WITH REFERENCE то ITS IMPORT AND MODES, BY EDWARD BEECHER, D.D. NEW YORK: JOHN WILEY, 161 BROADWAY 17.565✓ 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. PREFACE. It 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 Barrig 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 Barri(w 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 Carriw 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. Nor is this all; lexicons and vocabularies were made by Suidas, Zonaras, Hesychius, and others, exhibiting sometimes the classical, at others, the ecclesiastical uses of the word, and yet, in no instance, taking the modern Baptist ground, not to say that some directly oppose it. Besides all this, numerous treatises on Baptism were written in Greek, and allusions to it are frequent in all the Greek Fathers. Moreover, commentaries were written on both the Old Testament and the New, containing constant allusions to baptism, especially in commenting on the Mosaic ritual, and on the predictions of the great purification to be effected by the Messiah, and their fulfilment in the Evangelists; and yet, in no treatise or commentary, is the Baptist ground taken, not to say that it is often and pointedly contradicted. It is plain, therefore, that the Baptist position is entirely of modern origin. It has come up since the Greek ceased to be a spoken and written language, and it may be added, that it depends for its continued existence on preventing a revival of a full and general knowledge of the usus loquendi of the ecclesiastical Greek writers. In order to a comprehensive view of the origin and peculiarities of the present work on baptism, I ask attention to the following summary of facts. The Septuagint, the New Testament, and the Greek Fathers, belong to one system of writers. The writers of the New Testament were affected by the Septuagint, in their style and use of words. The Fathers were affected by both. Taking this system as a whole, it is easy to produce proof of the most positive and decisive kind, that Sarriga means to purify. Around these central and absolutely irresistible passages, there are others in which there is satisfactory moral evidence, to the |