Children in Christ.--The effect of baptism is to make men and women childlike--not in ignorance, nor in weakness, but in innocence and humility. "Of such is the Kingdom of Heaven." By baptism, following faith and repentance and administered by divine authority, the soul is "born again," and is typical, in its infant-like purity, of the soul raised to immortality. By baptism we are as effectually freed from sin, as by death, burial and resurrection, the mortal is changed to immortal and ushered into a new existence. Hence, baptism is termed "the washing of regeneration." Regeneration means "new birth." Early Christian Views.--The earliest Christians did not doubt the necessity of baptism. On the contrary, they strongly insisted upon it, as indispensable to a saved condition. During the Patristic age--that of the post-apostolic Fathers--the conviction that no soul could be saved without baptism was so firm that it led to pedobaptism--the baptism of infants--and to other innovations upon the primitive faith. It was seen that infants could not believe in Christ, nor repent of sins that they had not committed; but it was held that the Church, or those who stood sponsor for the little ones, could believe for them, and they were baptized for original sin, the sin of Adam, which they were supposed to have inherited. Peter's words in promising the Holy Ghost, "For the promise is unto you and to your children." [15] were construed to sustain infant baptism. It was even assumed that the Savior authorized it in saying, "Suffer little children to come unto me." Pedobaptism.--Holders of such views 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 Numida--whose mothers were pious Christians--were not baptized until they were over thirty years of age, Paul's affirmation that "children are holy," [16] and the Savior's declaration, "Of such is the kingdom of God," [17] 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, over-looked or were blind to the fact that Christ atoned for original guilt, and that men are accountable for their own sins and not for Adam's transgression.