Jarrel - Baptist Church Perpetuity - Landmark Baptist

Joseph Cook, Congregationalist: “I remember where I am speaking; I know
what prejudices I am crossing; but I know that in this assembly, assuredly
nobody will have objection to my advocacy, even at a little expense of
consistency with my own supposed principles, of the necessity of a spiritual
church membership, if I say that “the Baptists have” been of foremost service
in bringing into the world, among all the Protestant denominations an adequate
idea of the importance of a spiritual church membership. I know that no
generous heart or searching intellect will object to this statement.” Again, says
Mr. Cook: “I thank the Baptists for having compelled other denominations to
recognize the necessity of a converted membership.” f1048
(2.) In Baptists remaining faithful to the great evangelical trusts we have their
scriptural fruit.
A mispronunciation of a word led to the slaughter of the gallant six hundred in
the charge of Bal-a-kla-va. A slight error in information left Napoleon ignorant
of the sunken road at Waterloo, which lost him the battle upon which his
destiny depended. The great Romish apostasy began and reached its full
development by underestimating the importance of contending for the great
principles and the particulars of church ordinances and church constitution.
This is but the logical and inevitably final result of calling anything which is in
God’s word “non-essential.” f1049 Thus, giving his reasons for leaving the
Baptist for a Pedobaptist church, a prominent New England minister said:
“I no longer regard the Scriptures as final authority in any such precise and
formal matters as I have heretofore done. I believe them to be divine, but
divine in the sense of revealing principles of action rather than precise
examples. I have come to regard christianity as a growth almost as much as a
revelation, and that very nearly as much attention is to be paid to its
development as to its establishment. Arising from this view of the Scriptures, I
have felt a growing indifference to theological distinctions. Forms of
doctrines and modes, both as they relate to the organization and the
ordinances, appear to me of less moment. Baptism itself is of less
consequence to me, and, as I now think, a change might occur in the form
when in the judgment of good men it might be wise and necessary.”
On the same line Mr. Daugherty, formerly pastor of the Stoughton Street
Baptist church of Boston, on leaving the Baptists, said:
“I was born and brought up a Baptist and in due time entered Andover
Theological Seminary and commenced my ministry a conscientious Baptist.
But have come gradually to feel the narrowness of my faith, or, at least, the
intense literalness of the interpretation of that faith. … While I have no doubt
that, philologically and historically, baptism by immersion was the primitive
mode, I consider it to-day among the non-essential things of the Christian