vened the Council of Nice was polluted with the execution, or rather murder, of his eldest son. . . . The bishops, whom he summoned to his last illness in the palace of Nicomedia, were edified by the fervor with which he requested and received the sacrament of baptism, by the solemn protestation that the remainder of his life should be worthy of a disciple of Christ, and by his humble refusal to wear the imperial purple after he had been clothed in the white garment of a neophyte. The example and reputation of Constantine seemed to countenance the delay of baptism. Further tyrants were encouraged to believe that the innocent blood which they might shed in a long reign would instantly be washed away in the waters of regeneration, and the abuse of religion dangerously undermined the foundations of moral virtue.' 3

This 'abuse' of the Gospel mocked at the need of a holy life, made an ordinance a mere party watch-word at heaven's gate, and crushed out the spirit of Christ in a candidate for baptism. It became a mere talisman around which men could rally, and in the name of which Christians could persecute their brethren with inhumanity; plots, counterplots, broils, murders, ambitions and briberies, all reveled in a baptized barbarism; while gentleness, justice, purity and brotherly love well-nigh disappeared. The century opened with an intolerant bitterness on the part of the orthodox toward all who differed with them, not only in opinion, but in forms of expression. All dissent must seal its lips or bite the dust. At the close of the fourth, heresy' became a capital offense, punishable with death in some cases, under Theodosius, A. D. 379-395. His edict enforced uniformity of belief against all who differed with 'Catholics.' Their places of worship were confiscated for the use of Catholics,' they could neither bequeath nor inherit property, they were forbidden to dispute on religion, some of their ordained ministers were fined ten pounds weight of gold, others were banished, and the 'elect' of the Manicheans were sentenced to death as enemies of the State. The civil arm enforced the acts of Church discipline, orthodoxy was made the form of all public acts and offices, and when the balance trembled on any religious topic in controversy, the Emperor threw in the sword for settlement. The last toleration of religious differences was enjoyed under Julian the apostate, A. D. 362, if we except the brief eight months of Jovian in 363; but in 415 Honorins issued an edict forbidding the Donatists to assemble, on pain of death. This was the result of a great debate held at Carthage, 411, between 279 Donatist and 280 Catholic bishops. This edict was not executed to the extreme, but it silenced every opposing tongue. Gibbon tells us that 300 of the Donatist bishops and thousands of their ministers were stripped of their property, banished to the islands, or obliged to hide themselves in the wilds of Africa. Many persons of rank in schismatic assemblies paid ruinous fines, and obstinacy was unpardonable. Of course there was much earnest remonstrance and resistance, and the more far-seeing Catholics were seized with alarm, for if the religion of the majority or that of the Emperor changed, their free action was at an end.

Moved by these fears, the Council of Antioch, A. D. 371, forbade appeals to Emperors in matters of purely ecclesiastical authority, without the consent of the

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bishop. Augustine led in the debate against the Donatists at Carthage, and afterward advocated forcible means for reclaiming them, under cover of Christ's words, 'Compel them to come in.' But in earlier life, when he was a Manichean himself, he thought it wrong to punish heretics. Petilian, his Donatist opponent, urged strongly that there should be no compulsion, or interference of the civil power in matters of religion. Violence however triumphed as usual, and Theodosius II. commanded all books which did not conform to the Council of Nicæa to be destroyed, and those who concealed them to be put to death. Still, persecution not only followed all dissenting Christians, but the pagans were slain for their paganism. True, the Emperors were yet as much the head of the pagan faith as of the Christian; but they issued decree after decree prohibiting sacrifices to the gods under extreme penalties. The despotism of Theodosius treated his heathen subjects and Christian opponents alike. On the ground of a moral regeneration Christ demanded love for all men; but when this heathenish system of baptismal regeneration supplanted the need of purity of heart, Christians inflicted the same tragedy of horrors upon the defenseless pagans whom they were sent to convert, that the unconverted heathen had inflicted on them. Thus a heathenized baptism belied the gentleness of Jesus in the most atrocious way; and its ravenous thirst for blood pawned his royal crown to deck the brow of hate. When the persecuting demon took possession, Christ's rebuke, 'Ye know not what spirit ye are of,' was forgotten.

At this time the assumptions of the Emperors and the ambitions of the clergy had sunk the rights of the people in the dust, both in State and Church. The congregations had no longer the right to select their own pastors, much less to govern their internal affairs. By canons xii, xiii, of the Council of Laodicea, A. D. 360, the appointment of bishops in villages and other country places was forbidden, and the 'multitude' deprived of all voice in the election of the clergy, all power being now centered in the metropolitan bishop. Jerome was compelled to draw the contrast with former times. He says, in his Commentary on Titus,' i, 1: Among the ancients, presbyters and bishops were the very same; but by little and little, in order that the plants of dissension might be plucked up, the whole management was intrusted to one individual. As the presbyters, therefore, know that they are subjected to him who was their president by the custom of their Church; so the bishops know that they are greater than their presbyters, more by custom than by the principle of any appointment of Christ.' Cardinal Manning gives us the fully developed doctrine which has grown out of that 'custom,' in the claim of present infallibility for the clergy. He says:

The pastoral authority, or the episcopate, together with the priesthood and the other orders, constitute an organized body divinely ordained to guard the deposit of the faith. The voice of that body, not so many individuals, but as a body, is the voice of the Holy Ghost. The pastoral ministry as a body cannot err, because the Holy Spirit, who is indissolubly united to the mystical body, is eminently and above all united to the hierarchy and body of its pastors. The episcopate united to its

center is, in all ages, divinely sustained and divinely assisted to perpetuate and to enunciate the original revelation.'

means.

These high prerogatives on the part of the bishops made them worse and worse, till they took leave, not only of simple manners and pure doctrine, but of good sense. They gave themselves up to dissipation and voluptuousness, vied with princes in splendor and affected the rank of courts. Martin, of Tours, claimed superior dignity to the Emperor, the Bishop of Rome supremacy over all Church dignitaries, and the Bishop of Constantinople cursed him for claiming his right. Then the Bishop of Jerusalem entered the field, claiming that as his Church was founded first and by the Apostles themselves, he was the most venerable and his authority unquestionable. But the Emperor Valentinian III., A. D. 445, made Leo I. of Rome the rightful ruler of the whole Western Church. The Emperors, however, impiously claimed high honor. They were addressed as the 'Supreme Master,' 'Everlasting King,' your ‘Eternity' and your 'Godship.' Many of the bishops were grossly ignorant, for several of those who attended the Councils of Ephesus and Chalcedon, in this century, were unable to write, and attested the decrees in this form: I, such a one, have subscribed by the hand of; or such a bishop having said that he could not write, I, whose name is underwritten have subscribed for him.' This ignorance excited ambition for the speedy enlargement of the Church by infamous Gibbon says: "The salvation of the common people was purchased at an easy rate, if it be true that in one year twelve thousand men were baptized at Rome, besides a proportionable number of women and children; and that a white garment, with twenty pieces of gold, had been promised by the Emperor to every convert.' 95 He cites many grave authorities for the truth of this statement. But that process was both too slow and expensive, and Augustine set the fires of purgatory in full blaze, to awaken the people from their apathy. Clement, of Alexandria, first broached the doctrine of purgatory, in the third century. Cyprian had great trouble about those who had become martyrs before baptism, but concluded that as they were immersed in overwhelming sufferings they might be saved. But Augustine thought that the dead must be saved either by water in this world, or fire in the next. The case of the thief on the cross perplexed him sorely. He could not have gone to purgatory, for Jesus said that he would take him to Paradise; and as he suffered for his crimes, suffering could not save him. But as there is no record of his baptism before his crucifixion, Augustine found some relief in the thought, that no one knew that he had not been baptized beforehand! Hare bitterly laments Augustine's morbid tendency' to 'twist and warp the simplest facts, to wrench and distort the plainest declarations of Scripture, and to hatch and scrape together the most sophistical arguments and the most fantastical hypotheses, rather than to submit to what makes against some favorite notion or fancy. Yet, Augustine knew the truth here; he had known it thirty years before, when he wrote his earlier work.'" Still as these twistings found for him a way to save men who sinned after baptism,

TIM ENT URCED,

by taking them through purgatory proper; so babes could now be baptized, and yet be saved if they fell into after sin.

This discovery made Augustine bold to take an advanced step for infant baptism. He held (Serm. 294) that unbaptized infants were consigned to eternal fire, though their damnation would be the lightest of all;' and began to terrify the world with this horrible dogma. The word limbus,' or 'fringe,' was used by him to indicate the outskirts of hell; but he held that dead babes unbaptized were punished by exclusion from heaven, and by positive pain in this new found limbus infantium of his. In that case, infant baptism met a prime necessity for the babes if they did not die, and purgatory another at the close of life, if they sinned after baptism. At this point another motive came in. Orthodox baptism administered to babes would rescue them from Arianism and fill the ranks of the Church by natural birth, and so the sentimental superstition was established. The most eloquent preachers of this day vainly exhorted adults to seek baptism so long as they thought that severe penance could atone for sin after baptism; but a future purgation by fire gave a new phase to the question and rendered the baptism of babes absolutely necessary. Out of this new departure of infant salvation by baptism some fresh and perplexing questions arose. For example: the Council of Neo-Cæsarea, 314-325, answered the curious question, Whether a mother being immersed shortly before the birth of her babe, secured thereby the baptism of her unborn little one? They gravely decided that in this case the mother communicates nothing to the child, because in the profession, every one's own resolution is declared.' In treating of this decision, Grotius cites two great commentators upon the canon: Balsamon, who thinks that the child could not be baptized because it was neither 'enlightened,' nor had any choice of the divine baptism;' and Zonaras, who decides that the babe had no need of baptism' until it was born. Grotius himself concludes that the Council could not think the infant baptized with its mother, as 'A child was not wont to be baptized, but upon its own will and profession.'

In the fourth century, the baptism of a babe outside of Africa was much more common than before; but in order to silence all opposition, the Council of Carthage, A. D. 397, decreed (can. ii) 'an anathema against such as deny that children ought to be baptized as soon as they are born.' Then, according to Bishop Taylor, the Council of Milevium, 416, decreed: 'Whoever denies that new-born infants are to be baptized, to the taking away of original sin-let him be anathema."8 The first injunction of infant baptism by Church authority was at Carthage, in 397; the second at Milevium, 416; and this last African decree, being confirmed by Innocent I., was the first indorsement of the innovation by authority at Rome. But the great fight which Augustine made on the subject, marks it as an African movement from the first, and shows that it provoked resistance at every step, until his Winer, the learned German, sums up brave contest enforced it on the fifth century. the whole case thus in his Lectures: Originally, only adults were baptized; but at

the end of the second century in Africa, and in the third, generally, infant baptism was introduced; and in the fourth century it was theologically maintained by Augustine.' This great critic thus explains the fact that Augustine, A. D. 353-430, was the first theologian who maintained a place for it in Christian theology, and attempted to indicate its theological bearings on the whole Christian system. He presided at the Council of Milevium, and was bound to defend the ground which its ninety-two members had taken. Having collected his brethren and pronounced a curse upon those who denied that immersed babes were washed from moral pollution thereby, he was forced to defend the error. And so this great mind went from one error into another, until he became the champion of ecclesiasticism, sacerdotalism and sacramentarianism, all distorted into monstrous proportions.

Augustine was beset, on the other hand, by Pelagianism, which denied original sin; and hence, to him, the need of baptizing babes. Pelagius contended that they were as pure as the light, and the wide prevalence of this faith terribly aroused Augustine. The companion of Pelagius, Cælestus, an Irish layman, assigned newborn babes to Adam's moral condition before his fall; and the two went together first to Rome and then to Africa. At Carthage, Aurelius the bishop suminoned the Irish brother before a synod as a heretic, on the charge that he denied original sin, in that babes had need of remission; and so their baptism was unnecessary because it implied their sanctification in Christ. He was condemned, went under censure to Sicily, A. D. 412, and was condemned again by Zosimus the Roman bishop. He then repaired to Constantinople, 420, but returning to Rome was finally expelled. Augustine thought infant baptism a great bulwark against Pelagianism and an evidence of depravity.

We find another remarkable fact. Down to this time there was no provision for the baptism of babes in the liturgies, but now it began to appear. From an early period questions had been put to those who voluntarily assumed baptism. Ambrose, A. D. 340-397, put these: ""Dost thou believe in God, the Father Almighty?" Thou hast said, "I believe." And you have been immersed. Secondly, you were asked, "Dost thou believe in Jesus Christ our Lord?" and you said, "I believe," and you were immersed. Thirdly, thou wast asked, "Dost thou believe in the Holy Ghost?" and thou said, "I believe." Then you were immersed the third time.' Right here Augustine met another grave difficulty. This formula must now be forced into use for babes in some way, as he wished the immersed babe to stand in Christianity exactly where the adult stood. Because the child could not answer for himself, the sponsor must answer for him. Or, as Dr. Jacob better expresses it, 'As the adult by his own mouth professed the faith which he had, the infant was, by the mouth of another, to express the faith which he had not.' This the doctor calls an ecclesiastical fiction, to exhibit an identity which did not exist.' Sponsors had existed for some time for every young person who made a voluntary confession of faith. But Augustine is the first to assume that the sponsors of babes took