DIFFERENCES BETWEEN OLD & NEW SHCOOL BAPTISTS 2/6

This is the second of the 6 articles illustrating the differences between Old & New School Baptists - ed.

In pursuing this subject, as proposed in our last, we commence our illustration of a brief exhibition of the various views entertained by the parties on the being and perfections of God. Professions of harmony and doctrine and practice are but mockery, where antagonistic views are held on the great object of veneration and worship. Christians and pagans, for this among other reasons, cannot worship together. Nor can this difficult it be obviated by a mere profession of Christianity, nor even. Where a mechanical conformity to the practice of ordinances and rights is strictly observed, if the parties differ in the gods they worship, or in their conceptions of and confidence in the God of Israel. In tracing the discrepancy between the old and new kinds of Baptists in their views of God. We do not intend to examine the doctrines known as Trinitarian, Unitarian, Arian, Socinian. Sabellian. At this time, as it is not on the points that the difference between them consists.

The Old School Baptists, being taught only of God in their knowledge of him, have much more exalted views of His being and perfections than they can have, who have only learned the theory in the schools of those who teach every man his neighbor, and every man his brother, saying no the Lord. So far as our information extends, the Old School Baptists are the only class of professing Christians on earth who answer to the provisions of the covenant which God has made with his people under the gospel dispensation in this particular respect. The New School Baptists differ as widely from us on this point as do the Roman Catholics or the Pagans. The gods state professed to worship according to their faith and practice may be found out by searching and known as the sciences of this world are attained by schools, books, tracts, missionary labels, et cetera. On the other hand, the Old School Baptists hold that to no God. And Jesus Christ, whom he has sent, is eternal life. That no man, by searching, can find him out, that he can only be known by revelation, and that he is never revealed to any until they are quickened by the Holy Ghost. In what the old school Baptists no experimentally of the true God. They are affected very differently from those who have learned what they profess to know of Him, from their doctors of divinity or rabbis of their theology. The more the Old Baptists know of God, the more deeply do they feel abased before him. In some instances where he graciously reveals himself to them, they are constrained to cry out like the Prophet, "Woe is me for I am undone! Because I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips. For my eyes have seen the King, the Lord of Hosts." Isaiah 6.5. Like Daniel and like John, they fall down before him "as dead men." But those who learn the science of modern divinity at the schools like the proficiency in the schools of mythology. The more they learn, the greater conceit they have of themselves, the more inflated with pride which frequently discovers itself, and not only their priestly habiliments and gold spectacles. But in the high sounding titles of reference which they assume, and the strange ambition they discovered for the schoolboy playthings of A. M., D.D., and whatever is calculated to make the ignorant stare and the wise man smile.

We believe that God is immutable of one mind, and none can turn him, and that his purposes are as unchangeable as his nature. And consequently, it is as impossible that he should yield any design, or alter any plan as it is for him to cease to be God. In these exalted views of God, we are opposed by the New School. They hold that God can be moved by our prayers. Hence they appoint concerts of prayer in which it is arranged for thousands at the same moment to send up their prayers for some particular object that they have agreed to insist upon in the vain expectation that such prayers will act upon God as steam acts upon a locomotive. Hence the quantity, concert, zeal, and earnestness of their prayers are relied on by them, rather than the Spirit's work, teaching them the pray in harmony with the sovereign and eternal will of the unchanging God.

The Old School Baptists believed that God is omnipotent. That he never failed to accomplish his pleasure for want of the ability to execute his will. But the new school believed there are thousands in hell whom God has labored for years to save by wooing, pleading, and knocking at the door of their hearts, that they resisted until the Lord gave them up as too obstinate to be subdued. The balance of power is, in their theory, with men, for they represent that God has labored unsuccessfully for ages to convert the world. But this work they have undertaken to do and feel an assurance that they shall succeed. They will laugh us to scorn if we either tell them that God can or that men cannot evangelize the world.

In their revival-making operations, they talk of dead sinners storming heaven and taking the Kingdom of glory by violence as a common business transaction. They not only claim to be Co-workers with God but deny that he can work successfully without them and the means they furnish him to work with. How truly is it written that "wicked men wax worse and worse, deceiving and being deceived." For in ancient times, the error of their fathers was in thinking that God was altogether such as one as themselves. But now, forsooth. they affirm that God cannot save sinners. But that they saved the perishing heathen, and Christianized the whole world.

Having glanced at some of the many particulars in which the Old and New School Baptists differ in their views and testimony of God, we will in our next endeavor show how widely they differ on the doctrine of Election.

Elder Gilbert Beebe 
New Vernon, NY.
February 1st, 1848