Reformed Covenanter
Cancelled Commissioner
Commenting on Acts 8:38, John Calvin argued that the mode of baptism adopted on that occasion was dipping, but that such a mode was accidental to the ordinance:
They went down into the water. Here we see the rite used among the men of old time in baptism; for they put all the body into the water. Now the use is this, that the minister doth only sprinkle the body or the head. But we ought not to stand so much about such a small difference of a ceremony, that we should therefore divide the Church, or trouble the same with brawls. We ought rather to fight even an hundred times to death for the ceremony itself of baptism, inasmuch as it was delivered us by Christ that we should suffer the same to be taken from us. ...
Wherefore the Church did grant liberty to herself, since the beginning, to change the rites somewhat, excepting this substance. For some dipped them thrice, some but once. Wherefore there is no case why we should be so straitlaced in matters which are of no such weight; so that external pomp do no whit pollute the simple institution of Christ. ...
For more, see:
They went down into the water. Here we see the rite used among the men of old time in baptism; for they put all the body into the water. Now the use is this, that the minister doth only sprinkle the body or the head. But we ought not to stand so much about such a small difference of a ceremony, that we should therefore divide the Church, or trouble the same with brawls. We ought rather to fight even an hundred times to death for the ceremony itself of baptism, inasmuch as it was delivered us by Christ that we should suffer the same to be taken from us. ...
Wherefore the Church did grant liberty to herself, since the beginning, to change the rites somewhat, excepting this substance. For some dipped them thrice, some but once. Wherefore there is no case why we should be so straitlaced in matters which are of no such weight; so that external pomp do no whit pollute the simple institution of Christ. ...
For more, see:
John Calvin on the substance and accidents of the mode of baptism
Commenting on Acts 8:38, John Calvin argued that the mode of baptism adopted on that occasion was dipping, but that such a mode was accidental to the ordinance: They went down into the water. Here …
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