middle life and in old age may receive this circumcision that is without hands." 4

The application of this passage to infants turns somewhat on the meaning of dopo, which, in the preceding homily, Chrysostom uses in describing the infant when receiving circumcision. "The new-born child, who cannot then understand what is being done,” &c. τὸ γάρ ἄωρον παιδίον, κ.τ.λ.

In another place he bewails the carelessness of those who have received baptism, but make little or no spiritual use of it.

"The catechumens, so regarding it, pay no attention to a godly life; and those who have been enlightened [baptized], some of them being children when they received it, and some in sickness and long delaying, have no desire to live for God," &c.5

Chrysostom here laments over the same neglect that we see and lament, in those who were dedicated in their infancy to God, and yet take no spiritual and practical views of their relations to God and his Church, in consequence of that dedication.

He had those in his Church who had not thrown off all the heathen superstitions of their unconverted

4 ἡ δὲ ἡμετέρα περιτομὴ, ἡ τοῦ βαπτίσματος, λέγω, χάρις ἁνώδυνον ἔχει τὴν ἱατρείαν καὶ μυρίων ἀγαθῶν πρόξενος γίνεται ἡμῖν, καὶ τῆς τοῦ Πνεύ ματος ἡμᾶσ ἐμπίπλησι χάριτος. Καὶ ὁυγὲ ὡρισμένον έχει καιρὸν καθαπερ ἐκεῖ, ἀλλ' ἔξεστι καὶ ἐν ἀώρῳ ἡλικίᾳ καὶ ἐν μέσῃ, καὶ ἐν αὐτῷ τῷ γήρα γενόμενήν τινα ταύτην δέξασθαι τὴν ἁχεροποίητον περειτομὴν. — Hom. xl., in Genesin.

5. Οἱ μὲν οὖν κατηχούμενοι τουτο σπουδάξοντες ουδεμίαν ποιοῦνται ἐπιμέ λειαν ορθοῦ βίου. Οἱ δὲ ἤδη φωτισθέντες, οἱ μὲν ἐπεὶ παῖδες ὄντες τοῦτο Eλaẞov. K. T. 2.-Hom. xxiii., in Acta. Apost.

1 Φωτίζω is a common synonym with the Greek Fathers for βαπτίζω.

state. Some of these were accustomed to anoint the foreheads of their babes with a magical preparation, as a safeguard or charm against witches. He exhorts them against the pagan ceremony after this man

ner:

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'Defiling his child thus, does he not see that he makes it disgusting? How can he bring it to the hands of the minister? Tell me, how can you think it fitting for the seal to be placed on its forehead by the hand of the presbyter, when you have polluted it?" 6

No one will fail to perceive the reference here to the rite of infant consecration. No other early usage in the Church fills out the allusion.

These extracts from Chrysostom, if left standing thus solitary, would not serve the ends of historic justice in this discussion. The patriarch of Constantinople, and his relations to the times, should be regarded.

Chrysostom was born about A.D. 347, at Antioch; ordained deacon A.D. 381, and presbyter A.D. 386, and Patriarch of Constantinople A.D. 387. Early devoting himself to Christ and the Church, he was a monk, an eremite, and an earnest, distinguished scholar; and commenced authorship at the age of twenty-six, A.D. 373, dying at the age of sixty. Few names have been so eminent in the Eastern Church. His knowledge, as his influence, was very

• Ο βορβόρῷ χρίων πῶς ὀυχὶ καὶ βδελυκτὸν ποιεῖ τὸ παιδίον; Πῶς γὰρ αυτὸ προσάγει ταῖς χερσὶ τοῦ ἱερέως ; Εἰπέ μοι, πῶς ἀξιος ἐπὶ τοῦ μετώπου σφραγίδα ἐπιτεθῆναι παρὰ τῆς τοῦ πρεσβυτέρου χειρὸς ἔνθα τὸν βόρβορον Éπéxрioas.- Hom. xii., in 1 Epis. ad Corinthos.

extensive; and, as a legacy to the Christian Church, he left more than twelve hundred sermons, homilies, and exegetical discourses, and two hundred and fifty epistles, besides a miscellany of tracts.

Such a man could not speak as he does of infant baptism, if it were a novelty, or had only a partial and equivocal place among the rites of the Church.

WE

CHAPTER XXIV.

FOUR COUNCILS, AND SIRICIUS.

E pass now from one witness to many, from a man to a council. In those early and barbarous times, when Christianity was working its way into the kingdom of darkness by slow and perilous steps, Christian villages and families were subject to raids from the heathen, for pillage and capture and slaughter. In these incursions it often happened, as on our Indian frontier, that children were carried off by the pagans, and in after years would be re-captured or ransomed. So it was in Northern Africa, in the times to which we have now come in our backward movement.

Little ones so seized and carried off had been redeemed by the Mauritanian Christians. But, when brought back, they had so outgrown the memories of their childhood and of their early friends, as to be unable to tell whether they had been baptized or not. Then the question arose, whether they should be baptized at the hazard of a re-baptism, or not be baptized at the hazard of never being baptized. The case of such was submitted to the fifth Council of Carthage, A.D. 400; and they gave judgment as found in their Sixth Canon:

"As to those infants concerning whom no witnesses can be found who are able to testify beyond a doubt that they have been baptized, and who themselves cannot answer, on account of age, whether the sacraments have been administered to them, it is resolved that they may be baptized without any scruple, lest that scruple deprive them of the purification of the sacraments. For our Mauritanian brethren have come to us with this question," &c.1

It will be seen at a glance, that this rite must at that time have been owned and unquestioned in the African Church, or this double solicitude could not have been raised and brought to the deliberation and decision of a council; for there was the fear that the persons might fail of baptism wholly by its being now withheld, and the fear of repetition if now administered,

of both which errors the Church then had a dread. The third council of Carthage, A.D. 397, was called to view this question of infant baptism from another standpoint; but their testimony is to the same point for us, only the better for its variations. We have already spoken of the origin of the sect of the Donatists, and their notions. About the time of this council that party was breaking up, and showing a willingness to come back into the mother Church. It was therefore debated in this council, whether any returning from that schism should be admitted to

1 Placuit de infantibus quoties non inveniuntur certissimi testes qui eos baptizatos esse sine dubitatione testentur, neque ipsi sunt per ætatem idonei de traditis sibi sacramentis respondere, absque ullo scrupulo eos esse baptizandos ; ne ista trepidatio eos faciat sacramentorum purgatione privari. Hinc enim legati Maurorum fratres nostri, &c.— LABBEI, Concil. Carthag. Quint.