[CHAPTER VIII.]
ORDINATION AND PUBLIC LABORS.
The churches and communities in which he had given proofs of his ministry, began to call for the ordination of Mr. Badger. Before me this moment is the call of the church in Gilmanton, dated Dec. 4, 1814, which reads as follows:
"This certifies that Joseph Badger has been preaching several months past in this and adjacent towns with much success, and in this place souls have been converted to God. He has the approbation of the church in this place, as a Christian and a Preacher of the Gospel, and we believe it would be for the glory of God for him to receive Ordination.
"Signed, in behalf of the Church,
"Jasper Elkins,
"Frederick Cogswell,
"Daniel Elkins."
Rev. N. Wilson, of Barnstead, after making strict inquiry and satisfactory examination, in answer to the requests from the people, wrote to brethren in the ministry all about, to attend on the occasion at his residence, Jan. 19. The call was obeyed by the presence of seven ministers and a multitude of people. Rev. Wm. Blaisdel delivered the discourse, from 2d Tim. 4: 2, who, with W. Young, J. Boody, J. Shepherd, N. Wilson, J. Knowles, N. Piper, were the persons by whom the different parts of the services were performed. It will be understood by the reader that this ordination demanded no sectarian acknowledgments; that it left the tree unbent. "I was considered by them," says Mr. B., "as free indeed. No discipline was urged upon me but the Scriptures, and no master or leader but Christ. This, to me, was a solemn day, and long to be remembered." He was now relieved of many embarrassments under which he had formerly labored in not being able to administer the ordinances.
He still persevered in his labors through towns adjacent to Gilmanton, and "many of the youth," he tells us, "fled to the Shiloh for salvation and rest." On Jan. 29, he delivered a sermon on Baptism, in the Free Meeting-house, Gilmanton, and in the extreme cold, "under the keen eye of the north-west, which surveyed them critically," he baptized two persons, Mr. F. Cogswell and Miss Lydia Levy. Satan, he thinks, began about this time to exhibit himself as a persecutor, having an interest now, as of old, in the assemblies of the saints. Feb. 4th, he baptized two others in Alton, three others on the 10th at Gilmanton, and large congregations waited upon his ministry. By the regular clergy and their united influence, his movements were often opposed. Among the reports that clerical policy caused to arise, he records the following chapter:
"Badger is going about making and baptizing converts, and leaves them on the common. He has no discipline nor articles of faith. He throws away the holy Sabbath, alleging that it is done away in Christ. He says that he is not called to preach law, but gospel; therefore he casts the law of God away. He says there is no divine authority for infant sprinkling; that if we take it from circumcision, it can have, like its prototype, but a partial application to human beings. He also teaches that it is right for sinners to pray; and has said that the clergy are the greatest evil that ever happened to New England, because they keep the people in gross ignorance, because they do not admit to their pulpits many Gospel ministers, and because they are always the first to cry out against Reformation.
"'And when a soul engaged,
Exhorts the young or aged,
The clergy cry, enraged,
They'll pull our churches down.'"
How many such things the devil enables blind men to throw into the way of truth! but such is the power of Jesus' name, that no soldier of his cross is ever slain so long as he battles for the right."