OF THE BENEFIT, VIRTUE, AND OPERATION OF BAPTISM

Chrysostom on Phil., chap. 3, page 405, says, "Christ has given or ordained baptism as a purgative, and thus we have spewed out all wickedness, and by it have been made free from all our sins. The heat has abated, the fever is checked, all impurities have departed, and through the Spirit all other evil things have been purged out-those springing from fornication as well as those having their origin in the vanity of the mind.";

Again, on Heb. 7, "Therefore God gives baptism, that it may wash away sin, and not increase it.

Again, on Col. 3: "Truly, before baptism we were very impure, but after it we become golden."*

Again, on Heb. 11, "What then constitutes brotherhood, if not the washing of regeneration (that is, baptism)?";

Who does not perceive by these passages of Chrysostom, that the baptism of which he speaks, applies in no wise to infants, but only and exclusively to rational persons; for, when he first says to those who wished to receive baptism, that they should (spiritually) take hold of the feet of Christ, and wash them with their tears, and then say that Christ has given or ordained baptism for a purgative, and that they had thus spewed out all wickedness (that is, sin), he sufficiently indicates thereby that he is not speaking of the baptism of infants, since, these cannot do the things which he describes as being connected with baptism.