We began last time to describe a book or collection of books found in the personal library of the eighteenth century Baptist pastor Benjamin Beddome (1717-1795) currently housed in the Angus Library of Regents Park College, Oxford. The library catalogue has recently been digitalised and can be accessed online through the Oxford University Solo website (http://solo.bodleian. ox.ac.uk – all books begin with the prefix bed).
In our first article we sought to briefly describe the five books or pamphlets bound together on the subject of baptism. These are
1. David Rees (Credobaptist) Infant-baptism no Institution of Christ.
2. Samuel Hebden (Paedobaptist) A treatise on the subjects and mode of baptism.
3. Anonymous (Credobaptist) An Answer to a late anonymous Pamphlet entitled, A treatise on the subjects and mode of baptism. (We suggested that this work is probably the work of Portsea minister John Lacy, giving the impression that the Beddome book confirms this but a further inspection reveals it does not.)
4. Caleb Fleming (Paedobaptist) The Challenge, Occasioned by an Answer to a Late Treatise on the Subject and Mode of Baptism.
5. Anonymous (Paedobaptist) A review, and vindication, of a late Treatise, on the Subject and Mode of baptism, By Way of Reply, to a Zealous, Angry Answerer. Closer inspection of this item conforms this to be the work of Samuel Hebden who defends his own work, the second item in this collection.
In our previous article we also sought to give a fuller description of the first and most substantial work in the collection, David Rees's 290 page work opposing infant baptism and answering a previous work by Congregationalist Fowler Walker (d 1753).
We want to proceed by more closely describing the other four shorter works bound with the Rees volume.
The arguments in the books (continued)
Samuel Hebden's A treatise on the subjects and mode of baptism.
This 60 page book looks first at subjects (1-37) then at mode (37-60). Hebden begins by saying that the topic is too often debated with “anger and intemperate zeal, especially on the one side” (ie the Credobaptist side). He calls his opponents Baptists, Anabaptists (re-baptisers) or (his preference) Anti-paedobaptists. Despite his aspersions, they are “these friends of ours”.
He begins to look at the proper subjects of baptism by asserting that he does not oppose baptism of adult proselytes nor advocate baptising adults with no profession of faith. He certainly does not think baptism is essential to salvation. Further, he is not advocating indiscriminate infant baptism. Children of Heathen, Pagans or Papists should not be baptised nor those whose parents have not themselves been properly baptised.
He argues, he says, not from ancient practice but from Scripture. He announces five lines of argument he wants to pursue. Firstly and most importantly, from the perpetuity of God's covenant with Abraham, a covenant of grace, baptism being appointed to succeed circumcision as the initial sign and seal.
His also argues from various texts, including some that are often used against paedobaptism. His final argument is from the absurd consequences of failing to baptise htose infants he wants to see baptised.
He begins by asserting that the covenant in Genesis 17 was the covenant of grace. He argues this chiefly from its title – everlasting. “Nothing but inveterate prejudice can hinder man's inferring from hence and the foregoing discourse … that God's covenant with Abraham and his seed, could be no other than the covenant of grace” (p 9).
He then argues from several practical Scriptures that he feels speak plainly on the issue. These include Matthew 19:14, Romans 11:16 (where he argues that the children of believers are federally holy and so should be baptised), 1 Corinthians 7:14 (where he takes holy to mean “in covenant with God”), Acts 2:39 and Ephesians 2:12, and moving on to focus on Matthew 28:19 and Matthew 3:6, 11.
He concludes that despite “all the noise they make” Credobaptists cannot produce “a hint of God's casting the children of his people out of his covenant” and all these texts favour Paedobaptists. At various points Beddome has written in the margins of the text. On page 25, where Hebden looks at Matthew 28:19, he has typically written “See manifest inconsistency between this and the next page”. He again argues with him in the margin of page 29 over baptism replacing circumcision and at several other points.
On page 30, Hebden lists five ends of baptism. It is a token of God's taking persons into covenant; a sign of the blessing of regeneration; a seal of remission of sins to true believers; a means of distinguishing disciple from non-disciple, showing who is in the visible church; a means of putting God's professing people under covenant bonds and engagements.
This leads to the question of whether children should take communion. Here he opposes Essay in favour of the ancient practice of giving the eucharist to children by nonconformist minister James Peirce (1673-1726). Hebden finds the historical part defective and the argumentative part just as bad. Beddome here sees another contradiction in Hebden when he says that “arguments that overdo are good for nothing at all”.
As for mode, Hebden says there are three views - dipping is essential, dipping is more regular or that we may and ought to sprinkle. He argues for this last view.
He does not deny that dipping is the ancient method. However, according to him, then candidates were naked and were dipped three times over. Further, sprinkling (clinical baptisms) were always known.
He claims that some idolise dipping and others speak too highly of it, when in fact this is not warranted by linguistic arguments from the Scriptures. He knows that John Gale (1680-1721) has piled up quotations to support the Baptist view but he finds him at fault in his understanding. He goes on to examine several Scriptures seeking to get at the real meaning of the baptising and washing words. He claims that the dipping mode is not warranted by any one precept or example in the Bible and is not even unwilling to grant that John the Baptist dipped. He also brings up the old argument about how impracticable it would be to dip 3000 in one day as some claim was the case in Acts 2.
Having exhausted his main arguments, he comes to more controversial ground. He claims that dipping is unsafe and may be dangerous (in the case of infants, whom most dippers have no wish to baptise, and the sick). He also claims that it is indecent and will incite lust (!). He then has a bizarre argument about extreme bodily strength being necessary to do the thing properly and mocking because candidates partly baptise themselves once they step into the water. It is somehow against the sixth and seventh commandments and contrary to the principle that mercy is greater than sacrifice. He finally turns to Romans 6, which he sees as being certainly about Spirit baptism.
In closing he speaks warmly of Particular Baptists like Henry Jessey (1603-1633) and John Bunyan (1628-1688) but feels that General Baptists such as Henry Danvers (d 1683), Dr Gale and his protégé James Foster (1697-1753), are zealous party men who should be ashamed of themselves.
Lacy's An Answer to a late anonymous Pamphlet entitled, A treatise on the subjects and mode of baptism.
This is a reply to Hebden and is more or less the same length. The writer is clearly upset by Hebden's “violence and effrontery” and argues that despite his irenic pretensions he must have expected such a reaction as a footnote to his contents page refers to people being upset by his remarks. Hebden's book, he says, put him in mind of Fundamentals without a foundation a 1703 Paedobaptist work by David Russen.
For this writer, mode is the main issue. He has read Hebden but complains of his ambiguity, inconsistency, frequent shuffling and wriggling and frivolous distinctions, calling the work a “loose, groundless harangue”.
He objects against the grounds for baptism being your parents' faith not your own. He cannot see how this would exclude Papists and raises the matter of baptised parents who belong to no visible church and do not take communion.
He feels that a lot of time could have been saved with some of Hebden's covenantal arguments with their absurdities and inconsistencies.
He says clearly, “We maintain that there is no warrantable connection between circumcising infants of old, in the Jewish church and baptising of them in the Christian church”. He adds “and they with all their skill have never yet been able to prove it”.
As to the matter of when the transition comes our Baptist writer is quite happy to tie it to the coming of John the Baptist, who clearly rejected circumcision as a covenant marker. There is nothing about infant baptism in the story of John the Baptist he maintains. John says nothing about infants - “an irreparable loss and prejudice to the business of infant baptism”.
As for Romans 6 he cannot see how Abraham can in any sense be called the father of the infants of believers. He does not deny that in God's secret providence infants may be saved but that is not something known to us. His final point in the first part of his book is that there is no greta regard to be paid to Hebden's claim that baptism is an initial and initiating seal. This “though he has dinned his readers with the repetition of it above sixty times in” almost as many pages, and no less than six times on one page! Circumcision is called a seal but not baptism.
From page 26 the author begins to argue from specific Scriptures. Again he has a lot to complain of in Hebden. He accuses him of innuendo, of being “vague and trifling” and of “impatient repetition and obvious absurdities”.
As for mode, Hebden may be a hero to his own and one who has cut the Gordian knot but for this writer that is far from being the case. To suggest that dipping was an innovation in the second or third century without blushing is amazing. Hebden's arguments appear to be that mode is not dictated by the Scripture's use of the word baptise and dipping is inconsistent with the way that the baptism of the Spirit is spoken of. He is particularly offended by Hebden's idea that Naaman washed himself rather than being immersed. Hebden's “very magisterial air” and “forced interpretation” are roundly criticised. Our Baptist writer concludes by noting how strange it is “that it should come into any man's head to write so many pages, and to so little purpose” and then to publish these irreconcilable things.
This article was in In Writing. The third and final article never appeared.
