CHAPTER
9
BAPTISMAL REGENERATION
(The
Bible or the Church?, Chapter VIII, pp. 110-129)
131
HERE is an infant, born but yesterday, and yet so frail and sickly that
its young life may flicker out at any moment. The question arises, If
it should die, what is to be its future?
If it dies
in its present condition, it must, we are told, be lost; heaven it cannot
enter.
But, we plead,
the poor creature does not know its right hand from its left; it is absolutely
innocent. Why should it be thus punished?
Personally
innocent, yes, we are answered; but by natural generation it belongs to
the fallen race and Adam's sin must banish it to hell, unless by regeneration
it is brought within the family of God. But by the sacrament of baptism
this change can be brought about without delay or
132
difficulty, and thus the child's salvation can be secured if death should
seize on it. Any one, perhaps, can perform the rite; but, as that is a
disputed point, it may be well to make assurance still more sure, and
call in the aid of one who is divinely appointed to administer the sacraments.
But suppose
the man we summon to our aid should be false to his profession, and prove
to be of evil character and immoral life?
That, we are
assured, will in no way affect the validity of the sacrament, or the reality
of the change it will produce in the child. If the man be lawfully ordained,
God will acknowledge him as His minister, notwithstanding.
In a case
of this kind nothing is gained by an appeal to passion. But will thoughtful
and fair minds consider the matter, and honestly answer the question,
whether in the superstitions of Pagan races whom we send out missionaries
to convert, there can be found a conception of God more unworthy, more
revolting than this?
What kind
of God is this that is thus presented to us? A Being, unjust, unloving,
and cruel, who devotes an innocent and helpless infant to
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destruction. A Being, unreasonable, arbitrary, and capricious, who will
change its eternal destiny if a few drops of water are sprinkled upon
it, accompanied by the utterance of a few cabalistic words. An unholy,
an immoral Being, for He employs and recognises agents no matter what
their character and life may be.
And yet this
gross and profane misrepresentation of God is an essential part of the
religion of Christendom. And not only does Western civilisation tolerate
the system, but even in England, in these days of vaunted enlightenment,
"men of light and leading" are turning back to it. And notwithstanding
this proof of the power of religion to blind and deprave the human mind,
men who pretend to be freethinkers sneer at the truth of Adam's fall,
and refuse to believe in the spiritual apostasy of the fallen race!
For the question
here at issue is not of Protestantism versus Romanism—there
are Protestant Churches which champion these profane falsehoods; nor of
Low Church versus High—the
so-called evangelical party is not free from them; it is, as the sequel
will show, a question of Paganism versus Christianity.
134
Although this figment of baptismal regeneration is but one link in a catena
of errors, it is the first and most important; and if this can be pulverised
and destroyed the rest will crumble and disappear. But how is the discussion
to be conducted? Of course the vital question is, What does the Bible
teach upon the subject? And yet the majority of those who will read these
pages would refuse to follow such an inquiry.[1]
This indeed is the secret of the influence of priests. I will here content
myself therefore with calling attention to three plain and salient facts,
which any one with the help of a concordance can verify.
[1]
I have therefore dismissed it to the Appendix. See
App. I.
The first
fact is that in not a single passage of the New Testament where baptism
is mentioned is it connected with regeneration or spiritual birth. The
next fact is still more significant, namely, that in those passages where
the doctrine of baptism is unfolded it is definitely and emphatically
connected with death, which of course is the very antithesis
of birth. The third fact shall be stated in borrowed words. In
135
combating these errors the Bishop of Liverpool writes:—
"It
is most extraordinary that there is so little about baptism in the Epistles
of the New Testament. In Romans it is only twice mentioned, and in I
Corinthians seven times. In Galatians, Ephesians, Colossians, Hebrews,
and I Peter, we find it named once in each Epistle. In thirteen of the
remaining Epistles it is neither named nor referred to. In the two pastoral
Epistles to Timothy, where we might expect something about baptism,
if anywhere, there is not a word about it! In the Epistle to Titus the
only text that can possibly be applied to baptism is by no means clearly
applicable (Titus iii. 5). Nor is this all. In the one Epistle which
mentions baptism seven times, we find the writer saying that 'Christ
sent me, not to baptize, but to preach the gospel;' and actually 'thanking
God,' that he had baptized none of the Corinthians save Crispus and
Gaius (I Cor. i. 14, 17)."[2]
[2]
"Expository Thoughts on the Gospels" (John iii.).
To recapitulate.
Baptism is nowhere connected with regeneration in the New Testament; it
symbolises death and not birth; and it has but a small and incidental
place in Christian doctrine. How, then, it may well be asked, could it
have come to assume a meaning so different, and to hold a place so engrossing,
in the religion of Christendom?
In this connection
the fact claims notice that
136
while the writers of the New Testament, and the teachers whose names the
New Testament has made familiar to us, were, without exception, men whose
minds had been formed by the study of the Hebrew Scriptures, there was
scarcely one of the post-apostolic Fathers of whom this could be averred.
What the Scriptures and the Jewish faith were to the writers and teachers
of the New Testament, the writings of the Greek philosophers and the cults
of classic Paganism were to the Fathers.
Then again,
we must clear our minds from the views which ordinary Christians hold
of these cults. They were not the brutal and brutalising systems so commonly
supposed. They had many characteristics which made them not only practically
useful, but congenial to human nature at its best. So much so, indeed,
that vast numbers of nominal Christians turned back to them, not merely
under pressure of persecution, but after the persecutions had ceased,
and in spite of penal laws of drastic severity. And lastly—a
matter of principal importance—those
cults gave prominence to baptism, and therefore it was easy to confound
137
the Pagan with the Christian rite, and to associate with the latter the
superstitions of the former.
The religion
of ancient Rome was marked by formalism and coldness. Every element of
religious emotion and enthusiasm was due to the foreign cults which prevailed
during the period of the Empire. Isis worship, which had its home in Egypt,
and the Mithras worship of Persia, were widely popular. The former had
its tonsured priesthood and its initiatory rite of baptism. And the latter
had still more in common with the religion of Christendom. Its baptism
of neophytes and confirmation, its oblation of the consecrated bread,
its expiation from sin by washing in blood,[3]
its symbolic teaching of the resurrection, and its festival of the god
on the 25th of December, marked it out as a dangerous enemy of the so-called
Christian religion. Thus it was regarded by the early Christians; and
Renan goes the length of surmising that if Christianity had received some
fatal check it might have become the religion of the Western world.[4]
[3]
But see Note, Appendix
I, p. 265 post.
[4]
On this whole subject see Professor Dill's "Roman Society in the
Last Century of the Western Empire," pp. 66-70
138
But great as was the influence of the cults of Isis and of Mithras, it
was not from these that the Fathers derived the leaven which corrupted
the doctrine and perverted the ordinances of the Christian faith. All
that was noble and true in Greek philosophy these men attributed to the
Hebrew prophets. Justin Martyr (AD 110-165), himself a thorough Platonist,
went so far as to declare, in referring to the Greek Sophists, that "they
who lived agreeably to reason were really Christians."[5]
It was only natural therefore that they should look upon the Greek religion
as a reasonable cult, worthy of the race and the age to which it belonged.
[5]
Apol. i. 61. And see what he says in 57 and 76 about Plato's
borrowing from the Bible. This is asserted still more plainly by Tertullian
(c. AD 160-220). "Who is there of the poets and sophists" (he
demands) "who hath not drunk at the fountain of the prophets?"
(Apol. xlvii).
But, like
the religion of old Rome, the national religion of Greece had lost its
hold on the popular conscience. It failed to deal with the subjects which
troubled the minds of men—sin,
a future life, and punishment for guilt.
"But
the mysteries concerned themselves precisely with these very
139
subjects; they provided a series of preliminary purifications for their
votaries; they turned men's minds to the deeper problems of life and
death, and gave them new ideas; they made some attempt to reach and
touch the individual mind."[6]
[6]
Professor Ramsay in Encyc. Brit., ''Mysteries."
The human
mind is the same in every age; therefore it is, that religious movements
in different ages have so much in common. Just as, in our own day, wherever
mere Protestantism is made a cult, instead of being a bulwark behind which
spiritual Christianity can develop and flourish, men turn away from it
to a system which parodies the great realities for which they instinctively
crave; so in ancient Greece the mysteries marked a popular revival of
religion.
The chief
shrine, of world-wide fame, was at Eleusis, a city some fourteen miles
from Athens. The great yearly celebration took place in the month Boedromion,
which answered to the Jewish Tisri, in which fell the great day of expiation
and the Feast of Tabernacles. All classes were admitted to the festival,
but the immoral and the impure were warned off by a solemn
140
initiatory proclamation. Notorious sinners were peremptorily excluded,
while others were left to the judgment of their own conscience. They were
asked to confess their sins before taking part in the rites. Confession
was followed by a baptism. The candidates, having bathed in the sea, came
from the bath new men: it was a laver of regeneration. This was followed
by a sacrifice, which was known as "a sacrifice of salvation."
Then, after an interval, took place a great procession of the candidates,
bearing torches and singing the praises of the god. The sixth day of the
festival was known by the name of Iacchus. To him, "the holy child,"
and "to his death and resurrection" the Homeric hymn in covert
terms refers.[7]
[7]
The words in [quotation marks] are Professor Ramsay's.
The climax
of the celebration was the mystic plays. Their torches were extinguished;
they stood outside the temple in the silence and the darkness. Then the
doors were opened, and in a blaze of light there was acted before them
the great drama of the festival. "There was probably no dogmatic
teaching—there
were possibly no
141
words spoken—it
was all an acted parable. But it was all kept in silence. There was an
awful individuality about it. They saw the sight in common, but they saw
it each man for himself. It was his personal communion with the Divine
life. The glamour and the glory of it were gone when it was published
to all the world. The effect of it was conceived to be a change both of
character and of relation to the gods. The initiated were by virtue of
their initiation made partakers of a life to come. 'Thrice happy they
who go to the world below having seen these mysteries: to them alone is
life there, to all others is misery.'"
The question
before us is how the simple baptism of the New Testament, administered
to those who professed belief in Christ, as an acknowledgment by them
of submission to His lordship over them and their identification with
Him in death, was supplanted in the cult of "the historic Church"
by a mystic rite by which the sinner is cleansed from sin and, as Augustine
has it, "born of the bowels of the Church." Here is the solution
of the problem! This brief notice
142
of the Eleusinian mysteries has been given almost entirely in borrowed
words, lest any should suppose the facts are misstated for a purpose.
In the sequel, for the same reason, the language of another shall be followed
still more closely.[8] My purpose
is to show to what extent the influence of the mysteries, and analogous
religious cults, modified and corrupted the Christian ordinance of baptism.
[8]
I refer to "The Hibbert Lectures, 1888," already quoted. Where
I do not use [quotation marks], it is merely because of trifling omissions
or verbal changes, which preclude my doing so. And I have not given the
Greek terms used, nor have I added the authorities cited by Dr. Hatch.
"In the
earliest times (1) baptism followed at once upon conversion; (2) the ritual
was of the simplest kind; nor does it appear that it needed any special
minister." Both these points are clearly established by the narrative
of the Acts of the Apostles.
"A later,
though still very early stage, with significant modifications, is seen
in the teaching of the Apostles: (1) No special minister of baptism
is specified, the vague 'he that baptizeth,' seeming to exclude a limitation
of it to an officer;
143
(2) the only element that is specified is water; (3) previous instruction
is implied, but there is no period of catechumenate defined; (4) a fast
is enjoined before baptism. These were the simple elements of early Christian
baptism. When it emerges, after a period of obscurity—like
a river which flows under the sand—the
enormous changes of later times have already begun.
"The
first point is the change of name. (a) So early as the
time of Justin Martyr we find a name given to baptism which comes straight
from the Greek mysteries—the
name 'enlightenment.' It came to be the constant technical term.
(b)
The name 'seal,' which also came from the mysteries and from some forms
of foreign cult, was used partly of those who had passed the test and
who were 'consignati,' as Tertullian calls them, partly of those who were
actually sealed upon the forehead in sign of a new ownership.
(c)
The term musterion is applied to baptism, and with it comes a
whole series of technical terms unknown to the Apostolic Church, but well
known to the mysteries, and explicable only through ideas and usages peculiar
to them."
144
Thus we have a number of words expressive either of the rite or act of
initiation itself, or of the agent or minister, or descriptive of the
baptized or the unbaptized—all
unknown to Scripture, all derived from the mysteries.
"The
second point is the change of time, which involves a change of
conception. (a) Instead of baptism being given immediately upon
conversion, it came to be in all cases postponed by a long period of preparation,
and in some cases deferred until the end of life. (b) The Christians
were separated into two classes—those
who had, and those who had not, been baptized. Tertullian regards it as
a mark of heretics that they have not this distinction... And Basil gives
the customs of the mysteries as a reason for the absence of the catechumens
from the service. (c) As if to show conclusively that the change
was due to the influence of the mysteries, baptized persons were, as we
have seen, distinguished from unbaptized by the very term which was in
use for the similar distinction in regard to the mysteries—initiated
and uninitiated—and
the minister is a mystagogue."
145
As those who were admitted to the inner sights of the mysteries had a
formula or password, so the catechumens, on the eve of their baptism,
were entrusted with the sacred formula—the
very word for it was borrowed from the mysteries—and
the communication of it was an important preparatory rite.
Sometimes
the newly baptized received the communion at once, just as the newly initiated
at Eleusis were permitted, after a day's fast, to drink of the mystic
cup and to eat of the sacred cakes.
"The
baptized were sometimes crowned with a garland, as the initiated wore
a mystic crown at Eleusis."
Mention has
been made of the blaze of light which marked the climax of the initiation
festival at Eleusis; "so Chrysostom pictures Christian baptism in
the blaze of Easter eve; and Cyril describes the white-robed band of the
baptized approaching the doors of the church when the light turned darkness
into day."
Baptism was
no longer administered, as in primitive days, at any place or time, but
only
146
in the great churches, and, as a rule, only once a year. "The primitive
'See, here is water; what doth hinder me to be baptized?' passed into
a ritual which at every turn recalls the ritual of the mysteries."
The following
is the account given of the administration of the baptismal sacrament
at Rome as late as the ninth century:—
"Preparation
went on through the greater part of Lent. The candidates were examined
and tested; they fasted; they received the secret symbols, the Creed,
and the Lord's Prayer. On Easter eve, as the day declined towards afternoon,
they assembled in the Church of St. John Lateran. The rites of exorcism
and renunciation were gone through in solemn form, and the rituals survive.
The Pope and his priests come forth in their sacred vestments, with
lights carried in front of them, which the Pope then blesses; there
is a reading of lessons and a singing of psalms. And then, while they
chant a litany, there is a procession to the great bath of baptism,
and the water is blessed. The baptized come forth from the water, are
signed with the cross, and are presented to the Pope one by one, who
vests them in a white robe and signs their foreheads again with the
cross. They are arranged in a great circle, and each of them carries
a light. Then a vast array of lights is kindled; the blaze of them,
says a Greek Father, makes night continuous with dawn. It is the beginning
of a new life. The mass is celebrated—the
mystic offering on the Cross is represented in figure; but for the newly
baptized the chalice
147
is filled, not with wine, but with milk and honey, that they may understand,
says an old writer, that they have entered already upon the promised
land. And there was one more symbolical rite in that early Easter sacrament,
the mention of which is often suppressed—a
lamb was offered on the altar, afterwards cakes in the shape of a lamb.
It was simply the ritual which we have seen already in the mysteries.
The purified crowd at Eleusis saw a blaze of light, and in the light
were represented in symbol life and death and resurrection."
Utter paganism
in a Christian dress. To us who recognise the essential distinction between
spirit and matter the thought of washing the soul from sin by water baptism
is sheer nonsense. But it was otherwise with those whose minds were steeped
in Pagan philosophy. The Greeks knew no such distinction. With them the
soul was matter as well as the body—matter
in a more subtle form. There was nothing incongruous, therefore, in the
thought of washing it with water. And the practice of exorcising or blessing
the water sprang from the Gnostic belief that evil attached to everything
corporeal.
What further
proof is needed of the Pagan origin of the baptism of Christendom? The
early
148
corrupters of Christianity transferred to their new religion a rite with
which their old religion had made them familiar, and this they described
by the term which Holy Scripture provided. Nor was it confined to the
Eleusinian mysteries. In Prescott's Conquest of Mexico a description
is given of the rite in use in that country when the Spaniards landed
on its shores. The priestess midwife sprinkled water on the head of the
infant, and then, after exorcising the unclean spirit (as does the Romish
priest), she used these words: "He now liveth anew and is born anew;
now he is purified and cleansed." And in his work on Buddhisrn
Sir Monier Williams describes[9]
a similar rite practised in Tibet and Mongolia. The child is baptized
on the third or tenth day after birth. "The priest consecrates the
water, while candles and incense are burning. He then dips the child three
times, blesses it, and gives it a name."
[9]
Lecture xiii. p. 356.
It was not
from Greece that these superstitious rites were derived. All had a common
origin,
149
and that origin is to be sought in the mysteries of ancient Babylon.[10]
[10]
The Gorham case decided that baptismal regeneration is not the doctrine
of the Church of England. The then Bishop of Exeter refused to institute
Mr. Gorham to a living in his diocese because he rejected this doctrine,
and the Dean of Arches Court of Canterbury upheld the bishop's decision.
But the judgment of the Court below was reversed on appeal by the Judicial
Committee of the Privy Council (March 8, 1850). It is an interesting fact
that, as the result of that judgment, one of Bishop Philpot's chaplains
"verted" to Rome, and the other became a thorough evangelical.
In those days men had a conscience and acted upon its dictates.
The corruption
of the other "sacrament" proceeded on similar lines. First the
doctrine of it became leavened by that of the mysteries, and at a later
stage the ceremonial was altered to suit the corrupted ordinance. The
Paschal Supper was a memorial of Israel's redemption; the Lord's Supper,
a memorial of the great antitype of that redemption. No mind formed upon
the teaching of Scripture could miss its meaning as a celebration of the
Lord's death until He returns. Pliny's famous letter to Trajan gives proof
of the simplicity of the rite in those early days; and the Apology
of Tertullian[11] bears testimony
that, so far as the ceremonial of it was concerned, the
150
rite was still uncorrupted a century after the close of the apostolic
age. Not so its doctrine. In the same passage in which Justin Martyr gives
proof how entirely the Pagan view of baptism had obtained, be uses language
about the Eucharist that may fairly be appealed to in support of "transubstantiation,"
the "mixed chalice," and "the reservation of the sacrament."[12]
[11]
Chap. xxxix.
[12]
Apol. I. 85, 86.
The conception
of the table as an altar came in later; and of the elements as "mysteries,"
later still. By a natural sequence of error the minister in due course
became a priest. But it was not until the fifth century that the ordinance
had been completely paganised. The following extracts describe the simple
ritual of the middle of the second century and the beginning of the third,
and of the Pagan cult which had superseded it two centuries later.
In the passage
already referred to from his Apology Justin describes the assembling
of the Christians, and the order of service, and then proceeds:—
"After
which, there is brought to that one of the
151
brethren who presides bread and a cup of wine mixed with water. And
he having received them gives praise and glory to the Father of all
things through the name of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and gives
thanks in many words for that God hath vouchsafed these things. And
when he hath finished his praises and thanksgiving, all the people who
are present express their assent, saying, 'Amen,' which in the Hebrew
tongue means, 'So be it.' The President having given thanks, and the
people having expressed their assent, those whom we call deacons give
to each of those who are present a portion of the bread which hath been
blessed, and of the wine mixed with water; and carry some away for those
who are absent."[13]
[13]
Justin, Apol. I. 85.
And Tertullian
writes:—
"Our
supper sufficiently shows its meaning by its very name. It is called
by a term which in Greek signifies love... We sit not down to eat until
prayer to God be made, as it were, the first morsel... Our conversation
is that of men who are conscious that the Lord hears them. After water
is brought for the hands, and lights, we are invited to sing to God,
according as each one can propose a subject from the Holy Scriptures,
or of his own composing. Prayer in like manner concludes the feast."[14]
[14]
Apol. xxxix.
The following
is the description of what is ostensibly the same supper, as "celebrated"
a few generations afterwards:—
"Then
the sacred hierarch initiates the sacred prayer
152
and announces to all the holy peace; and after all have saluted each
other, the mystic recital of the sacred lists is completed The hierarch
and the priests wash their hands in water; he stands in the midst of
the Divine altar, and around him stand the priests and the chosen ministers.
The hierarch sings the praises of the Divine working, and consecrates
the most Divine mysteries, and by means of the symbols which are sacredly
set forth he brings into open vision the things of which he sings the
praises. And when he has shown the gifts of the Divine working, he himself
comes into a sacred communion with them, and then invites the rest.
And having both partaken and given to the others a share in the thearchic
communion, he ends with a sacred thanksgiving; and while the people
bend over what are Divine symbols only, he himself, always by the thearchic
spirit, is led in a priestly manner, in purity of his Godlike frame
of mind, through blessed and spiritual contemplation, to the holy realities
of the mysteries."[15]
•
[15] Dionysius the Areopagite ("Eccles.
Hier." c. 3). The above translation is from Hatch's "Hibbert
Lectures," X. pp. 303, 304. Though the works attributed to this writer
be not authentic, their genuineness is accepted. As Dr. Hatch says, "There
are few Catholic treatises on the Eucharist and few Catholic manuals of
devotion into which his conceptions do not enter."
*
* *
The
preceding chapter was taken from:
THE BUDDHA OF CHRISTENDOM (revised and republished in 1908 as The
Bible or the Church?)
by Sir Robert Anderson.
Published by Hodder and Stoughton, London, 1899.
No copyright. Public domain.
The
Buddha of Christendom, Chapter 10 / Bible or Church?, Ch 9
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