LXII. To leave private baptism therefore and to come unto baptism by women, which they say1 is no more a sacrament, than any other ordinary washing or bathing of man’s body; the reason whereupon they ground their opinion herein is such, as making baptism by women void, because women are no ministers in the Church of God, must needs generally annihilate the baptism of all unto whom their conceit shall apply this exception, whether it be in regard of sex, of quality, of insufficiency, or whatsoever. For if want of calling do frustrate baptism, they that baptize without calling do nothing, be they women or men.
To make women teachers in the house of God were a gross absurdity, seeing the Apostle hath said, “I permit not a woman to teach2;” and again, “Let your women in churches be silent3.” Those extraordinary gifts of speaking with tongues and prophesying, which God at that time did not only bestow upon men, but on women also, made it the harder to hold them confined with private bounds. Whereupon the Apostle’s ordinance was necessary against women’s public admission to teach. And because when law hath begun some one thing or other well, it giveth good occasion either to draw by judicious exposition out of the very law itself, or to annex to the law by authority and jurisdiction things of like conveniency, therefore Clement extendeth this apostolic constitution to baptism4. “For,” saith he, “if we have denied them leave to teach, how should any man dispense with nature and make them ministers of holy things, seeing this unskilfulness is a part of the Grecians’ impiety, which for the service of women goddesses have women priests?”
I somewhat marvel that men which would not willingly be thought to speak or write but with good conscience, dare hereupon openly avouch Clement for a witness5, “That as when the Church began not only to decline but to fall away from the sincerity of religion it borrowed a number of other profanations of the heathens, so it borrowed this, and would needs have women priests as the heathens had, and that this was one occasion of bringing baptism by women into the Church of God.” Is it not plain in their own eyes that first by an evidence which forbiddeth women to be ministers of baptism, they endeavour to shew how women were admitted unto that function in the wane and declination of Christian piety; secondly, that by an evidence rejecting the heathens, and condemning them of impiety, they would prove such affection towards heathens as ordereth the affairs of the Church by the pattern of their example; and thirdly, that out of an evidence which nameth the heathens as being in some part a reason why the Church had no women priests, they gather the heathens to have been one of the first occasions why it had? So that throughout every branch of this testimony their issue is yea, and their evidence directly no.
But to women’s baptism in private by occasion of urgent necessity, the reasons that only concern ordinary baptism in public are no just prejudice, neither can we by force thereof disprove the practice of those churches which (necessity requiring) allow baptism in private to be administered by women. We may not from laws that prohibit any thing with restraint conclude absolute and unlimited prohibitions. Although we deny not but they which utterly forbid such baptism may have perhaps wherewith to justify their orders against it. For even things lawful6 are well prohibited, when there is fear lest they make the way to unlawful more easy. And it may be the liberty of baptism by women at such times doth sometimes embolden the rasher sort to do it where no such necessity is7.
But whether of permission besides law, or in presumption against law they do it, is it thereby altogether frustrate, void, and as though it were never given?
They which have not at the first their right baptism must of necessity be rebaptized, because the law of Christ tieth all men to receive baptism. Iteration of baptism once given hath been always thought a manifest contempt of that ancient apostolic aphorism, “One Lord, one Faith, one Baptism8,” baptism not only one inasmuch as it hath every where the same substance and offereth unto all men the same grace, but one also for that it ought not to be received by any one man above once. We serve that Lord which is but one, because no other can be joined with him: we embrace that Faith which is but one, because it admitteth no innovation: that Baptism we receive which is but one, because it cannot be received often. For how should we practise iteration of baptism, and yet teach that we are by baptism born anew, that by baptism we are admitted into the heavenly society of saints, that those things be really and effectually done by baptism which are no more possible to be often done than a man can naturally be often born9, or civilly be often adopted into any one’s stock and family? This also is the cause why they that present us unto baptism are entitled for ever after our parents in God, and the reason why there we receive new names in token that by baptism we are made new creatures. As Christ hath therefore died and risen from the dead but once, so the sacrament which both extinguisheth in him our former sin and beginneth in us a new condition of life, is by one only actual administration for ever available, according to that in the Nicene Creed, “I believe one baptism for remission of sins.”