GRACE BAPTIST CHURCH
THE ORIGIN OF
THE BAPTISTS
By
S. H. Ford
CHAPTER
XII
Century Five
Numidians
Men are known by the
cause they espouse, and principles they avow, rather than the party
with which they are classed, or appellations they receive.
That
Lafayette was a Republican might in coming years be disputed, or
denied, on the grounds that he was a titled noble, chose to live
under a monarchical form of government, and never expatriated himself
from one, so as to become a citizen of the Republic which claims him
as an advocate of its principles, a defender of its rights, and an
associate of its founders. By such special pleading, though with far
less truth and consistency, has it been disputed and denied that the
Numidians were Baptists. But let facts speak their testimony is
decisive. A minority of the church at Carthage, on the shores of the
Mediterranean, called a council to investigate the validity of the
election and ordination of its newly-made pastor or bishop. He had by
management secured the majority vote, and hurried on his ordination
by the hands of a self-excluded pastor of a neighboring church, who
was not recognized by the surrounding churches or their pastors. (I
have condensed these facts, which will be found with a unanimity of
detail in Hawei's Mosheim and Neander). These associate pastors (of
Numisia) were not invited, nor their counsel or approbation sought.
The council decided that the minority was the true church. It then
proceeded to ordain Majorius, elected by it as pastor or bishop. The
neighboring Churches of Africa, in sustaining this church and its
pastor against the dominant party and its bishop Celilanus, gave
voice to a great principle, which involved the Christian world in
discussion and interminable contest. The principle was this: "That
every church which tolerated unworthy members in its bosom was itself
polluted by the communion with them. It thus ceased to deserve the
predicated of purity and holiness, and consequently ceased to be a
true Christian Church, since a church could not subsist without these
predicates." (Neander, p. 203).
This principle was a
protest against hereditary church membership. It proclaimed that none
but those who were born from above, had any right to the ordinances
or admission into the church. Neander, an apologist for infant
baptism, says:
"It was still very far from being the
case, especially in the Greek Church, that infant baptism was
generally introduced into practice. Among the Christians of the East,
infant baptism, though in theory acknowledged to be necessary, yet
entered so rarely and with so much difficulty into the existence of
the church during the first half of this period." (History, vol.
ii, p. 319). [That is, the first half of the fifth century.]
It
is thus most evident from the investigations of the great pedobaptist
historian, whose researches took a wider and more thorough range than
those of any other man, living or dead, that infant baptism was not
as yet introduced when the division took place in the churches in
Carthage and Numidia, and when the majorities expressed and battled
for theories which were in direct antagonism even to their own
practice. Even Augustine, who rose to eminence during the conflicts
in Africa, though a child of pious parents, was not baptized in
infancy. The question of infant baptism soon necessarily rose into
prominence. The principles of the Numidian pastors and churches, that
none but regenerate believers could be received into a true Christian
Church, and that those who received any others were not true
churches, utterly condemned the theory of infant membership, and
condemned the practice which the majority soon after
introduced.
MAJORIUS, the first pastor of the Carthage Church,
died soon after is ordination, and Donatus was elected to fill his
place. Schisms occurred in almost every church in Africa, and
extended into Asia and Europe.
Henceforth, those who declared
for the Numidian pastors, and indorsed the principles they expressed,
were denominated Donatists. Their ground was that Cecilanus had acted
the traitor during the persecution of Diocletian, as had many members
of the Carthage Church: that these traitors were nevertheless
sustained by, and continued in the church, and had by management
elected Cecilanus pastor: that Felix, a notorious traitor, was
selected to ordain the new pastor, against the protest of the
minority and without the council of neighboring pastors: that the
majority, in thus countenancing unworthy and unregenerate members,
and declaring that spirituality was not essential to
church-membership: in fact lost the predicates of a true church. They
had remained in the dominant church until they had seen in it the
signs of apostasy. Braving and enduring confiscation, imprisonment,
banishment, and death; refusing position, power, the smiles of great
Constantine, and the terrors of imperial indignation, they stood
steadfast to those principles which were cherished by thousands who
ad long before broken all connection and communion with dominant
party.
A council of foreign interested bishops was appointed
by Constantine, the emperor, to settle the dispute; but compromise
was a word unknown to these Donatists. A spiritual church was with
them everything, nothing else was a church. But these principles
would have unchurched those very bishops who were appointed to
adjudicate. Of course the decision was against the Donatists.
Accordingly they were denounced as heretics, and persecuted by the
Emperor, now at the head of the so-called Catholic Church. As a
consequence, all who held these principles, now so manfully sustained
by the Donatist, united with them, and were known by their name; and
thus were found in various countries separate and independent
churches, which baptized into their communion none gut those who gave
evidence of a change of heart and life, refused all union and
communion with the religious organizations around them, and
rebaptized all who had been immersed in any other society.
Such
were their principles, that Osiander, a historian of great note, and
an apologist for infant baptism and a worldly church, said: "Our
modern Anabaptists were the same as the Donatist of old." And
according to Long, an Episcopalian, who wrote a history of the
Donatists, " they did not only rebaptize children, contrary to
the Catholic Church." (History of the Donatists, Orchard, p.
60).
Then, the Donatists of Africa were Baptists. Did the
denomination originate with them?