Baptist History Homepage

Infant Baptism
Tennessee Baptist newspaper
By James M. Pendleton, 1859
      The inevitable tendency of infant baptism is to supplant the baptism of believers. A supposition will make this plain. Let it be supposed, then, that the principles of Pedobaptism prevail throughout the world. All parents come into the Church, and have their children "dedicated to God in baptism." If this supposition were realised, where would be the baptism of believers? It would, in one generation, be banished from the world. An ordinance established by Christ, to be observed to the end of time, would be abolished. There would be no gospel baptism on earth. One of the institutions of the Head of the Church would not he allowed a place in the world which he made, and in which he labored, toiled, suffered and died. How horrible is this? A human tradition arraying itself in deadly hostility to an ordinance of Heaven, and attempting with all the energy of desperation, to destroy it, and leave no memorial of its existence on the face of the globe! If there were no other objection to infant baptism, this is amply sufficient to induce all who love the Savior, and revere his authority, to wage against it a war of extermination.
     P.

[From the Tennessee Baptist, June 12, 1859, p. 2. Scanned and formatted by Jim Duvall.]



More on J. M. Pendleton
Baptist History Homepage