And he took them the same hour, &c.— It appears from this circumstance of the gaoler's washing their stripes, that the apostles had not a power of working miraculous cures whenever they pleased, either on their own bodies, or those of their dearest friends. Had they possessed such a power, it would have been their duty to have used it, unless they had a discovery of the divine will, that in such and such instances the use of it should be waved. The continual use of such a power would certainly have frustrated many of those noble purposes in providence, which their sufferings answered, and would have introduced many inconveniencies. The gaoler, in proof of his altered sentiments and genuine sincerity, not only washed the stripes, and took care of the apostles, but was baptized, he and his house, immediately, as the converts to Christianity commonly were in the apostolic age; for that had been the way by which the Jews used to receive whole families of the Heathens, when they became full proselytes to the Jewish religion; and our Saviour had appointed it as the way of initiating persons into the Christian church. The Jews would naturally have inquired of John the Baptist what the meaning of baptism was, and not why he baptized, though he professed he was not the Messiah, if it had not been a rite which theythemselves made use of when they received proselytes into the church; and our Saviour, in like manner, would not have commanded his apostles, Go, and baptize all nations, without explaining what he meant by baptizing them, unless it had been a thing well known, and which they had no need to have explained to them. It is very remarkable, that we have two instances in this one chapter of whole households being in this manner, and at once, received into the Christian Church; and such expressions as Lydia's being baptized and her house, and the gaoler and all his family, cannot be understood with their proper emphasis, unless we suppose them to be allusions to such a remarkable and well-known custom. We may just observe, that the practice of Abraham, with respect to the initiating rite of circumcision, was agreeable to this. See Genesis 17:26-27.
But I feel myself obliged in dutyto consider further the argument which this passage affords us in favour of infant baptism. There is no room to doubt, considering Abraham's character, but that when God first made his covenant with him and his seed, and ordered every male in his house to be circumcised, all the adult males of his family were instructed in the knowledge of God, and of his covenant, in order to their having the token of it applied to them, as well as to the children and himself, according to God's appointment: (Genesis 17:7-14; Genesis 18:19) And the same may be said in respect to the Jewish proselytes and their families; since, as to this point, there was one law to the Israelites and the strangers: (Exodus 12:48-49.) and therefore its being said, that Paul and Silas spoke the word of the Lord to the gaoler and all that were in his house, Acts 16:32 when the gospel seal of the covenant was to be applied to him and all his, is no more an argument against his having children baptized, than it is that there were no male infants in Abraham's family to be circumcised, nor any infants in the families of proselytes to be baptized as well as circumcised; because the adult persons in both were to be instructed, before either of those rites was to be applied to them; as the adult persons in the gaoler's house were first to be taught, that they might be baptized upon their own personal profession of faith, and by their own consent. And if any suppose that there were no children in his house, nor in Lydia's, Acts 16:15 they take that for granted, which it isimpossible to prove: but it is certain, that the terms household and a man's house, all along in the Old Testament, generally include the children of the family: and if, as it is asserted by many great writers, it was a well-known and long-continued custom among the Jews, to admit proselytes into the church of Israel, by baptizing them and their whole families, inclusive of their infants, (see Lightfoot's Harm. on John 1:25.) there is a plain reference to that custom, when in this chapter it is said, that Lydia and her house, and the gaoler and all his, were baptized: and it is very remarkable, in my judgment, that in this history of the acts of the apostles, God's covenant with his people and their seed, and the application of the New Testament seal of it to children as well as adult persons, is strongly intimated, first with respect to the converted Jews, afterwards to the Proselytes of the gate, and then again to the idolatrous Gentiles, in some of the first openings of the gospel dispensation among them respectively. As to the Jews, St. Peter called them to repent and be baptized, because the promise was to them and to their children, and ran in the like strain to such as should be called from among the Gentiles: Acts 2:38-39. As to the Proselytes of the gate, Lydia and her household, Acts 16:15 or, as the Syriac has it, the children of her house, were baptized; which shews at least, that, in those early times, children were deemed such parts of the household as were baptized. As to idolatrous Gentiles, the gaoler and all his were baptized. And it seems highly improbable, that the gaoler and his house were baptized by immersion; since, as far as appears, that ordinance was all on a sudden administered to them severally, while they were in the prison; and since the mangled condition of Paul and Silas's bodies, by means of their being severely scourged the day before, made it very improper, not to say unsafe, for them to go at midnight into the water so deep, as that mode of baptizing would oblige them to do.