A Portraiture of Quakerism, Volume 2: Taken from a View of the Education and Discipline, Social Manners, Civil and Political Economy, Religious Principles and Character, of the Society of FriendsClarkson, Thomas
Religion
A Portraiture of Quakerism, Volume 2: Taken from a View of the Education and Discipline, Social Manners, Civil and Political Economy, Religious Principles and Character, of the Society of Friends
Clarkson, Thomas
Society of Friends
_Question is, which of these turn baptisms is included in the great
commission given by Jesus to his Apostles, "of baptizing in the name of
the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost?"--Quakers deny it to be that
of John, because contrary to the ideas of St. Peter and St.
Paul--because the object of John's baptism had been completed--because
it was a type under the law, and such types were to cease._
It appears then that there are two baptisms recorded in Scripture; the
one, the baptism of John, the other that of Christ; that these are
distinct from one another; and that the one does not include the other,
except he who baptizes with water, can baptize at the same time with the
Holy Ghost. Now St. Paul speaks only of[153] one baptism as effectual;
and St. Peter must mean the same, when he speaks of the baptism that
saveth. The question therefore is, which of the two baptisms that have
been mentioned, is the one effectual, or saving baptism? or, which of
these it is, that Jesus Christ included in his great commission to the
Apostles, when he commanded them "to go and teach all nations, baptizing
them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost."
[Footnote 153: Eph. 4.5.]
The Quakers say, that the baptism, included in this commission, was not
the baptism of John.
In the first place, St. Peter says it was not, in these words:
[154] "Which sometimes were disobedient, when once the long suffering of
God waited in the days of Noah while the Ark was preparing, wherein few,
that is, eight souls, were saved by water;[155] whose antetype baptism
doth also now save us, (not the putting away of the filth of the flesh,
but the answer of a good conscience towards God,) by the resurrection of
Jesus Christ."
[Footnote 154: 1 Peter 3. 20. 21]
[Footnote 155: Antetype is the proper translation, and not "the figure
whereunto."]
The Apostle states here concerning the baptism that is effectual and
saving; first, that it is not the putting away of the filth of the
flesh, which is effected by water. He carefully puts those upon their
guard, to whom he writes, lest they should consider John's baptism, or
that of water, to be the saving one, to which he alludes; for, having
made a beautiful comparison between an outward salvation in an outward
ark, by the outward water, with this inward salvation by inward and
spiritual water, in the inward ark of the Testament, he is fearful that
his reader should connect these images, and fancy that water had any
thing to do with this baptism. Hence he puts his caution in a
parenthesis, thus guarding his meaning in an extraordinary manner.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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