That the Apostles Baptized Infants.

In the foregoing I said that when Christ and the apostles referred to Scripture, they referred to none other than that of the law and the prophets. For not yet were the Gospels written or the apostolic epistles collected. But in this I would not speak as if I would take aught away from the canonical New Testament, since the books of the Old Testament also were not written at one time, and yet the authority of the later books is not less; but I would show that Catabaptist writers are in error in this, that they suppose the apostles to have directed baptism in accordance with that writing that was not yet written. Nay, they order to be omitted what is verbally omitted in what was written afterward in accordance with the figurative scheme of the Hebrew tongue, but what is affirmed by the implications of speech. Meanwhile the thing itself warns otherwise, and the men who wrote the New Testament testify that they were not able to record all that Christ himself did and taught. I have undertaken to prove a hard thing then, the Catabaptists think, but it is easy if we give ear to the truth. I shall first employ argument and then testimony. But the arguments I draw from no source but Scripture itself, as follows: Every one knows how sharp was the contest among believers about circumcision, which contest is described in Acts xv.; some contended that those must be circumcised who were not entered into Christ, others opposing. But when there had arisen a great strife the delegates from Antioch, the apostles, and the whole church guided by the divine Spirit decreed that circumcision and all the externals of the law, a few exceptions being made in concession to the weak, should be abrogated. Here then I will ask the Catabaptists whether they believe the disciples were less solicitous about administering the baptismal rite than about circumcision? If they say that they were not solicitous, then the piety of the parents which has regard for the children as well as for themselves leads us to think otherwise. Since then a part were anxious that circumcision should not be omitted, a part that they might not confuse baptism, it appears that they were no less anxious for their children than for themselves, especially since in the beginning their infants had been circumcised. It cannot be then that if the apostles were unwilling to baptize the children there would not have arisen some disturbance. But nothing is said of this, so there was no disturbance. So because of believers’ opinions children were baptized, and for this reason there is no distinct mention of it. But if they admit that parents were anxious about the baptism of their children, then they conquered and baptized them, for baptism conquered and remained when circumcision became antiquated. For if consideration, strife and anxiety did arise, and yet the opinion of those who thought they ought to be baptized did not conquer, then circumcision would have been strengthened and baptism weakened. And this argument pertains to conjectures and indications, yet it is drawn from Scripture.

II. But the second argument is insuperable, gathered by comparison of Scripture. Circumcision was abrogated by decree of the church gathered in the spirit. Infants were with their parents within the church. If then, according to the Catabaptists’ opinion, those infants or little children were not baptized, yet were circumcised, it follows that by a decree of the church children of Christians were cast out of the church and were remanded to the circumcision. For who is circumcised becomes a debtor to the whole law. And there is no reason why we should plead here that account must be taken of the time. For the strife about circumcising believers arose at Antioch, not at Jerusalem, where it is agreed that either circumcision or baptism flourished.

III. The third argument also is from conjecture—that we should consider the race from which the first believers came. They were of a race that so clung to externals that the apostles believed even after the resurrection that Christ would rule corporeally. It is not therefore likely that they left their children unbaptized. I leave the rest to you, reader, for much can be educed from these bases.

IV. The fourth I have touched on in the foregoing, i. e., that Paul in 1 Cor. x. 1-2 makes us and the Hebrews equal. All, he says, were baptized, all ate the same spiritual bread, and since all their children were baptized in the sea and the cloud they would not be equal if our children were not baptized, as has been said. But here the Catabaptists chatter out: If they ate the same spiritual bread, therefore our children will also celebrate the eucharist. This has no weight, for by synecdoche to each part its own property is attributed. But since we have a precept for the celebration of the eucharist: Let each man prove himself, and boys are not competent for this, while they are for baptism and circumcision, it is clear that with Paul infant baptism was in use, but not infant eucharist. Here also is answered the objection they draw from Col. ii. 11, that children cannot be circumcised with the circumcision not made with hands nor lay aside the body of sin, therefore baptism did not come in the place of circumcision, since circumcision is external and corporeal, but this is internal and spiritual. For we learn here that Paul attributed our externals to the Hebrews, though they had the internals alone, but the externals not in the same form but differently. No one denies that they ate spiritual bread just as we, for they, like we, were saved through him who was to come. But they did not carry around the bread and wine in the supper, but used other externals in place of these, manna and water from the rock. Do you see how by analogy he makes the externals equivalents? The internals were the same, the externals different. So he attributes to them that internal baptism, so that they as well as we were cleansed through Christ; external baptism he expresses by the analogy of the sea and the cloud, but to us he attributes internal circumcision, for we are under the same covenant with them and are renewed by the same Spirit, and by it are circumcised. That is, he is speaking by synecdoche in accordance with the age of each class. But he found no other external than baptism, for what cause would there be for making a comparison analogically between baptism and circumcision, when without that he could have spoken of the spirit being renewed, unless he had wished in the same way to make equal the internals as well as the externals, as he did in 1 Cor. x. 1? It must be therefore that Paul entertained this opinion, that our circumcision is baptism; this he would never have held unless he had seen at that time the children of Christians baptized as he had formerly seen them circumcised.

V. Not only three, as above, but many families were baptized by the apostles, in which it is more likely than not that there were infants. This, too, pertains to probability, about which enough has been said above.

Now we come to testimony. You will put together here, good reader, whatever has been said of one and the same testament, people and Saviour. And you will at the same time consider here that in the apostles’ time no one used any Scripture but the Old Testament, nay, Christ himself used no other, and what controversy arose about baptism would have to be settled by its authority; but since this not even leads us to think anything but that baptism, the sign of the covenant, must be given to infants equally with circumcision, there could have been no hesitation with the apostles in approving the baptism of infants.

Origen on Romans, book v., thus testifies: “The church received from the apostles the tradition of giving baptism even to infants.” Augustine asserts the same in his book on the baptism of infants dedicated to Marcellinus. I do not adduce these in this place to give them the authority of Scripture, but on account of faith in history (for Origen flourished about 150 years after the ascension of Christ), that we may not ignore the antiquity of infant baptism, and at the same time that we may attain to certainty that beyond all controversy the apostles baptized infants. So the Catabaptists do nothing at all different from the false apostles in former tmes, of whom Paul thus speaks: They order you to be circumcised for this only, that they may glory in your flesh. So these men glory in mobs and their seditious, or rather heretical, church. For I assert truly that in our time no dogma, however unheard of, can so rightly be called heresy as this sect’s, for they have separated themselves from the churches of believers, they have rebaptized, and have their own assemblages. Now I lay my hand to the appendix.