# Der Lutheraner_St. Louis Missouri_1850 08 06_S194
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

194

but in such a way that we have pointed out the clear, sure Scripture against which they stand. For if we had not done that, we should truly have to let them stand, as they have stood hitherto.

38. For when they say that children cannot believe, with what will they make that certain? Where is the Scripture by which they prove this, and upon which they may ground themselves? It seems so to them, forsooth, because children neither speak nor have reason; but that seeming is uncertain, yea, altogether false, and one must not build upon our seeming.

39. But we have Scripture that children may well and can believe, even though they have neither speech nor reason. As the Scripture says, Ps. 106:37-38, "how the Jews sacrificed their sons and their daughters unto the idols, and shed innocent blood." If it was "innocent blood" (as the text says), then they were surely pure and holy children, which they could not be without Spirit and faith. Likewise, the innocent little children whom Herod caused to be slain, Matt. 2:16, were also children, not above two years old, surely without speech and reason; yet they are holy and blessed. And Christ says, Matt. 19:14, "the kingdom of heaven is of such little children"; and St. John in his mother's womb was a child, Luke 1:41. I mean, however, that he could believe.

40. Yea, you say, with John it was something special; but that does not prove that all baptized children can believe. Answer: Bide a while, give yourself time; I am not yet at the point of proving the faith of children; but at the point of proving how the ground of your rebaptizing is false and uncertain, as one who cannot prove that no faith may be in children. For since in John there is faith without speech and reason, your ground does not hold when you say that children cannot believe. It is surely not against the Scripture that a child believe, as the example of St. John shows. If, then, it is not against the Scripture that children believe, but in accordance with the Scripture, then your ground must be against the Scripture, namely, that children cannot believe. That I wanted to say first.

41. Who, then, has made you certain that baptized children do not believe, since I hereby prove that they may believe? But if you are uncertain, why are you then so bold, and make the first baptism naught, when you do not know, nor can know, that it is nothing? How? What if all children at baptism could not only believe, but also believed as well as John in his mother's womb? For we cannot deny that the very same Christ is at baptism and in baptism, yea, He is the Baptizer Himself, who came there to John in his mother's womb: so He speaks also just as well at baptism through the priest's mouth, as He there spoke through His mother's mouth.

42. Since, then, He is present there, speaks and baptizes Himself, why should not faith and the Spirit also come into the child through His speaking and baptizing, just as well as into John there? It is one and the same Speaker and Doer, there and here. And above all, because He says through Isaiah, chap. 55, v. 11: "My word shall not return unto me void." Now bring forth, you also, one single saying that proves that children cannot believe in baptism, since I bring forward so much to show that they can believe, and that it is fair to hold that they believe; although it is unknown to us how they believe, or how the faith is wrought; that does not matter either.

43. Moreover, He bids us "bring the little children to Him," Matt. 19:14, "embraces and kisses them," and says, "the kingdom of heaven is theirs." Although the spirits would gladly resist this and say that Christ speaks not of little children, but of the humble. But it does not sound so, because the text says most plainly that little children, not the humble, were brought to Him. And Christ does not say: Let the humble, but: Let the little children come unto me; and He rebuked the disciples not because they forbade the humble, but the little children; and "embraced" and "blessed" not the humble, but the "little children." Therefore, when He says: "Of such is the kingdom of heaven," and Matt. 18:10: "Their angels do always behold the face of my Father," this must be understood also of those same little children. For He also teaches afterward that we are to become such little children. But if such little children were not holy, He would truly have given us a bad pattern, to which we should "become like"; and He should not have said: "ye must become as little children"; but rather: ye must become otherwise than little children are. In sum, the fanatical spirit can make no humility out of the children in this text, except according to its own conceit; the words stand there too powerfully and plainly before the eyes.

44. Some, however, would weaken this text in this way: that the children of the Jews were circumcised; therefore they might well be holy and be brought to Christ: but our children are heathen, etc.

45. Answer: What if there had also been little girls among the little children that were brought to Christ? who certainly were not circumcised; for surely they brought all kinds of little children to Him. And since the little boys alone are not expressly named there, we cannot exclude the little girls, but must let them be little children, both little girls and little boys. And that they are called blessed not only on account of circumcision, but also for this reason, that they now come to Christ out of the Old into the New Testament, as His word runs: "Suffer the little children to come unto me; for of such is the kingdom of GOD." Of such little children (says He), "that come unto me, is the kingdom of GOD." For through "being brought and coming to Christ" they become so blessed that He embraces them, blesses them, and gives them the kingdom.

46. Therefore I let him rave who will. I still hold, as I have also written in the Postill, that the surest of all is the baptism of children. For an old person may deceive and come to Christ as a Judas and let himself be baptized: but a child cannot deceive and comes to Christ in baptism, as John came to Him, and as the little children were brought to Him, that His word and work may go over them, touch them, and make them thus holy: for His word and work cannot go in vain; and here it goes to the child alone. If it should fail in this, it would have to fail altogether and be in vain; which is impossible.

47. So, too, one cannot deny that they were little girls, and uncircumcised, of whom Ps. 106:37 speaks, that they sacrificed their "daughters unto the idols of Canaan," and yet calls them "innocent blood." So Moses truly, in Lev. 12:5, also commanded the little girls "to offer unto God, to be cleansed and redeemed"; and it is indeed apparent that the little boys alone suffered circumcision, but the little girls nevertheless shared in it also, by virtue of the saying which GOD speaks to Abraham, Gen. 17:7: "I will be a God unto thy seed, and circumcision shall be a covenant between me and thee, and thy seed after thee." Now the little girls are truly also Abraham's seed, and GOD is by such saying just as much their GOD, though they are not circumcised, as of the little boys.

48. If they believe, then, that GOD by the covenant of circumcision receives both little boys and little girls and is their God, why should He not also receive our children by the covenant of baptism? since He has also promised us that He will be "not the God of the Jews only, but of the Gentiles also," Rom. 3:29, especially of Christians and believers? If circumcision helps there, of little children, both boys and girls, that they become GOD's people, for the sake of Abraham's faith, from whom they come: how much more shall baptism here help each one in particular, that they become GOD's people, for the sake of Christ's merit, to whom they are brought, and by whom they are blessed. All this I say, that the ground of the Anabaptists is uncertain, and that they build upon it most wantonly.

49. Yea, you say, He did not bid children be baptized; so one finds no example of it in the writings or epistles of the Apostles: Answer: He also has neither old people, nor man, nor woman,