But God, in passing sentence of condemnation on Adam, consoled him by the promise of a Redeemer to come. “I will put enmities,” saith the Lord, “between thee and the woman, and thy seed and her seed; she shall crush thy head.”[335] Jesus, the seed of Mary, is the chosen one who was destined to crush the head of the infernal serpent. And “when the fulness of time was come God sent His Son, made of a woman, ... that He might redeem them that were under the law, that we might receive the adoption of sons.”[336]
Jesus Christ, our Redeemer, came to wash away the defilement from our souls and to restore us to that Divine friendship which we had lost by the sin of Adam. He is the second Adam, who came to repair the iniquity of the first. It was our Savior's privilege to prescribe the conditions on which our reconciliation with God was to be effected.
Now He tells us in His Gospel that Baptism is the essential means established for washing away the stain of original sin and the door by which we find admittance into His Church, which may be called the second Eden. We must all submit to a new birth, or regeneration, before we can enter the kingdom of heaven. Water is the appropriate instrument of this new birth, as it indicates the interior cleansing of the soul; and the Holy Ghost, the Giver of spiritual life, is its Author.
The Church teaches that Baptism is necessary for all, for infants as well as adults, and her doctrine rests on the following grounds:
Our Lord says to Nicodemus: “Amen, amen, [pg 269] I say to thee, unless a man be born again of water and the Holy Ghost he cannot enter into the kingdom of God.”[337] These words embrace the whole human family, without regard to age or sex, as is evident from the original Greek text, for τις, which is rendered man in our English translation, means any one—mankind in its broadest acceptation.
The Acts of the Apostles and the Epistles of St. Paul, although containing only a fragmentary account of the ministry of the Apostles, plainly insinuate that the Apostles baptized children as well as grown persons. We are told, for instance, that Lydia “was baptized, and her household,”[338] by St. Paul; and that the jailer “was baptized, and all his family.”[339] The same Apostle baptized also “the household of Stephanas.”[340] Although it is not expressly stated that there were children among these baptized families, the presumption is strongly in favor of the supposition that there were. But if any doubt exists regarding the Apostolic practice of baptizing infants it is easily removed by referring to the writings of the primitive Fathers of the Church, who, as they were the immediate successors of the Apostles, ought to be the best interpreters of their doctrines and practice.
St. Irenæus, a disciple of Polycarp, who was a disciple of St. John the Evangelist, says: “Christ came to save all through Himself; all, I say, who are born anew (or baptized) through Him—infants and little ones, boys and youths, and aged persons.”[341]
Origen, who lived a few years later, writes: [pg 270] “The Church received the tradition from the Apostles, to give baptism even to infants.”[342]
The early church of Africa bears triumphant testimony in vindication of infant baptism. St. Cyprian and sixty-six suffragan Prelates held a council in the metropolitan city of Carthage, in the year 253. While the Council is in session a Prelate named Fidus writes to the Fathers, asking them whether infants ought to be baptized before the eighth day succeeding their birth, or on the eighth day, in accordance with the practice of circumcision. The Bishops unanimously subscribe to the following reply: “As to what regards the baptism of infants, ... we all judged that the mercy and grace of God should be denied to no human being from the moment of his birth. If even to the greatest delinquents the remission of sins is granted, how much less should the infant be repelled, who, being recently born according to Adam, has contracted at his first birth the contagion of the ancient death.”[343] The African Council asserts here two prominent facts—the universal contagion of the human race through Adam's fall, and the universal necessity of Baptism without distinction of age.
Upon this decision, I will make two observations: First—Fidus did not inquire about the necessity of infant baptism, which he already admitted, but about the propriety of conferring it on the eighth day, in imitation of the Jewish law of circumcision. Second—The Bishops assembled in that Council were as numerous as the whole Episcopate of the United States, which contains about five thousand Priests and upwards of six millions of Catholics. We may therefore reasonably [pg 271] conclude that the judgment of the African Council represented the faith of several thousand Priests and several millions of Catholics.