WITH REFERENCE то ITS IMPORT AND MODES, BY EDWARD BEECHER, D.D. 11508- NEW YORK: JOHN WILEY, 161 BROADWAY 1895) ENTERED, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1848, by REV. EDWARD BEECHER, D.D., in the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the Southern District of New York. R. CRAIGHEAD, PRINTER & STEREOTYPEK, 112 FULTON STREET. PREFACE. Ir is a very striking fact, and one which I do not remember ever to have seen properly noticed, if noticed at all, that the controversy on the import of the word Barria is, in its origin, entirely modern. In Matthiæ's history of Greek Literature we find an account of the authors who have written in Greek, beginning with Homer, 1000 B. C., and ending with Constantinus Harmenopulus, 1380 A. D. This history includes all the poets, orators, historians, philosophers, physicians, mathematicians, geographers, rhetoricians, and philologists of Greece, also the Greek Fathers of the Christian Church, and the Byzantine writers of the middle ages. For more than two thousand years, then, the Greek language was written; though with diminished purity and classic elegance, by the Patristic and Byzantine writers. And yet during this long period, never was the position assumed by any writer of Greek, concerning the import of the word Barrilw, which is now assumed by Dr. Carson and other Baptist writers, i. e. that Barril means exclusively to immerse. Nor was this because the attention of writers of Greek was not turned to the subject. The question came up whether affusion on a bed, in the case of sick persons, should be regarded as valid baptism. It was decided that it should, and no one ever made the reply, Christ commanded us to immerse, the word Sarria means only to immerse, and you cannot immerse by sprinkling or affusion on a bed. The reason is plain. So long as the Greek was a living spoken language, no one dared to take this ground. 376633 |