| RELIGIOUS LIBERTY: A Major Tenent of The Baptists As Shown Through History
by Dr. Greg Dixon In the History of the Baptists - Vol. I,
by Thomas Armitage, D.D., he gives the earmarks of the Apostolic church
in chapter IX. The fourth one is the fact that the apostolic churches
were actively independent of the State. Armitage
- "We have seen that Jesus laid the cornerstone of religious freedom in
liberty of conscience, so that in the voluntary service of God his
followers should not be vassals to human dominion." "...then, his
inspired Apostles carefully guarded this holy principle of soul-liberty
by requiring implicit obedience to him, ...They, therefore, neither
asked permission of human governments to preach and form churches, nor
would they desist from doing so at their command." ..."Jesus retained
all judicial power in his hands and is its only Lawgiver, taking no
account of the pains and penalties of civil law." ..."They demanded the
right to worship without molestation, and if need be, contrary to the
mandates of the law; nay, and to invite all men to do so." Rather
than being redundant, because we could cite examples like this of the
Baptist churches throughout the ages, I will give a few examples from
the early beginnings of our nation at the time of the American
Revolution. All quotes are from Baptist Patriots and the American Revolution, by William Cathcart. "The
Baptists in this country, in 1770, may have been regarded as fanatics,
but they were universally esteemed as men of God who would not
perpetrate what they knew to be a wrong for all the world. And when
they deliberately, everywhere, and very frequently violated the
plainest colonial laws, and showed a readiness to suffer anything in
their persons and property rather than submit to enactments in conflict
with their consciences, the attention of the whole people was aroused,
and the wisdom of many of the best men in all the colonies led them to
doubt the patriotism of obeying unjust laws. And
by this painful method the suffering Baptists trained their countrymen
to disregard the tyrannical legislation of the mother country." Page 11. "But
our Baptist fathers demanded full liberty of conscience for themselves,
and for all others, and gloried in disobedience to all persecuting
laws." Page 12. "But
our Baptist fathers demanded full liberty of conscience for themselves,
and for all others, and gloried in disobedience to all persecuting
laws." Page 12. "But
our fathers submitted to robbery and loathsome prisons with foul
associates rather than render willing obedience to iniquitous laws. In
the East and in the South Baptist witnesses, from prison windows, and
sometimes with scourged shoulders, and in a voice as holy as ever
floated on the lips of martyrs, announced to multitudes of men that
unrighteous laws were conspiracies against God and the best interests
of our race, plots of the Evil One, to be met by exposure and stern
resistance, disobedience to which was loyalty to Jehovah." Page 18. "Before
the revolution Rhode Island was the freest Colony in North America, or
in the history of our race. Her Baptist founders had made their
settlement a Republic complete in every development of liberty, even
while under the nominal rule of a king; they created a government with
which there could be no lawful interference by any power in the Old
world or the new. Bancroft speaks of Rhode Island at the Revolution as
enjoying a form of government, under its charter, so thoroughly
republican that no change was required beyond a renunciation of the
king's name in the style of its public acts." Page 22,23. The
following is from the minutes of the Philadelphia Baptist Association,
the oldest body of this character in America: the Association sent a
large committee to Congress to aid the appeal of our New England
brethren. Dr. Samuel Jones, in his Centenary
Sermon before the Philadelphia Association, at its meeting held in this
city in 1807, says: 'On the assembling of the first Continental
Congress, I was one of the committee, under appointment of your body,
that, in company wit the late Rev. Isaac Backus, of Massachusetts, met
the delegates in congress from that State in yonder State House, to see
if we could not obtain some security for that liberty for which we were
fighting and bleeding at their side. It seemed unreasonable to us that
we should be called to stand up with them in defence of liberty if,
after all, it was to be liberty for one party to oppress another.'
These two Baptist bodies formally recognized the Revolution and the
Continental Congress, and they were among the first religious
communities in the Colonies to give the sanction of their influence to
that great Revolutionary legislature. Nor
does it detract from their recognition that they wanted Congress to
assist them in securing relief from persecution. The conscientious
Baptists who would preach, though imprisoned and scourged for it, and
who refused to pay taxes to support the State clergy, though certain to
be thrust into jail for their disobedience, and to have their property
seized and sold for less than half its worth by officers of the law,
would have borne the worst penalties ever endured by saintly sufferers
rather than have recognized a body tainted with usurpation. The true
Baptist will bear any outrage before he will accept relief by unholy
means." Page 26-28. "And
like the great founder of Rhode Island, Roger Williams, our Baptist
fathers, in Revolutionary days, forgave their persecutors, and in view
of great dangers threatening the liberties and lives of their
countrymen, stood knee to knee and shoulder to shoulder with patriots
of loving and persecuting antecedents, and never gave up the conflict
until the flag of freedom floated in undisturbed majesty over the
entire territory claimed by the thirteen Colonies." Page 78. "In
two points they were distinguished: first, in their love of freedom;
and secondly, in their hatred of the church establishment. They hated,
not its ministers, but its principles. To a man they were united in the
resolve never to relax their efforts until it was utterly destroyed." Page 86, 87. |
