IN the commission which the Messiah gave to his Apostles for converting the nations, he commanded three things to be done, indicated by three very distinct and intelligible terms, viz. matheteusate, baptizontes, didaskontes. Unfortunately one of these three Greek words has become a subject of much controversy. While all agree that the first term may be literally and properly rendered make disciples, and the last teaching them, the second, not being translated but transferred into our language, is by some understood to mean sprinkling; by others, pouring; by a third class, immersing; and by a fourth class, purifying them into the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.

      Fortunately, the meaning of any word, Hebrew, Greek. Latin, or English, is a question, not of opinion, but a question of fact; and, being a plain question of fact, it is to be ascertained by competent witnesses, or by a sufficient induction of particular occurrences of the word at different times, on various subjects, and by different persons. All good dictionaries, in all languages, are made upon a full examination of particular occurrences--upon a sufficient induction of distinct instances--and convey the true meaning of a word at any given period of its history.

      The action, then, which Jesus Christ commanded to be done [116] in the word baptizo, is to be ascertained just in the same manner as the action enjoined in matheteuo, or that commanded in didasko, its associates in the commission. We ask no other law or tribunal for ascertaining the meaning of baptizo than for ascertaining the sense of matheteuo or didasko. They are all to be determined philologically, as all other foreign and ancient terms, by the well-established canons of interpretation. From a, candid, judicious, and impartial application of these laws, there is not the least difficulty in the case.

      There is indeed, less difficulty in ascertaining the meaning of the word baptizo than that of either of the other words standing with it in the commission; because, a word more restricted, more circumscribed, and appropriated in its acceptation than either of its companions; because, moreover, it is a word of specification, and not so general and undefined as matheteuo or didasko--"making disciples" and "teaching them." It indicates an outward and formal action into the awful name of the whole Divinity; and consequently, à priori, we would be led to regard it as a most specific and well-defined term. The action was to be performed by one person upon another person, and in the most solemn manner.

      Besides, it is a peculiar and positive ordinance. All admit that baptism is a positive ordinance; and that positive precepts, as contradistinguished from moral precepts, indicate the special will of a sovereign in some exact and well-defined action, the nature, form, and necessity of which arise not from our own à priori reasonings about utility or expediency, but from the clearly-expressed will of the lawgiver. It is farther universally agreed that circumcision was a positive and not a moral institution, made right and obligatory by the mere force of a positive law. It enjoined a specific act upon a specific subject, called for exact obedience, and was therefore definitely set forth by a specific and not by a generic term. This fact will not, I presume, be disputed. Baptism, then, like circumcision, must have the specific action to be performed, implied, and expressed in it. That baptism is such a term, if it be disputed, the sequel will, we presume, abundantly prove.

      Meantime, before hearing the witnesses or submitting the induction, it may not be uninteresting to pursue this analogy a little farther, and to show, à priori, that such a specific precept or term is to be expected. [117]

      Will it not be conceded by all, that whatever good reason can be given why, not a general, but a specific word was chosen by God, in commanding circumcision to Abraham and his posterity, demands a term as specific and intelligible from the Christian Lawgiver in reference to the institution of baptism? Now, as Jesus Christ must have intended some particular action to be performed by his ministers, and submitted to by the people, in the command to baptize them, it follows that he did select such a word, or that he could not or would not do it. This is a trilemma from which escape is not easy. If any one say he could not, then either the language which he spoke, or his knowledge of it was defective. If the former, then the language was unfit to be the vehicle of a divine revelation to man; if the latter, his divine character and mission are directly assailed and dishonoured: or if any one say he could have done it, but would not, he impeaches either his sincerity or benevolence, or both; his sincerity, in demanding obedience in a particular case, for which he cared nothing; his benevolence, in exacting a particular service in an ambiguous and unintelligible term, which should perplex and confound his conscientious friends and followers in all the ages of the world! Follows it not, then, that he could, that he would, find such a word, and that he has done it--and that baptizo is that specific word?

      Before summoning our most authoritative witnesses to the meaning of this important word baptizo, I shall assert a few facts, which, I presume, will not be denied by any one properly acquainted with the original language of the New Testament:--

      1. Baptizo is not a radical, but a derivative word.

      2. Its root, bapto, is never applied to this ordinance.

      3. In the common version, bapto is translated, both in its simple and compound form, always by the word dip.

      4. Bapto is never translated by dye, stain, or colour.

      5. Baptizo, with its derivatives, is the only word used in the New Testament to indicate this ordinance. And,

      6. The word baptize has no necessary connection with water, or any liquid whatever.

      Now from these indisputable facts, as hereafter to be developed, some important corollaries are deduced; such as--

      1st. Baptizo indicates a specific action, and, consequently, as such, can have but one meaning. For if a person or thing can be immersed in water, oil, milk, honey, sand, earth, debt, grief, [118] affliction, spirit, light, or darkness, &c., it is a word indicating specific action, and specific action only.

      Baptizo, confessedly a derivative from bapto, derives its specific meaning, as well as its radical and immutable form, from that word. According to the usage of all languages, ancient and modern, derivative words legally inherit the specific, though not necessarily the figurative, meaning of their natural progenitors; and never can so far alienate from themselves that peculiar significance as to indicate any action specifically different from that intimated in the parent stock. Indeed, all the flexions of words, with their sometimes numerous and various families of descendants, are but modifications of one and the same generic or specific idea.

      We sometimes say that words generally have both a proper and a figurative sense. I presume we may go farther, and affirm that every word in current use has a strictly proper and a figurative acceptation. Now, in the derivation direct, (for there is a direct and there is an indirect derivation,) the proper and natural or original meaning of the term is uniformly transmitted. Let us, for example, take the Saxon word dip, through all its flexions and derivatives. Its flexions are dip, dips, dippeth, dipped, dipping: from these are derived but a few words, such as the nouns dipping, dipper, dip-chick, dipping-needle. Now, in all the flexions and derivatives of this word, is not the root dip always found in sense as well as in form? Wherever the radical syllable is found the radical idea is in it. So of the word sprinkle: its flexions are sprinkle, sprinkleth, sprinkling, sprinkled; and its derivatives are the nouns sprinkling and sprinkler. Does not the idea represented in the radical word sprinkle descend through the whole family? We shall visit a larger family. From the verb read, whose flexions are reads, readeth, reading, come the descendants reading, (the noun,) readable, readableness, readably, reader, readership. The radical syllable is not more obvious than the uniformity of its sense throughout the whole lineage. Let us now advance to the two Greek representatives of the verbs dip and sprinkle. These are ancient families and much larger than any of the modern. Bapto, the root, has some seven hundred flexions, besides numerous derivatives. We shall only take the indicative mood through one tense and through one person--bapto, ebapton, bapso, ebapsa, ebaphon, bapho, bebapha, ebebaphein. Its derivatives are baptizo, and its regular flexions [119] more than seven hundred, including all its forms of mood, tense, participle, person, number, gender, case; from which spring baptismos, baptisms, baptisis, baptistees, baptomai, baptisomai, baptos, baptisteerion, bapha, baphikos, bapheis. These, through their some two thousand flexions and modifications, retain the bap and as uniformly the dip represented by it. The same holds good of its distant neighbour raino, I sprinkle. It has many flexions and nearly as many derivatives as bapto. It has raino, rainomai, rantizo, rantismos, rantisma, ranteer, rantis, rantos, with their some two thousand flexions. These all exhibit the radical syllable rain or ran, and with it the radical sprinkle. Now, as it is philologically impossible to find bap in rain, or rain in bap, so impossible is it to find dip in sprinkle, or sprinkle in dip. Hence the utter impossibility of either of these words representing both actions. It is difficult to conceive how any man of letters and proper reflection can for a moment suppose that bapto can ever mean sprinkle, or raino dip.

      This my first argument is, I own, a work of supererogation, inasmuch as all admit that baptizo, and not bapto, is the word that the Messiah chose, to represent the action he intended, called baptism; and all the learned admit that its primary, proper, and unfigurative meaning is to dip. Hence, if all that I have said on flexion and derivation were grammatically false and philologically heterodox, as well as illogical, my cause loses nothing. I feel so rich in resources that I can give this and many such arguments for nothing, and still have much more than a competency for life. But be it all strictly and philologically true and solid, as I unhesitatingly affirm it, this single argument establishes my first proposition without farther effort. For, as all allow that dip is the primary and proper meaning of bapto, and colour, stain, dye, and wet, its figurative or secondary meanings; and as all admit that baptizo is the word that the Christian Lawgiver consecrated to indicate this ordinance; and as it is incontrovertibly derived from bapto, and therefore inherits the proper meaning of the bap, which is dip, then is it not irresistibly evident that baptizo can never authorize or sanction any other action than dipping or immersion, as found in Christ's commission! Such is my first argument, which, if false, I lose nothing; which, if true, my proposition is already established.

      But we must have arguments and illustrations for the unlearned as well as for the learned. Before we advance to our [120] second argument, founded on baptizo itself, I shall, in three English words, selected at random, show that neither number nor variety of derivatives from a common stock can ever nullify the original idea or action suggested. I take a verb, a noun, and a preposition, with their whole families. I open at the verb adduce--duce from duco, I lead, is the root. The family lineage is abduce, adduce, conduce, deduce, educe, induce, introduce, obduce, produce, reduce, seduce, traduce, circumduction, deduction, induction. Next comes the noun guard, from which the verb guard, guarding, guarded, guarder, guardedly, guardedness, guardship, guardable, guardful, guardage, guardance, guardiant, guardian, guardianess, guardianship, guardianage, guardless. And finally we open at the preposition up, whence spring upon, upper, uppermost, upperest, upward. Now, can any one for a moment doubt that in these three examples, the radical syllables duce, guard, and up, retain the same sense, whatever it may be, generic or specific, through every branch of their respective families.

      Ancient Greek grammarians sometimes arranged their verbs in the form of trees, making the origin of the family the root; the next of importance, the trunk; the next, the larger branches; and so on to the topmost twig. In this way both flexion and derivation were occasionally exhibited. This fact I state because it suggests to me a new form of presenting this, my first argument, to the apprehension of all my readers. A great majority of our citizens are better read in forests, fields, and gardens, than in the schools of philology or ancient languages. Agriculturists, horticulturists, botanists will fully comprehend me when I say, in all the dominions of vegetable nature untouched by human art, as is the root so is the stem, and so are all the branches. If the root be oak, the stem cannot be ash, nor the branches cedar. What would you think, courteous reader, of the sanity or veracity of the backwoodsman, who would affirm that he found in a state of nature a tree whose root was oak, whose stem was cherry, whose boughs were pear, and whose leaves were chestnut. If these grammarians or philologists have been happy in their analogies drawn from the root and branches of trees to illustrate the derivation of words, how singularly fantastic the genius that creates a philological tree whose root is bapto, whose stem is cheo, whose branches are rantizo, whose fruit is katharizo; or, if not too ludicrous, [121] and preposterous for English ears, whose root is dip, whose trunk is pour, whose branches are sprinkle, and whose fruit is purification!

      My first argument, then, is founded on the root bapto, whose proper signification all learned men say is dip, and whose main derivative is baptizo--which, by all the laws of philology and all the analogies of nature, never can, never did, and never will signify either to pour or sprinkle.

[CBAC 116-122]