Baptist waymarks; principles and usages of gospel churches

Front matter

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Book

Contents

CHAPTER PAGE

I. Introduction 7

II. What is a Gospel Church? 12

Introduction

THE Baptists of America at the beginning of the twentieth century number nearly five million communicants. They are found in every State and Territory of the Union, with schools, colleges, and theological seminaries, equal in numbers and in efficiency to those of any denomination in the country, and added to these a great Publishing Society with branches in various States. That this mighty and aggressive people should know themselves — their antecedents, their principles, and their usages — is beyond all question. Others should also have the means of knowing them.

The questions to be answered in these pages are, what are the principles, and what are the church usages of these people — the Baptists of America ?

There are various treatises, manuals, handbooks, and the like, on church discipline. Most of these are the result of laborious thought and research. Many of them are almost unexceptionable in their teachings and practical character.

But there is one field as yet unoccupied. There is a want still unsupplied in our denominational literature. There is no work which embodies the acts of churches or Associations in prominent or remarkable cases, and which would serve as precedents or guides in time of trouble.

Buoys and lighthouses are placed along the rugged shore, where dangers have been met or where wrecks have occurred. The rocks and shoals may thus be shunned and the safe channel be pursued. The experience of early mariners becomes the teacher of those who come after. This is, in fact, the basis of all progression. The voices of the past speaking to us in its acts, the wisdom of the past seen and tested in the results of those acts, become guides to us in our still onward struggles toward perfection. The triumphs or defeats of others should be marked down for our guidance ; their mistakes or imprudence for our future avoidance. They will form a chart, to be consulted on unknown or dangerous seas.

Precedents or examples are appealed to as common law. " Common law is immemorial usage." Renderings, decisions, and verdicts, are appealed to as precedents ; and, when established as such, have an intrinsic authority. When they have become common usage, they stand forth as the result of the wisdom and experience of ages. They have been tried and tested ; have challenged and

INTRODUCTION 9

obtained the common consent and assent. Hence their authority or influence. The Book of God is the only law of his churches. To make or unmake its laws or ordinances is treason against heaven. To claim the right to abolish, amend, or suspend its discipline, is the highest presumption. It is a sign of Antichrist. Yet, how, or in what method, these laws and discipline shall be enforced or applied, are questions which the honest Christian or prayerful church may find it difficult to answer, and, in matters of church polity, may undesignedly err. Cases of discipline will frequently occur in which mismanagement, or haste, or inexperience, will involve a church, or a number of churches, in almost interminable difficulty.

The artful and guilty will shun the simple and long-established modes of discipline or adjustment, and an inexperienced church will have no examples to guide it, and anarchy or division will result. " There is nothing new under the sun." It is hardly possible that any case of discipline can occur, either in a church or an Association, but that some case analogous has occurred before. Now, if this analogous case were before us, together with the way in which it was managed and disposed of, and the wisdom and justness of that decision tested by time, what a guide would that case be in settling a similar one.

To arrange systematically the acts of churches

IO BAPTIST WAYMARKS

and Associations in important matters of discipline with members, ministers, or churches ; to report cases and review them, so as to present the usages of Baptists, past and present ; report the actual code of practices among us — would be a laborious undertaking, but certainly a useful one. Be this as it may, we have determined to attempt its partial accomplishment.

From the minutes of the Philadelphia Association, from Semple's " History of the Virginia Baptists," from the " History of the Kentocton Association/' Benedict's History, and that of the Alabama Baptists, and also from records and minutes of Associations and churches, may be gathered the acts and usages of our denomination in the Southwest — classified so as to serve as a book of reference, not authoritative, but as a guide, or monitor, which will aid in producing uniformity in our operations. The constitution of a church, the steps to be taken, and the manner of constituting it, and the attending services, ought to some extent, at least, to be governed by settled usage. An example of how this is usually done, will be a guide. The call of a pastor, the ordination of a minister, or the election of a deacon ; the arraignment of a member or a minister, the proper mode of trial, what witnesses should be received, and what penalties adjudged ; when a council of helps should be called, and its duty when called ; the relation

INTRODUCTION I I

of one church to another, and of churches to an Association ; of ministers to each other, and of churches to the ministry ; all these may be illustrated by cases which have undergone rigid investigation, and in which decisions have been rendered, and received as correct.

Chapter II What Is A Gospel Church?

THE word which the Lord Jesus selected to designate his associated people means in the Greek in which the New Testament was written, a called-out assembly. It is ecclesia, and this word occurs three times in the discourses of our Lord Jesus Christ. It is for the first time used by him in Matt. 16 : 18, though there it may have a figurative application. Its literal meaning — that is, its real meaning — is evident from the Lord's use of it in Matt. 18:17. In the first instance the Lord's words are, "Upon this rock I will build my church." In the second, " If he shall neglect to hear them (the two or three) tell it to the church," and " If he neglect to hear the church, let him be to thee as an heathen man and a publican." Here the church of course means a body of people, larger and more authoritative than the "two or three" whom the offended brother has to take with him to the offender.

It was a body or assemblage that could hear the complaint, decide or adjudge — a united congregation of believers. It cannot be supposed that our 12

WHAT IS A GOSPEL CHURCH? 1 3

Lord used the word in these plain instructions in a different sense from the one in the sixteenth chapter, " Upon this rock will I build my church." If he had, then these disciples would not have understood what he meant by such a body. The word must certainly have the same meaning in both instances, and if in the last instance it means a literal assembly, it must in the first mean a literal assembly. Dean Alford, an Episcopalian, so declares. Stier, a Lutheran, an eminent Greek lexicographer, says : " In the second instance, ' Tell it to the church/ it obtains a more special significance ; yet it evidently points back to the first, so that the fundamental idea can only be the same." The " Pulpit Commentary " gives this testimony: " The word translated church, i ecclesia? Matt. 16: 18, is found the first time in the New Testament ; it is derived from a verb meaning 'to call out,' and in classic Greek denotes the regular legislative assembly of a people. Ecclesia has been that which designates the Christian society, and has been in all ages and countries." Liddell and Scott (the standard Greek lexicon, with all scholars and in all colleges and universities) defines ecclesia "an assembly of people called together," "an assembly called out." The ecclesia was common among the Greeks. According to Trench, " ecclesia was a lawful assembly of a free Greek city of those who were worthy and well qualified as citizens for the transaction of public affairs." Robinson's Greek lexicon: " The word ecchsia was common among the Jews as meaning a congregation, an assembly."

Thayer, in his lexicon of the New Testament Greek, collates critically the usage of the word from Thucydides to the end of the New Testament period, and finds it everywhere to mean an assembly real and visible : " The word ecclesia is found in the Greek translation of the New Testament seventy-four times, and is always used in the translation of the Hebrew word i kahal,' to call together. No other Hebrew word is so translated. Kahal is found in the Hebrew Scriptures one hundred and twenty-four times, and translated seventy-four times ecclesia, forty-seven times synagogue, twice plethos, and once Sanhedrin."

We read of the " churches of the Gentiles," " So ordain we in all the churches," "The churches of the Macedonians," "The seven churches which are in Asia." We nowhere read of the church of Asia, or the church of Macedonia. There is no instance of the word church in the singular, used to describe the churches as a whole, that is, the aggregated local assemblies. " The church " (Acts 9 : 31), or "churches," as in many manuscripts, is no exception, as we shall show.

It is as clear as the sunlight from the New Testament, that there was no such thing as a general church under apostolic ministry. Baptists some-

WHAT IS A GOSPEL CHURCH? I 5

times speak of the Baptist Church when they mean the aggregate of the churches. It is the influence of others upon them. "The Methodist Church of America," "The Lutheran Church," "The Presbyterian Church," why not the " Baptist Church " ? Because there is, there can be, no gospel church but a real, local, a worshiping congregation of Christ's people. Custom is masterful. Baptists must fling off its mastery and cling to God's truth. We as churches are one, as the forest is one, Baptist churches are distinct and separate as the trees are distinct and separate. The forest is not a great tree. It would be ridiculous to call it " the tree." The aggregation is not a great church. It is ridiculous to call it one. The apple orchard is not the apple tree. The tree would still be a tree were all the others cut down. The denomination is not the church. That individual body would still be a church were every other removed or dead. It is the church, though a thousand others surround it. Baptists are formed into churches, but these churches are not the church, or "branches of the church."

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J. Christ, as the Mediator of the new covenant ordereth the everlasting gospel to be preached, i:\ i ..: : : :r.; ■ .1 :..:: r .: .:.". his H:ly Scirl: blesse::. it to die turning of men from darkness to light, working faith and love in them,

"3. When sinners are thus wrought upon effectually, to such a suitable number as may be an essential church, L e. 9 to as many as may act properly and orderly as a church, that then it will be proper for them, by their mutual consent, to propose to be c on st i tuted a church, or that others seeing die expediency thereof ma gc : he 9 m c

HOW IS A GOSPEL CHURCH FORMED? 1 7

"4. For the accomplishment of so glorious a work it is necessary that a day of fasting and prayer be appointed by and among such believers, and that such procure some neighboring helps as they can, especially of the ministry.

" 5. The persons being first orderly baptized, according to the command of Christ, and being all satisfied of the graces and qualifications of each other, and being willing in the fear of God to take the laws of Christ upon them, and do by one mutual consent give up themselves to the Lord, and to one another in the Lord, solemnly submitting to the government of Christ in his church, and being united, they are to be declared a gospel church of Jesus Christ.

" 6. A number of believers thus united under Christ, their mystical head, are become a church essential, and as such is the first and proper subject of the keys, and the power and privilege to govern themselves, and to choose out their own ministerial officers."

Baptists hold that a gospel church is a local assembly of baptized believers, and the scholarship of the age admits that they are right according to the acknowledged meaning of the term used by the Lord Jesus. That this term is several times used to signify all the saved is certain. But it is a figurative application of the word. The saved, the blood-washed, are called sheep or a flock of sheep,

B but this is not literal ; they are not sheep really. It is only that in some particulars they are like sheep. So they are termed the lamb's wife and a building, but these are simply a figurative application of the term. It is misleading and confusing to conceive such figures to be facts, and to use metaphors as realities.

The Lord Jesus is called the " Lion of the tribe of Judah" ; how confusing it would be to speak of a lion dying on the cross, or of the believer as a lamb in the grasp of a lion. It is just as confusing to speak of the church of all ages and centuries following the divine Shepherd as a real veritable flock of sheep. For a flock is a number of gathered or congregated sheep. Unless assembled together they are not a flock. But this is made more confusing still when the flock is conceived to be a house and the house a garden, and the house and garden growing up into the head. Let it be remembered as a verity, that God's people (not a congregation or church as such) are compared to an army, are compared to a bride, a building, a body, having conditions resembling these. And so Christ's people are compared to a congregation, to a church, because they have a resemblance to a gathering or united body.

Stripped of metaphor, a church is a company of baptized believers united together in faith and fellowship in the name of the Lord Jesus for his

HOW IS A GOSPEL CHURCH FORMED? 1 9

service. A church is an ecclesia, is a called-out, spiritual congregation. It is in fact nothing more and is nothing less. A church, therefore, is not a general organization. It is not an aggregation of numerous local assemblies. The church at Corinth, at Philippi, together with those around them, were never called by the apostles "The Church of Greece/ ' or the catholic, that is, a general church.

Chapter IV What Constitutes Believers A Church

THE way in which a company of baptized believers become a church has been described in the second chapter. To make this still plainer, let us turn our thoughts to the church at Philippi. We are all familiar with the introduction of the gospel into that Greek city. Paul and Silas entered in, unheralded and knowing none there. On the seventh day they wandered out to the banks of the little river that marked its shores. They had learned, doubtless, that the pious Jews of the town met there on the Sabbath Day for worship. It was a spot "where prayer was wont to be made." Paul preached ; Lydia, a traveling merchant woman, who was a sincere worshiper of God, heard, evidently with deep interest, the preached word. The Lord touched her heart and she was converted and baptized.

Those who were with her, her servants or traveling companions, also heard and believed. And as Jesus made and baptized disciples, that is, made them by the truth preached with the Holy Spirit's application of that truth, so Paul and Silas made

WHAT CONSTITUTES BELIEVERS A CHURCH? 21

disciples of these subjects of grace and then baptized them. Then came the imprisonment of Paul and Silas. Their midnight songs of triumph were followed by the trembling of the earth. The prison foundations were shaken. The jailer was converted. He was told to believe on the Lord Jesus Christ for salvation. He did and was saved. Paul and Silas then " spake unto them the word of the Lord, and unto all that were in the house/ ' The blessed truth was made effective to all. And the jailer " took them" to some place where " he washed their stripes and was baptized, he and all his straightway." " He believed and rejoiced with all his house.' ' They had all heard the gospel, all had believed, all were baptized. Now, as a matter of course, these disciples would at once show fellowship with Lydia and those with her. "And they went out of the prison (the next morning) and entered into the house of Lydia, and when they had seen the brethren they comforted them," brethren in Lydia' s house. These coming together as they were wont, but now meeting in Lydia's house in the name of the Lord Jesus, united in bond and fellowship and service, would become a congregation, an ecclesia, a gospel church of baptized believers.

Fellowship, as has been shown, is the essence of church relationship, or, as it may be named, churchhood. It would be well, would be productive of great benefit both to the person seeking admission into the church and to those composing it, if the applicant had a summary of the covenant repeated to him and was asked if he or she was willing to take these covenant vows upon him or her, and then, instead of a motion and a second (altogether unnecessary, as the church is already moved on the question opened before the church), those who can freely extend their covenant vows — to watch over, pray for, and discharge the duties of one member of the body to another — say this by raising their hand. It is the ancient way of declaring faith and fellowship and of receiving a new-born one into the spiritual family.

To withdraw this fellowship is to expel or exclude. It is excommunication from communion or fellowship.

A declaration of principles as well as a covenant is necessary to a gospel church, that is to say, a company of baptized believers in the Lord Jesus Christ, fellowshiping each other as one in Christ Jesus united, expressed by covenant, should make known to all men who wish to know the truths which they as a body hold as " the faith once delivered to the saints." Accordingly, when formed into a church by covenant or agreement they make a " Declaration of Faith."

This is not a creed in the general meaning of that word. It is no imposed formula. It is no

WHAT CONSTITUTES BELIEVERS A CHURCH ? 23

authorized dictation of a council. It is not of binding force. It may be altered or amended by the action of the congregation, the church which put it forth. Fidelity and candor call for such a declaration, and Baptist churches usually put forth or adopt such scriptural avowal of their conception of Bible teaching.

Many such declarations or Confessions of Faith are extant. The most pronounced is that put forth by " Seven Baptist Churches in London," 1643, an d republished with amendments in 1689.

The Philadelphia Association, while not formally adopting this, did so by recommending its publication. It has since been known as " The Philadelphia Confession. " When a church is organized the Confession known as the New Hampshire, 1 or some other, is read, and, if approved by the church, adopted as expressive of its faith.

1 Found in Appendix A.

Chapter V Is Baptism The Door Into A Gospel Church?

WE must turn to the other general misconception of what constitutes a person a member of Christ's church. The Reformers, and Protestants generally, with all their apologies for and explanations of the term invisible as meaning the unseen work or "door" into that church, fell back on the patristic doctrine that " the sacrament of baptism was the door into the church," with no term to distinguish it. " In baptism, wherein I was made a member of the church," reads the Episcopal Catechism, "whereby they that receive baptism rightly are grafted into the church." But we need not quote from the Confessions and Disciplines of the Protestant communions to prove this. It is admitted by them that baptism admits into or is the door into the church. Now, according to the teachings of the New Testament and the essential nature and obligations of church-membership, this, "which some Baptists hold," is a misconception. Doctor Dagg has well said : "Baptism is not, like the Lord's Supper, a sacred rite. It signifies the fellowship of individual believers with Christ, not 24

IS BAPTISM THE DOOR? 25

the fellowship of believers with one another. The obligation to be baptized is independent of the obligations to form sacred relations and is prior to it. Baptism is therefore a qualification for admission into a church as to its external organization, but it does not confer membership. ,, l The plain statement in regard to the church in Jerusalem should at once end all controversy about this : " They that gladly received the word were baptized, and the same day there were added unto them about three thousand souls." Not that all these were baptized on the same day. Many, perhaps most of them, may have been baptized previously, but they were added to the church in fellowship. Baptism, as well as conversion or receiving the word, was an indispensable prerequisite, but neither the one nor the other added these thousands, nor Lydia, nor the jailer, nor the eunuch, to the church. This was a distinct thing, the expression of fellowship and assumption of mutual covenant obligation. If the following condensed objection to the general record, especially of Pedobaptists, be considered, we feel assured that the dogma of baptism as the door into the church will be abandoned :

I. If baptism is the door into the Christian church, then all whom John baptized (allowing his baptism to be gospel baptism) were by the reception of this ordinance made members of some !See Reynolds' " Church Polity," p. 48.

church ; but no such intimation is given in the Scriptures. The object of John's baptism is declared to be " to make ready a people, prepared for the Lord."

2. If baptism is the door into the church, then there is no such thing as putting a person out of the church, for, in order to do this, he must be unbaptized, but this cannot be done.

3. If baptism is the door into the church, can one person constitute a church ? The Christian public has answered, "No." And "no" responds every passage of the divine oracles wherever the name church is mentioned. To what church then did the first disciple whom John baptized belong? To what church, the first in every instance, where none had been previously constituted ? The answer is obvious, "To no church." If then the first person whom John baptized was not by the reception of this ordinance constituted a member of some church, the second w r as not, nor the third, nor any subsequent subject.

4. In the account of the eunuch's baptism, Acts 8, no mention is made of his being added to any particular church, nor have we any reason to believe that he considered the ordinance in this light. Indeed, as he was traveling and at considerable distance from his own country, such a relation, if we suppose it to have been consummated at that time, could be of but little avail to him. Nor is

IS BAPTISM THE DOOR ? 27

there anything in the account of other baptisms which makes this an initiatory ordinance or door into the church. It is said, Acts 2:41 : " Then they that gladly received the word were baptized, and the same day there were added unto them about three thousand souls. ,, In the forty-seventh verse : " And the Lord added to the church daily such as should be saved." But how were they added? Here we are not informed. We are told, " They that gladly received the word were baptized " ; that "they were added to the disciples," and the Lord added to the church, but it is not said that they were added " by baptism " any more than by gladly receiving the word. Both were prerequisites, but neither was initiatory. If, then, baptism is not the door into the visible church of Christ, it may be asked, "What is?" We answer, " Nothing more nor less than fellowship."

By fellowship we are admitted ; and by dis-fellowship we are excluded. " Is then a person, who is received into fellowship as a Christian, to be considered as a church-member? "

We answer, no ; but he must be fellowshiped, as an orthodox, baptized, and regular Christian.

We have endeavored to state as clearly and briefly as we could the two errors — the one of the Protestants, the other of the Romanists, in regard to what constitutes any one a member of a church. The one affirms that it is the internal work of grace, the other that it is the sacrament — baptism. The first, however, is so explained as to mean admission into an "invisible church," because the "door," or that which conferred membership, is invisible. This is borne out by the presence of sponsors, who answer for the infant : " I believe, I renounce the devil," etc., and then as by this profession of faith for the infant, who is baptized as the door into the actual one. This is all wrong, unscriptural, misleading, and absurd. A church of Christ is a company of baptized believers in faith and fellowship, united to edify each other, and advance the cause and kingdom of Christ.

Nothing else is a church. We have, therefore, found neither precept nor example in the Scriptures to prove that baptism was ordained specifically to initiate into a church. Several Baptist theologians of eminence have voiced our conclusion. In his commentary on I Cor. 12 : 13, "By one Spirit are we all baptized into one body," Dr. Gill observes : " All that are baptized in water are not baptized in or by the Spirit, as the case of Simon Magus, and that of others, shows ; nor does water baptism incorporate persons into a gospel church ; they being indeed true believers and baptized are proper persons to be received into a church, but baptism itself does not put them into or make them members of it. Persons may be baptized in water and never be joined to a church."

IS BAPTISM THE DOOR? 29

Andrew Fuller, in a letter addressed to a friend on the terms of communion, says: "The nature and design of baptism as given us in the New Testament, shows it to have been the initiatory ordinance of Christianity. It was not, indeed, an initiation into a particular church, seeing it was instituted prior to the formation of churches, and administered, in some cases, as that of the Ethiopian, in which there was no opportunity for joining to any one of them ; but it was an initiation into the body of professing Christians."

Rev. William Crowell, in his " Church Member's Manual," expresses a like view. Of the apostolic churches he remarks : "All the members of those churches became such by their own voluntary act. In other words, each entered freely into a covenant with all the other members, and thus became a part of a church. The faith of an individual did not, of itself, constitute him a member of any particular church ; nor did his baptism, which is the universal badge of the Christian profession, but his voluntary covenant, to walk with the church in the commandments and ordinances of the Lord, made him a member."

If baptism is not the rite of initiation, what relation does it bear to the church ? Its relation to church-membership we take to be two-fold. 1. It is an indispensable prerequisite or qualification for membership. This is evident from the very nature of baptism as the divinely appointed method by which the believer shall avow his faith in the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. " Go disciple the nations, baptizing them into the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. ,,

Profession of faith necessarily precedes entrance into a body of professed Christians ; and how shall that profession be made, except as God has ordained ? Apostolic practice as to this head is very manifest. The three thousand at Pentecost were baptized, and then added to the church. As soon as Ananias met Paul, visiting him by divine direction, he commanded, " Arise, brother Paul, and be baptized." The Holy Spirit having fallen upon Cornelius and those gathered with him to hear Peter, the apostle inquired, "Who can forbid water that these should not be baptized who have received the Holy Ghost as well as we?" The Ethiopian eunuch and Philippian jailer were baptized immediately upon a profession of faith in Christ. This was the uniform procedure of the apostles. The first step, after the disciple was made, was to baptize him in the name of the Lord. 2. Baptism imposes upon the baptized an obligation to unite with the church. Baptism into the name of the Trinity is a vow of subjection to the authority and of consecration to the service of God, as well as a profession of faith. It is an act