A General History Of The Baptist Denomination In America

Baptism, as it was instituted by the great Christian Lawgiver, was a plain and significant rite. And for a long time, after corruptions in doctrine had crept into the church, baptism was maintained in its original simplicity and purity, and was free from that pompous round of ceremonies, with which it was afterwards encumbered.

Nothing is more evident, than that in the primitive ages of the church, professed believers were the only subjects of this sacred rite, and immersion or dipping was the only mode. But in process of time, baptism passed from visible believers, to catechumen minors, and from them to unconscious babes. And from immersion it was reduced to pouring, then to sprinkling, and now to any mode, which the inventive fancies of capricious candidates may devise, provided always, that some part of them be wet.

The limits of this review will not permit me to do anything more than merely to glance at the most prominent parts of this extensive subject, and relate some of the most remarkable circumstances which have attended the progress of baptism from its introduction to the present time.

The New Testament account of baptism demands our first attention; and there we find, that the first performer of this sacred rite, and who administered it to the great Messiah and to multitudes of repenting Jews, was JOHN THE BAPTIST.