WE are permitted to copy the following from a private letter from one of our preaching brethren to another. The writer is one of our most highly esteemed ministers, always careful and judicious in his statements:—
"I do not know how it will strike others, but I do not see how we can send men out to preach who are not sound on the baptism question. For my own part I think trine immersion as much of a corruption of the ordinance as pouring, when we take into view the design of baptism, and the event of which it is a memorial. Of course it does not seem so to our Dunker friends; they are sincere as many advocates of sprinkling are."
These words we most heartily indorse. We have tried to examine the claims of trine immersion in a historical view, with care, and to treat it with candor. And it is certainly not to the credit of trine immersionists that they turn off our evidences with the remark that "it does not touch the point," as some have done, without making any effort to refute the facts or to meet the argument. We commenced the investigation of the subject with the conviction that they had a strong historical argument; but on reading we were surprised that they have really no foundation for some of their most important statements which are put forth in the most confident manner. If we are in error it could be shown; but we have the strongest assurance that it cannot be shown.
If they had the strength of argument with them on history, that would not convince us that they had the truth, because church history proves no obligation in the absence of Scriptural evidence. As the writer above says, their view is clearly shown to be erroneous, "when we take into view the design of baptism." No individual can consistently hold that view as a Seventh-day Adventist.