The N. Y. Independent, noticing a new book on Baptism by Henry S. Burrage, entitled, “The Act of Baptism in the History of the Christian Church,” gives the following article on “The Archæology of Baptism,” which will be of interest to our readers:—
In the Greek Church the act of baptism is immersion; in the Latin Church it is affusion. The Latins admit that the immersion of the Greeks is true baptism; the Greeks (at least, the more conservative among them) deny this of the Latin affusion. Whence the difference? If affusion was practiced in the Apostolic Church, either alone or together with immersion, why and when did the Greeks discard it? If it was not known in the Apostolic Church, when and why did the Latins introduce it? These and other questions regarding the baptismal usages of the Church are of much interest to the Christian archæologist.
Mr. Burrage’s Act of Baptism is made up of quotations from writers of different centuries of the Church, from the records of councils, and from other sources, showing what the act of baptism has been in different ages and nations. These citations (which in an appendix are presented in the originals) are accompanied merely by a few remarks, such as the author deemed necessary for a summing up of the facts presented. The book shows laborious research, while its tone is that of the earnest search for truth. The author writes in the spirit of the historian, rather than in that of the polemic. He holds that the practice of immersion has come down from the apostles. He fortifies this opinion by the authority of exegetical scholars like Ellicott, Lightfoot, Howson, Alford, Plumptre, Meyer, Lange, Tholuck, Olshausen, De Wette, and historical scholars like Schaff, Stanley, Pressensé, Döllinger, Kurtz, Guericke, Bunsen, and Mosheim. Indeed, on this question there is among scholars no difference of opinion whatever.
The first undisputed mention of the practice of affusion occurs in the letter of Cyprian to Magnus, written about 250 A. D. Certain persons, converted on a sick-bed and unable to be immersed, had been simply poured upon. Some had raised the question whether this was true baptism, and thus arose a controversy which has come down to our own day—the question whether anything else than a burial in water can be recognized as New Testament baptism. The opinion of Cyprian being asked, he replies “with diffidence and modesty,” thus recognizing that there was ground for serious doubt in the matter; but finally gives his opinion that, in case of necessity, a mere pouring may be regarded as valid baptism. This letter of Cyprian is quoted by immersionists as showing (1) that immersion was the (almost) universal practice of the Church of Cyprian’s day. (2.) That the use of affusion even in extreme cases was a novelty. Had it been practiced by the apostles, or even by the Church of the second century, Cyprian would certainly have referred to this action, by way of precedent. Indeed, the dispute would not have arisen. (3.) That the use of affusion for baptism took its rise from the superstitious idea that baptism was necessary to salvation.
The entire Latin Church finally adopted the opinion of Cyprian that affusion might be accepted for baptism when immersion was out of the question. But for a thousand years longer immersion continued to be the regular baptism of the Western, as it still is of the Eastern Church. Referring to baptism, Jerome says mergimur; Ambrose, mersisti; Augustine, demersimus; Leo the Great, demersio; Maximus of Turin, mergitur; Pope Pelagius, mergione; Gregory the Great, mergat; Alcuin, submersione; Hincmar of Rheims, mergitur; Lanfranc, immersio; Abelard, mergere; Bernard of Clairvaux, mersio. The testimony is superabundant that for twelve hundred years the Roman Catholic Church practiced immersion, except in case of sickness or other necessity. Taking together those who in all ages and nations have “professed and called themselves Christians,” the majority have been immersed. And the fact that originally affusion was used only when immersion was out of the question is put forward by immersionists as showing that, except for the idea that baptism was necessary to salvation, affusion never would have been resorted to at all; that, had no superstitious importance been attached to baptism, the original ceremony of immersion would have been used when practicable, and when it was out of the question the convert would have been allowed to die without any baptismal ceremony at all. In other words, that it is not immersion, but affusion, which is “ritualistic.”
But it is easy to see that when once it was established that, in case of necessity, affusion could be substituted for immersion, its greater convenience would cause the cases of alleged necessity to increase, and at last it would come to be freely resorted to simply as a matter of ease. We trace this tendency in the protests made against it. As early as the 9th century we find councils decreeing that the priest must not merely pour water on the child, but must dip it in the font; which action shows that affusion was coming to be practiced where there was no strict necessity for it. Thomas Aquinas (died 1274) declares that in his day immersion was “the more common” custom; but this very form of expression shows that affusion had become nearly as frequent. We see, moreover, another stage of the controversy in the suggestion of Aquinas that the apostles may have used affusion in the baptism of the three thousand—the first endeavor (so far as has been shown) to justify affusion by apostolic precedent, a thing which Cyprian did not attempt. Soon it was formally declared, as by the Council of Ravenna, in 1311, to be a thing indifferent whether the act of baptism were immersion or affusion; which point being reached, the more convenient affusion became the sole usage. And in later centuries the baptismal rubrics of the Latin Church prescribe affusion, without any mention of immersion. Used at first only in rare cases, it came in the course of a little upward of a thousand years to supplant immersion entirely in the Church of Western Europe; and when the Reformation came, the Lutherans and Calvinists not unnaturally followed the usage of the Latin Church, in which they had been reared, so that the Continental Protestants, together with the Presbyterian Churches of Scotland and America, employ not the immersion of the first thirteen centuries of the whole Church and of the Eastern Church of to-day, but the affusion of the Latin Church of later centuries.
In the English Church, however, immersion continued the standard usage down to the reign of Elizabeth. In Erasmus’s “Colloquies,” written in the reign of Henry VIII, we are told that in England they still dip children. William Tyndale speaks of the immersion as signifying burial and rising again with Christ; while in another place he tells how the people watch the priest, in baptizing, to see that he puts the child completely under the water. Bishop Horne, writing to Bullinger, in the reign of Edward VI, describes baptism in England as immersion. And the baptismal rubric of the Church of England of the present day commands the priest to “dip [the child] in the water,” adding, however, that, “if [the parents] shall certify that the child is weak, it shall suffice to pour water upon it.” The rubric of the Protestant Episcopal Church of this country says “shall dip it in the water or shall pour water upon it”; not demanding immersion, but giving it precedence, in which, as perhaps in the frequent practice of immersion in the Methodist Church, a daughter of the Anglican, we trace the influence of the English usage of the Tudor period. The disuse of immersion in England was through the influence of Protestant leaders who, on the accession of Elizabeth, returned from exile at Geneva and other Protestant cities, bringing with them Continental Protestant usages, among others that of affusion, which the Genevans had inherited from the Church of Rome.
Thus England, which up to that time had stood with the Eastern Church in the practice of immersion instead of following the Church of Rome in the practice of affusion, adopted the Latin usage at second-hand, through a Calvinistic influence. In the Church of England of to-day the practice of affusion (in the case of healthy infants) is Genevan, rather than Anglican. In this connection it may be noticed that the ritual of the English Catholics at Douay, in 1604, prescribed immersion, and immersion is sometimes practiced by the High Churchmen of to-day.
It will surprise many—Baptists as well as others—to be told that insisting upon immersion is a comparatively recent thing among modern Baptists. The “Anabaptists” of the century of the Reformation practiced affusion, with the Calvinists and Lutherans. They condemned the baptism of infants, but did not deny that affusion was baptism. The one who was sprinkled in infancy was on profession of faith merely resprinkled! Though immersion was practiced among them, none (so far as has yet been shown) of the Continental Antipædo-baptists of the sixteenth century, and only a very few in the seventeenth century, declared that immersion alone was baptism. But in England, during the reign of Charles I., the Baptists became strict immersionists, as they are familiarly known to be in England and America to-day. It will be seen, therefore, that the distinctive tenet of the Baptist denomination is not that immersion alone is baptism; but that baptism should be administered only on profession of faith. The fact that the English Baptists became strict immersionists, while their Continental brethren did not, may possibly have resulted from the fact that immersion was practiced in the Church of England so much longer than on the Continent.
Such are a few of the points in the history of baptism which are wholly or in great part covered by Mr. Burrage’s book. It is a work to be read by any one who is interested in the history of Church customs, and especially by each one who has occasion to give his opinion in controversy regarding baptism. A few of its translations from the fathers are somewhat awkward. In certain cases it seems as if one who had the matter in hand should have sought out the particulars a little more thoroughly; as, for instance, regarding the mode of immersion in the Milan Cathedral. But, on the whole, the book is far in advance of anything of its kind, and is a most interesting contribution to historical literature.