This is a very delicate, difficult, and important question. No answer which can be given to it can be expected to give general satisfaction. The answers will be determined by the views taken of the nature of the Church and the design of the sacraments. Probably the answer which would include most of the views entertained on the subject, is, that the children of the members of the visible Church, and those for whose religious training such members are willing to become responsible, should be baptized. But this leaves many questions undecided, and allows room for great diversity of practice.
Difference between the Jewish and Christian Usage.
We have already seen under the old dispensation, (1.) That God made a nation his Church and his Church a nation. (2.) Consequently that membership in the one involved membership in the other, and exclusion from the one, exclusion from the other. (3.) That the conditions of admission to the Church were, therefore, the same as the conditions of admission into the commonwealth. (4.) That those conditions were profession of faith in the true religion, and a promise of obedience to the will of God as revealed in his word. (5.) That the State exacted this profession and enforced this obedience so far as the external conduct was concerned. All the people were required to be circumcised, to offer sacrifices, to observe the festivals, and to frequent the temple services. And, (6.) That this was God’s way of preserving the knowledge of the true religion in that age of the world. And it succeeded. When Christ came, the uncorrupted Scriptures were read in the synagogues; the sacrifices as divinely appointed were offered in the temple; the high priest in his offices and work still stood before the people, as the type of Him who was to come. Under this system there could be no question as to whose children were to be circumcised.
When Christ came and broke down the wall of partition between the Jews and Gentiles, and announced his Gospel as designed and adapted for all men, all this was changed. It followed from the fact that the Church was to embrace all nations. (1.) That the Church and State could no longer be united or identified as they had been under the theocracy. The Christian Church at the first was established in an enemy’s country. For three centuries it was not only independent and separate from the State, but it was in every way opposed and persecuted by the civil power. It is still the fact that the Christian Church exists in Pagan and Mohammedan countries. (2.) From the necessity of the case it is a body independent of the State. It has its own organization, its own laws, its own officers, and its own conditions of membership. It has the right to administer its own discipline agreeably to the laws of Christ its king and head. (3.) As it was intended by Christ that his Church should be thus catholic or universal, existing under all forms of human government, civilized or savage, it was clearly his intention that it should be thus independent and distinct from the State. He declared that his kingdom was not of this world. It is not of the same kind with worldly kingdoms; it has different ends to accomplish, and different means for the attainment of those ends. It is spiritual, that is, concerned with the religious or spiritual, as distinguished from the secular interests of men. It moves, therefore, in a different sphere from the State, and the two need never come into collision. (4.) As the Church, since the advent is identical with the Church which existed before the advent, although so different in its organization, in its officers, and in its mode of worship, the conditions of church-membership are now what they were then. Those conditions still are credible profession of faith, and obedience to the divine law. But it is no longer the duty of the State to require such profession or to enforce such obedience, so that every citizen of the State should be “ipso facto” a member of the Church. The two bodies are now distinct. A man may be a member of the one, and not a member of the other. The Church has the right to exercise its own discretion, within the limits prescribed by Christ, as to the admission or exclusion of members.
Doctrine of the Church of Rome on the Baptism of Children.
It has already been remarked that the Romish theory of the Church is founded on that of the ancient theocracy. That theory, however, is necessarily modified by the catholicity of the Church. Being designed for all nations, it could not be identified with any one nation. National citizenship is no longer the condition of church-membership. Rome, however, teaches, —
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That the Church is, in its essential character, an external, organized society, so that no man can be a member of Christ’s body and a partaker of his life, who is not a member of that society.
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The Church is an institute of salvation. Its sacraments are exclusively the channels for conveying to men the benefits of the redemption of Christ.
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As the sacraments are the only channels of grace, no gracious affections or fruits of the Spirit can be required of those who receive them. Being designed to make men good, goodness cannot be the condition of their reception or efficacy.
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The sacraments, and especially baptism, being thus necessary to salvation, it is the duty of all men to apply that they should be administered to them and to their children.
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With regard to those children whose parents, through ignorance or indifference, neglect to bring them to the Church for baptism, they may be presented by any one who takes an interest in their salvation, that they may be baptized on the faith of the Church, or on that of those who are willing to act as their sponsors. It is no matter, therefore, whether the parents of such children are Christians, Jews, Mohammedans, or Pagans, as they all need, so they are all entitled to the sacrament of baptism. To exclude them from baptism, is to exclude them from heaven.