ONE ERROR LEADS TO ANOTHER.
By R. F. C.
“TAKEN in connection with the Scripture facts we have adduced, it would stand thus: ‘Infants of believing parents were constituted members of the visible church 3757 years ago, by a positive direction of Jehovah; but there is no express command in the New Testament touching their membership;’ the Baptists say, ‘therefore they are excluded from the New Testament rite of admission.’ But we say, therefore they should be baptized. What would become of the Christian Sabbath under such meddling hands as the Baptists apply to infants? The New Testament nowhere expressly enjoins the observance of it, therefore it must not be observed. Will they abide the result? Candor would oblige us to say, that, as the law made under the old dispensation for the observance of the Sabbath has never been repealed, that law is still binding. Though it has been changed by apostolic use, from the seventh day to the first day, neither the Baptists nor ourselves21believe that this change together with the silence of the New Testament touching its observance, releases us from the obligation to keep it holy. And if the Baptists would use the same logic and the same honesty in reference to infants, they would say, that neither the change of the ritual from circumcision to baptism, nor the silence of the New Testament respecting its application to infants, releases us from the obligation to administer it to them.” Thus testifies a man styled Rev. John H. Wallace, minister of the Methodist Episcopal church, in a discourse on baptism delivered at Mt. Morris in 1843. The argument is an attempt to engraft one error upon another, or to prove that because the Baptists venerate one tradition concerning which the New Testament is silent, they ought to receive another of the same character. Carry out this principle, and all the traditions and teachings of the self-styled Catholic church would be fastened upon us, and how much more is uncertain; for there are a great many other things about which the New Testament and the Old too are silent. It is hard to tell how the Baptists can answer this argument while they hold to the change of the Sabbath. If there is any difference between the two rites, infant baptism has the advantage; for infant circumcision is taught in the Old Testament and believers’ baptism in the New; but of this first-day Sabbath there is not so much as the remotest hint in either the Old or the New. Men are more inclined to add one human tradition to another than to abandon those they have for the truth. And yet all must be sensible, if they will reflect, that none of their errors can benefit them, that truth alone is able to sanctify and save them. I would invite our Baptist friends (and I mean all that hold the immersion of believers to be the only valid baptism), to read a tract published at the Review Office, entitled, An Appeal to the Baptists, from the Seventh-day Baptist General Conference. This little work shows that infant sprinkling and Sunday-keeping stand upon the same sandy foundation, and that the only proper way is to discard them both and take the Bible alone for our rule.