W. E. H.
(3) Further Defense. Von P. Lobstein, in Zeitschrift fiir and Kirche, 1896, de fends infant baptism on the broad ground of Di vine revelation and Christian nurture. He finds infant baptism supported (1) as an expression of the undeserved, anticipating love of God. This love has no more comprehensible and touching form than in the baptism of babes and sucklings. (2) It is an expression of the glorious liberty (or independence, 'Unabizaengigkein of the love of God. Man has no more claim to the unde served mercy of God than the veriest babe. (3) It is an expression of the unchangeable faithful ness of the love of God. Baptism stands for the ever-present. ever-uninterrupted grace of God. (See Review of Lobstein, by Prof. H. M. Scott, Chicago Theolog. Sem., in the Am. Jour. of Theol., Jan., 1897, p• 253, sq.).
8. BelieVers' Baptism.
(1) Reasons For. Those who hold to be lievers' baptism maintain that all authority for Christian baptism comes from the commission Christ gave to his disciples just before his ascen sion. That commission, they maintain, plainly limits baptism to such as can be taught and be lieve; that there is no case in the practice of the Apostolic church which contradicts the above lim itation, and that infant baptism is not found in the Bible, nor any other book, until near the close of the second century. They hold that it was the logical sequence of two errors which had then crept into the church, viz.: (a) That infants are totally depraved ; (b) that baptism per se is re generative therefore, infants should be baptized to remove their depravity.
As both these errors are now in general dis avowed by Christendom, there is no necessity for infant baptism, and hence there should be none. They further maintain that all attempts to infer infant baptism from infant circumcision, under the Mosaic covenant, are fanciful, and as plainly teach infant communion as infant baptism; that baptism is an act of faith, and only such as can express faith thereby should be baptized; that it is the answer of a good conscience, and cannot be ad ministered to one who has no conscience what ever.
They affirm that the church is builded upon the spiritual foundation of " the Apostles and Proph ets, Jesus Christ himself being the chief corner stone." The members thus builded are " living stones," and are builded together for a "spiritual house," in which "spiritual sacrifices" are offered, acceptable to God by Jesus Christ. This excludes
mere flesh and blood.
They deny that a person can become a proxy for another, and hold that such things as god fathers and godmothers are inventions of an apos tate church.
(2) Mode. The act of baptism they believe to be immersion. They maintain that all scholars admit immersion to be the plain English equivalent of "baptico;" that "sprinkle" and "pour" are not equivalents as the lexicons all testify; that there are three words in the Greek language, equiva lents, respectively, of the English, "pour," "sprin kle" and "immerse," and when speaking of bap tism as a literal Christian rite the Bible invariably uses the equivalent of "immerse" to the exclu sion of the other two; that the Greek church using the Greek language, and in many respects nearer the Apostolic church than the Roman Catholic, has always been an immersing church; that there is no mention of allusion for baptism in the Bible nor any other book for the first two centuries; that it was introduced in the case of sickness or weakness, and was not regarded as regular ; that after its introduction it met with long-continued opposition. and only in recent cen turies has the Roman Catholic church accorded it an equal place with immersion ; that the cir cumstances surrounding the practice of baptism in the New Testament point unmistakably to im mersion as the universal practice ; that the figura tive references to it by the New Testament writers can all be understood on the supposition that they meant immersion and cannot be understood on any other supposition ; that there is no place where baptism is spoken of in the New Testament that we may not substitute immersion without destroy ing the sense: that in a large majority of the cases where the word "baptism" is mentioned, to sub stitute "pour" or "sprinkle " would make the passage ridiculous and without meaning; that the great historians, such as Mosheim, Neander, Wall, Eidersheimer, Weiss, Ewald, Geikie, DePressense, Schaff, Conybeare, Howson, Stanley and many others unite in testifying that immersion was the primitive practice ; that the great reformers, such as Martin Luther, John Calvin and John Wesley, admit that immersion was the original practice.