sprinkled, Heb. x. 22. These words for washing, are such as are the most usual for the ordinary ways of washing: the same, for example, with that which is used Acts xvi. 33, He washed their stripes. Na man will think they were put into the water for thạt. They had several words to signify washing; and they used them promiscuously for the sacramental washing, and for other washings. It is the Christians since that have appropriated the word baptize to the sacramental washing; much after the same rate as they have appropriated the word Bible, which in Greek is any book, to the book of God; or the word Scripture, which in the Scripture itself signifies any writing, to the divine writings, I did not in the first nor second. edition proceed to give any instances out of any other book beside the Scripture, of the word Barn, used for washing by perfusion; partly, because it does not be long to the main matter of my book, which is a history, not of the manner of administering baptism, but of the subjects of it, infants or adults only; and partly, because I had, as for other authors, referred the reader to Mr. Walker's Doctrine of Baptisms; where there are a great many. But yet, having lately met with a very plain instance of that use of the word in Origen, which I think is not among Mr. Walker's, I will give it to the reader. It is in his Comment. in Joann. tom. 7, p. 116, ed. Rotom. 1668. He is there examining the ground of that upbraiding demand made by the Pharisees to St. John, why he baptized if he were not the Christ, nor Elias, nor that Prophet; and says, that they had no reason to think that either the Christ, or Elias, when they came, would baptize in their own persons; and accordingly that Jesus (who was the Christ, and that Prophet) did not baptize in his own person, but his disciples: and concerning Elias, speaks thus to the Pharisees: - Πόθεν δὲ ὑμῖν πεπστευται Ἠλαν τὸν ἑλευσόμενον ; ἐδὲ τὰ ἐπὶ τε θυσιαστηρίς ξύλα, κατὰ τὸς τὸ ̓Αχααβ χρόνος, δεόμενα 1 λετρο ἵνα ἐκκαυθῆ ἐπιφανέντος ἐν πυρὶ τῷ Κυρίς, βαπτίσαντος ; ἐπικελεύεται γὰρ τοῖς ἱερεῦσι τότο ποιησαι, &c. — ὁ τοίνυν μὴ αυτὸς βαπτίσας τότε, ἀλλ ̓ ἑτέροις τὸ ἔργο παραχωρήσας, πως κατὰ τὰ ὑπὸ το Μαλαχίς λεγόμενα επιδημήσας βαπτίζειν ἐμελλε ; 'How come you to think that Elias, when he should come, would baptize, who did not in Ahab's time baptize the wood upon the altar, which was to be washed before it was burnt, by the Lord's appearing in fire? 'But he orders the priests to do that; not once only, but says Do it the second time;-and they did it the second time; and, do it the third time; and they did it the third time. He therefore that did not ' himself baptize then, but assigned that work to others, how was he likely to baptize when he, according to 'Malachi's prophecy, should come?' - In the text, 1 Kings xviii. 33, the order given by Elijah is Fill four barrels with water, and pour it on the burnt sacrifice, and on the wood. And he said, Do it the second time, &c. This Origen calls the baptizing of the wood. But to proceed with the tenets of the Antipædobaptists of England. 3. As exact as the Antipædobaptists are in imitating the primitive way used in the hot countries, they do not baptize naked; which those ancient Christians always did when they baptized by immersion; as I shew in the next chapter. They usually spoke of the putting off the body of the sins of the flesh as a thing signified by the unclothing of the person to be baptized. I suppose it is for preserving modesty that they dispense with that custom. So it seems, in some cases, they can allow of dispensing with the primitive custom. 4. But a more material thing, in which some of them do deviate both from the express command of our Saviour, and the received practice of the church, is in the form of baptism. One sort of them do count it indifferent whether they baptize with these words, In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit; or with these, In the name of the Lord Jesus; and do in their public confession* allow either. of the forms.; And I have heard that some of then do affectedly choose the latter. But I am told, by one who should know, that whatever has been done formerly, they that do so now are very few ; and those, men not well thought of by the general body of them, but only such as are suspected to be underhand Socinians; for they have many such among them; and it is not for the use of those that have a mind to obliterate the belief of the Trinity, to baptize their proselytes into the faith and name of it. I believe, one reason why Socinus had such a mind to abolish all use of baptism among his followers, was because persons baptized in the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit, would always be apt to think those names to express the Deity in which they were to believe; which he did not mean they should do; and some of his followers have been so disgusted with that form of baptism, that they have given profane insinuations †, that those words were not originally in the Scripture, but were taken from the usual doxology into the form of baptism, and then inserted into the text of Matt. xxviii. 19. Those that baptize only in the name of the Lord Jesus, plead the examples of the Apostles, Acts viii. 16; and xix. 5. But though in those passages, where the matters of fact are related in short, there be mentioned in the recital only the name of the Lord Jesus, because that was the name that the Apostles found it most difficult to persuade the Jews to own (they having already, as St. Cyprian says, the ancient baptism of Moses and of the law, were now to be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ); yet interpreters have taken it for granted, that, in the conferring those baptisms, the Apostles used the whole form which our Saviour, had prescribed. Origen in Rom. 6. Didymus, la 2, de Spi Confes. of Anabapt. reprinted, London 1691. + The Judgment of the Fathers, &c. part 1, page 22. ritu Sancto. Cyprian. Epist. ad Jubaianum. Augustinus passim. Canon Apostol. 41, 42, aliis 49, 50. And Athanasius says, "He that is baptized only in the name of the Father, or only in the name of the Son, or without the Holy Spirit, &c. receives nothing." In short, it is true which St. Austin says †, that in churchhistory" you shall oftener meet with heretics that do not baptize at all, than with any that do baptize with any other words," viz. than those of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Yet we do find one sort of heretics that did so. It was one sect of the Eunomians; who, Sozomen says ‡, were the first that ever did it; and he gives his opinion that they are in as ill case as if they were not baptized at all. 5. Some other singular opinions they hold, that do not at all relate to baptism. Some of them (but I think it is but few in England) do hold that error which has of old been attributed to the Antipædobaptists of Germany, and is said to be still held by the Minnists of Holland, That Christ took not flesh of the Virgin Mary, but had it from Heaven; and only passed through her, as water through a pipe, without receiving any of his human substance from her. The Belgic Confession calls this the heresy of the Anabaptists. It is strange to observe in how many heresies, old and new, this odd opinion, so plainly contrary to Scripture, has made an ingredient. It was first invented by the Gnostics and Valentinians [20]; for they explained all that they believed of our Saviour's human nature in this manner; as we perceive by Irenæus : also by Tertullian [40] we understand that, [88] beside them Marcion and Apelles (that was one of his followers) held the same; but with this difference, Marcion said our Saviour had no real flesh at all, but only in appearance; Apelles owned real flesh, but not of hu * Epist. ad Serapionem. * Lib. 6, c. 26. † Lib. 6. contra Donatist. c. 25. § Artic. 18. Lib. 1, c. 1. circa medium. item 1, 3, c. 17. man race, but made of the substance of the stars and heavenly bodies, which was brought into the Virgin's body only to pass through her. Athanasius also ascribes this opinion* to the Marcionites. Gennadius t, besides that he also names Marcion, [110] says that Origen and Eutychus taught that Christ's flesh was brought from Heaven; [348] and Gregory Nazianzen, [370] in an epistle to Nectarius t, tells him that he had met with a book of Apollinarius, that maintained this heretical tenet, That, in the dispensation of the incarnation of the only Son of God, he did not take flesh from without to repair our nature; but there was the nature of flesh in the Son of God from all eternity; but I hear that Canisius § has found and pub, lished an epistle of his, wherein he disowns it. I shewed before that this of Christ's flesh only passing through the body of the Virgin, made one of the monstrous tenets of one sort of the Cathari, [1150] spoken of by Reinerius, [220] who were Manichees in the main. The old Manichees held, that he had properly no flesh at all; that he was not born of Mary, but came from the first man; which first man was not of this earth. Most of the old heretics that taught this, did it because they would not yield that our Saviour did really condescend so far as to take on him human nature, and be properly a man made (as St. Paul expresses it) of a woman; so they made use of it to impugn his humanity. But we have reason to judge, that most that hold it now, do it to impugn his divinity; for by this subterfuge, that his flesh was sent originally from Heaven, and only passed through the body of the Virgin, they evade the arguments for his divinity and pre-existence, taken from those places of Scripture which speak of his coming from Heaven, coming forth from the Father, and coming into the world, &c, expounding these texts, not of an eternal pre-existence, but of his flesh made * De Salutari Adventu adv. Apollinaristas. + De Eccl. Dogm. c. 2. § Antic. Lect. tom. 5, Apud Sozom. 1. 6, c. 27, |
