PUBLIC BAPTISM AND PIOUS SPONSORS ADVOCATED.
In my intercourse with many ministers and churches I discovered
that there were very low notions and practices as to the administration
of baptism and the qualification of sponsors, little or no
regard being paid to the rubric, though so express as to the public
performance of it, and sponsors being admitted without any reference
to their pious qualities. My friend, Mr. Francis S. Key, and
myself had often mourned over the profanation of this sacrament
in Virginia and Maryland, where, in its private performance, even
ungodly boys and girls had been sometimes admitted as sponsors.
We were both of us on the Committee on the State of the Church,
and there introduced, after a proper preamble, the following resolution
to be acted on by the House:—"Resolved, That it is the
opinion of this General Convention that the ordinance of baptism
ought, in all possible cases, to be administered in public, and that
when necessity requires it to be administered in private, then the
office for private baptism should be used, and the infant and sponsors
should be afterward required to appear in Church and to conform
to the rubric in that respect, and that the Right Reverend
the Bishops be respectfully requested to call the attention of the
clergy to this subject, and to enjoin upon them a particular care in
requiring proper qualifications in those who are admitted as sponsors."
We were surprised to find ourselves opposed by those who
held the highest views of the efficiency of baptism, and who ought
on that account to have desired to see it most highly honoured in
the performance. After considerable discussion, the following substitute
was adopted:—"The House of Clerical and Lay Deputies,
reverting to the notices of private baptism in some of the preceding
statements, (the report from Virginia called special attention to it,)
respectfully request the House of Bishops to insert in the pastoral
letter, solicited by this House, their opinion and advice on the subject
of the existing custom of administering private baptism without
a great and reasonable cause, and of using in private the public
office; and also on the proper qualification of sponsors." The
difference between our resolution and its substitute is obvious and
great. The resolution expressed a positive and strong opinion on
the part of the clergy and laity that certain evils existed, and ought
to be corrected, requesting the Bishops to warn against them in
their pastoral letter. The substitute expressed no opinion on the
part of the House, but placed it all in the hands of the Bishops,
merely requesting their opinion and advice on the subject. It was
then (for certain reasons) more customary for those in the majority
to throw every thing into the hands of the Bishops, and those who
doubted the propriety of such a course were regarded as wanting
in respect for Bishops, and no Churchmen.
[59]
As some of us feared,
the opinion of the House of Bishops was not such as we desired.
It was regarded as rather apologizing for than condemning the
violation of rubrics in relation to baptism, though admitting the
duty and importance of public baptism and of pious sponsors. It
is due to Bishop White, the supposed author of the pastoral, to say,
that not very long after this he became satisfied that more decisive
measures ought to be adopted, and gave notice in all the three
churches under his care, that henceforth there should be no more
private baptisms in those churches, except for such cases as the
rubric justified. In speaking to me on the subject soon after this
order, he made this significant remark:—that if the parents had so
little respect for the ordinance that they would not bring their children
to the church, it only proved that the baptism would be of
very little service to them, thereby showing that he regarded the
chief efficacy thereof to depend on the view the parents took of it,
and the use they made of it in the education of their children. One
remark I beg leave to make as to the qualification of sponsors.
Some ministers question their right to interfere as to the qualification
of sponsors, in the absence of a positive statute. Are they
then forbidden to exclude infidels, blasphemers, and most abandoned
persons? If permitted and bound to require proper qualifications
in adults coming to baptism, in candidates desiring Confirmation
and the Communion, does not consistency require that
they avert from the Church the shame of such an abuse of the sacred
office of sponsors as sometimes occurs? The circumstance which
determined my mind more resolutely than ever against private
baptism and improper sponsors was the fact, that not long before
this effort in the General Convention I consented to baptize a child
in private, and during the ceremony discovered, to my deep concern,
that the father, who had the child in his arms, and was acting as
sponsor, was in a state of intoxication. I have during my ministry
found it a comparatively easy task to prevent any but communicants
presenting themselves as sponsors. By preaching on the subject,
and showing its great inconsistency, I have generally prevented
such applications, and when they have been made, I have never
failed to convince the persons thus applying of the impropriety of
the step proposed, by going over with them the baptismal service,
and appealing to their own consciences and judgments. Rarely,
if ever, has it happened that I was unable to receive into the visible
Church any child, where parents desired it, no matter how unsuitable
they were to become sponsors, as there could, by a short delay
and a little trouble, be found some one communicant who would
perform the part. I have on some few occasions acted as sponsor
myself, making of course some changes in the service.
