arge
cities; for in such places there were always foreigners to whom these
strange utterances would be perfectly intelligible, and for whom a
discourse delivered in the speech of their native country would have
peculiar charms. But in the worship of the primitive Christians there
was no attempt, in the way of embellishment or decoration, to captivate
the senses. The Church had no gorgeous temples, no fragrant incense,
[218:1] no splendid vestments. For probably the whole of the first
century, she celebrated her religious ordinances in private houses,
[218:2] and her ministers officiated in their ordinary costume. John,
the forerunner of our Saviour, "had his raiment of camel's hair, and a
leathern girdle about his loins;" [218:3] but perhaps few of the early
Christian preachers were arrayed in such coarse canonicals.

The Founder of the Christian religion instituted only two symbolic
ordinances--Baptism and the Lord's Supper. [218:4] It is universally
admitted that, in the apostolic age, baptism was dispensed to all who
embraced the gospel; but it has been much disputed whether it was also
administered to the infant children of the converts. The testimony of
Scripture on the subject is not very explicit; for, as the ordinance was
in common use amongst the Jews, [218:5] a minute description of its mode
and subjects was, perhaps, deemed unnecessary by the apostles and
evangelists. When an adult heathen was received into the Church of
Israel, it is well known that the little children of the proselyte were
admitted along with him; [219:1] and as the Christian Scriptures _no
where forbid_ the dispensation of the rite to infants, it may be
presumed that the same practice was observed by the primitive ministers
of the gospel. This inference is emphatically corroborated by the fact
that, of the comparatively small number of passages in the New Testament
which treat of its administration, no less than _five_ refer to the
baptism of whole households. [219:2] It is also worthy of remark that
these five cases are not mentioned as rare or peculiar, but as ordinary
specimens of the method of apostolic procedure. It is not, indeed,
absolutely certain that there was an infant in any of these five
households; but it is, unquestionably, much more probable that they
contained a fair proportion of little children, than that every
individual in each of them had arrived at years of maturity, and that
all these adults, without exception, at o