Series 1 > Statutes of the Scottish Church, 1225-1559

SO STATUTES OF THE SCOTTISH CHURCH
[Synodal Statutes of the Diocese of Aberdeen,
Xlllth Century.]
(56) Of Baptism.
Since baptism is the first plank1 for men to cling to after
shipwreck: and great is the virtue and efficacy of this sacra¬
ment, inasmuch as it was instituted by God himself and
confirmed by his blood; we prescribe that this sacrament be
celebrated with honour and reverence and with great care,
especially in the distinct utterance of the words in which lies
the whole virtue of this sacrament, and the salvation of the
children. Now the form for baptizing is this: I baptize
THEE IN THE NAME OF THE FATHER AND OF THE SON AND OF
the Holy Ghost, Amen. But let priests teach that lay¬
men frequently may and ought to baptize children in
extremity according to this form in the Roman or even the
English2 tongue. And let the father and mother baptize
1 The plank on which a shipwrecked person reaches the shore was early
utilised as a theological symbol. A note in Lyndwood’s Provincials defines
baptism more fully as ‘ the first plank by which we escape from the shipwreck
of original sin. The second plank is penance, by means of which those who
have fallen after baptism escape from the shipwreck of actual sin ’ {De
Poenitentiis, lib. v. tit. l6). The phrase often occurs in English statutes
both on baptism and on penance.
2 The statutes of the council of Durham (1228, from which if not from the
constitutions of Sarum a little earlier, this and the following six statutes are
mainly taken) enjoin priests to instruct their people that in necessity they may—
and ought—to baptize their own children, making sure that they use the orthodox
formula ‘ in Romano vel Gallico.’ And when the priest is inquiring after the
event how any particular lay baptism was performed, with a view to the formal
completion of the rite (if need be), he is to approve the baptism if he can satisfy
himself that the layman ‘ distincte et in forma ecclesiae baptisasse in Latino sive
in Gallico sive in Anglico ’; otherwise he must re-baptize as prescribed. It is
highly significant that while Gaelic was the vernacular of almost all Scotland
north of the Forth and Clyde, as well as in Galloway and Carrick, a northern
Scottish Synod should have taken no account of Gaelic in this connection, and
recognised only Latin and English—English here being of course northern
English or Lowland Scots. In Buchan Gaelic was the vernacular in the twelfth
century, and ‘ probably much later,’ according to Professor Mackinnon, not to
speak of the Highland parts of Aberdeenshire and the Aberdeen diocese : yet so