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not view baptism as essential to salvation, they view it as a necessary prerequisite for communion in “regular, visible standing” as a church.
158In order to demonstrate that baptism is prerequisite to communion, Baldwin presents several arguments: (1) that the church of the New Testament was composed of believers only;
159(2) that receiving grace and believing is a necessary prerequisite to baptism;
160and (3) that “a profession of faith, in adults, in order to their admission to special communion, is a point generally
acknowledged” (Matt 16:13-19).
161Thus, Baldwin summarizes “We then believe it to be the apostolic order, to baptize none till they profess their faith in Christ; and that till then, they cannot be considered qualified members for a gospel church, nor be received into their fellowship at the Lord’s table.”
162According to Baldwin then, paedobaptists must demonstrate that the apostolic teaching and practice presents something other than a believing church in which belief precedes baptism and baptism precedes communion.
163After arguing that immersion is essential to baptism,
164the thesis of Baldwin’s third
158 Baldwin, Baptism of Believers Only, 13. Baldwin’s delineation between matters essential to salvation and matters essential to the ordering of a church are clear; while baptism does not fall in the former category, it does fall in the latter (12).
159 Baldwin, Baptism of Believers Only, 15–16. He cites Acts 2:41-42; 5:11-14; 8:12; 18:8; 2 Cor 8:5.
160 Baldwin, Baptism of Believers Only, 18–19. He cites Acts 8:37; Rom 4:10-14; 10:10; Gal 3:29. The Baptist anticipates an objection here in defense of infants. According to 1 Pet 2:5-9, those who belong to the church were once not a people and are now the people of God. If infants can belong to the covenant of grace by virtue of their baptism, then “there is no time at which they are not a people” and “the parents convey the right of membership on their infant seed.”
161 Baldwin, Baptism of Believers Only, 21–22.
162 Baldwin,Baptism of Believers Only, 27.
163 Baldwin, Baptism of Believers Only, 31. In order to remove the “baptism of the Holy Ghost” from the discussion, Baldwin compares the apparent belief and baptism experience of those in Acts 19:1-6 to the “one baptism” of Ephesians 4:1. He stresses that Paul viewed them as disciples not based on their having the Holy Spirit, whom they did not yet have, but on the basis of their profession and baptism.
Baldwin concludes “the baptism of the Holy Ghost ceased when these miraculous gifts cease,” which means that Paul refers to water baptism in Ephesians.
164 He states the Baptist sentiment: “The Baptists not only believe that this one baptism is an institution of Christ, but that it is ever to be administered in one mode, and to one kind of subjects. Our opponents suppose (at least many of them) that it may be administered upon a profession of faith, or without it; either by immersion or sprinkling. They acknowledge immersion to believers to be lawful baptism; could we with a good conscience, allow the same of infant sprinkling, much of our dispute would be at an end.” Baldwin’s indebtedness to the wider, trans-Atlantic debate over open communion is evident
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section is that “sincerity is not the term of communion: but being conformed to the apostles’ doctrine, and continuing steadfastly therein” (Acts 2:42).
165Sincerity is an insufficient ground for communion because “whatever we practice that is not according to the will of Christ, is contrary thereto, although we be ever so sincere in doing it.”
166In his subsequent writings, Baldwin’s arguments for close communion are similar to this dissertation’s thesis. In an “Appendix” to his Baptism of Believers Only (1806),
167Baldwin aims to disprove what paedobaptists hold to be basic, namely, “That infants have a right to gospel baptism, because infants under the law had a right to
circumcision.”
168Baldwin argues against this principle of continuity along three lines: (1)
in his lengthy quotation from Abraham Booth’s Apology (without a page number citation) to the same effect. Baldwin, Baptism of Believers Only, 32.
165 Baldwin, Baptism of Believers Only, 37.
166 Baldwin, Baptism of Believers Only, 38-39. Baldwin claims that consistency in the open communion position could not prevent two other errors: The open communion Baptist church would have to allow (1) a converted Roman Catholic to join even if she refused the cup on grounds of conscience; and (2) a Quaker to join even if she refused baptism and the Supper all together on grounds that a sincere Christian faith replaces visible forms.
167 Baldwin penned this Appendix in answer to Samuel Worcester, Two Discourses on the Perpetuity and Provision of God’s Gracious Covenant with Abraham and His Seed, 2nd rev. ed. (Salem, MA: Pool, 1807). The first edition of Worcester’s work was clearly published prior to Baldwin’s 1806 publication.
168 Baldwin resumes this line of argument in depth in later comments on Samuel Worcester’s Two Discourses. He explains (1) “the promise of blessing to Abraham came 24 years before the covenant of circumcision in Gen 17.” Baldwin, Baptism of Believers Only, 260. The promise of Gen 12 was “in no sense conditional.” (2) The promises that Abraham would have nations spring forth from his loins and have kings come from him “has been literally and fully accomplished.” (3) The promise to Abraham regarding the Gentile nations in Christ was renewed with Abraham about twenty years after the covenant of circumcision in Gen 17, that is in Gen 22. It was at this stage, that God repeated the promise, “In thy seed shall all the nations of the earth be blessed.” (4) The apostle distinguishes between the “promise” respecting the seed in whom the Gentile nations should be blessed, from that made in the covenant of circumcision respecting the posterity of Abraham.” The woman’s seed and seed of Abraham refer to Christ. “But primarily, his natural seed, or at most his spiritual seed, and not Christ, was intended, by the seed in the covenant of circumcision. The nations have never been blessed by any other of Abraham’s seed but Christ.” (5) The apostle makes another distinction in the promises to Abraham by the use of the plural
“promises” in Gal 3:16 (cf. Gen 12:3; 22:18). The same distinction is made with reference to the “seed”
singular as opposed to “seeds” in Gal 3, according to Baldwin. In a subsequent series of letters, Baldwin clarifies that the promise to Abraham and the Abrahamic covenant are distinct because Paul locates the fulfillment of the Abrahamic promise in Christ (Gal 3:16). See Thomas Baldwin, A Series of Letters in Which the Distinguishing Sentiments of the Baptists Are Explained and Vindicated: In Answer to a Late Publication, by the Rev. Samuel Worcester, A. M. Addressed to the Author, Entitled Serious and Candid Letters (Boston: Manning & Loring, 1810), 45-6. He explains, God’s promise to “perform the oath which he swore to Abraham” (Gen 22) refers not to the “time when the covenant of circumcision was ratified, but at the time when Isaac was presented as a victim on the altar . . . more than twenty years after the
ratification of that covenant.” Therefore, “beyond all controversy,” the promise of blessing to Abraham’s seed refers not to “the natural or even spiritual seed, but Christ.” Baldwin’s separation of the promise to
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the Abrahamic covenant (Gen 17) was distinct from the promise given to Abram in Genesis 12 that all the nations would be blessed through his offspring; (2) the change in dispensation from law to grace and from old covenant to new requires that only believers and not their children belong to Christ by faith;
170and (3) paedobaptists are inconsistent in their application of the covenant terms to their children, given that all circumcised males participated in Passover.
171Later, in his Series of Letters (1810),
172Baldwin presents a thoroughgoing Baptist defense of discontinuity between the Mosaic and new covenants, which require differences in the constitution of Israel and the church respectively. Baldwin maintains that covenants must be distinct unless “you can make it appear, that to ‘inculcate’ the necessity of a renewal of heart, and the actual possession of a renewed heart, are the same thing.”
173Due to the covenantal differences, Baldwin introduces a significant difference in argument regarding baptism in order to argue against baptism replacing circumcision.
He writes, “To say that baptism now seals the same covenant, which circumcision
formerly did, is to assume what never has, and we believe, never can be proved. Baptism, to my recollection, is never said to be the seal or token of any covenant whatever; but the
Abraham and covenant with Abraham appears novel in Baptist history. Others have viewed the Abrahamic covenant as comprising all of the promises and conditions stated throughout Genesis 12-22, understanding the episodes to constitute a whole package.
170 Baldwin, Baptism of Believers Only, 195–196. Baldwin presents a very brief explanation of Acts 2:41 with respect to the promise that is “for you and your children.” He cites Jer 31:31-34 and explains that this covenant spoken of by Peter in Acts includes only those who know the Lord, because it is enacted on better promises (213-14).
171 Baldwin, Baptism of Believers Only, 182. Baldwin cites Exod 12:43-48 to argue that baptized infants who fail to participate in the Lord’s Supper should be cut off from God’s people.
172 This publication was also written in response to Samuel Worcester, Serious and Candid Letters to the Rev. Thomas Baldwin, D. D. on His Book, Entitled, “The Baptism of Believers Only, and the Particular Communion of the Baptist Churches, Explained and Vindicated” (Salem, MA: Haven Pool, 1807).
173 Baldwin, Series of Letters, 88.
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answer of a good conscience toward God.”
174Instead, because baptism is a positive institution, it “rests on the authority and declaration of the institutor.”
175If this is the case, then “no inference can be made from what is fit and proper under one institution, to what is fit and proper under another,” which would include “subjects, qualifications, or
requirements.”
176Baldwin claims covenantal continuity in the fact that circumcision guaranteed males the right to participate in Passover as full members of the Mosaic covenant (cf. Exod 12:48-49).
177Similarly, in the gospel dispensation, according to Galatians 3:28, all who are baptized share in all the benefits of the gospel. In terms of discontinuity though, the distinction between God’s visible people and those who share in the covenant of redemption has now vanished because full participation in the covenant is received by faith.
178The upshot of this biblical-theological argumentation is that the church is composed of believers only, baptism is a covenantal sign given to those believers, and consistency in the application of the signs of the new covenant requires that baptism precede the Lord’s Supper.
Andrew Fuller
Fuller’s argument for strict communion is built on the premise that a proper methodology is necessary for arriving at Christ’s full teaching on a positive institution.
179174 Baldwin, Series of Letters, 89.
175 Baldwin, Series of Letters, 119.
176 Baldwin, Series of Letters, 119.
177 Baldwin,Series of Letters, 121–22.
178 For example, Christians do not have their domestic help baptized. Baldwin, Series of Letters, 120.
179 Fuller was born and raised in a hyper-Calvinist, Particular Baptist milieu. Fuller’s conversion in his teens and subsequent call to ministry occurred in correlation with a controversy over hyper-Calvinism in Fuller’s Soham church, during John Eve’s (d. 1782) pastorate. Fuller’s pastoral ministry began after Eve’s resignation with Fuller's initial pulpit supply in Soham, which led to his seven- year pastorate at Soham. Subsequently, Fuller moved to the pastorate at Kettering, where he finished his ministry. After becoming convinced of evangelical Calvinism (i.e., “Fullerism”) during his Soham pastorate, Fuller wrote his most famous work, Gospel Worthy of All Acceptation (1785). This work, along with William Carey’s Enquiry into the use of Means for the Conversion of the Heathen sparked a
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This methodology requires combining Christ’s commands to continue baptism and the Lord’s Supper in the church with the early church’s pattern for participating in those ordinances. While Christ’s commands to baptize and take the Lord’s Supper supply the grounding for the ordinances being positive institutions, the pattern of New Testament practice elucidates the essential elements of each ordinance from its accidental elements.
That each of the ordinances is a positive institution grounds Fuller’s arguments for strict communion.
180Therefore, a brief explication of Fuller’s view of positive institutions versus moral duties is in order before moving to the pastor’s direct arguments for close communion.
Fuller continually categorizes baptism and the Lord’s Supper as positive institutions, which are binding on the church of all ages. They are binding because Christ has legislated them, rather than because of any holy tendency inherent in the action.
Fuller writes,
[A moral duty] is commanded because it is right, the other [a positive institution] is right because it is commanded. The great principles of the former are of perpetual obligation, and know no other change than that which arises from the varying of
transatlantic missions movement, especially among Baptists. Fuller collaboratively founded the Baptist Missionary Society (BMS) with fellow-pastors and friends from the Northamptonshire Baptist Association (NBA), including John Ryland Jr. and John Sutcliff. Fuller’s work as the corresponding secretary of the BMS allowed continued correspondence with William Carey and those who joined Carey’s mission work in India. Besides writing sermons, Fuller’s writing centered around five major controversies: deism, antinomianism, Sandemanianism, Socinianism, and universalism—each as a means to preserving the church’s gospel witness. This sketch largely follows Paul Brewster, Andrew Fuller: Model Pastor- Theologian (Nashville: B & H, 2010). For more on Fuller’s life see Peter J. Morden, The Life and Thought of Andrew Fuller (1754-1815), Studies in Evangelical History and Thought (Milton Keynes, England:
Paternoster, 2015); Morden, “Andrew Fuller: A Biographical Sketch,” in At the Pure Fountain of Thy Word: Andrew Fuller as an Apologist, ed. Michael A. G. Haykin, Studies in Baptist History and Thought, vol. 6 (Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock, 2007), 1–42; Morden, “‘So Valuable a Life. . .’: A Biographical Sketch of Andrew Fuller,” The Southern Baptist Journal of Theology 17, no. 1 (2013): 4–14; Phil Roberts,
“Andrew Fuller,” in Baptist Theologians, ed. Timothy. George and David S. Dockery (Nashville:
Broadman Press, 1990), 121–39. For synopses of Fuller’s controversies, see Michael A. G. Haykin, ed., At the Pure Fountain of Thy Word.
180 Fuller, Fuller’s Works (FW), 3:515. Strikingly, Fuller closes his 1814 letter by stating, “I am willing to allow that open communion may be practised from a conscientious persuasion of its being the mind of Christ; and they ought to allow the same of strict communion; and thus, instead of reproaching one another with bigotry on the one hand, or carnal policy on the other, we should confine our inquiries to the precepts and examples of the New Testament.—I am affectionately yours, Andrew Fuller.”
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relations and conditions; but those of the latter may be binding at one period of time, and utterly abolished at another.
181Furthermore, positive institutions are abolished due to a change of dispensation or covenant—as the way in which circumcision ended with the onset of the new
covenant
182—and remain unknown unless God “expressly reveals” them.
183Therefore, distinguishing positive institutions from moral duties is vital.
Fuller specifically affirms baptism and the Lord’s Supper as positive
institutions belonging to the gospel dispensation/kingdom of Christ.
184Baptism functions to separate the kingdom of Christ from the kingdom of Satan and to distinguish the church from the world, as each professing believer aligns himself or herself with Christ and Christ’s church by baptism.
185While baptism is not a moral duty for Fuller, he clearly views positive institutions as signs which reinforce moral duties.
186With respect
181 Fuller was certainly not the first to argue that baptism and the Lord’s Supper are positive institutions. Of those surveyed in this dissertation, he makes the most use of the category. See Andrew Gunton Fuller, The Complete Works of Andrew Fuller: Controversial Publications., ed. Joseph Belcher (Harrisburg, PA: Sprinkle, 1988), 2:624. For Abraham Booth on this point, see Booth, Apology, 83.
182 For example, in a sermon on Gen 17 to the Kettering congregation, Fuller explains that Christians are not bound to baptize their children as Abraham’s descendants were bound to circumcise their children. “In short, we do not think ourselves warranted, in matters of positive institution, to found our practice on analogies, whether real or supposed . . . Our duty, we conceive, is, in such cases, to follow the precepts and examples of the dispensation under which we live.” See Fuller, Discourse XXV, “Abraham and His Seed,” from Expository Discourses on Genesis, FW, 3:71, See the lengthy note on this page.
183 Fuller, FW, 2:624.
184 He writes, “Baptism is a divine institution, pertaining to the kingdom of the Messiah, or the gospel dispensation.” Fuller, FW, 3:339. Fuller appears to see baptism as a structural and institutional marker of the church. While he admits the appropriateness of baptism as a symbol of new life in Christ, he consistently grounds baptism in Christ’s command rather than a holy tendency in the act itself. If the latter were true, baptism would be a moral duty and not merely a positive institution (341-42).
185 Fuller, FW, 3:342. In his letter to William Ward in India, titled “Thoughts on Open Communion,” Fuller offers other related points on the relationship between OT law and the command to baptize. He explains that baptism’s significance “arises from its being the distinguishing sign of
Christianity—that by which they were to be known, acknowledged, and treated as members of Christ’s visible kingdom.” Fuller, FW, 3:504-5. Furthermore, as opposed to the visible church being a mixed community of baptized and unbaptized professing believers, which would allow a “defective” profession of Christianity, one enters the church by verbal and baptismal profession. Entering this way “entitles, us to a place in Christ’s visible kingdom.” Thus, without believer’s baptism, “our claim to visible communion must of course be invalid.”
186 For example, baptism should reinforce orthodox trinitarian faith, as one marked by the divine name and should issue in a life of repentance. On the trinitarian significance of baptism, see Andrew Fuller and Michael A. G. Haykin, “The Admission of Unbaptized Persons to the Lord’s Supper,
Inconsistent with the New Testament,” Southern Baptist Journal of Theology 17 (2013): 68–76. In Fuller’s
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to the Lord’s Supper as a positive institution, Fuller concludes that the bread and cup with the words of institution in the church are essential to the meal,
187while the use of
unleavened bread, the accompanying agape feast, the time of day or day of the week, and the act of reclining are accidental.
188Hence, Fuller consistently maintains that the church is duty-bound to follow the examples and principles of the New Testament in similar cases. On this logic, Fuller is unwilling to make any accidental element a “term of communion,” because this would be to lay “bonds in things wherein Christ has laid none.”
189Positively though, because the ordinances are instituted “in connection” as positively institutions,
190whatever is essential to each ordinance remains binding on the church. These hermeneutical categories shed light on Fuller’s explicit arguments for close communion.
Fuller’s “Letter to a Friend” (1814) is the most strenuous display of
argumentation for strict communion in his corpus.
191Fuller begins his letter by affirming
circular letter entitled, “Practical Uses of Christian Baptism” (1802), he argues that baptism should “furnish motives for a faithful adherence to believe Christ’s truth and obey his precepts.” Fuller, FW, 3:339. Thus, Christ established baptism as a positive institution designed to promote piety in individuals and purity in the church (340).
187 Admittedly, Fuller’s discussion is lacking in what would comprise essential aspects of the Lord’s Supper. The features I listed are chosen because they appear throughout the discussion unquestioned and binding, though never listed as such by Fuller. See Fuller, FW, 2:634–36.
188 Fuller explains, “There are also circumstances which may, on some occasions, accompany a positive institution, and not on others, which being, therefore, no part of it, are not binding. It is a fact that the Lord’s Supper was first celebrated with unleavened bread; for no leaven was to be found at the time in all the Jewish habitations; but no mention being made of this, either in the institution or in the repetition of it by the apostle, we conclude it was a mere accidental circumstance.” Fuller, FW, 2:634.
189 Fuller, FW.
190 Fuller, FW.
191 Interestingly, in the explanatory letter contained within the parcel to the friend, William Newman, Fuller wrote “I wish none to see it but yourself, and that no mention be made of it. If anything be written on the other side, it may, if thought proper, be printed, but not else.” Fuller, FW, 3:508. Newman admits that the publication of Robert Hall Jr.’s On Terms of Communion (1815) rendered it proper to print the letter. Robert Oliver describes Hall’s treatise as the ablest defense of open communion to appear in print in Oliver, History of the English Calvinistic Baptists, 244. Interestingly, it was Fuller’s “Admission of Unbaptized Persons” letter that Robert Hall described as “the feeblest of all [Fuller’s] productions” in Robert Hall Jr., A Reply to the Rev. Joseph Kinghorn, 2nd ed. (London: Button and Son, 1818), 68.
Newman himself wrote on open communion with help from Abraham Booth before the latter died. Oliver, History of the English Calvinistic Baptists, 233.