Amidst Us Our Beloved Stands

Recovering Sacrament in the Baptist Tradition

Michael A. G. Haykin

• Publisher: Lexham Press
• Year: 2022
• ISBN:
  9781683595861
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Christian Denominations

Baptists are sacramental When it comes to baptism and the Lord's Supper, many Baptists reject the language of sacrament. As a people of the book, the logic goes, Baptists must not let tradition supersede the Bible. So Baptists tend to view baptism and Communion as ordinances and symbols, not sacraments.But the history of Baptists and the sacraments is complicated. In Amidst Us Our Beloved Stands, Michael A. G. Haykin argues that earlier Baptists, such as Charles Spurgeon, stood closer to Reformed sacramental thought than most Baptists today do. More than mere memorials, baptism and Communion have spiritual implications that were celebrated by Baptists of the past. Haykin calls for a renewal of sacramental life in churches today—Baptists can and should be sacramental.

I

BLESSED FOOD

Baptism as a means of grace in the Particular Baptist movement

Spirituality lies at the very core of English Puritanism, that late sixteenth- and seventeenth-century movement that sought to reform the Church of England and, failing to do so, mainly splintered into a trio of denominations—Presbyterian, Independent or Congregationalist, and Particular (i.e., Calvinistic) Baptist.1 Whatever else these Puritans may have been—social, political, and ecclesiastical reformers—they were primarily men and women intensely passionate about piety and Christian experience. By and large united in their Calvinism, Puritans believed that every aspect of their spiritual lives came from the work of the Holy Spirit. They had, in fact, inherited from the continental Reformers of the sixteenth century, and from John Calvin (1506–1564) in particular, “a constant and even distinctive concern” with the person and work of the Holy Spirit.2 Benjamin B. Warfield (1851–1921), the distinguished American Presbyterian theologian, can actually speak of Calvin as “preeminently the theologian of the Holy Spirit.”3 And of his Puritan heirs and their interest in the Spirit Warfield had this to say:

The formulation of the doctrine of the work of the Spirit waited for the Reformation and for Calvin, and … the further working out of the details of this doctrine and its enrichment by the profound study of Christian minds and meditation of Christian hearts has come down from Calvin only to the Puritans. [I]t is only the truth to say that Puritan thought was almost entirely occupied with loving study of the work of the Holy Spirit, and found its highest expression in dogmatico-practical expositions of the several aspects of it.4

Alongside this emphasis on the Spirit, however, the Puritans were also assured that, as the Elizabethan Puritan Richard Greenham (1540–1594) once put it, “we drawe neere to God by meanes.”5 By this Greenham, speaking for his fellow Puritans, meant that there are various godly activities or spiritual disciplines that the Holy Spirit employs to help Christians grow to maturity in Christ. On one occasion Greenham identified three vital spiritual disciplines: “The first meanes [of grace] is prayer.… The second meanes is hearing of his word.… The third meane whereby we draw neere, is by the Sacraments.”6 A later Puritan author, John Preston (1587–1628), recognized other key disciplines such as “meditation, conference, the communion of saints, particular resolutions to [do] good.”7 Given the prominence of the Spirit in their thinking, the Puritans never for a moment believed that these means of grace or spiritual disciplines were sufficient in and of themselves to nourish the soul of the believer or sustain the inner life of a congregation. Only the Holy Spirit was sufficient for that. Yet, the Puritans were also certain that to seek the Spirit’s strength apart from such means was both unbiblical and foolish. Benjamin Keach (1640–1704), the most significant Particular Baptist theologian of the late seventeenth century, put it this way in 1681 when, in a direct allusion to the Quakers, who dispensed with the ordinances of baptism and the Lord’s Supper, he declared:

Many are confident they have the Spirit, Light, and Power, when ’tis all meer Delusion.… Some Men boast of the Spirit, and conclude they have the Spirit, and none but they, and yet at the same time cry down and villify his blessed Ordinances and Institutions, which he hath left in his Word, carefully to be observed and kept, till he comes the second time without Sin unto Salvation.… The Spirit hath its proper Bounds, and always runs in its spiritual Chanel, viz. The Word and Ordinances, God’s publick and private Worship.8

Keach’s fellow Particular Baptist Hercules Collins (1646/7–1702) similarly asserted that “if God have a Church in all Ages, he must have Ordinances there, because no Church of Christ can be constituted without them.”9

Other Puritans who were Presbyterians or Independents would have wholeheartedly agreed with this coupling of ordinance and Spirit, though their preferred term was “sacrament” instead of “ordinance.” Neither of the two most important Particular Baptist confessions of the seventeenth century, the First London Confession of Faith (1644/1646) and the Second London Confession of Faith (1677/1688), use the term “sacrament,” although signatories of these confessions occasionally used this noun from time to time and did so unapologetically. William Kiffen (1616–1701), who signed both of these confessions and can be rightly regarded as the father of the Particular Baptist community,10 described baptism on one occasion as “the Sacrament of the Spiritual Birth.”11 Keach, quoting the Arminian theologian Daniel Tilenus (1563–1633), stated without qualification that “baptism is the first Sacrament of the New Testament … in which there is an exact analogy between the Sign and the thing signified.”12 And in his Baptistic adaptation of the Heidelberg Catechism, Hercules Collins used this term a number of times in the section “Of the Sacraments.”13 For instance, Collins stated that

the Sacraments … are sacred Signs, and Seals, set before our Eyes, and ordained of God for this cause, that he may declare and seal by them the Promise of his Gospel unto us … that he giveth freely Remission of Sins, and Life everlasting, not only to his all in general, but to every one in particular that believeth, for that only Sacrifice of Christ which he accomplished upon the Cross.14

Of course, out of all these communities that came from Puritanism, only the Baptists baptized believers, and they uniformly baptized by immersion. As Timothy George has noted, this difference initiated a ferocious debate about baptism that lasted for the rest of the seventeenth century. This debate can be seen in the titles of the numerous tracts each side lobbed at each other, for example, Daniel Featley’s (1582–1645) Katabaptistai Kataptustoi. The Dippers dipt. Or, The Anabaptists duck’d and Plunged Over Head and Eares, at a Disputation in Southwark (1645), or Hercules Collins’s Believers-Baptism from Heaven, and of Divine Institution. Infants-Baptism from Earth, and Human Invention (1691).15 This Baptist tenacity in promoting their convictions earned them the reputation of being “sowers of division.”16 They were also charged with being immoral—in particular, with “doing acts unseemly in the dispensing the Ordinance of Baptism, not to be named amongst Christians.”17 Featley, for one, insisted that the Baptists were in the habit of stripping “stark naked, not onely when they flocke in great multitudes, men and women together, to their Jordans to be dipt; but also upon other occasions, when the season permits”!18

One of the earliest responses to charges like this and others that identified the Particular Baptists with the continental Anabaptists of the sixteenth century was a small thirteen-page booklet, The Confession of Faith, of those Churches which are commonly (though falsly) called Anabaptists, later known as the First London Confession of Faith.19 Neither the publisher nor the author (s) of this confession were named in the text, although, at the close of the introductory preface there did appear fifteen names—it was the pastoral leadership of the seven Particular Baptist churches then in existence, all of them located in London. As to which of these elders were the actual authors of the confession, it appears that John Spilsbury (c. 1593–c. 1662/1668), William Kiffen, and Samuel Richardson (fl. 1642–1658) drew up this confessional text in September of 1644.20 The confession went through at least two printings that year, and in January of 1646, it was reissued in a second edition. Although the confession seems to have failed to defuse the criticism of many of their fellow Puritans,21 it became the doctrinal standard for the first period of Particular Baptist advance, which ended in 1660 with the restoration of Charles II (1630–1685).22

A COMPANY OF VISIBLE SAINTS

The 1644 edition of the confession consisted of fifty-three articles. The first twenty articles dealt with the nature and attributes of God, the doctrine of the Trinity, divine election, the fall and sinfulness of all humanity, and the person and work of Christ in his offices of prophet, priest, and king. Articles XXI to XXXII covered the work of salvation and unequivocally revealed the confession’s Calvinism.23 For instance, Article XXII, discussing saving faith, stated that “faith is the gift of God wrought in the hearts of the elect by the Spirit of God.”24 And as the gift of God, this faith cannot be lost, as Article XXIII declared: “Those that have this pretious faith wrought in them by the Spirit, can never finally nor totally fall away.”25 Moreover, such saving faith is possessed only by the elect of God. In the words of Article XXI: “Christ Jesus by his death did bring forth salvation and reconciliation onely for the elect, which were those which God the Father gave him.”26 Yet, as Robert W. Oliver has noted, this “belief in Particular Redemption did not inhibit evangelism.” In the same article which committed those who signed this confession to particular redemption, it also stated that “the Gospel … is to be preached to all men.”27 The final five articles of the confession contain a response to the charge that the Particular Baptists held sentiments similar to those of the continental Anabaptists by emphasizing that the civil power is ordained by God and that this power is not only to be obeyed but also defended in all civil matters.28 In the second edition of 1646 a further article was added which stated that it was perfectly legitimate for “a Christian to be a Magistrate or Civill Officer” and “to take an Oath,” both of which the sixteenth-century Anabaptists had disputed.29

The fifteen articles that lay between those discussing God’s work in the salvation of sinners and those detailing the relationship of local churches to the state contained a thorough discussion of the nature of the church and its life. The local church, Article XXXIII affirmed, “is a company of visible Saints, called & separated from the world, by the word and the Spirit of God, to the visible profession of the faith of the Gospel, being baptized into that faith, and joyned to the Lord, and each other, by mutuall agreement.”30 In other words, the local church should consist only of those who have professed faith in Christ and have borne visible witness to that faith by being baptized. As Benjamin Keach put it, an essential part of a local church’s “Beauty and Glory” is the fact that it is built with “all precious Stones, lively Stones; all regenerated Persons.”31 This vision of the church clearly ran counter to a major aspect of the mentality of seventeenth-century Anglicans, Presbyterians, and New England Congregationalists, namely the idea of an ecclesio-political establishment, where religious uniformity was maintained by the arm of the state and infant baptism was all but required for citizenship. The Particular Baptists were convinced that the church is ultimately a fellowship of those who have personally embraced the salvation freely offered in Christ, not an army of conscripted men and women who have no choice in the matter.

The description of the local church as “a company of visible Saints, called & separated from the world, by the word and the Spirit of God” bespeaks the theology of the radical wing of Puritanism that began to separate from the state church and set up independent congregations in the final two decades of the sixteenth century. The major matrix for the seven Particular Baptist churches that drafted this confession was, in fact, a radical Puritan congregation that had been founded in 1616 and is known to history as the Jacob-Lathrop-Jessey Church, so-called after the surnames of its first three pastors: Henry Jacob (1562–1624), John Lathrop (1584–1653), and Henry Jessey (1601–1663). It was during the pastoral leadership of Jessey in the 1630s especially that a significant number of this congregation came to Baptist convictions and went on to form the nucleu...