BAPTISM NO. 3

BAPTISM NO. 3

Your letter reached me here. There are really two great questions, the rights of Christ and the state of souls. If I only had Paul, or was a dissenter in the true meaning of the word, I should confine myself to the second — the state. But when I see that the rights of Christ are widely extended beyond the state of souls, as Peter, John and Jude teach me, then I must not deny either, but seek to put each in its proper place. Christ has been given power over all flesh.... The clergyman who does not see Paul’s truth confines himself exclusively and injuriously to Christ’s rights, and says every soul in the parish belongs to him as Christ’s pastor, and he would baptise every one of them. Now a Baptist, or a dissenter true and proper, would not baptise any but as the state of each warranted it. Hence he attaches to baptism not a simple renunciation of an old standing in order to be introduced into a new, but an improvement of state. I admit the clergyman thinks the standing confers state, but there he plainly errs. Now the servant of Christ claims the believer in the heathen country, or the Jew, for Christ, and requires him to be baptised, and not only him, but all his. When any of the household refuse, it indicates that they are not under his (the head of the house) authority, and where there was a decided refusal I should not like to insist on it because the right of Christ was clearly impugned; for surely the believer’s children are, through the death of Christ, placed in a new position as “holy”.

Baptism does not entitle to the Lord’s supper. It is ^[p. 56] the act and responsibility of another. The Lord’s supper is your own act and responsibility, and not another’s in any way. One is really the initiative, and is connected with the house, the other is connected with and assertive of the body, to which baptism does not at all relate.

I do not see any use in educating people in baptism merely. I might find many who would approve of household baptism who really have not the truth of which it is the leaf.

I feel that saints must be conversant with the large subject of Christ’s rights as Head of every man before the truth of baptism will be of any use to them.

I am cheered with your progress in the truth. The Lord is very gracious to you, leading you not merely to see the truth, but to make it your own. There can be no real advance until the spiritual meaning of baptism is understood — that Adam is ended in the death of Christ. Then if Christ has died (as we call to mind and “announce” at the Lord’s supper), where is there any place for man’s glory?