[17]. Baptism
John, who from baptizing got the name Baptist, has disclosed in his own words what baptism is: namely, an initiation
! i 186 The Works of Huldreich Zwingli by which those marked themselves out who were going to mend their lives. I am speaking now of baptism pure and simple, in which those who are going to enter upon a new life are dipped in water; not of baptism as embracing the whole matter of preaching as well as dipping. Those who today battle so stoutly against the baptism of infants—not seeing this distinetion, namely, that baptism is used sometimes for the whole procedure of both teaching and sacrament, sometimes only for the sacrament, that is, the sign—fight blindfolded, as gladiators sometimes did. Thus, then, the divine Baptist speaks in Matt. 3:11: “I indeed baptize you with water unto repentance.” What else is this than to say: “I dip you in water, that you may repent of your old life, that is, be so ashamed of your former life that you will utterly cast it off and begin a new one? By this sign I am simply teaching you, who are ignorant of heavenly things, that henceforth, if you wish to be saved at all, you must put on an entirely different life. As those who are washed come out new, as it were, so I first bring you by a visible act to the wiping out of your past life” Mark, 1: 4, keeps the same sequence when he says: “John was in the desert baptizing and preaching the baptism of repentance for the remission of sins.” Not that I mean that John began to baptize before he taught, but that he readily baptized any who came to him, although he did not know how honestly they had received the word, and did not demand to know. But when he saw that many of the Pharisees and Sadducees had come to his baptism, and knew through the Holy Spirit that their hearts were not right and whole with the Lord, he upbraided them sharply, saying: “Ye offspring of vipers, etc.” He meant: “Ye have come, indeed, to baptism, not in order to lay aside your old life, but that you may seem to men to belong to the number of those who by the sign of baptism bind themselves, as by an earnest or an oath, to a change of life, while within ye are not a whit better and make no change in your bad life. Since ye wish to be counted in the company of the repentant, show the fruits of repentance! Do as becomes the repentant!” From all this it is plain that baptism is an initiatory sacrament by which those who were going to change their life and ways marked themselves out and were enrolled among the repentant. And
this was a preparation for the coming of Christ, as Luke, 4: 17, proves from Isaiah [61:1-2]. For when everybody, having reviewed his whole life, not only found nothing in it on which he could rely for salvation, but also saw at the same time that he lacked the strength to tear loose from his former life and steadfastly to prosecute a new one, he needed someone to lend a hand in this wretehed state of things. Such a one is pointed out not only by the divine Baptist, but also by the Evangelist, as was highly necessary. For, knowing that repentance begets despair, he immediately shows that one had come who should raise up again the fallen hopes. He says, John 1: 26: “I baptize with water; but in the midst of you is and was born, yea even here among you stands, one whom nevertheless ye know not; he it is who will come after me, who yet was before me; the latchet of whose shoe I am not worthy to unloose.” “He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and with fire,” Matt. 3:11. John, therefore, at the same time taught repentance, and said that He who should destroy sin was at hand.
But before we go further I must speak of the baptism of the Holy Spirit, since some men not rightly taught concerning it have put forward in consequence wrong views of baptism.
The baptism of the Holy Spirit, then, is twofold. First, there is the baptism by which all are flooded within who trust in Christ, “for no man cometh to him, except the Father draw him,” John 6: 44. “And all shall be taught of God,” Isa. 54:13. Second, there is the external baptism of the Holy Spirit, just as there is the baptism of water. - Drenched with this, pious men once began at once to speak in foreign tongues [Acts 2: 4-11]. This was a sign to others rather than to the speakers, for the speakers felt within themselves faith and enlightenment of soul, but the others did not know this of them. It, therefore, turned their tongues into foreign speech, that others might know that what was taking place was done by the divine Spirit. And this latter baptism of the Holy Spirit is not necessary, but the former is so very necessary that no one can be saved without it; for no one is saved except by faith, and faith is not born save at the instance of the Holy Spirit. John said that both baptisms were to come, when he said [Lk. 3:16]: “He shall baptize you with the Holy Spirit, and with