"...THEIR EXISTENCE WILL BE FORGOTTEN..."

 

This is what has been said of Old School Baptist continually since they were first attacked. Yet? ed.

"They are the mere shreds and patches of a cast-away garment.  Have patience for a few years, and their very existence will be forgotten." New York Baptist Register

The excellent communication of Brother Hezekiah West, in our last number, went to press while we were absent.  We hope our readers have not overlooked it.  In addition to what Brother West has remarked on the extract from the Register, we will call the attention of our reader again to the words at the head of this paragraph.  The Old School Baptists are denominated shreds and patches of a castaway garment.  The editor of the Register tacitly admits that the Old School Baptists are what they claim to be.  By the old garment, we are to understand, the Church of Christ as she has existed from the Apostolic age to the present.  That order and doctrine by which she has hitherto been known are not cast away!  From whom?  Not from Old School Baptists, for they were the very small remnant of that garment; but castaway of course, from those who have embraced the new order.  Hence he not only, unintentionally admits, that we are according to the scriptures, the very small remnant; but also that the whole church of which we, the Old Fashioned Baptists are the remaining part, shreds, and patches, are dismissed, laid aside, and cast away by the refined New School order.  We hope now since he has inadvertently leaked out an acknowledgment of the fact, that the church in her primitive order; is to him and his associates a cast-away garment, he will not shirt his position, but content himself with the notion that we shall be extinct in a few years.  Viewing us, to be as small and insignificant as he affects to consider us; one might suppose he would scorn to attempt to aid in the extermination of a band so small, and contemptible.  But how vain is the rage of wicked men and of devils, while the little shreds, patches, remnant &c., can hear her Savior say - "Fear not little flock; for it is your Father's good pleasure to give you the kingdom."

We are not disposed to dispute without the namesake, of the Register about our relative numbers, we will freely admit that his party is "Legion" for they are many, but we will say that his statements are not correct in asserting that there is no Old School Association in the New England States.  Two Old School Predestinarian Baptist Associations may be found, embracing more of the sprinkling of these contemptible shreds and patches, which the Ne School have renounced and cast away, as far East as, Maine and New Hampshire; and although we know of two organized Associations, as such, of Old School Baptists in New York State, A.M. Beebe Esq. of the Register knowns, that those two Associations do not embrace the one-half of the churches in that State, which has avowed themselves Old School, and anti-missionary and anti-Arminians, and anti-state conventionists.

His assertion that the editor of the Signs of the Times may be considered head and tail, of those withered antinomian churches in the two Association before alluded to, after expecting the elegance of his chaste language, is in our opinion blasphemy.  Perhaps, he has yet to be informed that God has given Christ to be the Head over all things to his church, which is his body, and the fulness of him that fills all in all; but however ignorant he may be of the relation which exists between Christ and his church, he cannot ignore of the fact, that nearly all of the churches he has endeavored to stigmatize are old and respectable churches, which existed in the same faith and order which they now adhere to before the editor of the Signs of the Times was born.

Gilbert Beebe
Signs of the Times

December 2, 1839, Vol. 7.23