Jarrel - Baptist Church Perpetuity - Landmark Baptist

ft936 Idem, p. 115.
ft937 Idem, p. 68.
ft938 Idem, p. 125.
ft939 Idem, p. 134.
ft940 Idem, p. 138.
ft941 Davis’ Hist. Welsh Bap., pp. 157-158.
ft942 Backus’ Hist. of New Eng., p. 117.
ft943 Recent Letter to the Author.
ft944 Benedict’s Dist. Bap., p. 459 — note.
ft945 As an illustration of the cloud of conjectures which Imagination and
opposition to Baptists have gathered over the Williams affair and over
Clarke’s church, swallowing Dr. Dexter’s — Dexter was a scholar but a
most bitterly prejudiced Baptist opponent — statement, that Baptists, in
1638 and 1639, did not practice exclusive immersion — a baseless
fabrication which I have exposed in a previous chapter, Dr. Whitsitt says
that Williams never was immersed and that “there is no reason to Suppose
that the baptism administered by Mr. Clarke at Newport was any different
from the one administered at Providence; and, possibly, Williams went
there and sprinkled them over again. I do not know. If the Baptists at
Newport adopted the same mode of baptism that was practiced at
Providence, it must have been sprinkling. I am inclined to think that they
sprinkled in each case.” The reader will see that this is purely guess work,
dished out to young ministers as historical instruction! And all on the
baseless guess work of the bitter Baptist opponent — Dr. Dexter! It would
look like such guessers should easily guess out a “Baptist succession,”
even were there no history proving It. But, strange to say, the guessing
seems to be all done against Baptist history! Now, as to the facts:
(1.) As to Williams’ case. Prof. Reuben A. Guild, LL. D., Librarian of
Brown University. with the original documents before him, wrote me,
April 25. 1893: Winthrop, under date of March 16 1639, says that Williams
‘was rebaptized by one Holliman. Then Mr. Williams rebaptized him and
ten more.’ Governor Winthrop was a dear friend and correspondent of
williams and knew what he was writing about. Perhaps Prof. Whitsitt
makes the point that rebaptism was not immersion. It has always been so
regarded in these parts from the beginning. Williams himself has placed
himself on record as a believer in dipping. In the Winthrop papers (Mass.
Hist. Collections, fourth series, vol. 6), under date of 1619, more than ten
years after his ‘rebaptism,’ he speaks of John Clarke as dipping believers at
Seekonk, and adds: I believe this practice comes nearer the practice of our