Bertha and Her Baptism

by Nehemiah Adams

There is another historical testimony, if you wish to hear of more, which has great weight.

The Council of Carthage, one hundred and fifty years after the apostles, and composed of sixty-six pastors, has given us full testimony on the subject. A country presbyter, by the name of Fidus, had sent two cases for their adjudication. One was, "Whether an infant might be baptized before it was eight days old?" Here is the answer:

Cyprian, and the rest of the presbyters who were present in the council, sixty-six in number, to Fidus our brother, Greeting:

"—— As to the case of Infants: whereas you judge that they must not be baptized within two or three days after they were born, and that the rule of circumcision is to be observed,—we are all in the Council of a very different opinion." "This, therefore, was our opinion in the Council, that we ought not to hinder any person from baptism, and the grace of God. And this rule, as it holds for all, is, we think, more especially to be observed in reference to infants, even to those who are newly born."

This was written, within a hundred and fifty years from the time of the apostles, by sixty-six ministers of Christ, some of whom, we may suppose, must have had grace enough to show a martyr-spirit in resisting so gross an invention as the baptizing of infants would have been, if apostolic example had restricted baptism to those who were capable of faith. Did Paul reprove an abuse of the Lord's Supper, among the Corinthians, and would he not have given an injunction against so Jewish a superstition as the baptizing of children in place of the antiquated circumcision would have been, if it were not commanded, had the churches in his day seemed inclined to practise it?

Mr. M. All these things amount to a demonstration, in my view.

Dr. D. You would like to hear something from Augustine, whose "Confessions" you have read with so much interest.

In his writings, on Genesis, Augustine says, about two hundred and eighty-eight years after the apostles, "The custom of our mother, the church, in baptizing infants, must not be disregarded nor accounted useless, and it must by all means be believed to be (apostolica traditio) a thing handed down to us by the apostles." "It is most justly believed to be no other than a thing delivered by apostolic authority; that it came not by a general council, or by any authority later or less than that of the apostles." He also speaks of baptizing infants by the authority of the whole church, which, he says, was undoubtedly delivered to it by our Lord and his apostles.

Augustine was a man of distinguished piety and learning, whose testimony is every way worthy of implicit confidence. But, connected with his history, we have another substantial evidence with regard to the subject. He conducted a famous controversy against the Pelagians, who denied original sin. They were confronted with the argument from infant baptism. "Why," it was said, "are infants baptized, if they need no change of nature?" It would have been a triumphant answer could they have shown that it was an unscriptural practice, not countenanced by Christ or the apostles. But Pelagius said, "Men slander me as though I denied baptism to infants, whereas I never heard of any one, Catholic or heretic, who denied baptism to infants." Pelagius and his friend Celestius, who was with him in the controversy, were born, the one in Britain, the other in Ireland. They lived for some years in Rome, where they knew people from all parts of the world. They had also lived in Carthage, Africa. One finally settled in Jerusalem, and the other travelled among all the churches in the principal places of Europe and Asia. But they had never heard of the man, not even a heretic, who had denied infant baptism.

Here is another interesting proof. Irenæus, Philastrius, Augustine, Epiphanius, Theodoret, wrote catalogues of all the sects of Christians which they had ever heard of; but, while they make mention of some who denied baptism altogether, and with it, according to Augustine, a great part of scripture, they mention no denial of infant baptism by any sect whatever.