p. 53 | A NOTE FOR BAPTISTS by James White

Publishing Committee · Battle Creek, Mich. · Jun 12, 1856

A NOTE FOR BAPTISTS.

By James White

Having formerly been a member of the Baptist church there are many members of that body, of my acquaintances and former companions for whom I have a high regard. Their profession is a good one, to wit: to receive the Bible as "their only rule of faith and practice," and reject all traditions and institutions founded thereon; and it has been with the deepest regret that I have noticed, for years past their wide departure from the above rule. It would not be possible for Baptists to persist in Sunday-keeping, if they carried into practice their profession, to follow the Bible and reject the traditions of men. An illustration of the manner in which their weapons may be turned against them is furnished by an incident related to me by a resident of Waupun, Wis. The M. E. minister of that circuit, in a sermon on baptism, remarked that it was objected

against infant baptism, that there was no command for it in the Bible. "The same," said he, "may be said in regard to the Sabbath; there is not, from Genesis to Revelation, any command to observe the first day of the week, and yet we do it." This should forever put to silence all objections to infant baptism—with the Baptists I mean—or lead them to a more consistent and scriptural course in regard to the Sabbath.

Similar to the above is the following scrap of history, published in a Presbyterian work now in my possession. "Doubts on this subject [Sunday-keeping] are of very recent origin. They date no further back than the ages subsequent to the Reformation, and then they arose chiefly among the same people, who denied, because there is no command in the New Testament enjoining it, the propriety of infant baptism." So the question is settled!

The Papists laugh the Protestants to scorn, because they deny the authority of the Catholic church and yet follow her teachings in "keeping Sunday strictly, and breaking most other feasts commanded by the same church." The Baptists declaim against the Pedo-Baptists, because they deny the right of the Catholics to hold tradition to be equal in authority to the Bible, yet practice infant baptism, which is unauthorized by the Bible, and rests solely on tradition. The Pedo-Baptists in turn point to the inconsistency of the Baptists in denying the propriety of infant baptism, merely because it is not enjoined in the Bible, but rests on the authority of tradition alone, while they keep the first day of the week, which rests entirely on the same tradition without any authority whatever from the Bible. And "the world" with equal force retorts upon them all for these denials of their faith in their text-book, or concludes that the Bible is the author of this confusion. Thus by reason of them the way of truth is evil spoken of. The Baptists have claimed, and most of them now claim, to be free from such inconsistency, yet in truth their inconsistency is the greatest, as their profession is the highest. J. H. W.