On this page

• Text (1)

  Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. The text has not been manually corrected and should not be relied on to be an accurate representation of the item.

  • 

    Untitled Article

• Transcript

  • Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. The text has not been manually corrected and should not be relied on to be an accurate representation of the item.

    Additionally, when viewing full transcripts, extracted text may not be in the same order as the original document.

    Untitled Article

    i question of great importance to be letermined , whether the existing circumstances of Christianity are such as vholly to dispense with those uses r or which the ceremony must have ) een originally instituted . In

    themselves , indeed , mere ceremonies are of no utility ; it is the circumstances with which they are connected from which they derive their importance , their obligation , and their beneficial influences . To these circumstances , therefore , should we direct our attention

    for a criterion of their value ; and in proportion as they are found connected with a divine authority , and with the general obligations of a religion of infinite moment , will their utility be made to appear . Under

    these impressions I beg to state my views of the uses and obligation of baptism , which , I conceive , extend in a considerable degree to the present day , and probably will be continued to the period when the great purposes of the Christian revelation shall have

    been consummated . John , we are informed , " came baptizing with water unto repentance /* The meaning seems evident , that he used the ceremony as an emblem of penitence , preparatory to that moral purity and excellence required by the

    Christian dispensation . In its connexion with this essential object , the ceremony was , no doubt , of considerable utility ; it led to a rigid examination of the Jewish people as they presented themselves individually for its adoption ; and the result appears to

    have been , that while the hypocrisy of many of the greatest pretenders to sanctity was detected , some of the most worthy , though obscure and despised , members of society , as Jesus and his more immediate disciples , were

    selected . Nor should the compliance of the Saviour himself , though in the estimation of John so exempt from sin as to be an unlit subject of the ceremony , together with the peculiar mark of Divine approbation accompanying it , be overlooked as additional

    sanctions to its importance . After this we read , that " Jesus made and baptized more disciples than John , though Jesus himself baptized not , but his disciples . " And on his final departure from them , he left this command : f £ Go ye and teach all nations , haptizing them iuto the name of the Father ,

    Untitled Article

    and of the Son , and of the Holy § 0 ^ . teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded youand lo , I am with M you . always , to the end of the age : or , as it is in M&vk " Go ye into all the world , and preac h the to

    gospel every creature . He who believeth and is baptized shall be saved ; but he who believeth not shall be condemned . " The baptism of Jesus or that which was practised by his disciples in his name , and which received his sanction , was plainly different from that of John , since it included the

    acknowledgment that Jesus is . the Christ the Son of God , from whom he had received miraculous powers ; all which ideas are evidently included in the words " baptized into the name of the Father , the Son and the Holy Spirit . " Accordingly , when the apostles afterwards met with some who had

    received John ' s baptism only , they were rebaptized into the name of Christ and the acknowledgment of his miraculous powers . The words , "Go into all nations , baptizing" them , * ' cannot

    surely be reconciled with the opinion of your correspondent T . A . T ., that baptism was confined to the first converts from Judaism ; and in the parallel place in Mark , the limitation is simply to believers after the same

    universal call to embrace the gospel . With respect to the concluding clause in Matthew ^ "Lo , I am with you always , even unto the end of the age , " I confess it appears to me much more reasonable to conclude that the close

    of lvis own , and not of the Jewish dispensation terminating with the destruction of Jerusalem , is intended ; or rather , that it is an emphatic mode of promising his support and

    consolations so long as they shall be required I cannot , therefore , discover any limitations either of persons or duration to the order of baptism so universally expressed in the preceding verse , any more thun to the general order to " teach the observance of all things whatsoever he had commanded them .

    Oa the contrary , the whole appears have all the universality and comprehensiveness , as it respects person * , duration and subjects of observance , and all the emphasis of ex pression which appertains to a command o universal and perpetual obligation . If there bo any intimation that tin command to baptize was liable to

    Untitled Article

    34 Mr . Pine on Moral Uses of Perpetual Baptisrti *

• Citation
  • Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Dec. 2, 1826, page 734, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2555/page/34/