A church dictionary

by Walter Farquhar Hook

BAPTISM, PRIVATE. Rubric. “The curates of every parish shall often warn the people, that without great cause and necessity, they procure not their children to be baptized at home in their houses.”

Canon 69. “If any minister being duly, without any manner of collusion, informed of the weakness and danger of death of any infant unbaptized in his parish, and thereupon desired to go or come to the place where the said infant remaineth, to baptize the same, shall either wilfully refuse so to do, or of purpose or of gross negligence shall so defer the time, as when he might conveniently have resorted to the place, and have baptized the said infant, it dieth through such his default unbaptized, the said minister shall be suspended for three months, and before his restitution shall acknowledge his fault, and promise before his ordinary that he will not wittingly incur the like again. Provided, that where there is a curate, or a substitute, this constitution shall not extend to the parson or vicar himself, but to the curate or substitute present.”

Rubric. “The child being named by some one that is present, the minister shall pour water upon it.

“And let them not doubt, but that the child so baptized is lawfully and sufficiently baptized, and ought not to be baptized again. Yet, nevertheless, if the child which is after this sort baptized do afterward live, it is expedient that it be brought into the church, to the intent that the congregation may be certified of the true form of baptism privately before administered to such child.”

BAPTISM, PUBLIC. At first baptism was administered publicly, as occasion served, by rivers; afterwards the baptistery was built, at the entrance of the church or very near it, which had a large basin in it, that held the persons to be baptized, and they went down by steps into it. Afterwards, when immersion came to be disused, fonts were set up at the entrance of churches.

By the “Laws Ecclesiastical” of King Edmund, it is directed that there shall be a font of stone, or other competent material, in every church; which shall be decently covered and kept, and not converted to other uses.

And by canon 81, There shall be a font of stone in every church and chapel where baptism is to be administered; the same to be set in the ancient usual places: in which only font the minister shall baptize publicly.

The rubric directs that the people are to be admonished, that it is most convenient that baptism shall not be administered but upon Sundays and other holy days, when the most number of people come together; as well for that the congregation there present may testify the receiving of them that be newly baptized into the number of Christ’s Church, as also because in the baptism of infants, every man present may be put in remembrance of his own profession made to God in his baptism. Nevertheless, if necessity so require, children may be baptized upon any other day.

And by canon 68, No minister shall refuse or delay to christen any child according to the form of the Book of Common Prayer, that is brought to the church to him upon Sundays and holy days to be christened (convenient warning being given him thereof before). And if he shall refuse so to do, he shall be suspended by the bishop of the diocese from his ministry by the space of three months.

The rubric also directs, that when there are children to be baptized, the parents shall give knowledge thereof over-night, or in the morning before the beginning of morning prayer, to the curate.