Chapter XIV: Front Matter (14)

In fine, there are two great purposes to be answered, each having its own subordinate purposes, and desirable consequences. The Church answers both, the Baptists one only. If, nevertheless, you would still prefer the union of the Baptismal rite with the Confirmation, and that the Presentation of Infants to the assembled Church had formed a separate institution, avowedly prospective--I answer: first, that such for a long time and to a late period was my own judgment. But even then it seemed to me a point, as to which an indifference would be less inconsistent in a lover of truth, than a zeal to separation in a professed lover of peace. And secondly, I would revert to the history of the Reformation, and the calamitous accident of the Peasants' War: when the poor ignorant multitude, driven frantic by the intolerable oppressions of their feudal lords, rehearsed all the outrages that were acted in our own times by the Parisian populace headed by Danton, Marat, and Robespierre; and on the same outrageous principles, and in assertion of the same RIGHTS OF BRUTES to the subversion of all the DUTIES OF MEN. In our times, most fortunately for the interest of religion and morality, or of their prudential substitutes at least, the name of Jacobin was every where associated with that of Atheist and Infidel. Or rather, Jacobinism and Infidelity were the two heads of the Revolutionary Geryon--connatural misgrowths of the same monster-trunk. In the German Convulsion, on the contrary, by a mere but most unfortunate _accident_, the same code of _Caliban_ jurisprudence, the same sensual and murderous excesses, were connected with the name of Anabaptist. The abolition of magistracy, community of goods, the right of plunder, polygamy, and whatever else was fanatical were comprised in the word, Anabaptism. It is not to be imagined, that the Fathers of the Reformation could, without a miraculous influence, have taken up the question of Infant Baptism with the requisite calmness and freedom of spirit. It is not to be wished, that they should have entered on the discussion. Nay, I will go farther. Unless the abolition of Infant Baptism can be shown to be involved in some fundamental article of faith, unless the practice could be proved fatal or imminently perilous to salvation, the Reformers would not have been justified in exposing the yet tender and struggling cause of Protestantism to such certain and violent prejudices as this innovation would have excited. Nothing less than the whole substance and efficacy of the Gospel faith was the prize, which they had wrestled for and won; but won from enemies still in the field, and on the watch to retake, at all costs, the sacred treasure, and consign it once again to darkness and oblivion. If there be a _time for all things_, this was not the time for an innovation, that would and must have been followed by the triumph of the enemies of Scriptural Christianity, and the alienation of the governments, that had espoused and protected it.

Remember, I say this on the supposition of the question's not being what you do not pretend it to be, an essential of the Faith, by which we are saved. But should it likewise be conceded, that it is a _disputable_ point--and that in point of fact it is and has been disputed by divines, whom no pious Christian of any denomination will deny to have been faithful and eminent servants of Christ; should it, I say, be likewise conceded that the question of Infant Baptism is a point, on which two Christians, who perhaps differ on this point only, may differ without giving just ground for impeaching the piety or competence of either--in this case I am obliged to infer, that the person who _at any time_ can regard this difference as _singly_ warranting a separation from a religious Community, must think of schism under another point of view, than that in which I have been taught to contemplate it by St. Paul in his Epistles to the Corinthians.

Let me add a few words on a diversity of doctrine closely connected with this: the opinions of Doctors Mant and D'Oyly as opposed to those of the (so called) Evangelical clergy. "The Church of England" (says Wall)[152] "does not require assent and consent" to either opinion "in order to _lay_ communion." But I will suppose the person a _minister_: but minister of a Church which has expressly disclaimed all pretence to infallibility; a Church which in the construction of its Liturgy and Articles is known to have worded certain passages for the purpose of rendering them subscribable by both A and Z--that is, the opposite parties as to the points in controversy. I suppose this person's convictions those of Z, and that out of five passages there are three, the more natural and obvious sense of which is in his favour; and two of which, though not absolutely _precluding_ a different sense, yet the more probable interpretation is in favour of A, that is, of those who do not consider the Baptism of an Infant as _prospective_, but hold it to be an _opus operans et in præsenti_. Then I say, that if such a person regards these two sentences or single passages as obliging or warranting him to abandon the flock entrusted to his charge, and either to join such, as are the avowed Enemies of the Church on the double ground of its particular Constitution and of its being an Establishment, or to set up a separate Church for himself--I cannot avoid the conclusion, that either his conscience is morbidly sensitive in one speck to the exhaustion of the sensibility in a far larger portion; or that he must have discovered some mode, beyond the reach of my conjectural powers, of interpreting the Scriptures enumerated in the following excerpt from the popular tract before cited, in which the writer expresses an opinion, to which I assent with my whole heart: namely,

"That all Christians in the world that hold the same fundamentals ought to make one Church, though differing in lesser opinions; and that the sin, the mischief, and danger to the souls of men, that divide into those many sects and parties among us, does (for the most of them) consist not so much in the opinions themselves, as in their dividing and separating for them. And in support of this tenet, I will refer you to some plain places of Scripture, which if you please now to peruse, I will be silent the while. See what our Saviour himself says, John x. 16. John xvii. 11. And what the primitive Christians practised, Acts ii. 46, and iv. 32. And what St. Paul says, 1 Cor. i. 10, 11, 12, and 2, 3, 4; also the whole 12th chapter: Eph. ii. 18, &c. to the end. Where the Jewish and Gentile Christians are showed to be _one body, one household, one temple fitly framed together_: and yet these were of different opinions in several matters.--Likewise chap. iii. 6, iv. 1-13. Phil. ii. 1, 2, where he uses the most solemn adjurations to this purpose. But I would more especially recommend to you the reading of Gal. v. 20, 21. Phil. iii. 15, 16, the 14th chapter to the Romans, and part of the 15th, to verse 7, and also Rom. xv. 17.

"Are not these passages plain, full, and earnest? Do you find any of the controverted points to be determined by Scripture in words nigh so plain or pathetic?"

_Marginal Note written (in 1816) by the Author in his own copy of Wall's work._

This and the two following pages are excellent. If I addressed the ministers recently seceded, I would first prove from Scripture and Reason the justness of their doctrines concerning Baptism and Conversion. 2. I would show, that even in respect of the Prayer-book, Homilies, &c. of the Church of England, taken as a whole, their opponents were comparatively as ill off as themselves, if not worse. 3. That the few mistakes or inconvenient phrases of the Baptismal Service did not impose on the conscience the necessity of resigning the pastoral office. 4. That even if they did, this would by no means justify schism from Lay-membership: or else there could be no schism except from an immaculate and infallible Church. Now, as our Articles have declared that no Church is or ever was such, it would follow that there is no such sin as that of Schism--that is, that St. Paul wrote falsely or idly. 5. That the escape through the channel of Dissent is from the frying-pan to the fire--or, to use a less worn and vulgar simile, the escape of a leech from a glass-jar of water into the naked and open air. But never, never, would I in one breath allow my Church to be fallible, and in the next contend for her absolute freedom from all error--never confine inspiration and perfect truth to the Scriptures, and then scold for the perfect truth of each and every word in the Prayer-book. Enough for me, if in my heart of hearts, free from all fear of man and all lust of preferment, I believe (as I do) the Church of England to be the _most_ Apostolic Church; that its doctrines and ceremonies contain nothing dangerous to Righteousness or Salvation; and that the imperfections in its Liturgy are spots indeed, but spots on the sun, which impede neither its light nor its heat, so as to prevent the good seed from growing in a good soil and producing fruits of Redemption.[154]

* * * The author had written and intended to insert a similar exposition on the Eucharist. But as the leading view has been given in the Comment on Redemption, its length induces him to defer it, together with the Articles on Faith and the philosophy of Prayer, to a small supplementary volume.[155]

[147] By certain Biblical philologists of the Teutonic school (men distinguished by learning, but still more characteristically by hardihood in conjecture, and who suppose the Gospels to have undergone several successive _revisions and enlargements_ by, or under the authority of, the sacred historians) these words are contended to have been, in the first delivery, the common commencement of all the Gospels κατα σαρκα (that is, _according to the flesh_), in distinction from St. John's or the Gospel κατα πνευμα (that is, _according to the Spirit_).

[148] See Comment to Aphorism VIII., par. 3.--ED.

[149] That every the least _permissible_ form and ordinance, which at different times it might be expedient for the Church to enact, are pre-enacted in the New Testament; and that whatever is not to be found _there_, ought to be allowed _no where_--this has been _asserted_. But that it has been _proved_, or that the tenet is not to be placed among the _revulsionary_ results of the Scripture-slighting Will-worship of the Romish Church; it will be more sincere to say, I disbelieve, than that I doubt. It was chiefly, if not exclusively, in reference to the extravagances built on this tenet, that the great Selden ventured to declare, that the words, _Scrutamini Scripturas_, had set the world in an uproar.

Extremes _appear_ to generate each other; but if we look steadily, there will most often be found some common error, that produces both as its positive and negative poles. Thus superstitions go _by pairs_, like the two Hungarian sisters, always quarrelling and _inveterately averse_, but yet joined at the trunk.

[150] More than this I do not consider as necessary for the argument. And as to Robinson's assertions in his History of Baptism, that infant Baptism did not commence till the time of Cyprian, who condemning it as a general practice, allowed it in particular cases by a dispensation of charity; and that it did not actually become the ordinary rule of the Church, till Augustine in the fever of his Anti-Pelagian dispute had introduced the Calvinistic interpretation of Original Sin, and the dire state of Infants dying unbaptized--I am so far from acceding to them, that I reject the whole statement as rash, and not only unwarranted by the authorities he cites, but unanswerably confuted by Baxter, Wall, and many other learned Pædo-baptists before and since the publication of his work. I confine myself to the assertion--not that Infant Baptism was _not_; but--that there exist no sufficient proofs that it _was_ the practice of the Apostolic age.

[151] Let me be permitted to repeat and apply the _note_ in a former page. Superstition may be defined as _super_stantium (_cujusmodi sunt ceremoniæ et signa externa quæ, nisi in significando nihili sunt et pæne nihil_) _sub_stantiatio.

[152] Conference between Two Men that had Doubts about Infant Baptism. By W. Wall, Author of the History of Infant Baptism, and Vicar of Shoreham in Kent. A very sensible little tract, and written in an excellent spirit: but it failed, I confess, in satisfying my mind as to the existence of any decisive proofs or documents of Infant Baptism having been an Apostolic usage, or specially intended in any part of the New Testament: though deducible _generally_ from many passages, and in perfect accordance with the _spirit_ of the whole.

A mighty wrestler in the cause of Spiritual Religion and _Gospel_ morality, in whom more than in any other contemporary I seem to see the spirit of Luther revived, expressed to me his doubts whether we have a right to deny that an infant is capable of a spiritual influence. To such a man I could not feel justified in returning an answer _ex tempore_, or without having first submitted my convictions to a fresh revisal. I owe him, however, a deliberate answer; and take this opportunity of discharging the debt.

The objection supposes and assumes the very point which is denied, or at least disputed--namely, that Infant Baptism is specially injoined in the Scriptures. If an express passage to this purport _had_ existed in the New Testament--the other passages, which evidently imply a spiritual operation under the condition of a preceding spiritual act on the part of the person baptized, remaining as now--_then_ indeed, as the only way of removing the apparent contradiction, it _might_ be allowable to call on the Anti-pædobaptist to prove the negative--namely, that an infant a week old is not a subject capable or susceptible of spiritual agency. And, _vice versa_, should it be made known to us, that infants are not without reflection and self-consciousness--_then_, doubtless, we should be entitled to infer that they were capable of a spiritual operation, and consequently of that which is signified in the baptismal rite administered to adults. But what does this prove for those, who (as D. D. Mant and D'Oyly) not only cannot show, but who do not themselves profess to believe, the self-consciousness of a new-born babe, but who rest the defence of Infant Baptism on the _assertion_, that God was pleased to affix the performance of this rite to his offer of Salvation, as the indispensable, though arbitrary, condition of the infant's salvability?--As Kings in former ages, when they conferred lands in perpetuity, would sometimes, as the condition of the tenure, exact from the beneficiary a hawk, or some trifling ceremony, as the putting on or off of their sandals, or whatever else royal caprice or the whim of the moment might suggest. But _you_, honoured IRVING, are as little disposed, as myself, to favour _such_ doctrine!

Friend, pure of heart and fervent! we have learnt
A different lore! We may not thus profane
The Idea and Name of Him whose absolute Will
_Is_ Reason--Truth Supreme!--Essential Order![153]

[153] For a further opinion upon Edward Irving see note at pp. 153-4 of the 1839 edition of Coleridge's 'Church and State.'--ED.

[154] Here the editor of the 1843 edition was able to give two pages of additional matter by the author, tending, as Coleridge said, to the "clearing up" of "the chapter on Baptism," and the proving "the substantial accordance of my scheme with that of our Church." The addition is from Coleridge's MS. Note-books, and bears date May 8, 1828.--ED.

[155] This note appeared in the early editions only. The "supplementary volume" was never published, though the "Essay on Faith," at p. 425, v. 4, of Coleridge's "Remains" (1838), and "Notes on the Book of Common Prayer" (p. 5, v. 3, the same), may be the parts here mentioned as written to appear in it. We republish these two fragments at the end of the present volume, pp. 341 and 350.--ED.