A church dictionary

by Walter Farquhar Hook

BAPTISTS. A name improperly assumed by those who deny the validity of infant baptism, defer the baptism of their own children, and admit proselytes into their community by a second washing. They are more properly called Anabaptists, (see Anabaptists,) from their baptizing again; or Antipædobaptists, from their denying the validity of infant baptism. Their assumed name of Baptists would intimate that they alone truly baptize, and it ought not therefore to be allowed them. We ought no more to call them Baptists, than to call Socinians Unitarians, or Papists Catholics, as if we did not hold the Unity of the Godhead, and Socinians were distinguished from us by that article; or as if the Papists, and not we, were catholic or true Christians.

The following is the account of the denomination given by Burder. The members of this denomination are distinguished from all other professing Christians by their opinions respecting the ordinance of Christian baptism. Conceiving that positive institutions cannot be established by analogical reasoning, but depend on the will of the Saviour revealed in express precepts, and that apostolical example illustrative of this is the rule of duty, they differ from their Christian brethren with regard both to the subjects and the mode of baptism.

With respect to the subjects, from the command which Christ gave after his resurrection, and in which baptism is mentioned as consequent to faith in the gospel, they conceive them to be those, and those only, who believe what the apostles were then enjoined to preach.

With respect to the mode, they affirm that, instead of sprinkling or pouring, the person ought to be immersed in the water, referring to the primitive practice, and observing that the baptizer as well as the baptized having gone down into the water, the latter is baptized in it, and both come up out of it. They say, that John baptized in the Jordan, and that Jesus, after being baptized, came up out of it. Believers are said also to be “buried with Christ by baptism into death, wherein also they are risen with him;” and the Baptists insist that this is a doctrinal allusion incompatible with any other mode.

But they say that their views of this institution are much more confirmed, and may be better understood, by studying its nature and import. They consider it as an impressive emblem of that by which their sins are remitted or washed away, and of that on account of which the Holy Spirit is given to those who obey the Messiah. In other words, they view Christian baptism as a figurative representation of that which the gospel of Jesus is in testimony. To this the mind of the baptized is therefore naturally led, while spectators are to consider him as professing his faith in the gospel, and his subjection to the Redeemer. The Baptists, therefore, would say, that none ought to be baptized except those who seem to believe this gospel; and that immersion is not properly a mode of baptism, but baptism itself.

Thus the English and most foreign Baptists consider a personal profession of faith, and an immersion in water, as essential to baptism. The profession of faith is generally made before the congregation, at a church-meeting. On these occasions some have a creed, to which they expect the candidate to assent, and to give a circumstantial account of his conversion; but others require only a profession of his faith as a Christian. The former generally consider baptism as an ordinance, which initiates persons into a particular church; and they say that, without breach of Christian liberty, they have a right to expect an agreement in articles of faith in their own societies. The latter think that baptism initiates merely into a profession of the Christian religion, and therefore say that they have no right to require an assent to their creed from such as do not intend to join their communion; and, in support of their opinion, they quote the baptism of the eunuch, in the eighth chapter of the Acts of the Apostles.

The Baptists are divided into the General, who are Arminians, and the Particular, who are Calvinists. Some of both classes allow mixed communion, by which is understood, that those who have not been baptized by immersion on the profession of their faith, (but in their infancy, which they themselves deem valid,) may sit down at the Lord’s table along with those who have been thus baptized. This has given rise to much controversy on the subject.

Some of both classes of Baptists are, at the same time, Sabbatarians, and, with the Jews, observe the seventh day of the week as the sabbath. This has been adopted by them from a persuasion that, all the ten commandments are in their nature strictly moral, and that the observance of the seventh day was never abrogated or repealed by our Saviour or his apostles.

In discipline, the Baptists differ little from the Independents. In Scotland they have some peculiarities, not necessary to notice.

BARDESANISTS. Christian heretics in the East, and the followers of Bardesanes, who lived in Mesopotamia in the second century, and was first the disciple of Valentinus, but quitted that heresy, and wrote not only against it, but against the Marcionite and other heresies of his time; he afterwards unhappily fell into the errors he had before refuted. The Bardesanists differed from the Catholic Church on three points:—1. They held the devil to be a self-existent, independent being. 2. They taught that our Lord was not born of a woman, but brought his body with him from heaven. 3. They denied the resurrection of the body.—Euseb. Præp. Evang. lib. vi. c. 9. Epiph. Hæres. 5, 6. Origen, contr. Marcion, § 3.