By the attention of a friend in England, I have become the recipient of “The British Millennial Harbinger,” for May, 1853. It has been forwarded to me, I presume, from the marks it contains, that I may see what it publishes concerning myself, who seem still to be a thorn in the flesh of its editor, and of the Star of his destiny, the “Professor of Sacred History” in Bethany College, Virginia, the newest “gate of heaven,” devised and erected by ambition and ignorance, or unbelief of the truth.

In looking over this May number, I perceive that the things I brought before the British public when in England, and now periodically finding their way thither in the Herald, give the editor no little trouble and vexation; and, I may add, some of his correspondents too. One, who signs himself “G.M.,” writes: “My mind is often saddened when I reflect upon the treatment which this truth (the coming of the Lord) has met with from its professed supporters; but not this only, for even baptism for remission of sins has shared the same fate. First come those who add to the Scriptures the Book of Mormon; and next Dr. Thomas, who makes the Millennial Reign the Gospel of our Salvation, scattering division and schism wherever he goes.” He then proceeds to say: “Now these parties (Dr. Thomas and the Mormons) profess both truths. What I want to see is this truth (the coming of the Lord), and all other truths, delivered from such teachers, and stated simply as they occur in the Word of God, asking none to believe what I affirm, except there be at the same time a Scriptural demonstration of the position assumed.”

Having nothing but utter contempt for Mormonism, I have nothing to say for that in the premises before us, but shall confine my remarks to what “G.M.” affirms of myself. Those who are my regular readers and hearers, and whose minds are not biased by prejudice, will only smile at “G.M.’s” foolishness. They will know first, that “he errs not knowing the Scriptures,” that is, Moses and the Prophets; secondly, that he does not tell the whole truth in saying, that “I make the Millennial Reign the gospel of our salvation;” thirdly, that he makes a false accusation in saying, that I make schisms wherever I go; fourthly, that he errs in saying that I profess “baptism for remission of sins,” understanding by this that he means to say that I profess that doctrine as it is defined by Campbellites and Mormons; and fifthly, that he talks nonsense in supposing a Scriptural demonstration of a position assumed by a simple statement.

If “G.M.” understood Moses and the Prophets, he would understand the New Testament, and know from all these writings that what he, but not the Bible, styles the “Millennial Reign,” is neither more nor less than the blessing of all nations in Abraham and his seed, the Christ; which Paul, and, after him, Dr. Thomas, as his humble imitator, terms “the Gospel.” Paul’s words are these, “God preached the Gospel to Abraham, saying: In thee shall all nations be blessed.” This blessedness has not yet come upon a single nation, much less upon all nations; and for any one to say that it has, argues his profound ignorance of what the Scriptures define that blessedness to be.

But I do not say that the blessing of all nations in Abraham is “the Gospel of our salvation,” if by “our” is to be understood “the Saints.” It is the gospel of the nations salvation. The glad tidings or Gospel of the Saints’ salvation is, that when the nations shall be blessed in Abraham and his seed, they, as constituents of that seed, being Christ’s, shall possess with Him the blest nations with power and eternal glory, which is the same idea as possessing the kingdom and dominion under the whole heaven for ever. He who says, “This will not be,” is an Infidel, and denies the Gospel, though he may believe in the personalia of Jesus. The Saint’s reign with Christ upon earth over all nations, when established, will be a reign of righteousness and peace, uninterrupted by war’s alarms for a thousand years, the longest peace the world will ever have experienced since man was created. Now, the good news to individual Gentiles and Jews is, that God invites all who believe in the Gospel he preached to Abraham, to become kings of the nations, with honour, glory and life eternal, on certain conditions. It is only believers in the Gospel preached to Abraham, to whom the conditions are accessible; because “the righteousness of God” can only be counted to those who believe the Gospel. “Seek first the kingdom of God.” This is the order laid down by Jesus. If a man have found it, that is, have come to “understand the word of the kingdom,” and say, “What must I do to inherit it? The answer is, You must become the subject of “God’s righteousness;” in other words, you must be constituted righteous in the way that He hath devised for the justifying of the ungodly. Now, “Jesus is the way.” You are required, therefore, to believe in him, as well as in the Gospel preached to Abraham. Because the Jews did not, their belief in that Gospel was of no benefit to them, nor has it been to this day. To believe in him is to believe that he is the man ordained of God to occupy the throne of his kingdom, when “the kingdom shall come to the Daughter of Jerusalem,” which is Zion, the city where David dwelt. To believe this is to believe that he is “the Christ,” or Anointed One, called “Jehovah’s King,” by David, spoken of everywhere in Moses and the Prophets. To believe savingly in him is to believe these things, and that His blood shed was the blood of the covenant made with Abraham, called the New Covenant, shed for the remission of the sins of many; that is, of those who believe the promises of that covenant; that he was buried, and rose again according to the prophets, for the justification of believers. He that believes these “things concerning the kingdom of God, and the Name of Jesus the Anointed,” with a love-working faith, believes the word of the kingdom in its gospel and mystery, “with his heart unto righteousness.”

Whosoever partakes in the reign of Christ will be a saved man; yet the abstract doctrine that Christ will reign on earth a thousand years, or the belief of it, is not, nor has it ever been defined by me to be, “the gospel of our salvation;” the “one faith,” however, which must be believed for justification, comprehends it as an indispensable element of the Gospel. The Gospel is a plurality. It is tidings; not an item of news: but “things” called “good tidings of great joy, which shall be to all people,” and one of the good things is, that Christ shall reign on the throne of his father David over Israel and the nations for a thousand years. If it be possible, let “G.M.” comprehend this, and henceforth forbear to write until he is well instructed in the things whereof he affirms.

I remark, in the next place, that he accuses me falsely in saying that I “scatter division and schism wherever I appear.” When Paul visited the synagogues “he reasoned with them out of Moses and the Prophets, expounding and proving by citations the things concerning the Christ.” The result was division wherever he went. Was Paul, or the truth he set forth, the efficient cause of the schisms? “G.M.” would hardly deny that it was the truth that divided them, and not Paul. This is the fact. Yet Paul was denounced by the “G.M.’s” of his day as a scatterer of divisions or schisms, a turner of the world upside down, a pestilent fellow, and so forth. Well, I take Paul for my example in preaching the Gospel. I sometimes enter into Campbellite and other synagogues where Moses and the Prophets are classed with old almanacs: and proceed to reason with the people out of them, opening and alleging, that Christ’s mission is as yet only fulfilled in a very small degree; that He is to restore the kingdom again to Israel, and to rule over it on David’s throne; that he is then to bring the gospel-blessedness announced to Abraham upon all nations to the ends of the earth; and that Jesus, whom Paul preached, is He, who must, therefore, come again in power and great glory to accomplish the work. These great truths and the testimonies of the apostles and prophets pertaining to them, are followed by debates and oppositions. But I am no more to be blamed fro these than Paul. When God’s testimony is presented to the blind who say they see, trouble in their camp is inevitable; for the thinking of the flesh is enmity against God and his word. The word of life is light, even as God is light. When, therefore, it shines into the darkness, a struggle ensues between the two elements. If the light prevail the darkness is extinguished, and there is peace; but if the darkness maintain its position, as is generally the case, the light is excluded with all through whom it shines and death remains. Thus, a division or schism (“G.M.” does not seem to know that they are the same) is effected. The Schismatics are the fleshly-thinking opponents of the testimony of God, and not he or they who show what that testimony is, and endeavour to prove that it means precisely what it says. This was all I did in Britain. It is true schisma, or divisions, followed; but I am no more worthy of condemnation for these than Paul, whose doings were invariably followed by the same results. I obey the apostolic injunction, “Contend earnestly for the faith once delivered to the saints.” Where this faith is unknown it is opposed when presented. Shall the earnest contention for that faith cease because of opposition? Shall ignorance of Moses and the prophets put to silence the advocates of their testimony? No; though that ignorance become incarnate, and rejoice in the high-sounding titles with which vain men and proud ecclesiastics delight to honour one another before the multitude. They may gnash their carious teeth, and rave against schism to their heart’s content, but God’s testimony must be declared. No church enlightened by the truth was ever disrupted or divided by an earnest advocacy of the gospel preached to Abraham, the Millennial reign, the things of the kingdom, or of life and incorruptibility, only through the gospel. A really Christian church rejoiceth in the truth, believing and hoping all things it contains. Not so mere ecclesiastical associations. These are averse to all things not dogmatised in the confessions of their humanly authorised opinions. Mere Diana-worshippers, the craft-creed is glorified to the rejection of the Word of God. I have no regrets, though convicted of being the remote cause of dividing such bodies as these, and no others have I ever set by the ears. All the alleged opprobrium of this I accept with pleasure; and cheerfully anticipate all the consequences to be visited upon the perpetrators of such offences against the kingdom of sin.

Furthermore, G.M. errs in supposing that I “profess baptism for remission of sins,” in his, Campbellite sense, or in any other sectarian sense of the phrase. Campbellite baptism for remission of sins is not the baptism prescribed by the Apostle Peter for that result. The Campbellite sin-remitting baptism is the dipping of a believer of “facts” for pardon; for President Campbell of Bethany, in the number before us, says, “faith is the belief of facts.” His words are: “It is a great point gained to know and to appreciate that faith is the belief of facts!” When, therefore, Paul says, “We are justified by faith, and have peace with God,” according to Bethanian divinity it means, “We are justified by the belief of facts, and have peace with God.” This is “historical faith,” and “historical faith,” he has told us of old, “is the best sort of faith a man can have!” His facts are, Jesus Christ, the Son of God, was delivered unto death for blasphemy, was buried, and rose again from the dead, to sit on David’s throne in sky-kingdomia, some Utopia “beyond the skies!” He that affirms his belief in these facts, and is sorry for his sins, is considered as a fit subject for dipping. In dipping him, the usual formulary is pronounced over him, and he is told that all his past sins are remitted. This is styled by Bethanians and Mormons, “baptism for remission of sins.” Let not the reader, however, suppose that the Bethanian theology denies remission to the undipped. It teaches that there are Christians among the sects that reject dipping as the divinely appointed mode of using water. These may be styled “the unwashed,” who can never be classed with the “washed hogs who return to their wallowing in the mire,” referred to by Peter. Hogs unwashed cannot “return” to the unwashed state, though “washed hogs” may. Well, Bethanianism recognises unwashed Christians, while it professes, at the same time, to take the New Testament as the only rule of faith and practice! This is a remarkable incongruity, seeing that all “disciples” styled Christians in that book, were “washed in the name of the Lord”—1 Corinthians 6: 11. But if men be Christians without washing, why exhort them to be baptised so earnestly as Bethanians do? Thus, says their supervisor, the unwashed believers of the facts have the remission of their sins in believing, but not knowing it they are subject to doubts and fears. Dipping is to give them certainty, that, knowing they were pardoned, they may enjoy the pardon—an enjoyment arising from knowledge. Hence, the Bethanian version is, “be baptised that you may know that your sins were remitted when you repentingly believed the facts, and knowing may enjoy the remission of sins.”

But I maintain that the Scriptures teach no such baptism for remission of sins as this. It is an unscriptural dipping, because the faith is an unscriptural faith. The faith which justifies is the love-working belief of the exceeding great and precious PROMISES yet unfulfilled, and of the FACTS and their DOCTRINE concerning Jesus as the Christ; in other words, justifying faith Abrahamically embraces the things concerning the kingdom of God, and the name of Jesus Christ. The promises, facts, and doctrine, are essential to that faith “without which it is impossible to please God.” These understood and appreciated, will lead men to repentance, because they exhibit comprehensively “the goodness of God,” and “knowest thou not,” saith Paul, “that it is the goodness of God leadeth thee to repentance?” The reason why immersed people produce no better fruits than the undipped, and many of them not so good, is because their “faith” is a mere belief of history—of a narrative of facts—leaving them altogether in the dark respecting the heart-touching and mind- renewing promises of the gospel. Ignorant of these, they fail of becoming “partakers of the divine nature”—2 Peter 1: 4. Bethanian, and other species of “orthodoxy divinity,” ignore the promises of God, or double-distil them into the absurd follies of spiritualism. Their repentance is not the mind that was in Abraham—an unstaggering mind, strong in faith, giving glory to God; being fully persuaded that what he had promised, (and the things promised he knew and understood) he is able to perform—Romans 4: 18-23. Their repentance is sorrow because their sin has found them out. Their minds are in torment because of the apprehended tortures of the damned, which may seize upon their “souls” if they do not appease the fury of God! “Fear hath torment,” and their “repentance” is the offspring of their terror. This is a repentance that needeth to be repented of; for it is a repentance that worketh death. It is “sin working death in them.” Repentance of this sort pervading the inner man is evidential of that heart being untouched by “the goodness of God,” for faith in this goodness produces no such result. Its legitimate fruit is “faith working by love and purifying the heart;” and, a belief of facts combined with hell-terrors never since the world began, nor while flesh is flesh will it ever yield that perfect love which casteth out fear, which is essential to a scriptural purification of the soul.

A love-working faith in the gospel of the Kingdom is essentially necessary to qualify a man for immersion into the name, of the Holy Ones. When an intelligent heart-purified believer of the Gospel of the Kingdom is immersed into this name, his faith and disposition are counted to him for repentance and righteousness, or remission of sins, in the act of immersion, which act, according to the formula prescribed by the Lord Jesus, unites him to the Holy Name. Thus “by grace are ye saved through faith;” so that where the “one faith” is deficient salvation is not: for where the one faith is not in the mind and heart of the subject, there is no faith to be counted for the remission of sins.

This what I understand the Scriptures to teach concerning “baptism for the remission of sins.” It is very different, essentially different, from the Bethanian, Mormon, and Baptist, baptisms. They are unscriptural, because the subjects of them do not believe the Gospel of the Kingdom, which is foolishness to them, or unknown to them, or rejected with contempt as heresy, or reduced to a nullity by some crotchety hypothesis or vain conceit. Baptism saves by the resurrection of Jesus; but whom? “Us,” says Peter. The “us” is defined by himself as an example. He was one of those sent out to preach the Gospel of the Kingdom in all the habitable for a testimony unto all the nations thereof—Matthew 24: 14. He understood, believed, and obeyed what he preached like a candid and honest man. He was one of the saved by baptism through the resurrection of Jesus. And the rest of his contemporaries whom he associated with himself in the plural “us,” had believed the Gospel of the Kingdom and been saved from their past sins by baptism also. This was the divine order, and has only been inverted by the ignorance and perverseness of mankind. Faith in the Kingdom’s Gospel first, and then baptism, is the order prescribed by the Lord Jesus in the commission; but wayward humanity says, “No; immersion upon any pious grounds first, and faith in the Gospel of the Kingdom afterwards, though not absolutely necessary at all.”

Fifthly and lastly, “G.M.,” talks nonsense in supposing a scriptural demonstration of an assumed position possible by a simple quotation of Scripture. For example, he “affirms” truly enough, that Jesus will execute the office of High Priest for Israel. An objector says, I deny it, and demand the proof—a scriptural demonstration of your assumption being a truth.” G.M., replies, “I will give it in these words of Jesus, “I am King of the Jews;” and of Zechariah, “He shall sit a priest upon his throne.” “Now as Christ’s Kingdom”—“Stop!” exclaims the objector, “I don’t want your reasoning. You have placed your scripture texts by the side of your affirmation, and that is all you have any right to do. You say that you “ask none to believe what you affirm, except there be at the same time a scriptural demonstration of the position assumed” by you. You have affirmed your proposition, and produced what you call “a scriptural demonstration” which to my mind is no demonstration at all. The words of Jesus prove that he said he was King of the Jews; but your quotation from Zechariah may refer to some one else, and therefore does not prove to me, who am a non-Nazarene Israelite, that it is Jesus who shall sit upon the throne of Israel as a priest.”

It is obvious from this supposed case, that unless a man is permitted to reason on testimony adduced nothing can be demonstrated to the human mind, which is essentially “enmity against God, and not subject to his law.” G.M., nor any one else, can demonstrate affirmations without reasoning. God said to Israel, “Come let us reason together.” Paul reasoned with his contemporaries from the writings; that is, he showed that those writings testified what he said was God’s truth. This showing was done by what is called “reasoning.” G.M., must also reason, or be silent. G.M.,’s article in The British Millennial Harbinger is his reasoning, and proves him to be “a heretic,” if the editor be “orthodox;” and I feel satisfied he could not have obtained admission into its columns for what he has therein written, if he had not set out by speaking evil of Dr. Thomas. Have I not a right to show by reasoning what God’s testimony declares as well as G.M., or any one else? G.M., says that he asks none to believe what he affirms except it be scripturally demonstrated. I ask no more; but at the same time, claim equal right with all others to endeavour to show what the Scriptures teach; and if I prove that they teach a system of truth subversive, root and branch, of Bethanian and all other theologies, the convicted have no right to rail at me or to seek to silence me in any other way than by the force of argument. My weapons are the divine testimony and reason. If these be too sharp for them, let them stand aloof, and cease to pule about my creating divisions wherever I go. He that fights the good fight of faith with the sword of the spirit, which is the word of God, cannot fail of dividing the enemy, and cutting them up into mince meat: for “the word of God is living, and powerful, and sharper than any twp-edged sword, piercing even to the dividing of soul and spirit, and of the joints and marrow, and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart.” When reason wields this “mighty weapon” against “imaginations” and all “high things that exalt themselves against the knowledge of God,” it makes the wise in their own conceit angry and desperate. Instead of receiving what is proved they become violent and disruptive. They praise the weapon resting in its scabbard; but let reason bring its razor-edge in contact with their self-deceivings, and they curse the hand that wields it, and rave against the cut and thrust as the reasoner’s dogmatism and opinions. Then in the words of G.M., they “want to see all truths delivered from such teachers, and stated simply as they occur in the word of God.” They do not want the truths of that word brought home to their consciences. Men do not like that light which condemns their “piety” as evil. “State simply” that “he that believes and is baptised shall be saved; and he that believes not shall be condemned;” but whatever you do, don’t be too particular in defining the thing to be believed, lest in so doing thou shouldest bring us into condemnation also. This is the head and front of my offending. While in Britain I proved to the conviction of many, that “the wholesome words of the Lord Jesus” are scripturally interpreted by the paraphrase, “He that lovingly believes the Gospel of the Kingdom, and is immersed into the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, shall have repentance and the remission of sins granted to him in my name; and he that believes not the glad tidings of the kingdom shall be condemned.” G.M. has probably been dipped on a mere belief of facts, knowing nothing of the promises; and being tenacious of his own righteousness, he does not like reasonings that reduce it to mere “filthy rags.” Not being able to overthrow them, he falls upon the reasoner as a schismatic, and prays God to deliver the truth out of his hands, that peace-loving pietists may continue undisturbed. But the days of peace are gone; and G.M. must trim his lamp or perish in the war. EDITOR.