A church dictionary

by Walter Farquhar Hook

The Church, studious to retain this ancient and universal ceremony of the purest primitive times, was also careful to decline all fear of superstitious intendment; as if she thought the sacrament imperfect without it. Therefore, whereas the primitive mode made it to usher in baptism, our Church inverted the order, and made it come after, and so to follow it, as she expressly first declareth, “the child to be received into the congregation of Christ’s flock, as a perfect member thereof, and not by any power ascribed to the sign of the cross.” (Canon 30.) And further to assure all distrustful minds, that she maketh it not of the substance of the sacrament, she hath totally omitted it in the office of private baptism.—L’ Estrange.

The child, being now baptized, is become a member of the Christian Church, into which the minister (as a steward of God’s family) doth solemnly receive it; and, for the clearer manifestation that it now belongs to Christ, solemnly signs it in the forehead with the sign of the “cross.” For the better understanding of which primitive ceremony, we may observe, that it was an ancient rite for masters and generals to mark the foreheads or hands of their servants and soldiers with their names or marks, that it might be known to whom they did belong; and to this custom the angel in the Revelation is thought to allude: “Hurt not the earth, &c., till we have sealed the servants of our God in their foreheads” (Rev. vii. 3): thus again the retinue of the Lamb are said to “have his Father’s name written in their foreheads” (chap. xiv. 1). And thus, lastly, in the same chapter, as Christ’s flock carried his mark on their foreheads, so did his great adversary the beast sign his servants there also: “If any man shall receive the mark of the beast in his forehead, or in his hand,” &c. (ver. 9). Now that the Christian Church might hold some analogy with those sacred applications, she conceived it a most significant ceremony in baptism, (which is our first admission into the Christian profession,) that all her children should be signed with the cross on their foreheads, signifying thereby their consignment up to Christ; whence it is often called by the ancient Fathers, the “Lord’s signet” and “Christ’s seal.”—Wheatly.

The true sense and intention of the Church of England in appointing this sign appears from Dr. Burgess’s sense of the matter, which was accepted by King James the First, and affirmed by the archbishop of Canterbury [Bancroft] to be the sense of the Church. His words are these which follow:—“I know it is not made any part of the sacrament of baptism, which is acknowledged by the canon to be complete without it, and not perfected or bettered by it.

“I understand it not as any sacramental, or operative, or efficacious sign bringing any virtue to baptism, or the baptized.

“Where the book says, ‘and do sign him with the sign of the cross in token,’ &c., I understand the book not to mean, that the sign of the cross has any virtue in it to effect or further this duty; but only to intimate and express by that ceremony, by which the ancients did avow their profession of Christ crucified, what the congregation hopeth and expecteth hereafter from the infant; namely, that he shall not be ashamed to profess the faith of Christ crucified, into which he was even now baptized.

“And therefore also when the 30th canon saith, that the infant is ‘by that sign dedicated unto the service of Christ,’ I understand that dedication to import, not a real consecration of the child, which was done in baptism itself; but only a ceremonial declaration of that dedication, like as the priest is said to make clean the leper, whose being clean he only declared.”

The Church’s use of the sign of the cross and her expressions concerning it, are fairly capable of this construction; and so authentic a declaration is sufficient to satisfy any sober inquirer, that this sense not only may be, but ought to be, received.—Dr. Bennet.

The heathens were wont to deride the Christians, and to speak disdainfully of them, as worshippers of a malefactor crucified. To encounter which reproach, and to show that they “gloried in the cross of Christ,” (Gal. vi. 14,) taking it to be an honour, not an ignominy; they assumed this ceremony of signing themselves with the cross, both in baptism, and at several other times. And this sign being significant of a duty to be elicited by future practice, good reason had our Church to continue it.—L’ Estrange.

It is, in brief, a mark, by which we, as the primitive Christians did, declare our religion, and no more than that, wherewith we conclude all our prayers and thanksgivings, when we say through Jesus Christ our Lord and Saviour.—Clutterbuck.

Upon the whole, the ceremony is exceeding proper, and very innocent; used by most Christians; approved by all the ancients, and by some of the most eminent reformed divines expressly; and condemned by no Church: so that, if this ceremony be rejected by any, they ought to consider that the fault is in themselves, not in the thing, at which offence is taken, but none justly given, if the Church be but rightly understood.—Dean Comber.