Theodosia Ernest. Volume II.: or, Ten Days’ Travel in Search of the Church. (continued 6)

“That will not take us long. Our test is the ninth and the last. It says that, No apostate Church can be a Church of Christ. Not that a true Church may not, in process of time, by change of members, change of officers, and change of laws, cease to be a true Church, and thus become apostate; but that after she has thus apostatized, she is no Church of Christ, even though she may still retain the same name and the same external forms that she had at first. Christ’s institution, called the Church, is to be permanent and perpetual. But as many an individual example of that institution has died out and ceased to be, so many a one has gone out from Christ’s jurisdiction, and associated with his enemies. But when it has done so it is not a Church of Christ: when it has done so. It has no authority in his kingdom; when it has done so, its members are no longer members of Christ’s Church; its ordinances are no longer Christian ordinances, its ministry is no longer the Christian ministry. All its official acts are null and void. It cannot therefore be the medium of baptism to members or ordination to ministers. This is self-evident. It is a thing of necessity, unless you admit the absurdity that an organization which is not a Church of Christ, and to which Christ has given no authority, is yet competent to perform, in a legal and valid manner, those acts which he has intrusted exclusively to his Church.

“I trust our friends here will notice this point; I dwell upon it because it is of vast importance.”

“How so, Mr. Courtney? I do not discover any thing so very important in it,” said Theodosia; “but I suppose it in my stupidity that prevents me from seeing it.”

“I will tell you. The Episcopalians, the Lutherans, the Presbyterians, the Methodists, and, I believe, all those denominations who are called Protestants, believe and teach that the Church of Rome, so far from being a true Church of Christ, is that Antichrist which was foretold by the apostles. They have the best of reasons for this faith. There is no doubt that they are in this entirely correct. And yet, while they thus believe and teach, they cannot deny the fact that they all received their baptism and their ordination from the Church of Rome. Now, if Rome were never a Church of Christ, they could not even pretend that it had any right to baptize or ordain, any more than the Mormon society at Nauvoo had. Baptism and ordination conferred by them, and received through them, would have been no more Christian baptism than if it had been received from the followers of Mohammed in Mecca. They therefore say that Rome was once a true Church, but that she has apostatized and become what she is. As she was once a Church, she could receive and transmit true Christian baptism and valid ordination. Now, our position is, that from the day she became apostate she ceased to be a Church of Christ. She was no more a Church of his than if she never had been one. She had no more authority to act as the administrator of the laws of his kingdom than if she had never possessed that authority. Her baptism, after that, was no more Christian baptism than the washing of the heathen in the pagan temples of their idol gods was Christian baptism. The ordination of a minister by her authority and for her service, was no more Christian ordination than the consecration of a priest of Jupiter was Christian ordination; for she was no more a Christian Church, and had no more authority to act in the capacity of a Christian Church than any other company of those who hated holiness and persecuted the true disciples of the Lord.

“This surely will not admit of doubt; it needs no argument. If any one will dispute this, it is hardly worth while to reason with him. Christ gave the authority to administer his ordinances and execute his laws to his Church as the executive of his kingdom. Now, when any assembly ceases to be his Church, it has no longer his commission. All its rights are forfeited. It cannot carry them out of the kingdom; it cannot exercise them as Christ’s executive, when itself no longer belongs to Christ. A provincial government that has revolted against its king, thrown off its allegiance, instituted new officers, made new laws, received other subjects, and directed all its powers, physical and mental, to the destruction of the faithful subjects of their former king, are surely not legal administrators of the ordinances of his kingdom. They may still claim to act by his authority; they may still employ his name to give apparent sanction to their work; they may deny that they are rebels; they may declare that the king has no other faithful subjects but themselves, and gives authority to none but them. Yet all this will not legalize their acts. Their acts will no more possess the actual sanction of the king than if they had been done in their own name, or in the name of some foreign potentate, whose authority they had never pretended to recognize. The faithful subjects of the king can no more recognize their acts as legal than if they had never made any part of the kingdom. Now, suppose a subject of a foreign power should be naturalized, and so entitled to all the rights of citizenship in this revolted province, and should thence pass over to some province which had continued faithful to the king; would that naturalization given by this revolted province entitle him to citizenship in the real kingdom? He has come among the rebels; he has been received by the rebels; he has been naturalized by the rebels; and he is on this account entitled to citizenship among the rebels. But now, when he comes among the faithful, he must be naturalized by the faithful. They cannot recognize the authority of the rebels to admit citizens to their kingdom. If he become a citizen there, he must be naturalized there, and by the legal and undisputed authority of their king.

“So, when a subject of Satan comes to an apostate, a revolted Church, and is received by them, baptized by them, and thus made one of them, and entitled to all the privileges of Church-membership among them, he does not by this act become a member of Christ’s kingdom. This baptism does not make him a member of any true Church of Christ. And if he should desire to leave the rebels and unite with a true and faithful Church, that Church could not recognize as legal, or receive as valid, the baptism of the apostates. And if she should receive him as a member, without baptizing him, she would by that act acknowledge that his previous baptism had been legal and valid; and, consequently, that the revolted and apostate Church was, at the time of conferring it, just as much a true Church of Christ, and just as truly authorized by Christ to receive members and administer his ordinance, es she is herself.

“So also in regard to ordination. Suppose, in the revolted province, some one who had been received and naturalized and made a citizen among the rebels, should be by them chosen to office, by them duly initiated and commissioned as an officer to exercise among them the authority belonging to his station; and he should choose, afterward, to go over among the faithful subjects of the king, and claim that he was entitled to exercise the authority of his office there, in the real kingdom, what would the faithful subjects of the king be bound to do? Must they recognize his authority? must they submit to his rule? If they do so, they admit that the acts of the rebels are as legal and valid as their own acts, done by order of the king. They could do no such thing. If they received him as a citizen, they must first naturalize him again; for his naturalization by the rebels is nothing to them; (it did not make him a member of the kingdom, but only of a community of rebels.) Then, if they desired his services as an officer they would elect him as such, and commission him as such. And until he had been thus chosen and commissioned, he could surely be no more an officer among them, and they could no more recognize any official act of his, than as though the rebels had never dreamed of giving him a commission in their revolted government.

“So, when an apostate, a revolted Church, has first, by their unauthorized baptism, made one a member of their apostate communion, and then appointed him to office, and commissioned him as a minister to exercise his proper functions in their rebel assemblies, this does not make him a minister of any true Church of Christ. This does not empower him to exercise the office of a minister, or make any of his ministerial acts legal and valid, within Christ’s visible kingdom. Christ has intrusted the selecting and commissioning of his ministers to his Churches, and not to Churches which hate his people and his cause, and employ all their powers to injure and destroy them. If this man is to perform any official act within the true kingdom of Christ, he must first be ordained by legal authority within the kingdom; and every official act which he shall take upon him to perform, without such legal ordination, is illegal and invalid; it is null and void, as though it never had been done.

“This is surely all very plain; and I cannot conceive how any man of common sense, who will take five minutes to think about it, can ever venture to doubt or dispute it.”

“Certainly, I see all that,” said Theodosia; “but I do not yet quite apprehend the vast importance which you seem to attach to it. I do not yet perceive the tremendous consequences which are to follow from these self-evident truths.”

“These consequences,” replied Mr. Courtney, “are so tremendous, and they follow so necessarily and indisputably from the premises which we have laid down, that, when they are seen and felt, the mind almost instinctively rejects the premises; though, when seen without the consequences, it cannot help admitting their truth, and, even after the consequences are fully realized, can find no logical means of setting them aside.

“As one who stands and gazes at the desolation in the path of the avalanche, which rushed but yesterday over some beauteous, and luxuriant, and densely-populated valley, can hardly realize what he beholds; but exclaims, even while he sees it all, ‘This cannot be. Surely this is not the place which yesterday was thronging with busy life and studded with peaceful dwellings, in which were beating a thousand human hearts, with all their joys and sorrows, hopes and fears; and now thus desolate; now thus dead. And yet it must be so. This is the place; and there is now the ponderous mass which made this fearful ruin!’ So he who can be brought to look this subject fairly and fully in the face; who will bring his mind and hold it to the point until he sees and realizes the premises we have laid down, and the conclusion that must, of logical necessity, follow, is apt to feel as though the mind were stunned and stupefied with the result. And though he cannot show any flaw in the argument, or offer any reason why he should think it false, he yet exclaims, ‘It surely cannot be true.’

“The consequence which I have spoken of is this: An apostate Church, after it has become apostate, is not a Church of Christ. Her baptism is not valid Christian baptism. Her ministers are not legal Christian ministers. Her acts, as a Church, are, one and all, utterly null and void. Now, it is admitted by Episcopalians and Presbyterians, Lutherans and Methodists, that the Church of Rome is thus apostate, and that she was thus apostate before the Reformation. If so, she had before that time become incapable of conferring baptism or ordination. Her baptism was not Christian baptism, and her ministers had no authority as the ministers of Christ. And yet the only baptism and the only ordination which any of these denominations have, they received from the Church of Rome. It follows, therefore, if an apostate Church cannot confer valid Christian baptism; nay, if the baptism of Antichrist is not valid Christian baptism, the founders and first members of these Churches were not baptized; and if the ordination of Antichrist could not create a Christian minister, their ministers had never been ordained. And now, if baptism is a necessary prerequisite to Church membership, so that an assembly, even of good people, cannot be a true, visible Church of Christ, unless its members have been baptized,—not into Mohammedanism, by the authority of the false prophet; not into Mormonism, by the authority of Joe Smith; not into Roman Catholicism, by the authority of the Pope; but into a genuine Christianity, by the authority of Jesus,—then they could not, until they had been baptized, have become true Churches of Christ. And unless genuine and valid baptism can be conferred by those who have themselves not been baptized, and unless true and valid ordination can be conferred by those who have themselves neither been baptized nor ordained, then they have never received baptism, and have never had a legal ministry; and, consequently, never have been, are not now, and never can be, true Churches and true ministers of Christ, until they shall have been baptized into a real Church of baptized believers.

“They admit that baptism is an essential prerequisite to Church- membership.

“They admit that no one can give true Christian baptism who has not been himself baptized.

“They admit that baptism conferred by Mohammedans or Mormons, by a Temperance Society, or a lodge of Odd-Fellows or Freemasons, would not be Christian baptism; but that, to be such, it must be given by a true Church of Christ.

“They admit that they received their baptism from Rome.

“And they admit—nay, they contend and prove, that Rome, so far from being a true Church of Christ, was Antichrist himself—the man of sin—the son of perdition—the apocalyptic beast—the dragon that made war upon the saints, and that drove the true Church into the wilderness, and that wore out the saints with cruel and incessant persecutions.

“They admit all this, and they therefore must admit that they have never had true baptism, and are not true Churches of Jesus Christ.

“They may stand and stare at the ghastly array of their admissions, and at the overwhelming ruin in which these admissions bury up all their claims to be regarded as true Churches. But they cannot deny that they have made these admissions. They cannot help making them again. They must admit these things, or deny what is as open and plain as the day to every thinking mind. They dare not dispute the premises, and they cannot resist the consequence. They may lift up their hands and stupidly exclaim, ‘This cannot be so;’ but it is so, nevertheless. They may say it is unchristian and uncharitable thus to unchurch almost the whole of Christendom. We do not do it; it is the logic of the case that does the work. Neither we nor they themselves can deny the conclusion, if these admissions are once made. They may go back, if they choose, and retract these admissions. They may take them one by one, and see if they can, see if they dare, as conscientious adherents to the simple truth, retract a single one of then.

“Let them try it. Let them begin with the last. Will they deny that Rome is Antichrist? We will prove it to them by arguments from the principal defenders of each of the denominations. We will prove it from Luther, from Calvin, from Baxter, from Doddridge, from Scott, from Benson, from Adam Clarke, from Wesley, from Chalmers. Or, if they do not like their own authorities, we will prove it by a comparison of the historical facts with the Scripture predictions. Nay, further, if they deny that Rome is Antichrist; if they contend that Rome is, as she claims to be, the true Church of Christ, then it will follow, just as certainly as before, that they are not true Churches, though on different grounds. If Rome be the true Church, then they who went out from Rome were heretics and schismatics, and they legally are exscinded and excluded from the Church. For Rome, by the authority that was in her as Christ’s executive, has cut them off and consigned them to perdition. So, whichever horn of the dilemma they may take, they cannot go behind the last of these admissions. If Rome was the true Church; if Rome was authorized to exercise the authority of the kingdom of Christ; if Rome was that body to which Christ had committed the ordinances and laws of his kingdom for preservation and execution, then the act of Rome, by which they were cut off, was a legal act; and they were cast out of the Church, and, of course, had no more authority to baptize, and preach, and found Churches, than a deposed and excluded minister would have now.

“If you say that they withdrew, and were not cut off, it does not help the case at all; for, on the supposition that Rome was the true Church, they, in that case, went out from the true Church of Christ, and of course no longer made a part of it, and had no authority in it. But the first reformers did not withdraw. They remained in the Church as long as they could. They had no thought of forming a new Church, but only of reforming the old. They, as members of the Church of Rome, protested against her faith and practices. And for this they were excluded, anathematized, and persecuted, by that apostate, corrupt, and tyrannical hierarchy. But Protestants will not, they cannot, they dare not, in the face of their own denunciations of Rome as an apostate Church, and as Antichrist, recall what they have said, and fraternize with her as a true Church of Christ. And if they do, it will not affect our argument; for we have proved her false, though they may count her true. We have tried her by the Word of God, and found that she has not one single mark of a true Church of Christ. And yet, if she had every mark but one, she would not be a true Church of Christ. If, therefore, she ever was a true Church, she has become apostate. If she is apostate now, she has been so ever since she possessed the same peculiarities upon which we have rejected her claims; and this was, to say the least, long before the Reformation. The only ground on which a consistent Protestant can stand and claim that those who received their baptism and their ordination in Rome, and yet, on coming out of her, were true Church-members, with valid baptism and legal ordination, is this: they may contend that when these members were received and baptized, and when these ministers were ordained, the Church of Rome was a true Church of Christ; but, in the interval which elapsed between their baptism and ordination and their final withdrawal or expulsion, she had become the apostate seat of sin and abode of every unclean and hateful bird. But this they did not pretend at the time. No one will venture to pretend it now. Bad as Rome was at the time of Luther, she was not as bad as she had been. Her pope and cardinals, bishops and priests, vile as they were, were decent men, in comparison with the monsters of vice, and cruelty, and profligacy, which filled her sacred (!) offices in the tenth and eleventh centuries. She was just then only selling for money the privilege to sin; but she had long been accustomed to sell for money the right to grant such privileges. She was then only burning now and then a heretic; but she had long before been used to murder them by thousands.

“The apostasy was not only begun, but matured, hundreds of years before Luther was born. It was not then a thing of yesterday. Luther was born under an apostate Church; he was baptized into an apostate Church, and made a priest of an apostate Church; and his companions were all of them baptized into an apostate Church, if they were baptized at all. The only baptism and the only ordination that he or any of them received, was that of a Church that had not one single mark or feature of the Church of Christ; and, consequently, their baptism and ordination was no better than if they had received it in a Mohammedan mosque, or a Mormon temple, or a Freemason’s lodge. And since they could not give what they had not received, the so-called Churches which they set up have never had, and have not now, and never can have, the ordinances of a Church of Christ, until they receive them from a true and legal Church.

“But we need not forestall the results of our coming examination of their several claims. We have now done with that of the Church of Rome. We have first ‘searched the Scriptures,’ and found what were there laid down as the peculiar characteristics of a true Church of Christ. We have tried to find if Rome possessed these characteristics, and discovered that she has not one.”

“I have,” said Mr. Percy, “busied myself, as we have gone along, in making a sort of picture, or diagram, of this Church. As we had nine marks, I divided this blank page into nine equal spaces, and writing the marks in the margin, determined, if she was found to possess any one of them, to leave a white space for it; if not, to make it black. And here you see it all black, in every space, from the top to the bottom.”

“It is a good conception,” said the Doctor; “and I hope you will give us a similar diagram of every Church whose claims may come before us. But we are tired now; let us adjourn; and when we meet to-morrow, take up the Church of England.”

Diagram of the Roman Catholic Church.

Signs or Marks of a True Church. Marks of the Roman Catholic Church.

1st. It consists only of professed believers in Christ. [No] It includes little children who cannot believe. See p. 157.

2d. Its members have been baptized upon a profession of their faith. [No] Its members were sprinkled in infancy. See pp. 188⁠–⁠194.

3d. It is a local organization, and independent of all others. [No] It is not a local, independent organization, but a vast hierarchy. See pp. 195⁠–⁠197.

4th. It has Christ alone for its King and Lawgiver, and recognizes no other authority above its own. [No] It has the Pope for its head and lawgiver, and receives Christ’s law un subordinate to his. See p. 197.

5th. Its members have become such by their own voluntary act. [No] They were made members in childhood, without their knowledge or consent. See p. 198.

6th. It holds as articles of faith the fundamental doctrines of the gospel. [No] It denies the fundamental doctrine of salvation by faith, and makes it depend on works and sacraments. See p. 199.

7th. It began with Christ, and has continued to the present time. [No] Christ did not establish any hierarchy. The Roman Catholic Church began long after the apostles. See p. 199.

8th. It never persecutes for conscience’ sake. [No] It has always and everywhere been a persecutor, when it had the power. See pp. 201⁠–⁠206.

9th. No apostate Church can be a Church of Christ. [No] If it was ever a true Church, it apostatized when it became a hierarchy. or a persecutor. See pp. 245⁠–⁠256.

Seventh Day’s Travel.

“You will recollect,” said the Doctor, at the commence men of the conversation this morning, “that there was one point suggested by your remarks yesterday, concerning which I desired some further information; not so much because I had any doubt of the correctness of your statements, as because I desire to know upon what sort of evidence you made assertions so very different from those I have been accustomed to hear.”

“Certainly,” replied Mr. Courtney; “I remember it perfectly. You have all your life been taught, as all Pedobaptists are, by preachers, and books, and pamphlets, and papers, that the baptism of babes dates from the time of Christ. And I asserted that it was introduced at a much later period. I do not love to make assertions without giving the proof, and am very glad that you are disposed to hear the testimony. I will make it as concise as possible, and it will be as convincing as you can possibly desire. I will set your mind at rest on this point at once and for ever.

“And I say, in the first place, if the baptism of babes was not practiced by Christ and the apostles, it must have been introduced afterwards. This is self-evident. But now, we have carefully examined the record of the sayings and doings of Christ and the apostles, from Matthew to Revelation; and though we have found the baptism of many thousands of men and women expressly mentioned, we have not discovered any account of, or any allusion to, the baptism of one solitary babe. We must therefore, if the record be not incomplete on this most important point of Christian faith and practice, admit that no infant was baptized. At any rate, we must so decide, unless those who say that infant baptism was then practiced will show at least one plain, undoubted fact on which to base their assertion. But such a fact the most intelligent and candid Pedobaptists do not so much as pretend to have. They say, with their learned and zealous advocate, Professor Stuart, ‘Commands, or plain and certain examples, in the New Testament relative to it I do not find.’

“No one ever investigated this subject with more laborious scrutiny then Dr. Wall, the author of the ‘History of Infant Baptism;’ yet he is forced to acknowledge that, ‘Among all the persons that are recorded as having been baptized by the apostles, there is no express mention of any infant.’

“So Luther says, expressly, ‘It cannot be proved by the Sacred Scriptures that infant baptism was instituted by Christ, or begun by the first Christians after the apostles.’

“So the learned Erasmus, in his note on Romans v. 14: ‘Paul does not seem to treat about infants. It was not yet the custom for infants to be baptized.’

“So the Magdeburg Centuriators: ‘Concerning the baptism of infants, there are no examples of which we read in the first century.’

“Bishop Burnet expressly declares, ‘There is no express precept or rule given in the New Testament for the baptism of infants.’

“I might extend this catalogue indefinitely; but I need not do so. I will only add the testimony of the learned Limbroch, given in his System of Divinity: ‘There is no express command for it in Scripture. Nay, all those passages wherein baptism is commanded, do immediately relate to adult persons, since they are ordered to be instructed, and faith is prerequisite as a necessary qualification, which [things] are peculiar to the adult. There is no instance can be produced from whence it may indisputably be inferred that any child was baptized by the apostles. The necessity of Pedobaptism was never asserted by any council before that of Carthage, held in the year 418. We own that there is no precept nor undoubted instance in Scripture of infant baptism.’

“Now, since we have searched for it in the Record, and could not find it; and since these and others of the most learned, most industrious, and most zealous advocates of infant baptism admit that they have searched for it and cannot find it, it seems to me that we are fully justified in concluding that it is not there.”

“But, Mr. Courtney, you say these men were themselves baptizers of infants. They were pious, conscientious men How could they practice and commend that which had no Scripture authority?”

“That is a hard question, sir. If they were still alive, I would like to ask it of themselves. I suppose most of them, did they venture to speak out truly the real ground of their faith and practice, would give it somewhat in the language of Mr. Walker, in his modest plea for infant baptism: ‘Where authority from the Scriptures fail, there the custom of the Church is to be held as law. It doth not follow that our Saviour gave no precept for the baptizing of infants because no such precept is particularly expressed in the Scriptures; for our Saviour spake many things to his disciples concerning the kingdom of God, both before his passion and after his resurrection, which are not written in the Scriptures. And who can say but that among those many unwritten sayings of his, there might be an express precept for infant baptism?’”

“Certainly,” exclaimed Theodosia. “Who can say? And who can say that there was not among those unwritten sayings of his a complete description of purgatory? Who can say that there were not express directions concerning the consecration of monks and nuns? Who can say that all the mummery of Popery was not detailed in those unwritten conversations?”

“It seems very evident to me,” said Dr. Thinkwell, “that if He did give them such an express precept, they were very disobedient to his requirement; for of all the thousands whom they actually baptized, we do not read that they ever baptized a single infant; and never in a single instance so much as intimated to those whom they received and organized into Churches, that it was their duty and their privilege to bring their infants in with them. If he gave them such a precept, I can only say, they must have forgotten all about it, and the Holy Spirit failed to bring it to their remembrance, as Jesus promised he should do concerning the things which he had told them.”

“We have nothing at all to do,” said Mr. Courtney, “with traditions on this or any other point of faith or practice. The custom of the Churches, except so for as that custom is recorded in the Book, is nothing to us; and yet I will show that the custom of the Churches was not to baptize infants for several generations after the apostles. I say, first, infant baptism was not commanded by Christ, or practiced by the apostles. It did not exist up to the time when the canon of Scripture was completed. This I take for granted from the simple fact, that neither we, nor its most diligent and capable and zealous advocates have been able to discover any trace of it in the Book.

“I will now prove to you that it did not exist in the century next after the apostles. What sort of testimony do you require! Will you have the statements of ecclesiastical historians? Wallafridus Strabo, a Catholic ecclesiastical historian of the ninth century, says, ‘It should be observed, that in the primitive times, the grace of baptism was usually given to those only who were arrived at such maturity of body and mind that they could understand what were the benefits of baptism; what was to be confessed and believed; and, finally, what was to be observed by those who are regenerated in Christ.’

“In fact, there is a canon of a Roman Catholic council, held at Paris in the year eight hundred and twenty-nine, which says the same thing: ‘In the beginning of the Holy Church of God, no one was admitted to baptism unless he had before been instructed in the sacrament of faith and of baptism, which is proved by the words of St. Paul, Rom. vi. 3, 4.’

“Salmasius, an eminent French Roman Catholic, says, ‘In the first two centuries no one was baptized except, being instructed in the faith, and acquainted with the doctrine of Christ, he was able to profess himself a believer, because of those words, “He that believeth and is baptized.” Thence the order of catechumens in the Church. Then also it was the constant custom to give the Lord’s Supper to those catechumens immediately after their baptism.’

“Ludovicus Vives declares, ‘No one in former times was admitted to the sacred baptistery except he was of age, understood what the mystical water meant, desired to be washed in it, and expressed that desire more than once, of which practice we have yet a faint resemblance in our baptism of infants; for an infant of only a day or two old is yet asked [in the Lutheran Church] whether he will be baptized; and this question is asked three times: in whose name the sponsors answer, He does desire it.’

“Curcellæus says, ‘The baptism of infants in the first two centuries after Christ was altogether unknown; but in the third and fourth was allowed by some few. In the fifth and the following ages it was generally received. The custom of baptizing infants did not begin before the third age after Christ was born. In the former ages no trace of it appears. It was introduced without the command of Christ: and therefore,’ he says in another place, ‘this rite is observed by us as an ancient custom, but not as an apostolical tradition.’

“To the same effect speak many of the most learned Europeans who have, with every possible facility for such investigations, made the customs of the ancient Church their study.

“Thus the Magdeburg Centuriators concerning the first century say, ‘In this age they baptized only the adult or aged, whether Jews or Gentiles; and as to the manner of baptizing, it was by dipping or plunging in the water, into the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost.’ Of the second century they say, ‘It doth not appear from any approved authors that there was any mutation or change in respect to baptism from the first century.’ Of the third they say, ‘As to the rite of baptism in the Churches of Asia, we have no testimony of any alteration; but concerning the African Churches, there were great corruptions, in opinion at least, if not in practice;’ and instance the introduction of the baptism of infants, which was opposed by Tertullian.

“Dr. Mosheim says of the first century, ‘No persons were admitted to baptism but such as had been previously instructed into the principal points of Christianity, and had also given satisfactory proofs of pious dispositions and upright intentions.’ And of the second century, ‘The persons to be baptized, after they had repeated the creed confessed, and renounced their sins, particularly the Devil and his pompous allurements, were immersed under water, and received into Christ’s kingdom by a solemn invocation.’

“These authorities are none of them Baptists. They every one belong to Churches which consist of those baptized in infancy. They all have every motive to find infant baptism in the first Churches if they can. They none of them have any conceivable interest in advancing Baptist sentiments; and one would think the united testimony of such men, upon a question of ecclesiastical history, would be decisive. I would say, if I were talking on any other subject, that he who would, without a careful personal examination of the evidences, venture to assert, in opposition to all this, that infant baptism existed in the first two centuries, was either a liar or a fool. But I know the force of religious prejudice, and will not use such language. I will, on the contrary, suppose that even you and these good friends around me are not yet convinced I have given you the simple declarations of very learned and eminent men (themselves Pedobaptists) who before making those declarations had gone back into the musty records of antiquity, and made a careful and laborious search for the real facts. After such examination they expressly depose that the first and second centuries knew nothing of infant baptism. I can for my own part see no reason why any man should ask for further witnesses; but we have others, and I will bring them in, and they shall testify.

“There are witnesses which show that even to a much later day than this, infant baptism was the exception, and not, as now in Pedobaptist Churches, the general rule—I mean the baptistries. The Christians continued to baptize in streams, and pools, and baths until the middle of the third century. Justin Martyr says, the candidates ‘Were brought to a place where there was water.’ And Tertullian says, ‘It made no difference whether it were the sea, or a pool, or a lake, a river or a bath.’ But about the middle of the third century, shortly after infant baptism began to be rather proposed than practiced, the Churches began to build special places for baptism, especially in the towns and cities. These baptisteries were outside the churches, and consisted of a large pool enclosed in a building, and covered by a cupola, or dome. Now, the most ancient of these baptisteries were arranged at great cost for the immersion of adults. The pools were large enough and deep enough to swim in, and by the ancients were sometimes called swimming places. It was not until after the fifth century that the font was found in the place of the pool, and not until the fourteenth that the basin took the place of the font. Now these, though silent, are most convincing witnesses. The first baptisteries were contrived and fitted for the immersion of adults. The fonts, reduced in size, first to the standard of youths, and then to that of babes, show the gradual incoming of the immersion of infants; and the substitution of the basin shows the introduction of sprinkling.

“But, not to dwell on this, I wish to call your attention to another and a most conclusive fact. It is this: All the ancient formularies of the baptismal service are arranged for adults; or, at least, for those who could understand and answer the questions for themselves, In the earliest liturgies and rituals there is no provision made for infants. They are no more recognized as the proper subjects of baptism than are the worshippers of Jupiter.”

“I do not see how you can prove that,” said the Doctor, “unless you can give us the rituals to examine for ourselves, or show us the testimony of some competent and credible witness who has examined them.”

“It is in my power to do both at the same time. I have in my trunk a work, recently published in London, which brings to light much that was not known before, and clears away the rubbish which defaced and concealed much that was partly understood concerning the faith and practice of the first Churches. No one, who will follow the learned author through all the various paths by which he has come to his final conclusions, will be disposed to doubt that he has at length discovered and brought to view the real picture of the ancient Church. I will get it, and show you what was the practice of that Church concerning baptism. The author, who is the learned Chevalier Bunsen, is not a Baptist. He has no object in advancing Baptist sentiments. He is a Pedobaptist scholar, who, by vast labor and research, has endeavored to discover beneath the rubbish which false learning had heaped upon it, the beautiful form of the apostolical Church. Not, indeed, as it existed in the apostles’ days; not as it was before it had been at all corrupted by false doctrine or unauthorized practices; but as it was from the second to the fifth century. This book is called ‘Hippolytus And His Age.’ It is based upon the discovery of a long-lost manuscript of that ancient bishop, who lived and wrote in the third century. But besides this manuscript, Bunsen, the translator of it, has brought together, from many and various sources, the most reliable and authentic accounts of the age when Hippolytus lived.”

Mr. Courtney went to his state-room for the book, and presently returned with the third volume, containing what purports to be the “Church and House Book of the Ancient Christians.”

“We will not have time,” said he, “to read this book to-day. I will merely call your attention to the fact recorded on the fifth page, that those who would be baptized must first be brought to the minister to be instructed. On the eighth page, we learn that the course of instruction ordinarily continued three years, though this depended on their course of life. After this they were examined, the correctness of their lives duly certified by those who had brought them for instruction; and after fasting, bathing, exorcism, etc., they were divested of their clothing and immersed in water. (Pp. 18⁠–⁠22.) Then, after baptism, they go up out of the water, are anointed with oil, signed with the sign of the cross, clothed in white garments, and so return to the Church, where the Lord’s Supper is at once administered to them.

“We see, therefore, that all these fooleries of exorcism, unction, and chrism, together with the sign of the cross, which have no scriptural authority, had come into use long before infant baptism; and if the usage of the ancient Church can establish any thing not commanded in Scripture, these things stand on better ground than it does. But, although they had so far departed from the simplicity of the gospel as to introduce this senseless mummery, they had not yet learned to make one a Christian without his own consent. And Mr. Bunsen, on page 179, makes a very plain summing up of the whole matter. I will read it to you: ‘The Church adhered rigidly to the principle as constituting the true import of the baptism ordained by Christ, that no one can be a member of the communion of saints but by his own free act and deed, his own solemn vow, made in the presence of the Church. It was with this understanding that the candidate for baptism was immersed in water and admitted as a brother upon his confession of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost. It understood baptism, therefore, in the exact sense the First Epistle of St. Peter, iii. 21, not as being a mere bodily purification, but as a vow made to God, with a good conscience, through faith in Jesus Christ. This vow was preceded by a confession of faith, made in the face of the Church, in which the catechumen expressed that faith in Christ, and in the sufficiency of the salvation offered by him. It was a vow to live for the time to come to God, and for his neighbor—not to the world and for self; a vow of faith in his becoming a child of God, through the communion with his only-begotten Son in the Holy Ghost; a vow of the most solemn kind, for life and for death. The keeping of this pledge was the condition of continuance in the Church. Its infringement entailed repentance or excommunication. All Church discipline was based upon this voluntary pledge, and the responsibility thereby self-imposed. How could such a vow be received without examination? How could such examination be passed without instruction and observation?

“‘As a general rule, the ancient Church fixed three years as the period for this preparation; supposing the candidate, whether a heathen or a Jew, to be competent to receive it. With Christian children the condition was the same, except that the term of probation was curtailed according to circumstances. Pedobaptism, in the more modern sense, meaning thereby baptism of new-born infants, with the vicarious promises of parents or other sponsors, was utterly unknown to the early Church, not only down to the end of the second, but indeed to the middle of the third century. We shall show, in a subsequent page, how this practice originated in the baptism of children of a more advanced age.’”

Mr. Courtney then turned to page 186, and read,

“‘The Examination.—In the third and last year of the preparation, the catechumens were called competentes, or candidates, as they had been called hearers in the second. Before they were set apart from the rest, in immediate preparation for their baptism, an examination was made as to their life and conduct during the period of probation.… It is unnecessary to say that this examination was a public one. The congregation [the ekklesia] was, and continued to be, the supreme judge.… If the candidates passed this ordeal, they were first bathed and pronounced personally clean. They fasted on Friday, and met together solemnly on Saturday. Thereupon they were commanded to pray. They knelt down and received the bishop’s blessing, who exorcised every unclean spirit.… The bishop breathed upon each of them, as the Lord did upon his disciples, and then sealed them (as the text-book expresses) on the forehead, ears, and lips—doubtless with the sign of the cross. At the dawn of Sunday, the baptismal font was filled, accompanied by a blessing, which corresponds exactly with the prayers [which they] used in consecrating the elements used for the Lord’s Supper. The deacons assisted the men, and the deaconesses the women, to take off their ornaments and put on the baptismal dress. They were then presented to one of the presbyters, who called solemnly on each of them to renounce Satan and all his services and all his works.… After this solemn renunciation he was anointed by the presbyter with the oil of exorcism.… The deacon and deaconess accompanied the neophytes into the water, and made each of them, in turn, repeat after them a confession of faith in the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, or respond to it with the words, I believe.… The confession was three times repeated, being uttered before each of the three immersions.… After that followed the true baptismal unction with the precious oil, the so-called chrisma.… The ceremony concluded with the Christian kiss.… After this, the baptized persons were clothed in white and conducted into the church.’ When, after repeating the Lord’s prayer in the name of the whole congregation, to show that each one was now a priest, ‘They partook of the Lord’s Supper, in which milk and honey were set before them, as well as bread and wine, doubtless as symbols of their being, as it were, newly born.’

“Now, what I say,” continued Mr. Courtney, “is this: however far all this may be from the practice of Christ and the apostles, it is utterly inconsistent with the idea that those who were the subjects of baptism could be little infants or any way incapable of witnessing a good profession. And if we read in this age or the next of the baptism of children, we may be sure that they are not little babes, but such as could be instructed, could believe and make profession of their faith.”

“But Bunsen promised to tell us, if I heard you rightly,” said Theodosia, “how it was that children at a later day came to be received. Can you find us that place?”

“It follows directly what we have been looking at. Here, on the 191st page, is the beginning of what he says on this point: ‘Baptism is indeed called a new birth—regeneration. But in what sense? Was it a sort of magical conversion of the curse into a blessing, effected now in the case of the infants by the act of sprinkling? Was it a forgiving of sins not intended to be brought back to the recollection of the parents or the sponsors who were present, but to be applied to the infant itself?

“‘The ancient Church knew no more than do the Gospels and the apostles of such superstition, which contains less spirituality than many of the lustrations of the old world, and not much more than the taurobolia and criobolia, mysteries of the last stages of heathenism, purporting to purify the neophyte by the blood of victims. On the contrary, she bears authentic testimony in all her ordinances against this corruption and misunderstanding, as in other cases the origin was innocent; and I think that we are at this moment better able than either the defenders or the opponents of infant baptism have hitherto been, to tell how it originated. A passage in our Alexandrian Church-book gives the true explanation of the assertion of Origen, himself an Alexandrian, that the baptism of children was an apostolic tradition. And it removes the origin of infant baptism from Tertullian and Hippolytus to the end of our present period; Cyprian being the first Father who, impelled by a fanatical enthusiasm, and assisted by a bad interpretation of the Old Testament, established it as a principle.… The difference between the ante-Nicene and the later Church was essentially this: the later Church, with the exception of converts, only baptized new-born infants, and she did so on principle. The ancient Church, as a general rule, baptized adults, and only after they had gone through the course of instruction; and as the exception, only Christian children who had not yet arrived at years of maturity, but never infants.… Cyprian, and some other African bishops, his contemporaries, at the close of the third century were the first who viewed baptism in the light of a washing away of the universal sinfulness of human nature, and connected this idea with that ordinance of the Old Testament, circumcision.’ And he goes on to show, that it was on this ground that it was applied to babes, to wash away their hereditary or original sin. Hence the doctrine of baptismal regeneration.

“Now, not only Bunsen, but all these writers whom I have quoted as authorities, are, if not opponents of the Baptists, all members of Pedobaptist Churches, and have every inducement to make the best showing that they can for the practice of their own communion. They are therefore most unexceptionable witnesses so far as they may be suspected of any secret bias to one side or the other of this controversy. They are certainly competent to testify, having made the customs of the ancient Church their special study; and they testify most unmistakably that what I said was true; namely, that baptism which Christ commanded to be given only to the believing penitent, that is, to him who gave evidence of a renewal of his nature by the obedience of faith, was first given to the youth upon the repetition of a form of words which they had learned as catechumens; and at length to those who could not say the words, but whose parents or others answered for them; and now, as we have often seen, it is given to little crying babes who do not know their right hand from their left. We have seen when infant baptism was introduced, why it was introduced, and how it was introduced;^[7] and I trust you are ready now to go on with our investigation of the claims of the English or Episcopal Church.”

“I am quite ready,” said the Doctor. “I shall not be troubled any more with doubts about the time of the introduction of infant baptism. I used to think that Dr. Barlow, an eminent Episcopalian, and Professor in the University at Oxford, England, spoke very strangely for one who belonged to a Pedobaptist Church; but I see now, that as a diligent student of antiquity, and a candid man, he could not have spoken otherwise.”

“What did he say, sir?” asked Theodosia.

“It was in a letter of his, published in England, in which he says, ‘I do believe and know that there is neither precept nor example in Scripture for infant baptism, nor any just evidence for it for above two hundred years after Christ; that Tertullian condemns it as an unwarrantable custom, and Nazianzen, a good while after him, dislikes it too. Sure I am, that in the primitive times they were first catechumeni, then Illuminati, or baptizati; and that not only Pagans, and the children of Pagans converted, but children of Christian parents. The truth is, I do believe Pedobaptism, how or by whom I know not, came into the world in the second century, and in the third and fourth began to be practiced, though not generally defended as lawful, from the text John iii. 5, grossly misunderstood; and upon the like gross mistake of John vi. 63, they did for many centuries, both in the Greek and Latin Churches, communicate infants, and give them the Lord’s Supper; and I do confess they might do both as well as either.’”

“The whole history is told,” said Mr. Courtney, “in a few words by the learned Johannes Bohemius, who wrote in the twelfth century. ‘In times past,’ he says, ‘the custom was, to administer baptism only to those who had been instructed in the faith, and seven times in the week before Easter and Pentecost catechized. But afterwards, when it was thought and adjudged needful to eternal life to be baptized, it was ordained that new-born children should be baptized, and godfathers were appointed, who should make confession and renounce the Devil on their behalf.’ But enough of this—perhaps too much, as it has turned our minds away, for the time being, from the main object of our conversation. Let us now proceed to look for our scriptural marks of a true Church of Christ in the English Episcopal Church. Let us have the tablet, Mrs. Percy. What is the first mark?”

“She must consist only of professed believers in Christ.”

“Is this true of the English Church? Does not her membership embrace the little children who cannot believe, and thousands who were made nominal Christians in their infancy, and who make no pretension to genuine piety? Does it not embrace the gamblers and horse-racers, the profane, the lewd and debauched? Does it not, so far us they can be brought into it, embrace the whole population, good, bad, and indifferent, of the great English nation? It is the custom, sanctioned by law, that every infant must be baptized. By baptism it is made a member of the Church. The confirmation which follows, when it has come to the age of childhood, and is able, though not very intelligently, to answer for itself, is not the act of admission: it only confirms what was already done. The liturgy regards the child as regenerated and made a member of Christ’s body by the act of baptism. This is the door of entrance into the Church; and, consequently, all who are baptized by her authority are members of her communion.”

“But, my dear sir,” asked the Doctor, “is not the confirmation necessary to complete and ratify the act of admission? I do not think any are recognized and treated as Church members, who do not at confirmation make a sort of profession of their faith. They must say the catechism and repeat the creed before they can be entitled to the privileges of full communion.”

“Let it be so; but is this an intelligent and personal profession of that saving faith in Christ which is required by the Scripture? Every one who has any familiarity with this confirmation ceremony, knows that the repetition of the catechism and creed is, in most cases, a mere formal saying over of the words. It means nothing more than that the child has been so far instructed that he has committed it to memory, and can say it over as he would a lesson in geography, or a rule in arithmetic. He is admitted to communion, not because he gives to the Church or to the bishop any evidence at all that he is a penitent believer in the Lord Jesus for the salvation of his soul, but because he gives evidence that he has intellect enough to learn the catechism, and memorize the creed. This is enough, and this is all. If it sometimes happens that the child has really been converted, and in his mind and heart attaches some spiritual meaning to the words repeated, this is the exception and not the rule. It is not required—it is not expected; and the membership exists, and is just as readily confirmed, without as with it. That there are some, nay, many, very good and pious people in the English Church, I will not deny. They have truly repented of their sins, and have heartily trusted in Christ as their Saviour. They have been born again, and made new creatures in Christ Jesus. But at the same time it is notorious that a majority of those she counts as members, make no pretensions to any other Christianity than that which they received by the forms of the Church; and to the efficacy of these forms they are trusting for salvation. If a profession made not by them, but for them, in infancy, and by them acknowledged and ratified in early childhood, not heartily, and with a full understanding of its import, but in words only, and as a regular matter of form—a mere ceremony which they read in a book, and which is required and expected to be observed at a certain age, and that whether there is any evidence of piety or not—if this is a genuine scriptural profession of faith in Christ, then they have made such profession; if not, then Mr. Percy must make the space opposite this mark in his tablet black, as he did for Rome.”

“It certainly cannot be left white,” said Mr. Percy; “and yet, when I see so many pious believers in Jesus among their members, I do not like to make it entirely black. Suppose we shade it, and leave it neither white nor black?

“Do not forget the true point of our inquiry,” replied Mr Courtney. “It is not whether she has believers among her members—Rome has had many thousands—but whether a genuine and scriptural profession of faith is, according to her acknowledged standards, a prerequisite for membership; or whether she admits them without such profession, and, in fact, before they are competent either to have or to profess a sincere and personal faith in the Redeemer.

“Now, if you have any sort of doubt that little infants are by baptism made members of this Church, you can easily dispel it by turning to the baptismal service in her liturgy: ‘The minister,’ you may read there, ‘shall take the child in his arms, and, after naming it, shall dip it discreetly in the water, or shall pour upon it, saying, “I baptize thee in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost, Amen.” Then the minister shall say, “We receive this child into the congregation of Christ’s flock, and do sign him with the sign of the cross,”’ etc. Now, is this congregation of Christ’s flock the Episcopal Church? Certainly; for the minister is to go on and say, ‘Seeing now, dearly beloved, that this child is regenerate and grafted into the body of Christ’s Church, let us give thanks,’ etc. But if this leave any doubt, read on: ‘Then shall the minister say, “We yield thee hearty thanks, most merciful Father, that it hath pleased thee to regenerate this infant with thy Holy Spirit; receive him for thy own child by adoption, and incorporate him into thy holy Church.”’ If the infant, therefore, is not a real Church member, the minister is instructed to say what is not true.

See also the form of a certificate of baptism, under the head of ‘Private Baptism of Children:’ ‘I certify you that in this case all is well done, and according to due order, concerning the baptizing of this child, who is now, by baptism, incorporated into the Christian Church.’

“And now, to assure yourself that it is not faith or penitence that qualifies for confirmation, and, consequently, for all the privileges of full communicants, turn to the note at the end of the little catechism, before the ‘Order of Confirmation,’ and you may read as follows:

“‘So soon as children are come to a competent age, and can say the creed, the Lord’s Prayer, and the ten commandments, and can answer to the other questions of this short catechism, they shall be brought to the bishop for confirmation.’

“The English Church, and that of Rome, stand on the same ground. They both admit infants to Church-member ship by baptism; and both pretend that they are by this baptism regenerated and made members of Christ. It is by baptism in both that men are born again; and this is given, not on any evidence of faith in them, but solely on the promise of the sponsors, or godfathers.

“Give us the second mark, if you please, Mrs. Percy.”

“It is that the members must have been baptized upon profession of their faith.”

“The question for us, then, is whether the English Church has in herself, and confers upon her members, genuine Scripture baptism? We Baptists will say, of course, that she has not; for we do not recognize the baptism of infants as authorized by Scripture; nor do we admit that sprinkling, or pouring, which is now generally practiced in the Episcopal Church, is baptism at all. But as we have not time to go over the facts and arguments on which we have based our opinions, it will be enough for us to show, by the testimony of the Episcopalians themselves, that they have changed Christ’s ordinance, both in the act and the subjects of it; and, consequently, that what they now perform as baptism is, according to their own showing, not the baptism of the Scriptures, but a ceremony which was substituted for it by mere human authority.

“But, first, I would remark, that when we were examining the record upon this point, we ascertained that those who came into the apostolic Churches believed, and were then baptized. They were not first baptized, and left to find their faith in after life. Now, as in this Church the pretended baptism is given before there is or can be any faith, this fact alone vitiates the whole, and renders it no true scriptural baptism. And, therefore, if the Church of England had continued to practice immersion, as the Greek Church has done, it would not have been true baptism when applied to little babes. But they have changed the act as well as the subjects. This I will prove to you by their own plain and express declarations. Hear what the learned Dr. Wall says, in his famous History of Infant Baptism, page 462, speaking of the primitive Christians: ‘Their general and ordinary way was to baptize by immersion, or dipping the person, whether it were an infant or a grown man or woman, into the water. This is so plain and clear, by an infinite number of passages, that one cannot but pity the weak endeavors of such Pedobaptists as would maintain the negative of it.… It is a great want of prudence, as well as of honesty, to refuse to grant to an adversary what is certainly true and may be proved so. It creates a jealousy of all the rest that one says.… It is plain that the ordinary and general practice of St. John, the apostles, and primitive Church, was to baptize by putting the person into the water, or causing him to go into the water. Neither do I know of any Protestant who has denied it.’

“Hear what Bishop Nicholson says:

“‘The sacrament of baptism was anciently administered by plunging into the water, in the western as well as the eastern part of the Church.’

“So Archbishop Secker: ‘Burying, as it were the person baptized in the water, and raising him out again, without question was anciently the more usual method.’

“So Bishop Davenant: ‘In the ancient Church, they did not merely sprinkle, but immersed those whom they baptized.’

“And Bishop Patrick: ‘They [the primitive Christians] put off their old clothes and stripped themselves of their garments; then they were immersed all over and buried in the water.’

“In accordance with this, Mr. Stackhouse declares that ‘Several authors have shown that we nowhere read in Scripture of any one being baptized but by immersion; and from the acts of ancient councils and ancient rituals, have proved that this manner of baptizing continued (as much as possible) to be used for thirteen hundred years after Christ. But it is much to be questioned whether the prevalence of custom and the over- fondness of parents will, in these cold countries, ever suffer it to be restored.’

“So Bishop Taylor says, expressly, ‘The custom of the ancient Church was not sprinkling, but immersion, in pursuance of the meaning of the word in the commandment, and the example of our blessed Saviour.’

“And Archbishop Tillotson says, that ‘Anciently, those that were baptized put off their garments, which signified the putting off the body of sin, and were immersed and buried in the water, to represent their death to sin; and then did rise up again out of the water, to signify their entrance upon a new life.’

“Now, if the original practice was immersion, as these doctors, and bishops, and archbishops declare, and sprinkling has now come in its place, it is self-evident that, by some authority, the ordinance of Christ has been displaced, and another action substituted for that which he enjoined. But, lest any one may doubt the authority of these dignitaries of the Church—for some people will, now-a-days, doubt almost any thing which goes to show that sprinkling was not the baptism enjoined by Christ and practiced by the apostolic Churches— I will show you that the English Church herself practiced immersion, and immersion only, until comparatively a very recent day In a catechism, published in the name of King Edward VI., shortly after the separation of the English from the Church of Rome, are the following question and answer:

“‘Master. Tell me, my sonde, how these two sacraments be ministered: baptisme and that whyche Paule caleth the Supper of the Lord?

“‘Scholar. Hym that beleueth in Christ, professeth the articles of the Christian religion, and mindeth to be baptized (I speake now of thè that be growè to ripe yeres of discretion: sith for the yòg babes, theyr parentes’ or the Church’s professiò sufficeth) the minister dyppeth in, or washeth with pure, clean water only, in the name of the Father, and of the Sonne, and of the Holy Ghost,’ etc.

“In a sermon by Archbishop Cranmer, a little before this time, the following passage occurs: ‘What greater shame can there be, than a man who professeth himself to be a Christian man because he is baptized; and yet he knoweth not what baptism is, nor what strength the same hath, nor what the dypping in the water doth betoken.… Baptism, and the dypping in the water, doth betoken that the old Adam, with all his synne and evel lusts, ought to be drowned and killed by daily contrition and repentance.’

“In like manner William Tyndale speaks of baptism: ‘The plungyǹge into the water sygnifieth that we dye and are buried with Christ, as concernynge the old life of sinne, which is Adam; and the pullynge out agayne signifieth that we ryse agayne with Christ in a new lyfe.’—(Robison, p. 430.)

“But why go to the early days of the English Church, when the very words of her Liturgy, even in modern times, expressly require dipping, except in case the subject be too feeble to endure it. Archbishop Usher says, ‘Some there are that stand strictly for the particular action of diving or dipping the baptized under water, as the only action which the institution of the sacrament will bear; and our Church allows no other except in case of the child’s weakness; and there is expressed in our Saviour’s baptism both the descending into the water and the raising up.’ So the famous George Whitefield says, ‘It is certain, in the words of our text, (Rom. vi. 3, 4,) there is an allusion to the manner of baptism, which was by immersion, which our own Church allows, and insists upon it that children should be immersed in water, unless those that bring the children to be baptized assure the minister that they cannot bear plunging.’ Thus Mr. Wesley says on one occasion that he baptized a certain individual by immersion, according to the custom of the first Church and the Church of England. And on another occasion says, he refused to baptize a child unless it could be done by immersion, according to the Book of Common Prayer, or unless the parents would certify it to be weakly.

“It is evident, therefore, that immersion was not merely the ordinance established by Christ, and practiced by the first Churches, but it was recognized and practiced by the Church of England as her ordinary baptism, even towards the close of the last century. And Dr. Whitby, of that Church, says expressly, that ‘Immersion was observed by all Christians for thirteen centuries, and approved by our Church, (the Episcopal;) and as the change of it into sprinkling was made without any allowance from the Author of the institution, or any license from any council of the Church, it were to be wished that this custom might be again of general use, etc.’—Now if these things be so, is it not as evident as any thing can be, they just to that extent to which they have left off immersion, they have ceased to baptize? and that, according to the confessions and declarations which they themselves have made? They lack, therefore, the second mark of a true Church, which we discovered in the Word.

“Let us now look for the third: Is it a local congregation or is it, like the Roman Church, a centralized hierarchy? We need spend no time to determine this. The structure and constitutions of the two establishments are very similar, if not identical, except that one recognizes the sovereign of England as its visible head, and the other the Pope of Rome. No local congregation of the English Church is of itself an independent church. It only makes a part of the great confederacy called the Church; and as our Scripture Churches were each one independent, and did not make a part of any such confederacy, but was complete within itself, so we may know from this circumstance alone that this is not the scriptural Church.

“Our next mark will demand a little more particular attention. Does the Church of England take Christ alone for her King and Lawgiver? or does she recognize the authority of the King or Queen and Parliament to legislate for her in matters pertaining to religion? I speak now of the Episcopal Church in England, for that in this country stands upon somewhat different ground. The English Church grew out of the Roman Catholic, as we shall see hereafter, in the time of Henry the Eighth; and one of those enactments by which it was established, declares that ‘Archbishops and bishops, archdeacons, and other ecclesiastical persons, have no manner of jurisdiction ecclesiastical, but by and under the King’s majesty, the only undoubted Head of the Church of England, to whom by the Holy Scripture power and authority is given to hear and determine all manner of causes whatsoever, and to correct all sin and vice whatsoever.’

“In the time of King Edward VI., it was further enacted, that ‘Whosoever should affirm by open preaching, express words or sayings, that the King is not, or that any other is the Supreme Head of the Church of England, should for the first offence forfeit goods and chattels, with imprisonment at the king’s will, for the second forfeit profit of lands; and for the third suffer as in cases of high treason.’ It was under such laws as these that the Church of England was organized.

“I cannot give you a better account of the results than has been given by Macaulay, himself a Churchman, in his History of England. ‘Henry the Eighth,’ he says, (p. 38, vol. i.) ‘attempted to constitute an Anglican Church differing from the Roman Catholic Church on the point of supremacy, and on that point alone. His success in this attempt was extraordinary. The force of his character, the singularly favorable situation in which he stood with respect to foreign powers, the immense wealth which the spoliation of the abbeys placed at his disposal, and the support of that class which still halted between two opinions, enabled him to bid defiance to both the extreme parties, to burn as heretics those who avowed the tenets of Luther, and to hang as traitors those who owned the authority of the Pope. But Henry’s system died with him.… The ministers who held the royal prerogative in trust for his infant son, could not venture to persist in so hazardous a policy, nor could Elizabeth venture to return to it. It was necessary to make a choice. The government must either submit to Rome, or obtain the aid of the Protestants. The government and the Protestants had only one thing in common —hatred of the Papal power.… But as the government needed the support of the Protestants, so the Protestants needed the protection of the government. Much was therefore given up on both sides. A union was effected, and the fruit of that union was the Church of England.… To this day the constitution, the doctrines, and the services of the Church retain the visible marks of the compromise from which she sprung.… Nothing, however, so strongly distinguished the Church of England from other Churches, as the relation in which she stood to the monarchy. The King was her Head.… What Henry and his favorite counsellors meant by the supremacy was certainly nothing less than the whole power of the keys. The king was to be the Pope of his kingdom, the vicar of God, the expositor of Catholic verity, the channel of sacramental graces.… The king (such was the opinion of Cranmer given in the plainest words) might, by authority derived from God, make a priest, and the priest so made needed no ordination whatever.… These high pretensions gave scandal to Protestants as well as Catholics; and the scandal was greatly increased when the supremacy which Mary had resigned back to the Pope, was again annexed to the Crown on the accession of Elizabeth. It seemed monstrous that a woman should be the chief bishop of a Church in which an apostle had forbidden her even to let her voice be heard.… When the Anglican Confession of Faith was revised in her reign, the supremacy was explained in a manner somewhat different from that which had been fashionable in the Court of Henry the Eighth.… The queen, however, still had over the Church a visitorial power of vast and undefined extent. She was intrusted by parliament with the office of restraining and punishing heresy, and every sort of ecclesiastical abuse;’ (so all the discipline of its membership was placed in the hands of the Crown;) ‘and was permitted to delegate her authority to commissioners. The bishops were little more than her ministers. Rather than grant to the civil magistrate the absolute power of nominating spiritual pastors, the Church of Rome, in the eleventh century, set all Europe on fire; rather than grant to the civil magistrate the absolute power of nominating spiritual pastors, the ministers of the Church of Scotland, in our own time, resigned their livings by hundreds. The Church of England had no such scruples. By the royal authority alone, her prelates were appointed. By the royal authority alone, her convocations were summoned, regulated, prorogued, and dissolved. Without the royal sanction her canons had no force. One of the articles of her faith was that, without the royal consent, no ecclesiastical council could lawfully assemble. From all her judicatures an appeal lay in the last resort to the sovereign, even when the question was whether an opinion was heretical, or whether the administration of a sacrament had been valid.’

“Such is the account which this learned son of the Church gives of her constitution. And if such a Church has Christ alone for her King and Lawgiver, there is no means of subjecting a Church to any secular or religious power. Loot at it a moment. No one can be a minister within her borders who has not been ordained by a prelate. Yet the prelate is the absolute creature of the crown. The crown, therefore, by making the prelate, makes the whole ministry of the Church. The whole discipline of the Church is in the crown. The queen says, by her commissioners, who are to be admitted as Church-members, and who excluded; who retained and who expelled; who shall be censured and who commended. And, in case even these, her own commissioners, do not decide to please her, there is, in the last resort, an appeal to herself. So that the queen has power to decide who shall and who shall not be members of the Church. The queen decides what is gospel truth, and what is heretical; what must be believed and what must be practiced. For, without the royal consent, the decisions of the Church can have no force.”

“That seems all very true,” replied the Doctor. “But you will recollect that this is the mere theory of the Church, under which she went into operation in the troublous times that gave her birth. It does not follow that the powers of the queen are now what they were then; that Queen Victoria has the same ecclesiastical prerogatives which belonged to Queen Elizabeth.”

“What if she has not?” replied Mr. Courtney. “The Church which once gave up her sovereignty, and consented to be subject in matters of religion to another lord than Christ, did, by that act, cease to be a Church of Christ, and lose the authority to act as his executive. But your surmise has no foundation in truth. This is not merely the ancient theory but the modern practice. The authority of the crown determines, to-day, the forms of prayer, the ritual of baptism, the times of worship, and all else pertaining to the English Church, as truly as it did in the days of Elizabeth. When Mr. Seabury went to England to procure ordination as a bishop, there was no Church or council of Churches, no bishop or house of bishops, that dared to confer ordination on him, or could, according to the law of the Church, have conferred it, until an act of parliament had been passed, and received the royal signature, permitting it to be done. Not only Seabury, but all the bishops of America, hold their commission by virtue of a special act of parliament; and not only they, but all who shall be by them ordained to the ministry, are by that act expressly prohibited from exercising their ministry in England.

“But we have been speaking of the Church of England as a whole; of the hierarchy, which comprises all the local societies in one great body. The Churches of Christ, however, we have before determined, are the local societies; and the true question before us is simply whether each one of the local organizations, commonly called Episcopal Churches, is subject, in matters belonging to religion, to any lord but Christ. If you look at it in this light, you will see that an Episcopal Church is subject to the priest; it is subject to the bishop; it is subject to councils; and in fact, it has no voice in its own government. It is ruled from without, and has nothing to do but inquire the decrees of its lords and humbly to obey them. If it refuse to carry into execution their enactments, it cannot continue an Episcopal Church.”

“But tell me,” asked Theodosia, “does the Episcopal Church in this country stand on the same ground?”

“It claims to be a part of the same Church. So far as practicable, it is constituted on the same plan. It is not, however, dependent on the will of the queen or the acts of parliament, but go the decrees of its general councils. If however, the mother, in England, was not a true Church when she gave it birth, it cannot be a true Church; for it has nothing which it did not receive from her. Moreover, each local society in America is just as much subject to its priest and bishop, and just as much bound by the ecclesiastical laws concocted for it and imposed upon it, as any local English Church.”

“Let us pass on,” said the Doctor. “I am anxious to see the end. What was our next mark?”

“It was,” said Mr. Percy, “that its members must have been made such by their own voluntary act; and we have seen already that the members of this Church were made such in infancy, without their own knowledge or consent.”

“Let us then go on to the next.”

“That,” said Mr. Percy, “has regard to her faith. Does she hold the fundamental doctrines of the gospel? It is well known that both in this country and in England she is divided into two great parties; one trusting as much as Rome herself to the efficacy of sacraments, and forms, and works; and the other recognizing salvation by Jesus only. I am disposed to mark her half black, therefore, to designate the High Church, or sacramental party; and half white, to designate the other, or Evangelical party.”

It may have been observed by the attentive reader that neither the Episcopal bishop nor the Methodist preacher have taken any part in this morning’s discussion. The truth is, they were not present; and the interest of the passengers had in a great degree subsided; so that our little company had the conversation all to themselves. They had been themselves so much engaged that they had scarcely observed the absence of their friendly adversaries, until they came to the seventh of those marks, which they had gathered out of the Book, and by which a true Church might be known.

But when the question was asked whether this Church began with Christ, and had continued ever since, they very naturally looked round for the Bishop, at whose instigation it had been added to the tablet; and, on finding that he was not present, they concluded to postpone their investigations until another day.

The Eighth Day’s Travel.

When our little company assembled the next morning, they learned that they were within an hour’s sail of Nashville They had therefore no time to talk, but each one began to make preparation to leave the boat. Mr. Courtney made inquiry for the Episcopal bishop and the Methodist minister, that he might bid them a kind adieu; but learned that they had taken another boat, or gone ashore at the mouth of the Cumberland. The Doctor insisted that Theodosia, Mr. Percy, and Mr. Courtney, should make his house their home for a few days, at least, until they should have finished this discussion. And in some three hours after they had landed, they were sitting round a table in Doctor Thinkwell’s dining room.

After dinner, when the Doctor had finished his cigar, he came into the parlor, where his guests were talking, and exclaimed, “Come, Mr. Courtney, we have no time to lose: I am anxious to have this question, what is the Church, or rather, which is the Church, settled as soon as possible. Let us resume our conversations here, and progress to a conclusion; I am impatient to see the end. Perhaps Mrs. Percy will come with us into the library, where we will be less liable to interruption, and have readier access to such books as we may wish to consult.”

The arrangements were made at once, and the investigation resumed where it was left off upon the boat.

“We were, I think,” said the Doctor, “engaged in applying our tests, or marks, to the English Episcopal Church and had progressed as far as the seventh sign. We had just inquired whether the English Church had been established by Christ, and had continued from his day until now?”

“It surely needs no time to answer that,” said Mr. Percy, “after what we have already seen to be the testimony of Macaulay, the historian; for he says expressly, that ‘it was the result of a compromise between the government on the one hand and the Protestants on the other.’ It cannot date farther back than King Henry VIII.”

“But I presume you are aware, Mr. Percy,” replied the Doctor, “that some of our clergy have contended that the true Anglican Church began in the time of the apostles, and has continued ever since, independent of Rome, except so for as it was for a time brought into unwilling subjection, previous to the Reformation. It is said that Christianity was brought into the island by Paul, and thousands of Churches existed both in England and Wales before the Saxon conquest; and when the Saxons re- introduced idolatry, Christianity retired to the fastnesses of the forests and mountains; and it was through these, and not through Rome, that our descent has come.”

“I suppose,” replied Mr. Percy, “that it is much easier to claim and contend for such a pedigree than to establish it. But let us see the proofs. We know what the English Episcopal Church is now. The question is, When did it become what it now is? And who made it such? Macaulay and other secular historians say with ope voice, it was Henry the Eighth and his successors on the throne of England. But theologians who see that this would be fatal to their claims to be a scriptural Church, declare that history is mistaken. Let us then examine for ourselves. It is a hierarchy which has for its head the person who wears the English crown. This is its peculiar feature. Take this away, and it is not the English Episcopal Church. It has been, in this respect, what it is now, ever since Henry the Eighth. What was it before that time? Was it not the same people, the same priests, the same bishops, and the same archbishops which then began to recognize King Henry as the head of the Church, who had previous to that time recognized the Pope as their sovereign lord in all matters of religion? Was it not that part of the Church of Rome which was in England which then, by the decree of the king and his parliament, was made the Church of England? They must be simpletons indeed who believe that the Church of King Henry, and his successors in the headship, was the ancient English Church which Austin, about the year six hundred, sought in vain to persuade to ‘give baptism to their children.’ Did King Henry call those people from their hiding- places in the mountains of Wales, and seek to them for the ordination and ordinances of Christ which Rome, as Antichrist, could not confer? No conscientious historian will dare to intimate any such thing. Those who make such statements make them to deceive. They know that he did nothing of the sort. They know that if the members and ministers of that old Church were yet in being, (and I do not question that they were,) King Henry had no use for them. No more did his successors. Both he and they continued to hang them, and drown them, and burn them, (as the Popes had done before,) even down to the time when Cromwell subverted his throne. That ancient Church, if I have read its history rightly, was a Baptist Church; or at least it was a Church that did not baptize except upon a profession of faith, and would not submit to be controlled in matters of religion by any lord but Christ.”

“It is a matter of no consequence at all to our present argument,” said Mr. Courtney, “whether the modern Church of England came out of Rome, or out of some ancient Church planted upon her native soil by Paul himself; for whatever her origin might have been, she could not at any time have been what she is now, and at the same time a true Church of Christ. Whenever she became a hierarchy, and owned the rule of any lord but Christ, whether that lord were the Pope of Rome, the King of England, or the Archbishop of Canterbury, is of no consequence at all; from that moment she ceased to be the true Church of Jesus Christ; for his Church was, and must continue to be, an independent local organization, not a confederacy; not a hierarchy; not any great ecclesiastical establishment. Christ established no such Church. The apostles established no such Church, either in England or anywhere else. If Paul built up a Church in England, (of which there is no proof but loose tradition,) it was like the other Churches which he founded, an independent local society; and if he established more than one, as he did in Greece, then each one was independent. And if any one usurped the power over others, or if any one yielded subjection to any other, whether that at Rome, or at Bangor, it ceased from that time forth to be a Church of Christ; for Christ was then no longer its only King and Lawgiver. Now, that the English Church has ceased some time or other to be the independent body which Christ enjoined, is certain; and it will not at all affect our argument whether she did so at, before, or since the time of Henry the Eighth.”

“But yet,” said Theodosia, “it would be very interesting to know the history of the Churches which were first established in England, and which must have been true Churches, if they dated near the times of the apostles. It may be they yet exist as independent bodies, and have always refused subjection alike to the Pope of Rome and the hierarchy of which the crown has now become the head.”

“Your conjecture is but the truth of their history, Mrs. Percy. They do yet exist. They have resisted, even unto death, all efforts to subject them to the Pope of Rome, or to the hierarchy of England. Their history was written in the blood of their martyrs, shed by those who, in former days, controlled the records and wielded the power of the country, and who were greatly desirous that it should be blotted out. We must therefore trace them mainly now in those brief allusions to their existence which the narration of other events made needful, and in the decrees which were designed for their destruction. Yet we will find no insuperable difficulty in tracing a true and pure Church of Christ in England, or at least in Wales, from the time that Christianity was first established on the island. This I trust we will be permitted to do before we close this investigation; but let us now not wander from the matter before us. This Church you may be sure was not the modern Church of England. That began with Henry the Eighth, according to the testimony of Macaulay and others of its own historians. But we can still trace the persecuted followers of Jesus by the blood of their martyrs, until the Reformation, and long after it. The first and the last whose blood was shed for their religion in England, were Baptists. They were never amalgamated with and never subjected to the hierarchy of the Pope, or of the King; and to this day maintain their ancient baptism, and their independent organization in the mountains of Wales, whence many have come, both ministers and members, to our own beloved land, and have aided us to build up Churches like their own, after the model at Jerusalem. But we will be obliged to go back to this subject. Let us now hasten on. What is your next mark, Mrs. Percy?”

“It is, that No true Church can be a persecuting Church.”

“Then surely the English Church cannot be true; for though she has not been, like Rome, at all times a perpetual and relentless persecutor, yet her hands are red with the blood of more than one of the followers of Jesus. Henry the Eighth laid the very foundation of the Church in blood. He, as head of the Church, persecuted and destroyed both Papists and Protestants: the Papists because they preferred the Pope to the King, and the Protestants because they could not receive his Church, which contained the whole of Popery except the Pope.

“Edward the Sixth, the youthful and amiable successor of Henry as the head of the Church, would gladly have been delivered from the necessity of killing his best subjects because they could not think about religion as his bishops did; but he was urged and goaded by the clergy into the condemnation and execution even of tender women, whose only crime was nonconformity to the Church of England. Cranmer, the archbishop, had great difficulty in overcoming his natural kindness of heart, and inducing him to sign the warrant for their death by burning; but he did succeed, and it was done.”

“Surely,” exclaimed Theodosia, “you do not mean to say that Archbishop Cranmer, the martyr, had been himself the means of bringing others in the flames! I have always thought he was one of the best and holiest of men. I remember there was in the catechism I used to study, a picture of him as he stood at the stake, holding out his right hand in the fire to punish it for signing his recantation.”

“Yes, Mrs. Percy, I mean to say that Cranmer was a murderer and a persecutor. So also was in heart that other saint of whom you had a picture in your catechism, representing John Rogers at the stake, surrounded by his wife and nine little children, one yet a nursing babe. John Rogers was so far a persecutor, that when he was solicited to ask for pardon, or at least some milder mode of death, for a woman condemned to the flames, he obstinately refused to say one word in her behalf.”

“I must believe you, Mr. Courtney; but still it seems to me almost incredible.”

“I grant, madam, that it is almost incredible; but I will show you such authorities that you shall be convinced that Rome herself, even in her worst estate, was never a bitterer or bloodier persecutor for conscience’ sake, than was this newmade Church of England. Look at Bishop Burnet’s History of the Reformation, vol. ii. p. 112. See also Strype’s Ecclesiastical Memoirs, vol. ii. p. 214; or Neal’s History of the Puritans; or Ivimey’s History of Baptism, pages 83⁠–⁠90. In the year 1549, a commission was given to Archbishop Cranmer and several others, by the King as the Head of this so called Church of the gentle and loving Jesus, to ‘search after all Anabaptists, (the same people now called Baptists,) all heretics and contemners of their Book of Common Prayer, and, if they would not be reclaimed, to excommunicate, imprison, and deliver them over to death.’ There was a Baptist woman, Mrs. Joan Boucher, sometimes called Joan of Kent, of whom Strype says, ‘She was a great reader of the Scriptures,’ and who risked her life to circulate the Scriptures among the ladies at court. She could not conform to all that the bishops taught, and was therefore arrested and condemned. When the young king refused to sign her death- warrant, Cranmer urged him, with great earnestness, to authorize her execution. The king could not answer the arguments of the learned prelate, and knew not how to resist his importunity. He signed the warrant, but did it with tears in his eyes, and protesting that he did it only on the authority of the Archbishop, who had declared that God required it; and said, if it should be wrong, that ‘he (the prelate) should answer for the sin in the great day of judgment.’ The bishop took the warrant, and thus said, ‘Her blood be upon my soul.’ Now in Fox’s Latin edition of the Book of Martyrs are a few sentences which the English has omitted, and which are thus translated by Mr Pierce in his answer to Nichols, p. 83:—‘In King Edward’s reign some were put to death for heresy. One of these was Joan Boucher, or Joan of Kent. Now, says Mr. Fox, when the Protestant bishops had resolved to put her to death, a friend of Mr. John Rogers, the divinity-reader in Saint Paul’s Church, came to him, earnestly desiring him to use his influence with the archbishop that the poor woman’s life might be spared, and other means used to prevent the spreading of her opinion, which might be done in time; saying too, that though while she lived she infected few with her opinion, yet she might bring many to think well of it by suffering death for it. He pleaded, therefore, that it was better she should be kept in some prison, without an opportunity of propagating her notions among weak people; and she would do no harm to others, and might live to repent herself. Rogers, on the other hand, pleaded that she ought to be put to death. “Well then,” saith his friend, “if you are resolved to put an end to her life, together with her opinion, choose some other kind of death, more agreeable to the gentleness and mercy prescribed by the gospel; there being no need that such tormenting deaths should be taken up in imitation of the Papists.”