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.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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