FOOTNOTES:
[1] This and several of the following sections are consistent with the “Star Book on Baptist Church Polity,“ on the same topics.
[2] In some States the laws do not recognize the church, that being a spiritual body, but incorporate a society, as it is called, consisting of all persons of full age who attend and support the worship. This society has charge of the financial affairs of the church, holds and keeps in repair its property, and conducts its secular concerns. It elects a specified number of trustees, as provided for by law, who are the legal representatives of the corporation. The members of the society, and the trustees elected, may or may not be members of the church. This whole society arrangement is a relic of the old New England parish system of the standing order, and is inconsistent with the freedom of church action, and antagonistic to Baptist Church independence. It is anti-Baptistic and anti-Scriptural. A church should be allowed to manage its own affairs, both temporal and spiritual: and should be protected by law in doing so. The society system has been abrogated in most of the States.
CHAPTER III
church ordinances
Christian ordinances, in the largest sense, are any institutions, or regulations of Divine appointment, established as means of grace for the good of men, or as acts of worship for the honor of God. In that sense, not only are baptism and the Lord’s Supper ordinances, but preaching, prayer, hearing the Word, fasting, and thanksgiving are also ordinances, since all are of Divine appointment. But, in a narrower sense, it is common to say that baptism and the Lord’s Supper are the only ordinances appointed by Christ to be observed by His churches. These are the only emblematic and commemorative rites enjoined upon His disciples, by which they are to be distinguished, and He is to be honored. They are the two symbols and witnesses of the New Covenant, the two monuments of the New Dispensation.
Baptism is the immersion, or dipping, of a candidate in water, on a profession of his faith in Christ and on evidence of regeneration; the baptism to be ministered in, or into, the name of the Father, the Son, and Holy Spirit. It represents the burial and resurrection of Christ, and in a figure declares the candidate’s death to sin and the world, and his rising to a new life. It also proclaims the washing of regeneration, and professes the candidate’s hope of a resurrection from the dead, through Him into the likeness of whose death he is buried in baptism.
The Lord’s Supper is a provision of bread and wine, used to represent the body and the blood of Christ, partaken of by members of the church assembled for that purpose; in which service they commemorate the love of Christ exhibited in His death for them, and profess their faith and participation in the merits of His sacrifice, as the only ground of their hope of eternal life.
Note 1.—No person can rightfully or properly become a church-member except he be first baptized, as the distinguishing mark and profession of his discipleship.