes a spiritual purification, though men have said so ; but in both Testaments the rite of sprinkling denotes cleansing. Time cannot have transmuted that divine truth into an error. The thing symbolized remains the same, then why should the symbol have been changed ? In the absence of proof to the contrary, sprinkling must now be as proper an emblem of cleansing as it was when first the rite was instituted ; and conse- quently it must be the true mode of baptism. Paul employs a somewhat similar mode of expression to that of Ezekiel, in Heb. x. 22,v,'here he speaks of 'Haring our hearts sprinkled from an evil conscience^ and our bodies washed (lelGumenoi from louo) ydxh pure water.' The sprinkling of the heart is a figure, derived from the rite of sprinlding as a symbol of cleansmg. The ancient priests sprinkled blood as a symbol of the atonement, by which guilt and con- demnation are removed from the conscience ; and water to denote the purification of the soul and body from the defilement of sin. Our Lord used the word lelovmenos, in John xiii. 10, in the sense of an emblematical washing. ' He that is ivashed &c.,is clean every whit.' In Eev. i. o, lousaiiti, — 'Washed from our sins in his blood,' denotes that cleansing which was symbolized by sprinkling, and which the Holy RELIGIOUS PURIFIC.1TI0NS U^i'DER THE L-MV, 45 Spii'it has described as ' The sprinklmg of the blood of Jesus Christ* i. Pet. i. 2. As the Apostle Paul, iu the above passage, speaks of the spiritual entrance of believers into 'the hohest' he alludes to the cere- monial washings of the priests before they entered the holy jDlace. Those washings ,ai'e not said to have been by immersion. They were commanded to wash {rachalz) without reference to the mode. A brass laver stood betw^een the court of the people and the idtar, like a pagan peruTanterion, or a Christian font. The vessel -with consecrated pure water, at the en- trance of pagan temples, in which, as Pliny says, (Hist. Nat. Book xv. c. 30,) there was a branch of laurel, with which the priests sj)rinkled themselves and all who approached for worship, was probably derived from the laver of purificaton ; and the papal holy water, at the entrance door, had a similar deri- vation. Moses, Aaron, and his sons, washed their hands and feet thereat whenever they went into the tent of the congi'egation, or near to the altar. Exod. XXX. 17—21, & XL. 30 — 32. This was an em- blematical washing, a purification from legal defile- ment. No priest could have gone to minister in public at the altar with an unclean skin. The sacer- dotal race of Israel were not so averse to cleanhness, as to render it necessaiy for God to appoint a public ablution of their persons, near to the altar, whenever they ministered before him. They were required to wash, not to remove 'the filth of the flesh,' but as a purification from 'the sins of the flesh,' when they a2)peared before the Holy One of Israel. God never commanded either priests or people to immerse their bodies, or theii* limbs, in token of j^urification. The water of the laver was, ' therein ' but the wash- ing of the priest was -thereat,' or out of "When we, or our children, are brought to the laver of baptism, we ai'e baptized 'thereat,' or out of, and not 'therein.' In speaking of our hearts being sprinkled, and our bodies being washed with pure water, the Apostle as- D 3 46 RELIGIOUS PURIFICATIONS UNDER THE LAW. sociates purity and its appointed symbol together, and each ehicidates the other. Both Moses and Paul, in speaking of the body being washed, employ a generic and not a modal word ; but Moses has distinctly des- cribed the emblematical washing of the body in other l^laces; and the Apostle represents purity of heart by si^rmkhng, as though the emblematical washing of the body among Christians, were also by sprinkhng. As Christians never SiDrmkled except when they bap- tized, sprinkling and not plunging is Christian bap- tism. This celebrated word baptizo wan used in the time of our blessed Lord in reference to the religious ablutions under the law by sprinkling. He and his apostles would of course use this verb, when speaking Greek, in the sense in which they found it thus fequently used. Indeed it is very evident that Paul did so in Heb. ix. 10, where, speaking of Jewish 2)urifications, he calls them 'divers baptisms,' (bapiismois) because they were solemnized on divers subjects, with divers elements, and for divers i3ur- 2)oses, rather than in divers modes. In the next eleven verses the Apostle describes the mode of these 'divers baptisms,' as sprinkling, no less than three times. It has been said that 'divers baptisms' should be rendered divers immersions ; but if so, how came the Apostle, when he described the mode, to speak of them thrice as acts of sprinkling P and how can such a rendering as divers im- mersions agTee with the opinion that 'one baptism,' in Eph. IV. 3, means one innnersion, as denoting one mode ? These two renderings contradict each other, both being untrue. If the 'divers baj^tisms' refer to divers modes, siirinkling was im question ably one. These baptisms, the Apostle affirms, were im- i:)osed by God, but he never imj)osed immersion, and consequently immersion cannot, in this jDlace, be denominated a baptism ; but sprinkling is baptism, Paul himself, as weU as ]Moses, being the expositor. SEVERAL EXAMPLES OF EAPTlSM. 47 111 the Xew Testament, baptism is never alluded to as a novelt}^, but is spoken of as a rite well known and iniderstood. No explanation is given of its meaning, as it required none ; it being commonly used in reference to the emblematical washings of the law by sprinkling. They were described in the Old Testament, why then should they be described again in the Xew? As the rite of sprinkling was simply transferred to the gospel, as this ancient and common, and cU^inely instituted rite of a former dis- pensation, was adopted and continued in the latter, no foiTual description of it was required; but simply the name that was applied to it in a conventional and well understood sense. If dijDping had been appointed, it would have been such a novel institution, that the precise form, and the reasons for its apiDointment, would have been laid down, together "v\dth dnections for its decent observance. But we have no such records ; we have therefore no reason to suppose that such a practice was mstituted as a Christian or- dmance ; but v/e have many reasons to believe that it was not. SEVERAL EXAMPLES OF EAPTISM. The Baptism at the Eed Sea. — In 1 Cor. x. 2, we are infoimed, that when the Israehtes went from Egy|3t to the wilderness, they *Were all baptized {ebaptisiDilo) unto Moses in the cloud and in the sea;' that is to say, they were initiated, by a baptism, into the dispensation of which he was the earthly head. This baptism cannot be a figTU'e of the jDas- sage through the sea, for that is described as a distinct fact in the pre^ious verse. Had it been said that the Egyptians were baptized in the sea, the word ebaptisantu must have been understood to mean immersed or overwhelmed, as they were all drowiied. But though completely immersed, they ai-e not said to have been baj^tized; but all the Israel- ites were baptized though not one of them was im- D 4 48 SEVERAL EXAMPLES OP BAPTISM. mersed, for they all passed over the bed of the sea on dry ground. To be baptized therefore is not neces- sai'ily to be immersed. How then were the undipped multitudes baptized ? The narratives of their pas- sage through the sea, suj^ply the probable, if not certain answer to this question. A strong east wind was employed by the Lord to divide the sea, and during the whole of that remarkable night it blew di- rectly against them, (as an examination of the map will show,) both as they were on the coast and as they went through the sea. This strong east wind must have caused great commotion in the sea while dividing it. Accordingly in Psalm lxxvii. 16, it is said, in reference to this event, ' The depths also were trou- bled.' The natural consequence must have been, that the people were sprinkled with spray from the agitated waters. This was the only way in which they came in contact with the water of the sea, or that the water came in contact with them ; and being thus sprinkled they were baptized by and with — for en often signifies by and with — the sea. As the Israelites were not immersed in the sea, so neither were they in the cloud; for in 1. Cor. x. 1, the Apostle Paul distinctly affiinns that they were 'UNDER the cloud;' and in Psalm cv. 39, it is said that God ' Spread a cloud for a covering.' The vapours of this cloud, being condensed in their descent, fell on them in drops ; such being the natural action of a cloud. We are therefore informed that, ujoon this occa- sion, when God's way was in the sea, and his i^ath in the great waters, and when he led his people like a flock by the hand of ]Moses and Aaron, not only were the depths troubled, but ' The clouds also poured out water.' Psalm lxxvii. 17. This profuse baptism was an act of great compas- sion to the Israelites, for rain falls but seldom, and in very small quantities in Eg\'pt, the land being- irrigated by the annual ovei-flow of the Nile ; and they had had a long, rapid, and exhausting march before SEVERAL EXAMPLES OF BAPTISM. 49 a pursuing enemy, and under the burning atmosphere of an Egyptian sky. Moreover, as during that eventful night, a cbying hot east ^ind, such as often proceeds from the desert over EgyjDt, blew violently upon them, to divide the sea, it was a great mercy to them that they were refreshed with s^Dray from the fearfully agitated waters, and "«-ith cooling showers from the cloud which hung over them. Probably the Psalmist, in his grateful review of the journey from Egypt through the ^dldernes, refers to this copious baptism, when he says, ' Thou God didst send a plentiful rain, whereby thou didst confirm thine inheritance when it was weary.' Psalm lxviii. 9. The facts of this baptism can never be accomo- dated to the immersion theory. The simjole facts alone must determine the meaning of the word ebaplisanto ; and they clearly prove that it does not denote a dij^inng, but a profuse sj)rinkling of S2)ray and rain. It is of no consequence to our argument whether they were bajotized for a typical, sacramental, spnitual, or whatever other purpose. The only question now at issue relates to the mode. Spray from the sea, and rain from the cloud that was s^n-ead over them, descended on them; and this descent of sprinkled water is called a baptism. It is so called, not by a heathen who Hved centuries before Christ, nor by some superstitious Greek Father who lived centuries after him, but in the New Testament, and by the holy and insj^ired apostle Paul. The word baptizo, therefore, in the Christian vocabulaiy, is used in reference to a des- cent of spiinkled water in this instance, and if in this, why should it not be used in a similar sense in other instances The baptism of Xebuchadxezzar. It is stated in Dax. IV. 33, and in v. 21, that when this humbled monarch dwelt like an ox in the fields, he was bap- tized, (ehaphe) or wet with the dew of heaven. Was he therefore dipped in a 'baptistrv* of dew every morn- D 5 50 SEVERAL EXAMPLES OF BAPTISM. ing, as he lived iii the open air ? Xo object is ever naturally plunged or dipped in dew. The vapours which exhale from the earth in the heat of the day, are condensed in the cool houi'S of the night, and esiDecially in the early morning, and they form and hang in drops. Dew always descends. Had it fallen upon the afflicted monarch as j^rofusely as a shower, the mode would have been the same ; and it was not the dipping of the object into the element, but the descent of the elemciit upon the object. His person and garments were sprinkled with dew, like the grass around him in the fields. It descended, gathered, and hung about him in ckops. Thus sprinkled with dew he was baptized ; so that a person is ebaphe, or baptized, when he is sprinkled as with dew. Indeed some ancient writers called Christian baptism holy dew. But would a * Baptist'^ consider himself baptized if condensed vapom' gently descended U23on him until his clothes were saturated with water, as the king was baptized ? if so what would become of the beloved opinion that baptism is a burial and resurrection ? Sundry Jewish Baptisms. — The disciples, after the example of the Lord, observed the rites of the law, but they did not follow the tradition of the elders. We are told in Mark vii. 2-4, that the Pharisees found fault with them, because they saw them eat with defiled, that is to say, not with unclean, but ' un- washed hands.' ' For the Pharisees and all the Jews, except they wash their hands oft, eat not ; holding the tradition of the elders. And when they come from market, except they wash, they eat not.' The disci- ples had neglected the rite of purification. The censure of the Pharisees proceeded, not from a regard to cleanliness, but fi'om a sanctimonious affectation of superior piety. There was no reason to complain that the disciples had luiclean hands, but only that they had not purified them according to tradition. The word first rendered wash is lu'psontai, from, nipto. SEVERAL EXAMPLES OF BAPTISM. 51 which denotes a partial washing only ; the other word is baplisantai. Thus these forms of nipto and baptizo, are used in a synonymous sense, as though they both denote the same purification before meat. This opinion is confirmed by the fact that, while the Pha- risees complained that the disciples had not washed before eating, in Luke xi. 38, a Pharisee comj^lained — though he had not invited him to take a bath — that Jesus had not baptized [ehaptislhe) before dmner; the baj^tism being a rite which each guest might ob- serve as he entered the house, or went to the table, without invitation or aid. As the above two words are used to designate the same action, they must have the same meaning; and as nipto denotes a par- tial washing, so must baptize. Sm-ely the Pharisee did not expect the Lord to plunge himself over head before dinner ? His reply, that they baptized the out- side only of cups, shews ihat it was a ceremonial baptism that was spoken of, and that it was not an immersion. The Pharisee did not complain that he was unclean but iiTehgious, and he showed that their piety wTiS merely superstition and hypocrisy. In washing the hands to make them clean, the Jews did not always dij:) them in water. A common mode was by having water poured on them, and rub- bing them as the water flowed. This mode was so common that a reference to it sufficed to denote the office of a servant. Thus Elisha is described as one who poured water on Ehjah's hands, ii Kings iii. 11. In Jewish, Persian, and Arabian entertamments, water is poured on the hands of the guests that they may wash them; the ob\'ious reason of this mode be- ing, that the hands may not touch impure water. Homer repeatedly refers to this mode, and especially in the rehgious lustrations. In Jewish worship, the minister's hands are sometimes aifused ; and Mr. Isaac, m p. 132 of his Ceremonies of the Jews, states that they pour a little water over each hand in the morning, as a religious purification. Various learned 52 SEVERAL EXAMPLES OF EAPTlSM. rabbis affirm the same thing. Even had the Jews* hands been dipped as a baptism, their bodies were not; why then should the mere use of the word baptize, lead them to suppose that there was no other way to be baptized than by complete immersion ? When the Jews returned from market, they ate not until they were baptized. Their whole bodies were not defiled in the market, but if they were, they might have been cleansed without being submerged. That baptizo here denotes a religious ablution of the hands is clear, because it is mentioned — in reference to a special occasion, — in connection with washing the hands oft; because the hands only could ha,Ye been defiled by touching common things at market ; and because entire immersion would have requii^ed more time, trouble, and water than could have been sj^ared for such a puinjose, and so often. The law did not requne these baptisms, nor did cleanliness render them necessaiy. They were observed ' after the tra- dition of the elders.' The elders multiplied the occasions and subjects of purification, but they are not charged with departing from the rite which God originally instituted. As these purifications are de- nominated baptisms, it is certain that baptism, in its Jewish sense, does not denote an immersion of the body, but such a ceremonial and emblematical wash- ing as the law prescribed. It appears from Mark vii. 3, that all the Jews baptized before eating. The Saclducees were not men who would make more ado about rites than was necessaiy, even if the Pharisees were. Though Je- sus was not a Pharisee, his host marvelled that he had not baptized before dinner, because the joractice was universal, though none of the poor could have had baths. That they all should have been dij^ped eveiy noon was not possible, and still less before every meal. Or if it had been usually possible, the millions whom Jose^'/hus describes as having been present in Jerusalem, kt the Passover, could not have •SEVERAL EXAMPLES (ir BAPTISM. 53 immersed before dinner. These baptisms were puri- iications of the hands, not to make them actually -clean, — for vrho can suppose that our Lord sat down to dine with unclean hands ? — but reUgiously clean. As * all the Jews/ when they spoke Greek, used the word m that sense, they could not have understood the command to be baptized to mean that they must be submerged in water, and nothing else, but that it referred to a symbolical rite, and that an old ordinance was transferred to a new dispensation. The Jews were in the constant habit of baptizing themselves, and their furniture, and utensils, so that they were a nation of baptists ; but Judea must have been su€h a country- as Holland, for them to have been a nation of immersionists. Mark also states that the Jews obsen'ed the bap- tisms [baptismous) of cups, pots, and brazen vessels. VII. 4. If these baptisms had been intended to make the vessels actually clean, they would not have been mentioned in the word of God, as being peculiar to the Jews ; since all nations under heaven cleanse their household utensils, when they require it. But they were emblematical purifications, after tradition, and not after the law. As om* Lord twice affirmed, in Matt. XXIII. 25, and Luke xi. 39, that they washed the outside only of the baptized cui^s, they could not have immersed them. These baptisms are men- tioned to show, not that the Pharisees w^ere a singu- larly clean people, but that, though they rejected the weightier matters of the law, they were so hypo- critical as to appear to be singularly scniiDulous, in having eveiy thing at their homes as religiously free from defilement, as they affected to be in their own persons. It is also stated in Mark vii. 4, that they baptized their klinon, or couches, on which they reclined at the table when eating. The couches Avere of a size to accommodate a small number of persons, as from three to five. These baptisms of couches were 04 SEVERAL EXAMPLES OF BAPTISM. not such washings as make things clean, or they woiikl not have been mentioned as being peculiar to the Jews, nor would the Lord have censured Je^vish rites if the object had been cleanliness. Theii* mo- tive was superstitious, and theii' authority was 'the tradition of the elders,' who, with the characteristic zeol of Pharisees, were not satisfied with the purifi- cation of such things as God commanded, but ap- plied the pm'hying rite to the ordinary utensils and events of iile. The religious purifications were never performed by immersion. Xo man can en- tertam such an opinion, unless his mind be biassed by a favourite theory. Apart from such washings as were intended to make things literally clean, sprink- ling was the mode of purification. Indeed God had expressly commanded tents and vessels to be sprinkled, when they were religiously defiled. Num. XIX. 11.* The gospel histories accuse the Jev>'s of increasing the subjects of purification, but not of altering the mode. Both the divinely instituted, and the traditional and unauthorized purifications, by sprinkling, ai'e denominated baptisms. These examples show that baptizo is used to de- note an emblematical rite, and not an immersion. If it had been used in the sense of to dip, we might have expected it to have been used in those jilaces in which the act of dipping is destinctly described ; as when Lazarus was desned to dip his finger in water, to cool the tonnents of Dives ; and when our * The only specific direction to immerse is iu Lev. xi. 32. God commanded that if an unclean dead creature, as a snail, tor- toise, mouse, lizard, Sec, fell upon any vessel, raiment, sack, &c., in -n-hich work was done, it should he put into water. ' So shall it he cleansed.' If a man touched such a creature he hecame un- clean, hut it was not commanded that he should he put into water. This immersion was not only an emhlematical cleansing, it was necessary to cleanse the vessel^, sacks^ &c., from any fetid odour, and to make them sweet and clean. Num. XXXI. 23. 'Go through the water ' plainly means 'Go thi'ough the purifying rite.' SEVERAL EXAMPLES OF BAfTISM. OO Lord dipped the sop and gave it to Judas. But baptizo is not used in such places. A formation of bapto is employed to express the act of dipping, though it is not limited to that sense. Thus Uives prayed that Lazarus might bapse the tip of his finger. Luke XVI. 24. In Matt. xxvi. 23, Jesus said of Ju- das 'He that bapsas his hand with me in the dish, &c.' In Mark xiv. 20, it is embaptomenos ; and in John XIII. 26. bapsas and embapsas. If any similar form of bapto had been used m our Lord's command, — in- stead of baptizontes, or m the narratives of baptism, it might have been ai'gued that it meant to dip the bodies of all who were discipled, as truly as it meant for Lazarus to dip his finger, and Jesus to dip the sop. but in the New Testament a form of bapto is used, when to partially dip is meant, and buthizo when a complete immersion is meant, as in Luke v. 7, and 1. Tim. vi. 9; but baptizo is never used in such senses. Baptizo belongs to religion, and is used in reference to those religious rites which were observed according to the express command of God, by sprinkling. It is a generic and not a modal word, like sanctify, ordain, consecrate, worship, &c. . Bap- tism is the ordhiance and sprinkling the mode of its observance. The BAPTIZED VESTURE. Ill Ecv. XIX. 13, the glorified Redeemer is represented as being clothed in a vesture baptized in blood. Our translators have rendered it 'dipped in blood;' but no fact or doctriue can be altered by the uniuspired use of an English word. The original is baptized in blood ; the word being bebummenon, a fonnation of bapto. Now this baptized vesture refers to one of two things. It may refer to the vesture which he wore on the cross at the time of his crucifixion. In that case the fact alone can give the correct interpretation of the word baptized. It is a certain fact tliat his vesture was not dipped m his blood, but that it was rather stained, by being spiashc4 or sprinkled with blood. But if. v6 SEVERAL EXAMPLES OF BAPTISM. as is most probable, the baptized vesture represents him as having come forth from recent conquests, then the true exposition may be found in Is. lxiii. 3. ' Their blood shall be sprinkled on my garments, and I will stain all my raiment.' So that if the baptized vesture were a martial robe, it was not dipped but sprinkled and stained. Accordingly the word bap- tized is said to be rendered sprinkled in the Syriac, the Ethioj^ic, the Latin vulgate, and the old Italic version; and Origen, in quoting this passage, has used the word spriiikled in Greek, as though ranlizo and bapto, or sprinlded and baj^tized, denote the same thing. A similar instance to the above is found in the wTitings of /Eschylus — an eminent tragic writer of Greece, 400 years b.c. who says, 'This garment, baptized v.ith the sword of iEgisthus, is witness agamst me.' That baptized garment, like our Lord's vesture, was not immersed but stained with blood. The baptism of Judith. Judith xii. 7. This Jewish lady obtained permission to go exerj night to a fountain to observe her religious duties. She baptized (ebnptizeto) herself at, (epi) not in the foun- tain. The soldiers were forbidden to hinder her, but were not forbidden to watch. Can it be sup- posed that an opulent and polished lady laid aside her raiment, and immersed her person in water, in the oj^en air, and in immediate proximity to a large army of rude and heathen men, and that all the soldiers knew this, when such a periodical cere- mony was not required, either by cleanliness, health, or religion ? The fountain, as a simple spiing, could not have been deep enough for a full sized woman to dip herself in, nor could it have been deemed proper for her to do so, when the water was so precious to the army as di*ink. To meet some of tlie difficulties which this case presents to immer- gionists. Dr. Carson, in pp. 78 & 455, conjures up a 'stone trough,' as a bath for Judith; but such a baptizo translated to dip. 57 conjecture proves nothing. That she was immersed appears very incredible ; but the opinion that she observed the purifying rite, with the pure water of the spring, agrees with the jDlace, with her womanly feelings, with Jewish rites, and with the fact that this bai^tism was connected with prayer, and that after its observance she is said to have been ^ clean.' It is as unlikely that baptizo means to dip, as that a piu-e minded and delicate woman of station would im- merge herself in a well at night, close to multitudes of heathen warriors. If she did not dip, the word does not mean to dip. BAPTIZO TRANSLATED TO DIP. If immersionists are correct in saying that to bap- tize is always and only to dip, it must be right to translate baptizo, in its various fonns, by that word and its derivatives. So strenuously indeed do our brethren insist upon such translations, that they have fonned a new Bible Society, to publish versions in foreign tongues, in which baptize is rendered to dip, or immerse. On the same principle the Greek word 'baptist' from baptiston should be relinquished in this country, and some English word as, dipj^ing or immersion, should be employed to designate their churches, magazines, missions, &c. ; and of course in the English New Testament, di2)23ing — for no other word so correctly designates their practice, — should be substituted for baptizing. In that case sundi-y passages would read thus, 'John the dipper.' Matt. XI. 12. 'John did dip you in the wilderness, and preached the dipping of repentance.' Mark i. 4. 'I have need to be dipped of thee.' Matt. iii. 14. 'Unto what then were ye dipped ? and they said unto John's dipping. Acts xix. 3. 'I dip you in waterunto repentance.' Mat. III. 11. 'I have a dipping to be DIPPED ^dth.' Luke xii. 50. 'Can ye be dip- ped with the dipping that I am dipped with ? — with the DIPPING that I am dipped withal shall ye be 58 BAPTIZO TRANSLATED TO DIP. be DIPPED.' Mark x. 38 — 9. ]3emg dipped with the DIPPING of John.' Luke vii. 29. *He that be- lieveth aiid is dipped shall be saved.' Mark xvi. 16. * They were dipped, both men and women.' Acts viii. 12. As many as were dipped into Jesus Christy were dipped into his death.' Eom. vi. 3. 'By one Spirit we are all dipped into one body.' l.Cor. xii. 13. *We are buried with him by dipping into death.' Eom. vi. 4. 'Dipped for the dead.' 1. Cor. XV. 29. 'The doctrine of dippings.' Heb. vi. 2. 'Divers dippings." Heb. ix. 10. Such renderings as some of these would interpret the word of God as though its sense were absolutely foohsh, not to say absurd. The same maybe said of translations from the pagan classics, and the Greek fathers. How very improjDer then it must be to say that to baptize, both in sacred and profane authors, is always and only to dip ; and from thence to enforce immersion as a Christian duty, and to reject from the Lord's table all such as have not been religiously submerged in water, however Christ-like they may be in their spirit and life ! It has been asked how fai' the true sense of the above passages would be given if, instead of baptize, &c., we were to substitute the word sprinkle. We answer that the word sprinkle would not give the precise sense, because it designates a specific form of applying water, w^hereas baptizo, being a generic term, does not. To sjirinkle is to baptize, however, because the minor is included in the major, but to baptize is not absolutely and specifically to sj^rinkle. We deny that baptizo, as used in the gospel, designates any precise mode. Like ' Lord's Supper ' it is the name of an ordinance, and does not describe any precise form of action. It denotes the whole class of sentiments belonging to the or- dinance of baptism, and refers to the use of water as a symbol of spiritual truth. Though it does not specifically mean to sprinkle, it is applied to that IMMERSION DISPROVED BY ANALOGY. 59 rite in the purifications of the Jews, and as it was ob- served in tlie Christian Church. The command was generically to baptize, because the word was not used in a narrov»' and purely ritual sense, but to include the spiritual objects of the ordinance as well as the sign. The sign is less important than the things sig- nified. Baptism alludes to them all, and it would therefore be incorrect to render it by any word of a specific sense, such as S2)rinkle or pour. The ti'ue mode of baptism is not taught by the name of the or- dinance. That is the only true and proper mode which the apostles observed, and which agrees as a symbol with its correspondence. It has now been she^ii that baptizo does not al- ways mean to immerse, even in the classics, but that it has very many other applications; that in the Holy Scriptures it must be understood in a generic sense, and l^e inteii^reted by -Jewish usages ; and that in reference to a Christian ordinance it never means to dip at all, but only to symbolically purify with water. Now as our 'Baptist' brethren rest their view and practice mainly on the alleged meaning of baptizo, what must be thought of the structure that is built on so flimsy a foundation '^ immersion disproved by the analogy of the lord's supper. If the Lord's supper be solemnized in the right mode, immersion must be a ^\Tong mode of baptism, as there is no agreement in the j^rinciples on which two such sacramental forms are founded. The sacred Eucharist is called the Lord's supper, and yet we do not understand the word ' supper ' in its literal, and etymological sense, nor is it employed in that sense in the Holy Scriptures. We all know that it signifies a meal, and amongst the Jews the supper was the principal meal in the day. But in its Christian and ritual sense, it has not its radical and l^rimaiy but a conventional meaning. Who will say 60 IMMERSION DISrROYED BY ANALOGY. that a tiny morsel of bread, and a drop or two of wine, constitute a proper supper ^ "We certainly could not live on such meals, and yet, in the received and un- derstood sense of the word, we properly call it a sup- per; and those small quantities of bread and wine are amply sufficient to ansv^er eveiy end of that holy ordinance. Now if baj^tism meani immersion as un- doubtedly as supper means a meal, it would, even then, be as right to administer drops of water in one ordinance, as drops of wine and crumbs of bread in the other. Those j)eople who dip, because they say that to baptize is to dip, are very inconsistent, even on their own shewing, in not eating a meal at the Lords table, since a supper certainly is a meal. Inasmuch as veiy small Cjuantities of bread and wine satisfy the consciences of immersionists, why should they not be satisfied with equally small quantities of water in baj)- tism ? and especially as it is imijossible to prove that baptism, as used in Scripture, signifies immersion, whereas it is absolutely certain that supper commonly means a meal. About as little water is necessary and proper in one ordinance as ^vine in the other. Instead of making a meal of the sacred Eucharist, because it is called a supper, immersionists, in com- mon with ourselves, plead ciixumstantial evidence, as well as didactic directioris, to shew the proper mode of obser\-ing it ; and in like manner, in the absence of didactic dh-ections, we plead circumstantial evidence to shew the right mode of ba2)tism. Paul commanded the Corinthians, — who made a similar and as gxeat a mistake respecting the supper as they do respecting baptism, that if any man were hungiy he should eat at home, before he went to the Lord's supper. 1 Cor. XI. 34. If the Corinthians or others had fallen into a similar eiTor respecting the baptism as resjiecting the suppei', as immersionists have, and had l)een un- clean, he, acting on the same principle, would un- doubtedlv have commanded them to have washed at SHEDDING FORTH, A TYPE OF SPIRITUAL BAPTISM. 61 home, before going to the baptism ; for the Lord's baptism is not intended to wash the body, any more than the Lord's supper is to feed the body; it being mtended, Uke some of the rites of the law, to be a symbol of ' The washing of regeneration, and re- newing of the Holy Ghost.' But the mistake respect- ing baptism was not made until a long time afterwards, when a tide of feeling set in to change the beautifully simple rites of our holy religion into showy ceremonies and vain parade. The Apostle's command, and the fact of the ordinance having been instituted after a substantial meal, show that the supper was to be un- derstood in a conventional sense ; and why should not the name of the sister ordinance of baptism be understood in the same way, even if baptism did al- ways mean immersion as used elswhere, and esi)eciallj so as it does not ? SHEDDING FORTH, AND NOT IMMERSION, A TYPE OF SPIRITUAL BAPTISM. Augustine has defined sacraments as being ' Visible words and signs addressed to the eye, rather than to the ear.' Symbols and sounds are two forms of Ian- guage, and are interpreted by two different senses. As Grod is a purely spiritual being and is everywhere present, we cannot suppose that the communications of his Spirit are made in any specific mode, after the man- ner of men ; but it has pleased him to represent purely spiritual and heavenly things by allusions to things material and earthly. x\s he is, 'high and lifted up.' and as he adapts his modes of speaking to our modes of thought and action, his condescension is repre- sented as a descent; and the gift of the Sjiirit to men is represented as water springing up in their hearts, in two places as the breathing of life and influence with- in them, sometimes by the action of fire, most fre- q'lentiy however by the descent of water in various forms, but never by dipping. These are all imperfect types of the inflLiences of the Spirit; but the descent E 2 62 SHEDDING FORTH, A TYPE OF SPIRITUAL BAPTISM' of water, be it much or little, in showers or drops, by pouring, sprinkling, shedding, falling, &c., may, from its being so generally used, be deemed the most appropriate and most resemblant of all sig-ns and figures. It is that which best aids our conceptions, and illustrates the influence of the Spirit on the mind. It is therefore appointed as a symbol of the spiritual baptism, and the connection between the administra- tion of this ordinance and the giving of the Holy Ghost, is distinctly and frequently adverted to in the Holy Scriptures. The Sjwrit may no more be shed, poured, or sjirink- led, than the blood of Christ is literally sj^rinkled on our hearts, to cleanse us from an evil conscience. There is no actual contact with the atoning blood of the immaculate sacrifice. A mind cannot be brought into contact with a material liquid. Do we then impeach the wisdom of God in Heb. xii. 24, and 1 Peter i. 2, where it is called the blood of sprinkling ^ Certainly not. The descrii)tion of that which is spiritual is de- rived from the fonn and meaning of the appointed symbol. The sign suggested the mode of describing the thing signified. As sacrificial blood was sprinkled on the mercy seat, sprinkling came to denote aton- ing and cleansing ; and the realized efficacy of the atonement is said to be ' The sprinkling of the blood of Jesus Christ; not literally but figuratively. As the atonement is described in a metaphor bor- rowed from the form in which it Avas symbohzcd, so is the communication of the influences of the Spirit. Wa- ter baptism, being a symbol of the baptism of the Spirit, suggested the most easy and natural mode of describ- ing it, and supplied language for that description. We may therefore reason reflexly from the thing signified to the sign, and by the descriptions of the correspon- dence correctly ascertain the form of the emblem. Those descriptions are such as agree with and arise from aff'usion, but they never agree with immersion. We are not withmthe Spirit as an immersed object is SHEDDING FORTH, A TYPE OF SPIRITUAL BAPTISM. 63 ill water. In the baptism of the SpiiTt there is a descent of the element, as in water baptism. Such words as 'sprinkle,' 'shed forth,' 'poured,' 'fell,' &c,, in refer- ence to the Spirit, clearlv elucidate the form of the rite from which they are derived ; and as they are all derived from affusion, and not one of them from im- mersion, it is plain that affusion is baptism and im- mersion is not. As immersion is not the emblematical baptism, no emblematical description of the influences of the Spi- rit is derived from it. If it had been, the plunging of the body in water would have suggested a correspond- ing representation of the soul, in reference to the Holy Spii'it. It would not be said that he descended upon us, but that, he being quiescent, we go and are iunnersed in him. If this be improj^er and absurd, immersion must be equally so, because an emblem must agree with its correspondence. There is no agreement whatever between immersion, and those representations of the gift and agency of the Spirit, which are derived from water baj^tism. Not only have we no express command to be plunged over head in Avater as a religious act, but there is not one clear allusion to the baptism of the Si)irit that agrees with. such a practice, either in the Old or New Testament. In no one instance has it pleased God to speak of divine influence in a figure that corresjDonds with the immersionists' mode of symbolizing it; nor can their rite suggest to the mind such a truth as the Scriptures describe, that the Spirit is shed forth. How came it to pass that the narratives of the Spirit's baptism agree with affusion, and that they never agree vdih immer- sion, if immersion is right and affusion is wrong ? The reasoning by which it is attempted to rcjU'esent ourbajitism as invalid, would, we fear, invalidate the bajDtism of God. Both the gift and agency of the Spirit, and the use of water as a symbol thereof, are denominated baptism. Thus John said — ' I l^aptize with water, — he shall baptize with the Holy Ghost.' E 3 64 SHEDDING FORTH, A TYPE OF SPIRITUAL BAPTISM. Baptizo must therefore denote the same action in reference to both. It cannot in the same breath de- note two such opposite actions as poiirmg and phmg- ing. But in the spiritual baptism it certainly does denote pouring, because the Spirit was 'poured out/ it must tlierefore denote jiouring in the water baptism; for the modal description of the spiritual baptism, clearly explains the mode of water ba2)tism, because it is founded thereon. Since the fulfilment of the promise to baptize with the Holy Ghost is described as being by afiusion, the promise could not have been to immerse. The pro- mise was to baptize, in the fulfilment the Spirit was shed forth. When the Spirit was poured out from 'on high,' the disciples were baj^tized, though they were not dipped. As there must have l^eeii an exact cor- respondence between the promise and its fulfilment, and as the fulfilment was by shedding forth, the pro- mise to baptize must have been one v,hich shedding forth would fulfil. Baptizo must therefore refer to^ affusion, and not to immersion. If the promise was to dip, it is certain that it never v/as fulfilled, which no Christian can affirm; so that baptizo does not mean to dip. It must be admitted that to baptize, in the prediction of John and in tlie promise of -Jesus, did not mean to immerse, and that therefore baptism is not immersion; or else it must be maintained, in opposi- tion to t])e Scriptures, that neither of them has been fulfilled, and that Jesus did not baptize with the Holy Ghost, since the description of what he did entirely disagrees with every mode of immersion. To us it seems impossible to escape this alternative, either to surrender our faith in the veracity of John and of our Lord, or the immersion sense of baptizo, and conse- quently the practice founded upon it. The former we cannot do, the latter therefore we may and must do. Christians are baptized by the ordinary influences of the Spirit. Thus all the holy me nbers of tl e Cor- SHEDDTXG FORTH, A TYPE OF SPIRITUAL BAPTISM. 65 iiithiaii church were "Baj^tized by one Spirit into one body.' 1 Cor. xii. 13. No Christian is spiritually dipped, nor is the spiritual baptism described in lan- guage borrowed from immersion. If it had been, the promise should have beeu rendered, *I immerse you in water, but he shall immerse you in the Holy Ghost and in fire.' Luke iii. 16. *Ye shall be immersed, dip- ded, or plunged in the Holy Ghost, not many days hence,' Acts i. 6 ; for infinite wisdom employs figures correctly. But that is not God's manner of spealdng. He said *I will pour out my Sjnrit upon all flesh.' Joel II. 28. Acts ii. 17. 'I will sprinkle clean water npon you.' Ezek. xxxyt. 2o. 'I ^dll pour water upon him that is thirsty.' Isaiah xliv. 3. 'Jesus — having received of the Father the promise of the Holy Ghost, hath SHED FORTH tliis, &c.' Acts Ii. 33. 'On the Gen- tiles also was poured out the gift of the Holy Ghost.' Acts X. 4 . 'The Holv Ghost was shed on us abun- dantly.' Titus III. 6. &c. These are reflex tenns. They are derived from the sign of the Spirit's gracious work, and as the sign must agree with those descriptions, immersion can- not be the sign. The spiritual truth is approi^riately represented by its appointed symbol, viz. the shed- ding forth of water. Water is shed forth when it descends, however small the quantity may be, so that sprinkling is shedding forth ; and as it is not the quantity, but the element and mode of administra- tion as an act of cleansing that constitute the type, God appointed it as a proper symbol of the descent and cleansing influence of his Spirit. But immersion is both unauthorized and inappropriate, and indeed it is an unmeaning ceremony. This argument elucidates the sense in which l)ap- tizo is used, and the design and mode of water l)ap- tism ; and while it shows that affiision has the seal of God's approval, it overturns the merely human practice of innnersion. The Spirit is said to be shed forth from the fact that, in baptism, water is shed e4 66 John's baptism. forth. Each baptism is administered from above, and not from beneath. The descent of the element uj^on the object, therefore, is the only true mode of baptism, and not the descent of the object into the element. JOHX'S BAPTISMS. Circumstantial evidence will aid us in the attempt to ascertain the true mode of baptism, much more than the etymology or pagan use of a Greek word, which has gi*eat latitude of meaning. Facts often afford correct expositions of the senses of particular words. Indeed many truths, both etymological, sa- cred, and natural, are learned by a careful induction of facts. It must be here jn-emised that John's baptism, being a baptism unto rei^entance, and preliminaiy to the introduction of Christ's kingdom, was not Chris- tian baptism. Persons whom he baptized were therefore baptized again by Paul. Acts xix. 2-5. So that if John had plunged the people, it does not fol- low that Christ's Ministers did so, since Christ and not John was the author of their baptism. But we think it is morally certain that John did not sub- merge the people under water; and it is proper that this moral certainty should be established, as immer- sionists hold a contrary opinion, and often affirm that John dipped, in vmdication of their own practice as a Christian rite. John was by descent a Je\^-ish priest. He, as a priest's son, had been familiar with the purifying rite from a child, and frequently witnessed it. He en- tered upon his ministiy at the age when the Jews entered upon the priesthood. When he officiated no part of the Levitical law was repealed. That law, it has been shown, enjoined sprinkling as the rite to be administered by one person on another. His bap- tism was not strictly Levitical nor Christian ; it was a transition ba2)tism, and stood like a short vestibule John's baptism. 67 between the tv/o dispensations. If Jesus boiTowed the mode of his baptism from John, he also must have borrowed his from IMoses ; for as a Levite he baptized according to ancient prescription, and the unrepealed lav/ of God. x\s baptizo includes the idea of purification, it is used in the Holy Scripture in reference to the action of several elements, as water and fire, and to the agency of the Holy bpirit. A dispute between John's disciples and some -Jews about purifying, is stated to have been about baptism. John iii. 2.j-(). Baptism and ■piriiiyhu^ (/lat/iutifiuiouj are evidently used to desig- nate the same thing. The Christ was foretold and ex- pected as a purifier, in a spiritual sense. ^^ hen John appeared performing the symbolical rite of purification upon immense numbers of people, he was supposed by some to be the Messiah, — he being just then ex- pected to appear, who was to purify men from their sins. x\s he disclaimed that high office, and also denied being Elijah, — whom they, by a literal inter- 23retation of a figure, expected personally to precede Christ, the deputation from the sacerdotal bench at Jerusalem said, 'Why baptizest thou then?' that is as a distinguished purifier of the people. His pro- phetic attire, his elotpient utterance of burning truth, and his having sprinkled their nation in so short a time, awakened the conjecture that he was the ex- pected Messiah, of v,diom it was foretold, that he should spiinkle many nations. Is. li 1. 15 All men mused in their hearts of John, whether he were the Christ, or not.' Luke iii. 15. The members of the deputation themselves baptized by sprinkling. They incpaired why HE baptized, not wdiy he observed a rite which no administrator was directed to perform. Had he l^erformed the ceremony of dipping, an explanation of such a novel and unauthorized rite would have been demanded and given ; but they marvelled that he was a distinguished ' Bapdsies,'^' and not that he * In page 57, line 22, of some copies, the two last letters of this wcrd are, \>\ 'mib\&'kc, \ rintcd in instead of es. 68 John's baptism. dipped. Nothing is said about the form, because it was not strange or unusual. They had reason from l^rophecy to expect that Christ woukl be a purifier, and that he might therefore perform the 2)urifying rite, but they had no reason to expect that he woukl plunge people over head in water; such a practice indeed would have been deemed inglorious, and be- neath the dignity of "^ Messiah the Prince,' who was to be a Priest on his throne. John baptized in a manner agreeable vfith their high conceptions of the person, state, and dignity of the royal Priest, the Iving of Israel. He must therefore have baptized in the country, like the members of the sacred hierarchy in the temple, by sprinkling. He baptized 'luitli water' not i}i. John was entitled the' bapt isles.' The dipper, or the sprinkler, would have been an undignihed designa- tion, as derived from a mere ritual form, v/hereas the * Hapiisfes,' or Baptist, was an honourable name, and was associated with ideas of reverence, and with the spiritual character of the baptismal rite. It was the generic title of a,n oflice in which the spiritual pre- dominated over the visible and formal. Dipper, plunger, or immerser, could have had no spiritual meaning, nor have ansv>^ered any important object. Plis official designation, the * baptist es," was so com- prehensive as to include the moral and spiritual ends of the ordinance which he solemnized to so vast an extent, and the character of his peculiar mission to the world as a religious reformer. A similar meaning obviously belongs to the name of his dispensation and work, 'The baptism of John.' Matt. XXI. 25. Our Lord did not demand in this passage if his sprinkling, and much less if his dip- ping were from heaven, but his baptism. * The bap- tism of John' included his ordinance, preaching, prophecies, and the whole class of sentiments he was commissioned to teach. It denoted what he taught as well as what he did. ' The baptism of John ' was John's baptism. 69 the niinistn' and disiDensation of John. 'Apollos taught dihgently the things of the Lord, knowing only the ba2)tism of John.' Acts xviii. 2o. A know- ledge of the mere mode of the 'baptism of John' would not have qualified him to be a competent teacher, such as he was. ' The baptism which John jDreached/ Acts X. 37,means the doctrine he taught, and the tem- porary disi)ensation of which baptism was the initia- tory token. The above names given by our Lord and his disciples to the person and ministiy of John, confirm the fact that, in the New Testament, baj^tism is not a modal but a generic tenn ; and that it desig- nates the ordinance, not the mode. The mode of ba2:)tism must be learned from other sources. That the mode of John's baptism was shedding forth, and not immersion, is clear from the words of Peter, when speaking of the conversion of Cornelius. In Acts X. 44-0, it is said that 'The Holy Ghost fell on them that heard the word,' and there was 'pour- ed OUT the gift of the Holy Ghost.' In Acts xi. 15 & 16, Peter rehearsed the circumstances to his bre- thren, and said; 'The Holy Ghost fell on them, as on us at the begimiing,' on the day of Pentecost. The descent of the Spirit instantly led his mind to recur to the baptism of John, as a figure. 'Then remembered I the word of the Lord, how that he said, John indeed baptized with water, but ye shall be baptized with the Holy Ghost.' The same particle, WITH, is used m reference both to the water and to the Spirit ; it must therefore have the same mean- ing in both places. As they were not baptized in the Spirit, neither did John baptize in water. The affusion of the Spirit was a baptism, and so was the affusion of water. We reason from the clear modal description of the Spiritual baptism, to explain the mode of water baptism. As the Holy Ghost fell, and was poured out, Peter was reminded of John's bap- tism, as though the v>'ater also fell and was jioured out. The water, whether much or little, must have 70 John's baptism. been poured forth by John, as the Spirit is repre- sented to have been poured out by the Lord. There must have been a resemblance between the symboli- cal and the divine baptism, for one to have reminded Peter of the other. Pouring could never have re- minded him of dipping. John baj^tized the body with water, and Jesus the soul with the di\dne influ- ence ; the specific mode ascribed to the S2)iritual act, being derived from the visible and formal. The Spirit is said to have been poured upon the heart, in allusion to the water being poured on the head ; so that when John baptized, he did not put men under water, but shed it forth upon them. It is often said that John must have immersed because he 'baptized «« Jordan.' But he also bap- tized 'beyond Jordan,' at a lAace where Jesus subse- quently abode. John x. 40. Jesus did not abide in the bed of the river, nor did John baptize there. * Beyond -Jordan ' denotes at least some distance from Jordan in the wilderness, were there was no deep water, so that he could not have immersed there ; and if not there, why should he at Jordan or Enon ? In Mark i. 9, Jesus is said to have been baptized by John eis the Jordan, and as eis sometimes means into, it is supposed that he was immersed. If it had been said that he was 'baptized eis the water,' this conjecture would have been plausible; but such an expression is not to be found in the New Testament ; and eis, when put before the name of a place, often means at that place, as in the following instances : 'She fell down eis his feet.' John xi. 32. 'Wash eis the pool.' John ix. 7. 'Jesus stood eis the shore/ or at the sea side. John xxi. 4. As Jordan is a place, eis the Jordan means that John baptized at the Jor- dan, as Jesus stood at the sea side. Even if eis meant into Jordan, it does not mean into the water of Jordan, but within the banks, and therefore it does not favour immersion. Neither does 'en Jordan ' mean in the water. Sail- John's baptism. 71 ors do business in great waters,' Vs. cvii. 23, but not under them Joshua says that the Israelites went into Jordan, stood in the midst of Jordan, and came U]) out of Jordan, though he affirms also that they were not in the water. En is so indefinite a word that it has twenty or thirty senses. It means in; at; with; by; for; among; near to; then; while; to; about; &c. &c. Its true sense in any giyen instance, is not to be determined by the frequency of its occuiTence in that sense, but by the scope of the context. When it precedes the names of places it has the sense of af. It is correctly rendered af more than a hundred times in tlie New Testament. In multitudes of instances, in the Scriptures and in the classics, it would be absurd to render it by any other word ; as '.'It the right hand of God,' an expression which occurs six times in the Xew Testament; and 'KI keep watch af the riyer.' Odyssey y. 4<36. In Enon, in Bethabara, in the wilderness, and in . Jordan, means at those places. Dr. Carson, in p. 339, admits that when Eli- jah is said to have dwelt ^// the brook Cherith, 1 Kings xyii. o, it means within the banks of the brook; and why should not en Jordan mean the same thing? That it means in the water, has never been proved and never can be; but if it could, it would not mean under the water ; for people who wore sandals might conveniently go into water to be sprinkled. John would have baptized not only at but in Jordan if, — as is most probable, he and the baptized were within the banks of the river, and especially if they stood at the water's edge. Indeed God himself spake thus to Joshua, — and I quote this passage not to prove the mode of baptism, but to explain the meaning of 'in Jordan,' — he said, *^Yhen ye ai'e come to the BPaxK of the water of Jordan, ye shall stand still ix Jordan.' Josh. iii. 8. So that in the words of God, ix Jordan, and at the brixk of the water,mean the same thing. When John baptized en Jordan, it was at the brmk of the water, and not un- 72 John's baptism. der the water ; for God himself affirms that standing at the brink of the water of Jordan, is standing in Jordan ; who then shall deny it ? When the celel)rated missionary-traveller. Dr. Wolfe, was in Mesopotamia, he found a sect of Chris- tians who are called after John the Baptist. In im- itation of him they baptize at streams, but they do not immerse in them. The Syrian customs are now much the same as in the days of our Lord. Successive generations in Syria, instead of being 'new and im- proved editions,' seem to be stereotyped. If then John had dipped m Jordan, his professed followers would probably have done the same thing, through all ages of time until this day. But what is the fact P Dr. Wolfe says, 'The priest or bishop baptize chil- dren of thirty days old. They take the child to the banks of a river, a relative or friend holds the child near to the surface of the Avater, while the 25i'iest sprinkles the element upon the child, and with prayers they name the child.' Journal vol. ii. p. 311. Baptizing at the river, therefore, does not mean put- ting under the water. God had commanded the rite of sprinkling to be solemnized at and with 'running water;' Lev xiv. o — 7. & oO — 52. & Num. xix. 17 — 21; and as Kedron is dry in summer, and might have been dry during the half year in which John baptized so many before he baptized Christ, it is not to be accounted strange that he bai)tized at the Jor- dan and at Enon. As a reason why he baptized at Enon, it is said, 'Because there was much water there.' John iii. 23. This is an oft quoted passage in favour of the im- mersion theory, and Enon is the name of many chapels, though they do not belong to John's dis- ciples. The immersionist mind hovers like a halcyon over the 'much water ' of Enon, as though it were a lake as broad as that of Galilee, or a noble stream like the Thames. But it is not said that there was DEEP water there, as though deep water were required JOHN S BAPTISM. 73 for baptism, Deeji water was not required, as it would have been for immersion, nor is deep water mentioned as a reason why Enon was a suitable jDlace for John to exercise his ministry, but 'much water.' Little and much are words of comparison. What would be 'much water' in a country Uke Judea, would be little in our rainy and well watered island. Though *much water' and 'many waters' sometimes refer to waters that are deep and broad, they also refer to small quantities of water. "When Hezekiah stopj^ed up the springs of Jerusalem, and the little brook Kedi'on, to afflict an invading army with thirst, he said as a reason for doing so, 'Why should the king of Assp'ia come and find much water ? 2 Chron. XXXII. 4. If the much water of Enon were no more than that of Jerusalem, which was accessible to an aiTuy outside of the city, — and there is reason to be- lieve it was less, — there could not have been sufficient water to immerse in ; for a stream deep enough to dip in, would be too deep to stop up for a length of time, it if could be stopjDed up at all. If it could be proved that in a warm climate, large numbers of people could meet together, far from theii' homes, and do without any . water or with veiy little, the water of Enon must be supposed to have been wanted principally for baptisms ; but if the multitudes who continually thronged around John, in a diy and thirsty land, required 'much water' for other purposes, and they certainly must, it cannot be said that 'much water' was required for baptism only. If there had been no baptisms a good supply of water would have been indis- pensible. When the 2^eople left their homes, in all parts of the kingdom, to repair to the attractive scene of the ministrv' of John, they might have taken theii' food with them, but very few of them if any could have caiTied with them the requisite supply of water for druik. Then feet had also to be frequently washed, 74 John's baptism. and otlier a])lutions bad to be performed ; and tbe beasts of burden, on wbicb the more distant travel- lers rode, required water. In eastern lands cara- vans pitch their tents when they come to a spring of water, and a small fountain occasions the encamp- ment of an army, or the erection of a to^vn. Thus all Israel encamped at Elim, because there were wells of water there. Ex. xv. 27. For the same reason the American ^Methodists hold their large and protracted 'Camp-meetings' where a copious supply of water can be had. Though in our rainy and well watered island, "we search for 'dry places,' and jealously guard our- selves against the influences of a proverbially moist atmos2:)here, we build our villages and towns near to streams and fountains of water. Even if John had immersed, since his congregations were formed of people from all parts of the land, they must have re- quired more water for their own personal use, than he could have required for immersion ; and a good spring may supply water enough for the consumption of large mumbers of persons, which is not deep eiiough to dip an adult in, and much less for one man to stand in and to plunge numbers of other men. The summers of Palestine are eminently dry, so that the brooks are ustially dried up, and sometimes water is sold by measure at a high price. Had John se- lected a place where water was scarce, and continued there in the summer months, the dreadful suiferings from thirst would soon have scattered his congrega- tions abroad. In reply to statements like these, it has been asked, what greater difficulty could the crowds around John have fouiid, than the multitudes that followed our Lord for three days, and who, having nothing to eat, were ready to faint by the way, so that he wrouo'ht a miracle to give them food ? INIatt. xv. 32. & ]Mark viii. 2. Now tliis very fact is a confirmation of our argument. The Scripture does not say that they had nothing to drink. Hunger might have been endured for three davs, but could thirst ? Where John's baptism. 75 were these multitudes when they so devotedly fol- lowed Christ ? They were on the banks of the lake Genesareth, the water of which is good for drink; and doubtless they drank of it abundantly. The Saviour ministered to multitudes where there was 'much wa- ter,' but he is not said to have dipped them therein. To all this it may be replied, that John is not said to have preached at Enon, but to have bapiized, 'be- cause there was miich water there.' But in all probability, baptized has a corresponding meaning to that vrhich, it has been shown, belongs to his official designation 'the Baptist,' and to that of his ministry *the baptism of John; and therefore it does not refer specifically to a mere rite. As he baptized wherever he preached, and baptism was one object of his min- istr}", to say that he baptized at Enon is, in one word, to say that he exercised his ministrv there. The great object of his laboins was the baptism of the mind and life, by repentance and purification from sin, and as a preparation for the kingdom of Christ; the more sub- sidiary object was the baptism of the body, as a symbol of the hoher spiritual baptism. The people went to hear his preaching, as well as to submit to his religious rite. His whole work was designated ... from a particular part of it, as Christian denomina- tions, in our time, are called by names which refer not to the things that are common to them all, but to things peculiar to and distinctive of each, and by which each is distuiguislied ; as Independent, Epis- copahan. Baptist, kc. &c. When it is said that John baptized at Enon, it means that he officiated in all departments of his ministiy; so that it does not follow that much water was necessaiT for that pai'- ticular part of his work, on which his general desig- nation, 'the Baptist,' was founded. Enon was a small place, about five miles from the Jordan. Its waters were anciently of Httle note. This is the only instance in which they are mentioned. Even Josephus, who speaks of many other waters. 76 John's baptism. never mentions those of Eiion. Jacob's well is still deep. Siloam is still a pool, and various natural fountains in Palestine still flow. At Enon there is a fountain or well, as in the days of John. These waters have flowed for ages, and being natural springs may flow until the end of time. The v/ell of Enon is^ in a kind of cave. ^ That this well was there anciently, and consequently that it supplied John and his con- gregations with water, is clear from the fact, that the ancient name, /En-on, signifies the fountain of On. The first syllable is derived from the Hebrew ^m, which means a place or opening where water springs are, as in Gen. VIII. 2. Lev. xi. 36. and ii. Kings, in. 19; audit also denotes a spring of water, as in Ps. civ. 10. Thus this name, like many other Scripture names, describes the place to which it is given, and it agrees with the fact that there is still a spring there ; so that it is not difficult to judge how 'much water' was had at Enon. This fountain, like ail others, was undoubt- edly of great value in a country where, during half the year, the weather is sultry and water scarce. That John dipped the people in this fountain is extremely improbable, as, apart from all consider- ations as to its diameter and depth, it is obvious that it could not have been used for dipping and drinking, since the use of it for the former purpose, must have rendered it unfit for the latter. But the people of necessity drank its water, and consequently they could not have been dipped into it. * Mr. Ro'bmson, an immersionist,— quoted by Mr. Maccalla in Lis debate -with Mr. Campbell, has given the following description of Enon. 'Enon near to Salim was either a natural spring, an artificial reservoir, or a cavernous temple of the Sun, prepared by the Canaanites, the ancient idolatrous inhabitants of the land. The eastern versions, that is, the Syriac, Ethiopie, Persic, and Arabic of the gospel of John, as well as the Hebrew and Chaldean Ain — yon, or Gnaiu — yon, suggest these opinions. It is difficult to say which is the precise meaning of the Evanglist's word Enon ; and it is not certain whether the plain meaning be that John was baptizing at the Dove— spring near to Salim, or at the .Sun— fountain near to Salim.* John's baptism. 77 The word [polla) rendered much, literally merais many, and forms the first syllable of some of our words, as polytheism, <5^c. Accordingly, the marginal read- ing of *much water' is *many waters'. It may refer to the numerous little streams or rills, formed of water which ran over the brink of the spring, and which the earth failed to absorb. In the language of an oriental imagination, these would be hudaia polla, or waters many ; an expression which sometimes refers to scarce and precious httle streams and springs, and which is used as a hyperbole, like the words so often used by Moses, 'A land floTsing with milk and honey.' There certainly are places in the Jordan where im- mersion might be practised at some periods of the year, but in general the river is too deep ; it is also difficult in the descent, and dangerously rapid. Dr. Shaw states that at the place where he crossed the Jordan, it was three yards deep, even at the brink. Where Viscount Chateaubriand went over, it was six or seven feet deep, close to the shore. Mr. Thomp- son says it is exceeding deep, even at the edge of the inner bank. Yolney says that the river is ten or twelve feet in de23th. Mr. Monro, in his Summer E amble in Syria, speaking of the place which tra- dition assigns to the jDassage of the Israelites, and the baptism of our Lord, says, 'The stream was run- ning with the precipitous fury of a rapid, and the bank was steep, shelving off abn^ptly to deep watery' and Mr. Mauntbel says of the same place, that it was deeper than his height. Dr. Kitto, after collaiing the statements of various travellers, respecting different parts of the river, states the average depth to be eight or nine feet. The extreme rapidity of the cur- rent makes it deep, and renders it dangerous for bathing. Scenes of indecorum and death often occur when deluded pilgrims, wi-apped in winding sheets, plunge in the water ta wash away their sins. Though to save their lives they cling to the bushes and trees which overhang the stream, tiiey are not F 78 John's baptism. unfreqiiently swept away by the rapid current, and drowned. It is extremely improbable, — in the ab- sence of all e\ddence to the contrary, that the gi'eat harbinger of our Lord stood in the deep and rapid stream, plunging crowds of jDcople indiscriminately. The liabiht}' to accidents and death, even where im- mersion was practicable, renders such a course highly improbable, to say the least. Immersionists in general wisely abstain from dipping in rivers, and especially such as are deep and rapid; but rare as immersions in rivers are, there have of late years been several in- stances of drowning in the attempts made to practise them. If John had immersed large numbers in the Jordan, there would have been many instances of drowning, and yet we never read of one. Modern 'baptistries,' with their convenient steps, taps, drains, vestries, and prepared dresses, and in which the water is qiute still, and of a determined and uniform depth, are very different places to Jordan. If John had wanted a suitable place for the immersion of large bodies of people, he would probably have gone, not to the spring Enon, nor to the dtingerous river, but to the lake of Genesareth; where he would have found stiU and translucent waters, a pebbly bottom, and withal a safe and gentle descent. But what an employment would this constant plunging in water have been, for the long j^redicted and honoiu'ed herald of the Saviour! Had he found places in Jordan that^were conveniently shallow, of an even bottom and a gentle descent, to have im- mersed the very large numbers whom he baptized, he must have spent a large portion of his time in water. Instead of being jirincipally employed in giring religious instruction, he must have been stand- ing up to the middle in the river, — how he could have stood in the foimtain of Enon it is difRcult to say, — splashing water about incessantly, by plunging aE classes of people over head and lifting them up asrain. Such a life mi"rht suit a fabulous merman. John's baptism. 79 but it could not be borne by a man. Such wet and exhausting labour, for a lengthy period of time, it was physically impossible for John to perform. Even had it been suited to the human constitution, it would have been but ill adapted to the high and spiritual purpose of j)reparing the way for the Son of Grod to appear and establish his kingdom on the earth, and to turn the hearts of many to the Lord their God. There is another consideration which it is painful to have to adduce, but the interests and obligations of truth forbid its being suppressed. The public in- decency of immersion, is a strong reason to prove that it was not practised. The law of God distinctly prohibits any unseemly exposure of the body. The altar was directed to be on level ground, lest the priests should expose their limbs while ascending the steps. Exod. XX. 26. Nothing like public immersion by an administrator was ever known in the rites of the law, or in the usages of the Jews. To eastern nations, who are eminently modest, and whose women are generally veiled, not to adorn but to conceal their faces, nothing could have been more offensive than for men, and especially for young and aged women, diffident sisters and daughters, mothers and wives, who were so reserved that they avoided the touch and even the look of a strange man, to be publicly exposed, and plunged over head in water, by a man, in the open air, and in the presence of great crowds of people. Such a practice would have been justly regarded as nothing less than an open violation of all propriety; and in the absence of all proof it must be regarded by all unprejudiced men as utterly in- credible. Those brethren who affirm that the Jews were plunged, should at least show how the alledged act was practicable. The baptized must of course have had clothes on, but the poor who had travelled from distant places on foot, could not have had a change 1-2 80 JOHX'S BAPTISM. of clothes with them ; indeed but few of them could have had ai-iv other clothes than those which they wore on their journey. If then they were put under water with their usuahkesses on, they must have gone home, however distant, with the drenched garments about them, at the hazard of life, and to the amusement of some spectators, and the shame of others. This being incredible, the only other hypothesis is, that they changed their clothes ; but to those who had not a change, and they must have been many, this was impracticable ; and if any were baptized without being immersed, they ail were ; for John would bap- tize them ail ni tlie same manner. The ba2)tism of John being a new and temporary institution, it is highly improbable that an immense stock of dresses, weighted at the bottom to make them sink, could liave been manufactured for the use of the multi- tudes. If he immersed, there must have been tents erected, sufficiently numerous to afford a becoming privacy to each person ; or the promiscuous croAvds of both sexes must have twice changed their clothes, and exposed their persons publicly in the open air. in either case men and women must have been seen emerging from the water gaspiiig for breath, and uttering cries of fear and suffering, climbing up the steep ascent in a pitiable plight, Avith disordered and streaming dresses, and dishevelled hair. If these be strange words to your ears, there must have been stranger sights to your eyes, had you been there. Gould such scenes as these have taken place as solemn religious services for penitent sinners P While thev were being baptized they confessed their sins. Matt. III. 6. but how could they have been making confessions while being submerged in water ? AVhat- ever degree of incredibility belongs to all such hy- potheses belongs equally to immersion. If this formidable ceremony had been attempted, instead of multitudes eagerly pressing forward to be plunged, the common feelings of mankind would at John's baptism- 81 once have condemned it; for such a thing as one man dipping others, for reHgious piir[30ses, was im- proper and unprecedented. If they had not con- demned it, there must in many inst?inces have been reluctance to overcome, objections to an- swer, questions to solve, difficulties and dangers to avoid, many important conveniences to provide which may be rather referred to than described, exhorta- tions, cautions, and guards would have been required, and reproach and scorn would have been encoun- tered. And yet not the most distant allusion is made to such things, and for the very ob\ious reason that there was no such practice as immersion to give rise to them. As the ancient and divinely appointed rite was administered, there was no call for explanation or comment. If a new rite, such as immersion, had been observed, it would have been described; but as a rite of iifteen centuries was adopted, it is spoken of as one which was so universally known as to re- quire no description, or formal preparation, or delay, and which was everj-where practicable, safe, conve- nient, and deUcate. Moreover the immersion of such immense num- bers, as John baptized, was naturally impossible ; and consequently they were not immersed. If he had dipped as many persons in a day as a modern im- mersionist, with eveiy imaginalJe convenience, can in a fortnight, and thus in half a year have done the wear}' work of seven years, he could not have dipped such numbers as went to him for baptism ; for 'Jerusalem, and all Judea, and all the region round about Jordan, were all baptized of him in — or at the brink of the water of — Jordan.' !Matt. iii. 5. These baptisms are all described as having been ad- ministered by him only, and during the six months of his ministry which preceded the baptism of Christ, and notwithstanding that uiueh of his time was de- voted to preaching, &,c. The population of Judea araountedto at least two millions. Josephus states that 1-3 82 John's baptism. at the passover held thu'ty-five years afterwards, there were present, in Jerusalem alone, as many as three millions. Wars of the Jews b.ii. eh. xiv. s. 3. This agrees with what he states of a later passover, and of other events. It is not necessary to siipjiose that every person in Judea was baptized, but the num- bers must have been large, for stronger language could hardly be used had the whole nation been baptized. But few would submit to this ordinance at first, but had he laboured, standing in deep water, for eight hours a day, sabbaths included, and immer- sed forty in an hour, being three hundred and twenty each day, only fifty-eight thousand two huncked and forty could have passed through his hands in the half year. It was impossible for him thus to stand in deej) water eight hours a day for six months, but had it been possible, he could not have immersed one in fifty of three millions ; and yet it is said that * Jerusalem, and all Judea, and all the region round about Jordan, were all baptized of him — not of his disciples — in Jordan.' Now that which could not be, was not. As the immersion of such numbers as were baptized was imjDracticable, they could not have been uumersed. The insuiDerable difiiculties of the immersion theory are adduced, not to oppose the word of God, but to interpret its true meaning, and to show that when John baptized he did not dip. The most scrii3tural hypothesis is, that the j^eople were arranged, as when our Lord miraculously fed thousands at the lake of Genesareth, in an orderly manner, and that the illustrious prophet, as the peni- tents prayed arid confessed their sins, passed along the lines of the peoj^le, accompanied with a suitable font or laver, and with hyssop, according to the law, baptized them by S2)rinkling water upon them. No valid reason has been assigned to show that he did not apply this divine rite to a new purpose, at a time when the law which enjoined it was unrepealed. It was the only specific mode of purification which an John's baptism. 83 administrator was commanded to observe on the per- sons of men, and which s^-mbolized the shedding- forth of the Holy Spirit; and it was convenient, deli- cate, solemn, suitable to a religious service, institu- ted by God, and free from every difficulty and objec- tion; whereas the immersion of people by an administrator was never ajDpointed by God, nor is it credible that it was practised by his inspired servants. The armnnent which is illooicallv adduced to sustain the opinion that John immersed, is fatal to the 02)inion that the apostles immersed. If the inference, that John immersed because he sometimes baptized where there was water enough for that jourpose, be correct, then it must be equally correct to infer, even on the immersionist's own showing, that the apostles did not immerse, seeing that they baptized where there was but little water, and indeed wherever new con- verts were found. This is an mconclusive argument in favour of immersion, but a conclusive argument against it ; because it is at least possible that John might have baptized at the Jordan, or even at the ^Mediterranean sea, and yet not have dij^ped the peo- ple therein; but as Chnstian ministers baptized wherever they happened to be, in deserts, dun- geons, f)rivate houses, and other dry places, where there was but Httle water, immersion by them was impracticable. The more our esteemed brethren, who deem it a Christian duty to dij), attemi^t to prove that John must have immersed, because he baptized where there was sufficient water, the more do they prove that the apostles must not have immersed, because they baptized in all places; and water could not be obtained in all places, sufficiently deep, and othenN'ise convenient for plunging new converts. AVe have disproved the validity of this argTiment in relation to John's baptism, but in using it, immer- sionists overturn then own rite as a Christian ordi- nance, in the ver>' attempt to establish it as such. Either the apostles did not baptize like John, or if r4 84 BAPTISM OF THE LORD JESUS. they did, it was not to immerse that John went to Enon and Jordan; in either case the immersion theory falls to the ground. The simple fact appears to be, that John preached and baptized where there was a good supply of water, because he, being only one, and not being an itmer- aut, crowds of people congi'egated around him wherever he exercised his ministry; for the intense expectation of the public mind was directed to him, as being the Messiah, or his distmguished harbinger. But the ministers of Christ were many and scattered abroad. They preached and baptized in all places, frequently at the homes of men, so that it vras not ne- cessary for them, as it was for him, to fix their preach- ing stations near to streams and fountains of water. THE BAPTISM OF THE LOPvD JESU9. "\Mien our Lord presented himself to John for bap- tism, the Baptist hesitated to administer the rite to so august a person. But as he had humbled himself, he i)aid obedience to exery law. He observed all the rites of the law, until with his last breath, it was 'fin- ished.' And for the same reason, as the baptism of John was from heaven, he deemed it proper to sub- mit to it. It was a divine institution, and as it became him to do all that was right, he said ' Suffer it to be so now, for thus it becometh us to fulfil all righteous- ness.' Matt. III. 15. Thus, though he was not a penitent, he gave the sanction of his examj^le to the baptism of John as an ordinance of God. There is nothing in the narrative of his baptism to sanction the immersion hypothesis. Neither John nor the Saviour is represented as ever being in, and much less under water. In the English version, Mat- thew and Mark are made to say that our Lord, after his bajitism, came up out of the water; but they do not say that he came ujd from under the water. He might have been in, and have come out of the water, without being under it. But he was not in the water. BAPTISM OF THE LORD JESUS. 85 nor does the Greek word apo imply that he come out of it. .^/jo means from. From is its primary, j^roper, and usual sense. It should never be rendered 'out of/ unless the sense of the context requires it, as when it is clear from the narrative that the 2)ersGn came from within the place from which he departed. Even then it retains its jDroper sense, and means from out of. It does not denote the act of proceeding 'out of the interior of a place, but the motion from one j^lace to another. Accordingly it is rendered ' from,' nearly four hundred times in the EngHsh New Testament. How absurdly it would read, were it always rendered 'out of,' the follo-udng instances ^ill shew. 'AVho hath warned you to flee out of the wrath to come ?' Mat. III. 7. 'Depart out of me ye workers of iniquity.' Mat. VII. 23. 'Let him nov/ come down out of the cross.' Mat. xxvii. 42. 'Shake off the dust out of your feet.' Luke ix. 5, 'The angel departed out of him.' Acts xii. 10. Dr. Pivland, in his appendix, p. 28, admits that it might be generally if not always rendered from, as in the above instances; and Dr. Carson says, in p. 126, 'I aduiit the j^roper transla- tion of a po is from. — I perfectly agi^ee that fl^^o would have had its full meaning, if they had only gone down to the EDGE of the water.' Speaking of an opponent, who states that apo rarely has the sense of 'out of,' he says, in p. 337, • He grants me more than I vnH accept, I deny that it ever signifies out of.' Apo is a word of very indeterminate metining. No well infomied and candid jDerson wiU ever suppose that our Lord was plunged in water, because «/jo is in the narrative ; and there is nothing else to prove it. The English words, 'out of,' prove nothing, unless it be that our admirable version is, in this instance, incorrect. The proper readiu'g is, that when the Lord Jesus was bap- tized 'He went up straightway from the water,' that is from the brink of the water. Not only is there no valid reason to believe that he was dipped, but there are vahd reasons to believe r5 86 DISCIPLES FEET WASHED EMBLEMATICALLY. that he was not. Before immersionists cau expect us to believe that he was actually immersed, we have a right to require that thev should at least show how it could have been done, with a delicacy, dignity, and propriety, that became his divine character, and the sacredness of the occasion. Did he lay aside his gar- ments before all the spectators, and then go plunging into the deep and rapid river; or did he change his garments, and thus unbare his sacred person t^vice ? But from whence could he obtain a change of clothes ? As he forbade his disciples to take more than one coat on their journeys, it is probable that he had but one coat himself. Did he then submit to be put under water with his usual clothes on, and afterwards permit them to remain drenched upon his person until they were dr}' ? If every such hypothesis is marked with impropriety and indecorum, hov/ can we, in the absence of all evidence, be called ujDon to believe that John took hold of the incarnate Son of God and plunged him in a river ? When Jesus was baptized he was praying. Luke III. 21. Praying and dippmg are incongruous acts. "With bended knee in intercessory prayer, he apj^eared within the banks and near to the water of Jordan. John shed forth a small quantity of water upon his sacred head as a baj^tism; and as he did so, the heavens were opened, the Holy Spirit descended in a visible em- blem of purity and gentleness, and the voice of God proclaimed, 'This is my beloved Son in whom I am well pleased.' This was not a curious but a solemn scene ; and the rite thus administered corresponded with the usages of the Jews, and vrith the institution of God, and it was an unobjectionable and highly becoming mode of baptism. THE disciples' FEET WASHED EMBLEMATICALLY- As our Lord would not invest sacred rites with un- due importance, he himseh* did not administer bap- tism; but he ennobled ser\ice,and by his own example BAPTISM OX THE DAY OF PEXTECOST. 87 invested acts of hiimilitr and love witli dignity and honour. ^Yhen he deigned to perform the office of washing his servants' feet, it was not merely as an examjole of humihty that he did so, but also as an emblem of purification from sin. The discii^les were not seated at the table vfith their feet on the floor, but were reclining on a couch at the table, after the manner of the Jews, — for we find them eating after their feet were washed, — so that their feet were ex- tended from the table and above the floor. There is no reason to suppose, therefore, that their feet were successively immersed in the water vdiich Jesus first poured in the basin. Had they been so, Peter would not have been so wishful to be washed all over in the water. The basin being set on the floor under their feet, the Saviour might have washed them by a small affusion, j^ouring the water with his hands, as his own feet were washed with the tears of Mary. He did not submerge the body of each disciple, as an emblem of being made spiritually pure, but affirmed that washing the feet only was sufficient to mdicate comj^lete cleansing, and said that — Judas excepted — they were then 'clean every whit.' His o\\tl example and his own words, therefore, forbid us to believe that he afterwards instituted a law that every disciple should be bodily submerged in water, as an emblem of being cleansed from sin. His disciples, when they baptized, affused the faces of men, and he, as an indication and exam- ple of humility, appears to have affused their feet. Asbaptizo,when occasionally used by Greek T\Titers, denoted the condition of being completely immersed, by whatever means, the transition in a foreign coun- try, and that countiy Judea, to the conchtion of being completely cleansed, or 'clean every whit,' in what- ever way the emblematical rite might be performed, was both easy and natural. THE BAPTISMS ON THE DAY OF PENTECOST. After the ascension of our Lord, the apostles, accord- ing to his command, departed not from Jerusalem, but 83 BAPTISM OX THE DAY OF PEXTECOST. waited for the promise of the Father, until they were 'endued with power from on high.' On the day of Pentecost ' They were all with one accord in one place. And suddenly there came a sound from heaven, as of a rushing mighty wind, and it — the sound — filled all the house where they were sitting. And there appeared unto them cloven tongues, like as of fire, and it sat upon each of them. And they were all filled with the Holy Ghost, &c.' Acts ii. 1-4. This descent and in- fluence of the Spirit was the baptism which John predicted, as the spiritual counterpart of his own water baptism, and which the Lord Jesus promised. It is an incontestible fact that in this bajDtism there was nothing like dipping. "When the people of vari- ous nations were amazed at hearing unlearned men speak in all languages, * as the Spirit gave them utter- ance,' Peter declared that this descent of the Spii-it was the fulfilment of the promise made 720 B. C. by the prophet Joel; *I will pour out my Sjuritupon all flesh, — and on my servants, and on my handmaidens, I will POUR out in those days of my Spirit.' Acts ii. 17 & 18. quoted from Joeln. 28 & 29. And Peter also said that 'Jesus — being by the right hand of God exalted,— hath shed forth this which — (that is the effects of which) — ye now see and hear.' xlcts ii. 32 & 33. This baptism is figuratively described not as an immersion but as an effusion. Both jirophecy and history affirm that the Spirit came down from on high, and was poured and shed forth. This affusion is of course a metaphor, but the descent of the element upon the objects is a very different metaphor to that of dipj)mg the objects into the element. The sound was like that of a rushing mighty wind, and was so loud that it was heard all through the house. The ai^pearance as of fire did not surround them, as water surrounds an immersed object, and still less were they dipjDed in fire, but it sat upon their heads like cloven tongues or flames. The Holy Spirit filled the apostles with his influences to an extraordinar}' de- BAPTISM ON THE DAY OP PENTECOST. 89 gree. The modal descrii^tion of the Spirit's baptism, and not whether there was much or little of the Spirit, is the question at issue. Shedding forth is the mode ascribed to this communication of the gift of the Spi- rit, and this shedding forth of the SjDirit is denomi- nated a baptism by John, by the inspired apostles, and by the Lord Jesus. Who then can deny what God distinctly and repeatedly affinns ? As God bap- tized when he shed forth his Spirit, his ministers also baptize when they shed forth water. It is sometimes affirmed that on this memorable day the apostles were immersed in that which filled the house where they sat, and that 'it' surrounded them as an immersed object is surrounded with fluid. What then was that which filled the house ? It was not the mfluence of the Holy Ghost, for though the minds of the apostles were filled with that influence, of course the house was not. Nor was it wind, for though Dr. Carson says, p. 107, that 'They were literally covered with an appearance of wind and of fire,' (an appearance of wind must be a new dis- covery,) there was no wind whatever in the house, though the sound resembled that of a strong wind. They were baptized as with fire, but fire did not fill the house ; only cloven tongues as of fire, — like lambent flames, sat upon each of them. The antece- dent of the pronoun 'it,' is echos, a sound, a noise, a reverberation. It was the sound and the sound only that filled the house. Surely, it will not be affiiTiied that they were immersed in a sound. Even this sound came down upon them from heaven. If they were not immersed in an echos, there was no immersion whatever, either spiritual or literal, but there was a baptism; so that to be baptized is not to be immersed In the after part of the day of Pentecost three thousand new converts were baptized. The entire argument in favour of the rite of sprinlding, as the true mode of baptism, shows that they must have been baptized l)y sprinkling. In the narrative itself 90 BAPTISM OX THE DAY OF PENTECOST. there is nothing v.'hatever to indicate that they wei^e dipped; but the immersion hypothesis involves a series of improbabiiities, which amount almost to a moral demonstration of its untruth. It is improbable that there were the requisite con- veniences in Jerusalem for the immersion of three thousand men and women in one afternoon, without preparation and without delay. Jordan is more than thirty miles distant in a sti'aight line. Kedron is not a perennial stream. It is but a little brook, and is easily crossed without a bridge. In the rainy season it IS a ra])id, but Mr. Buckingham says, an insignifi- cant and muddy torrent, which carries away the filt'- of the city. In the summer it is dry. As Pentecost i. in summer, and w^as that year on the 24th of May,* when the rainy season was over, it must have been dn-' then. Siioam and Bethesda are veiy little pools, fed by a solitary spring; the only spring in the en- virons of Jerusalem, says Lamartine, *in which to dip the finger or moisten the lips.' Siloanl is acces- sible by a descent of twenty steps. Josephus states that these pools, and the little springs m the neigh- bourhood, were subject to being dried up. The immersion of three thousand in these pools, durmg one afternoon, was impracticable. Dr. Kitto states that few and scarcely any meti'opolitan towns, have s-ich an inadequate natural supply of water as Jeru- salem, and hence the elaborate contrivances adopted to collect and presence the precious fluid, and bring it to town To this day, small as the city is, water has to be brought from Bethlehem on mules. Y\'ater v/as principajly collected from rain m ancient times, Amos IV. 7 & 8. as it now is; and many houses had cisterns in which to store it during the summer. Most of the citizens hated Christ and his foilow^ers, but if they hp.d loved them, it is not ver}- likely tiiat they would have allowed their cisterns to be turned into Irap- tistries ; thus to spoil the water for futm'e use, witl) the lung drought of an oriental summer in i^ro-pect; du- BAPTISM ON THE DAY OF PENTECOST. 91 riiig which not a drop of raiu sometimes falls for mouths. But had they been willing to have their water spoiled, cistei-ns were very unlikely places for three thousand,of both sexes, and of various ages and sizes, to get into and out of again. Possibly there were some public res- ervoirs near the city, and there were the pools of Solo- mon at Ethan near Bethlehem, a distance of six miles, m which water, carefully collected, was pre- served for pubhc use. But, to say nothing as to their de^^th, the public authorities could not have allov/ed the use of public reservoirs to dip three tliousand people in, thus to make the water unfit to drink, and esjDecially for despised Christians to be dipped therein. If John who was so jiopular could not baptize at Jerusalem, but must go to Jordan for that 23ui'pose, as some immersionists suppose, how could three thousand Christians have been immersed there in one afternoon without any previous arrange- ment, and with the facility and ease which such a brief narrative as that of Scripture seems to imply. If every convenience had been siDecially prepared for immersion upon a large scale, it is not veiy credi- ble that tvrelve men, had they aU been at work, and had they done nothing else, could at one time have dipped three thousand persons, which would have been two hundred and fifty each; for there was nothing mnaculous about the baptism, nor does it appear that they had any assistants, or that others had authority to baptize. If there were more baj3- tizers than the twelve, there must have been as many more baptistries ; so that if such a hypothesis dimin- ishes one difficulty it increases another. Many of the persons who where baptized appear to have been devout foreigners from ' every nation under heaven.' That natives and strangers of both sexes, in various states of health, and of diverse cos- tumes and habits, were immersed with their usual dresses on, and that they afterwai'ds walked through tlie streets arrayed m drenched garments, exposed 92 BAPTISM ON THE DAY OT PENTECOST. to the taunts of scoffers, and the mirth of the light- hearted, and at the peril of their lives is extremely improbable, and especially so in the absence of all evidence. The motley multitudes were hastily drawn together from all parts of the city by curiosity, to hear unlearned men speak miraculously in a great variety of languages. They consequently never dreamt upon leaving home that they should be bap- tized as Christians before they returned, and cannot be supposed to have taken a change of clothes with them. But if they had, it is difficult to conceive how and where they could have twice disrobed themselves ; and how, if there had been every convenience, so vast and mixed a multitude could have been sub- merged devoutly or even decently, to say nothing of the time which, according to modern practice, must have been occupied in examining all the new con- verts indi\'idually. The narrative speaks of baptism as a rite which was administered then and there, with- out hesitation or inconvenience, and which required no prejoaration and but little time. The jealous orientals, who frequently rejiudiated their wives for trifling causes, and who fostered and guarded the modesty of female relatives with sciti- pulous care, would never have allowed them to sub- mit to the unseemly act of being taken hold of by a strange man, and dipped in v\'ater. They w^ouid have deemed it a trespass upon the common feelings of human nature, and especially upon religion, for men to bathe women, either in the presence of a large au^ dience, or in a private bath ; and the immersion of such numbers could not have taken place mthout many accidental exposures and dangers, and without ex- citing ridicule and jealousy, if not disgust. Before we can be called upon to l^eUeve that God appomted such a practice as a Christian duty, our brethren who advocate it must produce its parallel in some other institution or law which Christ has enjoined. How could twelve poor men, of a desjDised and BAPTISM ON THE DAY OF PENTECOST. 93 persecuted sect, immerse three thousand persons in London, where there are vast means of sujiplpng water to every house, without the slightest expecta- tion of such an event, and without the least delay; and esi^eciallv if the Thames were as distant from London as Jordan is from Jerusalem, and if water were scarce, and the drought of an eastern summer were in prospect, so that the jDrecious fluid would be carefully preserved ? Luke says nothing about the water, nor is it likely that he should, when a very small quantity was required; but had they been im- mersed, the water, and the sundr}- conveniences of a modem baptistr}', would have been very important; and in that case we should probably have heard some- thing about them. But the ])aptism is mentioned in the briefest and simplest manner, as though it had been a brief and simple rite, and administered at once, and on the spot, without ostentation, difficulty, or delay. No explanation seems to have been given, or to have been necessaiy, as though it were under- stood to be the ancient and usual rite obsen-ed when a subject received lustral water from an administrator. xVs millions were discipled to Christ in a compara- tively short period proximately, what hazardous and unseemly toil must have devolved upon the ministers, if these converts and their households were all dipped ! "What unbecoming scenes must have occurred, and what strange emotions must this novel and notable rite have exited among polished Greeks and Ro- mans! And yet no difficulties or objections appear to have arisen, nor any formal preliminaries to have been recjuired. Bajotism a2:)pears to have been prac- ticable and easy, without inconvenience and without delay, at all periods and in every place. Where mountain streams and intemiitting S2)rings were dry, where the cup of cold water was an act of charity, and in thirsty lands and parching summers, baptism was administered though immersiom was impractica- ble. For immediate baptism water was found every Vi BAPTISM ON THE DAY OF PENTECOST. where, but for immediate immersion, when the gos- pel was first introduced, water could rarely be found anwhere. Had the Lord Jesus intended to embar- rass his people in their attempts to observe the law of baptism, and to make it a burdensome service, like some of the rites of the law, which Peter said they and their fathers covid not bear; had he intended it to be often impracticable, and to be an inconvenient,, unseemly, painful, and dangerous rite, dipping is the veiy form he would have enjoined. But had the itinerant apostles been commanded to immerse all natiojis, would they have been forbidden to take more than one coat on their journeys, and would not an exception have been made in favour of a baptizing suit ? Unless they had had two suits at least, to have perambulated the nations of the earth, preaching and plunging contmually, would have subjected botli them and theii' successors to serious inconvenience and danger. As Christianity- spread rapidly among the nations of the earth, and as, tliough vehemently opposed by the confederated powers of evil, it won millions of human hearts to the Sanourin a comparatively short time, iiniumerable bav2:'tisms took place ; and yet no formal preparation, diiSculties, or delay, appear to have arisen from the size, sex, age, numbers, sick- ness, delicacy, or diflfidence of the baptized; or from the want of changes of raiment, dressing rooms, or water. Wherever the apostles preached, and per- sons avowed their faith in Christ, though it were cold or hot, day or night, though the new converts were male or female, old or young, sick or well, they were all baptized at once, without any probation, and without the least delay ; so that baptism is a rite which can be administered without any aiTaugements or notice, beyond what are m<>mentary, and with so small a rpiantity of water as may be obtained wherever men cnn dvreli. /\Ve never read of garments being laid aside, — as when Jesus washed his disciples' feet BAPTISM OF PAUL. 95 and Stephen was stoned; of water of proper dejitli being sought for; or of any of tliose conveniences or restoratives being used, which, if absent from modern immersions, would be important desiderata. All the narratives of baptism agree with the rite of applying water to the body, and not one suggests the idea of immersion; but some of them are connected with circumstances which shew the immersion liypothesis to be m the highest degree improbable. THE BAPTISM OF PAUL. The narrative of this event shows that Christian baptism is so simple and easy a rite, that it may be administered to a person whose spirit and bodily strength are in a state of prostration ; and who is ill from three days entire abstinence from food and drink, from the pride of his heart being withered and his fondest hoj^es being wrecked, and from his having been miraculously struck ^\-ith sudden and total blind- ness, and been ovenvhelmed with anguish and terror. To have plunged a man overhead in cold water who was in such a state of exhaustion, and not to have delayed his immersion until he had taken food, and re- covered from the effects of his distressing excitement, would have savoured of unfeeling severity, rather than of the mild and merciful spirit of Christ, who said, 'My yoke is easy and my burden is light.' Matt. XI. 30. It seems incredible, therefore, that Paul was immersed when he was baptized. Moreover it is not intimated that Ananias and Paul re2)aired to a bath, or went m search of deep water, or that they left the room in which- they met. He was not laid down in a 'liquid gTave,' but;, being at prayer, he arose, or rising (anastas) was ba]otized. His rising and his baptism are mentioned as though they were almost simultaneous acts, or followed each other so quickly that it might be said, that 'rising he was baptized.' Both the facts and the language employed, are unfavourable to the hypothesis that he was submerged. G 96 BAPTISM OF LYDIA. THE BAi'TISM OF LTDIA. As Lydia dealt in a costly article, and could invite three Christian ministers to her house, and entertain them for some time, without previous pre2)aration, it is evident that she was in good circumstances; and as, though a gentile, she worshipped God, she was religi- ously educated. She, with her household, and a hand of women, met for worship hy the side of the Strymon atPliilippi, in Macedonia. There they were met by Paul, Silas, and Luke; and as Paul preached, the Lord opened her heart, and she and her household were all baptized before returning home, as the his- tory plainly implies; so that they were baptized at the river. Baptism therefore is on ordinance which a holy man may administer to a praying woman, un- expectedly, and away from home, in the open air, without either of them having a change of raiment, and while other men and women vrere witnesses of all that took place; so that baj^tism could not have been immersion. Is it credible that a female of her station and piety, who, as she went to the river side vdth. no idea of being put under water, had no change of clothes for herself or her children, should have been immerged by a man ? As a Grecian lady she was probably veiled, and Paul, in 1. Cor. xi. 1-16. declared it to be a shame for a woman to pray in the presence of men with her head uncovered, that is unveiled, and strictly forbade it, as being, in that country, an act of indecorum. How then, in the ab- sence of all testimony, can it be deemed probable, and much less certain, that he required Lydia to be bodily immersed in the river; and that she, under such circumstances, permitted a strange man to plunge her and her household under water? Let all such persons believe this as are able, but certainly we are not. THE BAPTISM OF THE PHILIPPIAN JAILER. The Jailer and 'and all his' were baptized. Acts BAPTISM OF THE PHILIPPIAN JAILEPv. 97 XVI. 33, but there is uothiiig whatever in the history to sanction the opinion that they were dipped; nor is it likely that ancient j^risons were constructed with such regard to the health or comfort of prisoners, as to contain baths sufficiently large for one person to plunge others therein. Drs. Jenkins and Carson have suggested that they were immersed in the river Stry- mon, but such an oi)inion is unsupported by a tittle of evidence, and is clearly opposed to the sense of the narrative. That ail the members of a family, aroused from midnight repose by a terrific earthquake, and agitated with violent emotions, were at the same hour successively plunged into cold water, and that the parents and children with the immerser, then rushed from the tank or pool in a pitiable plight to the house, and immediately ate and rejoiced together, is a hy- pothesis that appears to have come from the regions of romance, and not to have been deduced from the brief and simple narrative of Scripture. That the Jailer and all his, were plunged in the river, is still more incredible. Midnight was not the houi' for a family to be immersed in a river with safety; nor would the terrors of an earthquake facilitate so for- midable a rite. The Jailer had been strictly charged to secure his prisoners, and was about to commit suicide from the fear that they would escape. It was at his peril that he should have passed through the streets, when people were abroad, wdth his prisoners at large, in \iolation of his public duty. Indeed they appear not to have left the place at all, for they re- fused to leave the jail until they were honourably released. As both Paul and Silas had been cruelly flagged, and their flesh was lacerated with 'many stripes,' were they in a fit state to go into a river, and to stand in deep water until they, or one of them had dipped the Jailer and all his "^ And then there was the darkness, the dressing and undressing, the dangers of stumbling, disowning, &c. and otlier cir- cumstances att-ndaut upon perilous midnight immer- 98 BAPTISM OF THE ETHIOPIAN EUNUCH. sions in a river, which prove the supposition to be incredible. The only pretension to an argument in favour of their immersion, is the groundless syllo- gism, in which immersionists seek for refuge, whenever pressed with objections which they cainiot answer, viz. that baptizo means to immerse, that the Jailer and all his were baptized, and that therefore they were immersed. But as the circumstances connected with the ritual use of that word in the New Testa- ment, clearly prove that it does not mean to immerse, that syllogism is based on unsound jiremises, and is consequently untrue. The baptism is described as a sim])le aiid easy rite, free from difficulty and danger. The Jailer and his family having been aroused from midnight slum- bers by an earthquake, were reassured by the im- prisoned saints ; who also made known to them the great salvation, and won their confidence, aifection, and gratitude. AYith all tenderness and promptitude the Jailer washed their wounds; and in immediate connection with that ablution, he, and all his, received Christian baptism from them. In washing their stripes he must necessarily have used a basin, or some such vessel, and as the baptisms are mentioned as having taken place in connection with that act of kindness, a little pure water poured into the basin, sufficed for the administration of that simple and beautiful or- dinance ; and thus, though it was midnight, and great commotion and terror reigned around them, they all were 'baptized straightway,' that is readily, conveni- ently, and at once, and both the baptizers and the baptized rejoiced together. THE BAPTISM OF THE ETHIOPIAN EUNUCH. This case is often quoted as being in favour of immersion, but the only reason peculiar to it is the use of the indeterminate prepositions eis and ek; which in our version are rendered 'into' and 'out of.' Whatever baptism may be, it is not going down BAPTISM HF THE ETHIOPIAN ETNUCH. 99 into water, nor coming up out of it. Those words describe what took place before baptism and after it, but it cannot be inferred from them what the true mode of baptism is. The immersionist has his 0"vvn sense of the verb previously fixed in his mind, and by his sense of baptizo he interprets eisamXekjUS being in agreement with it. Having shown the New Tes- tament sense of the verb, let us examine the meaning of the prepositions, apart from that of the verb; and, by a consideration of all the circumstances, endeavour to ascertain in what way the baptism was admin- istered. To some readers going ^down into the water' sug- gests the idea of immersion. But to be immersed, a man must not only go down into, but down under water. To prove from the preposition eis, that the eunuch was put under water, it must be j^roved that eis signifies under absolutely, for if it ever means anything else, it may mean something else here ; and therefore it must at least be uncertain, — in the ab- sence of other and definite evidence, whether he v>-as put under water, or something else was done which eis may mean. If it is never used in the sense of under, it cannot be used in that sense here ; but if it were ever used in such a sense, no valid reason can be adduced why it should denote under in this narrative. Immersionists aSrm that eis means 'into,' and they ask what he went 'into ' the water for but to be put un- der it. Admitting that he went into the water, who can prove that he vrent ancle deep ? An ox or an ass may go down into a stream without going over- head, and a man may surely do the same thing. His going into the water is no evidence that he was dip^ ped. Whatever such hallucination may float in the mind of an immersionist, it ^^•ill not sink the eunuch. He might have gone into the water, though it Ijarely covered his sandals. 'They went down both of them into the water, BOTH Philip and the Euimch.' Acts viii. 38. Thus G 3 100 BAPTISM OF THE ETHIOPIAN EUNUCH. what is said of one is said also of the other. If eis 23iits the eiiuuch under water, it must put Philip there also. So that if the argument from g/s proves anything, it proves too much; and it is a sound maxim in logic, that that which proves too much proves nothing. If in addition to eis it be attempted to prove an immer- sion from any other word in the narrative, that is practically to relinquish the argument drawn from eii, as being per se insuiScient. To make it certain that either Philip or the eunuch went into the water, even to the depth of an inch, it must be jDroved that the specific sense of ^/5 is always and nothing but into ; because if it ever means any thing else, it may mean something else here ; — there being nothing stated in the narrative to show that they were in the water; — so that it must at least be uncertain whether they went into the water or not ; and consequently, the inference that the eunuch v/as immersed therein, can amount to nothing more than a conjecture, and a conjecture cannot be the founda- tion of a doctrine or a duty. Nov>' eis has many other meanings beside into, as it is used in the New Tes- tament, and in the classics. It means to; towards; near to; by; on; in; at; among; for; &c., &c. Accord- ingly it is rendered in our version by a variety of words. In some instances it would be absolutely foohsh to render it 'into,' For exaiiiple, *I am not sent but into the lost shee|) of IsraeL' Matt. xv. 24. 'And his fellows ervant fell down into his feet.' Matt, xviii. 29. 'Jesus — cometh into the gi\ave.' Johnxi. 38. 'Jesus vrent up into a mountain,' ]Matt. v. 1, but surely not into the earth. In the Septuagint we have the foUowmg examples. 'And Jacob came into Shalem, — and pitched his tent into the city.' Gen. xxxiii. 18. 'V>'hen they came into Jordan they cut down wood.' 2. Ivings vi. 4. And in Homer; 'I hasten into x\chilles.' Iliad xv. 402. Though eis certainly means into, when the context gives it that meaning, it is imquestiouably used in a variety of BAPTISM or THE ETHIOPIAN EUNUCH. 101 other senses, in instances without number. Why should it be assumed that it means 'into/ absolutely, in this naiTative, when there is not a single circiun- stance mentioned to show that it has such a mean- ing, or that the eunuch even stood in the water ? How- ever strongly our brethren may speak in defence of their opinion, they can never make it certain that the eunuch went *into' the water, and much less that he was put under it; and nothing short of demonstra- tive proof can establish the doctrine of immersion, in the fac^ of so large a body of clear evidence as ap- pears against it. OuiT word TO is equivalent to ers. To, like eis, means into, when the context reqiiu*es it to have that meaning. In our common paririiice, going to a house, going TO heaven, and going to London, denote going into these places. It is the same \\'ith eis ; but going down eis the water does not necessarily give eis the sense of 'into,' since it may as properly mean to the water as into it. There is no interior in water, that it should necessaiily have the sense of into, to the exclusion of every other. That Philiji and the eunuch went down from the chariot to the water, is the ti'ue and ob^-ious sense of the account. INIr. Eice states that Scapula, Bretchschneider, Buttman in bis Greek grammar, Stuart, and others affirm its primary significatioii to be to. jNlr. Thorn has as- certained that in the New Testament it is rendered TO and UNTO no less than five hundred and thirty- eight times ; and Mr. A. Campbell, in his own version, has rendered it to in other places ; thus shcA^dng that in his judgment it means to in instances wherein our translators have rendered it 'into'. Indeed the apostle John, in xx. 4, uses it in express contradis- tinction to into. He says that having out-run Peter he * came first eis the sejoulchre'; and in the next verse it is added that, though he stooped down, and looked in, and saw the linen clothes lying, yet went HE NOT in'. John went eis that is to the sepulchre, f4 102 BAPTISM OF THE ETHIOPIAN EUXUCH. but it is distinctly denied that he then went ^into' it. Why then should it be confidently affirmed that the eunuch went into the water, and be inferred that he went under it, when the veiy same word is used in reference to the Water, as denotes 'to' the sepul- chre, but does not denote * into ' it ? The true sense of an indefinite preposition must be ascertained by its connections. As, in this instance, down TO the water is the natural sense cf the narra- tive ; as 'to' agrees with the primary meaning of eis, and frees the baptism from difficulties in which the im- mersionists' opinion involves it, and does not incur one ; down to the water is the true sense, rather than down into, as shewing that the eunuch went down under water. This preposition therefore does not afford the least proof that Philip dipped the eunuch when he baptized him. Had the immersion theory been true, baptizo would naturally and necessarily have been construed with eis in reference to the baptizing element, in the sense of dipping into water. Our Lord commands us to baptize all nations els the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost; and Paul affirms that saints are bap- tized eis Jesus Christ, eis his death, and eis one body. When he enquired of certain disciples, 'Into what were ye baptized ?' they answered, not eis cold water, but eis John's baj^tism. Acts xix. 3. Eis is thus construed with baptizo in reference to the authority, object, or nature of baptism, but not in reference to the element. BajUized eis water, and baptized eis the Holy Ghost, had such forms of words been used, would (because the sense would admit of no other meaning,) have meant into water, and into the Holy Ghost, and would thus have been decisive evidence in favour of immersion ; but the absence of such ex- pressions is evidence against it. Never does the word of God say that a person was baptized eis or into water, or eis the Holy Ghost, or that any person should be so baptized. The i^rejiosition used in connection BAPTISM OF THE ETHIOPIAN EUNUCH. 103 w-ith baptizo is en, as denoting tlie element with which, and not into which, we should be baptized. Thus Jesus said, 'John truly baptized with water, but ye shall be baptized with the Holy Ghost, not many days hence. — And ye shall receive jiower after that the Holy Ghost is come upon you.' Acts i. -5 & 8. In the narrative of the eunuch's baptism it is also said, that 'they came up out of the v»ater,' and this word, like into, apj^ears to some readers to favour the opinion that he was immersed. The original word is ek. Now if eis does not, as a certain matter of fact, take Philip and the eunuch ' into ' the water, and much less put the eunuch under it, it will be difficult to shew that ek necessarily brings them 'out of the water. If they went not 'into,' and still less under, ek cannot mean that they came 'out of.' Ek can bring them backward, only so far as eis takes them forward. The progress from the water, cannot be gTeater than the progress to the water. To prove from ek only that it is a matter of fact that they came 'out of the water, it must be proved that ek means ' out of,' and nothing else. If it have any other meaning than ' out of,' if lil^e eis and en it be a preposition whose specific sense in each place must be learned from the context, it must at least be un- certain that it means 'out of here, because the sense of the narrative does not give it that meaning; and if it is uncertain, the immersion argument, as found- ed on this word, falls to the ground; because it is uncertain, as far as ek is concerned, whether they came ' out of the water or not. If it can be proved that ek means 'out of absolutely and always, it must then be admitted that they were at least partially in the water. This is the veiy utmost that can be in- ferred from eis ?a\(\ek, or 'into' and 'out of,' if we adojjt the immersionist's interpretation ; but this wiU not jorove his theory to be true, for they might have gone down 'into' the water, and have come up 'out of ' it, though Philip baptized the emiuch by sprink- 104 BAPTISM OF THE ETHIOPIAN EUNUCH. ling. So that if facts would allow iis to concede that they went 'into' and came 'out of water, this would only shew that they stood partly, perhaps ancle deep or sandal deep, in water; and all the rest, as to the eunuch being submerged, would be mere conjecture and assumption, which prove nothing. If ek really means ' out of,' there is no evidence to shew how far or how deep the two persons went into and came out of the water ; but if, as is probable, it here signifies from the water, immersion can no more be deduced from ek than sprinkling. There being no circumstances in the narrative to shew that e/t has the sense of 'out of,' extrinsic evidences must be adduced to prove that it always means 'out of,' to make it cer- tain that it has such a meaning here ; for if it has other meanings in other instances, it may have some other uieaniug in this. Dr. Carson felt this truth, aud ac- cordingly he says, p. 131, 'I say that it always sig- nifies out of.' And in p. 135, he denies 'That ek is ever used when the object departing is not supposed to iiave commenced its departure within the object from which it departs.' If this be true, ek should be rendered 'outof ' whenever it occurs. How foolishly it would read if it were thus rendered, and how untrue Dr. Carson's assertions are, will appear from the following extracts, in which the sense of ek is gener- ally from, and occasionally for, of, by, aud on. 'I proceeded and came out of God.' John viii. 42. 'As Jesus passed by he saw a man which was blind out of his birth.' John ix. 1. 'The baptism of John, was it out of heaven or out of men ?' Mark xi. 30. 'Christ was raised up out of the dead.' Eom. vi. 4. ' The tree is known out of of its fruit.' Matthew xii.33. 'He agreed with the labourers out of a penny a day.' Matt. XX. 2. 'Neither repented they out of their murders, nor o UT OF their sorceries, nor out of their fornications, nor OUT OF their thefts.' Eev. ix. 21. 'He riseth out of supper.' John xiii. 4. 'AH these have I kept out of my youth up.' Luke xviii. 21. 'Judas received a BAPTISM OF THE ETHIOPIAN EUNUCH. 105 band af men, &c. out of the chief priests, &c. 'John XVIII. 3. * Grant that my two sons may sit, the one out of thy right hand, and the other out of thy left.' Math. xx. 2\. *Y3 are out of beiieath, I am out of above ; Ye are out oy this v^orld, I am not out of this world.' John vm. 23. The following instances, of the use of ek in the sense of from, have been selected by learned men from the works of Homer, Thucydides, Herodotus, ^c. ' He is said to have had some disease OUT or his birth.' * Who rorming men out of the ex- ti'emity of the foot, making a stcitue.' 'Out of the Sicilian mountains, the sea is extended far into the east.' 'He cut the hairs out of the heads of lambs.' The mountams extend out of sea to sea.' 'The pro- montory was steep out of the sea, and not easily attaclied out of the land.' 'The road out of Abdera to Ister ' 'She led him out of the gate to the inner apartment.' These examples, which might be greatly multiplied, clearly prove that ek, per se, is a word of undeterminate sense, and that of its varied senses, that which is true in each case must be learned from the scope of the narrative. In the Enghsh \ew Testament ek is rendered by various words, according to the sense, it is said by as many as twenty. ]\Ir. Thorn afiii-ms that it is ren- dered FROM, one hundred and eighty-six times ; it should, for anythmg that appears to the contrary, be rendered from in his narrative, and then it would be one hundred and eighty-seven times ; as from agrees with the histor}-, and frees it from the chfficulties of the immersion hypothesis. As Phihp and the Eunuch were in a carriage, and the water, — as it alv.ays lies in hollows, lay in a low place, it was, of course, necessary for them to go down TO the water for the eunuch to be baptized; and after the baptism for them to go up from the water to the carriage. But immersionists affirm that if the baptism were by sprinklmg, it was not necessary for them to leave the chariot, as so opulent a person 106 BAPTISM OF THE ETHIOPIAN EUNUCH. would not travel across a desert without a suj^ply of water. This however is a mere conjecture. Had he been crossing the great desert at that time, he might have had water with him ; but even then it might not have been so accessible as that which lay by the vray- side. But the desert which he was crossing was merely a narrow strip of desert ; and between Jeru- salem and Gaza there were, in those days, various places where refresiiment might have been obtained on the road. In going to Jerusalem, the eunuch had passed along this very route shortly before. He consequently must have known that there was water in the desert. It lay in his way, and he must have seen it in going to Jerusalem, as well as in returning from thence. Knowing that water was to be had there, and at other places on his journey, he would not encumber himself uselessly by carrying it vvith him. There is nothing to show that he had water with him, or why he should have had. PhilijJ therefore could not have baptized him by sprmkling, as the symbol of purifying grace and of Christian discipleship, with- out going down to the water. We do not deduce sprinkling from the prepositions TO and FROM, but we say that even if it could be proved, which it never has been, that they should be here rendered ' into' and ' out of, ' no man can logically deduce dipping from them. These little words, on which some persons have laid so much stress, which- ever way they be rendered, do not describe the mode of baptism actually observed at all. They describe only what took place before the bajitism and after it. A student of the English version of God's holy word, may imagine that he ascertains the truth by re- gardmg such words as 'into' and ' out of,' but he draws inferences from them which neither the inspired original, nor the circumstances of the case, ^viU estab- lish. No learned and really candid immersionist builds his faith on such words, for they prove nothing that is material to this controversy. Indeed were it BAPTISM or THE ETHIOPIAN EUNUCH. 107 jiot that prejudice has unhappily so far influenced some men, as to induce them to become uncandid, and that many sincere and anxious inquirers have not the necessary aids to a correct understanding of these little words, this exegesis would not have been necessary. Though the English prepositions seem to favour tlie practice of dipping, all reasoning founded on them is utterly uncertain and unsound; and they are quoted so often only for want of better proofs. Wri- ters of small tracts, which are widely cumulated, and sundry preachers, quote them as though the original meant 'into' and 'out of,' absolutely, and nothing else. Such persons must know that they also mean to and FROM, or they must not. In the former case they must be wanting in honesty, in thus handling the word of the Lord deceitfully; and in the latter, they must be ignorant and therefore incompetent teachers, on such a subject As the language of the narrative does not definitely express an immersion, so neither do the circumstan- ces imply that it took place. The locality was that part of the way between Jerujsalem and Gaza 'which is desert.' Places are desert not because there is ' much water there, ' but from the want of water Isaiah mentions it as a figurative phenomenon, to appear in Christ's kingdom, that 'In the wilderness waters shall break out, and streams in the desert.' xxxy. 36 . C an it be supposed that there was a river suffi- ciently deep for immersion in that dry and thirsty land ? Deserts are so from the want of water. They do not con- tain natural baptistries. Then streams are not peren- nial. The ti'aveilers were passing over barren sands, and dry and arid wastes. In such places the rainy sea- son may form deposits and scanty rills of water in lov/ places, but they are shallow, and soon diy up. Had the eunuch been baptized at a river or lake, its name would have been mentioned, but it is denomi- nated 'a certain water.' He had gone to a great dis- 108 BAPTIS:^ OF THE ETHIOPIAN EUNUCH. tance to worsbij) at Jerusalem, and probably, as Dr. Kitto suggests, at the gTeat Passover festival, wben many prosehtes repaired to Jerusalem. If so, the rainy season was just over, and some little collections of superabundant water, wliicb the earth failed to absorb, might have been found in low hollow places. He said, 'Lo ! water,' as though it were suddenly airived at, and was so small as not to be seen until they were near to it. They did not go in search of deep water, but used the first that they met with. There is no rea- son to suppose that they met with water that was deep enough for dipping, and if not, he was not dipjied; but if they had, the eunuch might have been baptized thereat by sprinkling, and net by immersion. If when the eunuch said, 'Lo! here is water,* he had also said, and here are changes of raiment and dressing rooms, it would have been ob^-ious that he had to be submerged ; but how was the immersion of a person, and he of high rank, to be effected in the open countiy, and on the high-way, without the least pre2:)aration for such an event ? Supposing pure wa- ter of a convenient depth and gentle descent to have been found, for the eimuch to have been dipped, one of three courses must have been taken. Either he must have been dipped in his traveUing dress, and afterwards have sat still in his chariot for a consider- able time, in thoroughly drenched clothes, and at the hazard of his life, so that he could hardly, in so sony a plight, have gone on^iis vfay rejoicing; or this first lord of the treasuiy of Ethopia must have been im- mersed stark naked, in the presence of the evangelist and the attendants, — for that he had at least one attendant is certain from his ha^-ing commanded the chai'iot to stand still ; or in changing his cbesses he must have exposed his person twice, for a chariot is an open carriage. Moreover, if an immersion took place, Philip must have gone into the water with the eunuch, to perform the rite. Did he then, and the other, dress and undress in the presence of each BAPTISM OF THE ETHIOPIAN EUNUCH. 109 other, of the charioteer, and possibly of men and women who were passing by ? But did Philip, who was a pedestrian, travelling alone on foot, carry a dipping-suit with him, to be ready for every baptism, notwithstanding that the Lord expressly commanded his disciples to take but one coat on a journey ? Or did he receive clothes from the eunuch m exchange for his o>m ? Or did he dip with his usual dress on, and retain it, dripping with water, on his person until it was dry ? All these hypotheses being incredible, it is equally incredible that the eunuch was immerged. As it is thus clear that there could not have been an immersion in this baptism, there must have been a small effusion of water from the hands of the adminis- trator. Air the reasons which have been and will hereafter be adduced to prove that baptism is the generic name of the ordinance, and that sprinkling is the true mode of solemnizing it, shew that the eunuch must have been baptized in that mode. There are also other reasons which the narrative itself suggests. Baj^tism appears fi*om this narrative to be so sim- l^le a rite, that ministers may administer it by the wayside, to persons whom they may happen to meet on a journey; and that there is nothing whatever to 'hinder' its observance if there be but water. This perfectly agrees with the rite of sprinkling, which might be conveniently administered to a! fellow traveller on the road, and for which nothing but water is requisite. Philip does not appear to have mentioned the subject of 1)aptism, or if he stated the obligation, it is not likely that he would explain the mode, as the catechumen would be acquainted with the usual mode. As a proselyte, the eunuch had been bajotized pre viously by a priestly administrator,— after some private self-abluti\-ithhold the water ? As he had poured out the Ploly Ghost to baptize their souls, according to the pre- diction of John, who could forbid the jjouring out of water, as the appointed symbol of his descent and in- fluence, and the sign of Christian discipleship "^ Hav- ing ' RECEIVED the Holy Ghost,' could any man forbid that they should now receive bajDtismal water also ? They had received the spiritual baptism from God, and were now to receive the emblematical water bap- tism from man. It is jiroi^er to recognize as Chris- tians, those whom God has constituted such. There 112 ONE BAPTISM. is a beautiful agreement between the two baptisms, as administered by the Lord Jesus and by bis church. Water, as a cleansing element, is an appropriate em- blem of the purifying intluence of the Holy 82)irit. In each baptism there is a descent of the element ui)on the recipieut; both the sign and the thing sig- nified bear the same denomination ; and the modal description of that which is purely spiritual, clearly determines the form of the visible sign. When the facts of this case are candidly consid- ered,^ — that a considerable number of persons were baptized in an apartment, that water had to be brought into the place for that i)uri)ose, and that the outpour- ing of the Spirit reminded Peter of the baptism of John with water, dipping must appeal' among such and similar associations, as altogether incongruous and foreign, as an unmeaning intruder in the Chris- tian litual, and as a human innovation, of no possible benefit on earth, and of no conceivable resemblance to anything from heaven. THE 'ONE BAPTISM.' Our brethren who believe it to be the law of Christ that his disciples should be immersed, regard ' One baptism, Eph. iv. o, as referring to an external rite, and as teaching that there is one mode only of observing that rite; and as that mode is assumed to be immer- sion, 'One baptism' is read as though it meant 'one dipping,' and is sometimes quoted in condemnation of sprinkling. If it could be proved that 'One baptism' means that there is but one true mode of baptizing with water, since it has been shown that the descent of the element is that true mode, * One bajitism ' would be a condemnation of immersion, as being a second and different baptism, or rather as not being the bajitism of Christianity. But as all the words of a passage must be interpreted in hannony with each other, this word does not appear to have any refer- ONE BAPTISM. 113 enee whatever to a mere rite. The Aposth3 is here writiiifj^ ou the unity of the Spirit beiii^^ kept in the liond of peace; and pursuing the same theme, he states tliat there is one spiritual body, tlie ciiurch ; one Spirit, even as we are called in one hope of our calling; one Lord, the supreme ruler of us all; one faith, or harmonious body of truth through which v/e are saved; one spmtual baptism, in which we all are purified, renevv^ed, and united in spirit, by the Holy Ghost; and one God and Father of us all, whose sons we are, being justified through faith, re- newed by the Spirit, and united in the one body of the church. To read ' One baptism ' as meaning 'one dipping,' is greatly to detract from the spirituality and dignity of the inspired writer's theme. What an incongruous association is formed, when an outward rite, in whatever form it may be observed, is placed in the same class of great and lofty subjects as the unity of the church, of the catholic faith, and of the cliaracter and work of the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost ! We may truly say of baptism, in this and other places in the Holy Scripture, as Dr. Carson, in p. 24. says of the classical sense of baptize, that ' The idea of water is not in the word at all;' and we may add that still less is the idea of mode. The inspired Apostle here speaks of spiritual unity, and not of ceremonial uniformity; of one spiiit, and not of one form. He had previously said that there is ' one body and one Spirit,' and now by 'One baptism' he desig- nates that holy unity of spirit of v/hich he speaks in I . C R X 1 1 . 1 3 , ' By on e Spirit are we all b a p t i z e d in- to one body.' In that place as in this he descants on spiritual unity, and this is the true exposition of 'One baptism,' Paul himself being the expositor. Had the Apostle meant that there is but one mode of water baptism, v>^hy should he not also have said 'One Lord's Supper,' v/hich the Saviour so impres- sively instituted and enjoined in commemoration of his atoning death ? especially as attempts were made H 114 ONE BAPTIf?M. in hit^ time to observe that sacred rite in a form tliat was a<^tually sinful; whereas no attempt was made to deviate from the true mode of baptism. If lie had referred to one rite, he would probably have referred to the other; for certainly the Lord's supper is at least co-ordinate with baptism, as a Christian institu- tion ; but he speaks of that baptism which we receive by 'the washing- of regeneration, and renewing of the Holy Ghost.' The erroneous interpretation of 'One baptism,' agrees with the exaggerated importance which immer- sionists, and baptismal-regenerationists attach to the sacred ordinance, though they may differ as to the mode. It substitutes mere ritualism for the spirit of religion, and in respect to this vrord makes the juirely spiritual teaching of Scripture of no effect. It dedu- ces uniformity in a visible and formal rite, from a word which teaches that a oneness of spirit and unity of faith and love subsists among true Christians, Avho are baptized by the Holy Ghost. Thus the act of man is supposed to be meant instead of the act of God; ritual uniformity is understood rather than catholic unity ; and instead of the cleansing of the heart by the Spirit, as the source and means of unity, an out- ward and emblematical baptism is inferred, wliich unhappily has given rise to disunion and strife. However sound immersionists may be in the doc- trines of the gospel, — and we rejoice to recognise them as being, for the most part, brethren beloved in the Lord, sound Protestants, thorough Noncon- formists, and evangelical Christians, that of the ' baptistr}^ ' is calculated to lead to serious error. That principle of interpretation v.hicli resolves purely spiritual things into outward rites and institutions, however sacred and obligatori' they may be, teems with dangerous results. Were it carried ou t to its full exteiit, it would lead to consequences which our beloved 'Baptist' brethren, equally with ourselves, would regard with great alarm. Some of the wildest forms BURIAL -A-ITH CHRIST BY BAPTISM. 1 1 5 of iiiillenariaiii^jin, and most eiTatic and pemioious foruis o{ iiomauijsiu, are ibimded ou that principle. Indeed it contains the whole germ of papal eiTor. THE CHllISTIAX BURIED WITH CHRIST LY BAPTISM. As there is no allusion whatever to water in tlio * One baptism,' neither is there any such allusion in Rom. VI. 3. 4. where it is stated that, ' So many of us as were baptized iiito Jesus Christ, were' baptized into his death. Therefore we are buried with him by baptism into death ; that like as Christ was raised up from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so we also should walk m nev«ness of life.' Baptizo and baptisma are here used in a purely spiritual sense, Y.'ith 110 reference to a.uything ritual. The iminer- sionist discerns no specific allusion to dipping in being ])aptized mto Jesus Christ, nor can he show any resem- blance between immersion and crucJJixion in being baptized into his death ; but he sees an allusion to that rite m our being ' buried with Christ, by baptism into death.' The true sense of this passage, v/hich teaches the doctrine of entire sanctiacation, has been entirely mistaken; it has been pressed into the service of the ' baptistiy,' and is supposed to sanction the practice of being put luider v\'ater. Christians are here said to be buried with Christ by baptism into death ; and immersion, some men say, is a figure of that spiritual burial. But that word burial itself is but a figure of a s^nritual truth. The death, burial, and resuiTectioii of Christ, are re- ferred to by Paul as figures of Christian experience. Our being buried with Christ denotes the body of sin being entombed, as a corrupt and perished thing, and our being risen from a death unto sin, to a higher, purer, and happier life, or into 'newness of fife..' Immer- sion cannot represent the Christian, as being thus bu- ried with Christ, because one figure cannot represent another. The spiritual ])urial refers to the se-pulchre of Christ, and not tu the 'baptistry' of the immersionist. h2 116 BURIAL V.'ITK CHRIST BY BAPTISM. That a Christian rite should he the figure of a figure, is as unphilosophical, and as uutrue, as the aiicient fiction of the shadow of a shade. It h frequently said that inirnersion is the repre- sentation of the burial and resurrection of our Lord; and Dr. Carson says *The immersed person dies un- der the water, and for a moment lies buried with Christ.' p. 157. That this rite represents the Lord's burial, and that when immersed a person is buried with him in a 'liquid tomb,' appears to be a common and cherished opinion of Christians who practise dip- ping as baptism. They assume that water biiptism is meant in the passage mider consideration, and Mr. Lanieli asks in p. 18, 'If the rite were performed by sprinkling could it be called a burial ? How can that be buried or covered which is not immersed ?' Thus the hypotlieses that Christians immersed when they baptized, that immersion Ls a representation of Christ's burial, and that therefore immersion ijs and ever will be the true mode of baptism, are inferred from a supposed tdiusion to the rite, as one in which Christ- ians are buried v/ith the Lord. But before it can be certain that there is here an allusion to an external rite, and that that rite is dipping, it mustbe proved that dipping really is Christian baptism; because until that is proved, it cannot be certain that Paul alludes to it. The alledged allusion cannot be adduced as proof, for antecedent proof is required to establish the fact of there being such an allusion. Immersionists com- pletely invert the logical order of the argument. That which they assume as the ground of proof, viz. that there is an allusion to an outward rite, is the very question at issue. Instead of first pro\1ng im- mersion to be Christian baptism, it is inferred to be so, on the ground of a supposed idlusion. It is not proved from the passage, it is assumed to exj)lain it; but the passage cannot be logically adduced in proof of the hypothesis which is assumed to explain it, for an assumption is not an argument. It is clear tliere- BURIAL WITH CHRIST BY BAPTISM. 117 fore that this passage does not contain an intrinsic proof of immersion, and that tlie ojnnion that such a practice existed as Christian baptism, so as to be pos- si])le for it to be alhidcd to, requires extrinsic proofs, which it has been shown do not exist. But, apart from all consideration of such extrinsic proofs, let us, looking at the passage and its context, endeavour to ascertain if there is or can be any such allusion. The dipping of a person in water in the name of the Holy Trinity, we are assured, represents the en- tombment of Christ; and as he was buried in the earth, it is a Christian dut}' that his disci})les be for an instant buried in water. This hallucmation has impressed the minds and confirmed tlie prejudices of many in- telligent and excellent Christians, who, from education or other causes, have attached themselves to the the- ory of immersion; and it is a popular, and — upon a merely supei-flcial and prima-facie view, — a somewhat plausible sophism, which often passes cuiTent, as though it bore the genume stamp and superscription of a truth. A brief examination however will suffice to refute and expose it. At the very threshold of our inquiry, an objection presents itself vrhich is fatal to this opinion, viz. that baptism is never said to have the most remote specific reference to the work of our Sa^-iour, any farther than to his gift of the Spirit after his ascension to heaven. There are two simple and beautiful rites in Christ- ianity, which symbolize the work of the Saviour, and of the Holy Spirit, respectively. Under the law there were corresponding rites of sacrifice and punfication. In the Lord's supper we have a symbol of the atone- ment, as effected by the broken body and shed blood of Christ; and in baptism a syml)ol of the cleansing ajid sanctifymg grace of' the Spirit. Thus the Christian ritual, in its two ordinances, is harmonious, appropri- ate, and complete ; but the opinion that baptism is a figurative burial with Christ, and that it represents his burial and resurrection, destrovs that completeness H 3 118 BURIAL WITH CHRIST BY BAPTISM. and hannoiiv, deprives tbe Holy Spirit's work of its appropriate symbol, disparages its iinportajice, as- cribes the reference of both rites to Christ, and is opposed to the whole tenor of Scripture. The bap- tismal symbol is commonly used in both Testaments to describe the descent and agency of the Spirit. Baptism refers as specifically to the work of the Spirit, as the Lord's supper does to the sacrifice of Christ; and it is as improper to regard baptism as a symbol of the work of Christ, as it would be to regard the Lord's supper as having reference to the work of the Spii'it. Since therefore baptism has no specific refer- ence to the Saviour, it cannot represent his burial; 80 that the irnmersionist's expoj^ition of this passage is v/nolly iiicorrect. Accordingly, the baptisms during our Lord's lii'e had no such reference, and it does not appear that ])aptism had any gignification after his death other than it had before. Such a meaning is never attributed to baptism by the .sacred writers, nor is there a single allusion to it, directly or indirectly. As the facts and figures of the New Testament shew that baptism was administered by the descent of a little water, such a supposed allusion is mtmifestly a mistake. It is a mere inference from a hio'hiv figura- tive passage, and that inference is wholly unsupported, and wholly opposed by Scripture, and it is fanciful, perplexing, and contradictoiy. But the entombment of Christ is not the only thing which baptism is supposed to represent. Dr. Carson says in p. 47o,thatwater is the 'womb' outof which the baptized person proceedfj; and both he andMessis Burl, S. Stennett, lUaclean, iiyhuid, and others speak of it as an emblematical washing. The use of water as an emblematical purification under the law, naturally and obviously suggested the idea of spiritual purity. That signification has never been altered. Baptism being mentioned in connection with the promise of the Spirit, and the baptism of the Spirit having in some instances been received concurrently with water baptism, show BURIAL WITH CHrasT BY BAPTISM. 119 that the orduiaiicc has a direct reference to the cleaiismg agency of the Spiiit on tlie mind. But it cannot represent three such dissimilar things as a cleansinp;, a womh, and a grave ; so that a person may l^e eml)k^maticaliy cleansed, horn, and buried in the same act. If he goes into the water as a grave, he surely cannot he raised up and walk out of it as from a womb. If, as I\Ir. Gibbs says, it is a laver, and as many im- mersionists admit, it is an emblem of renewing grace, it cannot be a l)urial; unless men are cleansed in a tomb, and buried in a laver. Such a confusion of fig- ures makes them destroy each other. Smce baptism undoubtedly is a symbol of the washing of regenera- tion, it cannot be a representation of Christ's buria.1. But assuming that baptism has some reference to Christ, it may be asked, — looking at the question a priori, why it should be supposed, smce nothing is ap]iointed in the Christian economy but for obvious and important reasons, that his burial, above all things, should have to be rei:)resented by a religious rite, in tlie person of eveiy disciple; and why should not every Christian have some other rites solemnized in his person, to represent the Lord^s crucifixion and resuiTection ? These were events of infinitely gi'eater consequence to every Christian, and to the whole world, than his mere interment. Had he lived and died in some other countiythan Judea, he might not have been buried.and in that ease there would have been no prediction of his burial in the prophecies. His being buried or not was, in itself, of little or no moment; whereas both his death and resurrection were indis- pensible to the salvation of the world, "\^'hy then, speiiking a priori as we before said, should so com- paratively immaterial an event be singled out, and be required to be publicly represented by a disagTee- able, dangerous, indelicate, and often an impracticable rite, on the persons of all Christians, all over the world, and to the end of the world? If God had ex- pressly commanded such a rite to be performed, his ^ H 4 120 UUIIIAL V>'ITH CHRIST BY BAPTISM. word would have been our absolute law; but as he has not commanded it, and as water baptism is never mentioned as a burial, and much less as a burial with Christ, and as the question now turns on the true meaning of a metaphor, which some brethren misunderstand, we are entitled to ask, if, in the ab- sence of all e\idence, it can be deemed probable that he would require that so comparatively minor an event as the mere interment of Christ, should be set forth in the person of' every creature;' by a ceremony too which is very unlike it, and which, if it resembled it ever so correctly, can answer no conceivable good end, — as a resemblance to the burial; and which is unmeanuif^, and useless, and withal dan^-erous and unseemly P But sujDpose it to be proper to represent the Lord's lyarial, it must require a very fanciful imagination to discover any resemblance between that event and a person being plunged overhead in water. Had he been buried in water,— if such a hypothesis may be reverently mentioned, — there might have been some apparent show of reason for this strange misconcep- tion; but in that case, a scenic representation could ansv/er no valuable end, and would be opposed to the spirit and character of Christianity. Emblems of purely spiritual things are consistent with the gosj^el, but scenic representations of simple facts are unsanc- tioned by it; they savour of superstition, and are cal- culated to strike and impose upon the senses, rather than to instruct the mind. Christian congregations sometimes sing, as they look on the * baptistry,' 'Was not the Lord who came to save, Interred in such a liquid grave ?' Ripox's col. h. 452, v. 4. He certainly was not. His entombment was not an immersion, that we should be buried with him, by being momentarily placed under water. His burial was not a baptism of any kind, that we, to represent his entombment, should be literally buried by water baj)- BURIAL WITH CHRIST BY BAPTISM. 121 tism. "Wlieii he spoke of having 'a baptism to be baptized with,' he did not refer to the sepulchre. The sepulchre was not a 'baptistry,' a 'liquid grave,' or a * watery tomb.' In what way then can a man be liter- ally buried with Christ, by a hasty dip in water; or by being dijiped three times, as some ancients were, to denote the three days in which our Lord tenanted the tomb; or even if, with the aid of breathing ajipar- atus, he were immersed for three days ? ^^'ate^ had no connection with the Eedeemer's burial. AVe are not buried with him in water, but, as it is distinctly aliirmed by the inspired word, into his death, or, as afterwards explained, into the likeness of his death. That likeness in us to him is purely spiritual, and is the result of spiritual baptism. The Scriptures never say that we are baptized into water, or buried in wa- ter. In the whole argument of Paul there is no re- ference to water, nor to the Christian's body, but to the sanctiiication of the soul by a death unto sin, through the Spirit, whose purifying inlluence is the baptism of which the Apostle speaks. ]Many persons, as they read of being buried with Christ by baptism, conceiving that water baptism is meant, think only of an English grave. But a per- son walking into water up to the waist, and ha\ing the up2)er jiart of his body hastily dipped, bears no resemblance to the interment of a corpse. In the grave earth is placed over the dead, whereas in the ' baptistry ' the living are not covered vdih water but dijiped into it. By what stretch of the imagination can we discover a resemblance between giving a per- son a hasty plunge, and the awe-inspiring act of com- mittmg the dead to the earth ? between an immerser and a sexton ? between a pit of water or a stream and a grave ? and between the baptismal fonnula and a deeply mom-nful funeral service ? Moreover, the entombed body remains in the grave, whereas the dipped body is instantly raised up again. And yet the Scripture does not sav that we were once h5 12^ BURIAL WITH CHRIST BY BAPTISM. buried with Christ by baptism, as though it had been a ceremonial and momentary burial, but it affirms, as it reads in the margin, that we are baptized iiito Je- sus Christ, and into his death; and as our common version correctly renders it, 'we are buried with him by baptism into death.' This bmial is not momen- tary, like dipping. It continues. We are now and always ]raried with him by spiritual baptism, not into water, but spiritually into death. The verb 'are,' is in the present tense, and will ever be so. This burial is permanent. The body of sin is put av.ay, and Ave are risen with Christ into newness of life; as vre are delivered from sin, and have acquired those auectious and habits of nihid, which are holy in their nature, and heavenward in their tendency; so that the spiri- tual state of a baptized and faithful Christian, which the death, burial, and resurrection of the Lord are taken to represent, is one that endures. If there be so great dissimilarity between immer- sion and an English inteiiiient, the contrast ])etweeii that rite and the burial of our Lord is still greater. His sepulchre presented no resemblance to an English grave, and still less to a 'baptistry,' of water. It was a cave or side-room, nearly on a level A\dth the ground, and hewn out of a solid rock. It had a low entnnice at the side, which was closed by a great stone being rol- led against it. Thus the two ]\Iarys sat opposite to the sepulchre. Math. xxvi. 61. How then was the Lord buried ? He w^as not lowered do^^iiwards like a corpse into an English grave, or like a living person when dipped into water ; but he was carried into the cavernous tomb, and placed on a shelf, or in a niche, 'as the manner of the Jews was to bur}%' and there he lay. If then it were proper for us, while living, to be ceremonially buried with Christ, can a person's walking in water until it reaches his waist, and being then plunged overhead, be deemed so resemblant an act, as to be entitled a burial with Christ by dipping ? Bet^veen carrying a dead body through a door into a BURIAL T^'ITII CHRIST BY BAPTISM. 123 cave, and pliinging a living body in water, there is no re- semblance, either emblematical, pictorial, or otherwise ; so that such a rite cannot be meant by the xVpostle, The sentiments of all Christians are entitled to all the respect that we can pay to them, consistently with the obligations of truth ; but certainly, while we venera,te every institution of the Lord, we cannot but regard all scenic representations of the death and ])urial of the Lord, whether observed in papal or pro- testant churches, as being improper and puerile. When looking on a water 'baptistry,' let the image of the sepulchre in the garden, together ^mh the actual scene of the Saviour's burial appear, and the whole charm of the burial by a hasty dip in water, and the argument connected with it, vanishes away like the illusive and evanescent scenei^' of a dissohing view. Li the ordinance of the Lord's supper, communi- cants are not said to die with Christ, as Christians who immerse say that they are 'buried with him,' when hastily immerged. Their own persons pass through no ceremony to represent his crucifixion ; nor is there any such resemblance to the death of Christ in our eating bread and drinking wine, as is attributed to the burial of Christ in immersion. The Lord's supper commemorates his death, but when we receive it we are not dead with him, as the immer- sionist professes to be buried with him, during the in- stant that he is covered with water. The bread which we brea,k and eat, is an emblem of his body as given for us ; and the wine we drink, of his blood, as shed for the REMISSION of sins. This is a beautiful and appropriate rite, in which vre show forth the Lord's death, as an atonement for our sms ; but we do not represent his death and crucifixion, as the buriiil is said to be represented. It is a commemorative sj-m- bol of the great sacrifice, as baptism is the symbol of the purifying influences of the Holy Spirit; and it is solemnized, not because one of a cluster of metai^hors is singled out and construed as being allusive to it. 124 BUllIAL WITH CHRIST BY BArTIS.A[. but ill obedience to a simple and express conimand; aud we thus testify that faith and love of which he is the object, and our communion with each other, as his disciples. In Piom. vi. 6, it is said that ' Our old man is crucified with Christ.' Now we are buried Vvith Christ by baptism, as we are crucified with him, — spi- ritually. Mistaken Eomanists have represented our Lord's death and burial, and spectators have been deeply impressed with such scenes. Immersionists may deem their modeof representing his burial to be the only true and proper mode ; but all such repre- sentations of Scripture fticts are unauthorized, and incongruous with the spirit of Christianity. The passages in which we are described as bemg dead, buried, risen, &c., must all be mterpreted har- moniously with each other, either in a literal or spiri- tual sense; but either principle of interpretation must be fatal to immersion. If it be admitted that this'bui'ial into death by baptism is purely spiritual, what we contend for as its undoubted meaning is con- ceded; and thus the opmion that men are buried with Christ by dipping is relincjuished. But if the literal sense be adopted, the corresponding figures in the context must be also understood literally ; and the impossibility of their being thus understood, must be equally fatal to the opmion that immersion is meant. If we are buried with Christ Ijy being dipped in wa,ter,in what sense are we buried into death ^ It is said that we are baptized eis Jesus Christ, and eis his death. If baptizo means to dip,^ and eis into, as immersion- ists affirm, m what way ai'e we dipped into Jesus Christ, and into his death "^ The crucifixion of the old man vrith Christ, and our being dead with hini, and risen again, must correspond with our being bu- ried with Christ; and if the latter denotes our bemg put under water, what is meant by the former. If the literal sense is given up in one instance, it must be given up altogether; for all these metajdiors must be interpreted by the same rule. To understand BURIAis WITH CHRIST EY BAPT-ISM. 1 20 one of them literally, and others spiritually; to be spiritually crucilied, dead, and risen again, but liter- ally buried with Christ in water, and, as Dr. Carson says, p. 157, to 'die while momentai-ily immei'sed,' is mysticism that is difficult to understand. That spiritual state which is described in Rom. vi. 4, as a burial with Christ by baptism, is described in the next verse, as our being * Planted together in the lilveness of his death.' If the Apostle is to be under- stood in a literal sense, he must here also allude to the mode of baptism; so that baptism cannot be im- mersion, or it must be a partial immersion only, the body ;)eing like a tree, partly in water and partly out. \Vere there a denomination of Christians who prac- tised baptism after the mode which this word 'plan- ted' indicates, they would have better authority for that ]Uode than for immersion; because planting is expressly stated to be a 'likeness' of his death, whereas the baptism is not stated to be a likeness of his burial. The papists of the Iloman and English churches, also maintain that there are allusions to wa- ter baptism in this place; and in order to baptize into Christ's death, and as a 'likeness' of his death, they make the sign of the cross. The only elFectual way to overturn their conclusion, is to deny the sonnd- ne^is of their premises.* * The folloTvicg is a part of the reasonmg of Mr. Peter Edwards, ill his 'Caudid reasons for renouncing the i^rinciples of Audpedo- baptism,' published nearly at the close of the last century. We have here (Rom. vi. 3. 4.) three things; I. a baptizing into Christ, '2. into Ijis death, 3. into his burial ; and the last is made the consequence of the first. To form tlie antithesis, we must distiugiiibh between the life and death of Chi'ist, and the^ it ■will be ; v,e are baptized fiist into the life of C hrist, then into the dt-ath of Christ, and last of all into his burial. Now if baptism brings us into each of these, and one of them, as the 'Baptists' say, is an allusion to the mjde of b.iptiziug, then for the same reason so must the otht?i- two. That is, his life must allude to the mode, so must his death, and so must his burial. And the reason is, because baptism unites us to him in each of these. And if ull these are lo allude to tha. 126 BURIAL WITH CHRIST BY BAPTISM. The only facts to which these figures allude, and upon which they are founded, are the death, burial, and resurrection of Christ. To complete the figura- tive description, it was necessary that we, who are crucified, dead, and risen with Christ, should be viewed as being also buried with him. There is a baptism in- to Christ, uito his death, and into his burial. To un- derstand this, it is not necessary to refer to the idea of immersion, or to any rite, but to the death and bu- rial of Christ, and to baptism by the Spirit. If there is an allusion to water in one place, there must be in the other tv/o places, which would render them unin- telligible. Baptism is sometimes used ritually, Vrith no nioile, I should 1)8 glad to 3:iio\r what kind of mode it must at last be, which is to hear a resorahlance to every one. The life of Christ was action, his death a crucifixion, and his burial the Suciosure of his body in the cavity of a rock. The mode therefore must he threefold ; it must represent action, crucifixion, and in- closing in a rock ; because, to pursue the notion of the 'Baptists,' his life, death, and burial, must all have an allusion to the mode of baptism. There is no sect, I should suppose, that use a mode of baptism to which all these will agree. Tlie Romanists use salt, oil, and spittle; but whether they intend an allusion to the life of Christ, I cannot take upon me to affirm. Yet as they must have some allusion, the salt may allude to his life of teacliing, the spitOe to his life of miracles, and tlae oil to his life of manificeuce. The clergy of the ' Church of England' use the sign of the cross, and tliis is to allude to the cruciiision of Christ. The ' Baptists ' U30 immersion, and this to allude to the burial of Christ. Now if we could unite all these in one, we should have a tolerable allusion to our Lord's life, death, and burial; but when each is taken separately, there is a deficiency in point of allusion. The Eng- lish clergy are deficient in alluding only to the cnxciiixion, but not to the life and burial. The Romanists are deficient in allu- ding only to the life and crucifixion, but not to the burial. The * Baptists' are deficient in alluding only to the burial, but not to the life and crucifixion. I know not whether these different com- munities take their document from this part of holy writ; but certainly they have the same gi'ound, if they choose, to reason in the same way. But as the 'Baptists' avowedly do this, and are at the same time so deficient in the business of allusion, it would become them to set about a reform in the mode of their baptism; it beiijg at present wanting in two articles, viz. the life-and cruci- fixion, that is to say, the sign of the cross, &c. BURIAL WITH CHRIST BY BAPTISM. 127 immediate reference to what is spiritual; and some- times it is used spiritually, with no immediate re- ference to anythmg ritual. Since the word baptism is used Ijy Christ, in Acts i. 5, by Jolui the Baptist in 31ath. iii. 11, by Peter in Acts xi. 16, and by Paul in 1. Cor. xii. 13, & Eph. iv. o, in reference to the Holy Spirit, in express contradistinction to water; why should it be assumed that water baptism is meant, or even alluded to in this ver\' spiritual theme ; and not the promise of the Father, the great gift of the Christian dispensation ? The baptism by which we are buried with Christ into death, is that of the soul, and not of the body; it is a baptism with the Spirit, and not with water; and it is received, not from man, but from the Savioui* himself, according to his own promise. The above exposition of Rom. vi. 4, equally appHes to the parallel passage in Col. ii. 12, 'Buried with him m baptism.' In the jH'eceding verse, the gentile Colossians are said to have been ' Circumcised with the circumcision made without hands, in putting off the body of the sins of the flesh, by the circumcision' of the Spirit 'of Christ.' AYhen it is said that we are •buried with him in baptism,' it is added, 'Wherein also ye are risen with him.' We are not risen from this l3urial in baptism by emerging out of water, but, as is expressly affirmed, ' Through the faith of the operation of God, who hath raised him from the dead.' Both parts of this antithesis must certainly corres- pond with each other, and since it is expressly and repeatedly stated that we are spiritually risen, it must mean that we are spiritually buried, and not that we are immerged in water. The burial of Christ suggests the figure of that change of heart which is effected by renewing grace, and that gi'ace is the baptism of which the Apostle sjieaks. All the transitions which he describes, take place in the Christianas mind, and have no allusion whatever to any rite relating to his body. The cmcifixion and 128 BURIAL WITH CHRIST BY BAPTISM. death wliieh correspond to the eriiciiixi(jii and death of Christ, refer to the death of sm hi tiie soul, and the painful conflicts attendimt upon that death; and the resurrection with Christ is an entrance into 'newness of hfe;' so tliat the burial must also be purely spiri- tual, and not ritual, and if tlie l^urial be spiritual so must the baptism. "VVhy should a spiritual sense be assigned to all these figiu'es but one, and that one be selected, and be literally interpreted, to prop an opinion, and to sanction c\ favourite practice of immerging the bodies of men ? Christ was circumcised, crucified, dead, burigd, and raised to life again, and so are we sjjiri- tually ; but uoiie of these tilings are to be represen- ted by rites. It is not the body of iiesh, but the body of the sins of the flesh tliat dies, and is buried or put away as an otTensiye tkhig, when we receive the bap- tism of the Spirit. As at the resurrection of the dead, we shall leave ail that is corrupt and vile in tlie grave in which we were buried, and shall rise to eternal life in an miaorrupted and glorified nature ; so when bm'ied with Christ through the baptism of the Holy Ohost, that personification of sin which is denom- inated the body of sin, is cast away as a loath- some thing, ajid we rise into a new state of mind, and walk in newness of life. We thus become 'new crea- tures ' through a death mito sin, and a life unto righte- ousness. All this is set fortli, not by dipping persons over head in water, but by the death, burial, and re- surrection of Jesu.s Christ This saving bajitism is that of the Holy Ghost, and it has no more allusion to a bathe in water, than to the fire of a funeral pile. The burial is an allusion to tlie entombment of Christ, and not to the plunging of men, and the baptism to the in- fluence of the Holy Spirit ; and this spiritual burial is stated to be the result of our having been baptized into -Tesus Christ, and baptized into his death. A\ hen- ever imiuersionists read of baptism, their minds are filled witji phantasms of deep water; and being mis- BURIAL TVITH CHRIbT BY BAPTISM. 129 led ))y the sound of these -\vords, they have entirely mistaken their sense, A consideration of the whole drift of the Apostle's argument will faily confirm these views. In the for- mer part of his epistle to the Romtms, he had shown that we are justified hy faith, apart from all acts of obedience to the moral law. He then refutes the ob- jection that that doctrine must encourage sin, and shows that so far from doing so, it leads, in connec- tion vrith rene^dng grac^, to true holiness. He is not writing about autward rit-es, nor alluding to them, but to refute the notion that justification by faith leads to sin ; laid in doing so, he speaks not of im- mersion in water, but of the death, burial, and resur- rection of the Lord, as figurative representations of the transitions to which a- believer's imn'e are crucified, buried, and risen with him spiritually Those persons who have beenimmersed, havenotbeen buried with Christ by baptism into death, unless they have beenbaptized by the Holy Ghost; aney not been immersed. All those who are dead indeed unto sin^ and are risen with Christ to the enjoyment of heavenly blessings, are spiritually baptized into the death of Christ. All these figures agree with each other, the doctrine which they teach agrees with the whole scope and spuit of the gos- pel, and onh- a strained and unnatural interpretation can deduce the idea of water interment. Nevertheless, some Christian brethren believe that in this figurative description of the sanctification of the soul, there is an authority for plunging the body. The circumcision, crucifixion, death and resurrection, are all sniritual. 130 DIPPIXG^AND NOT SPRINKLING, AN INNOVATION. but the burial with Christ, by the sanctifying influence of the Holy Spirit, which is the true baptism, they deem to afford sanction to a kmd of water burial, by bemg momentarily dipped. It is much to be regTetted that this water hallucination has been obtruded into this sacred and beautiful cluster of figures, which set forth the most momentous change to which the mind of man can be subject; that these words should be so often quoted in defence of a rite, rather than to un- fold and enforce the high privilege of l^eing purified from sin; that any persons should have been deluded with the idea that they were 'buried with Christ by baptism into death,' when they were submerged in water, rather than when they received the sanctifying influences of the Holy Spiiit, without which neither sprinklers nor dippers can be saved; and that the form of a lx)dily observance should divide the Chris- tian church, and di^mite those brethreii who share the same spiritual blessings in Jesus Christ. The advocates of the deadly error of baptismal re- generation regard 'bapti&m,' in the passages under consideration, as alluding to water beiptism, though tliey regard 'buried' as having a spiritual s^nse ,' and they maintain that the spiritual state i:* attained by the observance of the outward rite. If to overturn their error we deny the literal senr<« of baptism, by that denial we also relincjuish the opinion that bap- tism means immer&ion, and that we must be immer- sed to be buried ; but if the premises be admitted, it must de^'olve upon those who make the admission, to show that the inference in favour of baptismal regen- eration is illogical and untrue. DIPPING, AND NOT SPRINKLING, AN INNOVATION. It liaving now been shown that John the Baptist, and the apostles under the authorit}' of our divine Lord, baptized by shedding forth the element, and not by dipping the object, it is certain that any other form of ba]:)ti^vm must have been an innovation in the DIPPING, AND NUT SPRINKLING, AN INNOVATION. 131 church. As immersion did ijot originate in any di- \-ine appointment, its origin must have been human. Nor is it surprising that it should have been so, for even in the second century, the natural aversion of the human heart to spiritual worship and service, and the natural tendency to formalism, began to appear, in the attempts vdiich were successfully made to sub- stitute the pomp and circumstance of imposing forms, in the place of humble-minded, meek, and heavenly piety. Our brethren who immerse aflirm that sprink- ling was an mnovation. But ail the arguments ad- duced to show tliat sprinklingor shedding forth is the true mode of baptism, prove to the contrary; and there is an additional reason to assign against such an opin- ion, VIZ. that this alleged corruption is unlike any of the corruptions of Christianity. All Christian rites and forms of worship are distin- guished by their simplicit}^ and ai'e conveniently and easily observed; for 'the kingdom of God cometh not with observation,' and consists not in bodily ex- ercises which profit nothing, but in 'righteousness, })eace, and joy in the Holy Ghost.' Corruptions in the rites and foi-ms of the church, have always gone from the less to the greater, from the plain;^ the sim- ple, and the unostentatious, to showy and ceremoniid parade. But if immersionists are right, corruiDticn must in this one solitary instance have been an ex- ception to the universal tendency, and have gone from the gTeat to the lesser, and from the complex and sho^\T ceremony to the simple and more practi- cable fonn. Every student of history is aware that enlargement, and not abridgment, was the chai'acter- istic tendency of ancient times, in reference to rites. The men of those times, instead of cultivating the heavenly-minded graces of spiritual religion, sought to make its rites important and imposing ; to gratify the pride of the unsanctified heart with the idea of 'much serving;' and to have eveiything that is exter- nal in religion overdone. Is it credible that in one I 132 BAPTISM IN THE EARLY CHURCnES. solitary instance, and that instance an outward rite, innovation should have taken an inverted course, have gone in a direction contrar}^ to that which it took in every other instance, and have reduced an ostentatious ceremony to a simple and easy rite ? Was such a change likely to be introduced in any of those ages when superstition made every possible addition to the rubric of Christianity, and gTeatly magnified the importance of religious ceremonies ; and when the tendency to supersede the inv.ard and spu'itual life, the imassummg and self-denymg spirit of Christianity, and to resolve religion into external forms and vam show, was completely in the ascen- dant ? Such a hypothesis — apart from the. historical evidence to the contraiy, is in the highest degree improbable. BAPTISM IN THE EARLY CKURCIIES. The testimony of ecclesiastical history is of no value, as a guide to truth, any farther than as it agrees with the Holy Scriptures. Some of the wildest phantasms of the human mind may find sanction in the writings of the 'early fathers;' but even amongst their most erratic ^Titiiigs, imperishable truth is some- times found, in indistinct and broken forms. Averse as human nature is to spiritual religion, it can never do too much to multiply and magnify re- ligious rites. The proud and self-righteous heart of man, instead of being submissive to the righteous- ness of God by faith in Christ, and meekly seeking the sanctifying influences of the Holy Spirit, is ever wishful to ' do ' much to be saved, iind is prone to ascribe undue importance to external forms. Many evidences of this spirit appear in the early history of the church. Its growth and development were rapid. Even in the second centun, \eiy childish ceremo- nies and pernicious errors began to prevail ; and jNIosheim affirms that there was a perplexing variety in the ritual of the eaiiy churches. To such an ex- BAPTISM IN THE EARLY CHURCHES. 133 tent had these formalities and abuses grovm in the fom-th century, that Augustine complained that Chris- tians were in a worse case than the Jev/s, and counsel- led that the yoke and burden should be taken away. ]Many of these innovations related to the sacred ordinance of baptism. We leai-n from several win- ters on ecclesiastical antiquities, whose descriptions are supported by quotations from early Christian au- thors, that the following was the mode of baptism, in some of the early centuries. Candidates, who had not been baptized in infiuicy, were initiated as cate- chumens by various solemnities. They then passed through three stages of probation, with accompanying rites; and before being baptized were subject to the imposition of hands, to abstinence from some kinds of food and indulgence, and for twenty days to exor- cism from evil spii'its, by prayer and insuuiation, or being breathed upon. Catechetical exercises also were observed, and saliva and salt were used. Before bemg immersed the candidates openly renounced Satan, puffed and spat in a westerly direction, v/here he was supposed to be, and clapped their hands in derision of him. Then turning tovrards the east, as though they thus turned towards the Lord Jesus, vrith their hands and eyes uplifted, they declared tlieir faith in, and their submission to him. They were then anointed with oil, were three times crossed, were stripped of their garments, to denote the put- ting away of sin, stood naked in the presence of many of their own sex, and were then anointed all over with .oil. The v>'ater having been blessed to render it efficacious, the men and women went into the bath apart. The priest then depressed their heads under the water three times, and in some cases, after- wards sprhikled them, it is said, repeating the usual form of words. After leaving the water they were again anomted and crossed, but this time with ointment, and were clothed with nev>' white garments, to denote the nutting on of Christ's rigliteousness, and received i2 134 BAPTISM IS THE EARLY CHURCHES. milk and honey, as svnibols of spiritual blessings. Lamps were put in their hands as indications of spi- ritual illumination, and of the light of a holy example. The bishop afterwards implored the Holy Spirit upon them, and professed to impart the spiritual gift by the imposition of hands in confirmation. Their sins were supposed to be then washed away, they received the Lord's supper, and were deemed fit for heaven. Such were the absurd and indecent forms observ- ed in ancient immersions. Those forms all rested upon equal authority, and were all, so far as w^e can learn from history, coeval ^ith dipping ; for we never read of that ceremony until we read of its supersti- tions and puerile appendages, and until human in- novations had inundated the church. x\s modern immersionists do not follow the exam})le of the an- cients, they certainly should not plead their authority. They reject so much of their testimony respecting immersion as they do not approve ; but, as an au- thority for a practice which the inspired Scriptures do not sanction, vre are bound to reject it altogether. To do one thing on such authority, and to refuse to do many others, is manifestly inconsistv.^nt. Such examples however are not w(jrthy of imitation in any- thing. The simple rite of the apostles and the com- plex and formidable rite of these ancient churches, are plainly opposed to each other. But the present practice of dipping'-R-ith clothes on, is unlike either the religious or sanitary purifications of the Jews, or the immersions of ancient Christians ; it is neither an ac- tual nor an emblematical cleansing. The -J ews washed the skin in privacy, and the ancient Christians im- mersed people when they were naked as Adam and Eve before the fall, and pleaded that the jiractice was apostolic ; but dipping with clothes on is a de- vice of modern times. The ancients appear to have authority witli our friends who dip, so far as they agree with them, but to have no authority when tliey diifer from them. No BAPTISM IN THE EARLY CHURCHES. 135 instance of immersion can be found recorded in anci- ent writers, until they mention infant baptism as a prescriptive custom; so that if antiquity strengthens one opinion of the immersionist, it equally disproves and demolishes another. Though the ceremonious ancients practised three immersions, with concomitant puerilities, they did not deny the validity of sprinkling or shedding forth. Justin, who was martyred at Eome in 16-5, speaking of baptism, does not call it immersion, for the prac- tice appears not to have grovrn up when he v>TOte his Apologies, but being emblematically 'washed with water;' and, as stated in p. 31, he denominated pagan lustrations by sprinkling, imitations of the true bap- tism. In Latui authors of the second century, baptizo does not appear to be rendered by niodai words wdiich mean to immerse, but by generic v/ords v.hich mean to wash, irrespective of the mode. Sprinkling was sometimes emblematically called vrashing; and Paul states that the washing of regeneration is effected by the shedding forth of the Holy Ghost. Some of the writings attributed to the ancients are probably spu- rious, but if they all were genume, they are of no value as expositions of Scrijiture. We may in gene- ral receive their testimony to matters of fact as au- thentic ; and from them we learn that baptism v^as sometimes administered at natural streamlets, that washing and afterwards immersion preceded the or- dmance, until it superseded it, but that the validity of spriidding was never authoritatively denied. On the contrary, it was distinctly admitted, and practically recognised, in various instances. In clinical bai)tism3 no otiier mode was practicable. Thus in the year 337, the emperor Constantine was baptized by Euse- bius, as he lay in bed, a few days before his death, other prelates being present, in commemoration of which event a coin wa.s made. Persons who were thus baptized were not afterwards dipped when they recovered. They were indeed sometimes refused the I 3 136 BAPTISM IX THE EARLY CHURCHES. office of tlie ministry, not because the validity of their baptism was questioned, but from the want of confi- dence in the sincerity and soundness of a sick-bed con- version. Lactantius, an eloquent mhiister, and the tutor ofCrispus the son of Constantine, is recorded to have baptized out of a pitcher; and a similar baptism is recorded of Romanus, a soldier, by Laurentius, just before he was martyred, in 'J6S. Athanasius,the Coun- cil ofLaodicea, and Gregory Xazianzen, a great writer, and an archbishop of Constantinople, spake of bap- tism by sprinkling as valid. Men who practised trine immersion, whose prejudices were all in favour of that rite, and whose native tongue was Greek, could not but recognize the sheding forth of the element, as the genuine relic of pure and simple times, and acknowledge it as tnie baptism. Cyprian, who be- came a bishop in 248, sitting in council with sixty-six other bishops, Jerome, who became a presbyter or bishop in 378, and other early Christian writers apply the prediction of Ezekiel — 'Then will I sprinkle clean water upon you, &c.' to baptism; which shows that they deemed sprinkUng to be a true mode of baptism. Intlie first ages of Christianity, when tlie churches of Christ had no spacious buildings, with baths and vestries, for theii' use, and when they often met in se- cluded places to observe the sacred oi\linaiices, it was scarcely possible for the many new converts, and their households, who were baptized, to be dipped. In the most ancient pictorial representations of bap- tism, which have survived the spoliations of time, the baptized appear standmg in shallow water, and the administrators are depicted as shedding forth the element upon their heads. As the Christian rubric was too simple for the churches of the third century, they began to imitate the more im2)osing ritual of the lav/ of Moses. That law directed the unclean to wash themselves, before being cleansed by the sprinklmgoi the v/ater of sepa- BAPTISM IN THE EARLY CHURCHES. 137 ration; and a similar practice grew up as a prelimi- nary to baptisDi. The ceremonious orientals would not be outdone hj the Jews, in the extent of their lustrations. Ih the course of time, the preliminary w^cishing, having grown uj^ to a complete immersion, supplanted the true baptism; as it agreed more fully with the incoiTect ideas then prevalent of being born of water, and being buried with Christ by baptism. They magnified the importance of being put under water, ascribed a meaning to baptism to -which the Divine Institutor never referred, changed the simple rite whicli lie appointed into a cumbrous ceremony, and by various appendages trimsfoi-med it into a solemn mummeiT, luitil the true rite fell into gen- eral desuetude. True Baptists omit the preliminary rite, as being unauthorized and improper, and ad- minister the primitive and apostolic baptism only; whereas immersionists omit the Christian baptism, and observe that rite — but without its foolish associa- tions, — which was introduced in an age when super- stition olxs cured the spu'itual truths of Christianity, and transformed and magnified its outward rites. It does not appear that the validity of sprinkling was ever deiried, or that the rite was ever entirely laid aside. It was observed in the baptism of the sick, and mere generally in some cold and arid climates, where the innovating rite was impracticable. Amidst the ferment of the Eeformation, a fanatical sect sprang up in Wittemburgh, which depreciated the Bible, pretended to supernatural revelations, taught many vagaries, and denied the validity of the true baptism, and the duty to baptize any infants. (D'Aubigne's Hist. Eef. b. ix. ch. 7.) Superstitious orientals still dip three times, and some of them, it is said, add sprinkling to trine immersion. Since the Preformation unchained the Bible, a smaU numl)er only of the Protestants have adopted that rite. It is practically discarded by an immense majority of Biblo I 4 ' 138 BAPTISM IX THE FARLT CHURCHES. Students; and as Christians learn to regard the New Testament as its own interpreter, and not to inter- pret it by the pagan vocabulary, immersion will doubtless sink into disuse as a religious rite; and like some other thmgs, which have been defended with equal learning, and held v.ith equal firmness and devotion, have no existence but in history. Some historians, and other modern writers, have stated that dipping was the apostolic and primitive rite; but there are no credible authorities to sub- stantiate such a statement. The New Testament, our only sure and allsufficient guide, is plainly and entirely opposed to it. Some learned and good men have been perhaps too ready, without due examination, to adopt those errors as truths, which tradition and antiquity have sanctioned. Successive generations have received those relics as genuine, which previous generations, equally credulous, received and handed down to them; and thus, prescription havmg usurped the sacred functions of Scripture, sundry doctrines, customs, names, and forms of thought, are current in society, which the infallible test enables us to de- tect as counterfeits. The eminent men, in whose works are found a few unguarded and incorrect ex- pressions relating to baptism, were in general engaged in contests with serious error, and lived in troublous times, when more urgent and absorbing matters than modes of baptism requii-ed then whole atten- tion. They themselves however were not submerged, nor did they dip others. Though a few words in favour of immersion may be extracted out of their voluminous writings, their matured judgment, and then* whole practice were opposed to it; so that if their names are of any weight they are against im- mersion. But we have only one master, even Christ; and though wise and holy men may aid us in learn- ing the true sense of the oracles of God, we must pay homage to no book but his. 139 THE SriRITUAL NATUllE Of CHRISTIANITY OPTOSED TO IMMERSION. Cbristiauity is eminently a spiritual and not a rit- ual religion. Though it requires us to serve God with tlie body as well as with the spirit, and to sol- emnize the sister rites of ba2)tism and the Lord's supper, its formal observances are as simple as pos- sible ; and it reigns, and imparts purity and peace to the minds of its discijjles, oidy when it is enthroned in their ati'ections. The services of the law were distinguished by their pictorial and emblematical character. They ad- dressed the ima;j;ination and the senses, much more than the understanding. The visible and form den- grossed the attention of the worshipper, rather than the spiritual and unseen. The priests were not pub- lic expositors of truth, like Cliristian ministers, so much as hierophants. They were robed in rich vest- ments, and conducted a gorgeous ritual in an equally gorgeous temple. Confessions were made not so much by the sinner unbaring his heart and rehears- ing his sins, as by the shedding of blood in sacrifice, and the victim being consumed with fire on the altar; and praise was olfered by substantial contributions of the fruits of the land. When the Israelite became unclean, he washed himself and his clothes, and re- ceived the emblematical sprmkling from one wlio was clean. In the then state of mankind, it pleased God to ordain, as sufficient for the time, a system of in- structive hieroglyphs and emblems, in addition to the moral code. That system was a complex and mag- nificent parable. But in the gospel, the kingdom of God came not with observation. That kingdom is within us. Tem- ples, altars, and shrines form no part of it; for renewed hearts are temples and altai's for God. Its sacrifices are those of gratitude, benevolence, loyalt}% and self-consecration to the Lord ; its purification is I 6 140 IMMERSION OPPOSED TO THE GOSPEL. that of the rniud by the Holy Spirit; and it enjoins godlikeness rather than bodily exercises. Agreeably with its distmetive spirituality, its two emblematical rites are unconnected with anything that is complex, difficult, or imposing to the senses, and are eminently simple. Its rubric is contained in models rather than directions, and is adapted to the understanding of a child. Its rites are not intended to strike the senses, but to aid the mind in its apprehension of spii'itual things, and to foster confidence and peaceful emotions ; and not to excite nervous trepidation and dread. Little is seen in them by the eye, but much is suggested to the mind ; so that the attention may not be occupied so much with what is done, as with the reason why it is done. The ceremonial is simple, in order that the understanding and affections, being but little engaged with the yisible symbob may be dii'ected the more freely and fully to its spiritual meaning. Y\liat dis- sonance does immersion introduce into this beautiful and spiritual economy ! In that rite the attention of the administrator, of the subject, and of the specta- tors, is so much absorbed in the difficult and disagree- able form, as to be hardly capable of appreciating the spiritual objects of baptism ; indeed the minds of some immersed persons must be totally unfitted for any spiritual or devotional exercises, during the i)erform- ance of the dreaded ceremony; whereas baptism by sprinkling is perfectly accordant with the charac- ter of Christianity, and its administration is most favourable to meditation and prayer. IMMERSION OPPOSED TO THE MILD AND GENTLE SPIRIT OF THE GOSPEL. Some of the rites of the ceremonial law, though adapted to the intellectual and moral state of the ancient Israelites, Avere costly, painful, and burden- some. But the genius of Christianity is eminently gentle and attractive. The cross which the Lord commands us to bear, i:»roceeds not from him but from IMMERSION 0PP0SI-:D TO THE GOSPEL. 141 tlie world. He has imposed no duties wliicli are irk- some to the ilesli, uor iustituted any ordinance that is calculated to excite pain, or even diffidence, in the most timid ajid sensitive mind. AMiatever he im- posed, he afimned to be * easy and light.' Matt. xi. 30. All paijiful inflictions and emVjaiTassing ser\ices ai'e alien to the mild and suasive spirit .of rehgiou. Had the Lord enjoined any burdensome rite, the Christian would not hesitate but hasten to obey. But the whole spii'it and character of the gospel form a strong 'a- ters of Enon and Jordan, — from the descent of Philip and tlie Ethiopian to, or into, the water, — and from the supposition, strange, low, and superstitious, that a Christian is buried with his Lord by being put un- der water. No dipping of the person was ever com- manded by God under the fonner disi^ensation. No public dij^pings of the person were practised either by Jews or heathens, as rites of purification. Such an act is unsuitable to the meaning of baptism. It would have been neither decent nor practicable^ in the cir- cumstances of the baptisms recorded in the New Testament. It is not supported either by the literal or the figurative language of the Scrijjtures. But the public sprinkling of the person with water was a rite of DiA-ine appointment. It was often practised by the Jews and olher nations. It is most appro- priate as an emblem of religious purity. It is conso- nant with all the statements, and all the omissions, of the sacred writers. It agrees vdtli all their lan- guage, literal and figurative. The one mode of bap- tism is as much opposed to the universality, gentle- ness, and spirituality, of the Christian system, as the other is in accordance with these characteristics. We conclude, therefore, that the baptism by water •^vhich was instituted by our Lord, and observed by Lis apostles and the first disciples, was administered, not by putting the persons to be baptized under water, ijut by sprinkling tbem with water.' The word of God is the only sure criterion of that truth which no dogmatism can destroy, and which 110 prejudice can pervert. Antiquit}-, tradition, trans- lations, and the opinions and concessions of distin- guished men, are often alleged in favour of immer- sion; but these things are all merely huma-i, and they all fail to establish it as the ordinance of God. k2 152 COXCLUDIXG OBSERVATIONS. All human acts aud opinions must be discarded, as being totally incompetent to deteimine authorita- tively what is the will of God. He has guarded the purity of the Bible, by a special Providence, for the same reason that he gave it to the world. The more thoroughly the sacred book is examined, with an un- prejudiced mind, the clearer and stronger does the great body of circumstantial evidence in favour of baptism by sprinkling appear. In the advocacy of immersion, strong words and feelings are often mis- taken for strong arguments. The immersion theory has no solid foundation, and no spiritual correspon- dence ; there is no command, example, or even meta- phor to sanction it; but it supersedes the ancient symbol which God apj^ointed, and the Saviour per- petuated, ^vithout authority and vv'ithout use. In en- tering the spiritual temple of God, those Christians who have been sprinkled in the name of the Father,Son, and Holy Ghost, have been subject to the only pro- per ablution at the font, which, as Dr. H alley remarks, the Divine Architect has placed at its porch. It is often affirmed by writers in favour of immer- sion, that nothing can be baptism that differs from Christ's institution; that what is not commanded is virtually forbidden, as will worship ; that no additions should be made, by human authority, to the positive appointments of Christ; and that to altera rite, is in reality to institute a new rite that is not sanctioned by heaven. Now as it has been shown that immersion was not instituted by Christ, and has no divine au- thoritv' or sanction, and that the true mode of baptism consists in the descent of the elementby sprinkling, it behoves our beloved lirethren, even upon their own showing, to rehnquish their present practice, and to receive the true baptism from those who have them- selves been duly ba])tized. That immersion will ulti- mately be abandoned, may he ex]:»ected with all the confidence that a strong faith in the power of trutli can inspire. But the human mind cannot precipitately CONCLUDING OBSERVATIONS. 153 surrender its cherished belief, and the objects which have been intrenched in its strong affections and pre- judices. Its movements must be slow and 2)rogressive. i\lauy persons, who seek after truth as a 'hidden trea- sure/ receive it with joy. Others however, whose earliest and fondest recollections, whose endearing associa- tions of family, friendship, and conversion to God, and whose pious toils, sacrihces, prayers, and denomina- tional attachments, have all been connected with im- mersion, must feel it to be no small task to recognise an error, and an innovation, in that rite which they had always regarded with devoted confidence, as an ordinance of God. To prosektes the difficulty must be still greater. In adopting immersion they sincerely believed that they had found ' a more excellent way,' and they submitted to it as an act of obedience to Christ. For a person to acknowledge that he aban- doned the truth when he imagined that he embraced it, and that he renounced the ordinance of heaven when he believed that he found it in an earthly illu- sion, and for him to retrace that step as erroneous by which he fondly thought he was led to the truth, is almost more than hunum nature can be expected to 8ubmit to. It is natural that he who has been pros- elyted to an opinion, should be most anxious to con- vince both himself and others that he turned from a vrrong way to the right, aiid that therefore he should be a more zealous advocate of that opinion than those who where educated in its belief. But the claims of truth and the will of Christ are paramount, and at his feet all human pride and prejudice must be cast away. Such feelings are most unfavourable to the acquisition of truth, and have often led men to reject it as a vile and worthless thing. But the sincere and anxious in- quirer, who may have read the jH'eceding pages with displeasure, is recommended calmly and thoughtfuUv to review the argument again. Do not hastily reject it, lest in doing so, you should reject that which is tine. Should vou not vield to an argfumcnt which vou 154 CONCLUDING OBSERVATIONS. are unable to vanquish ? You may perhaps discover some assailable points therein, but if the objections against dipping appear more decisive than the reasons which have been assigned in its favour ; if, when weigh- ed in an impartial balance, the evidence preponder- ates in favour of spiinlding, must not a conscience that is truly loyal to Christ, lead you to surrender the most cherished opinion, rather than oppose a rite which he ordained, and to which he deigned to submit. Most men are probably subject to some degree of prejudice, and the strongest prejudices of men are commonly identified with theii' greatest errors ; so that though they can "."indicate the truth in aChiistian spir- it, when their errors are attacked, their tempers are endangered. In papal and protestant churches, stur- dy prejudice often appears as the defender of vul- nerable forms and rites, and often resists unanswer- able arguments. Every attempt to disarm and subdue it, in some minds, but adds to its inveteracy and strength. But truth will live and reign when we and our prejudices are gone from the earth. It becomes us as Christians to cultivate that cliild-iike spirit which is distinguished for simplicity,gentleness,and a wilhng- ness to learn. ^Ye may argue respecting the rites of religion until we lose its spirit, and transgress its lavrs ; and our energies, instead of being devoted to the salva- tion of men, maybe so directed against each other, that in the attempt to vanquish others, we may ourselves be vanquished by an unsanctified temper. The undue importance that is practically attached to an outward rite, and that rite merely human, has protluced its natural results in the minds of some of its adherents. I speak not merely of the assumption of the sacred name of 'Baptist,' either as being in- appropriate to those who assume it, or as implying that we the tiiie Baptists are unbaptized; I speak not only of the concentration of the mind on one rite, and that rite misunderstood, having a natural tendency to hinder the growth of a largeness of heart, and to lead CONCLUDING OBSERVATIONS. 155 US to magnify the fonas and depreciate the spirit of piety; or of the uuwaiTaii table spirit which leads men to take upon themselves to affirm, that holy Christians are unfit to approach the Lord's table, because they are undijDped ; but I refer to the excesses into Avhich some immersionists have fallen. When a powerful im- petus is given to certain minds, the momentum they have obtained leads them on to a tenninus much be- yond the station where others deem it proper to stop. Thus in the early ages, when the form of baptism was changed and magnified, the doctrine of baptismal re- generation sprang up, and has deluded the world for sixteen centuries, and is still held by some of those who have practically returned to the primitive form. And nov,' that immersion is again invested with undue importance, nev,' sects have arisen which deride Christ- ian experience, magnify the virtue of the 'baptistry/ as though mercy and purity were found through the water, and dip for the remission of sins. If being plunged in the name of God were really so efficacious, it must be wise to postpone the ceremony to as late a period in life as possible, so that all the previous sins may be washed away. This however is a most serious error; and it behoves the immersionists, in their attempts to establish and spread their opinions, to jniard af^ainst the dano^er of maoiiifvinp- their dis- tinctive rite, lest others should go still further than themselves, and teach delusive and dangerous heresies. The S2)irit of mind in which we solemnize a rite, is certainly more important than our being precisely cor- rect in its formal observance. If persons are dipped who, owing to their education, or to their having been misled by mistaken teachers, sincerely believe it to be the law of God, and who have been placed in circumstan- ces unfavourable to the knov/ledge oftruth, they submit to immersion, though it be a human iimovation, as the ordinance of the Lord; and as an act of well meant though mistaken ol)edience, we doubt not that it will be accepted of God. The form thev observe is wrong, K 4 166 CONCLUDING OBSERVATIONS. but their motive in observing it is right. But if ob- stinate self-will, prejudice, or pride, should prevent persons from being willing to learn, should lead them to hear such exj^ositions only as agree with their own cherished views, and to refuse to listen to such as contravene them, however true they may be, it is manifest that they believe a doctrine to be false, partly because they do not wish it to be true. Their error is not absolutely free from sin. If, though we avail ourselves of all accessible aids in the study of the inspired volume, and pursue that study with an anxious, devout, and reverent heart, we by reason of human frailty, mistake the true form of a rite, and if we observe it as we conscientiously understand it, we trust that God will be pleased with our sincere en- deavours. When a mistake originates in the weak- ness of our judgment, and not in wi'ong disjiositions of mind, he will rather pity us as erring creatures, than condemn us as wicked; for it is better to ob- serve a mistaken rite in a Christian spirit, than a true rite with an evil heart. All moral duties are so plainly defined that to mistake theii* meaning is im- possible. But the Christian rites are defined with less strictness, the spnitual import being more im- portant than the outward forms, so that we are not bound by a rubric of cojoious and specific details. But it never recognises bathing as baptizing. Were we, with our views of the will of God, to be dipped in his name, so far from being pleasing to him, it would be taking his name in vain. And yet some advocates of that rite treat us as though a difference of opin- ion from them were an act of disloyalty to Christ. They deny that our baptisms are acts of obedience, though he will accept them as such ; not only because they are administered according to the form that was observed under his own superintendence and direc- tion, but because also they are administered in the spirit of true obedience. Even if their opinion be law to them, it certainly is not law to tliose who, un- COXCLUDING OBSERVATIONS. 157 der the guidance of the sacred oracles, are con- strained to believe it to be untrue. The advocates of a i)unctilious regard to forms, and especially when those forms are human, should consider that they lay themselves open to a charge of formalism. The churches which rej ect theii' Christian brethren from the Lord's table, in common with the unregenerate and impenitent, because they are undipped, however conscientious they may be, appear to betray a spirit of uncharitableness that is a lingering relic of past ages of intolerance, buch minds as are subject to that spirit, fictitiously attach to a human error all the importance of an infallible truth. Gentleness is generally the associate of truth, and uncharitableness is as frequently the associate of er- ror. Those advocates of error who have been most vehement, and who, like Dr. Carson, have used very intemperate, unloving, and unholy words, may foster the 2)rejudices of believers in their own o2:>inion, but to others, their spirit appears as unamiabie, as their reasonings are fallacious. Such language as theirs is neither pleasing to God, useful to men, nor hon- ourable to themselves. It may sometimes be a duty to expose self-sufficiency, to chastise flippancy, and to humble pride ; but passion and prejudice are sorry substitutes for clear and conclusive argument. It be- comes us to devote as much greater attention and zeal to the spiritual truths and privileges of the gos- pel, than to outward ordinances, as'they are of greater imjDortance. Christians should also cease to be an- gry with each other, and carefully abstain from the sin of counting each other as enemies, because they hold and advocate different views of truth. Let no man, when he finds it difficult to refute an argument, de- scend to the useless and sinful work of labelling it with foul and insulting epithets. It may be easier to designate it with such words as nonsense, blas- phemy, trifling, and the like, than to confute it, but such language will not con\'ince any one's judgment K 5 loS CONCLUDING OBSERVATIONS. nor prepossess his feelings in favour of sentiments which are thus defended. Christian discussion should be conducted with meekness and fear, aud none of those passions which savour of Satan, be pennitted to lay their polluting hands on the truths and laws of heaven. It ill becomes an erring man to affect the infallible, and to fulminate anatliemas. Every one should be willing to hear an opponent patiently, — for what have vre to fear if we ai*e right ? and should treat him with becoming consideration and defer- ence The tongue of controversy must learn to speak in gentle tones, and all Christians to be deferential, forbearing, and tender-hearted. ^Vhen the mild and heavenly spirit of the gospel reigns in those who now transgress tlie law of love, and when the kingdom of God comes into all our hearts with power, though uniformity may continue to be a fiction, to which no legislature can give an actual existence, heaven and earth will behold a union of Christian hearts, exten- sive as the boundaries of the Churcli of God, and durable as his throne. T. KIRK, PRINTER, NOTTIXGHAM. APPENDIX. 1. Baptizo. The following remarks are added in confirmation of the statement that baptizo is used in Scripture, in a sense different to that of the classics. Words are mutable like other earthly things. The mutations in the meaning of Greek words daring more than a thousand years, and the different senses attached to them in^Greece, and in foreign countries, may be readily conceived from the difference in the language of our ancient and modern writers, and in that of the educated and uneducated classes of society; and from the differ- ent dialects spoken in England, and the altered sense in which some of our words are used in the colonies. Ideas and things are so much more numerous than words, tha* many words in all languages haye necessarily various meanings. As new ideas and things come into existence, and old languages are introduced into other countries than those to which they be- long, words come to be used in new senses, until their primary sense ceases to be suggested when they are used. Words are spoken correctly when they are thus used in senses contrary to those which etymology sanctions, because the altered sense is fixed by use, and they are understood as they are intended to be. Thus though Hebraistic Greek would have been incorrect at Ath- ens, inthe time of Xenophon, it was correct at Jerusalem in the time of our Lord. Josephus, and Philo-Juda?us, who was born 30. B. C. being learned men, and well versed in the classics, are said to have aimed at a pure Attic Greek diction ; but the iuspired wH- ters used the Jewish idiom, so that there are words in the New Testament which are not found in any Greek author, and others which have quite a different sense to that of the classics. A number of words have been selected which are^^used in dif- ferent senses in the classics and in Scripture. The following are 163 APPENDIX. examples. Adiakritos, class, confused; scrip, impartial. Aion, class, time, age; scrip, the earth, mankind. Anathema, class, a sacred offering; scrip, accursed, excommunicated. DaimoniodeSy class, divine; scrip, devilish. Z)oa:«, class, an opinion ; scrip, brightness, glory. Kopazo, class, to toil, to he weary ; scrip, to cease, to be calm. Opheilema, class, a debt ; scrip, a sin. Pneu- matikos, class, breathing, -windy ; scrip, spiritual. Baptizo is a word of infrequent occmrence in the«classics. Out of the fifty instances quoted by Dr. Godwin, it means to dip but in three; and in those three it is not certain whether it means a partial or an entire dipping; in most of the other instances it means to be overwhelmed, or sunk. If the usual classical sense of baptizo belonged to that word in the New Testament, the com- mand to baptize men would certainly require us to drown them ; for baptizo commonly refers to the act and condition of being sunk, as a wrecked ship is in the sea, and denotes a continued submersion therein, and not a momentary dip. Josephus em- plo^^s the very word of our Lord (baptiz antes) in his narrative of the drowning of Aristobulus, a youthful high priest, by the ser- vants of Herod : 'Continually pressing him down, and baptizing him as in sport, while he was swimming, they completely suffo- cated him.' Ant. xv. 3. It is clearly impossible that our Lord, in using the same word, could have meant the same thing. Accord" ing to the classics, objects are baptized which are not dipped, but are in the state of being under water, by whatever means they are brought into that state ; as Aristotle speaks of the shore being baptized {haptizesthai) with the tide; and as, in Lucian, Timon speaks of pressing a person down who is in water, and baptizing (baptizonta) him, that he may not be sble to rise again. As bap- tizo means to dip in a very few instances only, in all the classics, do the immersiouists use it in its common classical sense? Un- doubtedly they do not, nor can they baptize, as the classics com- monly describe baptism, without drowning people. They neither baptize in the usual classical sense, nor in the Scripture sense. Tliat classical sense must be given up by them as it is by us. We must look to the divine oracles only, as the true exponent of thsir own language. In the classics baptizo is always applied to common things, and is never applied to sacred things ; but in the Scriptures, on the contrary, it is used about a hundred times in a sa- cred sense, and is never applied to common things. Being chang- APPENDIX. 161 ed ia reference to its objects, it is also used in an altered sense ; and from denoting a complete submersion, apart from the mode, it denotes, symbolically, a complete cleansing, apart from the mode; so that baptisma is the designation of the rite of emblem- atical pmificatiou, and refers to the design and character of the ordiuaace, and not to the mode of b:iptizing. 2. It should have been stated in reference to the self- ablutions enjoined upon Israel, that though they were intended to promote cleanlLuess and health, they certainly vere eujoined as i-elig-ious duties, and were necessary io constitute a complete purification. 3. *As in the Hebrew sprinkle.' p. 3i. These words were in- serted by mistake. There is, in Psalm li. 7, a reference to the rite of spriukling with hyssop, but that rite is not mentioned in the Hebrew. 4 . Proselyte baptism. As the Jew who ^. as ir&c?ean was ex- cluded from society, andfrom religious privileges-, until, afterhis ob- servance of the self- ablutions, he was sprinkled, it is not likely that that rite would be omitted when a gentile became a proselyte, since God enjoined the same mode g£ ijuriiicationupon both. The gendle was probably initiated as the Jew was restored, by pri- vately washing himself, and being publicly sprinkled by an ad- lainiatrator. BY THE SAME AUTHOR, Sold by J. Bakewell, 80, Newgate Street London, PRICE 4cl. CHRISTIANITY, ITS PROGRESS AND PRESENT IMPEDIMEXT8. A'LECrURE delivered in the General Baptist Chapel, Stoney Street, Nottingham, on the 23rd of Nevtmber, i>>4 8, before the United Nonconformist Ministers and Churches of that Town. 'An exceedingly solid and elaborate composition, pervaded by a spirit offire, and distinguished by strong eloquence, \yere we to note all that is excellent we should transcriLe every f^age. C HRiSTiAx Witness. •As a specimen of powerful argument, expressed in eloquent and forcible language, there can be but one opinion of its merits. The principles it advocates are the great principles of religious freedom, and such as are essential to the purity acd advance- ment of Christianity.'— Methodist New Connkxion Magazine. 'This pamphlet is worthy of recommendation.' — Nonconformist. 'Able and eloquent.' — Nottingham Review. PRICE 8d. SAXCTIFICATIOX EXPLAINED AND ENFORCED. 'A very valuable Discourse.' — Revivalist. ' We earnestly commend this Discourse to the consideration and prayerful perusal of all our readers. It abounds in manly thought", and contains many poAverfully written paragraphs. Mr. M. does not tieat his subject superficially. We have not for years read a work on the subject that has gratified us more. We ten- der him many thanks for his valuable Discourse. It is no ordi- nary production.' — Methobist New Connexion Magazine. *It is very creditable to its Author, and it will, we doubt not, be read with much spiritual profit.' — Wesleyan Methoust Asso- ciation Magazine.