The Service of Infant Dedication

Abstract

"Ceremonies for infants, conducted by Christians practising Believer's Baptism, are of long-standing. John Clifford, at the end of the 19th century responded to the request of parents with a simple service in the home, 1 but this was not the first instance. The Paulicians in the Middle Ages conducted ceremonies for infants .and there is evidence of early Baptist practices. Morris West quotes from the Covenant of Westgate Baptist Church, Bradford, which is dated 4, 12.1753, "And as we have given our Children to the Lord by a Solemn Dedication, so we will endeavour through divine help, to teach them the way of the Lord and command them to keep it setting before them an holy Example worthy of their imitation and continuing in prayer to God, for their Conversion and Salvation"/. and Comments, "Many readers may be surprised to find such a statement in an eighteenth century church covenant. But it seems clear that both in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries some Baptists practised a form of Infant Dedication on the authority of our Lord's blessing of the children. What is further interesting - and very relevant in the discussions about Baptism - is that there is some evidence to suggest that our forefathers thought the children of Christian parents to be in a different situation "theologically" to children of -non-Christians. By the nineteenth century, the practice apparently had fallen out of use and out of mind""