The prevailing usage of any word determines the sense it bears, when found in a command of Christ. We have seen, not only that the prevailing usage of the Greek language determines the meaning of the word “baptize” to be “immerse,” but that this is its fundamental, constant, and only meaning. The original command to baptize is therefore a command to immerse.
As evidence that quite diverse sections of the Christian world are coming to recognize the original form of baptism to be immersion, we may cite the fact that a memorial to the late Archbishop of Canterbury has recently been erected in the parish church of Lambeth, and that it is in the shape of a “font-grave,” in which a believer can be buried with Christ in baptism; and also that the Rev. G. Campbell Morgan has had a baptistery constructed in the newly renovated Westminster Congregational Church in London.
Pfleiderer, Philos. Religion, 2:211—“As in the case of the Lord's Supper, so did Baptism also first receive its sacramental significance through Paul. As he saw in the immersing under water the symbolical repetition of the death and resurrection of Christ, baptism appeared to him as the act of spiritual dying and renovation, or regeneration, of incorporation into the mystical body of Christ, that 'new creation.' As for Paul the baptism of adults only was in question, faith in Christ is already of course presupposed by it, and baptism is just the act in which faith realizes the decisive resolution of giving one's self up actually as belonging to Christ and his community. Yet the outward act is not on that account a mere semblance of what is already present in faith, but according to the mysticism common to Paul with the whole ancient world, the symbolical act effectuates what it typifies, and therefore in this case the mortification of the carnal man and the animation of the spiritual man.” For the view that sprinkling or pouring constitutes valid baptism, see Hall, Mode of Baptism. Per contra, see Hovey, in Baptist Quarterly, April, 1875; Wayland, Principles and Practices of Baptists, 85; Carson, Noel, Judson, and Pengilly, on Baptism; especially recent and valuable is Burrage, Act of Baptism.
B. No church has the right to modify or dispense with this command of Christ.
This is plain:
(a) From the nature of the church. Notice:
First,—that, besides the local church, no other visible church of Christ is known to the New Testament. Secondly,—that the local church is not a legislative, but is simply an executive, body. Only the authority which originally imposed its laws can amend or abrogate them. Thirdly,—that the local church cannot delegate to any organization or council of churches any power which it does not itself rightfully possess. Fourthly,—that the opposite principle puts the church above the Scriptures and above Christ, and would sanction all the usurpations of Rome.
Mat. 5:19—“Whosoever therefore shall break one of these least commandments, and shall teach men so, shall be called least in the kingdom of heaven: but whosoever shall do and teach them, he shall be called great in the kingdom of heaven”; cf. 2 Sam. 6:7—“And the anger of Jehovah was kindled against Uzzah; and God smote him there for his error; and there he died by the ark of God.” Shakespeare, Henry VI, Part I, 2:4—“Faith, I have been a truant in the law, And never yet could frame my will to it, And therefore frame the law unto my will.” As at the Reformation believers rejoiced to restore communion in both kinds, so we should rejoice to restore baptism as to its subjects and as to its meaning. To administer it to a wailing and resisting infant, or to administer it in any other form than that prescribed by Jesus' command and example, is to desecrate and destroy the ordinance.
(b) From the nature of God's command: