Subscriptions and Donations in aid of the General Baptist Missionary Society will be thankfully received by Robert Pegg, Esq., Treasurer, Derby; and by the Rev. J. C. Pike and the Rev. H. Wilkinsun, Secretaries, Leicester: from whom also Missionary Boxes, Collecting Books, and Cards may be obtained.

THE

GENERAL BAPTIST

MAGAZINE.

DECEMBER, 1864.

THE GENERAL BAPTIST DENOMINATION.

ON points of difference between the General and other Baptists I wish to write with extreme caution, yet without any concealment; avoiding all misrepresentation of their views, and all reservation with respect to our own. I think that some Particular Baptists diverge more widely from the doctrines of others, than these others do from the doctrines of most General Baptists. At the same time when our speculative opinions are compared, it does not require much discernment to see that they are not alike. This unlikeness may be perceived by presenting a few instances. I request attention to the following. When men of reputation among the larger section, who reject rigid Calvinism, especially that part of it which pleads for the eternal predestination of some, and its correlative, the everlasting reprobation of others, tell us distinctly that they believe in "particular redemption, or in a redeeming work unequivocally restricted;" a genuine General Baptist is constrained to disavow such belief, and to oppose to it the persuasion that redemption is general. When the high Particular Baptist says that Christ died only for a part of mankind, for his sheep, or the church; and when the lower one says that Christ died for the church in one sense, and for the world in another; the General Baptist differs from both, and agrees with inspired teachers who thus judged that "Christ died for all, gave himself a ransom for all, tasted death for every man," and that "he is the propitiation for the sins of the whole world." When the moderately Calvinistic Particular Baptist says that" redemption, while it is particular, has, in addition, a universal aspect," non-Calvinistic General Baptists are quite dazed with such a duplex presentment of it. When we are told that the Father's love to his offspring is all-embracing, and that the provision made for their salvation by the sacrificial mediation of the Son is unlimited, but that the required application of this salvation by the Holy Spirit is purposely partial, we seem to discern unequal sympathy and imperfect unity in the persons of the Godhead, and a trinity so disparate and divided we cannot accept. If, again, the Particular Baptist asserts that divine influence, VOL. LXVI.-NEW SERIES, No 12.

when it is exerted on sinners, is absolutely irresistible, and that the convict and the convert are entirely passive during the progress of the great change; the General Baptist thinks that such assertions are contradicted by the "stiff-necked and uncircumcised in heart and ears who did always resist the Holy Ghost;" and by the directions given to one and another who asked what must be done to enter into life, and to be saved. And, once more, if it is declared that certain persons being elected, and enlightened, and renewed, will infallibly persevere, and be inevitably glorified, we demur to such a declaration as not being sustained by the texts of Scripture on which it is imposed, and as being discountenanced by other texts which represent it possible for partakers of the Holy Ghost, and for possessors of the heavenly gift, to "sin wilfully," to "fall away," and to draw back unto perdition." "When the righteous turneth from his righteousness, and committeth iniquity, he shall even die thereby." If it be objected that to admit the moral possibility of final apostacy is tantamount to the admission that the perverseness of man is more potent than the eternal purpose of God, the objection is regarded not as a Scriptural argument, but as a human sophism. The final perseverance of the saints has, however, always been treated as an open question, and we have not considered it necessary to insist upon it either negatively or positively. Those of us who do hold it maintain it on principles different from those of some of its advocates: from those of the Mystics, who contend for it on the ground of their union with God; from those of the Antimonians, who say they cannot but be saved because God sees no sin in them; and from those of Predestinarians, who maintain that their personal salvation was unconditionally decreed before the beginning of time. Our hopes of continuing in the grace of God, and of enduring to the end, are based on the terms of the new covenant, and on the entire tenor of the Gospel, which promise and insure eternal life to all who believe in Christ. "Kept by the power of God through faith unto salvation."

While I have deemed it proper thus to advert to certain doctrinal distinctions belonging to the General Baptists, I wish to be regarded as doing so simply in the way of exposition, and not at all in the way of vindication. I take the liberty to discriminate, as clearly as I am able, between sentiments which are not the same, or similar; but I would not take undue advantage of my present position and opportunity by putting into my paper either a plea or a protest-either an endeavoured defence of what we do believe, or an attempted refutation of what we do not believe. So far as my knowledge of my ministerial brethren extends I feel bound to say that the very differences to which I have now so specially referred are rarely dwelt upon in their ordinary preaching. As a body we have a latent disaffection to Calvinism, even when it is modified and mitigated by some of its modern abettors; but it is seldom that this dislike draws any of us out into declared antagonism to it. We know almost nothing in our pulpits of the quinquarticular controversy.* The prevailing impression amongst us is that any one of the five points, though sharpened by the most acute polemic, is yet too blunt to be of any service in pricking sinners in their hearts; and that he who handles them the oftenest and the most adroitly does not "help them much who have believed through grace." On the other hand I may state that knowing little of Arminius beyond his name, and not liking all the little which we

The controversy on the five points, called Quinquarticular, about the time of the synod of Dort, 1618 including Predestination-Redemption-Divine Grace-the Human Will--and Final Perseverance.

The General Baptist Denomination.

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know, we never call ourselves his followers.* It may be that some of our very few theological writers have ranged themselves on the side of Arminianism, and that most of our ministers teach tenets which are considered to be constituent parts of that system; but as a people we acknowledge no author or preacher, living or dead, as our champion, or chieftain, or representative man. I am aware that there is a dictum with respect to dogmatic divinity similar to that which was uttered concerning philosophy; and as every man is pronounced to be either a Platonist or an Aristotelian, so it is supposed that every believer in Christ must be either a Calvinist or an Arminian. The supposition is erroneous, and the source of it is either prejudice or ignorance. It was contended long ago that in the offices and homilies of the Anglican Church "no evidence exists as to her Arminianism, any more than as to her Calvinism :" although another oracle declared that that incomprehensible and incongruous community had "a Calvinistic creed and an Arminian clergy." What we think is this, that any church or denomination may be truly orthodox without acknowledging either Calvinism or Arminianism, or even while repudiating both. Moreover, as neither system can claim to have been transmitted from apostolic times, but as both have been immitted—let in-at a later period, both of them, according to a canon of Tertullian, may be not true but "adulterate." At the very least it may be asserted that before Arminius and the Remonstrants-before Calvin and the Supralapsarians or the Sublapsarians-before Augustine of Hippo, the great oracle of the Genevan divine-before the holding of any hierarchical council to construct and impose a formal creed, intelligent Christians may have had a correct religious belief derived directly from the sacred volume; and our desire is to draw every article and every particle of our objective faith from the same infallible Fount. In attachment to the word of God, in the persuasion that what is contained in the canon of Scripture is the word of God, in reverential regard for the parental claims and rectoral rights of God, in a penitential sense of the awful evil attaching to the universal apostacy from God, in the conviction that there is no recovery from that dire apostacy apart from Christ, who "suffered for sins, the just for the unjust, that he might bring us to God," in testifying to all sinners "repentance toward God and faith toward our Lord Jesus Christ," in the enforcement of Scripture precepts as the rules of Christian living and the standards of righteousness and true holiness, and in keeping the positive ordinances of Christ as they were delivered; the General Baptists wish to be, and hope they are, second to none among the varied sects of Evangelical Christians. But in scholarship and authorship, in zeal and enterprise, in the labour and liberality which are necessary to the widening of our boundaries, and in that earnest and persevering inquiry of God with which He has connected the increase of his people with men like a flock, deficiency and inferiority to some others must be freely acknowledged. If it would be an error to say that we have been supine and slothful, it is an obvious truth to say that we have been very slow; and while it may be a fact that our means of progress have been scanty, that we have come behind in many gifts, it is also clear

Some who stigmatize us do not know so much as the name, for they call us not Arminians, but Armenians.

To speak of Calvin personally, or of his voluminous writings, otherwise than with profound respect would be discreditable to a Christian theologian of any class. Nor can any one, except a violent theological partizan, permit himself to think lightly of such men as James Arminius, Simon Episcopius Hugo Grotius, and Philip Van Limborch.