The question will naturally arise and very properly, When did sprinkling for baptism first come into use? And how came it to pass, that a human device superseded and took the place of a Divine institution? These questions are fully and satisfactorily answered by Pedobaptist scholars themselves, whose testimony we accept as a justification of Baptist views.
For _two hundred and fifty years_ after Christ we have no evidence of any departure from the primitive practice of immersion. At length the idea came to prevail that baptism possessed saving virtue, and had power to purify and sanctify the soul, making its salvation more secure. It was consequently thought unsafe to die unbaptized. Here was the germ of the pernicious dogma of "baptismal regeneration," the foundation alike of infant baptism and of sprinkling instead of immersion.
The first authenticated instance of _sprinkling_ occurred about the middle of the third century, or A. D. 250. This was the case of Novatian. The historian Eusebius gives this case, and Doctor Wall in his laborious researches could find no earlier instance; good evidence that no earlier existed. Novatian was dangerously sick, and believing himself about to die, was anxious to be baptized. The case seemed urgent, and as he was thought to be too feeble to be _immersed,_ a substitute was resorted to; water was poured profusely over him as he lay in bed, so as to resemble as much as possible a submersion. The word used to describe this action (_perichutheis, purfusus_) has usually been rendered _besprinkle;_ it rather means to pour profusely over and about one. This it was thought might answer the purpose in such an emergency.
From this time onward pouring and sprinkling were resorted to at times of extreme illness, or feebleness, where persons could not leave their beds, and hence was termed _clinic_ baptism, from _clina,_ a couch. But it was always regarded as a substitute for baptism, rather than baptism itself; and its validity was doubted. Novatian himself having recovered from his sickness, was objected to when his friends proposed to make him bishop, because, it was said, he had never been properly baptized. It was not, however, until the seventeenth century that sprinkling became common in Europe, in France first, and then extending through those countries over which the pope held sway. At length, accepted by Calvin and the Genevan Church, it extended into Scotland, by John Knox, and other Scotch refugees, who had found in Geneva a shelter from the persecution to which they had been exposed in their native country; then into England: and in 1643 it was adopted as the exclusive mode of baptism by a majority of one of the Westminster Assembly of Divines, and sanctioned by Parliament the next year. All of which is verified by Eusebius, Valesius, Wall, Salmasius, Venema, Taylor, Towerson, Grotius, "Ency. Brit.," "Edin. Ency.," and other reliable historical authorities.[1]