Adeodatus, St. Austin's son, begotten in fornication who being* 15 years old, was baptized together with him, is likewise mentioned without any reason. St. Austin was a Manichee when his son was born to him [273], and they condemned all Christian baptism of infants or others; as I shall mention by and by (ch. 5) concerning them and some other sects. It were absurd to expect that he should have procured him to be baptized before he himself had renounced that opinion, and thought fit to be baptized himself. He says of him † "We [I and Alipius] joined him with us of the same age of ourselves in thy grace [the grace of baptism] to be educated in thy discipline, and were baptized," &c. As Ishmael was circumcised so, this youth was baptized, the same day with his father: - which was at Easter, anno 388 [288]. When I have spoken of Alipius, whom St. Austin mentions as baptized together with him, I hope I have done. It is only in compliance to Mr. Tombs that he need be mentioned at all. He had observed, that he was baptized when he was adult, and so makes him an instance for this purpose, without giving any proof or pretence of it, that his parents were Christians. He might, in a week's time, have collected a hundred such instances of persons baptized at man's age, whose parents were utterly unknown, as Alipius's are, only people have generally concluded that they were Heathens, because they did not baptize their children. There happen to be also some more particular proofs in his case; as that, before his conversion, he abhorred or scorned the name of Christ; as St. Austin gives us to understand, when, after having given God thanks for his grace in recovering him himself, he adds, "Thou didst also subdue Alipius the brother of my soul, to the name of thy only begotten, our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, which he before took in disdain to have inserted in our letters." *Confess. lib. 9, e. 6. + Confess. lib. 9, c. 6. Also, that he was so ignorant of what the Christians believed or held concerning the person of Jesus Christ ; for having heard some Christians maintain that he as man had no soul, but that his divinity was in the stead of a soul to his body; and thinking this to be the cominon opinion of the Christians, and judging it to be absurd,“ he was (as St. Austin says *) the more hardly brought over to the Christian religion; but afterwards, understanding this to be the mistake of the Apollinarian heretics, he congratulated the Catholic faith," &c. So improbable is it that he had Christian parents. There is one Den, an Antipædobaptist writer, and Danvers from him t, that mentions a great many more names yet, viz. Pancratius, Pontius, Nazarius, Tecla, Luigerus, Erasma Tusca, the three sons of Leonilla; but they do but just mention them; and if the reader would know who they are, and upon what grounds they are brought in here, he must look to that himself. For Tecla If they mean the famous Tecla that is said to be baptized by St. Paul, there is no doubt but she was baptized in her adult age; but there is as much probability of St. Paul's parents having been Christians as of hers; for the rest, nobody knows who they mean; for as some of those names have had several persons called by them, so some have had none at all that I know of. What I have to add in this edition to this and the foregoing chapter is, that whereas one Mr. Delaun, an Antipæedobaptist, in a Plea for Nonconformists, written in king Charles the Second's time, had heaped together a great number of quotations out of modern authors, who had reported the ancient opinions or usages to be, in any respect whatsoever, different from the tenets or usages of the church of England; and, among the rest, had brought in, at p. 11, all that he could rake together against infant baptism (taking them, I suppose, out of Danvers) viz. the sayings of Bishop Taylor, Grotius, Lud. Vives, Daillè, Dr. Field, Mr: Baxter, Wal. + Treatise of Baptism, Part 1 c. 7. * Confess. lib 7, c. 19. Srabo, Boemus, which, among several others, I recited in the last chapter; and whereas there were none of these quotations about infant baptism, or the other subjects, but had been considered and answered by learned men of the church (though not in any particular answer to Delaun's pamphlet, but on other occasions) and consequently, unless the Nonconformists could produce some new matter, there seemed to have been said all that was necessary to restore peace and union. Now, the other day, a certain busy writer for dissention, in stead of offering any new thing, reprinted Delaun's book, with a pompous preface, as a piece that never was answered, a finished piece, &c. which called for an answer from the churchmen. As for infant baptism there is not one word or quotation in it but what had been fully answered; nor, as I think, on any other subject. Now, at this rate, we must never be at quiet, if, after objections fully proposed, and all of them publicly answered, the method be, instead of a fair reply, to reprint, in a challenging way, the very same objections again. The reason I have to think that he took all the quotations he has against infant baptism out of Danvers is, because, where Danvers has mixed any forgery of his own with the quotation, there Delaun has done the like, as they do both quote Grotius in Matt. xix. 14, in the same words, but forged ones; where they make him say "Infant baptism, for many hundred years, was not ordinary in the Greek church;" and where they make him speak of Constantine as an instance against infant baptism; which he was never ignorant enough to do. VOL. II. CHAPTER IV. THE CHURCH OF THE ANCIENT BRITONS; THE NOVÄTIANS, DONATISTS, WHICH WERE THOUGHT ANTIPÆDOBAPTISTS;-OF THE ARIANS. ABOUT 26 years ago, a certain Antipædobaptist writer lighted upon an argument to prove, as he thought, the ancient Christians in Britain, before the coming in of the English, to have been against infant baptism It is an evidence how great mistakes may arise from the misprinting of two or three words in a book; and that in a book of so little regard as Fabian's Chronicle. The account of the matter is this: Venerable Bede wrote, in the year 731 [631], The Church History of the English Nation; and tells how Austin, the monk, after having made some progress in planting Christianity among the English [500], made a proposal to the Britons, desiring them to join in communion with him and his new converts, and to assist in converting the English to the Christian faith; but whereas the Britons held and practised rites and traditions in many things different from those that he then brought from the church of Roine, he insisted that they should leave off their own, and comply with his ceremonies and customs. This they refused; and, after many alterations, he at last made them this final † proposal: " You practise in many things contrary to our custom, and indeed contrary to the custom of the universal church; and yet, if you will comply with me in these three things, that you keep Easter at the right time; that you perform the office of baptizing (by which we are regenerated unto God) according to the custom of the holy Roman church and the apostolic church, and that you, together with us, do preach the word of the Lord to the nation of the English,- we will bear patiently with all the other things which you practise * Danv. Treat. of Bapt. pt. 2, c. 7. contrary to our customs; but they answered, that they would do none of these things, nor own him for their archbishop," &c. This same passage is related by several others of our English historians in the after-ages, who, taking it from Bede, relate it to the same sense. Among the rest, one Fabian (a sheriff or alderman of London, in king Henry the Seventh's time, as I take it) wrote a Chronicle of the English History in English [1400]. There are two editions of his book, which Ì have seen in the Oxford library. There may be more; in one of them (which is the first I know not; I think the title-page in one was torn) his words are to the same sense as Bede's, being these, at fol. 56, " Then he sayd to them, Sen ye woll not assent to my hestes generally, assent ye to me especially in thre thyngs. The first is, that ye kepe Esterday in due forme and tyme, as it is ordeyned. The second, that ye give Christendom to the children in the manner that is used in the chyrche. of Rome. And the thyrde, that ye preche unto the Anglis the word of God," &c. But in the other these words [in the manner that is used in the chyrche of Rome] are omitted; so that the condition stands thus [that ye give Christendom to the children]; and this last mentioned edition our author having lighted on, concluded that the British church, before these times, had not been used to give Christendom to, or baptize children. He should have considered, that the account of such a thing should be taken from Bede and the other ancient historians, and not from Fabian; especially since Fabian, in his Preface, acknowledges (as Mr. Wills says*, for I did not read that) that what he relates of the ancient affairs, he has from Bede; and consequently his meaning must be to express Bede's sense; and so that edition first mentioned must be as he meant it, and the omission in the other must have been by mistake, of himself or the printer. * Infant Baptism Asserted, p. 134. |