Pedobaptism.--Holders of these ideas have never explained why infant baptism did not become prevalent until two or three centuries after Christ, and why such eminent Christians of the fourth century as Gregory, of Nazianzum, the son of a bishop; Basil the Great, of Cappadocia; Chrysostom of Antioch, and Augustine of Numidia--whose mothers were the most pious of Christians--were not baptized until they were over thirty years of age. Paul's affirmation that "children are holy" (1 Cor. 7:14), the Savior's declaration, "Of such is the kingdom of heaven," and Mormon's words to Moroni, already cited, are a sufficient answer to the assumption that children under the age of accountability have need to be baptized. Those who introduced the practice of baptizing infants for original sin, overlooked the fact that Christ atoned for original guilt, and that men are accountable for their own sins and not for Adam's transgression. Other Innovations.--One innovation led to another, though the next related to adults. What was to become of martyrs, who had shed their blood in defense of the church, or for its sake, but had never confessed Christ nor been baptized? Were they to be damned? Oh, no; for their benefit another doctrine was introduced; they were held to have been baptized in their own blood. Finally, out of deference to the claims of a far more numerous class--worthy men and women, many of whom had lived and died before the Christian Church was founded, while others, though living contemporaneously with it, were never reached by its missionaries--the idea gradually obtained that baptism was not essential to salvation. All of which might have been obviated, and the Church spared much ridicule and skepticism--the result of its ramblings and inconsistencies--had it kept the key to the situation--namely, baptism for the dead. Gradual Growth of a Heresy.--The idea that baptism is nonessential did not become fixed and popular until many centuries after the apostles fell asleep. Saint Augustine, who figured in the latter part of the fourth and the first half of the fifth century after Christ, and who advanced the notion that water baptism was "the outward sign of an inward grace," the external emblem of internal sanctification, held, nevertheless, that no soul could be saved without it--not even infants; though their condemnation, resulting from non-baptism, would be of the mildest character. Augustine's concept of baptism, with some modifications, is the doctrine of the Roman Catholic Church, and of the orthodox Protestant churches, at the present time. Luther held baptism to be essential to salvation; Calvin and Zwingli did not; and there, in the sixteenth century, it appears, began the schism of opinion concerning it that divides Christendom today.