In his commentary on the Epistle to the Romans, Book v., he says:
"For this cause it was that the church received an order from the apostles to give baptism even to infants."
In his homily on Lev. 12, he says:
"According to the usage of the church, baptism is given even to infants, when, if there were nothing in infants that needed forgiveness and mercy, the grace of baptism would seem to be superfluous."
In his homily on Luke 14, he says:
"Infants are baptized for the forgiveness of sins."
It was the practice, then, in Origen's day, to baptize infants. He tells the people of his day, to whom he preaches and writes, why it was that the church had received a command from the apostles to baptize them, not proving to them the fact of history, but, taking that as well known, explaining the theological reason for it, as he understood it.
It is now 1857. Eighty-five years ago, the length of time after the apostles to the birth of this man, brings us back to 1772. There is good Dr. Sales, who was born in 1770. Suppose that he should say that steamboats came from England at the time that the Hudson river was discovered, and that they had plied there ever since?
No man in his right mind (not to say a scholar like Origen), however singular his opinions, would assert, for veritable history, that which was as palpably false as such a fiction respecting steamboat navigation upon the Hudson would be. Yet Origen asserts that the practice of infant baptism was received directly from the apostles. Everybody could contradict him if he were in error.
Mr. M. But we know that he was in error in saying that forgiveness of sins was a consequence of baptism.