Volumes upon volumes have been written on Baptism by Baptists and Pedobaptists. Acrimonious debates and controversies have been indulged in to prove on the one side that adults only can be baptized, and on the other side that infants, as well as adults, must be baptized.
The mode of administering the ordinance has also been the subject of many a dispute among eminent theologians and learned divines. Pedobaptists hold that "Baptism with water is an emblem of baptism with the Holy Ghost. The two baptisms, the material and the spiritual, are the one a shadow or figure of the other, and the mode of the material as resembling that of the spiritual" (Edwards).
To the earnest seeker after the Truth, the question will come: Can Christians have "two" baptisms when Paul says, There is one baptism? (Ephesians, 4:5.) Christian Scientists are satisfied with this plain declaration of the great apostle, and for them there is but one baptism, as there is also but one Lord, one faith, one God and Father of all. Christian Scientists leave a clear field to those who care for shadows and emblems; they seek only after the true Substance, and are satisfied therewith, and do not concern themselves about the river Jordan, the water of the baptistery or of the font.
