For those who might think that we should not concern ourselves with what is going on around us, especially among those who call themselves Baptists, we submit this example from Elder Gilbert Beebe - ed.
It is some time since we have treated our readers to an exhibition of the progressive corruption of the New School Baptists. Now, lest our New School neighbors should charge us with neglect, and our readers should forget that there is a difference between truth and error, we have selected the three following articles from the “Cross and Journal,” of Columbus, O., of December 4th, 1846:
“ADVICE TO NEWLY ORDAINED CLERGYMEN.
“Make up your minds deliberately, if you mean to be faithful, to lead a life wherein hardy and venturous faith will be daily tested by calls to unflinching self-denial. Your one work is to win souls to Christ; not to produce a certain general decency and amendment in the face of society around you, but as God’s instrument, and through the power of Christ’s name, to work in living souls the mighty marvel of their true conversion. How painful soever be the thoughts which it excites, never lose sight of this truth, that your ministry has failed as to every soul entrusted to you who is not under it converted to the Lord, or built up in his holy faith. And such a work must be full of toil and self-denial. The strong man armed will not allow you to spoil his house, and be free the while from molestation. And he is ever ready with his assaults and craft; unless you slumber he will not seem to sleep. Reckon, then, first on opposition. And then secondly, remember that in all this you will have a real work to do. Let this thought be always with you. Go out to visit in your parish, not because you ought to spend so much time in visiting you people, but because they have souls, and have committed to you (feeble as you are) the task of saving them, in Christ’s strength, from everlasting burnings. Be real with them, strike as one that would make a dent upon their shield of hardness, yea, and smite through it to their heart of hearts. When you preach be real. Set your people before you in their numbers, their wants, their dangers, their capacities; choose a subject, not to show yourself off, but to benefit them; and then speak straight to them, as you would beg your life, or counsel your son, or call your dearest friend from a burning house, in plain, strong, earnest words. Let your sermon be your own, made up of truths learned on your knees from your bible, in self-examination, amongst your people. And to make them such as this, spare no pains or trouble. Deal much in the great truths which the blessed God has taught us of himself; beware of always tarrying amongst the graves and corruption of our fallen, tempted state, but rise up to God and Christ and the Holy Ghost, and bear your flock with you there. To lead them for themselves indeed through the Spirit, to believe in the person of the Eternal Son, and so to stand before the Father, accepted in the Beloved, this is life eternal.
“REV. S. WILBERFORCE.”
“TO A MOTHER.
“You have a child on your knee. Listen a moment. Do you know what that child is? It is an immortal being, destined to live forever! It is destined to be happy or miserable! You, the mother; you, who gave it birth, will be the instrument, in the hands of God, of good or ill to its soul. Its character is yet undecided, its destiny is placed in your hands. What shall it be? That child may be a liar; you can prevent it. It may be a thief; you can prevent it. It may be a murderer; you can prevent it. It may descend into the grave with only an evil memory behind and dread before; you can prevent it. Yes, you, the mother can prevent all these things. Will you, or will you not? Look at the innocent! Tell me again, will you save it?
Will you watch over it? Will you teach it? Warn it? Discipline it? Subdue it? Pray for it? Or will you, in the vain search of pleasure, or in the gaiety of fashion or of folly, or in the case of some other bubble even in household cares, neglect the soul of your child, and leave the little immortal to take wing alone, exposed to evil, to temptation and everlasting ruin? Look again at the infant! Place your hand on its little heart. Shall that heart be deserted by its mother, to beat, perchance, in sorrow, disappointment, wretchedness, and despair? Place your hand on its side, and feel that heartbeat. How the blood is thrown through its little veins! Think of it; that heart, in its vigor now, is the emblem of a spirit whose ceaseless pulsations will be those of sorrow or joy forever. Go on and count off a century. In some place that spirit will be beating. You may change to meet it. Beats it then in sorrow! Oh, mother, I would not for the world suffer the agony you will feel, when you find your child ruined, desolated, destroyed, a wretch, and its spirit beating with a life that cannot cease!”
“JOY IN HEAVEN.
“My children, if you like to do good, to make the poor happy, and to comfort the afflicted; if you like to receive their warm thanks and blessings, and to see the tear of affection and thankfulness stand in their eye; then you love to help the missionary society. The blessing of them that are ready to perish comes upon the head of every little boy and girl who helps to send the gospel to the heathen. You cannot hear their thanks now; but if you meet them in heaven, they will thank you there. Mr. Scott, of Demarara, says that he once visited a very excellent negro woman on her dying bed. He took leave of her as though he never expected to see her more in this world. Just as he turned away, she made signs of wishing to say something else. He drew near her bedside, when, with her dying breath, she made the inquiry, ‘Whom shall I see in heaven?’ He replied, ‘Jesus, for he appears in the midst of the throne as a Lamb that has been slain.’ ‘Yes, yes; but who else shall I see?’ Mr. Scott replied, ‘All the good people of former ages are now in heaven; you will meet them.’ But,as if not yet satisfied, she said, ‘Shall I see any of the missionary society?’ meaning the friends and supporters of the society. Mr. Scott said, ‘Do you wish to see them?’ ‘Oh! yes, yes, Massa, and say ‘Thank you for the gospel.’ Dear young readers! How will you feel in heaven, when happy ransomed souls come near and say, ‘Thank you, thank you for the gospel; you sent the gospel to me!’ With a heart full of more love and joy than the heart can hold here, you will tune your harp afresh, and burst forth into a louder song; and the song will be, ‘Not unto us, O Lord, not unto us, but unto thy name give glory.’ – Miss. Rep.”
The three articles copied above from the “Cross and Journal,” afford incontestable evidence of the fearful apostasy of the New School Baptist, from whose organ these articles are copied, and of the truth of divine revelation, that “evil men and seducers shall wax worse and worse, deceiving and being deceived.” The people who publish, patronize, and love to read and encourage their children and neighbors to read such sentiments as these extracts contain, claim to be Baptists, and think us unkind and destitute of charity because we cannot recognize them as Baptists of the primitive or apostolic order. They profess to hold the doctrine of predestination, election, and the special and efficacious work of the Holy Ghost in quickening and regenerating the children of God. They also profess to hold that men in a state of nature are dead in trespasses and sin; and that salvation is of God, “not of works, lest any man should boast,” and from these distinguishing sentiments of the primitive saints they declare that they have never swerved.
It is humiliating to the feelings of sensitive Baptists to see such doctrines as the New School seem to glory in, palmed on the world under the sanction of those who have usurped their name. Our object in calling attention to the corruption and blasphemy of their doctrines is not to raise against them a spirit of persecution but of pity. As citizens of our great and mighty Republic, we would not abridge their privileges to think, decide, and act for themselves in matters of religion, and the same rights which we would award to them we would also grant to Roman Catholics and Mormons, and all other denominations of professed worshipers, so long as their free enjoyment of such rights as citizens shall not invade or infringe the equal rights of all other citizens of our country. We do not say, however, that in holding such sentiments as they publish, and yet claiming our name, they do us no injustice, or that they do not invade our rights; but our God will judge them.
Who will undertake the task of reconciling the doctrines contained in these three articles, with the confession of faith to which they have set their hands?
We will not weary our readers with a lengthy examination of the doctrinal corruption of these extracts; such a service is not called for, as we have none among the Old School Baptists, not even babes in Christ, that cannot readily detect the heresy which is so glaringly displayed. A few of the more prominent outrages upon the Spirit of truth we will notice.
First, The “advise to ordained clergymen.” This description of bloated humanity did not exist among the Baptists in the apostolic age, and in subsequent centuries it originated and held for ages exclusively in the church of Rome. The daughters of the Romish “beast” found it convenient to dignify their preachers by such titles as Reverends, Clergy, Doctors of Divinity, &c., and to degrade their members as laymen; but this aristocratic distinction has never, until comparatively modern times, found its way among professed Baptists, and never into the church of God, for no unclean thing can enter there. But the New School Baptists claim now to have clergymen, and we know not but their claim is as valid as that of any other branch of modern anti-christ. Their work, as set forth in the article of “advice,” is “To win souls for Christ.” they have not to feed the flock of God; for the sheep know not the voice of strangers. Not to preach Christ and him crucified; to the Jews a stumbling block, and to the Greeks foolishness; for they are unacquainted themselves with that kind of preaching, and they are of the number of those who themselves stumble at the word, being disobedient, whereunto also they were appointed. They are not to regard the word or Spirit of God as their oracle but receive advice from the wise men of this world. Instead of preaching as did the apostles, that there is salvation in none but Christ, New School clergymen are to assume that every soul in their respective parishes is committed to them to save, “in Christ’s strength from everlasting burnings.” This they are themselves to believe, and this they are to try to make their parishioners believe, and they are advised to act upon this principle. If this task is committed to clergymen, we demand by whom was it committed, and when, and where? But enough of this.
Second, The address “To a Mother.” With one breath the young clergyman is represented as having the task of saving every soul in his parish; the work committed to him exclusively, to convert them, to save them, and finally to “rise up to God, and Christ, and the Holy Ghost, and bear their flocks with them.” To convert and save them, and finally take them to heaven, is in the first lesson made exclusively the task of the clergyman, and in the next breath the same work is tasked upon the mother of every child. Now this is a riddle which would require the erudition of a college-bred clergyman to unravel, how the clergyman can be exclusively the savior of every soul in his parish, and yet that every mother is required to save her own children! “O consistency,” &c. Now, if the mother can prevent her child from being a liar, a thief, and a murderer, and from going to its grave with only an evil memory behind, and dread before; if the destiny of every soul is placed in the hands of mothers, what has Christ, or his blood, or his righteousness, or the Holy Spirit’s quickening work to do with the salvation of men? Can we possibly believe such doctrine without rejecting the whole testimony of the scriptures? Can we so reject the testimony of the scriptures without becoming infidels? If not, are not all who teach such doctrine, whether New School Baptists or others, infidels? We leave our readers to form their own conclusions.
Third. The third article shows what kind of a heaven the Arminians are looking for. According to their description of it, it is a place where little boys and girls are to receive “thank you” for the pennies they have given to missionaries! This reader is New School Baptist doctrine. The poor black woman, with all the religion that the missionary Scott could give her, and all the penny-worths of the gospel that little boys and girls had sent her, could not die in peace, anticipating only the pleasure of seeing Jesus there, exalted upon the throne, and meeting the innumerable company of all his redeemed there, the missionary bears witness that she seemed to be “not yet satisfied.” She could not die in peace until assured by her false guide that she could meet in heaven the greater object of her solicitude and of her gratitude, and have an opportunity to bestow her thanksgiving on those whom she was taught to believe were more justly entitled to it than Christ. If such be the heaven anticipated by Arminians, missionaries, and New School Baptists, how thankful ought all Christian people to be that God has laid up in store for them a better inheritance; that while the poor deceived Ethiopian converts to missionism expect to be employed in looking up the boys and girls who gave them the gospel by the penny-worths, they shall be employed in immortal anthems of praise unto God and the Lamb forever and ever. And then shall they be satisfied, and completely satisfied, when they awake with his likeness.
Little boys and girls may be induced to tease their parents for pennies to lavish upon the insatiable avarice of greedy missionaries, but that the joys of heaven are to be measured out by the penny-worths, and heathen converts there employed in thanking such saviors for the gospel, out-Romes Rome itself.
Elder Gilbert Beebe
New Vernon, N.Y., February 1, 1847
Elder Gilbert Beebe Editorials Volume 2 Pages 737 – 744
“ADVICE TO NEWLY ORDAINED CLERGYMEN.
“Make up your minds deliberately, if you mean to be faithful, to lead a life wherein hardy and venturous faith will be daily tested by calls to unflinching self-denial. Your one work is to win souls to Christ; not to produce a certain general decency and amendment in the face of society around you, but as God’s instrument, and through the power of Christ’s name, to work in living souls the mighty marvel of their true conversion. How painful soever be the thoughts which it excites, never lose sight of this truth, that your ministry has failed as to every soul entrusted to you who is not under it converted to the Lord, or built up in his holy faith. And such a work must be full of toil and self-denial. The strong man armed will not allow you to spoil his house, and be free the while from molestation. And he is ever ready with his assaults and craft; unless you slumber he will not seem to sleep. Reckon, then, first on opposition. And then secondly, remember that in all this you will have a real work to do. Let this thought be always with you. Go out to visit in your parish, not because you ought to spend so much time in visiting you people, but because they have souls, and have committed to you (feeble as you are) the task of saving them, in Christ’s strength, from everlasting burnings. Be real with them, strike as one that would make a dent upon their shield of hardness, yea, and smite through it to their heart of hearts. When you preach be real. Set your people before you in their numbers, their wants, their dangers, their capacities; choose a subject, not to show yourself off, but to benefit them; and then speak straight to them, as you would beg your life, or counsel your son, or call your dearest friend from a burning house, in plain, strong, earnest words. Let your sermon be your own, made up of truths learned on your knees from your bible, in self-examination, amongst your people. And to make them such as this, spare no pains or trouble. Deal much in the great truths which the blessed God has taught us of himself; beware of always tarrying amongst the graves and corruption of our fallen, tempted state, but rise up to God and Christ and the Holy Ghost, and bear your flock with you there. To lead them for themselves indeed through the Spirit, to believe in the person of the Eternal Son, and so to stand before the Father, accepted in the Beloved, this is life eternal.
“REV. S. WILBERFORCE.”
“TO A MOTHER.
“You have a child on your knee. Listen a moment. Do you know what that child is? It is an immortal being, destined to live forever! It is destined to be happy or miserable! You, the mother; you, who gave it birth, will be the instrument, in the hands of God, of good or ill to its soul. Its character is yet undecided, its destiny is placed in your hands. What shall it be? That child may be a liar; you can prevent it. It may be a thief; you can prevent it. It may be a murderer; you can prevent it. It may descend into the grave with only an evil memory behind and dread before; you can prevent it. Yes, you, the mother can prevent all these things. Will you, or will you not? Look at the innocent! Tell me again, will you save it?
Will you watch over it? Will you teach it? Warn it? Discipline it? Subdue it? Pray for it? Or will you, in the vain search of pleasure, or in the gaiety of fashion or of folly, or in the case of some other bubble even in household cares, neglect the soul of your child, and leave the little immortal to take wing alone, exposed to evil, to temptation and everlasting ruin? Look again at the infant! Place your hand on its little heart. Shall that heart be deserted by its mother, to beat, perchance, in sorrow, disappointment, wretchedness, and despair? Place your hand on its side, and feel that heartbeat. How the blood is thrown through its little veins! Think of it; that heart, in its vigor now, is the emblem of a spirit whose ceaseless pulsations will be those of sorrow or joy forever. Go on and count off a century. In some place that spirit will be beating. You may change to meet it. Beats it then in sorrow! Oh, mother, I would not for the world suffer the agony you will feel, when you find your child ruined, desolated, destroyed, a wretch, and its spirit beating with a life that cannot cease!”
“JOY IN HEAVEN.
“My children, if you like to do good, to make the poor happy, and to comfort the afflicted; if you like to receive their warm thanks and blessings, and to see the tear of affection and thankfulness stand in their eye; then you love to help the missionary society. The blessing of them that are ready to perish comes upon the head of every little boy and girl who helps to send the gospel to the heathen. You cannot hear their thanks now; but if you meet them in heaven, they will thank you there. Mr. Scott, of Demarara, says that he once visited a very excellent negro woman on her dying bed. He took leave of her as though he never expected to see her more in this world. Just as he turned away, she made signs of wishing to say something else. He drew near her bedside, when, with her dying breath, she made the inquiry, ‘Whom shall I see in heaven?’ He replied, ‘Jesus, for he appears in the midst of the throne as a Lamb that has been slain.’ ‘Yes, yes; but who else shall I see?’ Mr. Scott replied, ‘All the good people of former ages are now in heaven; you will meet them.’ But,as if not yet satisfied, she said, ‘Shall I see any of the missionary society?’ meaning the friends and supporters of the society. Mr. Scott said, ‘Do you wish to see them?’ ‘Oh! yes, yes, Massa, and say ‘Thank you for the gospel.’ Dear young readers! How will you feel in heaven, when happy ransomed souls come near and say, ‘Thank you, thank you for the gospel; you sent the gospel to me!’ With a heart full of more love and joy than the heart can hold here, you will tune your harp afresh, and burst forth into a louder song; and the song will be, ‘Not unto us, O Lord, not unto us, but unto thy name give glory.’ – Miss. Rep.”
The three articles copied above from the “Cross and Journal,” afford incontestable evidence of the fearful apostasy of the New School Baptist, from whose organ these articles are copied, and of the truth of divine revelation, that “evil men and seducers shall wax worse and worse, deceiving and being deceived.” The people who publish, patronize, and love to read and encourage their children and neighbors to read such sentiments as these extracts contain, claim to be Baptists, and think us unkind and destitute of charity because we cannot recognize them as Baptists of the primitive or apostolic order. They profess to hold the doctrine of predestination, election, and the special and efficacious work of the Holy Ghost in quickening and regenerating the children of God. They also profess to hold that men in a state of nature are dead in trespasses and sin; and that salvation is of God, “not of works, lest any man should boast,” and from these distinguishing sentiments of the primitive saints they declare that they have never swerved.
It is humiliating to the feelings of sensitive Baptists to see such doctrines as the New School seem to glory in, palmed on the world under the sanction of those who have usurped their name. Our object in calling attention to the corruption and blasphemy of their doctrines is not to raise against them a spirit of persecution but of pity. As citizens of our great and mighty Republic, we would not abridge their privileges to think, decide, and act for themselves in matters of religion, and the same rights which we would award to them we would also grant to Roman Catholics and Mormons, and all other denominations of professed worshipers, so long as their free enjoyment of such rights as citizens shall not invade or infringe the equal rights of all other citizens of our country. We do not say, however, that in holding such sentiments as they publish, and yet claiming our name, they do us no injustice, or that they do not invade our rights; but our God will judge them.
Who will undertake the task of reconciling the doctrines contained in these three articles, with the confession of faith to which they have set their hands?
We will not weary our readers with a lengthy examination of the doctrinal corruption of these extracts; such a service is not called for, as we have none among the Old School Baptists, not even babes in Christ, that cannot readily detect the heresy which is so glaringly displayed. A few of the more prominent outrages upon the Spirit of truth we will notice.
First, The “advise to ordained clergymen.” This description of bloated humanity did not exist among the Baptists in the apostolic age, and in subsequent centuries it originated and held for ages exclusively in the church of Rome. The daughters of the Romish “beast” found it convenient to dignify their preachers by such titles as Reverends, Clergy, Doctors of Divinity, &c., and to degrade their members as laymen; but this aristocratic distinction has never, until comparatively modern times, found its way among professed Baptists, and never into the church of God, for no unclean thing can enter there. But the New School Baptists claim now to have clergymen, and we know not but their claim is as valid as that of any other branch of modern anti-christ. Their work, as set forth in the article of “advice,” is “To win souls for Christ.” they have not to feed the flock of God; for the sheep know not the voice of strangers. Not to preach Christ and him crucified; to the Jews a stumbling block, and to the Greeks foolishness; for they are unacquainted themselves with that kind of preaching, and they are of the number of those who themselves stumble at the word, being disobedient, whereunto also they were appointed. They are not to regard the word or Spirit of God as their oracle but receive advice from the wise men of this world. Instead of preaching as did the apostles, that there is salvation in none but Christ, New School clergymen are to assume that every soul in their respective parishes is committed to them to save, “in Christ’s strength from everlasting burnings.” This they are themselves to believe, and this they are to try to make their parishioners believe, and they are advised to act upon this principle. If this task is committed to clergymen, we demand by whom was it committed, and when, and where? But enough of this.
Second, The address “To a Mother.” With one breath the young clergyman is represented as having the task of saving every soul in his parish; the work committed to him exclusively, to convert them, to save them, and finally to “rise up to God, and Christ, and the Holy Ghost, and bear their flocks with them.” To convert and save them, and finally take them to heaven, is in the first lesson made exclusively the task of the clergyman, and in the next breath the same work is tasked upon the mother of every child. Now this is a riddle which would require the erudition of a college-bred clergyman to unravel, how the clergyman can be exclusively the savior of every soul in his parish, and yet that every mother is required to save her own children! “O consistency,” &c. Now, if the mother can prevent her child from being a liar, a thief, and a murderer, and from going to its grave with only an evil memory behind, and dread before; if the destiny of every soul is placed in the hands of mothers, what has Christ, or his blood, or his righteousness, or the Holy Spirit’s quickening work to do with the salvation of men? Can we possibly believe such doctrine without rejecting the whole testimony of the scriptures? Can we so reject the testimony of the scriptures without becoming infidels? If not, are not all who teach such doctrine, whether New School Baptists or others, infidels? We leave our readers to form their own conclusions.
Third. The third article shows what kind of a heaven the Arminians are looking for. According to their description of it, it is a place where little boys and girls are to receive “thank you” for the pennies they have given to missionaries! This reader is New School Baptist doctrine. The poor black woman, with all the religion that the missionary Scott could give her, and all the penny-worths of the gospel that little boys and girls had sent her, could not die in peace, anticipating only the pleasure of seeing Jesus there, exalted upon the throne, and meeting the innumerable company of all his redeemed there, the missionary bears witness that she seemed to be “not yet satisfied.” She could not die in peace until assured by her false guide that she could meet in heaven the greater object of her solicitude and of her gratitude, and have an opportunity to bestow her thanksgiving on those whom she was taught to believe were more justly entitled to it than Christ. If such be the heaven anticipated by Arminians, missionaries, and New School Baptists, how thankful ought all Christian people to be that God has laid up in store for them a better inheritance; that while the poor deceived Ethiopian converts to missionism expect to be employed in looking up the boys and girls who gave them the gospel by the penny-worths, they shall be employed in immortal anthems of praise unto God and the Lamb forever and ever. And then shall they be satisfied, and completely satisfied, when they awake with his likeness.
Little boys and girls may be induced to tease their parents for pennies to lavish upon the insatiable avarice of greedy missionaries, but that the joys of heaven are to be measured out by the penny-worths, and heathen converts there employed in thanking such saviors for the gospel, out-Romes Rome itself.
Elder Gilbert Beebe
New Vernon, N.Y., February 1, 1847
Elder Gilbert Beebe Editorials Volume 2 Pages 737 – 744
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