It was a real discovery, because apart from the church's pastors and clerks, few eyes had seen them. Contained in the church's historical collection were conference and covenant meeting record books, treasurer's ledgers, corporate records, letters, women's missionary societies minutes, and booklets which now include a little over 230 years of the history of Baptist life since the days of President . George Washington. Second, in a seminary setting there are those who greatly enhance the program and labor in the background.
The church has treated our family as if it were theirs, and no one has prayed harder for me to get through this course of study than they have. Who likes early American decor and had turned the parsonage built in the year 1800 into a haven for history lovers. When Martha and I first read the church records over four decades ago, we asked the same question.
INTRODUCTION
This thesis will examine in detail the church records of the Second Baptist Church in Galway, a separate Baptist church on the New York border. If we observe the use of the covenant in church records, we find that congregational politics is strikingly obvious. Second, it will examine the ecclesiastical covenant of the Second Baptist Church of Galway, examine its source or author, and explain its structure and meaning.
Third, she will study the early books of record to see how the covenant was used in the life of the church. There is no man of the Church of England, but the same man is also a member. Commonwealth; nor any member of the Commonwealth who is not also [a member of] the Church of England."
Thus, these parents (who could not testify to the conversion experience) and their children would thus be under the control of the church. The church covenant begins with a description of the triune God: Father, Son and Holy Spirit. In the table below, the mutual duties of Christians are clearly delineated in the second half of the church covenant.
Church Covenant of the Second Baptist Church of Galway, Vol. 214 [The Formulation of the Covenant]. A revival followed, resulting in the organization of the second church in Galway. Crumb offers more details about Abia Peck and the founding of the Second Baptist Church of Galway.
This ties in with head of doctrine number ten on the independence of the church. The frequent mention of the church covenant reminded all members of their covenant obligations towards God and each other. Elisha Andrews became a member of the Second Baptist Church of Galway on 13 May 1790 (Church Record Book, 12).
The genius of the use of the church covenant was that it mobilized the laity. However, that would turn a page in the history of the church beyond the scope of this thesis.
CONCLUSION
We both agreed that the history of the individual Baptists on the New York frontier is an extremely rich treasure that has been overlooked in contemporary Baptist history studies. Hopefully, this thesis will have the same effect as the discovery of gold on January 28, 1848, at Sutter's Mill in California, which resulted in the gold rush, which helped spur the settlement of the American West. There is an abundance of "Baptist gold" awaiting scientific discovery in the New York frontier settlement in the early years of the United States of America.
Abijah Peck's portrait hangs in the entrance to the current Bible Baptist Church of Galway. Here is one last story that ties Abijah Peck and the use of the church covenant. A dispute arose between representatives of these two denominations on the board of the New York Missionary Society as to what kind of church they wanted to start.
5 Sources for Elkanah Holmes, Lemuel Covell, and the Tuscarora Baptist Church, from earliest to latest date are: Deidamia Brown, Memoir of the Late Rev. Two covenants will appear in this appendix: the 1789 covenant and the present covenant of the same church, renamed Galway Bible Baptist Church. The author of the covenant of the Second Baptist Church of Galway is Isaac Backus; Compare Backus' church covenant in Hovey's biography of Backus Alvah Hovey, A Memoir of the Life and Times.
Therefore, being dead to our former way of life and now alive to God, we enter into this covenant with our Lord, and our brothers and sisters in Christ who are members of the Bible Baptist Church of Galway to encourage and answer each other to keep the vows made today.2. With God's help we resolve to be students of the Bible and to hold fast to the essentials that are clear to all, and to be merciful towards those who sincerely differ on non-essentials that are not clearly made known . Third and Fourth Baptist churches of Galway identified with Providence, the newly given name of the township formed from Galway.
We promise to do everything in our power to preserve unity and peace in the Church.
ARTICLES OF FAITH
We believe that the Lord Jesus Christ who was set up from eternity as the Mediator of the New Covenant to be the sponsor of his people and in the fullness of time really took on human nature in which he suffered and died as their substitute in them room and place whereby He made all that satisfaction for their sins which the Law and Justice of God could require. We believe that the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son and he alone does and can make a specific application of the Atonement through Christ to each specific believer as it is revealed in the word of God. We believe that assurance of Faith in this Life is attainable and that it is a duty highly imposed on Believers to labor after we do not in any way consider Afsusration as the essence of Faith, but one of its delightful consequences.
We believe that there will be a general resurrection of both the Righteous and the Unrighteous and God has appointed a day when He will judge the world in Righteousness through Jesus Christ and will reward every man according to his works when the wicked will be sent into the eternal punishment and the Righteous in Eternal Life. Theology was often conveyed as a body of divinity and that body reflected the Westminster Shorter Catechism's explanation of the covenant of grace. Savior is Christ, His twofold nature and threefold office as prophet, priest and king, the application of that salvation through the effectual calling of the Holy Spirit through calling, faith and repentance, and the benefits to those who are saved, including justification , adoption, sanctification and the eternal state.
The theological basis during this time of foreign missions and simultaneous revivals of the Second Great Awakening was the postmillennial hope, fueled by Calvinist covenant theology. 3. It expresses all five points of the TULIP acronym (ie, total depravity, unconditional election, limited atonement, irresistible grace, perseverance of the saints). The Separate Baptists of the Second Baptist Church in Galway were clearly evangelicals and Calvinists, and their Calvinism did not diminish their zeal to reach the lost.
An important and popular Dissociated Congregationalist evangelist in Connecticut named Elisha Paine held this modalist view.4 Backus called Paine “one of the greatest lawyers in the . Brooks Holifield, Theology in America: Christian Thought from the Age of the Puritans to Civil War (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2003), 62. Connecticut, and was in a very successful situation in the world.”5 According to Goen, Paine illustrated his erroneous view of the Trinity by saying that "a man may stand before the law in several offices without being several persons."6 He thought that the affirmation of three persons in the Trinity meant the affirmation of three gods.7 When confronted, Paine admitted that he had been taught that there were three persons in the Godhead, but claimed that the Trinity was a mystery to him, thus avoiding official condemnation as.
This discrepancy in the Articles of Faith of the Second Baptist Church of Galway, the origin of which is currently unknown, may link to an older document somewhere in New England where Paine worked as an evangelist.
HOW TO PRACTICE
A True Account of the Visible Church 1589" In The Reformation of the Church: A Collection of Reformed and Puritan Papers on Church Questions, 196-202. A Century of Missions in the Empire State as Seen in the Work and Growth of the New York State Baptist Missionary Convention. Lemuel Covell, missionary to the Tuscarora Indians and the Province of Upper Canada; It contains a history of the origin and progress of missionary activities in the Shaftsbury Baptist Association up to the time of Mr.
Covenant Meeting." In The Baptist Encyclopedia: A Dictionary of the Doctrines, Ordinances, Usages, Confessions of Faith, Sufferings, Labors and Successes, and of the General History of the Baptist Denomination in All Lands with numerous biographical sketches of distinguished American and foreign Baptists , and an appendix. Emmanuel Baptist Church in Brooklyn: In Commemoration of the 50th Anniversary of the Founding of the Church, 1881-1931. The Cry of a Stone, or A True Treatise Showing What is the Right Matter, Form, and Government of Christ's visible church.
The congregationalism of the last three hundred years as seen in its literature with special reference to certain recondites, neglected or. Commissioners of the Church of Scotland, as part of the Covenanted Uniformity in Religion between the Churches of Christ in the Kingdoms of Scotland, England and Ireland by an Act of the General Assembly, Anno 1645, approving the same" in The Confession of Faith . Theology in America: Christian Thought from the Era of the Puritans to the Civil War.
Baptist Foundations in the South: Tracing Through the Separations the Influence of the Great Awakening. Church-Government and Church Covenant Revealed, in an Answer of the Elders of the Feverish Churches of New-England to Thirty-two Questions, Committed to them by Divers Minifters in England, to declare their Judgments therein. Narrative of the Revival of Religion within the Bounds of the Presbytery of Albany in the Year 1820.
of the church administration". In Liberty Online Library: The Works of John Robinson, Vol.
