Jarrel - Baptist Church Perpetuity - Landmark Baptist

Great Founder, Jesus Christ, than other practices of religion do.’” Prof.
Albert H. Newman, D.D., L.L. D., it specialist in Baptist history, wrote me,
December 13, 1892: “It seems highly probable that Roger Williams was
immersed, though I Once was of the contrary opinion. Coddington, who
seems to have witnessed the ceremony, described it sometime afterward as
immersion.”
(2.) As to John Clarke, l have shown by Prof. J.C. C. Clarke, who has given
the original records of Rhode Island the most thorough investigation, that
he came to America a Baptist preacher. Prof. Reuben A. Guild, LL.D.,
after proving that Williams was immersed — in the letter from which this
note quotes — adds: “As to John Clarke, I have already answered your
question. He was pastor of the First Baptist church of Newport, and he
‘dipped’ believers at Seekonk. Would he administer this rite to others and
be a Baptist pastor and preacher when he had not been dipped or immersed
himself? 1 think not He was a scholarly and common sense man. The
tradition and belief is that he was baptized in England.” Prof. Albert
Newman, in the letter quoted in the foregoing, says: “It is certain from Mr.
Williams’ own account of Clarke’s church that Clarke practised
immersion, and we may infer from this that he was himself immersed.”
Prof. Whitsitt attempts to prove John Clarke was a Congregationalist, by
assuming that he was made a freeman in Massachusetts and that no man
could there, at that time, be a freeman without, at the same time, being a
Congregationalist. But the Professor is wrong again. The John Clarke, of
whom he speaks as having been made a freeman, is not the John Clarke
who organized the Newport church. Plot. David Weston editor of Backus’
Church History and the lamented critical Professor of Church History in
Hamilton Theological Seminary, says: “The John Clarke who was admitted
a freeman in Boston, May, 1635, must have been a different person from
the founder of the Rhode Island plantation. The latter writes in the
Narrative’ — ‘In the year ‘37 I left my native land, and in the ninth month
of the same I (through merry) arrived in Boston. I was no sooner on shore
than there appeared to me differences among them coming the covenants.’.
Mass. Historical Collect ions, fourth series, vol. 2. p. 22. The date thus
given in the ‘Narrative’ is verified by the fact that the difficulty on the
question of covenants, which Clarke found in the colony as soon as he was
on shore, does not seem to have arisen till 1836.” — Note to Backus’ Hist.
Bap., vol. 1, pp. 70-71. To this must be added, since the John Clarke who
organised the Newport church did not arrive in America till 1637, he could
not possibly have been the John Clarke whom was admitted a freeman in
1635! Prof. Whitsitt is a good brother and valuable historian but, in
attempting to fellow Dexter and to maintain the a Wooed Williams claim.