The Baptists CHAPTER I WHO AND WHAT ARE THE BAPTISTS? KNOWLEDGE of the Baptists, even among well-informed people, is often confined to a single fact-they are a religious body that practice immersion. This is, to be sure, accurate knowledge as far as it goes, but it goes a very little way. It does not serve to distinguish Baptists from many other denominations. Not a few persons will hear with surprise that there are in the United States, besides the Baptists, at least ten religious bodies-some of them quite numerous-that uniformly practice immersion, and three others that practice it frequently. While it is true that the administration of 7 this rite has been the most striking characteristic of Baptists, from the time that they appeared as a separate people, early in the seventeenth century, they have from the first held a distinctive group of doctrines. To understand these is a necessary preliminary to a comprehension of their history. The cardinal, the fundamental principle of Baptists is loyal obedience to Jesus Christ. This they conceive to be the essence of Christianity. To be a Christian is not to have had a certain "experience," not to believe a certain creed, not to perform a prescribed round of rites and observances, but to obey Christ. "If ye love me, keep my commandments." Baptists therefore decline to recognize the distinctions sometimes made between "essentials" and "non-essentials" among Christ's commands. They hold every command to be essential, in the place and for the purpose commanded. And they deny the right of any human authority to abrogate or alter any command that Christ gave to his disciples to be observed for all time. Because of the authority thus recognized in Jesus Christ, Baptists receive the Scriptures-the written word of Christ-as the sole and sufficient rule of faith and practice. No special theory of inspiration has acceptance among them; they are committed to no views of the authorship and dates of the various books, and are free to accept the ultimate conclusions of sound scholarship. Their thought has never been better put than in the Philadelphia Confession-which is practically identical with the confession of the English Baptist Assembly of 1689, which again is the Westminster Confession slightly revised: "The whole counsel of God, concerning all things necessary for his own glory, man's salvation, faith and life, is either expressly set down or necessarily contained in the holy Scripture; unto which nothing at any time is to be added, whether by a new revelation of the Spirit, or traditions of |