This denomination of Christians dissent from the regular Baptists on the point that immersion is a prerequisite to the privileges of a church relation, and permit Christians of all denominations, in regular church standing, to partake with them at the Lord's table.
The Rev. Robert Hall, of England, one of the most learned and eloquent Baptist ministers of the age, was an unflinching opposer of the practice of “close communion,” which he denounced as “unchristian and unnatural.” In a tract written in defence of his views on this subject, he remarks, “It is too much to expect an enlightened public will be eager to enroll themselves among the members of a sect which displays much of the intolerance of Popery, without any portion of its splendor, and prescribes, as the pledge of conversion, the renunciation of the whole Christian world.”
In reference to the mode of baptism, Mr. Hall says, “I would not myself baptize in any other way than by immersion, [pg 301] because I look upon immersion as the ancient mode; that it best represents the meaning of the original term employed, and the substantial import of this institution; and because I should think it right to guard against the spirit of innovation, which, in positive rites, is always dangerous and progressive; but I should not think myself authorized to rebaptize any one who has been sprinkled in adult age.”
This class of Baptists are found chiefly in the western and northern parts of the state of New York. They number between forty and fifty churches and ministers.
Transcendentalists.
Transcendent and Transcendental are technical terms in philosophy. According to their etymology, (from transcendere,) they signify that which goes beyond a certain limit; in philosophy, that which goes beyond, or transcends, the circle of experience, or of what is perceptible by the senses. Properly speaking, all philosophy is in this sense transcendental, because all philosophical investigations rise above the sensual, even if they start from that which is perceptible by the senses. But philosophical inquiries are to be distinguished according as they proceed from experience, or from principles and ideas not derived from that source. The latter sort are called, in a narrower sense, pure, or transcendental. The school of Kant makes a still further distinction: it gives the name of transcendental to that which does not, indeed, originate from experience, but yet is connected with it, because it contains the grounds of the possibility of experience; but the term transcendent it applies to that which cannot be connected with experience, but transcends the limit of possible experience and of philosophizing.
As applied in this country, especially when used as a term of reproach, Transcendentalism would designate a system [pg 302] which builds on feeling, rather than on reason, and relies more on the imagination than on the judgment. In the main, however, the Transcendentalists are persons who hold that man has the power to perceive intuitively truths which transcend the reach of the senses; but they divide, some taking the unction of Sentimentalism, and others of Mysticism.