few overpass the term of fourscore years and six, we are certainly not at liberty to infer, without any evidence, and in the face of probabilities, that he had now attained a greater longevity.  A contemporary father, who wrote about the middle of the second century, informs us, that there were then many persons of both sexes, some sixty, and some seventy years of age, who had been “disciples of Christ from childhood,” [472:4] and the pastor of Smyrna is apparently included in the description.  If he was eighty-six at the time of his death, he must have been about threescore and ten when Justin Martyr made this announcement.

No one could have been considered a disciple of Jesus who had not received baptism, and it thus appears that there were many aged persons, living about A.D. 150, to whom, when children, the ordinance had been administered.  We may infer, also, that Polycarp, when an infant, had been in this way admitted within the pale of visible Christianity.  Infant baptism must, therefore, have been an institution of the age of the apostles.  This conclusion is corroborated by the fact that Justin Martyr speaks of baptism as supplying the place of circumcision.  “We,” says he, “who through Christ have access to God, have not received that circumcision which is in the flesh, but that spiritual circumcision which Enoch, and others like him, observed.  And this, because we have been sinners, we do, through the mercy of God, receive by baptism.” [473:1] Justin would scarcely have represented the initiatory ordinance of the Christian Church as supplying so efficiently the place of the Jewish rite, had it not been of equally extensive application.  The testimony of Irenaeus, the disciple of Polycarp, throws additional light upon this argument.  “Christ,” says he, “came to save all persons by Himself; all, I say, who by Him are regenerated unto God—­infants, and little ones, and children, and youths, and aged persons:  therefore He went through the several ages, being made an infant for infants, that He might sanctify infants; [473:2] and, for little ones, He was made a little one, to sanctify them of that age also.” [473:3] Irenaeus elsewhere speaks of baptism as our regeneration or new birth unto God, [473:4] so that his meaning in this passage cannot well be disputed.  He was born on the confines of the apostolic age, and when he mentions the regeneration unto God of “infants, and little ones, and children,” he alludes to their admission by baptism to the seal of salvation.

The celebrated Origen was born about A.D. 185, and we have as strong circumstantial evidence as we could well desire that he was baptized in infancy. [474:1] Both his parents were Christians, and as soon as he was capable of receiving instruction, he began to enjoy the advantages of a pious education.  He affirms, not only that the practice of infant baptism prevailed in his own age, but that it had been handed