are not doctrines, but persons. Such expressions as the building of God, the house of God, the temple of God, are never used to designate a system of abstract doctrines, but always to designate a concrete person or a company of such persons. It is unnecessary to make specific references in proof of this statement. We simply appeal to the concordance. The usage of the New Testament in this respect is uniform. Indeed the apostle seems to have taken special pains, in this particular passage, to make the application of his figurative language plain. "Ye are God's building." (v. 9.) "Which temple are ye." (v. 17.) We regard this passage, then, as a solemn admonition to ministers of the gospel, not to incorporate into the church, of which they are the builders under him who builds all things (Hebrews iii. 4), any materials but such as will abide the fire of God's judgment; in other words, not to baptize any but such as give evidence of being among the saved. (Acts ii. 47.) And if this be the true interpretation, as the uniform usage of Scripture, and the repeated explanation of the apostle in the context testify that it is, then it makes a serious difficulty for all who advocate the incorporation of infant children into the church by baptism.

Another passage of a like nature is found in I Corinthians vii. 1214. This passage, like the passages narrating the bringing of the little ones to Christ, has commonly been cited as a warrant for the baptism of children, at least of such children as have one believing parent. But a careful examination of the apostle's words shows that their bearing is just the contrary. He ascribes no other "federal holiness" to the children, than that which he ascribes to the unbelieving parent. If the children are "holy," so is the unbelieving parent "sanctified." Indeed the holiness of the children is expressly inferred from the sanctification of the unbelieving parent: "else were your children unclean; but now are they holy." Why? because "the unbelieving husband has been sanctified in the wife, and the unbelieving wife has been sanctified in the husband." Clearly, the same effect which the faith of the believing parent produces in the children, it also produces in the unbelieving parent. Clearly, the children in this case are classed with the unbelieving partner, rather than with the believing. If this passage warrants the baptism of children who have a believing father or mother, it at least equally warrants the baptism of every husband who has a believing wife, of every wife who has a believing husband. If it proves any thing in relation to baptism, it proves a great deal too much: and so it is fairly transferred from the place of an argument in favor of infant baptism to the opposite position of a grave difficulty to be encountered and explained by the defenders of the practice.

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All the passages which speak of the baptized as constituting one body are so many difficulties for the evangelical pedobaptist in explaining the Scriptures. For his theory and practice make two bodies of baptized persons, differing by a much greater difference than that which, according to his theory, divides the baptized from the unbaptized,—by all the difference between the regenerate and the unregenerate, between union with Christ and alienation from him. scriptural doctrine is, that "by one Spirit we are all baptized into one body." (I Corinthians xii. 13.) And the baptized are everywhere in Scripture presumed to be regenerate and holy persons, and addressed as such. "As many of you as have been baptized into Christ have put on Christ." (Galatians iii. 27.) This passage is a fair representative of the tenor of Scripture upon this subject. That there were some unregenerate and unholy persons-some hypocrites and some self-deceivers among the baptized, even in primitive times, cannot be questioned. Such persons are plainly recognized in the apostolic writings;-but how recognized? as "false brethren unawares brought in." (Galatians ii. 4.) But infant baptism brings in such persons not unawares, but knowingly and systematically; not as exceptions, but as the rule; not in single instances, but by wholesale. It substitutes two sorts of baptism for the "one baptism" of Scripture. (Ephesians iv. 5.) For the baptism of an infant on the faith of its parent, and the baptism of a believer professing his own faith, do not constitute "one baptism." The two things are essentially different. The former tends to supplant and abolish the latter. At first it only makes the latter occasional and exceptional; but when carried out consistently it confines believers' baptism to the infancy and the margin of the church. What it steadily and rapidly tends to is this: to make that baptism to which alone the language of Scripture is fairly applicable an infrequent and abnormal baptism.

These are some of the principal difficulties connected with the interpretation of Scripture, which it is necessary to overcome in order to make out a case in favor of infant baptism. But there are also grave historical difficulties. Just as the silence of Scripture is a serious negative difficulty, so also the silence of the earliest ecclesiastical writers is an additional difficulty, corresponding to and emphasizing the former. The writings of the so called Apostolical Fathers say not a word about the baptism of infants. Justin Martyr not only gives no testimony in favor of such a practice, but he uses language in regard to the rite which implies that he knew of no other baptism than that of instructed, repentant, believing, and voluntary candidates. Clement of Alexandria is equally silent. In regard to Irenæus, Tertullian, and

Origen, if the dispute is not yet settled, this at least is certain, that their testimony is now regarded, by the ablest and most impartial scholars, as much less favorable to infant baptism than it was thought to be half a century ago. The Apostolic Constitutions make no mention of the practice in the earlier books, and only the briefest mention in the later. It cannot be said with certainty to be mentioned by any ecclesiastical writer, till after the middle of the third century. Cyprian is the first who distinctly and indisputably testifies in favor of the practice; and he does so in a way which implies that it was an unsettled practice. Nothing in his letter to Fidus on the subject implies that children were baptized, or that, in his judgment they ought to be, in any case except where they were believed to be in imminent danger of death. And this early testimony to the practice, in this specific case, is limited to the North African church. No other writer of this early date makes any mention of it. A century later it finds express defenders in other parts. But such witnesses as Gregory Nazianzen, and Chrysostom, and Augustine, in the end of the fourth century and beginning of the fifth, are more embarrassing than helpful to its modern evangelical defenders. For the grounds on which they advocate it militate against its divine origin, and the practical inconsistency of their position as its advocates argues its recent introduction. They do not advocate it as a primitive usage, but distinctly on the ground of its necessity to salvation, just as they advocate infant communion for the same reason. Their testimony confirms one assurance that the practice was the offspring of an antievangelical theology—a theology which connected saving grace with the reception of the sacramental rites, irrespective of the faith of the recipient. And then there is this practical inconsistency in the case. The very writers who recommend infant baptism as necessary were not themselves baptized in infancy, though born of Christian parents. So their very advocacy marks them as innovators in the church, urging the general adoption of a practice which was not generally adopted in the preceding generation. How is it, we may reasonably ask the evangelical pedobaptist, that among all the Greek and Latin fathers of the first four centuries, there is not one concerning whom we have any testimony that he was baptized in infancy, while in regard to nearly all of them we have explicit and unquestioned testimony that they were baptized in adult years, after they were converted? It is often said that exceptions confirm the rule; but it goes hard with the rule, when all the cases known are exceptions. Ambrose, Jerome and Augustine, in the west, and Chrysostom, Gregory and Basil, in the east, were all baptized after they came to

years of manhood, although several of them are expressly declared to have been dedicated to God from their birth by their pious parents. And there are numerous like cases of persons less distinguished. These are the men who insist on the necessity of giving baptism to infants. What does this mean? Plainly it means just this: that they lived at the time when infant baptism was gaining ground,-coming to be, what it had not heretofore been, the general custom. This accounts or their recommending to others what was not practised in their own case, when they were children. But here is a serious difficulty for the pedobaptist. If infant baptism was instituted and practised at the beginning, how came it to fall into such general disuse in the first three centuries? How came a divine rite to be so neglected, at the very time when the tendency to exaggerate the importance and increase the number of external religious rites was confessedly rife? Thus while the Baptist has to meet the single difficulty of explaining the use of infant baptism-a difficulty which, since the researches of modern scholars into the history of the subject has ceased to be formidable,—the pedobaptist has to meet the double difficulty of accounting both for the early disuse and the subsequent revival of the practice; and all the researches of modern scholarship tend only to make this double difficulty more formidable.

The defenders of infant baptism have appealed to the inscriptions found in the catacombs of Rome, as proving that the practice prevailed in the early centuries. But they have only encumbered their cause with a new difficulty by calling attention to these interesting monuments of antiquity. It is true, that very young children-even infants under three years of age-are mentioned as baptized, in a few of the inscriptions on these monumental tablets. But there is no proof that these inscriptions belong, as Dr. Bushnell and others have assumed, to the first two or three centuries. Most of them are without any means of determining their date. The date of some, however, is determined by the names of the Roman consuls recorded in them. Of those of which the date can be determined, there are none that commemorate baptized children earlier than about the middle of the fourth century, and only three within the limits of that century. These three are dated respectively A. D. 348, A. D. 371, and A. D. 374. In the first of these cases, the baptized child was six years and above eight months old; and in the other two cases eight years or more and all the three are expressly spoken of as newly baptized,that is, evidently baptized at this early age only on account of the apparent approach of death. There are inscriptions as early as the end of the first, and the beginning of the second century; but for

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about two and a half centuries from this earliest date there is no record of a baptized child. Among about one hundred epitaphs of children there is only one before the year 350 that speaks of the child as baptized, and that one only two years before this date; and there are only two others which fall within the limits of the fourth century. Evidently infant baptism had made but slow progress during the hundred years since Cyprian began to advocate it in North Africa, in cases of necessity. The facts established by a careful examination of the monumental inscriptions in the catacombs are just these: In a very few cases, in the latter part of the fourth century, baptism was administered to children of six or eight years of age, at the point of death. Even this child baptism, in extreme cases, can be traced no farther back than that. Not a single case of strictly infant baptism can be fairly made out from these tablets till after the year 400. And if it could, it would not go to prove the prevalence of infant baptism at the date of the record, but only the existence of the superstitious practice of baptizing infants that were apparently near to death. The fact that these young children are so generally designated as newly baptized, when there is any mention at all of baptism, is very significant. We see from this in what sense they were baptized on the faith of their parents. They were not baptized because and when their parents believed in Christ; but they were baptized because their parents believed baptism indispensable to salvation, and only when their parents believed they were about to die. The supporters of infant baptism must be hard pressed for historical arguments in its favor, or they would not have recourse to so damaging an expedient as an appeal to the epitaphs collected from the catacombs.1

The more ecclesiastical history is studied, the more the difficulties of infant baptism are multiplied. Less than a century ago there was a general disposition to concede, that in the field of post-apostolic history the pedobaptists had altogether the best of the argument. Now it is coming to be generally understood, that the verdict of early church history is decidedly against the divine origin of the practice. It is hard to say which of the many difficulties which it has to encounter in this field of inquiry is the greatest,-the silence of the earliest writers, the inconsistency of the later ones, the opposition which the practice had to overcome, the unscriptural grounds on which its earliest advocates recommend it, the treacherous nature of the evidences adduced to prove it, or the lateness of its general acceptance.

1 For a full and critical discussion of the bearing of these inscriptions on the question of infant baptism, see an article by the late Dr. Irah Chase, in the Christian Review for October, 1868, pp. 550-560.