their first coming to the faith, addicted themselves to the service of the church in the lower offices; to prcvent the inconvenience mentioned by St. Paul, in preferring novices* or Neophytes, i. e. persons but lately baptized or made Christians.

CHAPTER XVIII.

OUT OF PAULINUS, BISHOP OF NOLA, AND ANOTHER PAULINUS, DEACON OF THE CHURCH OF MILAN.

[Year after the Apostles 293.]

PAULINUS, Bishop of Nola, had been a Heathen man; during which time he had addicted his mind to poetry and oratory. After he became a Christian he made use of those faculties on religious subjects; and Sulpitius Severus, who had built a church, desired him to compose some proper godly sentences, to be written in several places of the church, and particularly at the font, or place of baptizing. Paulinus sends him a letter in answer, containing several such sentences.

It is

quæ sunt

In one of them, composed in verse for the font, there is this distich :

"Inde parens sacro ducit de fonte sacerdos
Infantes niveos corpore, corde, habitu.”

"The priest from the holy font does infants bring,
In body, in soul, in garments white and clean.'

As he refers to the cleanness of the body, by washing in the font, and of the soul, on account of the forgiveness of sins granted in that holy sacrament, so what hẹ

speaks of the whiteness of their garments, is according to the custom then used all over the church of clothing the new baptized person, whether infants or grown people, in albes, or white garments.

If there were not testimonies enough of the custom of baptizing infants in this age, this alone would not be sufficient to prove it; for there being nothing but the word infants singly mentioned, without any other circumstances setting forth their age, and there being a custom about these times of calling, by a metaphorical speech, all the new baptized persons infants, whether they were young or old, it is a question whether Paulinus did, by that word, intend to restrain the sense to infants in age, or whether he meant only to describe the procession of the priest, leading from the font a number of newly baptized persons in general in their albes.

That there was such a custom of calling new baptized persons by the name of Infants, about this time, appears by several instances. Gaudentius, who was

Bishop of Brescia about this time, has an oration or sermon*, in which he thus bespeaks the novices, or new baptized persons:-"You are put in mind by the name of Infants, by which you are called, that you are by your baptism regenerated and born anew; and, therefore, if any of you that are married," &c. Also St.Austin has a sermon or discourse, intitled Ad Infantes,

To the Infants,' i. e. to a congregation of persons then newly baptized; and I confess it seems to me that that passage of St. Ambrose (De Mysterio Pasche, c. 5) which Mr. Bingham (vol. iv. p. 24) takes to be spoken of proper infants, is rather to be referred hither. He is there speaking of the holy Christian rites used at the feast of Easter; particularly the baptismal solemnities, and says," Hinc vitalis lavacri sacræ ecclesiæ editi puerperio infantes parvulorum simplicitate renati, baratro innocentis perstrepunt conscientiæ. Hinc casti patres pudicæ etiam matres, novellam per fidem stirpem prose

*Orat. 8, ad Neophytos.

quuntur innagneram." Here the infants brought forth of the womb of the vital laver of the holy church, being regenerated in the simplicity of babes, do sing from the bottom of a sinless conscience. Here chaste fa'thers and mothers do follow great numbers of their children new-born by faith.'He means, I think, the Godfathers following the new baptized persons, whom they had brought to baptism; and who walked from the font in procession in their albes.

This does not at all invalidate the testimonies which have been given for infant baptism; for, in all that I have quoted, except this and one or two more, there is, beside the word infant, some circumstance that does shew the speech to be about infants in age. It rather confirms the thing, and is itself a testimony; for one reason of the name was, that the number of Christians being now much encreased, and the baptism of Christian infants being more frequent than of elder persons new converted, these latter had the name of Infants, in allusion to the former.

Paulinus de Obitu Celsi, Pueri.

ON THE DEATH OF CELSUS, a child.'

This Celsus was a child very dear to his parents, that died at seven years old, or when he was newly entered into his eighth, as appears by some passages of the disHis parents were so overmuch concerned at his death, that Paulinus found it necessary to write to them a consolatory advice. It is written in verse; and, after the first distich, follow these two :

course.

"Quem Dominus tanto cumulavit munere Christus,
Ut rudis ille annis, et novus iret aquis ;

Atque bis infuntem, spatió ævi, et fonte lavacri, ›
Congeminata Deo gratia perveheret."

So great a favour Christ did to him show,

That he, escaping all the snares below,

Should hence so young, and fresh from baptism go.
Two graces do his infant soul commend,

So little sully'd, and so lately clean'd.'

This quotation is not fully to the purpose either of the Pædobaptists or Antipædobaptists; for the one will enquire Why this child's baptism was delayed so long as till he was almost seven years old and the other, Why he was baptized so soon? and there is not any such account of the condition of his parents as to satisfy either of them. They might, perhaps, be, as Paulinus himself was, lately converted, or it might be deferred by negligence and procrastination. St. Austin somewhere, but I have forgot where, speaks of fourteen years as the soonest that people were ordinarily baptized on their own profession; yet, at another place, where his adversary would prove that unbaptized children might go to Heaven, by the instance of Dinocrates, a boy born of Heathen parents and dying at seven years old, whose soul was said, in a certain story-book, to have been seen in Heaven in a vision, by his sister, in her prayers, he says "It is not impossible but that at that age he might have been baptized at his own choice;" which place I have occasion to recite hereafter *.

It is plain enough by what has been said, that the ordinary time of baptizing infants was within a little time after their birth; and the Antipædobaptists, I suppose, do not think a child of seven years old any fitter than a mere infant.

The custom that I mentioned, of calling new baptized persons by the name of Infants, is alluded to here; for Paulinus calls this child his infantem, in two respects an infant, viz. spatio evi et fonte lavacri; an "infant in age, and an infant as newly baptized.'

'

Paulinus has some letters and tracts attributed to him that are spurious; but this is recited among his works, by Gennadius, in these words: "Paulinus, Bishop of Nola, in Campania, wrote many things in way of short poems; and a consolatory tract to Celsus, in form of an Epitaph, on the death of his Christian and baptized infant, full of Christian hope," &c.

Ch.20.

+Catalog. Virorum Illustrium.

Paulini Epistola ad Hieronymum de duabas
Quæstionibus apud Hieronym. Ep. 153.

Paulinus, in this letter, desired St. Hierom's opinion of the meaning of two sayings which the Scripture

uses..

One was, what is said in Exod. ix. 12: He asks, Why [or in what sense] Pharaoh's heart was hardened by God? and also, How that which the apostle says: (Rom. ix. 16) is to be understood, It is not of him that willeth, nor of him that runneth, but of God that sheweth mercy; which seems to take away free-will.

The other was concerning that text (1 Cor. vii.) Else were your children unclean; but now are they holy. On which Paulinus asks this question,

Quomodo sancti sint qui de fidelibus, id est, de baptizatis nascuntur; cum sine dono gratiæ postea acceptæ et custoditæ salvi esse non possunt?"

"How those children that are born of fidele, that is, of baptized parents, are holy; whenas, without the gift of the grace [of baptism] afterward [viz. after their birth] received and preserved, they cannot be saved?'

He seems, at this place, to have taken the obvious sense of St. Paul's words to be, that the infants of. Christian parents are holy from their birth and desires to know what holiness this is that St. Paul ascribes to them from their birth, since, though the parents be baptized Christians, yet, unless the children also be them* selves baptized, they cannot be saved.

This is the most material of the evidences we have from him on this subject; for if it be concluded, as he does here conclude, that infants cannot be saved without baptism, it will undoubtedly follow in any one's sense, that they ought to be baptized without delay.

This letter of Paulinus is not extant, that I know of, and perhaps was never published; but St. Hierom, in