04 - Extracts of Letters
EXTRACTS OF LETTER.
EXTRACTS OF A LETTER FROM THE AUTHOR, GIVING AN ACCOUNT OF HIS CHANGE OF VIEWS, AND WRITTEN A FEW DAYS AFTER HIS BAPTISM.
MARIETTA COLLEGE, June 28, 1838.
* * * * "Perhaps you know I have preached for about two years past to a Presbyterian church in the country. Some eighteen months ago, an elder of that church became a Baptist. On the occasion of his baptism a sermon was preached by Rev. Hiram Gear, the Baptist minister in Marietta. This sermon disturbed several members of my church, and the session requested me to preach on baptism, in reply. I declined, saying, the best way to manage the excitement was totally to disregard it; pleading my duties in college, &c. Soon the session applied to me a second time, insisting that I must preach on the subject; several members of the church were in trouble, and a discourse must be delivered. Finding that the interest in the subject was not likely to die by neglect on my part, I told the church I would prepare a discourse as soon as practicable, and begged them to remain quiet till they should hear what I might have to say. [17]
"Thus compelled to write, I determined to go into an original investigation of the whole matter, proceeding just as if I had never heard or read any thing on either side, and endeavoring, with a spirit of candid and prayerful inquiry, to seek after the mind of Christ. I began my researches by reading Professor Stuart on baptizo, the ablest pedo-baptist work on the philology of the subject. The inquiry was, What does Christ mean when he commands his ministers to baptize? I was soon astonished to find, in Stuart’s investigation, proof so strong that the word, in its literal, ordinary sense universally means to immerse, plunge, or dip. It looked as if, with this fact before him, the learned professor ought to have become a Baptist. I was alarmed, and would have given up the inquiry, but could not. I laid aside Stuart, and entered upon an investigation of the original Scriptures relative to the language used respecting the ordinance. I also examined Josephus, and the classics, so far as I had the means. The further I prosecuted my inquiries, the stronger was the evidence in favor of Baptist views. Thus passed some months. The people had become tired of asking after my sermon on Baptism, but my conscience would not now suffer me to abandon the investigation. I therefore continued to apply [18] to it, as other duties permitted, all my powers, till I was compelled to admit, as a philologist and interpreter of the Bible, that immersion, and that only, is the baptism which Christ enjoins.
"Afterwards I took up infant baptism; and here I found myself in clouds and darkness. I wandered about in the fogs with which writers have shrouded the Abrahamic covenant, the connection between the Old and the New Dispensations, the substitution of modern for ancient rites and ordinances, the obscure passages of ecclesiastical history, bewildered and perplexed--all, as I now believe, because I would not trust to the WORD OF GOD to guide me to GOD’S INSTITUTIONS. I conversed with my pedo-baptist friends, I prayed, and wept, and groaned. I would lay down the subject for weeks, then resume it, till, some three or four months ago, I was obliged, in the fear of God, to conclude that none but believers in Jesus have a right to the ordinances of Jesus.
* * * * * * * * * * * "I lay no claim to infallibility; but if I am wrong, I am conscientiously so--I am so after a most laborious and protracted search for truth. I have acted also in opposition to all the prejudices of early years--of classical and theological study-- [19] prejudices confirmed by twelve years’ connection with a pedo-baptist church, during six of which I acted as a minister of Christ. And not only my church relations, but all my literary associations, my family connections, and my temporal interests have combined to withhold me from the result to which I have come. These I cheerfully sacrifice to my convictions of truth and duty."
* * * * * * * * "Yours, &c." [20]