p. 288, para. 1 | Untitled article

Untitled article

Pacific Press Publishing Company · New York · September 15, 1892

FromThe American Sentinel, Vol. 7, No. 36

Two centuries ago the law of Plymouth Colony, Massachusetts, required all parents to have their children baptized. There was certainly in itself no moral wrong in putting a few drops of water on the head of an infant; and it could do the child no harm. But the Baptists refused obedience to the law because they could not conscientiously do that which the law required. They did not so understand baptism, and in their view to sprinkle infants and call it baptism, or to do it as a religious ceremony, or to acknowledge faith in it by doing it, when they had no such faith, would have been wicked. They therefore suffered fines, imprisonment, banishment, and even death rather than yield their consciences into the keeping of the State. And who will say that they did not do right? Who does not honor them for their fidelity to principle, and to God? Not one; all honor those faithful men as champions of soul-liberty. Yet, according to judicial decisions even the seemingly ample guarantee of liberty of conscience in the Constitution of Tennessee does not leave the dissenter from the prevailing religion free to disregard laws made in aid of the religion of other sects. And so in that State, as in some other States, the observers of the seventh day, though permitted to observe that day, are required to keep Sunday also, an institution which they look upon just as the Baptists did upon infant baptism. How much then is Tennessee in advance of Massachusetts two centuries ago?