ART. III.—THE COMMUNION QUESTION.

1. Terms of Sacramental Communion. By ROBERT BOYTE C. HOWELL, D.D., Pastor of the Baptist Church, Nashville. Tenn. Third Edition. Philadelphia: American Baptist Publication Society. 12mo, pp. 271. 1847.

2. Communion: The Distinction between Christian and Church Fellowship, and between Communion and its Symbols. Embracing a Review of the Arguments of the Rev. Robert Hall, and Rev. Baptist W. Noel, in favor of Mixed Communion. By T. F. CURTIS, A.M., Professor of Theology, Howard College, Ala. Philadelphia: American Baptist Publication Society. 12mo, pp. 303. 1850.

WE place at the head of this article the titles of two books which deserve the attention of the Christian public, and especially of the Baptist denomination in this country, but which, for some reasons, may be in danger of failing to gain access to all upon whose reception they have obvious and proper claims. The first has been issued in its third edition for nearly four years, and thus far, we regret to acknowledge, has not received so much as a "notice" in the supplementary pages of this journal, an oversight the more noteworthy, since the book was early republished in England, and has had a very wide circulation in many portions of our own country. The love of sectarian and controversial discussion on the question of Communion among Christians, has never marked our pages. Even to the apparent neglect of seasonable occasions for advocating sentiments deeply fixed in our convictions, this Review has, we believe, always aimed to maintain the character of candor and liberality towards other denominations of Christians. While the subject of Church Communion has been so well understood by ourselves, and so often misrepresented by others, we have rather preferred to leave it to the working of its natural influence upon the minds of candid and sensible men. And while as a denomination we hold the singular position of maintaining the purity of one of the leading ordinances of Christianity, in its important bearings, in contrast with multitudes of Christian people who we believe have neglected or perverted it; and while the subject of Baptism, in its manifold relations, is, and ever has been, the great nucleus with which the fundamental questions of Regeneration, the Voluntary Principle in Religion, Church

Organization and Orders, and the relations of Church and State, have been vitally, logically, and practically connected; and while in the middle of the nineteenth century the most serious questions connected with some political governments, and the position of doctrines in the system of Christianity, as much perhaps as in any preceding period, find their real basis in Christian Baptism and its relations, it may be taken, we think, as an evidence of a desire on our part to maintain courtesy towards brethren of other persuasions, that in the long course of the history of this Review, extending through a period of fifteen years, the whole catalogue of its articles on the main subject of Baptism, together with the wide range of collateral topics, such as Baptist history and statistics, the general religious belief of the Baptists, their connection with religious liberty, their church polity, their theory of membership, and their missionary history, in its various relations in this and other countries, amounts to only twenty-two.

But while we have been so silent in relation to our firm and familiar convictions on the subject of Communion, it is not seldom that other leading journals, the organs of large ecclesiastical persuasions, find occasion to give their readers many an earnest warning as to the bigotry of holding the system of opinions which concentre in the doctrine of "believers' baptism" and sometimes they give us information concerning ourselves, of which we should be entirely ignorant but for the positiveness and authority with which they assume to give us knowledge. A specimen of this may be found in an article on "Close Communion,"-an inviting title,—in the last number of the Princeton Review, the organ of the powerful body of the Old School Presbyterian Church, in which the writer, in reviewing Mr. Curtis's book, says that "the subject of Free Communion is beginning to attract the attention of the American Baptist brethren, as it has of the churches of that denomination in England. * * But we venture to predict that the time is rapidly approaching, when this subject will agitate the Church from the centre to the circumference of the body. The wave is already in motion which threatens, at least, to sweep away this exclusive, schismatic principle of restricted communion from the face of the Protestant world." The reviewer expresses himself pleased with the friendly spirit which Mr. Curtis manifests, and closes by adding, he "should not be at all surprised, if before many years, he (Mr. C.) should be found among the zealous advocates of free communion, among all the sincere followers of the Lord Jesus Christ."

In speaking of sentiments which we, in all charity, candor, and fidelity, are compelled to hold, the leading theological Review of New-England, the Bibliotheca Sacra, in an article in the November number of 1849, contrasting the "Internal and External Element of Religion," has placed the mark of formalism upon our churches as a body; and ranking our sentiments in this respect in the same category with the superstitions of Romanism and Puseyism, goes on to describe them in a strain of severe remark, which, as one instance of the kind, instead of many which we might collect, we will venture to extract, though at the loss of space we would fain reserve for our more direct purpose:

We will venture to refer to one more fact, evidencing the exclusive nature of formalism, and that too when it gains a partial power even over good men. There are Protestant Christians who even maintain not only that baptism is necessary to church communion, but baptism in one particular form. They hold that those only who have been plunged entirely under water, and that too by one who has been himself immersed, have a right to a seat at the table of Christ. An internal cleansing is not sufficient; an outward application of water to signify this cleansing is not sufficient; they would have just so much water applied, enough to cover the whole body. They contend not for the spirit nor the form, but for the form of the form; not for the substance nor the shadow, but for the shade of the shadow; not for the purified heart, nor the outward rite which typifies it, but for the mode of the rite. This is, indeed, tithing the mint, anise and cummin, and neglecting the weightier matters of the law. They make not merely the rite of baptism, but a peculiar form of the rite, necessary to church fellowship. They require as a condition of communion, not only the water of baptism, but a certain amount of water, enough to cover the whole body. The question whether or not they shall commune with a man, is not so much, Has he been spiritually cleansed? or, Has he had water applied in the name of the Trinity? but, Has he had water enough applied to cover him all over? for only so much, as they appear to think, will signify moral purification. They seem not to know that "he that is washed needeth not save to wash his feet, but is clean every whit." They can commune, as they know they do. with those not purified in heart, who have been immersed; but they cannot sit at the communion table even with the pure in heart who lack immersion. A man may be washed in atoning blood, and have clean water applied to typify the washing of regeneration; but if he has not been washed all over, in the material water of baptism, if a hand or a foot has not felt the baptismal element, he must have the table of the Lord barred against him as an unworthy communicant. Our Baptist brethren are not all of them fully emancipated, as yet, from the bondage to form. We do not blame them for contending for baptism by immersion, but we are grieved to see them lay so much stress on the mere form of a form, the mode of a rite, the manner of signifying inward purification. There is, indeed, in that denomination, a growing spirit of emancipation from this yoke of bondage; many of the members of her communion, some of her ablest and noblest leaders, are casting indignantly away the shackles of form, fixing their eyes on the spiritual element of religion, and elevating that to the chief place in their regard. And they stand ready now, just

as they hope to do in heaven, to embrace in the arms of an open charity and communion, all who possess the principle of spiritual life. God speed the day when the catholic spirit which is now animating the hearts of so many of her mighty men, shall be diffused through the entire rank and file of her great army. (Pp. 739, 740.)

If leading authorities in other quarters thus take it upon them to inform us of facts concerning ourselves of which we are ignorant, and to represent our views of Christianity and its ordinances as we are certainly not conscious of holding them, it may be meek indeed to bear quietly and without reply such misrepresentations, but hardly just to ourselves, or to views which our conscience, judgment, and faith in God's Word, imperatively require us to hold. It becomes a grave question how far it is right to encourage by our silence, repeated animadversions which we feel to be at once unfair to ourselves, inapplicable to the subject, and aside from all right views of the nature of the ordinances of the gospel. Our silence is very likely to be construed as the result of a conviction in our wide community of churches, that the subject is safest when touched the least, and that the invidious ground of "Restricted Communion" can be held only in contravention of the natural promptings of Christian feeling, by a species of minute verbal and metaphysical criticism,or by indirect and left-handed applications of Christian precepts.

The agreement of opinion on the subject of communion which prevails among Baptists, has not been produced by stress of ecclesiastical legislation overlying and binding the churches to general standards of religious belief; nor has it, as we conceive, resulted from the local, pre-occupying influence of a few particular churches, moulding and assimilating the great mass of those springing from them in the still extending field of American Christianity and civilization. No form of ecclesiastical organization is less favorable to unity of opinion and similarity of polity than the system of independent churches universally prevailing among the Baptists. And the principle of imitation and example can operate with very limited effect among churches separated from each other by wide geographical spaces, and by a variety of social and circumstantial peculiarities. The adoption of Baptist sentiments in many regions seems to have been unsought and spontaneous; and their wide prevalence in this country cannot be traced to any particular quarters. The opinion seems to have existed with some, that most of the Baptists in this country derived their peculiarities from the founders of the

Rhode Island colony. But Professor Knowles, the accomplished biographer of Roger Williams, admits that "the great family of Baptists in this country did not spring from the First Baptist church in Providence. Many Baptist ministers and members came, at an early period, from Europe, and churches were formed in different parts of the country which have since multiplied over the land. Of the 400,000 Baptist communicants now in the United States, a small fraction only have had any connection, either immediate or remote, with the venerable church at Providence, though her members are numerous, and she has been honored as the mother of many ministers."

Indeed, it is a well-known fact, that the prominence and prevalence of the sentiments of the Baptists, as to the ordinances and doctrines of the gospel, have not been identified with any ecclesiastical leaders or law-givers, nor been limited to any one geographical region or particular language. At the dawning of the Reformation in England, and upon the removal of the pressure of Papal and Protestant persecution, there soon arose to view a great multitude of people professing Baptist sentiments. A large share of these doubtless proceeded from Wales, where these sentiments had been cherished, we have reason to believe, from the time of the introduction of Christianity into Britain. For at the commencement of the Reformation in England, multitudes of Baptists all at once made their appearance. No one can tell when they became Baptists; and in a very short time their sentiments were found scattered all over the English nation. A large part of Cromwell's army, several of his generals, and many of his leading officers were Baptists. They were com plained of, by their contemporaries, "as growing more rapidly than any other sect in the land." (Baillie's Letters, I.

66

p. 408.

At a period equally early, a similar movement had been long prevailing in Holland and Piedmont. According to an authority quoted by Mr. Curtis, entitled, "An Account of the Origin of the Dutch Baptists, published in 1819, by Dr. Ypeij, Professor of Theology at Gröningen, and Rev. J. J. Dermont, Chaplain to the King of the Netherlands," it is admitted that the Baptists may be considered as the only Christian community which has stood since the days of the apostles, and as a Christian society [community?] has preserved pure the doctrines of the gospel through all ages. The perfectly correct external and internal economy of the Baptist denomination tends to confirm the truth, disputed by the Romish Church, that the Reformation was in the highest degree