“BAPTISMAL REGENERATION.”

            “Although,” says Mr.Campbell, “we never immersed any person in water into the name of the Father, &c., who does not confess his faith in the person, mission, death, resurrection, and ascension of Jesus Christ—or what is implied in “believing that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God,” they (the Episcopalians, &c.,) have the reckless assurance to charge our Brotherhood with the belief of Baptismal Regeneration.”—Millennial Harbinger Volume 2 No. 7.page 404. The italicism is ours for the sake of emphasis.

            Mr. Campbell’s “baptismal regeneration” is doubtless not of the same kind as that of his sectarian brethren. Their’s is the being born again of an eight day old without even the form of a birth. The subject of their theological fiction is “a chip off the old block;” that is, a piece of “sinful flesh,” called a babe, without sins, unthinking, consequently without faith, whose motions are instinctive like all new-born animals. The being born again of this faithless, repentanceless, ignorant, unthinking, instinctive subject, consists with them in the physical operation of Spirit upon it in some undefinable way, in, at, or during the sprinkling and signing of its face and forehead with church-font water in the name of the Father, &c. —The design of this God-dishonouring and ridiculous farce is the forgiveness of sins, and the ingrafting into the body of Christ. The action of the spirit or water, or of both combined, does not touch the “original sin,” for it dies and corrupts nevertheless. Besides this, it has nothing in the form of sin to be forgiven. Forgiveness of sins, therefore, is out of the question. —Perhaps the rhantism is for the forgiveness of sins committed when its “immortal soul” tenanted some other body in a previous state—that for instance exhibited by the man who was supposed to be born blind because of his sins! —John 9: 2. I suppose a babe derives its “soul” from its parents as well as its body; perhaps, then, it is sprinkled for the remission of that proportion of sins still holding on to the compound soul-particle detached from the parents’ souls into the babe’s body. If this be not the “philosophy” of the affair, I am at a loss to explain how a babe without personal transgressions can be “baptised for remission of sins.” Perhaps “His Holiness” of Rome, or his more enlightened protestant “Grace of Canterbury;” or his father-in-godship of Exeter, can exhibit the scripturality of the thing. If they cannot, it is useless to seek for light even from the posthumous hierarchy of the spirit-world! We give it up.

            The “brotherhood” of which Mr. Campbell claims to be the Supervisor, cannot certainly be charged with “the belief of” such “baptismal regeneration” as this. It would doubtless, as he says, be “reckless assurance to charge” any such thing upon them. Having been mixed up with them very intimately in former years, we can add our testimony to the truth of their innocency of so gross a stultification of the human intellect. But while people may be guiltless of perpetrating one particular absurdity, they may be justly chargeable with sins upon other points of law; so that “whosoever shall keep the whole law, and yet offend in one point, he is guilty of all.” Now Mr. C. and his brotherhood do not make a baptismal subject of a faithless babe; but, notwithstanding his plausible statement above, I know that they immerse man and women as ignorant of the mission of Christ as an eight-day old. Now I am prepared to prove from the apostles and prophets that a subject ignorant of this, though immersed a thousand times, is as unbegotten of the Spirit, and therefore unregenerate, as any rhantised suckling. I do not deny that Mr. C. and “his brethren preach a view of the Christ’s mission, which is implied in their version of Peter’s declaration that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God; but I do deny, unqualifiedly, that their view and version are “the faith” by which a subject can alone be justified. —According to them, the Christ was to be sent to accomplish in person here no more than what it is testified Jesus effected, save that at some indefinite and remote period he will come on an escorting expedition at the end of all things. This is the Christ they preach. They ask their proselytes, by implication, if Jesus is the Christ having such a mission as this? —This is what “is implied in” their notion of “believing that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God.” They immerse a subject confessing this belief, and pronounce him born of water and the spirit, and therefore, of course, “spirit,” or regenerate. —The immersion of such a subject for remission of sins, I affirm, is practically “baptismal regeneration;” for when I analyse his “faith,” as it is called, I find it an assent to a view of the Christ’s mission which is no where revealed in the scriptures of truth. If then, he be regarded as born again, he is first begotten of untruth, and then born of water, which is not the regeneration of Scripture; and therefore, in effect, as much aqueous regeneration for remission as baby-immersion: for adult-belief of untruth brings even a piously disposed subject no nearer to spiritual begettal than physical incompetence to believe at all. The adult and infant subjects, (from different causes indeed,) are both faithless of the truth, and therefore unbegotten of it; their immersions only remain—they are both born of water without faith in the Bible mission of the Christ; therefore their regenerations are both baptismal, and nothing more.

            Mr. C., and his co-labourers, do not know what the mission of the Christ is. This is a grave charge against men so wise in their own conceits. But we have a graver charge against them than this; that, if it be granted that they do know it, they not only do not believe it, but are opposed to it, and persecute those that preach it. —Let us put them to the test—Do they believe that the Christ will restore the Twelve Tribes of Israel to the glorious land, and build again the dwelling place of David AS IN THE DAYS OF OLD? This is part of Messiah’s mission, as we can prove abundantly. Believing that Jesus is the Christ, this also is his mission. They ridicule the idea, and “take up an evil report against” its advocates, “and reproach their principles and character, and neither give them a hearing, nor make the amende honourable;” they are, therefore, infidels and persecutors, and mere baptismal regenerationists notwithstanding the appearance of verity in the extract before us. “Do you believe in the mission of Christ?” What is easier than to say, “yes?” But change the form of the question and say—“What is the mission of the Christ as revealed in Moses and the prophets?” Mr. Campbell himself, though the ecclesiastical chief of 300,000 people pretending to apostolicity of faith and practice, cannot begin to answer the question; it is not likely, therefore, that the proselytes he immerses would be more knowing than himself.

EDITOR.

August 10, 1852.

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            In his last speech at Boston, Kossuth inquires—“Does not Russia remind us of the golden image of Nebuchadnezzar, standing on feet of clay?” He has derived the idea from the matter we have furnished him with. —Editor.

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