538 CHAP. XXVII. ORIGIN OF BAPTISM. THE JEWS CHILDREN OF GOD, BORN OF GOD. REGENERATION IN THE PROPHETS. - USE OF CIRCUM IT has been shown, that the baptism of the world by the Flood prefigured the two different aspects of Christian Baptism-retrospectively, the expiation of past guilt; prospectively, regeneration, or the entrance upon a new state of life: of these two views sometimes the one is brought forward more prominently, and sometimes the other. In allusion to the former, Ananias said to Saul, "Arise and be baptized, and wash away thy sins';" in prophetic allusion to the latter, Isaiah says, "Wash you, make you clean, put away the evil of your doings from before mine eyes; cease to do evil; learn to do well2:" and therefore Justin very properly considers this passage to be a prediction of the manner, in which Christians should be regenerated: for he adduces it in illustration of our Lord's declaration, that, " Except a man be born again, he cannot enter into the kingdom of heaven."4 It is to be observed, that he does not think it necessary to cite the subsequent repetition of the same statement, in which the necessity of regeneration by water 1 Acts, xxii. 16. 3 Just. Mart. Apol. i. Sect. 61. 2 Isaiah, i. 16. is distinctly announced, although it might seem to strengthen his application of the passage in Isaiah: and the reason is, that no one in those days imagined the possibility of regeneration being conferred in any other way than by baptism. When a question arose between the Jews, and some of John's disciples about purifying', the distinction here noticed was probably the occasion of it. The Jews, in conformity with the bent of their evil and corrupt affections, paid little heed to that lesson of newness of life, which was inculcated by the doctrine of the Deluge; and their highest notion of purification was limited to the typical expiation of guilt, by which the priests were prepared to offer an acceptable sacrifice to God. That those baptisms were actually intended, as Grotius conjectures, to have some reference to the purgation of the earth by the waters of the Deluge', it is reasonable to infer from the name of the vessel which was appointed for that purpose. The other vessels for washing the sacrifices were merely denominated lavers; but that in which the priests were to wash themselves was called the Sea": and though it had not that name till the time of Solomon, one vessel alone having been originally made for all purposes, yet the sanction under which their purification is enforced, has such a peculiar solemnity, that we are driven, as it were, to search for some precedent in the 1 John, iii. 25. 2 Credibile est ablutionem hanc fuisse inter vetera instituta, orta, ut arbitror, post magnum diluvium in memoriam purgati mundi. Grot. in Matt. iii. 6. 3 The Sea was for the priests to wash in. - 2 Chron. iv. 6. 66 1 dispensations of God, which may instruct us in the necessity of an expiation by water, in order to acceptance in his sight. When the laver of brass was commanded at Mount Sinai, the Lord said, "Aaron and his sons shall wash their hands and their feet thereat: when they go into the tabernacle of the congregation, they shall wash with water, that they die not;-it shall be a statute for ever unto them, even to him and to his seed throughout their generations." In allusion to this precept of the law (and it is a good illustration of the effect which it was supposed to have), the Psalmist says, Verily I have cleansed my heart in vain, and washed my hands in innocency2: and in another Psalm, with a still clearer reference to the law above-mentioned, David says, "I will wash my hands in innocency, and so will I compass thine altar, O Lord." The same allusion occurs in Isaiah: "Your hands are full of blood: wash you, make you clean;" not only clean from the blood itself, but from the guilt of that blood. For Tertullian observes, that it was a general practice among the ancients, that those who were stained with homicide expiated it by cleansing themselves with water; which, as the heathen nations had no command to that effect, must have been suggested by the memory of some former great expiation by water for their philosophers were so far from imagining any connection between the outward act and the inward effect, that they ridiculed the credu 1 Exod. xxx. 19-21. 3 Psalm, xxvi. 6. 5 De Baptismo, c. 5. 2 Psalm, lxxiii. 13. lity of those who adopted that common, but to them unaccountable, persuasion. It was not therefore the invention of their wisdom. It would appear from the language just quoted from the sacred writers, that one half of the ceremony enjoined by the law was omitted by the Jews in practice; for the hands are always mentioned, but the feet never. When, therefore, our Lord washed the feet of his disciples, one motive, besides the lesson of humility which he drew from it, may have been to remind them that obedience is due to every commandment of God, even though it should not exactly accord with our own notions of fitness, and to warn them against the common error of transferring to the material instrument the guilt of the moral agent: because the hands are principally operative in acts of sin, the Jews seem to have thought that they alone needed purification; the absurdity of which opinion Justin points out to Trypho by appealing to those sins which are seated in the heart. What," says he, "is the use of that washing which only cleans the flesh and the body? Wash your soul from anger and avarice, from envy and from hatred, and behold your body is pure." They had now to learn, that the grace of God is not bound to attend those symbols, which we might ourselves select, but that every one, who in simple faith obeys his ordinance, will receive that peculiar measure of blessing, which the Lord of all things has been pleased to annex to signs of his own choosing. 66 1 Just. Dial. cum Tryph. Op. p. 114. The That something more mysterious than the mere inculcation of humility was actually intended, the argument of our Saviour very plainly shows. language, in which he persuades Peter to submit to the ceremony, is quite sacramental: "If I wash thee not, thou hast no part with me." What is he that has no part in Christ but an unregenerate person? But he that is washed according to his ordinance obtains an interest in Jesus. If If any further corroboration of this inference were needed, it might be found in that significant declaration of our Lord: "What I do thou knowest not now; but thou shalt know hereafter:"3 for it were a great derogation from the dignity of the evangelical style to suppose, that it imports no more than this : "Wait a little, and I will tell thee what I mean." Hereafter plainly points to a period when, by aid of further illumination from above, he should be able to comprehend something more than that moral lesson of humility, which alone at that time his faculties were competent to understand; when the commandment to baptize all nations would teach them that they, who would have part with Christ, must be saved by the washing of regeneration, and renewing of the Holy Ghost. It may be said, that there is no evidence that in this case the washing was accompanied by any renewing of the Holy Ghost, and, consequently, that it could 4 1 Cum lavaret pedes discipulis suis, tacentibus cæteris si taceret et Petrus, solam fecerat formam humilitatis, nihil pronuntiaverat de sacramento baptismatis. Sed cum Petrus recusat, negat illi Christus regnum, nisi accepisset obsequium. Optatus Afer, de Schismate Donatist, lib. v. 4 Titus, iii. 5. |