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p284 * * * I regret the occupation of minds with baptism, and pressing it on others as is done. It is not Christ nor the church, but ordinances; and I judge it is a very great evil, always injuring the person who is so occupied. The person who spoke to you probably had been baptised as a child, and only meant that he had not been immersed as an adult. The ground they take, I am more than ever assured from scripture, is wholly false.

As to christening, it is the word which most truly expresses what baptism is being made, as to outward position, a Christian. This, which your baptism as an infant did, no present immersion could possibly do. There would be no public introduction to Christendom of a man born of Adam no becoming a Christian by profession. There would be what they call obedience, which is in the teeth of scripture, and the reputation of what they call "seeing baptism," or adopting Baptist views, which are every way false and that is all. To a scriptural judgment you cannot be baptised now, because you have been for I affirm, according to scripture, baptism is just christening that is, the introduction into Christianity, and nothing else. Every other view of it is unscriptural and false. I fear much the falsifying the position and testimony of brethren by the way some press it. It is simply confounding the house and the public profession with the unity of the body of Christ. The public body exists, corrupted, no doubt, but exists, and to form it again by baptism is all false; it exists by baptism: and we are called to maintain the unity of the body, of which the Lord's supper is the sign (not baptism); to follow righteousness, faith, charity, peace, with those that call on the Lord out of a pure heart. A testimony by baptism I should consider a false testimony, and should take no part in. If a person never had been baptised, it is irregular, and should be remedied, and if a person falsely fancies he has not, I respect his conscience; but his making a point of it tends always to disunion, not unity; and if this testimony were practically founded on it, I should leave it as a false one. Still, I have never meddled, nor should, with those who think they have not been and ought to be baptised, nor make their ignorance a reason for troubling them, as they trouble others by what I am perfectly satisfied is only ignorance. I am as satisfied as that I am sitting here writing, that all their views of baptism are utterly false and unscriptural. I repeat, the only true sense of baptism is what is expressed in the word christening. The great point now is maintaining the unity of the body separate from evil; with this, baptism has nothing to do. It is either public Christendom or christening which we have, or the badge of a sect.

What we have to look for is not subjection to ordinances . . but spiritual mindedness (not sinking, as you say, into the quiet possession of mighty truths without the power of them) and unity of those who love the Lord. Baptism so called, helps neither, but the contrary. . . . I only add, that your baptism, though in the midst of confusion, was bonâ fide, the same as your child's. I was exercised in the same way; but I felt I was introduced, and meant to be introduced in good faith, into the church as a public profession in the world, and this is what baptism is - I was christened. The state of individuals in their souls has nothing to do with it. It is not communion in the unity of the body, which is by the Holy Ghost. I admit the same confusion in mere expression of the service, not of the baptism, that there is among Baptists; but the name christening just shews the justness of the appreciation of the rite and the true purpose of those concerned in it. In this the Establishment is right; the Baptists, according to scripture, clearly wrong.

The Lord bless you and your home. Seek, dear brother, that not the freshness of a soul just out of prison, but the deep and living power of a soul in constancy of communion with God, may be found in you, and pray for me and fellow saints that it may be so. The Lord is working remarkably here; not now, in adding outwardly, but what I think more of, giving His word power in souls.

[52181E]

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