On the theory that baptism takes the place of circumcision, see Pepper, Baptist Quarterly, April, 1857; Palmer, in Baptist Quarterly, 1871:314. The Christian Church is either a natural, hereditary body, or it was merely typified by the Jewish people. In the former case, baptism belongs to all children of Christian parents, and the church is indistinguishable from the world. In the latter case, it belongs only to spiritual descendants, and therefore only to true believers. “That Jewish Christians, who of course had been circumcised, were also baptized, and that a large number of them insisted that Gentiles who had been baptized should also be circumcised, shows conclusively that baptism did not take the place of circumcision.... The notion that the family is the unit of society is a relic of barbarism. This appears in the Roman law, which was good for property but not for persons. It left none but a servile station to wife or son, thus degrading society at the fountain of family life. To gain freedom, the Roman wife had to accept a form of marriage which opened the way for unlimited liberty of divorce.”
Hereditary church-membership is of the same piece with hereditary priesthood, and both are relics of Judaism. J. J. Murphy, Nat. Selection and Spir. Freedom, 81—“The institution of hereditary priesthood, which was so deeply rooted in the religions of antiquity and was adopted into Judaism, has found no place in Christianity; there is not, I believe, any church whatever calling itself by the name of Christ, in which the ministry is hereditary.” Yet there is a growing disposition to find in infant baptism the guarantee of hereditary church membership. Washington Gladden, What is Left? 252-254—“Solidarity of the generations finds expression in infant baptism. Families ought to be Christian and not individuals only. In the Society of Friends every one born of parents belonging to the Society is a birthright member. Children of Christian parents are heirs of the kingdom. The State recognizes that our children are organically connected with it. When parents are members of the State, children are not aliens. They are not called to perform duties of citizenship until a certain age, but the rights and privileges of citizenship are theirs from the moment of their birth. The State is the mother of her children; shall the church be less motherly than the State?... Baptism does not make the child God's child; it simply recognizes and declares the fact.”
Another illustration of what we regard as a radically false view is found in the sermon of Bishop Grafton of Fond du Lac, at the consecration of Bishop Nicholson in Philadelphia: “Baptism is not like a function in the natural order, like the coronation of a king, an acknowledgment of what the child already is. The child, truly God's loved offspring by way of creation, is in baptism translated into the new creation and incorporated into the Incarnate One, and made his child.” Yet, as the great majority of the inmates of our prisons and the denizens of the slums have received this “baptism,”it appears that this “loved offspring” very early lost its “new creation” and got “translated” in the wrong direction. We regard infant baptism as only an ancient example of the effort to bring in the kingdom of God by externals, the protest against [pg 956]which brought Jesus to the cross. Our modern methods of salvation by sociology and education and legislation are under the same indictment, as crucifying the Son of God afresh and putting him to open shame.
Prof. Moses Stuart urged that the form of baptism was immaterial, but that the temper of heart was the thing of moment. Francis Wayland, then a student of his, asked: “If such is the case, with what propriety can baptism be administered to those who cannot be supposed to exercise any temper of heart at all, and with whom the form must be everything?”—The third theory of organic connection of the child with its parents is elaborated by Bushnell, in his Christian Nurture, 90-223. Per contra, see Bunsen, Hippolytus and his Times, 179, 211; Curtis, Progress of Baptist Principles, 262. Hezekiah's son Manasseh was not godly; and it would be rash to say that all the drunkard's children are presumptively drunkards.
(e) The lack of agreement among pedobaptists.
The lack of agreement among pedobaptists as to the warrant for infant baptism and as to the relation of baptized infants to the church, together with the manifest decline of the practice itself, are arguments against it.
The propriety of infant baptism is variously argued, says Dr. Bushnell, upon the ground of “natural innocence, inherited depravity, and federal holiness; because of the infant's own character, the parent's piety, and the church's faith; for the reason that the child is an heir of salvation already, and in order to make it such.... No settled opinion on infant baptism and on Christian nurture has ever been attained to.”
Quot homines, tot sententiæ. The belated traveler in a thunderstorm prayed for a little more light and less noise. Bushnell, Christian Nurture, 9-89, denies original sin, denies that hereditary connection can make a child guilty. But he seems to teach transmitted righteousness, or that hereditary connection can make a child holy. He disparages “sensible experiences” and calls them “explosive conversions.” But because we do not know the time of conversion, shall we say that there never was a time when the child experienced God's grace? See Bib. Sac., 1872:665. Bushnell said: “I don't know what right we have to say that a child can't be born again before he is born the first time.” Did not John the Baptist preach Christ before he was born? (Luke 1:15, 41, 44). The answer to Bushnell is simply this, that regeneration is through the truth, and an unborn child cannot know the truth. To disjoin regeneration from the truth, is to make it a matter of external manipulation in which the soul is merely passive and the whole process irrational. There is a secret work of God in the soul, but it is always accompanied by an awakening of the soul to perceive the truth and to accept Christ.
Are baptized infants members of the Presbyterian Church? We answer by citing the following standards: 1. The Confession of Faith, 25:2—“The visible church ... consists of all those throughout the world, that profess the true religion, together with their children.” 2. The Larger Catechism, 62—“The visible church is a society made up of all such as in all ages and places of the world do profess the true religion, and of their children.” 166—“Baptism is not to be administered to any that are not of the visible church ... till they profess their faith in Christ and obedience to him: but infants descending from parents either both or but one of them professing faith in Christ and obedience to him are in that respect within the covenant and are to be baptized.”3. The Shorter Catechism, 96—“Baptism is not to be administered to any that are out of the visible church, till they profess their faith in Christ and obedience to him: but the infants of such as are members of the visible church are to be baptized.”4. Form of Government, 3—“A particular church consists of a number of professing Christians, with their offspring.” 5. Directory for Worship, 1—“Children born within the pale of the visible church and dedicated to God in baptism are under the inspection and government of the church.... When they come to years of discretion, if they be free from scandal, appear sober and steady, and to have sufficient knowledge to discern the Lord's body, they ought to be informed it is their duty and their privilege to come to the Lord's Supper.”