Yuille - History of the Baptists in Scotland - Landmark Baptist

a baptism in Skye. A pagan man from oversea is borne to the feet of the Saint
and, hearing the Gospel through an interpreter, believes — it will be noted that
Columba did not preach in the dialect of the Picts — “and the river in which he
was baptized” was called after him. f19 No exception to immersion is signified
in the Life.
One of the divergences of the British or Celtic Church from Rome lay in the
form of administration of the ordinance and, as Bede tells us in a much —
discussed passage, f20 Augustine, the missionary of Pope Gregory the Great to
Britain, demanded conformity to the Latin model. The precise difference is not
stated, but seems to have consisted in single rather than triple immersion, and
the omission of the anointing with the chrism or sacred oil. f21 Trine immersion
was directed by an early Roman order (as still in the Greek Church), though
the single use was sanctioned for Spain by Gregory himself. The omission of
unction was a subject of complaint even some centuries later. The Stowe
Missal, possibly dating from the Tenth Century in its oldest part, contains the
earliest extant Baptismal Office of the Irish Church. It shows Latin influence
and directs trine immersion, with the alternative of aspersion or sprinkling, but
its rubric, ordaining the administrator to “descend into the font,” f22 affords
evidence that immersion was the older and the preferable custom. A logical
impulse carried these baptizers of infants further than their modern successors,
for there are signs that they conceded the Holy Communion, as was the ancient
custom, to the infant neophytes. It is clear that the earlier Celtic Church was
Baptist in the immersionist sense, though on the matter of believer’s baptism it
had, through early corruption, gravely departed from primitive teaching and
practice. To infant baptism it had added political or herd baptism, as had the
Roman Church.
The breach with apostolic simplicity widened as the Church of Rome became
dominant in Scotland, and its teachings and ceremonies tended to the occult
and mysterious. It had already degraded the pure and simple ordinance to a
magical ritual and overlaid it with accretions. f23 Immersion in mere water after
the primitive example was not enough; the water must be consecrated by a
solemn ceremonial and, as now sacred, be reserved for further use; exorcism
must deliver the child from evil spirits; the use of spittle, salt, oil precede or
succeed the administration. Yet, broadly, the Mediaeval Church adhered to
immersion, and the ecclesiastical statutes of the Aberdeen Synod of the
Thirteenth Century are definite upon that head. It was requisite that a suitable
font be provided for each parish Church and, covered with a lid, be locked
when not in use. Extant examples of these ancient fonts, from the Thirteenth
Century downwards, show that their suitability lay in their sufficiency for the
immersion of infants. f24 Parents might baptize a child in peril of death, using
the appointed formula in Latin or in English; but the non-recognition of Gaelic