The early church of Africa bears triumphant testimony in vindication of infant baptism. St. Cyprian and sixty-six suffragan Prelates held a council in the metropolitan city of Carthage, in the year 253. While the Council is in session a Prelate named Fidus writes to the Fathers, asking them whether infants ought to be baptized before the eighth day succeeding their birth, or on the eighth day, in accordance with the practice of circumcision. The Bishops unanimously subscribe to the following reply: “As to what regards the baptism of infants, ... we all judged that the mercy and grace of God should be denied to no human being from the moment of his birth. If even to the greatest delinquents the remission of sins is granted, how much less should the infant be repelled, who, being recently born according to Adam, has contracted at his first birth the contagion of the ancient death.”(343) The African Council asserts here two prominent facts—the universal contagion of the human race through Adam’s fall, and the universal necessity of Baptism without distinction of age. Upon this decision, I will make two observations: First—Fidus did not inquire about the necessity of infant baptism, which he already admitted, but about the propriety of conferring it on the eighth day, in imitation of the Jewish law of circumcision. Second—The Bishops assembled in that Council were as numerous as the whole Episcopate of the United States, which contains about five thousand Priests and upwards of six millions of Catholics. We may therefore reasonably conclude that the judgment of the African Council represented the faith of several thousand Priests and several millions of Catholics. St. Augustine, commenting on this decision, justly observes that St. Cyprian and his colleagues made no new decree, but maintained most firmly the faith of the Church. And this is the unanimous sentiment of tradition from the days of the Apostles to our own times. Is it not ludicrous as well as impious to see a few German fanatics, in the sixteenth century, raising their feeble voice against the thunder tones of all Christendom, by decrying a practice which was universally held as sacred and essential? In judging between the teachings of Apostolical antiquity on the one hand and of the Anabaptists on the other, it is not hard to determine on which side lies the truth; for, what becomes of the Christian Church, if it has erred on so vital a point as that of Baptism during the entire period of its existence? Original sin, as St. Paul has told us, is universal. Every child is, therefore, defiled at its birth with the taint of Adam’s disobedience. Now, the Scripture says that nothing defiled can enter the kingdom of heaven.(344) Hence Baptism, which washes away original sin, is as essential for the infant as for the full grown man, in order to attain the kingdom of heaven.