p. 8 | Infant Baptism by A. C.

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, California · Nov 11, 1897

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 23, No. 44.

Infant Baptism

By A. C.

No. 659. Infant Baptism.

WHEN and by whom was infant baptism first introduced?

It is impossible to trace it. The Herzog "Encyclopedia of Religious Knowledge," edited by Dr. Philip Schaff, a believer in infant baptism, informs us, article, "Baptism of Infants," "No time can be assigned to the beginning of the practise of infant baptism." And again, "It must be admitted that adult baptism was the rule, infant baptism the exception, in the apostolic age, and continued to be till the church was fairly established in the Roman Empire." It came in with the erroneous idea that the mere act or rite of baptism regenerated. If that were so, of course children ought to be baptized. And in this belief certain zealots in the Catholic Church later on compelled baptism. Dr. Schaff says: "Compulsory infant baptism was unknown in the ante-Nicene age; it is a profanation of the sacrament, and one of the evils of the union of Church and State against which Baptists have a right to protest."