Thomas Houston and the practice of naming in baptism

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Reformed Covenanter

Cancelled Commissioner
I once asked R. Scott Clark why the practice of naming children in baptism had died out; he did not know the answer and I have yet to get to the bottom of it. In the extract below, Thomas Houston, a nineteenth-century Irish Reformed Presbyterian minister and the dude in my avatar, mentioned in passing that naming of the child in baptism was the usual practice of the Christian church. I think his reasons for discouraging the practice are fairly weak, but it is an interesting historical reference. Does anyone know why this practice died out? Do you care to even hazard a guess?

Some, again, regard baptism as a mere ceremony for giving a name to the child baptized. Under the Jewish economy, it was customary to declare the name of the child at the time when it was circumcised. Hence it is usual to pronounce the Christian name of a child, or of an adult convert, at baptism. But when such a low and unworthy view is entertained, that baptism is only intended for conferring a name, the practice of declaring the name should either altogether be dispensed with, or so changed as to afford no countenance to the vain fancies of ignorance and superstition. Scarcely anything can be conceived more dishonouring to God, or deadening to the conscience, than to degrade a holy ordinance, by observing it with an end so irrational and unworthy.

Thomas Houston, A practical treatise on Christian baptism (1853) in Works: doctrinal and practical of the Rev. Thomas Houston, D.D., Knockbracken (4 vols, Edinburgh, 1876), iii, 33.
 
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