PROFESSOR PAINE ON BAPTISM.
PROF. L. L. PAINE, D. D., who occupies the Chair of Ecclesiastical History in the Bangor Theological Seminary, has surprised some of his Congregational brethren by teachings which strike them as quite unexampled in theological seminaries of that denomination. At a recent anniversary a visitor was confounded to hear the statement made, without contradiction, in the examination of the classes in church history, that immersion was the primitive mode of baptism. He put the inquiry publicly through the Christian Mirror, whether that was the teaching of the Professor, and whether, if it was the truth, a good deal of argument against the Baptists must not be given up. Professor Paine replied with admirable spirit:— “It may be honestly asked by some, was immersion the primitive form of baptism; and if so, what then? As to the question of fact, the testimony is ample and satisfactory. No matter of church history is clearer. The evidence is all one way, and all church historians of any repute agree in accepting it. We cannot claim even originality in teaching it in a Congregational Seminary. And we really feel guilty of a kind of anachronism in writing an article to insist upon it. It is a point upon which ancient, mediæval, and modern historians alike, Catholic and Protestant, Lutheran and Calvinist, have no controversy. And the simple reason for this unanimity is, that the statements of the early Fathers are so clear, and the light shed upon these statements from the early customs of the church is so conclusive, that no historian who cares for his reputation would dare deny it, and no historian who is worthy of the name would wish to. “There are some historical questions concerning the church, on which the most learned writers disagree; for example, the question of infant baptism; but on this one, of the early practice of immersion, the most distinguished antiquarians, such as Bingham, Angusti (Coleman), Smith (Dictionary of the Bible), and historians, such as Mosheim, Gieseler, Hase, Neander, Milman, Schaff, Alzog (Catholic), hold a common language. The following extract from Coleman’s Antiquities very accurately expresses what all agree to: ‘In the primitive church, immersion was undeniably the common mode of baptism. The utmost that can be said of sprinkling in the early period is that it was, in case of necessity, permitted as an exception to a general rule. This fact is so well established that it were needless to adduce authorities in proof of it.’ As one further illustration we quote from Schaff’s ‘Apostolic Church’: ‘As to the outward mode of administering this ordinance, immersion, and not sprinkling, was unquestionably the original, normal form.’ “But while immersion was the universal custom, an abridgement of the rite was freely allowed and defended in cases of urgent necessity, such as sickness, and approaching death, and the peculiar form of sprinkling thus came to be known as ‘clinical’ baptism, or the baptism of the sick. It is somewhat singular that no controversy of any account ever arose in the church on this question of the form of baptism, down to the Reformation. And hence it is difficult to determine with complete accuracy just when immersion gave way to sprinkling as the common church practice. The two forms were employed, one as a rule, the other as the exception, until, as Christianity traveled northward into a colder climate, the exception silently grew to be the rule. “As late as the thirteenth century immersion still held its ground, as is shown in a passage in the Summa Theologica of St. Thomas Aquinas, where the arguments in favor of the two modes of baptism are compared, and the conclusion is drawn that immersion is the safer, because the more common form (quia hoc habet communiores usus). Three centuries later, in the time of the Reformers, sprinkling had become common, and even quite universal, although Calvin speaks of the different forms of baptism in a way which seems to imply that immersion was by no means obsolete. So that Dr. Schaff puts the date quite early enough, we think, when he says that ‘not until the end of the thirteenth century did sprinkling become the rule and immersion the exception.’ It is to be remarked, also, that this change occurred only in the Western or Latin church. In the Greek church, immersion has remained the rule to the present day.” Prof. Paine has evidently studied to some purpose. It would be well if some of his colleagues in the Bangor Seminary could profit by his instructions.—Examiner and Chronicle.