Baptist History, Heritage & Distinctives – The Waldenses – One Baptism – Baptist Peculiarity FOUR – Infant Baptismal Regeneration – Doctrine of the Anti-Christ – Part 7
Thomas E Kresal
February 22, 2020
Baptist History, Heritage & Distinctives – Part 7 The Waldenses – One Baptism – Baptist Peculiarity FOUR
Infant Baptismal Regeneration – Doctrine of the Anti-Christ
Fourth: Baptists immerse, or bury with Christ in baptism, only those who profess to be dead to, or freed from, sin. We now proceed to the examination of the Waldenses regarding the fourth Bible peculiarity.
After the rise of the Arian controversy, the Catholics originated the practice of trine immersion. In baptism, they dipped the candidate once in the name of the Father, once in the name of the Son, and once in the name of the Holy Ghost. But the Waldenses adhered to the apostolic practice of “one baptism.”
They buried in baptism only once those who professed to be dead to sin. They were charged, it is true, with Anabaptism, or re-baptism, which they denied, on the ground that even the immersions performed by false churches were invalid, and not baptism at all. The suffering Waldenses, in their supplication to Emanuel, Duke of Savoy, used the following language: “The Turks, Jews, Saracens, and other nations, though never so barbarous, are suffered to enjoy their own religion, and are constrained by no man to change their manner of living and worship; and we, who serve and worship in faith the true and Almighty God, and one true and only Sovereign, the Lord Jesus, and confessing one God and one baptism,—shall not we be suffered to enjoy the same privileges?” The point has already been fully established, that the Waldenses baptized none except professed believers. And they considered a true believer as a child of God; therefore they did not baptize sinners, the children of the Devil, in order to make them children of God; they baptized those who professed to be dead to, or freed from, sin.
Thus we discover that the Waldenses regarded baptism as a testimony of the cleansing from sins by the blood of Jesus Christ. With them, baptism was not in order to the cleansing from sin, but a testimony of it. In fact, the Waldenses regarded baptismal salvation, in connection with infant baptism, as one of the leading features of Antichrist. In a treatise concerning Antichrist, written by the Waldenses in the twelfth century, it is supposed, we have the following; remarkable language concerning; the doctrine of Antichrist: “He teaches to baptize children into the faith, and attributes to this the work of regeneration, thus confounding the work of the Holy Spirit in regeneration with the external rite of baptism, and on this foundation bestows orders, and, indeed, grounds all Christianity.” (Jones Church History, p. 255)
Peculiarity Four Continues on Monday, February 24
Presented by Thomas E. Kresal from: “Baptist Succession” by D.B. Ray, 1871 Edition, pg. 356-57
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