Baptist

“ Under this notion John Baptist was taught to expect Christ, as one who would give that repentance and faith which he called people to, and would carry on and complete that blessed structure of which he was now laying the foundation. Note, It is a great comfort to Christ's ministers, in their administration of the outward signs, that he whose ministers they are can confer the grace signified thereby, and so put life, and soul, and power into their ministrations; can speak to the heart what they speak to the ear, and breathe upon the dry bones to which they prophesy. ”

“ Into which of these media does the immersion take place? Shall we follow the Baptist interpretation of the words of John, “He shall immerse you in the Holy Ghost?” But in the first place, we have seen that this is false to the real manner of the baptism in question; which consists in a shedding down of the Spirit. In the second, how then, in harmony with Baptist principles, are we to understand the other clause of the passage,—“Immersed in one Spirit, into one body?“ Are there here two immersions by one act? ”

“ He tells us how the Baptist, himself pure to asceticism, so true and holy as to command the submission of all classes in the community, assured the people that he, though greater and felt to be greater than any of their old prophets, was not of the same world as Jesus. This man who stands on the pinnacle of human heroism and attainment, reverenced by his nation, feared by princes for the sheer purity of his character, uses every contrivance of language to make the people understand that Jesus is infinitely above him, incomparable. ”

“ To lie, or touch what was not his own, was beyond the pale of pardon, or mercy, and a solitary aberration was a stain for life.
The mothers, clad in homespun, were chaste in thought and action; unlettered and ignorant, but pure as ether. Their literature confined to the Bible, its maxims directed their conduct, and were the daily lesson of their children. The hard-shell Baptist was the dominant religion; with here and there a Presbyterian community, generally characterized by superior education and intelligence, with a preacher of so much learning as to be an oracle throughout the land. ”

“ Don’t cheerful agnostics, who know they’re going to die dead, worry much less than good Baptists, who worry lest their sons and cousins and sweethearts fail to get into the Baptist heaven—or what is even worse, who wonder if they may not have guessed wrong—if God may not be a Catholic, maybe, or a Mormon or a Seventh-day Adventist instead of a Baptist, and then they’ll go to hell themselves! ”

“ While praying, a heavenly messenger—John the Baptist, descended in a cloud of light, laid his hands upon their heads, and ordained them saying—"Upon you my fellow-servants, in the name of Messiah, I confer the Priesthood of Aaron, which holds the keys of the ministering of angels, and of the Gospel of repentance, and of baptism by immersion for the remission of sins; and this shall never be taken again from the earth, until the sons of Levi do offer again an offering unto the Lord in righteousness." ”

“ Baptism is therefore a confession of evangelical faith both as to sin, and as to the deity and atonement of Christ. No one is properly a Baptist who does not acknowledge these truths which baptism signifies. ”

“ Paul explained to them that John the Baptist came to call all men to repentance, and that his baptism was only meant to prepare the way for that of Jesus, and to lead all men to believe in Him, and be baptized in the way which He should appoint. ”

“ The evangelist determines thus, not only because it is commonly reckoned a satisfaction and entertainment to know something of the original extraction and early days of those who afterwards prove great men, but because in the beginning of these there were many things miraculous, and presages of what they afterwards proved. In these verses our inspired historian begins as early as the conception of John Baptist. ”

“ The young in the Baptist Church, not having been baptized in infancy, are brought up to feel that they are out of the Church, and that they have to be converted, or "to get religion," before they join the Church, instead of being brought up to feel that, having been baptized, they belong to the Church and must believe its doctrines, and live the life which they teach. ”

“ The Baptist house was crowded every Sunday, while ours was thin and discouraging. We had a good old gentleman for a minister, but he was over seventy, and a married man besides, which kept the women from taking much interest in him; while his old-fashioned notions didn’t suit the young men of the congregation. The Baptists, on the other hand, had a young unmarried preacher, with a voice that you could hear a quarter of a mile off, and a way of giving it to the Jews, and the Mormons, and other safe and distant sinners that filled his hearers with enthusiasm and offended nobody. ”

“ If there is any man’s testimony we may accept about our Lord it is that of the Baptist, who, from his close contact with the most profligate and with the most spiritual of the people, saw what they needed, and saw in Jesus power to give it; the business of whose life it was to make Him out, and to arrive at certain information regarding Him; a man whose own elevation and force of character made many fancy he was the Messiah, but who hastened to disabuse their minds of such an idea, because his very elevation gave him capacity to see how infinitely above him the true Christ was. ”

“ I believed firmly, that if there was a Christian people upon the earth who had kept the primitive faith from the days of the apostles, and had never symbolized with the errors of the church of Rome in her idolatrous and adulterous course, that people was the Baptist denomination. ”

“ Their complaint was the occasion of calling up clearly in the Baptist’s own consciousness the relation in which he stood to Jesus, and of prompting the most emphatic enouncement of the unrivalled dignity of our Lord. He says to his jealous disciples, “If I do not gather a crowd of followers while Jesus does, this is because God has appointed to me one place, to Him another. Beyond God’s design no man’s destiny and success can extend. ”

“ In this country there is a large religious community known as the Baptist Church. This group includes many fine people. Many of them are honest, intelligent, cultured, refined, and good citizens. They have taken their denominational title from their emphasis upon immersion as being the only scriptural baptism, in contrast to those who accept something else. ”

“ But oh the pity! that money given by godly men to provide preachers of the gospel should be devoted to undermining the Christian cause!
What is the effect of this method of interpretation upon the churches of our denomination? It is to cut the tap-root of their strength, and to imperil their very existence. Baptist churches are founded upon Scripture. Their doctrine of regenerate church-membership, and of church ordinances as belonging only to believers, presupposes an authoritative rule of faith and practice in the New Testament. ”

“ III. The Baptist did not commence his preaching until he had arrived at a mature age and prepared himself by prayer and mortification for his holy office. Then, impelled by the Divine Spirit, by whose inspiration he had retired into solitude, He enters upon his office with invincible courage. The Holy Ghost is accustomed to employ those whom He has rendered perfect, in procuring the perfection of others. Let your desert be that private life or station in which God has placed you, and endeavor to sanctify it by prayer, retirement, and mortification. ”

“ I. The parents of the Baptist were pronounced by the Evangelist to be "both just before God, walking in all the commandments and justifications of the Lord without blame." (Luke i. 6.) Here strengthen your faith on the important dogma that it is possible to observe all the commandments of God ; for Zachary and Elizabeth observed them. It is possible, too, to observe the counsels; for they walked in all the justifications of the Lord without blame. Aim at the perfection of your calling, and be just in the sight of God and blameless in your conversation with men. ”

“ The Missionary Baptists are by far the most enterprising in all that pertains to the spread of Christianity. They are the most numerous, most wealthy, best educated, and most liberal. In translating the Bible into all languages, in carrying it into all lands, and in sending the gospel to all nations, they have made some amends for that unrelenting bitterness which they have shown toward our brethren from the first day till now. We shall glance at what has hitherto been their order by making certain extracts from the Central Baptist, published in the year 1870. ”

“ Baptists hold to a unity of the ordinance, as well as to a oneness of the faith; insisting that as there is but one Lord, and one faith, so there is but one baptism. And the dipping in water of a professed disciple of Christ is that one baptism. Neither sprinkling a person with water, nor pouring water upon him can by any possibility be Christian baptism. That this position is the true one, we appeal to the New Testament, and the best extant historical and philological authorities to establish. ”

“ Then we will work backwards to the foundation of your society and the others, and see which reaches to Jesus Christ. Oh! no, says our author; that is one of the common methods; they are poor. “Read the New Testament. You will find the Baptist doctrine of salvation, and the resulting Baptist idea of the church, taught or implied on every page,182 and you will not find a trace of the Catholic doctrine of salvation, or of the Catholic idea of the church. ”

“ Such statements have never been regarded as complete, infallible statements of faith, nor as official creeds carrying mandatory authority. Thus this generation of Southern Baptists is in historic succession of intent and purpose as it endeavors to state for its time and theological climate those articles of the Christian faith which are most surely held among us.
Baptists emphasize the soul's competency before God, freedom in religion, and the priesthood of the believer. ”

“ Biblical Proofs, that baptism is designed as a means of securing to man a remission of his sins, are abundant. John the Baptist was the special preacher of this doctrine in the days immediately preceding the Savior's ministry in the flesh; and the voice of this priest of the desert stirred Jerusalem and reverberated through all Judæa, proclaiming remission of sins as the fruits of acceptable baptism. ”

“ In the early days of this Church there were certain persons, belonging to the Baptist denomination, very moral and no doubt as good people as you could find anywhere, who came, saying they believed in the Book of Mormon, and that they had been baptized into the Baptist Church, and they wished to come into our Church. ”

“ Beginning a new century in the history of our denomination, let us carry this message with the same earnestness as did our fathers. Discourage inactivity, coldness, indifference, formalism in our preaching, and denounce spasmodic religion among our hearers. Contend earnestly for those principles which have been the very life of Baptists. The gospel must go, like the sun shining in his strength, scattering all clouds from the face of the world, until the moon and the stars shall be lost in its effulgence. ”

“ Is their faith according to the teachings of the New Testament?” Many things which are old are not true. Creeds and sects may boast a venerable antiquity, while the Word of God utterly condemns them. Any organization that cannot reasonably claim Christ for its founder has small right to the name of a Christian church, no matter how old it may be.
Baptists claim to be built on the foundation of the Apostles and prophets, Jesus Christ Himself being the chief Corner-Stone. ”

“ Which passage Hosein Waes paraphrases in these words, [12] “John the Baptist, your son, shall publish and give authority to the faith in the Messias Jesus the son of Mary, who is the Word of God, or the Word proceeding from God; for he shall be the first who shall believe in him. He shall become chief and high-priest by his knowledge, by the austerity of his life, and by the sweetness of his behaviour, which are three qualities requisite to make a man an Imam or high priest of the law of God. ”

“ And only when we modern preachers have seen sin as God sees it, and begin to apply the divine standard to the human conscience; only when our eagerness and yearning well over into our eyes and broken tones, only when we know the terror of the Lord, and begin to persuade men as though we would pluck them out of the fire, by our strenuous expostulation and entreaties—shall we see the effects that followed the preaching of the Baptist when soldiers, publicans, Pharisees, and scribes, crowded around him, saying, "What shall we do?" ”

“ It is the erroneous view that baptism is the act of the administrator which causes the anxiety of High Church Baptists to deduce their Baptist lineage from regularly baptized ministers all the way back to John the Baptist, and which induces many modern endeavors of pedobaptists to prove that the earliest Baptists of England and the Continent did not immerse. ”

“ So the Holy Baptist at the beginning of the Gospel puts forth this as an Evangelical principle, concerning any Divine Ministry, not excepting Christ’s Own; “A man can take unto himself nothing” [margin] . (John iii. 27, &c.) St. Paul likewise calls Christ Himself “the Apostle and High-priest,” linking the two ideas together—joining the Apostolical and the Priestly offices—but saying that even He “glorified not Himself to be made an High-priest.” [88] The Father “sent” Him; and “as His Father sent Him, so He sent His Apostles.” ”