TRACTS FOR THE TIMES.
word λειτυργούντων, ministering (Acts xiii. 2.); a word which, dropt (so to say) by accident, and interpreted, as is reasonable, by its use in the services of the Jewish Law, (Luke i. 23; Heb. x. 11.) remarkably coincides with the λειτυργία of the Primitive Church, according to which the offering of the Altar was intercessory, as pleading Christ's merits before the throne of grace.
Again, in 1 Cor. xv. 29, we incidentally discover the existence of persons who are styled "the baptized for the dead." Perhaps it is impossible to determine what is meant by this phrase, on which little light is thrown by early writers. However, any how it seems to refer to a custom of the Church, which was so usual as to admit of an appeal to it, which St. Paul approved, yet which he did not in the Epistle directly enforce, and but casually mentions.
In 1 Cor. i. 16, St. Paul happens to inform us that he baptized the household of Stephanus. It has pleased the Holy Spirit to preserve to us this fact; by which is detected the existence of a rule of discipline for which the express doctrinal parts of Scripture afford but indirect warrant, viz. the custom of household baptism. (Vid. also Acts xvi. 15. 33.) This accidental disclosure accurately anticipates the after practice of the early Church, which urged the baptism of families, infants included, and gave a weighty doctrinal reason for it; viz. that all men were born in sin and in the wrath of God, and needed to be individually translated into that kingdom of grace, into which baptism is the initiation.
These instances, then, not to notice others of either a like or a different kind, are surely sufficient to reconcile us to the complete ritual system which breaks upon us in the writings of the Fathers. If any parts of it indeed are contrary to Scripture, that is of course a decisive reason at once for believing them to be additions and corruptions of the original ceremonial; but till this is shown, we are bound to venerate what is certainly primitive, and probably is apostolic.
It will be remarked, moreover, that many of the religious observances of the early Church are expressly built upon words of Scripture, and intended to be a visible memorial of them, after the manner of St. Paul's directions about the respective habits
