- 41 - 8. 9 The meaning of Baptism To return from the kingdom of the spiritually dead to the kingdom of God no one needs any human institution, no organized religion or clergy, as found among the religions of today and in particular in the Catholic Church. • Whoever has strayed from God may at any time communicate in spirit with God, the Father, and from Him receive, w i t h o u t t h e a i d o f h u m a n i n t e r m e d i a r i e s , pardon and the strength to live according to God’s will. Seventh: Your [Catholic] church, in contrast, teaches the need for so-called ‘sacraments’ in order to achieve Salvation, and as these sacraments can be dispensed only by priests ordained by bishops, the Catholic Church possesses in that doctrine a perfect means of binding the faithful to its organization. For, according to its precepts, no one can reach God save through the mediation of a priest. As you read the New Testament you will notice that there is not one single word in the teachings of Christ and of his Apostles on which this doctrine of sacraments can be based. Your sacraments, to which you attribute such scholarly significance, are m a n m a d e f a b r i c a t i o n s, as I will now show you. a. “First and most essential of your sacraments is that of baptism b y w a t e r. You claim that baptism per se, that is, entirely without the involvement of the person baptized, converts an enemy of God into one of His children, by the eradication of so-called original sin as well as all personal sins. Hence, you go so far as to baptize infants so young that they are utterly unaware that the rite is being performed. This shows a c o m p l e t e m i s c o n c e p t i o n of the significance of baptism! Which, in the early days of Christianity, was merely an external rite emblematic of an attitude of mind. Baptism, therefore, created nothing new, as you preach, but was merely an external manifestation of the sentiments of those who received it. Thus, the baptism administered by John was a public acknowledgement on the part of those he baptized that they were ready to accept his gospel and to mend their ways. The essence of the rite lay in its administration in public, so that all might know who those were that had been baptized. You may perhaps think that an attitude of mind requires no outward sign, but you mortals often deceive yourselves as to your own real sentiments and become quite sure of them only when called upon to profess them in public. Then you frequently find that what you had considered to be the good within yourselves is not as great as you had imagined it to be. Among those who went out to hear the Baptist preach, there were many who thought that they were experiencing a change of heart, but when they were faced with baptism in public as an outward sign of this change of heart, their courage failed them. Their fear of man was stronger than the good in them; they dreaded the taunts of their fellowmen, and particularly those of the Jewish priesthood, which had not acknowledged John as an envoy of God. Because of this fear they therefore declined baptism. Had they not been faced with the choice between accepting or rejecting this outward
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