Regardless of the historiographical arguments made over the course of the last century regarding the relationship between Baptists and Anabaptists in the seventeenth century,Footnote 1 every historian of Christianity must concede at least a typological connection between the two movements. Seventeenth-century Baptists shared numerous theological convictions with their sixteenth-century forerunners, including the novel ideas of the separation of church and state, the freedom of the individual conscience, and a voluntary ecclesiology which restricted the practice of baptism and church membership to professing adult Christians. Historians have likewise noted that the two movements differed from their magisterial Protestant counterparts in that each viewed its movement as a restoration of the church to first-century practices rather than as a mere reformation of the church to some previous era of perceived relative purity which remained under the auspices of government.Footnote 2 Restoration required the repudiation of the layers of church tradition, they argued, as their more radical humanism drove them not to the early fathers, councils, and traditions before the perceived medieval fall but exclusively to the Scriptures, and especially to the New Testament. It was there and there alone, Anabaptists and Baptists often argued, that Christians would find “the doctrine of Christ and the apostles,” as well as instructions for church polity and practice.Footnote 3 When the early Anabaptist theologian Balthasar Hubmaier debated his magisterial Protestant counterpart, Ulrich Zwingli, he demanded of his readership: “If . . . you want to read my simplicity, then do it without any respecting of persons, of high names, of old practices, of traditions, also without any feelings which would tend to lead you away from the truth. After that, judge in your minds and consciences according to the simple Word of God.”Footnote 4 Again, when arguing with the Reformation theologian, Oecolampadius, Hubmaier recorded his retort to the latter's use of the African church father, Tertullian, saying: “You speak to me much of Tertullian, Origen, Cyprian, Augustine, councils, histories, and old customs. I must somehow think that you lack the Scriptures, which do not want to come out of the quiver. Dear Ecolampad, set your Scriptures together on infant baptism as I have done Scriptures on the baptism of believers.”Footnote 5 Likewise, the Orthodox Creed, written by General Baptists in 1678, stated that “no decrees of popes, or councils, or writings of any person whatsoever, are of equal authority with the sacred scriptures.”Footnote 6 This sort of sentiment would later lead Donald Durnbaugh to label the Anabaptists, Baptists, and similar groups as belonging to the “Believers’ Church” movement. This movement was discernable in that it accepted “the Word given in the scriptures and apprehended through the Holy Spirit [as being] the sole authority. Tradition must bow if the clear statement of the Word as understood in the covenant community so demands.”Footnote 7
While one might then indolently conclude that the Anabaptists and Baptists were pure primitivists or restorationists, completely consistent about the sole use of Scripture for faith and practice, a closer reading of the writings of some of their early leaders might suggest otherwise. Instead one may more readily find these theologians complaining of the reliance their Catholic and magisterial Protestant opponents placed on councils, creeds, and church fathers while, at the same time, apparently cherry-picking patristic resources themselves when such sources appeared to bolster their own positions. It was the same Hubmaier, for instance, who argued for sole authority and perspicuity of Scripture, who later would devote an entire treatise to the “old teachers” and their patristic support for his theological arguments.Footnote 8 Likewise, a number of seventeenth-century Baptists followed suit.
In their defense, Baptists and Anabaptists were undoubtedly not unconscious that these references appeared inconsistent with their restorationist convictions. They cited their sources intentionally so as to ward off accusations of their movements as being schismatic, heretical, and inconsistent with long-held Christian teaching. Particularly with regard to their controversial insistence on the practice of believer's baptism (which typically encompassed the rebaptism of Christians who had previously been baptized as infants and the refusal to christen their own children), an array of sixteenth-century Anabaptists and seventeenth-century Baptists regularly turned to the early fathers of the church to seek an afflatus for their biblical interpretations and to justify their own calls for restoring its exclusive practice. And no church father served this purpose for these two movements more than the late second to early third-century African theologian and Latin father, Quintus Septimius Florens Tertullianus.
Tertullian's Polemic against Pedobaptism
While he is especially known for being the first Latin father and for being one who articulated a nascent theology of the Trinity, Tertullian was at least periodically utilized by several significant early leaders of the fledgling Believers’ Church movement for his fervent opposition to the practice of pedobaptism. Tertullian famously declared that Christians are “made, not born,”Footnote 9 arguing for the need for personal faith and against the increasingly popular practice of infant baptism. His work, De baptismo, written at the turn of the third century, is extremely valuable to church historians as the first treatise devoted to the topic of baptism within Christianity.Footnote 10 It is in this work, which may have served as a prebaptismal address to Carthaginian catechumens,Footnote 11 that Tertullian recorded what may well have been the full rite of initiation for baptizands in North Africa during this period. The service included a catechesis for the candidates, the urgency for each candidate to pray before entering the waters, the renunciation of the devil, and an affirmation of one's promise to God and obligations to the congregation, all of which was followed by the three-fold submersion or immersion into water and an assortment of post-baptismal anointings, blessings, and the Eucharist. The fact that the candidates were required to prepare for their baptisms “with frequent prayers, fastings, bendings of the knee, and all-night vigils, along with the confession of all their former sins,”Footnote 12 not only rehearsed, in Tertullian's mind, the formula used by John the Baptist, but also made the need for each candidate to be a consciously confessing adult believer abundantly palpable. Baptism presumed faith and repentance. Tertullian contended:
It follows that deferment of baptism is more profitable, in accordance with each person's character and attitude, and even age: and especially so as regards children. . . . It is true our Lord says, ‘Forbid them not to come to me’ [Matt. 19:14]. So let them come when they are growing up, when they are learning, when they are being taught what they are coming to: let them be made Christians when they have become competent to know Christ. . . . Let them first learn how to ask for salvation, so that you may be seen to have given to one that asks.Footnote 13
Tertullian, then, famously urged the church to arrest its practice of baptizing children, arguing in ways which would later resonate with key leaders of the early Anabaptists and Baptists alike.
Early Leaders of the Free Church Movements
Unlike many of their contemporary Christian movements in Europe, the Anabaptists and Baptists did not originate with a single founder. In fact, historians have squabbled over the exact origins of both groups.Footnote 14 The consequences of such an indefinite or gradational beginning can be a lack of clarity for antiquarians regarding each movement's basic, historic tenets and an ambiguous identity for historical research. Another related problem for historians is identifying among the Anabaptists and Baptists those leaders who wielded the greatest influence not only in their respective eras but also in shaping their respective movements for subsequent generations. Eventually, however, key figures for each group were postulated.
Among the Anabaptists, Conrad Grebel is often identified as the leader of the nascent Swiss branch which parted ways with Ulrich Zwingli in January of 1525.Footnote 15 Balthasar Hubmaier, a priest in the South German city of Waldshut, would quickly emerge as a significant thinker who outlined a theology and liturgies for first generation Anabaptists. Hubmaier would be exiled to Moravia where he organized churches. A few years later, the layman Pilgram Marpeck would also become a successful church planter for the Anabaptists in Moravia and regions of southern Europe. Menno Simons became the most prominent theologian and organizer of Anabaptism in Holland, where the movement would flourish for several generations. Interestingly, all four of these Anabaptists would hold in common a familiarity with Tertullian's writings and, in the case of the latter three, use Tertullian's words in public defense of their new project. Other early Anabaptist leaders appear to remain silent not only about Tertullian but also about any patristic precedent for their beliefs. One may conjecture that such reserve may be attributable either to their unfamiliarity with the fathers or their primitivist convictions of mitigating tradition's extra-biblical authority. Nevertheless, that such prominent sixteenth-century Anabaptists would utilize the Latin father is significant enough not to be considered an aberration and to be a topic worthy of exploration.
Likewise, it is even more difficult to identify the most important leaders of the early Baptist tradition. Arguably most significant among the early Baptists was John Smyth, who founded the first Baptist congregation among exiled Englishmen in Holland in 1608.Footnote 16 Smyth, who demonstrated an acquaintance with Tertullian's works, guided his band of English expatriates to a new practice of adult baptism for confessing Christians, which led to the establishment of a new Christian tradition. This essay will also explore the works of Henry Lawrence, a distinguished member of Parliament and Particular Baptist pastor in England, along with Thomas Grantham, a prolific English General Baptist pastor, as prominent examples of other early Baptists who cited Tertullian in support of their theological and ecclesial reforms. While appeals to patristic sources were not common among early Baptist clergy, many of whom may not have been -familiar with -Tertullian's works, that such important overseers among seventeenth century Baptists would summon Tertullian as an historical precedent for ecclesial practice among an ostensibly restorationist movement, is indicative of at least a variegation within influences of early Baptist thought. Moreover, such appeals may suggest a fraternal coalition that was not purely biblicist but was, at least in some circles, also welcoming of extra-biblical support for its convictions when Christian tradition ran congruent with its own objectives. That such important leaders among both early Anabaptists and Baptists made use of Tertullian's works suggests a theme worthy of exploration.
The Anabaptist Appropriations of Tertullian
The Anabaptists demonstrated an appreciation for Tertullian's work as early as 1521, the year in which the movement was founded, when Conrad Grebel wrote his friend and brother-in-law, Joachim Vadian, promising to send him a newly printed “bound edition of Tertullian.”Footnote 17 In two succeeding letters, Grebel again wrote to Vadian, first in January 1522, regretting that his friend had not yet received the book and again two weeks later excited that the volume had finally arrived in Vadian's hands in St. Gallen. Grebel began his second correspondence: “I was full of joy at your enticing letter, not because I rejoice so much but because you received the Tertullian which for so long you desired, awaited, received with such joy; and having received, you will enjoy it. Take heed, my Vadian, lest I make you a Tertullian.”Footnote 18 Leland Harder posits that the work Grebel was so excitedly sending his colleague was probably Tertullian's Apologeticus (Apology), in which the Latin father had quipped that Christians “are made, not born.”Footnote 19 It seems much more likely that Grebel's gift was the 1521 edition of Tertullian's Opera, edited by Beatus Rhenanus, both because of its wide distribution in western Europe and the timing of its publication the year prior, an edition which made much of Tertullian's works available to readers and which included Tertullian's Apologeticus. Beyond Tertullian's exclamation that Christians are “made, not born,” Grebel and his circle of former Zwinglian disciples may well have appreciated the Apologeticus for the latter's insistence that Christians not be executed for their faith, a message appealing to Anabaptists just as they began experiencing similar persecution in their own time.Footnote 20 Unfortunately, Grebel's extant writings are largely limited to shorter pieces of personal correspondence, and, consequently, his rationale for relishing Tertullian's writings is never developed in his own Anabaptist work.
Probably the most educated theologian among the first generation of Anabaptists,Footnote 21 Balthasar Hubmaier demonstrated a familiarity with the broader patristic tradition and elaborated on the Anabaptist affinity with the North African church father. Formerly an ordained priest with a doctorate in theology from the University of Ingolstadt, Hubmaier was facile in his use of church fathers, especially when their words appeared to corroborate his positions.Footnote 22 Hubmaier posited that adult baptism was the custom until the time of Augustine. Hubmaier therefore combed the writings of church fathers who predated and were contemporaneous with Augustine: Clement, Cyprian, Origen, Eusebius, Ambrose, Basil, Cyril, and Jerome, to substantiate credobaptism as the normative practice.Footnote 23 But Hubmaier naturally relied most heavily on Tertullian as the first church father to address baptism directly. Hubmaier wrote extensively about the Anabaptist doctrine of baptism and defended the practice of the delay of baptism until adult confession of faith. However, recent research has demonstrated that he probably never had access to Tertullian's De baptismo.Footnote 24 Instead, the Anabaptist theologian drew from other works by Tertullian which were available to him in Beatus Rhenanus's Opera. Footnote 25 It is also of interest that Hubmaier stopped in St. Gall to meet with Joachim Vadian in the spring of 1523 as the former was en route to Zurich to confer with Zwingli about baptism. Vadian had already come into possession of Tertullian's Opera by the gift of Conrad Grebel. Thus, as one scholar has recently suggested, Hubmaier and Vadian may well have discussed believer's baptism during this visit.Footnote 26
Regardless, Hubmaier still used Tertullian to defend Anabaptist practices in general and believer's baptism in particular. In his selective collection, Old and New Teachers on Believers Baptism, Hubmaier cited and rephrased numerous passages of scholars both from the early church and his own Reformation period. Paraphrasing a passage from Tertullian's De paenitentia (On Repentance), Hubmaier observed the church father as saying: “Baptism is a sealing of the faith, which is given and begun in the faith of repentance. Therefore we are not baptized because we want to stop sinning, but because we have already stopped, for we have now already been baptized in the heart.”Footnote 27 It is worth noting here that in De paenitentia Tertullian was not directly addressing the issue of infant baptism but that of the eager novice in the faith who wishes to be baptized. For Tertullian, the habit and desire for sin must first be defeated, for, as the Latin father argued later in the treatise, “accordingly, the catechumens ought to desire Baptism, yet they ought not to receive it presumptuously. He who desires it, honors it; he who receives it presumptuously, despises it.”Footnote 28 Those more advanced in the faith would then likely have learned to eschew sin and desire a godly life, making their baptisms more appropriate at that later juncture. The novice Christian, on the other hand, while eager to be “washed,” would doubtlessly not have arrived at such a level of righteousness. Although Hubmaier was certainly aware of the context of Tertullian's words, the Anabaptist theologian undoubtedly found them doubly fitting for his polemic against pedobaptism. If new Christians were inappropriate candidates for baptism, then all the more the case for infants.
To further his case for patristic support of his Anabaptist baptismal theology, Hubmaier directly quoted Tertullian's De corona militis (Of the Garland of the Soldier) in which Tertullian wrote: “Now I come to speak about baptism. Those of us who want to come to baptism will testify some time before in the church under the bishop's hand that we renounce the devil and his spirits and angels. After that we are immersed three times.”Footnote 29 One may readily observe, in this instance, that Hubmaier undoubtedly purposefully cut short the remainder of Tertullian's sentence. The Latin father additionally notes the formal pledge as taking place before the bishop and in the presence of the congregation followed by the three-fold baptism, stating: “making a somewhat ampler pledge than the Lord has appointed in the Gospel.” Ironically, Tertullian was here holding for tradition or long-held custom as authoritative alongside the Scriptures for the various rites of the church, as he would argue later in the treatise, that “you may then learn, not whether you should observe a custom, but why.”Footnote 30 The context of Tertullian's remarks was then at least somewhat incongruous with Hubmaier's agenda to argue for patristic sources establishing credobaptism as the hard and fast rule for the early church. Hubmaier apparently desired to highlight the portion of Tertullian's quote which demonstrated the active involvement of a baptizand during the rite of baptism in order to establish a conscious and voluntary participation of the candidate in order to refute the pedobaptismal practices in his own day, and, ironically, to demonstrate the early church tradition's consistency with Hubmaier's own interpretation of Scripture.Footnote 31
These two references from Tertullian used by Hubmaier are grouped into the Anabaptist's work with dozens of other citations, both ancient and modern, with very little commentary from the Anabaptist leader. Nevertheless, one might easily conclude that the two passages more than intimate that the proper candidates for baptism should be those who consciously and wholeheartedly repent of their sins, renounce the devil and all evil, and confess their genuine faith in Christ. Hubmaier then concluded, ostensibly in parallel form with Tertullian, that infants and young children were inappropriate baptismal candidates.
Like his south German counterpart, the Dutch Anabaptist theologian Pilgram Marpeck cited Tertullian's treatise, De paenitentia, highlighting the same passage as Hubmaier had done previously. Importantly, however, Marpeck noted Tertullian's emphasis on baptism as merely sealing an already existing faith, arguing that Marpeck's own unique understanding of baptism as “co-witness” to the saving work of God actually came with patristic precedent. While the waters of baptism were symbol for Marpeck, he noted “it really is no symbol at all, but is true essence. Thus the Father is in the Son and the Son in the Father for the sake of the work in which a man has come to faith.”Footnote 32 Marpeck thus exhibited a “double radicalism.”Footnote 33 Marpeck maintained the traditional sacramental terminology in his writing, while he rejected the late medieval Catholic sacramentalism which saw grace as imparted through the elements of water, bread, and wine ex opere operato (“out of the operation of the work”). Instead, for Marpeck, the outward practice mediates an inward reality, thus the “symbols participate in the reality they represent.”Footnote 34 In the case of baptism, the water does not convey grace by virtue of the ritual action alone but only when combined with the faith of the recipient: “for merely to plunge somebody into water or to baptize them [sic] is no sacrament. You must baptize in such a manner that the one who is baptized dies to sin in a sincere way and in the power of a living faith in Christ. . . . [O]nly then is baptism truly a sacrament, that is, when the content and action of baptism happens with the commitment to a holy covenant.”Footnote 35 Because of these qualifications, Marpeck rejects infant baptism outright.
Tertullian was then understood to concur with Marpeck's understanding of baptism as an effective sign, symbolic of previous faith and of forgiveness through the act of baptismal confession by the power of the Holy Spirit:
Tertullian says in his book on penance: ‘This bath is a sealing of faith, which has been initiated and commended by faith in repentance.’ Not only are we to be washed in order that we may discontinue sinning, but we have already been washed beforehand. Baptism (the external immersion or sprinkling) is a co-witness of the inner essence, namely of the covenant of a good conscience with God.Footnote 36
Marpeck repeatedly used Tertullian's work as evidence for the theory that infant baptism was foreign to Christianity for several centuries of church history.Footnote 37 Tertullian's concern in De paenitentia (On Repentance) was not pedobaptism but the baptism of “learners” (i.e., neophytes to the faith).Footnote 38 Like Hubmaier, then, Marpeck probably had learned that Tertullian once argued against pedobaptism in his day, although he did not have access to Tertullian's writings which directly addressed this topic. In their place, Marpeck lifted passages from De paenitentia (especially in Tertullian's chapter titled “Baptism Not To Be Presumptously [sic] Received. It Requires Preceding Repentance, Manifested by Amendment of Life”), and applied Tertullian's admonition against baptizing “young novices” to the baptism of infants. Though different from the recipients addressed in Tertullian's treatise, Marpeck, like Hubmaier before him, selected Tertullian's words to fit his anti-pedobaptist agenda.
Finally among the Anabaptists, the great organizer of mainstream Dutch Anabaptism, Menno Simons, also utilized Tertullian's words to defend his baptismal practice. In his Foundations of Christian Doctrine, Simons, also using Rhenanus's edition, cited the familiar passage about the requisite spiritual preparedness of the candidate before baptism and rhetorically asked: “If infant baptism is apostolic, why does Tertullian write and say, ‘They who present themselves for baptism, confess for a considerable time before the church and before the bishop that they renounce the devil, his pomp and the angels, after that they are’?”Footnote 39 Menno explained further, “Rhenanus annotates on this passage and says: It was the custom of the fathers that adults, that is, grown persons, were baptized by the washing of regeneration.”Footnote 40 This latter phrase, “the washing of regeneration,” is left without comment by the Dutch Anabaptist leader.
Citing the same Tertullian passage again in his treatise Christian Baptism, -Menno commented at length regarding the chronology of infant baptism. Unlike some of his Anabaptist colleagues, Menno, who was trained for the Catholic priesthood, seemed to have a grasp, uncommon among Anabaptists, for pedobaptism's early historical development, enabling him to argue in a more nuanced fashion:
Even now, as in the days of the apostles and immediately thereafter, the foolish teachers and bishops have adopted the custom of baptizing little children, not in keeping with the divine commandment nor with the doctrine and ordinance of the holy apostles. This may be readily gathered from the book of Tertullian, called Corona Militis. He writes that among the ancients most adults were baptized by the washing of regeneration. Understand me well, brethren. Tertullian lived one hundred and eight years after Christ, some say one hundred and forty years. Already in the days of these ancient writers, the true, evangelical baptism which was commanded by Christ and taught and practiced by His holy apostles had degenerated with many, which baptism He clearly testifies the ancients commonly administered to adults. Even if it appears, brethren, that they baptized children in the days of Tertullian's ancestors before him, . . . it is still true that infant baptism was no apostolic institution nor usage, nor a divine command. For if Christ had commanded it, and the holy apostles had taught and practiced it, then the ancestors of Tertullian would not have baptized some infants but all the infants of true believing parents, without question.Footnote 41
While he conceded that pedobaptism was practiced before the time of Tertullian, Menno repeatedly argued that such an exercise was both an aberration from general practice and a departure from the scriptural and apostolic faith.Footnote 42 For the modern historical theologian, Menno's concession actually strengthens his argument. Even though Simons did not have access to Tertullian's strongest writings against pedobaptism, the Dutch Anabaptist leader used Tertullian more appropriately than did his Anabaptist counterparts in Hubmaier and Marpeck.Footnote 43
The Baptist Appeal to Tertullian
Though deeply embroiled in direct conflict with Catholicism, Anabaptism of the sixteenth century turned to Tertullian, among other church fathers, to argue for its doctrine of believer's baptism. Such a move would at first appear surprising, given Anabaptism's reputation for primitivism. Nevertheless, many of its early leaders were themselves trained for the Catholic priesthood and some demonstrated a comfort with citing patristic theology in their writings. But perhaps somewhat more unexpectedly, some early Baptist leaders of the seventeenth century, whose origin was somewhat more removed from Catholicism, following the English Reformation and Separatism, also appealed to Tertullian for historical support for their baptismal theology. And the first Baptist to employ Tertullian's words was their first leader, John Smyth.
What differentiated the early Baptist references to Tertullian from their Anabaptist predecessors was that the Baptists had Tertullian's ever-important treatise, De baptismo, at their disposal, multiplying the resources of his apparent patristic support for their position. In what is probably the longest citation of any one person or source in his own treatise entitled “The Character of the Beast,” Smyth referenced Tertullian in what Smyth characterized as the “most plain” testimony from antiquity regarding the proper candidates for baptism. From the latter's De baptismo, Smyth quoted from the Latin father a variation of the passage noted previously:
Therefore, to defer and not to hasten baptism is more profitable for the condition, disposition, and age of every person, but especially as concerning young children. For what necessity is there to bring sureties into danger for the baptizing of infants if there be no such necessity of hastening the baptizing of infants. Seeing the sureties ofttimes are disabled to perform their promise both by reason of mortality, and of the evil disposition of some children when they come to years, for whom they promised in baptism. Indeed the Lord saith, forbid them not to come unto me. Therefore, let them come to Christ but let them come when they are grown, when they learn, and when they are taught to what they come. Let them by baptism be made Christians when they can know Christ by instruction. Why doth the innocent age hasten to the remission of sins? We delay more safely in worldly matters. Shall we commit heavenly things to young children unto whom we dare not commit our earthly substance? Let them first know how to ask for salvation that so we may seem to give to him that asketh.Footnote 44
From this passage, Tertullian is seen not only to argue in parallel fashion with the fledgling Baptist doctrine of baptism but also with the Baptists’ doctrine of the freedom of conscience. Therefore, with this early church example, Smyth concluded that catechesis must precede baptism, and baptism is properly given only upon both personal confession and the new believer's request for the rite, not because of birthright, sacramentalism, or covenant theology.
In many ways, De baptismo is a useful patristic document in supporting the delay of baptism and in repudiating the practice of hasty baptisms, especially of children. Smyth, however, did not elucidate on the latter half of Tertullian's citation, particularly Tertullian's rhetorical question, “Why doth the innocent age hasten to the remission of sins?”Footnote 45 Because Baptists, including John Smyth, did not see baptism as remitting sin, Smyth either glossed over these words or merely rendered them as symbolic. Yet Tertullian's statements, as shall be further elucidated, intimate that the Latin father was undoubtedly motivated to delay baptism by a different rationale than that which the early Baptists posited for rejecting infant baptism.
Smyth was not the only early Baptist to utilize Tertullian in attempts to bolster the Baptist witness by leveling historical precedence against his Anglican, Puritan, and fellow-Separatist counterparts then in Britain. The wealthy landowner, Member of Parliament, and early Baptist, Henry Lawrence (1600–1664), also extensively cited Tertullian as patristic support for the Baptist baptismal argument. In his treatise, Of Baptisme (1646), Lawrence extensively wrote about the biblical origin and historical development of baptism, utilizing the work of both numerous patristic sources and historians of his own day. Lawrence demonstrated his familiarity with Origen, Cyprian, Jerome, Justin Martyr, Gregory of Nazianzus, and other ancient writers, quoting them both in Latin and English. As opposed to some of his Baptist contemporaries, he was willing to concede that infant baptism was potentially practiced before the third century. He argued, however, that “[t]hough no prescription will lye good against God, yet I am of opinion, that if the possession of infant Baptisme hath bene very antient (which I doubt of) yet the injoyment hath not bene anciently so peacable, as some would make us beleeve.”Footnote 46 Citing historians and brief references to other church fathers, Henry built his case to its climax:
The next and last authority I shall bring, shall be that of Tertulliá, who flurished about 203 years after Christ, the most famous of the Latin Fathers, of him Hierom in an epistle of the Christian writers, affirmes ‘that nothing was more learned, or acute,’ a man of that authority, with the famous and ancient Cyprian, ‘that he called him his master,’ and as Hierome affirmes of him, ‘he never past a day without the reading of Tertullian.’ This Tertullian in a treatise that he hath of Baptisme towards the end, hath these expressions; first in the general, ‘Baptisme is not flightly or rashly to be committed to any, let them know whose duty it concernes. To give to every one that asketh belongs to abuses; rather consider this, Give not that which is holy to dogs, nor cast your pearles to swyne. And lay hands suddainly [sic] on no man, lest you partake of their sinnes.’Footnote 47
These words quoted from Tertullian originally came from the same chapter of De baptismo as Smyth's citation of Tertullian. In fact, Lawrence proceeded to quote the same passage from Tertullian as was previously noted by John Smyth, wherein Lawrence highlighted Tertullian's words, “Let them be made Christians when they can know Christ,” but concluded by quoting Tertullian's warning against hasty baptisms: “‘that they who understand the weight of Baptisme, will rather feare the attaining than the deferring of it.’ . . . Thus the excellent & ancient Tertullian.”Footnote 48
Lawrence argued that Tertullian's words of admonishment against pedobaptism could not be construed to be referring only to parents who did not believe. All sponsoring parents were in danger, reasoned Lawrence, because “though the parents may help with the witnesses, to the education of the child, yet they cannot secure themselves nor others, that they shall stand to that covenant which is made for them.”Footnote 49 Lawrence concluded that Tertullian understood spiritual development in such a way that children were not appropriate candidates for baptism because they would not be cognizant of the faith commitment made during the rite for which they would ultimately be responsible. Lawrence's reasoning would not be incongruous with Tertullian's concerns at this juncture, for both required a conscious acceptance of the faith and its responsibilities. At the same time, Tertullian and Lawrence would undoubtedly differ on the substance of the Christian's responsibilities, as we shall see later in this essay.
Finally, the prolific writer and General Baptist preacher, Thomas Grantham (1634–1692), highlighted Tertullian in a number of his theological treatises. In his book, The Baptist against the Papist (1663), Grantham argued that
Tertullian who lived about the time when Infant-Baptism began to appear, did dispute against it, as an unnecessary practice, for divers causes. 1. ‘For that it is not meet to commit heavenly things, to those who are not capable of keeping treasure of an earthly nature.’ 2. ‘For that the Sponsors might be endangered.’ 3. ‘For that it became them that were to be baptized, to fast, pray, and confess their sins.’ 4. ‘Because they that receive Christ, must ask him; let them (that is, little ones) come therefore, saith he, while they are youths, whilst, wherein they come, they are taught, etc.’Footnote 50
Grantham would later argue that the Baptist “way of baptising began in the days of John the Baptist, and for our opposing Infant baptism ‘tis very antient, for as soon as we hear it mentioned we find it opposed by Tertullian who lived in the third Century . . . for he saith, ‘veniant ergo dum adolescunt, veniant dum discunt, dum quo veniant decentur, fiant Christiam cum Christum nosse potuerint.’”Footnote 51
Grantham repeatedly turned to patristic sources,Footnote 52 first and primarily to Tertullian, to argue against what he called the “innovated Schism” of infant baptism. In a treatise anonymously penned as by “a Prisoner of the Baptised Churches in Lincolnshire,” the incarcerated Grantham once again railed against the historicity of pedobaptism in the early church: “Yea,” he opined, “in the second hundred's latter end It scarce was heard of; nor did it extend To any large dimention; and beside, some Antients then against it boldly cry'd, As an unnecessary practice. Here Tertullian my witness doth appear.”Footnote 53
Beyond historiographical arguments, Grantham turned to Tertullian for scriptural proof of the exclusive practice of believer's baptism, saying: “There is no express Scripture for Infant-baptism, therefore Infant-baptism may be omitted. . . . To which we add Tertullian's Rule: ‘If it be said, it is lawful, because the Scripture doth not forbit it: it may equally be retorted it is therefore not lawful, because the Scripture doth not command it.’”Footnote 54 If indeed this interpretive rubric by Tertullian were adopted by Grantham and other Baptists (which parallels the scriptural interpretation used by Anabaptists before them),Footnote 55 it demonstrates a particularly conservative line of biblical hermeneutics.
Finally, to accompany his proofs from Scripture and historical precedent, Grantham made use of Tertullian in his theological arguments against pedobaptism. In his treatise, The Loyal Baptist (1684), Grantham quoted Tertullian's witticism: “We are not born, but made Christians,” and Grantham expounded on the notion that one's birth by Christian parents does not entitle a child to “Christ's ordinances.”Footnote 56
The level of Grantham's familiarity with early Christian sources was exemplified by his numerous references to the church fathers. He utilized Augustine, Irenaeus, Cyprian, and especially Tertullian not only in his baptismal arguments but also in his discussions of the Christian's respect for civil authorities, the Lord's Supper, and a number of other theological issues. Yet, like many seventeenth-century Baptist leaders, Grantham focused primarily on defending the most visible Baptist distinctive, water baptism of adult Christians. And Tertullian, who is cited dozens of times by this General Baptist preacher, seemed to be his greatest ancient ally for the Baptist cause. Because he used Tertullian more than casually, Grantham portrayed a deep and abiding knowledge of the Latin father's writings. However, like his Baptist contemporaries, Grantham may not have fully appreciated the basis and context of Tertullian's argument for baptism's deferral.
Tertullian's Original Intentions
Patristic scholars agree that there is no avoiding Tertullian's vehement repudiation of the practice of infant baptism. His call “to defer and not to hasten” the sacrament upon young people is not only inescapable but is consistently argued in his work. Nevertheless, before Anabaptists and Baptists can proclaim him as one of their own, or, more precisely, argue for historical precedent for the sole practice of believer's baptism through his work, one must analyze not only the sixteenth and seventeenth-century appropriations of the Latin father but the ancient writings of Tertullian himself.
Tertullian's De baptismo is the first treatise in Christian history solely devoted to the topic of baptism. While it may well have been intended primarily for catechumens, Tertullian argues by answering rhetorical questions regarding the rite, namely, whether John the Baptist's baptism was divine or earthly in origin, why Jesus did not baptize, whether the apostles and patriarchs of the church were saved apart from baptism, whether the baptism of heretics is still valid baptism, and whether a second baptism is necessary or helpful after apostasy. What is of interest to this article is Tertullian's theological argument for withholding baptism of the very young. In his careful analysis of the church father's language, Mark Searle observes that Tertullian did not question the validity of infant baptism but merely the sagacity of its practice.Footnote 57 Infant baptism was unwise and superfluous for Tertullian because infants had not yet committed individual, personal sin. While he was careful not to mitigate a theology of original sin, Tertullian saw the rite of baptism performed on the very young as ill-advised and even dangerous, leading to a double-jeopardy when executed. As parents or sponsors made baptismal vows to the bishop and God on behalf of the minor, both the sponsors and the child would be subject to subsequent divine judgment if the baptized never manifested the requisite faith and Christian discipline in life.Footnote 58 Moreover, since Tertullian argued that baptism should only be performed once a lifetime, the effect of baptism (i.e., washing away one's sins) would be unnecessarily performed on a person who had not yet accumulated sin and who would inevitably still do so through the course of life. Even though post-baptismal sin could have been forgiven in a ceremony called “canonical penance,” Tertullian was writing at a time before the custom of ongoing, individual sacramental confession had developed.Footnote 59 Canonical penance served as the once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to receive post-baptismal remission through the church. Consequently, the work of confession was more dangerous and complicated for fully initiated Christians than for pre-baptismal neophytes.Footnote 60 For these same reasons, Tertullian not only opposed pedobaptism but also the baptism of those who were unmarried and those who were widowed. All of these categories of people would be, in Tertullian's mind, more susceptible to temptation to sin than those mature Christians who were married or firmly established in a life of countenance: for the infant because sin was unavoidable, for virgins because “they were ripe for it,” and for widows “because of their wandering about.”Footnote 61
Tertullian's call to “defer and not to hasten” baptism apparently was then built upon a discerning strategy for the management of human iniquity. It is in this context that Tertullian famously wrote:
It follows that deferment of baptism is more profitable, in accordance with each person's character and attitude, and even age: and especially so as regards children. . . . So let them come, when they are growing up, when they are learning, when they are being taught what they are coming to: let them be made Christians when they have become competent to know Christ. Why should innocent infancy come with haste to the remission of sins?Footnote 62
Tertullian's motivations for the delay of baptism are then at least somewhat incongruous to the Free Church arguments for and interests in credobaptism. As David F. Wright notes of the Latin father, “Tertullian gives no suggestion that he views baby baptism as invalid, as not true baptism at all, as though the person baptized as a baby could subsequently receive a proper (second) baptism. His quarrel with the baptizing of babies is not that of a latter-day credobaptist but seems to be twofold: it is needless, and it is attended with very great risk.”Footnote 63 It is then probable that the early Anabaptists and Baptists who utilized Tertullian's words may have either misunderstood or merely glossed over his reasoning for delaying baptism, especially in light of their excitement to have discovered a significant church father apparently supporting their cherished doctrine of credobaptism.
Tertullian as Partial Precedent for the Believer's Church
While a certain distancing from Tertullian would then be a helpful corrective to Anabaptist and Baptist historiography, it does not necessarily follow that modern Anabaptists and Baptists must altogether dismiss the church father's argumentation as irrelevant to their own subsequent position. Though the two entities, Tertullian and the Believers’ Church movement, have differing points of origin and motivation for urging the delay of baptism, both demonstrate some shared convictions regarding its appropriateness solely for mature, adult Christians. As David Wright observes, “Tertullian is concerned with the profitability of baptismal reception.”Footnote 64 And while the Anabaptists and Baptists would not fully concur with Tertullian and numerous other earlier ChristiansFootnote 65 in associating the redemptive work of the Holy Spirit with water baptism for the forgiveness of sins,Footnote 66 the Believers’ Church tradition would affirm Tertullian's concern that spiritual maturity is necessary for each baptizand for his or her baptism to be deemed appropriate.
Moreover, one may see lines of agreement even in the areas where Tertullian and the Believers’ Church movement would seem to depart theologically: Tertullian urged the church to delay baptism for young people so that the more mature person's adolescent and adult sins might be subsequently washed away; meanwhile the Believers’ Church movement underscored credobaptism for the purpose of securing a more faithful congregation of genuine believers. The former's motivation then was more related to purity from sin, especially from concupiscence, while the latter's concern was more directly related to faith and ecclesiology. Both seemed to anticipate, however, a shared ideology of what would later be known as an “age of accountability.” While Tertullian and many in the Free Church underscored original sin as an inherited bondage of sin for and a corruption of the nature of all humanity,Footnote 67 Tertullian referred to the “age of innocence” (innocens aetas) through which a young child would not be held responsible for her original sin and would not have yet consciously sinned by her own commission.Footnote 68 In the Latin father's mind, original sin was not to be equated with a corruption of the soul, the loss of the Imago Dei, or of free will. Instead, notes Everett Ferguson, “Tertullian did not connect the inclination to sin that he saw in inherited human nature with a need to baptize babies. Baptism must await the person's recognition of sin and so the need of seeking salvation.”Footnote 69
The concept of a period of innocence before a person is held responsible for his or her sins reemerged among many Anabaptists and Baptists alike. For instance, Dutch Anabaptist Dirk Philips posited:
Hence we conclude with the apostles and the entire Holy Scripture, that original sin has been paid for and taken away by Jesus Christ to the degree that children may not be judged and condemned on account of Adam's transgression (Gen. 6:5; 8:21). We conclude that the tendency of the nature of children is toward evil; but that does not damn them. By the grace of God it is not accounted as sin to them. As long as they are simple and without the knowledge of good and evil, they are pleasing and acceptable to God through Jesus Christ. But why should so many words be necessary? It is true and indubitable that children as well as adults – the children by their simplicity, the adults by their faith – are saved by the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ (Acts 15:11).Footnote 70
Although there are notable exceptions,Footnote 71 numerous early Anabaptists and Baptists concurred with Tertullian's “age of innocence” even as they, too, espoused the doctrine of original sin, giving both Tertullian and the Believers’ Church the theological rationale to delay baptism. In the case of both entities, a young child should not be baptized because he could not understand the faith and could not be held accountable by God and his congregation for his Christian conduct. Thus, “to defer and not to hasten” seemed at least a wiser course of action in the case of Tertullian and essential in the case of the Anabaptists and Baptists.
Additionally, Tertullian understood baptism as encompassing a promise not only from God to the baptized but also from the baptized to God and the congregation. That Tertullian outlined a formal question and answer format in his baptismal liturgy to mimic the concept of stipulatio in Roman contract law underscored his understanding of baptism as sacramentum, a binding obligation between parties, in this case those which are human and divine.Footnote 72 The Latin father even rhetorically asked on this basis, “Shall we take less cautious action in this than we take in worldly matters? Shall one who is not trusted with earthly property be entrusted with heavenly?”Footnote 73 Here Tertullian was arguing that minors were legally excluded from the management of earthly property and its contractual obligations, thus they certainly could not be held liable for more ponderous heavenly responsibilities.Footnote 74 Such an understanding of baptism as a sacramental pledge which necessitates mature reception and commitment on the part of the baptizand is paralleled in the writings of early Anabaptists Hubmaier, Pilgram Marpeck, Dirk Philips, Menno Simons and Baptists Robert Garner, Henry Lawrence, Thomas Grantham.Footnote 75
While, to be clear, the historic Anabaptist and Baptist appeal to Tertullian for patristic support for credobaptism is not completely representative of the convictions of the Latin father, they all did share a common understanding of the practice of infant baptism as misapplied because children could not genuinely confess their faith before and through the rite. Moreover, several modern scholars agree with the early Baptists’ interpretation that Tertullian was writing against pedobaptism as not only undesirable, but also as a novel contrivance in his time, buttressing the historic Baptist affinity for the Latin father.Footnote 76 Regardless, Tertullian understood baptism as an act whereby the Spirit worked to remit the sins of the baptizand, and he underscored this divine work as his underlying rationale for its postponement; the Believers’ Church, on the other hand, maintained that baptism was an act of personal confession of faith and public witness. The fact remains that Tertullian encouraged the Christian church to defer baptism's administration until the recipient could confess genuine faith. The Believers’ Church can then more precisely champion Tertullian on the subject of believer's baptism as an anteceding ally in part but not in full.
