Baptism Scripture Quotes

The gospel by which individuals come to personal faith, and so to that radical transformation of life spoken of so often in the new Testament, is the personalizing of the larger challenge just mentioned: the call to every child, woman, and man to submit in faith to the lordship of the crucified and risen Jesus and so to become, through baptism and membership in the body of Christ, a living, breathing anticipation of the final new creation itself

Very occasionally, a simplified form of communion and of adult baptism for new members of the church would be enacted but no Separatist was ever married in church, because there is no hint of a marriage ceremony in scripture and the primitive church had not considered marriage a sacrament before AD 537.

Because of the Resurrection, our natural reaction must be to get past our emotional reactions as quickly as possible and reflect on what happened in light of the cross and the resurrection and our own baptisms into that defining reality – to the life-giving and life-affirming waters of forgiveness and reconciliation.

I was raised as a Baptist in the Bible Belt of the South. Until the age of 37, I had never heard anyone teach or preach about the baptism of the Holy Ghost. Oh yes, I had heard those scriptures read, more aptly read over, and had read over them myself, but I had never heard anyone try to explain this amazing experience or even give it any credence.

Second, we are to discover this purpose of God in Scripture. The will of God for the people is in the Word of God.

The saints are the true interpreters of Holy Scripture. The meaning of a given passage of the Bible becomes most intelligible in those human beings who have been totally transfixed by it and have lived it out.

Baptism is the sacramental doorway into the Church established by Jesus Christ. It removes our innate condition of original sin, washes away all actual sin and their effects, infuses sanctifying grace, illuminates with God’s own presence, and incorporates the one baptized into the Body of Christ.

There are people who begin waiting on God, and they do not know what they are waiting for—they have no idea. I believe that God is making the thing so that you cannot get out of it. You may refuse it, and you may come within its reach and come outside the boundaries of it, but it is for you. It is a personal baptism—it is not a church baptism. It is for the body of believers who are to be clothed with the power and unction, or anointing, of the Spirit by this glorious waiting. What do I mean by saying it is not a “church” baptism? Why, I mean that people get their minds on a building when I say “church.” You see, it is the believers who compose the “body” —believers in the Lord Jesus Christ—whatever sect or creed or denomination they are. I also tell you that Paul went so far as to say that some people have very strange ideas of who will be ready for the coming of the kingdom. All in Christ will be ready, and you have to decide whether you are in Christ or not. The Scripture says, in the first verse of Romans 8, “There is therefore now no condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus, who do not walk according to the flesh, but according to the Spirit.” If you are there—praise the Lord! That is a good position. I ask the Lord that He will bring us all into that place. What a wonder it will be.

The first wall attacked by Luther was the idea that popes, bishops, monks, and priests are spiritually superior to laity. His view was that all Christians belong to the same spiritual estate by virtue of their baptism and faith. These alone grant entrance into the kingdom of God. This was an early version of what came to be known as the “priesthood of all believers.” Luther demolished the second wall when he rejected the Roman assertion that only the pope has the right to interpret Scriptures. Luther strongly emphasized that laypeople have the right to read and interpret the Scripture for themselves. The third wall torn down was the claim that only the pope could summon church councils. Luther reminded his German readers that the emperor, not the pope,

This has been the vicious cycle of evangelical revivalism ever since: a pendulum swinging between enthusiasm and disillusionment rather than steady maturity in Christ through participation in the ordinary life of the covenant community. The regular preaching of Christ from all of the Scriptures, baptism, the Supper, the prayers of confession and praise, and all of the other aspects of ordinary Christian fellowship are seen as too ordinary.

BAPTISM BY FIRE Scriptures for meditation: 2 Chronicles 6; 7:1-6 Confession: Jer. 20:9 PRAYER POINTS Thank God for the purifying power of the fire of the Holy Ghost. I cover myself with the blood of the Lord Jesus. Father, let Your fire that burns away every deposit of the enemy fall upon me in the name of Jesus. Holy Ghost fire, incubate me in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ. I reject any evil stamp or seal placed upon me by ancestral spirits in the name of Jesus. I release myself from every negative anointing in the name of Jesus. Let every door of spiritual leakage be closed in the name of Jesus. I challenge every organ of my body with the fire of the Holy Spirit. (Lay your right hand methodically on various parts of the body beginning from the head.) Let every human spirit attacking my own spirit release me in the mighty name of Jesus. I reject every spirit of the tail in the name of Jesus. Sing the song "Holy Ghost fire, fire fall on me". Let all evil marks on my body be burnt off by the fire of the Holy Spirit in the name of Jesus. Let the anointing of the Holy Ghost fall upon me and break every negative yoke in the name of Jesus. Let every garment of hindrance and dirtiness be dissolved by the fire of the Holy Ghost in the name of Jesus. I command all my chained blessings to be unchained in the name of Jesus. Let all spiritual cages inhibiting my progress be roasted by the fire of the Holy Spirit in the name of Jesus. Now Make this Powerful Confession Before You Proceed I boldly declare that my body is the temple of God and that the Holy Ghost is dwelling in me. I am cleansed through the blood of the Lord Jesus Christ. Therefore, whosoever wants me to go into captivity shall go into captivity. Whosoever wants me to die by the sword shall die by the sword. The strangers shall fade away and be afraid out of their close places in the mighty name of the Lord Jesus Christ. They shall lick the dust like a serpent, they shall move out of their holes like worms of the earth,

Rather than get hung up on historical details, we need to keep coming back to the question, ‘What does God want to tell us?’ If we hang our faith on the absolute historical accuracy of Scripture in every detail, we risk making Scripture a sort of ‘magic’ book that turns up the right answers to all sorts of rather irrelevant questions, instead of being a book that gives us, in the wonderful words of the Coronation service, ‘the lively oracles of God’. The Bible is not intended to be a mere chronicle of past events, but a living communication from God, telling us now what we need to know for our salvation.

Having written some pages in favor of Jesus, I receive a solemn communication crediting me with the possession of a “theology” by which I acquire the strange dignity of being wrong forever or forever right. Have I gauged exactly enough the weights of sins? Have I found too much of the Hereafter in the Here? Or the other way around? Have I found too much pleasure, too much beauty and goodness, in this our unreturning world? O Lord, please forgive any smidgen of such distinctions I may have still in my mind. I meant to leave them all behind a long time ago. If I’m a theologian I am one to the extent I have learned to duck when the small, haughty doctrines fly overhead, dropping their loads of whitewash at random on the faces of those who look toward Heaven. Look down, look down, and save your soul by honester dirt, that receives with a lordly indifference this off-fall of the air. Christmas night and Easter morning are this soil’s only laws. The depth and volume of the waters of baptism, the true taxonomy of sins, the field marks of those most surely saved, God’s own only interpretation of the Scripture: these would be causes of eternal amusement, could we forget how we have hated one another, how vilified and hurt and killed one another, bloodying the world, by means of such questions, wrongly asked, never to be rightly answered, but asked and wrongly answered, hour after hour, day after day, year after year—such is my belief—in Hell.

In their hermeneutical practices, the Anabaptists were adamant that the New Testament, as the Word of Christ, is the completion of the Old Testament. In the Schleitheim Confession, Sattler and the Swiss Brethren interpreted the Old Testament through the New Testament rather than as a flat document that confuses the two covenants. The Old Testament—more properly, the prophets from Noah to John the Baptist—was a preparation and “figure” that indicated not itself but Jesus Christ. Noah’s deluge is a “figure of what saves you,” spiritual baptism; the Abramic practice and Mosaic command to circumcise is a “testimony” to spiritual purification; John the Baptist “pointed with his finger to Jesus the Lamb of God.”22 This fulfillment of the Old in the New, with its progression of New over Old, fostered profound differences with the Magisterial Reformers. The Anabaptists believed the Reformed conflated the two covenants and thereby departed from Scripture: “they have not so much as a dot in Scripture.”23

authority. What we face now is the “sinner’s prayer.” And I am here to tell you, if there is anything I have declared war on, it is the sinner’s prayer. Yes, in the same way that dependence upon infant baptism for salvation,[29] in my opinion, was the golden calf [30] of the Reformation, the sinner’s prayer is the golden calf of today for the Baptists, the Evangelicals, and everyone else who has followed them. The sinner’s prayer has sent more people to hell than anything on the face of the earth! You say, “How can you say such a thing?” I answer: Go with me to Scripture and show me, please! I would love for you to show me where anyone evangelized that way. The Scripture does not tell us that Jesus Christ came to the nation of Israel and said, “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand, now who would like to ask me into their hearts? I see that hand.” That is not what it says. He said, “Repent and believe the gospel” (Mar 1:15)! Men today are trusting in the fact that at least one time in their life they prayed a prayer, and someone told them they were saved because they were sincere enough. And so if you ask them, “Are you saved?” they do not say, “Yes I am, because I am looking unto Jesus and there is mighty evidence giving me assurance of being born again.” No!—they say instead, “One time in my life I prayed a prayer.” Now they live like devils, but they prayed a prayer!

In a sense the rise of Anabaptism was no surprise. Most revolutionary movements produce a wing of radicals who feel called of God to reform the reformation. And that is what Anabaptism was, a voice calling the moderate reformers to strike even more deeply at the foundations of the old order. Like most counterculture movements, the Anabaptists lacked cohesiveness. No single body of doctrine and no unifying organization prevailed among them. Even the name Anabaptist was pinned on them by their enemies. It meant rebaptizer and was intended to associate the radicals with heretics in the early church and subject them to severe persecution. The move succeeded famously. Actually, the Anabaptists rejected all thoughts of rebaptism because they never considered the ceremonial sprinkling they received in infancy as valid baptism. They much preferred Baptists as a designation. To most of them, however, the fundamental issue was not baptism. It was the nature of the church and its relation to civil governments. They had come to their convictions like most other Protestants: through Scripture. Luther had taught that common people have a right to search the Bible for themselves. It had been his guide to salvation; why not theirs? As a result, little groups of Anabaptist believers gathered about their Bibles. They discovered a different world in the pages of the New Testament. They found no state-church alliance, no Christendom. Instead they discovered that the apostolic churches were companies of committed believers, communities of men and women who had freely and personally chosen to follow Jesus. And for the sixteenth century, that was a revolutionary idea. In spite of Luther’s stress on personal religion, Lutheran churches were established churches. They retained an ordained clergy who considered the whole population of a given territory members of their church. The churches looked to the state for salary and support. Official Protestantism seemed to differ little from official Catholicism. Anabaptists wanted to change all that. Their goal was the “restitution” of apostolic Christianity, a return to churches of true believers. In the early church, they said, men and women who had experienced personal spiritual regeneration were the only fit subjects for baptism. The apostolic churches knew nothing of the practice of baptizing infants. That tradition was simply a convenient device for perpetuating Christendom: nominal but spiritually impotent Christian society. The true church, the radicals insisted, is always a community of saints, dedicated disciples in a wicked world. Like the missionary monks of the Middle Ages, the Anabaptists wanted to shape society by their example of radical discipleship—if necessary, even by death. They steadfastly refused to be a part of worldly power including bearing arms, holding political office, and taking oaths. In the sixteenth century this independence from social and civic society was seen as inflammatory, revolutionary, or even treasonous.

A similar theological—and particularly ecclesiological—logic shapes the Durham Declaration, a manifesto against abortion addressed specifically to the United Methodist Church by a group of United Methodist pastors and theologians. The declaration is addressed not to legislators or the public media but to the community of the faithful. It concludes with a series of pledges, including the following: We pledge, with Cod’s help, to become a church that hospitably provides safe refuge for the so-called “unwanted child” and mother. We will joyfully welcome and generously support—with prayer, friendship, and material resources—both child and mother. This support includes strong encouragement for the biological father to be a father, in deed, to his child.27 No one can make such a pledge lightly. A church that seriously attempted to live out such a commitment would quickly find itself extended to the limits of its resources, and its members would be called upon to make serious personal sacrifices. In other words, it would find itself living as the church envisioned by the New Testament. William H. Willimon tells the story of a group of ministers debating the morality of abortion. One of the ministers argues that abortion is justified in some cases because young teenage girls cannot possibly be expected to raise children by themselves. But a black minister, the pastor of a large African American congregation, takes the other side of the question. “We have young girls who have this happen to them. I have a fourteen year old in my congregation who had a baby last month. We’re going to baptize the child next Sunday,” he added. “Do you really think that she is capable of raising a little baby?” another minister asked. “Of course not,” he replied. No fourteen year old is capable of raising a baby. For that matter, not many thirty year olds are qualified. A baby’s too difficult for any one person to raise by herself.” “So what do you do with babies?” they asked. “Well, we baptize them so that we all raise them together. In the case of that fourteen year old, we have given her baby to a retired couple who have enough time and enough wisdom to raise children. They can then raise the mama along with her baby. That’s the way we do it.”28 Only a church living such a life of disciplined service has the possibility of witnessing credibly to the state against abortion. Here we see the gospel fully embodied in a community that has been so formed by Scripture that the three focal images employed throughout this study can be brought to bear also on our “reading” of the church’s action. Community: the congregation’s assumption of responsibility for a pregnant teenager. Cross: the young girl’s endurance of shame and the physical difficulty of pregnancy, along with the retired couple’s sacrifice of their peace and freedom for the sake of a helpless child. New creation: the promise of baptism, a sign that the destructive power of the world is broken and that this child receives the grace of God and hope for the future.29 There, in microcosm, is the ethic of the New Testament. When the community of God’s people is living in responsive obedience to God’s Word, we will find, again and again, such grace-filled homologies between the story of Scripture and its performance in our midst.

QUESTIONS 1. Is the doctrine of the Trinity revealed in the Old Testament? In the New Testament% 2. Is the God revealed in the Old Testament the Triune God? How can this be proved% 3. Cite an Old Testament text to prove that God is not a single person. 4. Cite a text which indicates that the Angel of Jehovah is Jehovah (God). 5. Cite a prophetic text which shows that God promised to send God incarnate. 6. Why did the apostles accept the "doctrine" of the Trinity? 7. What two essential elements of the doctrine of the Trinity are taught in the baptismal form of Matthew? 8. The Larger Catechism states that each of the three persons of the Godhead is seen to be God because Scripture attributes to each of them such names, attributes, works, and worship as are proper to God only. Can you cite Scripture references showing that the names, attributes, works, and worship proper to God are associated with each of the three persons (the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost)?

As a prisoner for the Lord, then, I urge you to live a life worthy of the calling you have received. Be completely humble and gentle; be patient, bearing with one another in love. Make every effort to keep the unity of the Spirit through the bond of peace. There is one body and one Spirit—just as you were called to one hope when you were called— one Lord, one faith, one baptism; one God and Father of all, who is over all and through all and in all. EPHESIANS 4 : 1 – 6

The scriptures begin not with a set of principles or proverbs but with the voice of a narrator, a storyteller: “In the beginning when God created the heavens and the earth, the earth was a formless void and darkness covered the face of the deep” (Gen. 1:1–2), and they end with a worshipful cry for the story of God to move to its next, dramatic chapter: “Amen. Come, Lord Jesus!” (Rev. 22:20). The Bible contains diverse literary forms and genres, but they are all enclosed in a grand narrative parenthesis. To the eye of faith, to be human is to be a creature, and to be a creature is to be enmeshed in the story of creation. A major theme in the theology of baptism, to name another place of narrative investment, is that through baptism Christians are gathered up into the identity of Jesus Christ, which means at least in part that we now see our lives in the shape and pattern of the story of Jesus. Jesus is, as Hebrews puts it, the “pioneer and perfecter of our faith” (Heb. 12:2). He has blazed the trail ahead of us, and his story is now our story.

just as John ritually cleansed people with water through baptism,* so you will be washed with the Holy Spirit very soon.

Followers of Jesus the Messiah, both Jews and Gentiles, did so as an act of worshipping the one God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob as seen in their prayers, reading of scripture, and the practice of communion. Baptism as a symbol of initiation into the body of Messiah represented a new exodus for the people of God, a rite of passage into the Messiah-family.

Protestants have discovered great genius in inventing arguments for the support of infant baptism, and to some Baptists they seem to reason in this manner: It is written, God made a covenant with Abraham and his family: therefore, though it is not written, we ought to believe he makes a covenant with every christian and his family. God settled on Abraham and his family a large landed estate: therefore, he gives every christian and his family the benefits of the christian religion. God commanded Abraham and his family to circumcise their children: therefore, all professors of christianity ought, without a command, not to circumcise but to baptize their children. Jesus said, "suffer little children to come unto me:" therefore, infants who cannot come ought to be carried, not to Jesus, but to a minister, not to be healed, but to be baptized. Paul advised married believers at Corinth not to divorce their unbelieving yoke-fellows, lest they should stain the reputation of their children, with the scandal of illegitimacy: therefore, children, legitimate and illegitimate, ought to be baptized. A man of thirty years of age says he believes the gospel: therefore, his neighbor’s infant of eight days ought to be baptized, as if he believed the gospel. And finally, the scripture does not mention infant baptism; but it is, notwithstanding, full of proof that infants were and ought to be baptized.   Really, the Baptists ought to be forgiven for not having a taste for this kind of logic; yea, they ought to be applauded for preferring argument before sophistry.

So, Christian Wiccans have agreed to adapt to the basic principles of early Christianity: 1) honoring the Holy Trinity, 2) baptism, 3) communion, 4) strive to seek truth and love, and 5) to continue to read and study all forms of scriptures that each individual finds enlightening and as a guide to their Higher Selves.

Moreover, Synod in agreement with our Confession maintains that “the sacraments are not empty or meaningless signs, so as to deceive us, but visible signs and seals of an inward and invisible thing, by means of which God works in us by the power of the Holy Spirit” (Article XXXIII), and that more particularly baptism is called “the washing of regeneration” and “the washing away of sins” because God would “assure us by this divine pledge and sign that we are spiritually cleansed from our sins as really as we are outwardly washed with water”; wherefore our Church in the prayer after baptism “thanks and praises God that He has forgiven us and our children all our sins, through the blood of His beloved Son —Page 172— Jesus Christ, and received us through His Holy Spirit as members of His only begotten Son, and so adopted us to be His children, and sealed and confirmed the same unto us by holy baptism”; so that our Confessional Standards clearly teach that the sacrament of baptism signifies and seals the washing away of our sins by the blood and the Spirit of Jesus Christ, that is, the justification and the renewal by the Holy Spirit as benefits which God has bestowed upon our seed. Synod is of the opinion that the representation that every elect child is on that account already in fact regenerated even before baptism, can be proved neither on scriptural nor on confessional grounds, seeing that God fulfils His promise sovereignly in His own time, whether before, during, or after baptism. It is hence imperative to be circumspect in one’s utterances on this matter, so as not to desire to be wise beyond that which God has revealed.

The fathers do affirm a broad set of theological propositions that have remained central to Christian orthodoxy across almost all denominational lines. Ramsey specifically lists belief in a triune God, the fully divine and fully human natures of Christ, the redemptive efficacy of Christ’s death on the cross, the absolute authority and infallibility of Scripture, the fallen condition of humanity, the significance of baptism and Holy Communion, and the vital importance of prayer and a disciplined spiritual life. “Belief in these things, which the fathers unanimously proclaimed, even if they proclaimed them in different ways, continues to be the distinguishing mark of Christianity to this day.

The Church is a group of individuals who have made sacred covenants with God through his divine authority. When individuals cease to keep those covenants, they remove themselves from the Church whether or not the Church formally removes them from the rolls. We need to help youth, young adults, and ourselves make sacred covenants in the waters of baptism and the temple. We need to remember those covenants by reviewing records of those covenants (scripture study) and communicating with the author of those covenants (prayer). We need to form our families by covenants and center them in covenants. We need to renew those covenants by regularly partaking of the sacrament. We need to keep those covenants and repent when we stray from those covenants. If we keep our covenants, the statistics will take care of themselves.

To try to understand the words, first and foremost, is a fool’s errand. That’s why everyone thinks Christian fundamentalists, or really any kind of religious fundamentalists, are wackjobs or idiots or both. What most Catholics understand, it seems intuitively, or perhaps because they were baptized as babies and already put on their path without much of a say, is that they are supposed to behave like actors; it’s about learning the lines, the cues, then feeling them, there in the church and also out in the world. That’s it. That’s how Christianity is supposed to work; it is based on feeling, not knowledge. That’s what it means to be a follower.

Basil the Great gives us a clear understanding of the Sacred Apostolic Tradition: “Of the dogmas and sermons preserved in the Church, certain ones we have from written instruction, and certain ones we have received from the Apostolic Tradition, handed down in secret. Both the one and the other have one and the same authority for piety, and no one who is even the least informed in the decrees of the Church will contradict this. For if we dare to overthrow the unwritten customs as if they did not have great importance, we shall thereby imperceptively do harm to the Gospel in its most important points. And even more, we shall be left with the empty name of the Apostolic preaching without content. For example, let us especially make note of the first and commonest thing: that those who hope in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ should sign themselves with the sign of the Cross. Who taught this in Scripture? Which Scripture instructed us that we should turn to the east in prayer? Which of the saints left us in written form the words of invocation during the transformation of the bread of the Eucharist and the Chalice of blessing? For we are not satisfied with the words which are mentioned in the Epistles or the Gospels, but both before them and after them we pronounce others also as having great authority for the Mystery, having received them from the unwritten teaching. By what Scripture, likewise, do we bless the water of Baptism and the oil of anointing and, indeed, the one being baptized himself? Is this not the silent and secret tradition? And what more? What written word has taught us this anointing with oil itself?15 Where is the triple immersion and all the rest that has to do with Baptism, the renunciation of Satan and his angels to be found? What Scripture are these taken from? Is it not from this unpublished and unspoken teaching which our Fathers have preserved in a silence inaccessible to curiosity and scrutiny, because they were thoroughly instructed to preserve in silence the sanctity of the Mysteries? For what propriety would there be to proclaim in writing a teaching concerning that which it is not allowed for the unbaptized even to behold?” (On the Holy Spirit, chap. 27).

Irenaeus may challenge the appropriateness of a decision made by Victor, but he never challenges Victor’s authority to make the binding decision. Cyprian may at times disagree with a decree of Stephen’s on baptism, but he never rejects the special place of the Roman See, which

What we seek for ourselves, and what we teach to others, must be governed by the Scripture alone. Only when the Word of God dwells in us richly shall we be able to evaluate the experiences that we and others may have.

Third, this revelation of the purpose of God in Scripture should be sought primarily in its didactic rather than its descriptive parts. More precisely, we should look for it in the teaching of Jesus, and in the sermons and writings of the apostles, rather than in the purely narrative portions of the Acts. What is described in Scripture as having happened to others is not necessarily intended for us, whereas what is promised to us we are to appropriate, and what is commanded to us we are to obey.

Events surrounding Jesus’ baptism reveal the intense religious excitement and social ferment of the early days of John the Baptist’s ministry. Herod had been cruel and rapacious; Roman military occupation was harsh. Some agitation centered around the change of governors from Gratus to Pilate in AD 26. Most of the people hoped for a religious solution to their intolerable political situation, and when they heard of a new prophet, they flocked out into the desert to hear him. The religious sect (Essenes) from Qumran professed similar doctrines of repentance and baptism. Jesus was baptized at Bethany on the other side of the Jordan (see Jn 1:28). John also baptized at “Aenon near Salim” (Jn 3:23).

Many interpreters place John’s baptismal ministry at a point on the middle reaches of the Jordan River, where trade routes converge at a natural ford not far from the modern site of Tel Shalem.

Infant baptism was not named in the Holy Scriptures, nor in any history, for two hundred years after the birth of Christ. And when it was first named, ministers called it regeneration. Because Christ says, “Except a man be born of water, and of the Spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God,” they held that baptism washed away original sin, and that infants could not be saved if they were not baptized. And because Christ says, “Except ye eat the flesh of the Son of man and drink his blood, ye have no life in you,” they held that no person could be saved without eating the Lord’s supper; and they brought infants to it, as well as to baptism. For the truth of these facts, we appeal to the most noted writings of the third and fourth centuries. A noted minister of the third century said, “It is for that reason, because by the sacrament of baptism the pollutions of our birth is taken away, that infants are baptized.” [Clark’s Defense of Infant Baptism, 1752, p.111.]

The excellent Mr. Edwards was settled there, with his grandfather Stoddard, upon the opinion that the Lord’s supper was a converting ordinance, and he had gone on fifteen years in that way, until he was fully convinced that it was contrary to the Word of God; and he also found that gospel discipline could not be practiced in such a way. No sooner was his change of mind discovered, in 1744, than most of his people were inflamed against him, and never would give him a hearing upon the reasons of his change of sentiments; but they were resolute to have him dismissed. As he could not get them to hear him preach upon the subject, he printed his thoughts upon it, in 1749, though most of them would not read his book. In it he says, “that baptism, by which the primitive converts were admitted into the church, was used as an exhibition and token of their being visibly regenerated, dead to sin, and alive to God. The saintship, godliness, and holiness of which, according to Scripture, professing Christians and visible saints do make a profession and have a visibility, is not any religion and virtue that is the result of common grace, or moral sincerity, (as it is called), but saving grace.” And to prove this, he referred to Rom. 2:29; 6:1-4; Phil. 3:3; Col. 2:11, 12. [On a right to Sacraments, p. 20-23.] Though he did not design it, yet many others have been made Baptists by the same scriptures, and the same ideas from them.

All things in Scripture are not alike mplain in themselves, nor alike clear unto all; yet those things which are necessary to be known, believed and observed for salvation, are so nclearly propounded and opened in some place of Scripture or other, that not only the learned, but the unlearned, in a due use of ordinary means, may attain to a sufficient understanding of them. (m2Pe 3:16; n Psa 19:7; 119:130)

In August, 1746, disputes about baptism were first brought into this church; and while the pastor, Mr. Backus, was prayerfully considering the subject, ten persons were baptized by Elder Moulton. The description of his subsequent exercises, and the result to which he was brought, is thus given in his own words.   “About three months after, when the heat of controversy was abated, the question was put to my conscience in my retired hours, Where is it, and in what relation to the church, do those stand, who are baptized, but not converted? I could see that all the circumcised were obliged to keep the passover; and I had seen that there was no halfway in the Christian church, nor any warrant to admit any to communion therein, without a credible profession of saving faith. No tongue can tell the distress I now felt. Could I have discovered any foundation in Scripture for my former practice, I should most certainly have continued therein: But all my efforts failing, I was at last brought to the old standard, so as to leave good men and bad men out of the question, and simply inquire, What saith the Scriptures?” By this means his mind was at length settled, in the full conviction of the baptism of believers only, and he submitted himself to this ordinance, August 22, 1751.

celebrations and with the Jewish festivals in particular. Hence the way in which Christian baptism celebrates a new kind of exodus, and the eucharist a new kind of Passover.

People sometimes speak as if the spirit were given to make us happy and relaxed. Well, that may sometimes happen, but this expectation looks suspiciously like an attempt to get the spirit to endorse [14] our modern western aspirations. In the New Testament, the spirit drove Jesus into the wilderness after his baptism,34 and the spirit drives the church into the places of pain and danger so that new creation may happen right there, where it is most needed.

In the last place: We observe some sincere Christians, whose minds are so swayed by the assertion that personal faith must be the invariable pre-requisite to baptism and admission to the church, that they seem incapable of ever entertaining the thought that the church membership of the children of believers may be reasonable and scriptural. The doctrine seems to them so great an anomaly that they cannot look dispassionately at the evidence for it. But to one who has weighed the truths set forth above, the absence of that doctrine from God’s dispensations would seem the strange anomaly. To him who has appreciated the parental relation as God represents it, the failure to include it within the circuit of the visible church, to sanctify its obligations and to seal its hopes with the sacramental badge, would appear the unaccountable thing.

We have to remind ourselves that the multitude who heard Peter's sermon on Pentecost was Jewish. It included Jews from Palestine, proselytes, and dispersed Jews from other parts of the Roman Empire and beyond. The Old Testament was all they had of the Holy Scriptures. As they listened to Peter preaching from those Scriptures (twelve of the twenty-two verses of Peter's sermon in Acts 2 contain quotations from the Old Testament), they could have understood his words in only one way-as a reference to the promise in God's covenant and the fact that that promise extended not only to believers but to their children as well. To interpret Acts 2:39 in light of the New Testament Scriptures, which did not yet exist, as do many Baptists," is to engage in hermeneutical error and can only lead to a serious misrepresentation of the mind of the Spirit. The Jewish multitude had Jewish expectations-not just about the Messiah, but also about the way in which God works with people.

Philippian jailer asked Paul, "What must I do to be saved?" it was natural and scriptural for the apostle to reply, "Believe in the Lord Jesus, and you will be saved-you and your household" (Acts 16:30-31). Paul's words do not mean that the rest of the household would automatically come to faith in Christ, but his presumption was that the faith of the head of the household would ultimately govern the commitments of the rest of the man's family. As a result, the jailer's entire household was baptized that night (v. 33).

Because one of the most striking features of the New Covenant is the inclusion of Gentiles on a large scale, it is important to note that the promises of God to parents do not change as a result of this new state of affairs. Nor does the fulfillment of God’s covenant promises in Christ alter or change the duties of believing parents with regard to the rearing of their offspring. In short, in all eras, God commands parents to bring children up with Him as their God, and He promises that such a faithful upbringing will not be futile. And Scripture is consistently clear that the duties of godly parenthood are not altered if the parents are Gentile.

In Scripture, God tells us how we should approach him in public worship. We read the Bible, sing the Bible, preach the Bible, pray the Bible, and see the Bible (in baptism and the Lord's Supper).

If infant baptism is not commanded in Scripture, it is thus a violation of what is called the Regulative Principle of Worship.

The problem with all of this, of course, is that it tends to leave us with little that is normative for two broad areas of concern — Christian experience and Christian practice. There is no express teaching on such matters as the mode of baptism, the age of those who are to be baptized, which charismatic phenomenon is to be in evidence when one receives the Spirit, or the frequency of the Lord’s Supper, to cite but a few examples. Yet these are precisely the areas where there is so much division among Christians. Invariably, in such cases people argue that this is what the earliest believers did, whether such practices are merely described in the narratives of Acts or found by implication from what is said in the Epistles. Scripture simply does not expressly command that baptism must be by immersion, or that infants are to be baptized, or that all genuine conversions must be as dramatic as Paul’s, or that Christians are to be baptized in the Spirit evidenced by tongues as a second work of grace, or that the Lord’s Supper is to be celebrated every Sunday. What do we do, then, with something like baptism by immersion? What does Scripture say? In this case it can be argued from the meaning of the word itself, from the one description of baptism in Acts of going “down into the water” and coming “up out of the water” (8:38 – 39), and from Paul’s analogy of baptism as death, burial, and resurrection (Rom 6:1 – 3) that immersion was the presupposition of baptism in the early church. It was nowhere commanded precisely because it was presupposed. On the other hand, it can be pointed out that without a baptismal tank in the local church in Samaria (!), the people who were baptized there would have had great difficulty being immersed. Geographically, there simply is no known supply of water there to have made immersion a viable option. Did they pour water over them, as an early church manual, the Didache (ca. AD 100), suggests should be done where there is not enough cold, running water or tepid, still water for immersion? We simply do not know, of course. The Didache makes it abundantly clear that immersion was the norm, but it also makes it clear that the act itself is far more important than the mode. Even though the Didache is not a biblical document, it is a very early, orthodox Christian document, and it may help us by showing how the early church made pragmatic adjustments in this area where Scripture is not explicit. The normal (regular) practice served as the norm. But because it was only normal, it did not become normative. We would probably do well to follow this lead and not confuse normalcy with normativeness in the sense that all Christians must do a given thing or else they are disobedient to God’s Word.

5. The Bible has both a central direction and a rich diversity. Historical scholars tend to stress its diversity, and a serious reading must affirm this richness. This means that not all parts will cohere or agree. The Bible presents us with the treasure of many people in many times and places trying to live and believe faithfully. And we must take care that we are not reductionist because the richness staggers us and will not be contained in our best categories. But theologians also stress the singularity of the Bible. It is, in a clear way, about one thing. There is “one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all” (Ephesians 4:5–6). Given certain differences, that oneness is characteristic of both the Hebrew Scriptures and the Christian Testament. And we must not trivialize the Bible by fragmenting it into many things in which we miss its central agenda.

Unfortunately, most Christians and ministers assume that a deep understanding of divine things is not necessary for salvation. Their ministers have led them to believe that baptism is all it takes to obtain the assurance of salvation. They are unaware that such a claim is theological and stands on theological assumptions about the basic elements and matrix of Christian theology. Without a knowledge of the true basic elements and matrix involved in the interpretation of Scripture and the constructions of Christian doctrines, it is amazing how easily believers are deceived by pastors, pastors deceived by professors, professors deceived by scholars, and scholars deceived by tradition.

We're all Naaman, lepers reborn. We're all iron sinking toward Sheol until the wood and water save us. We're all Elijah, led to brooks in the wilderness. We're all Elisha, baptized into Jesus' Jordan baptism to share his Spirit. By the Spirit of Jesus, the baptized become a prophetic community, given the words of God to speak and sing to one another, qualified by the Spirit to stand in the Lord's council. Preachers aren't the only prophets in the church. Preachers lead and train a community of prophets. Wherever the Lord calls us to labor--whether we're at work, hoe, out in the neighborhood, or at the kids' baseball game--he fills our mouths with words of fire to kill and make alive (1 Sam 2:6; Jer 1:9-10). Prophets must keep up a steady diet of God's word so that our words give life rather than spread death. When we drink the Spirit, our words drop like rain and drip like dew (Deut 32:2). Clothed with the Spirit of prophecy, we intercede for the world. Faithful prophets must be and remain filled with the Spirit. You're baptized: walk in step with the Spirit. You've been soaked in the Spirit: don't quench or grieve him, and you will prophesy, you will see visions, you will dream dreams.

Whatever one thinks about debates over women in ministry or “traditional gender roles,” one can hardly conclude that this teaching is a major theme of Scripture, especially when subjects the Bible does emphasize repeatedly (baptism and the Lord’s Supper) are considered “secondary issues” that rarely cause more than a brief academic discussion or informal teasing with each other between those on the “same side” who disagree on them.

The Kingdom of God is not a Talmud, nor is it a mechanical collection of scriptural or patristic quotations outside our being and our lives. The Kingdom of God is within us, like a dynamic leaven which fundamentally changes man's whole life, his spirit and his body. What is required in patristic study, in order to remain faithful to the Fathers' spirit of freedom and worthy of their spiritual nobility and freshness, is to approach their holy texts with the fear in which we approach and venerate their holy relics and holy icons. This liturgical reverence will soon reveal to us that here is another inexpressible grace. The whole atmosphere is different. There are certain vital passages in the patristic texts which, we feel, demand of us, and work within us, an unaccustomed change. These we must make part of our being and our lives, as truths and as standpoints, to leaven the whole. And at the same time we must put our whole self into studying the Fathers, waiting and marking time. This marriage, this baptism into patristic study brings what we need, which is not an additional load of patristic references and the memorizing of other people's opinions, but the acquisition of a new clear-sighted sense which enables man to see things differently and rightly. If we limit ourselves to learning passages by heart and classifying them mechanically — and teach men likewise — then we fall into a basic error which simply makes us fail to teach and make known the patristic way of life and philosophy.

be specific, then: a type in Scripture (tupos in Greek, meaning originally a die-stamp or matching impression) is an event, institution, place, object, office, or functioning person that patterns a greater reality that in some sense is of the same kind and is due to appear on history’s stage at some subsequent point. This greater reality is called the antitype. The term “type” is taken from Romans 5:14, where Adam is called a tupos(“pattern”) of Christ, the one who was to come. “Antitype” comes from 1 Peter 3:21, where baptism, understood not simply as an applying of water to the body but also, and essentially, as an outgoing of faith to God, is called the antitypethat the preserving of Noah through the flood waters by his entering the ark had prefigured. A type establishes a frame for interpreting the greater reality when it appears, and meantime, simply by existing, it inculcates the principle of which the greater reality will in fact be the supreme instance. When the greater reality arrives, it becomes the decisive factor in its own field; one way or another it transcends and supersedes the type. In space-time terms, the type is thenceforth a thing of the past, no longer determinative of what must be done or of what will happen. The biblical account of it, however, is of permanent value as providing concepts and categories for understanding the antitype. Typology thus becomes a kind of phrase book for use in theology.

A study of the Scriptures references in Acts and the Epistles concerning water baptism show that all baptisms took place in the Name of the Lord Jesus Christ. Peter was not 'out of order' here,

The saints are the true interpreters of Holy Scriptures. The meaning of a given passage of the Bible becomes most intelligible in those human beings who have been totally transfixed by it and have lived it out.

They become Scripture by being read anew, evolving in continuity with their original sense, tacitly corrected and given added depth and breadth of meaning. This is a process in which the word gradually unfolds its inner potentialities, already somehow present like seeds, but needing the challenge of new situations, new experiences and new sufferings, in order to open up.

They come to our wards and branches feeling as though they are strangers. "Now therefore ye are no more strangers and foreigners, but fellowcitizens with the saints, and of the household of God" (Eph. 2:19). We read in the scriptures about seeds and about the sower of seeds (Matt.13). We are taught that a seed can grow, become a tree, and bear fruit. But we have to have good soil to accept the good seed, and that is one of our roles in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints--that we provide the soil which nurtures the seed so it can grow and bear fruit and that the fruit remains (John 15:16). Many are strong enough to endure to the end. Without receiving a warm hand of fellowship, some become discouraged and unfortunately may lose that spirit that brought them to the waters of baptism. What was once a centerpiece in their existence is pushed aside for what they may perceive to be an offense, more pressing matters of the day, or it is simply lost in the shuffle of living. (Ensign 4/84)

In most Christian circles you will rarely hear fasting mentioned, and few will have read anything about it. And yet it’s mentioned in Scripture more times even than something as important as baptism (about seventy-seven times for fasting to seventy-five for baptism).

There are certain elements that Scripture prescribes for corporate worship services of the church. Many theologians refer to these as the elements of corporate worship, and they include the following: 1) Preaching34 2) Sacraments of baptism and the Lord’s Table35 3) Prayer36 4) Reading Scripture37 5) Financial giving38 6) Singing and music

And he commanded them that there should be no contention one with another, but that they should look forward with one eye, having one faith and one baptism, having their hearts knit together in unity and in love one towards another.

We can become, in other words, people for whom the romantic or existentialist dream might eventually begin to come at least partially true. But this is not, or not for the most part, something straightforwardly and completely given in baptism and in initial Christian faith.

St. Paul. ‘As many of you as have been baptized into Christ, have put on Christ’.182 Erasmus. ‘Paul does not seem,’ in Rom. v. 14, ‘to treat about infants.—It was not yet the custom for infants to be baptized.’183 Luther. ‘It cannot be proved by the sacred scripture, that infant baptism was instituted by Christ, or begun by the first Christians after the apostles.’184 M. De La Roque. ‘The primitive church did not baptize infants: and the learned Grotius proves it, in his annotations on the Gospel.’185 Ludovicus Vives. ‘No one, in former times, was admitted to the sacred baptistery, except he was of age, understood what the mystical water meant, desired to be washed in it, and expressed that desire more than once.’186 Chambers. ‘It appears, that in the primitive times none were baptized but adults.’187 Bishop Barlow. ‘I do believe and know, that there is neither precept nor example in scripture, for pedobaptism, nor any evidence for it, for about two hundred years after Christ.’188 Salmasius and Suicerus. ‘In the first two centuries, no one was baptized, except, being instructed in the faith and acquainted with the doctrine of Christ, he was able to profess himself a believer; because of those words, He that believeth, and is baptized.

Hebrews 6 1So let’s push on toward a more perfect understanding and move beyond just the basic teachings of the Anointed One. There’s no reason to rehash the fundamentals: repenting from what you loved in your old dead lives, believing in God as our Creator and Redeemer, 2teaching about baptism,* setting aside those called to service through the ritual laying on of hands, the coming resurrection of those who have died, and God’s final judgment of all people for all time. 3No, we will move on toward perfection, if God wills it. C6 It’s clear that Jesus wanted His people to grow and mature in faith. Those who don’t move beyond the basics—tasting the gifts and powers of the new creation, partaking in the Spirit and the word of God—and then fall away bring shame to Jesus and produce nothing but briars and brambles. There is no stagnant life in the Kingdom. Either you grow and produce a blessing or you languish and descend into a curse. Be warned.

But, in special, we detest and refuse the usurped authority of that Roman Antichrist upon the Scriptures of God, upon the Kirk, the civil magistrate, and consciences of men; all his tyrannous laws made upon indifferent things against our Christian liberty; his erroneous doctrine against the sufficiency of the written Word, the perfection of the law, the office of Christ, and His blessed evangel; his corrupted doctrine concerning original sin, our natural inability and rebellion to God's law, our justification by faith only, our imperfect sanctification and obedience to the law; the nature, number, and use of the holy sacraments; his five bastard sacraments, with all his rites, ceremonies, and false doctrine, added to the ministration of the true sacraments without the word of God; his cruel judgment against infants departing without the sacrament; his absolute necessity of baptism; his blasphemous opinion of transubstantiation, or real presence of Christ's body in the elements, and receiving of the same by the wicked, or bodies of men; his dispensations with solemn oaths, perjuries, and degrees of marriage forbidden in the Word; his cruelty against the innocent divorced; his devilish mass; his blasphemous priesthood; his profane sacrifice for sins of the dead and the quick; his canonization of men; calling upon angels or saints departed, worshipping of imagery, relics, and crosses; dedicating of kirks, altars, days; vows to creatures; his purgatory, prayers for the dead; praying or speaking in a strange language, with his processions, and blasphemous litany, and multitude of advocates or mediators; his manifold orders, auricular confession; his desperate and uncertain repentance; his general and doubtsome faith; his satisfactions of men for their sins; his justification by works, opus operatum, works of supererogation, merits, pardons, peregrinations, and stations; his holy water, baptizing of bells, conjuring of spirits, crossing, sayning, anointing, conjuring, hallowing of God's good creatures, with the superstitious opinion joined therewith; his worldly monarchy, and wicked hierarchy; his three solemn vows, with all his shavellings of sundry sorts; his erroneous and bloody decrees made at Trent, with all the subscribers or approvers of that cruel and bloody band, conjured against the Kirk of God. And finally, we detest all his vain allegories, rites, signs, and traditions brought in the Kirk, without or against the word of God, and doctrine of this true reformed Kirk; to the which we join ourselves willingly, in doctrine, faith, religion, discipline, and use of the holy sacraments, as lively members of the same in Christ our head: promising and swearing, by the great name of the LORD our GOD, that we shall continue in the obedience of the doctrine and discipline of this Kirk, and shall defend the same, according to our vocation and power, all the days of our lives; under the pains contained in the law, and danger both of body and soul in the day of God's fearful judgment.

Therefore, we can hardly think of submission to his baptism as an act of righteousness, and certainly not a fulfillment of all righteousness. More likely Jesus means “fulfill all righteousness” in a salvation-historical sense. God’s saving activity prophesied throughout the OT is now being fulfilled with the inauguration of Jesus’ ministry and will culminate in his death on the cross. This is supported by the similar salvation-historical reference to John the Baptist in 21:31–32 (Hagner 1992, 116–17). Jesus is expressing his obedience to God’s plan of salvation that has been revealed in the Scriptures (Keener 2009, 132). The public baptism illustrated salvation-historical continuity between John the Baptist’s and Jesus’ ministries. By identifying himself with John through baptism, Jesus endorsed John’s ministry and message, and linked his own cause to John’s (“this is the way for us to fulfill all righteousness” 3:15; emphasis added).

About 1524, in Germany, many of the churches of brethren, such as had existed from the earliest times, and in many lands, repeated what had been done at Lhota in 1467; they declared their independence as congregations of believers and their determination to observe and to carry out as churches the teachings of Scripture. As formerly at Lhota, so now on these occasions those present who had not yet as believers received baptism by immersion were baptized.[65] This gave rise to a new name, a name which they themselves repudiated, for it was attached to them as an offensive epithet in order to convey the impression that they had founded a new sect; the new name was Anabaptist (baptized again).

He expressed his own thoughts and teachings thus: “the holy universal Christian Church is a fellowship of the saints and a brotherhood of many pious and believing men who with one accord honour one Lord, one God, one faith and one baptism.” It is, he said, “the assembly of all Christian men on earth wherever they may be in the whole circle of the world”; or again, “a separated communion of a number of men that believe in Christ”, and explained,—“there are two churches, which in fact cover each other, the general and the local church,… the local church is a part of the general Church which includes all men who show that they are Christians.” As to community of goods, he said it consists in our always helping those brethren who are in need, for what we have is not our own but is entrusted to us as stewards for God. He considered that on account of sin the power of the sword had been committed to earthly Governments, and that therefore it was to be submitted to in the fear of God. Such gatherings were frequently held in Basle, where Hubmeyer and his friends zealously searched the Holy Scriptures and considered the questions brought before them. Basle was a great centre of spiritual activity. The printers were not afraid to issue books branded as heretical, and from their presses such works as those of Marsiglio of Padua and of John Wycliff went out into the world.

His teaching as to the absence of any freedom of will or choice in man, and of salvation as being solely by the grace of God, went so far as to lead to the neglect of right conduct as a part of the Gospel. Among the doctrines carried over from the Church of Rome was that of baptismal regeneration, and, with this, the general practice of baptising infants. While reviving the teaching of Scripture as to individual salvation by faith in Christ Jesus and His perfect work, Luther did not go on to accept the New Testament teaching as to the churches, separate from the world, yet maintained in it as witnesses to it of the saving Gospel of Jesus Christ; he adopted the Roman Catholic system of parishes, with their clerical administration of a world considered as Christianized. Having a number of rulers on his side, he maintained the principle of the union of Church and State, and accepted the sword of the State as the proper means of converting or punishing those who dissented from the new ecclesiastical authority. It was at the Diet, or Council, of Speyer (1529) that the Reform party presented the protest to the Roman Catholic representatives, from which the name Protestant came to be applied to the Reformers. The League of Smalcald in 1531, bound together nine Princes and eleven free cities as Protestant Powers.

For one thing, the Bonhoeffers rarely went to church; for baptisms and funerals, they usually turned to Paula’s father or brother. The family was not anticlerical—indeed, the children loved to “play” at baptizing each other—but their Christianity was mostly of the homegrown variety. Daily life was filled with Bible reading and hymn singing, all of it led by Frau Bonhoeffer. Her reverence for the Scriptures was such that she read Bible stories to her children from the actual Bible text and not from a children’s retelling. Still, she sometimes used an illustrated Bible, explaining the pictures as she went.*

Had the churches of Christ been left unto their primitive liberty under the enjoined duties of reading and expounding the Scripture, of singing psalms unto the praise of God, of the administration of the sacraments of baptism and the Lord’s supper, and of diligent preaching the word, all of them with prayer, according unto the abilities and spiritual gifts of them who did preside in them, as it is evident that they were for some ages, it is impossible for any man to imagine what evils would have ensued thereon that might be of any consideration, in comparison of those enormous mischiefs which followed on the contrary practice.

Basing itself upon Sacred Scripture and Tradition, [this Council] teaches that the Church, now sojourning on earth as an exile, is necessary for salvation. Christ, present to us in His Body, which is the Church, is the one Mediator and the unique way of salvation. In explicit terms He Himself affirmed the necessity of faith and baptism and thereby affirmed also the necessity of the Church, for through baptism as through a door men enter the Church. Whosoever, therefore, knowing that the Catholic Church was made necessary by Christ, would refuse to enter or to remain in it, could not be saved.

The Scriptures function as the script of the worshiping community, the story that narrates the identity of the people of God, the constitution of this baptismal city, and the fuel of the Christian imagination.

Scripture also functions as something like the constitution of the baptismal city.

Bossuet. ‘Experience has shown that all the attempts of the Reformed to confound the Anabaptists, by the scripture, have been weak; and, therefore, they are, at last, obliged to allege to them the practice of the church.’161 Chambers. ‘As none but adults are capable of believing, they’ the German Baptists, ‘argued, that no others are capable of baptism; especially, as there is no passage in all the New Testament, where the baptism of infants is clearly enjoined. Calvin, and other writers against them, are pretty much embarrassed, to answer this argument; and are obliged to have recourse to tradition, and the practice of the primitive church.’162 Also the Oxford Divines, in a convocation, held one thousand, six hundred and forty-seven, acknowledged, ‘that, without the consentaneous judgment of the universal church, they should be at a loss, when they are called upon for proof, in the point of infant baptism.

In the epistle to the Galatians, it is written, ‘If ye be Christ’s, then are ye Abraham’s seed, and heirs according to the promise’.120 Let us inquire, what is implied in believers’ being the seed of Abraham; and what promise is here intended. In the context,(ver. 6, 7.) it is written, ‘Even as Abraham believed God, and it was accounted to him for righteousness: Know ye therefore, that they which are of faith, the same are the children of Abraham.’ Abraham believed; therefore, they who believe, are his children. This is perfectly in the style of scripture. The unbelieving Jews are called children of the devil, because they were like the devil, in their character and conduct. On the same principle, the profligate are called children of Belial; believers, children of light; and unbelievers, children of disobedience. On the same principle, believers are called children of Abraham. They are like Abraham, in character and conduct. They have faith of Abraham.

Quaker prohibitions (no music, no dancing, no novels, no theater, no destruction of animal life for pleasure), the peculiar Quaker customs (no separate salaried ministers, no officiated marriages, baptisms, or funerals, the use of singular “thee” and “thou” instead of the inaccurate plural “you”), and Quaker social activism (refusal to pay taxes for support of ministers, abolitionism, equality of women, pacifism) are all founded on simple positive religious principles. “God has given to all,” says Clarkson, “besides an intellectual, a spiritual understanding.  .  .  .  This spirit may be considered as the primary and infallible guide—and scriptures but a secondary means of importance.”5