A TOUGH QUESTION

This is another editorial where Beebe addresses J.L. Waller, one of the editors of the Baptist Banner of Kentucky - ed.In a controversy between Mr. Hall of the Presbyterian Gerald and Mr. J.L. Waller one of the editors of the Baptist Nammer of Kentucky; the former gentleman demands of the latter, "To explain how he and his neighbors can consistently treat Pedo-Baptist churches as parts of the church of Christ when they exclude them from the Lord's Table because they have never been baptized, and therefore are not in the visible church at all?"  Also, "How they can treat a man as a real minister of the Lord Jesus Christ when he is not entitled to partake of the Lord's Supper; how he can be fit to preach when he is not fit to sit at the Lord's table?"

When, or how, Mr. Waller will answer these interrogatories, we do not know, or whether he will make the attempt.  But therein, certainly, Mr. Waller is awkwardly situated. He and his new school Baptist contemporaries generally profess to regard the Protestant portions of the Pedo Baptists as truly evangelical. They called them brethren. They invite their clergy into their pulpits. Invite them to take part in their ecclesiastical councils. And in almost every other way recognized them as their brethren.

If baptism is an ordinance of Christ. And indispensable to membership in the Church of Christ. No unbaptized person can be a regular member of that church. Nor any number of unbaptized persons, however pious or orthodox otherwise. Can be a branch of that church. And if the scriptures require the immersion of believers as the only gospel baptism, then the sprinkling of infants is a perversion of the ordinance. And those either infants or adults who are sprinkled are not baptized and consequently not members of the Christian Church. All old School Baptists hold at baptism is an ordinance of Christ. And indispensable to church membership. And as believers only are the subjects, and that immersion is the only divinely authorized mode. Consequently, we deny that the Pedo Baptists, as they are called, are members of the Christian Church, all their clergy gospel ministers. And our faith and works correspond. At least in this matter, however well the doctrinal sentiments of some of them in some things may accord with ours, and however, we may be led to hope that others, from what they relate to us of spiritual exercises, are subjects of regeneration. We are circumscribed by the laws of the Kingdom of Jesus Christ to extend our fellowship for them only so far as they conform to the laws of the Heavenly Kingdom. If the Pedo Baptist will prove to us that they are the Church of Christ, we will cheerfully commune with them. And invite them to commune with us. Or if they're clergy, will prove to us that they are the ministers of Jesus. We will cheerfully receive the elements of the Lord's Supper at their hands. But until they can do this, we are bound to withhold our fellowship from them and close our pulpits against them. There is, however, no consistency in the physician occupied by the new School Baptists in recognizing them as brethren, and as the churches of Christ, as coworkers, and their clergy as ministers of Christ, and yet refusing to commune together at what they call the Lord's Supper. We. Call that only the Lords, which conform to the pattern which he was given, either in preaching, baptism, or the supper. We hold none as our Christian brethren, who do not hold the doctrine and practice the ordinances which Christ has instituted and enjoyed on his disciples.

Gilbert Beebe,

March 1, 1851, Signs of the Times