Anglican Mainstream

Christian life begins with baptism. The Book of Common Prayer (BCP) baptism liturgy used to fill Sunday afternoons up and down the land, and it's still worth trying to understand what Cranmer thought he was doing and the view of humanity that underlies his book.

 

Cranmer required that baptism be administered freely, or to use a weasel word popularised in the 1960's, "indiscriminately," to babies.

 

Thus BCP Vicars were forbidden to discriminate about whom they would baptise – when all's said and done, the Vicar was only the Vicar, not God. The BCP required parents to give overnight notice that they wanted their baby baptised, but if they couldn't manage that, turning up on the morning would do. Baptism is administered in faith, "nothing doubting but that [God] favorably alloweth this charitable work of ours, in bringing these children to his holy baptism."

 

Nor is there any provision for adult baptism before 1662, when it was added, partly for use on the Plantations, but also to assist people who had not been baptised because of the recent civil war.

 

Cranmer assumes that a good healthy infant will, for preference, be dipped in the font, not have water sprinkled on the head – an aspiration that would be unfulfilled at least 999 times out of 1000 for the next 450 years.