CHAPTER XXV.

AMBROSE OF MILAN, BASIL, GREGORY NAZIANZEN,

IN

AND OPTATUS.

N continuing our inquiries on the practice of Infant Baptism in the times immediately following the age of the apostles, we come next to Ambrose of Milan. This step carries us ten years nearer to the apostles, as Siricius, our last authority, was made bishop A.D. 384, and Ambrose A.D. 374. He was an evangelical, devout, energetic, and scholarly man in the Church. Though in the Latin branch of it, he read the Greek fathers, mingled freely in the controversies of the times, and wrote extensively, twenty volumes at least, besides ninety tractates, or letters so called. As our topic was not then in dispute, we find in the writings of this father only wayside allusions to it, whose power, of course, is inversely as their direct and polemic character.

In his commentary on St. Luke, he traces a resemblance between John the Baptist and Elias, while remarking on the words, "He shall go before him in the spirit and power of Elias." In tracing the parallelism he says, that they were both in the desert; both fed on coarse food, one locusts, and the other what the ravens furnished; both rebuked kings,—the

one Ahab, and the other Herod; and after other points in the comparision, he says, "The one turned back Jordan, the other turned men to the waters of salvation." 1

He then continues his remarks on the miracle of Elias in dividing Jordan after this manner: "Perhaps this may appear to be fulfilled in our day and in that of the apostles. For that flowing of the waters back to the source of the river, in the division of it by Elias (as the Scripture says, Jordan was turned back), signified the sacrament of the waters of salvation, about to be instituted, by which little children, who are baptized, are reformed from their corruption back to the primitive condition of their nature.

The reference of the bishop to the washing away of original sin in baptism is nothing to our purpose. The use of the ordinance is our point of inquiry. Of the abuse of it we have sufficiently spoken for a treatise of this kind while we were sifting the Pelagian controversy. Later Church historians will not probably find all the errors and excesses of "the fathers " confined to the first three or four Christian

centuries.

In speaking of Abraham, in his work on the patriarch, as enjoined to circumcise infants, he says that the law very reasonably imposed the rite on every male infant,

1 Ille Jordanem divisit, hic ad lavacrum salutare convertit. 2 "Sed fortasse hoc supra nos et supra apostolos videatur expletum. Nam ille sub Elia diviso amne fluvialium recursus undarum in originem fluminis (sicut dicit Scriptura, Jordanes conversus est retrorsum) significat salutaris lavacri futura mysteria, per quæ in primordia naturæ suæ qui baptizati fuerint parvuli a malitia reformantur.". Comment in St. Lucæ, c. 1.

even those of the bond-servant, that the remedy might be as extensive as the disease, and come on the child as early as his danger. He includes the proselyte by saying, that every race as well as age is exposed, and by the law was required and expected to be protected. Showing a spiritual meaning over circumcision and baptism, he says the import of the rite is plain. Those born in the house are Jews; and the purchased are Gentile believers; and both must be circumcised from sin, if they would be saved. "Both the home born and the foreign, the clean and the unclean, must be circumcised by the forgiveness of sins, so as to sin no more; since no one enters the kingdom of heaven except by the sacrament of baptism." "For except one be born again, of water and the Holy Spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God," quoting the words of Christ. Then he continues, "He excepts no one, not an infant, not one prevented by any necessity." 3

These two citations from a witness, born A.D. 333, and dying A.D. 397, are as good proof of the practice of this rite commonly in that period, as though he had devoted whole chapters and tractates to it. The bishop of Milan evidently had other work than writing largely on an ordinance generally received and practised, as from the apostles.

8 "Ergo et Judæus et Græcus, et quicumque crediderit, debet scire se circumcidere a peccatis, ut possit salvus fieri. Et domesticus, et alienigena, et justus, et peccator circumcidatur remissione peccatorum, ut peccatum non operetur amplius; quia nemo adscendit in regnum cælorum, nisi per sacramentum baptismatis. . . . Nisi enim quis renatus fuerit ex aqua et Spiritu Sancto non potest introire in regnum Dei. Utique nullum excipit, non infantem, non aliqua præventum necessitate."-AMBROSII de Abraham, Lib. ii. c. 11.

...

The careful reader will here note one of those synonyms for baptism, of which the early Christian writers made so free a use, and of which we shall find a great variety as we proceed. "Circumcised by the forgiveness of sins, since no one enters the kingdom of heaven except by the sacrament of baptism." Here, evidently, Ambrose uses "the forgiveness of sins," and "the sacrament of baptism," as meaning one and the same thing. So in the quotation above made from his Commentary on St. Luke, he calls baptism "the sacrament of the waters of salvation." Augustine expresses baptism by "the grace of the name of Christ."4 Chrysostom calls it "circumcision;""our circumcision,—I speak of that of baptism; "5 and "enlightening" and "the seal." Siricius calls it "the saving water." 8

6

As we proceed, the reader will find the following words and phrases as common synonyms for baptism: "The circumcision of Christ," "washing of regeneration," "sanctification," "consecration," "regeneration," "the laver of regeneration," "the laver of salvation," "the enlightening," "born of water," "spiritual circumcision," "sacrament of eternal salvotion," "renewal," &c.

In the citation of any passages where these terms occur, the text itself, or the context, will readily show that nothing else than baptism can be meant. Those early writers thus used varied expressions for the one act of baptism, as we use the words christen, consecrate, and dedicate, for baptize.

4 p. 176. 5 p. 183. 6 p. 184. 7 p. 185. 8 p. 191.

Basil, a father eminent in the Greek Church, was born about A.D. 329. He pursued his studies at Constantinople, Antioch, and Athens. At first a hermit, he became successively a deacon, a presbyter, an assistant bishop, and then sole bishop of NeoCæsarea. He was an able theologian, and an efficient manager in ecclesiastical affairs. He is introduced. here among the ancient witnesses for infant baptism, not because he has written abundantly or with peculiar directness on the subject, though his testimony has weight, but because some things said by him have been made to bear against this ordinance as existing in his day.

In one of his sermons, delivered on a fast day, observed on account of a great drought and famine, he rebukes the church-members for absenting themselves.

"The grown men," he says, "generally follow their business. A very few come to join in the worship; and those, indolent, sleepy, and gazing about.” “And these little boys, laying their books by at school and joining with us in the responses, do it as a relaxation and play," &c.9

It is quite evident that these children were baptized, because in the ancient church service only the baptized could remain through the prayers that called for responses. A few words will make this plain. In the church services of that day, the sermon came before the prayers; and to hear it any and all classes

9 Οἱ δέ παῖδες οἱ σμικρότατοι ὅυτοι, οἱ τὰς δέλτους ἐν τοῖς διδασκαλίοις αποθέμενοι καὶ συμβοῶντες ἡμῖν, ὡς ἄνεσιν μᾶλλον καὶ τέρψιν τὸ πρᾶγμα μETÉρXOVται, K.T.2.- Drought and Famine: a Fast Day-Sermon.